by N. W. Harris
Athos felt as though his swelling pride would move him to tears, looking at the image of his nephew on the holographic monitor afloat in front of him. Alone in the main room of his dwelling, it was the first time he’d talked to the new commander in private since he sent him down. All other communications had been recorded and transmitted to every passenger on the ship.
“How are you faring?” he asked, trying not to sound too excited. “Do you need a relief?”
“No, sir,” Pelros replied. He sat in the front of the transport, wearing his new Shock Troop armor. “I’m functioning optimally.”
“Good,” Athos replied. “You’re doing an outstanding job.”
“What do the people say?” Pelros asked, sounding hopeful.
“They worship you,” Athos replied, doubting it would go to the young commander’s head. He’d brought Pelros up to be humble, dreaming of making a general of him some day. His nephew needed preparation for the reverence he’d be treated with when he returned to the ship. “The citizens and royals are glued to their feeds, cheering and gambling upon your every move. There’s already a movement to have a statue of you placed outside the coliseum.”
“It is not I who should have a statue.” Pelros laughed. “It is you, Uncle. I’m nothing special. Any of your officers could have done as well. You pioneered the technology to make this possible.”
“The people don’t care about such dullness as who sponsored the research,” Athos said, smiling more than he had since he was Pelros’ age. “They want action. They want a hero. These you have delivered to them.”
“Speaking of entertainment,” Pelros hesitantly said. “I didn’t want to say anything on the feed, but I’ve withheld important information about two of our slave soldiers.”
“What is it?” It didn’t anger Athos that his nephew hadn’t spilled all on the feed. A good commander should know when to bite his tongue.
“The slaves Kelly and Jules have both told me about a dream or a sort of vision they’ve had,” Pelros began.
“The two from the coliseum?” Athos asked.
“Yes. Their condition could be trauma induced, but they claim to know, at least roughly, where those responsible for the attack on the recruit ships are hiding.”
“That’s interesting; what have you done about it?” Athos was glad this information was secret. Pelros would be a god if he avenged the rest of the fleet, and such a jewel needed broadcasting at the right moment.
“I have them searching for the hidden base,” Pelros replied, seeming relieved Athos hadn’t gotten angry with him. “They believe they’re getting close.”
“Make sure you have the cameras on when you find it,” Athos said. “The citizens will demand you get another promotion for such a show.”
“General Athos…” The admiral’s nervous voice came through his apartment’s communication link. “I need you on the bridge.”
“I’m on my way,” Athos replied. It was unlike the admiral to call him directly, something bad must’ve happened. He closed the link and said to Pelros, “I’ve got to go. Contact me immediately if you find anything.”
“Yes, sir,” Pelros replied.
Athos rushed out of the apartment and onto the elevator. The admiral’s panicked tone worried him. Everything had been going smoothly. He’d hoped for a little more time before he had to deal with another crisis. The door opened, and he stepped onto the bridge.
“Bring all weapons online,” the admiral ordered, his face paler than Athos had ever seen it. “All fighter craft on standby.”
“Aye, sir,” the weapons officer answered.
Silence and catatonia permeated the bridge. Everyone’s eyes were locked onto the view screen.
Admiral Vecan glanced at Athos. “General,” he said, his voice choked.
Athos’ stomach felt like it dropped to his feet. “Is that the fourth planet?” he asked no one in particular.
“Yes, sir,” the navigator answered.
A luminous vessel shaped similar to the jellyfish floating in the blue seas on the planet below drifted past the red planet. Larger than Earth’s moon, the domed upper portion of the vessel comprised only a portion of its overall length. It had massive cables of light floating beneath it, serpents longer than the diameter of the red planet twisting through space as if searching for something to strangle.
“How did they get this close without us seeing?” Athos’ strategic mind struggled for solid ground. Something needed to be done, and the admiral wasn’t up to the task. “Is there a wormhole?”
“It just appeared, sir,” the navigator answered.
“And it has no gravitational signature,” the weapons officer added.
The vessel’s upper region began vanishing. Invisibility swept down over the dome and all the way through the tentacles.
“It’s gone, sir,” the weapons officer said.
“What do you mean—gone?” the admiral asked frantically, stepping around the console and looking at the sensors.
“It’s either a more advanced cloak than we’ve ever encountered, or the ship was never there.” The weapons officer adjusted the Pegasus’ sensors as he spoke. “We were only able to detect it visually, and now that’s gone too.”
“General?” Vecan inquired, eager to be rescued by the more experienced officer as usual.
“Lock down the ship,” Athos said. “This may’ve been done by whoever destroyed the other recruit ships, perhaps as a distraction for an attack. Keep the weapons online, and monitor the harvesting activity on Earth.”
The admiral repeated his order, seeming to want to reassert who was in charge. Pelros’ success on the planet below made it easier for him to ignore Vecan’s insulting behavior.
“There it is again, sir!” the navigator said, stumbling back from his station.
The glowing vessel had halved the distance from the fourth planet to the Pegasus. Though it was massive, it seemed to be created from some insubstantial material, through which the red planet could still be seen.
“It’s got to be a thousand times bigger than the Pegasus,” the admiral said, going pale again.
The craft vanished once more. Athos expected it to appear on top of them the next time. He glanced at the sailors in the control room. Vecan’s agitation infected them all.
“Breathe, everyone,” Athos reminded them. “If it appears again, hit it with everything we’ve got.”
“Do as he says,” Vecan stammered.
Following Jones’ directions, Shane walked through the woods toward the hidden base. They’d been climbing on foot since leaving the road and the truck that had carried them from Charleston behind. They had hiked all night and into the next day. Dazed and numb since the slaughter of the kids near Columbia, he just started to notice the soothing sounds of the wilderness around him.
The quivering leaves had changed, and autumn’s crispness teased the air. The afternoon’s sun backlit the red, orange, and yellow leaves, making the tops of the trees above them look like flames danced upon their branches. Birds chirped, squirrels chattered, and peace permeated the forest. Not all the horrors going on in the world beyond had made it into these woods, and he imagined somehow that nothing would change here even if the aliens destroyed the rest of the world.
The magic of this place, and his memories of times he’d spent there with Granny and his parents before his mom died, caused emotion to seep light into the deadness crushing in on him.
“You do have the most beautiful planet in the universe,” Jones whispered, looking up at the trees.
“Yes,” Shane replied, a little shocked.
Jones had always seemed so harsh; he hadn’t thought the captain had the capacity to make such an observation. He walked next to Shane, glancing at him with a line of concern across his brow.
“We’re almost there,” Jones said.
“Good.” Shane didn’t feel like talking. He looked down at the leafy ground and walked
faster up the hill.
After another hour, he came to a fallen tree lodged between two others and held horizontally across the hillside. Turning left, he headed toward the root end, intending to go around it. When he was ten yards from the bottom, he stopped.
“This is…” he said, pausing because the others hadn’t caught up.
He looked at the tree trunk, a flood of memory washing hope into him. It was his and Kelly’s tree. They’d sat on the section of the trunk in front of him enough times that he could see where the bark had broken off from their heels kicking it as they sat. His heart had felt shriveled like a raisin, but this place inflated it so it pounded against his sternum and burned in his chest.
“It’s here,” he yelled. “We’re here!” Shane ran around the tree and up the steep hill, using the path he’d taken with Kelly so many times. “Stop,” a girl’s voice shouted from above.
He looked up. The red-haired girl he’d rescued in the gym stood at the crest of the hill, pointing her gun at Shane. Her eyes widened, and she lowered the weapon.
“Shane?” She stumbled down a couple of yards to meet him. “You’re back!”
Rebecca wrapped her arms around him, hugging him and weeping. Shane returned her hug, his responsibility to all the kids hiding at this base reverting to him. It didn’t feel like a burden. Shane realized he’d missed this place and these kids. They were his new family, and this had become home. The rebels said the technology hidden here could save Kelly and defeat the Anunnaki. Things might still be set straight.
“How’s Nat?” he asked, feeling alive and excited once more. “How are all the other kids?”
“Everyone is fine,” Rebecca said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Come on, they’ll be happy to see you.” She turned and headed up the hill.
“First, I have to rescue Kelly,” Shane replied, intending to make the effort as soon as they entered the base.
Tracy and Petrov caught up to him, Jones and the rest of the group following behind. They mounted the crest of the hill, and Shane became disoriented.
“Where’s the base?” Ahead of him lay dense forest, the same as they’d been walking through all day. “The barracks should be right here.”
“They are,” Rebecca replied, a hint of mischief in her voice. “After you left, they turned on a machine that makes the whole place invisible. It’s not nice in there, and I have to get outside every day to see the forest and the sun.”
“Would’ve been nice to have that technology on our mission,” Tracy said, glaring at Jones.
“The cloaking device is too heavy, and there is only one of them,” Jones explained. “It also blinds the user.”
They followed Rebecca toward the area where the barracks should be, passing through a sort of bubble that hid the base. Beyond sat the buildings he’d expected. Coming onto the tarmac, Shane saw a glowing sphere sitting at the center of the base. The clear, gelatinous ball grew and shrank in size rhythmically, seeming to breathe. The cloaking dome it emitted glowed bright green, supported by a column of energy rising fifty feet above the sphere before spilling out over the base like a giant umbrella. It wasn’t pleasant to look at, causing Shane’s eyes to ache after a couple of seconds, and it blocked his view of the sky and the peak of the mountain rising up behind the base.
“That’s the cloaking device,” Jones said. “It is not Anunnaki technology.”
“Where is it from?” Anfisa asked.
“The U.S. Air Force found it in a cavern in a remote area of Alaska last fall,” Jones replied. “Technology likely lost by someone exploring Earth before the Anunnaki first came here. They gave it to us so we could try to reverse engineer it. Other than being able to activate it, we haven’t made any progress.”
“When can you reconnect me to Kelly?” Shane demanded. “We need to save them.” He pointed at the sky.
“We can try now,” Jones replied.
Shane had grown so accustomed to being denied the request that it stunned him to hear the captain say yes.
“You probably don’t need all of us,” Petrov said.
“No,” Jones replied. “Just Shane.”
“I’m coming too,” Tracy asserted.
“We hoped you would.” Jones led the way toward the hangar where Shane and his friends had first sat down with Lily. “But we feared your last attempt was too traumatic for you to try it again.”
“Are you kidding me?” Tracy said with disbelief. “No amount of pain is going to stop me from saving Jules.”
Shane looked at her and smiled, comforted to have her beside him on this mission. Inside, Jones led them past the conference room to a door near the back of the hangar. He typed in a code and opened it, revealing an elevator.
They entered, and Jones closed the door. The elevator hummed and vibrated for a handful of seconds, and then the captain opened the door onto a massive underground room filled with electronic equipment. Rebel clones rushed from station to station.
“Are the neural linking programs ready?” Jones asked the first clone he came to.
“Yes, sir. We have rerouted the fighter ship’s power supply systems as specified.”
“Good,” Jones replied, then looked at Shane and Tracy. “Come with me.”
He led them past the electronics room, which looked like it could be mission control for NASA. Shane wondered how the captain had signaled these clones to prepare for their arrival. They always seemed to have an open link for communication, though the cloak and the Anunnaki monitoring Earth from above made contact impossible. Coming to a glass door, Jones flipped a switch and light flooded an underground hangar bay beyond.
“Holy cow,” Tracy exclaimed. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s the fighter craft Lily and I came here in,” Jones explained, opening the door so they could enter.
“Why is it so damn cold?” Shane rubbed his arms; the temperature had to be near freezing.
“The ship’s electronics and power systems need to be chilled,” Jones said, leading the way to the silver craft. “We’re pushing them beyond their design to utilize them for the link between you and your friends.”
Twice the size of a school bus, the spaceship looked like a cigar tapered on both ends. When they approached the windowless craft, the silver metal of its skin liquefied in an area near the front and flowed down toward the polished floor of the hangar bay, forming steps that led inside. Shane’s heart thumped in his ears, hope putting a smile on his face. He hadn’t been certain they stood a chance of rescuing Kelly and the others until now—just looking at this advanced piece of technology boosted his confidence. The rebels had more up their sleeves than they had let on before, and after completing the rescue mission, they only had one recruit ship left to contend with.
The captain led them into the vessel, and Shane had to duck his head to keep from hitting the curved ceiling. The interior of the craft was smaller than it looked from the outside, and he imagined advanced electronics and power systems comprised most of its thick fuselage.
“Take a seat,” Jones ordered, pointing at what appeared to be the pilot and copilot’s stations in the front of the ship.
Shane and Tracy did as they were told. Two rebel technicians slipped into the tight space behind them and put helmets with wires running away from them and plugging into various ports around the cockpit on their heads. Imagining the massive power supply that must be in the ship behind them, Shane feared the rebels might mess up and fry their brains.
“You’ll only be in them for a moment,” Jones explained. “Just long enough to displace their slave personalities. While you’re there, you must tell Kelly and Jules that when you leave, they will have full control. You have to convey that they need to act like they are still enslaved or they will be discovered and executed.”
“Will we need to fall asleep?” Tracy asked, sounding a little worried.
“Not this time,” Jones replied. “We’ll have to leave y
ou alone in the hangar, but I’ll be watching from beyond the glass. Good luck, and may the gods be with you.” He put his hands on their shoulders, and then turned and left the space ship with his two clones on his heels.
“I hate it when he gets all sappy,” Tracy joked. “It means shit’s going to hit the fan.”
“Yeah,” Shane replied, chuckling. “When the dude is an asshole, you know everything is going to be alright.”
The lights in the cockpit and hangar bay beyond dimmed, and the machinery filling the ship behind them started humming. Shane could sense the immense amount of energy surging in the ship’s systems.
“Here we go,” Shane said.
“Time to bring them home,” Tracy replied.
The humming grew in volume, and Shane’s vision blurred. A jolt of electricity surged through him, and just as he wanted to scream from the pain, it vanished.
Shane stood in the forest, looking up a hill. He glanced down and saw he wore the red Anunnaki armor with a black plus mark his chest. He held the helmet under his left arm.
“Kelly?” a male voice said.
He looked left, seeing a young Shock Troop soldier who looked like one of Jones’ clones. It had worked; he was in Kelly’s body.
“Yes?” Shane replied to the alien’s inquisitive expression.
Shane’s soul felt tattered, ripped from his flesh and shoved into Kelly’s. He experienced vertigo from the transformation to her smaller, and extremely different, body. It threatened to overwhelm him, and he looked away from the Shock Troop soldier and scanned the area. He had to keep an intense focus on the mission and off the sensations he experienced from being in Kelly or all would be lost.
“The transport’s sensors picked up a small group of humans a quarter of a mile north of this location,” the Shock Troop soldier continued, scrutinizing Shane, or Shane in Kelly’s body, with a hint of concern showing in his voice. “Then they suddenly disappeared. I think the enemy must have some sort of cloaking device hiding them.”
