by M. R. Forbes
He took the clothes and finished dressing. This was the best he had felt in weeks and a complete reversal from where he had been only a few hours earlier.
He was ready to get back into the fight.
Nathan went to the door. “I’ll check in with Doc again, grab some food, and meet you in the lobby.”
“Pozz that,” Hayden and Chandra both said.
Nathan left the room. Hayden and Chandra waited a few seconds, and then they left too. The trip from the west wing of the hospital back to the pod station was quick and uneventful. They passed a few nurses and a couple of guards on the way, and none of them offered any suspicion toward their presence.
They loitered in the front of the hospital, only waiting a few minutes before Nathan rejoined them carrying a satchel. They made their way outside, giving Hayden his first true glimpse of Edenrise.
His head swiveled, his eyes drinking in the glory of the tall, unblemished skyscrapers, sparkling with internal lights in the gathering darkness. He noticed the people on the streets, moving freely and fearlessly despite the onset of night. He looked past it all to the energy shield, invisible on its own but causing a wavy shift in the world beyond its cover. It was everything he had ever dreamed Sanisco had been and could be in the future, only it was right here, right now.
And some potentially evil being was hiding somewhere inside.
Nathan whistled, flagging a dark car sitting off to the side of the hospital, a soldier standing beside it. The soldier noticed Nathan and rushed to get into the car, starting it up and bringing it up alongside them.
Nathan opened the back door, motioning for Hayden and Chandra to enter. He followed behind them once they did, closing the door.
“Where are you headed, sir?” the driver asked.
“The docks,” Nathan replied.
“Yes, sir.”
The car pulled away, heading across the city. Hayden did his best to keep his posture and expression serious, trying not to make it obvious he had never been in the city before. He couldn’t believe how much Tinker had accomplished, and he couldn’t help but be envious of it. Tinker had told him the energy shield couldn’t be replicated because the power draw was too high, but what if they lowered the range? He quickly discovered Edenrise was larger than the inhabited parts of Sanisco. If they had the technology, they could do so much more with so much less, but Tinker hadn’t even entertained a conversation about it.
It didn’t matter right now. But what if Tinker was gone? Edenrise would still be there, and it would still have its shields. The opportunity wasn’t completely lost.
Hayden, Nathan, and Chandra climbed out of the car when it reached the docks. Hayden marveled again at the massive boats resting along the shore. They were all so much larger than the one he had escaped from Manhattan on, rising tall out of the water to the west. The largest of them was lit up, though he didn’t notice any activity near it.
Nathan led them on foot, a few blocks over to an ordinary looking building. He used his hand to activate a security panel there to unlock the door, bringing them inside. They made their way to a lift and descended deep underground into a secondary part of the building. Passing another secured door they followed a long corridor to the end where Nathan unlocked the third and final door into Tinker’s workshop.
Hayden quickly examined the room, the scene a little less blurry than before. With his vision in the replacement eye improving, he crossed the room to one of the tables to inspect a partially-disassembled rifle, the nearby glass partition catching his attention.
“This is Tinker’s lab?” he asked.
“Yes,” Nathan replied.
“I was expecting something fancier.”
“He’s not that into fancy. He prefers functional.”
“What’s that?” Hayden asked, pointing to the sphere on the other side of the glass.
Nathan stared at it for a moment. “You need to see this, Sheriff. Chandra, you too.”
Chandra had gone to one of the terminals, but now she joined Nathan and Hayden as Nathan led them into the separate area containing the sphere. “According to Tinker, the United States Space Force found this artifact as part of the fallout from the asteroids that brought the trife to Earth.”
“It came with the asteroids?” Hayden said.
“Affirmative. Tinker believes it was sent as a message from the aliens he calls the Others. It included a key to the artifact he went west to search for. When the Space Force lost the war and abandoned Earth, they buried the artifact and carried the key to Proxima with them, separating the two parts. My wife, Niobe, found the key. The Trust killed her to keep her from bringing it back to Earth, but she knew they were going to kill her, and she arranged for me to be the one to deliver it.”
“Your escape from Proxima was no accident?”
“No. Judicus Shia was on Tinker’s payroll. The plan was to kill me on entry and find the data chip, the key, in the rubble. When that didn’t work, Tinker sent James to kill me and get the ring.”
“Only he didn’t kill you.”
“Right. He had his reasons for that.” Nathan paused. “This isn’t easy for me, Sheriff. Letting you go and betraying James. I owe both of you my life, but he welcomed me into his family. He made me feel accepted in a way I’ve never been accepted before. He isn’t a bad person. He’s just loyal to the one who made him and who acted as his mentor and father.”
Hayden knew what Nathan was saying without Nathan having to say it. If it came down to taking James’ life or sparing it, Nathan was asking him to spare it.
“The Spacers that came after me had to die too,” Nathan said. “Including you. No witnesses. No loose ends. Tinker had a story ready to feed to the Trust, who would have passed it to Proxima Command. The fugitive dead, the Centurions tragically lost in the pursuit.”
“Understood,” Hayden said. “I can’t say I’m surprised.” He motioned to the sphere. “You said it contains a message. What was it?”
“It’s easier to show you,” Nathan said.
Nathan reached for the small screen on the side of the bottom pillar, tapping it to activate the controls. He was sure Tinker would be pissed he was using the sphere. He turned it on, watching as the sphere went into its startup sequence. Both ends of the device separated, exposing a pair of glowing rings which started to spin. Then the sides slid open too, revealing a second pair of spinning rings. They began throwing the red hologram across the space.
Hayden flinched when the hologram appeared, showing the cloaked figure on the bridge of its starship. He settled in a moment later. “Does it have sound?”
“No,” Nathan replied.
Hayden watched the scene play out. The massive ship appearing in the viewscreen ahead of the cloaked figure, the asteroids launching from its sides and heading directly for the figure. The ship somehow avoiding the attack and turning to face the opposite direction to watch the asteroids hit an Earth-like planet below. The alien object, launching from the figure’s ship to join the asteroids and then the counterattack from the planet.
He was amazed at the way the larger asteroid-throwings ships decimated the defenses. He could almost feel his mouth hanging open when the alien launched the self-constructing gate from its ship, casting it out to escape through while the larger ship adjusted its vector to attack.
The scene ended, the sphere’s rings going dark and vanishing back into their shell. Hayden stared at the object, his mind working. He glanced at Chandra. Her mouth was hanging open, her skin lined with goosebumps. He looked at Nathan, who was looking back at him, expecting him to comment on how incredible the whole thing was.
“I take it the alien who recorded this is Tinker’s Other?” he said.
Nathan nodded. “That’s right.”
“And he thinks what? The alien is showing us how to contact it because it’s powerful enough to stand up to the enemy?”
“Pretty much,” Nathan said. “It’s waiting for us to prove we’re worthy by killing al
l the trife.”
“And that’s the motivation behind the virus. Is that what you see?”
Nathan thought about it for a few seconds. “You know, I did. But now that I watched it again with you, I’m not as certain.”
“That’s because you’re smarter than you think you are, and you don’t have someone leaning over your shoulder, hinting at what you should believe. How did Tinker come to his conclusion on what this meant?”
“He said he had visions. He saw it coming to pass.”
“And you believed that bullshit?”
“I never did, Sheriff. There’s a reason I call him the Mad Messiah.”
“I think we need to change his name to the Had Messiah,” Hayden said. “My opinion is that he’s been totally played.”
“What do you mean?” Nathan asked.
“You said the enemy has a weapon that causes hallucinations?”
“That’s right.”
“So they have a penchant for making people see what they want them to see?”
“You could put it that way, sure.”
“From what I understand, the trife came to Earth on the backs of thousands of asteroids, just like we saw in the projection. But I’ve never heard anything about a massive ship. How would Space Force miss something like that? That thing was at least six kilometers long.”
“The hologram doesn’t show Earth.”
“Exactly. The planet in the projection isn’t Earth. So what? They moved in closer to that one to start their assault? That doesn’t work for me.”
“Why not?”
“The civilization in the projection doesn’t just have starships. They have warships armed with beam weapons. If the enemy isn’t afraid to launch their attack from close up against an opponent with the potential to fight back, why would they be afraid to launch their attack against Earth at a time when Earth had yet to finish building a starship? Something doesn’t add up.”
“I hadn’t considered that. Do you think the sphere is lying?”
“I think the whole projection is a fabrication. A trick.”
“That’s crazy, Sheriff,” Chandra said. “What would be the point of that?”
Hayden was silent as he considered, his speculation coming into focus in his head. He was sure the sphere was a trap of sorts, but he also knew there had to be a motive for it.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said, letting the words spill out before he had completely finalized his thoughts. Talking through a problem was usually the fastest way to solve it. “I think the aliens who sent the trife don’t have starships with the range to reach Earth. Maybe they don’t have starships at all. Maybe they aren’t even as advanced as we’ve always assumed. Or maybe it all comes down to cost and resource efficiency.
“Anyway, they create these delivery vehicles that look like asteroids and then launch them either from the edge of their interstellar range or from the closest planet they control. Maybe it takes a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years for the asteroids to get anywhere. Maybe eighty percent of them hit something else and burn up or are otherwise destroyed before they do anything. But eventually, they come across another planet with intelligent life on it.
“When they do, they have these spheres bundled in with the asteroids, along with these gates. There are probably hundreds of them to ensure they reach the planet. In any case, it all comes crashing down through the atmosphere. Some number of spheres survive the fall. Some number of doors survive the fall. Lots of trife survive the fall. Then the enemy waits.”
“They wait? For what?” Nathan asked.
“For the trife to destroy the planet, and then for someone like Tinker to come along to put the key and the door together and let them in. They walk across a bridge between planets instead of having to take a ship across space. Proxima is four light years away and it takes two weeks to make a round-trip. What if it were four hundred light years away?”
“There are a lot of holes in that theory, Sheriff,” Chandra said. “Not the least of which is how do they know someone on this end will put the key and the door together? And why didn’t they just program the door to open on its own when it got here?”
“Your theory also doesn’t explain how the trife’s virus was designed to be effective against humans,” Nathan added. “Or why the key is compatible with human tech in the first place.”
“I didn’t say it was a perfect hypothesis,” Hayden said. “But I do think it’s a better explanation than Tinker’s aliens-as-gods theory. He’s trying to fit the narrative into his personal goals. I’m trying to work something out based on facts.”
“Your version is pretty good,” Chandra said. “I think you’re on the right track, but we don’t have enough information to understand everything. It seems to me the aliens had to know something about us before they attacked. Maybe they sent a scout ship or something first?”
“What if they came to Earth first?” Nathan said. “If the USSF let one of them in at Area Fifty-one and it managed to get here and remain undetected, how do we know one of them didn’t take a ship to Earth a few hundred years ago? Proxima is sending scout ships all over the galaxy. Maybe the Others did the same thing. Maybe one of them found Earth, scouted it out, sent back the intel, and then the Others launched their attack.”
“That could work,” Chandra said. “It fills in some of the holes, anyway.”
“Okay,” Hayden said, following the line of thinking. “So what if the key and door weren’t meant for Tinker? What if the ship the scout took is a one-way trip? What if the scout has a way to survive indefinitely? A stasis pod or even just a long lifespan?”
“What if it didn’t come through the door when the USSF opened it?” Nathan said. “What if it was trying to recover the door and got sealed inside, and James and I let it out when we went to look for the artifact?”
“But why separate the key and the door?” Chandra asked. “That just makes it harder to open.”
“Exactly,” Hayden said. “You don’t want it opening at the wrong time. You need to be sure your target is suitably weakened, or the occupation isn’t going to go as smoothly as you want.”
“It still doesn’t explain the sphere,” Nathan said. “Why send a message like that if you already have someone on the inside? Why try to trick your target into opening the door for you? Especially when you’re expecting the native intelligence to be dead.”
“Plan B?” Chandra said.
“If the first scout fails why not send another scout?”
“If they know how our society works, they would probably know how to manipulate us. Maybe having us do it for them is easier? Or more cost-efficient.”
“You make it sound as though they attack planets like I do my taxes.”
“What are taxes?”
“Never mind.”
“We’ll never have all of the answers,” Hayden said, interrupting them. “For all we know everything we just threw out is completely wrong. I’m sure some of it is. But that doesn’t mean we can’t come to a common outcome. Tinker thinks the Others will protect what’s left of humankind. I disagree. As far as I’m concerned, at best they want to enslave us. At worst, they want to finish destroying us. If Tinker gets his hands on the artifact and opens the bridge? That’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
Chapter 22
They continued the conversation while Hayden ate some of the food bars Nathan had taken from the hospital and Chandra continued searching the Area 51 mainframe for more information about the Other. They went in circles on some points, agreed on a few others, and always came back to the same basic conclusion:
If Tinker opened the door to the interstellar bridge, they were fucked.
Hayden already planned to go after Tinker as soon as they dealt with the Other. What he had learned only served to increase the urgency, and he was impatient while Chandra pored through the mainframe for any clues about the alien and how it might be managing to stay hidden. Nathan was handling the wait better, slumped
against the wall near the doorway with his head down, asleep.
Hayden was about to go over and wake Nathan when the replica perked up, eyes flipping open and looking directly at him. Nathan jumped to his feet, jaw moving slightly to activate his comm.
“Roger that,” Nathan said, in response to whoever had contacted him. He shifted his attention to Chandra. “We’re getting closer, but nothing yet.” He paused, expression slowly morphing to one of concern. “Understood. Yes, sir… Yes, sir… Yes, sir. I’ll be there immediately, sir.”
Hayden stood as Nathan hurried over to him. “That was General Neill. He just got a report from an officer over at Hangar Six. One of the men just ran away from his post screaming, right before he drew his sidearm and shot himself in the head.”
“Sounds like our alien,” Hayden said. “Is there anything important about Hangar Six?”
“Yeah. Apparently, it’s where Tinker’s storing the DVs that have already been packed and inspected.”
“DVs?”
“Delivery vehicles. The virus, mounted and ready for launch.”
A sudden chill ran down Hayden’s spine. “Coincidence?”
“It would be a pretty big one. I’m going up to check it out. There are two comms in the satchel. Yours is set to listen-only. We don’t need to screw up and accidentally let the Liberators know you’re wandering around out there. You can communicate with me through Chandra if needed.”
“Pozz that,” Hayden said.
“If I say the word accelerated, that means come and help me.”
Hayden nodded. “Understood.”
“Chandra,” Nathan said, getting the botter’s attention. “You have fifteen minutes to come up with something.”
“Pozz that, Colonel,” she replied.
Nathan looked back at Hayden. “We can’t afford to wait too long on this and give it a chance to disappear again.”
“Agreed.”
“Hospitals don’t stock firearms, so I wasn’t able to get you a weapon. I’m hoping your new replacements will help even that out?”
