Emergence

by Ken Lozito

  Connor waited as a three-dimensional schematic began to form on his HUD, showing the landscape thirty meters deep. After a few moments, the image began to build outward.

  NEIIS bunker-hunting had become the latest colonial craze. The allure of discovery brought out even the most inexperienced and supremely unqualified researchers, all eager to make the next great find. In response to this, the colonial government had created a separate office dedicated to overseeing NEISS-related research efforts as a way of maintaining some semblance of control. Thus, the Office of NEIIS Investigation, or ONI, was established. ONI was to have a presence at any NEIIS bunker site, regardless of whether the discovery was academic or the result of investigation by a private colonial citizen. ONI representatives were required to be present in order to ensure proper safety and, if needed, make sure first-contact protocols were followed.

  Lenora was on the ONI advisory committee, but Connor found other ONI representatives challenging to work with. In order to deal with this issue, he’d created his walking staff, which saved a lot of time when hunting for NEIIS bunkers and had the added benefit of going virtually unnoticed by anyone he happened to come across.

  Pulling him out of his brief thoughts about ONI and its larger implications, the schematic completed and showed nothing at his current location, so he kept going. As he walked along, a comlink call appeared on his heads-up display, and he answered it.

  “Are you sure this intelligence is good? Why would the NEIIS build a bunker here?” Dash asked.

  “I take it you’re having as much luck as I am?”

  They’d been at this for a few hours with nothing to show for it. Connor was glad Dash had been able to help; otherwise, the effort would take twice as long.

  “As in none at all? Yep, that about sums it up. I’ve reached the end of my quadrant, and I’m heading back to the C-cat, but I’m going to make a sweep up north and work my way back that way. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  “Sounds good to me. The information came from one of the new satellites we have mapping the continent,” Connor said while striking the end of his walking stick into the ground for another scan.

  “I’ve noticed that the mapping analysis seems to have trouble in certain regions.”

  “Finding hidden bunkers that have been in the ground for over a hundred years isn’t the easiest thing to do.”

  “No, but it’s gotten easier with some of the new tools. Certainly beats digging a bunch of holes, and it takes some of the guesswork out. Anyway, I was surprised to get your call earlier.”

  “I knew you were in the vicinity and figured you could use a break from advising the ONI,” Connor said.

  “They pulled me out of the NEIIS capital city site early this season because we hadn’t found any bunkers there,” Dash replied.

  Connor remembered what had been dubbed the NEIIS capital city only too well. A NEIIS control center there for transmitting ryklar signals through an ancient network had almost sent millions of ryklars into colonial cities. And this had happened when the colony was barely catching its breath after the Vemus War. It turned out that a rogue CDF platoon’s commanding officer had snapped and conceived the unfortunate plan to remind the colony why it needed the CDF. Even though the facility Connor had established at Sanctuary had gone a long way toward helping the post-war survivors, lives had been lost, and he still felt as if he’d let those CDF soldiers down. On the upside, Sanctuary was currently the fastest growing colonial city.

  “I thought you were requisitioning resources for a permanent research facility there,” Connor said.

  Dash started to reply to him, but a positive hit appeared on Connor’s heads-up display. He made sure the end of his walking stick was firmly in the ground and sent another jolt. The outer edges of a tunnel appeared less than five meters beneath his feet.

  “I think I found it,” Connor said and ran forward, stopping at the ten-meter mark shown on his HUD. He took another ground-penetrating scan and waited for it to propagate on his screen.

  “That’s great! Is it like the others?” Dash asked, his voice rising with excitement.

  Connor looked ahead, trying to peer through the overgrowth. The entrances to the bunkers they’d found so far were often hidden and could be difficult to find. He sent one of his recon drones ahead to give him an aerial view and put an overlay on the video feed from the drone to mark his position. A short distance away the forest thinned enough that he could see open patches through the canopy of trees. He spotted a lone mound that would hardly have been noticeable if he hadn’t been following a line from the tunnel beneath his feet.

  “It’s pretty well hidden, which means it might not have been disturbed by anyone or anything.”

  Many of the less protected bunkers they’d found had been raided by ryklars, which destroyed everything inside. Other bunkers had been affected by faulty equipment or seismic activity, but not all of them. Connor and his team, which was based out of Sanctuary, had found quite a few bunkers they’d kept off the ONI’s radar. They just cataloged the bunkers’ locations so they could study them at a later date. If this current find proved fruitful, he’d follow the same protocol, and Lenora would take care of keeping the ONI out of the area. Connor mainly focused on finding bunkers of different NEIIS factions than what he’d found before.

  He approached a thick, mangled mess of vines that seemed to have choked the life out of any other foliage growing in the area. That was actually a good sign, and Connor smiled. The chances of the bunker being undisturbed had just increased.

  He brought up his walking stick and swapped out the sensing end for the cutter, the tip of which glowed brightly when he raised the power output. Intense heat radiated from the tip, and he sheared away the layers of thick vines as if they were nothing, only to find that the bunker entrance was small—nothing more than an oval-shaped door hardly large enough for him to walk through. He saw that the vines had managed to push the aged bunker door slightly open, and there were signs of oxidation all around the edges of the door, which indicated that this bunker wasn’t made from the bronze alloy the NEIIS had used in most of their construction. He opened the storage compartment on his suit and withdrew two small reconnaissance drones, each about twenty centimeters in diameter. After he activated them, a glowing line of amber appeared along the center as they floated into the air. Connor put the two drones into record-and-reconnaissance mode and sent them into the bunker, watching as they sped away through the darkened hole.

  “Drones away,” Connor said.

  He could almost hear Dash grin. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t turn anything on. Just look and don’t touch.”

  Connor smiled. “That’s our motto.”

  Since the NEIIS had a propensity for utilizing automated systems in reaction to certain stimuli, Connor, along with Noah’s help, had created specialized reconnaissance drones that would quickly map out the interior of the bunkers while recording the data to be analyzed later on. This was all in service of preventing another accidental awakening of a NEIIS in stasis. Drones could quickly move through the area, interacting with the environment on a limited basis, and this had given rise to their new motto for investigating the bunkers. In order to keep the data on the drone secure, all recordings were backed up to a communications drone that Connor had loitering farther away.

  He decided to scout the surrounding area for other entrances, and as he looked around, he kept a small window up on his HUD that showed a live video feed from both drones. The drones scanned the interior of the bunker through multiple spectrums of light, but Connor kept the video feed in night-vision mode.

  “We’ve got company. Are you expecting anyone else to join us?” Dash asked.

  In response to this question, Connor’s enhanced hearing picked up the sound of a Field Operations troop carrier transport. “No, I’m not expecting anyone,” he said grimly.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Just stay with your C-cat. No sense drawing their att
ention if they don’t already know you’re here.”

  Dash was silent for a few moments. “You’ve got that tone again.”

  Connor’s mouth tightened in frustration. “This location was off the official channels, so the only way the ONI could have known about it is if someone tipped them off—the same group that’s infiltrated our communications before.”

  “Who would be spying on you?”

  Connor wasn’t the only one being spied on. Noah had found plenty of attempts on his systems, too. There was a perpetual game of “whack-a-mole” going on where they no sooner plugged one breach than another was found. Whoever was spying on them was going to great lengths to avoid being detected, though not for lack of trying on Connor’s part—or Noah’s, for that matter. So far, they’d proven to be extremely elusive.

  The Field Ops troop carrier flew right toward Connor as if those aboard knew exactly where he was, and the thought of it made him want to curl his lip and growl. The transport ship landed nearby, and Connor walked over to it—no sense in hiding at this point. Four Field Ops security agents exited the vehicle, followed by a few members of the Office of NEIIS Investigation.

  The ONI had been a thorn in Connor’s side for the past few months. Someone was feeding them information that he would’ve preferred to keep within the Colonial Research Institute at Sanctuary. At the moment, however, the names and identification of the individuals approaching him all appeared on his internal HUD.

  The ONI leader strode ahead of the others as if he owned that area of the continent. “Mr. Gates, I’m extremely surprised to see you here,” Ellis Atkinson said in a smug tone, implying that he was anything but surprised.

  “Are you? The feeling is mutual.”

  Atkinson made a show of looking around. “Is there anybody else with you?”

  “What brings the ONI way out here?” Connor said without answering the question.

  “Oh, you know—the same thing that brought you here. ONI received a rather convincing report about a possible bunker site here.”

  The Field Ops agents had spread out and were securing the area, with the exception of their leader, who’d come to stand at Atkinson’s side. The team leader had short black hair and a thick beard covering most of the olive-colored skin of his face. He also had a thick brow and broad shoulders. The other ONI team members stood behind Atkinson and seemed to look at Connor with more than a little curiosity.

  “That’s interesting because we got a similar report,” Connor said. His video feed was still coming in, and it appeared that the drones had made it to the bunker’s inner sanctum. One of the drones flew inside a ventilation shaft that gave unfettered access to almost the entire bunker. This quickened the drones’ abilities to explore the bunkers without having to operate the doors inside.

  “Very curious, because we haven’t seen a report from Sanctuary,” Atkinson said.

  Officially, any newly identified NEIIS-related sites were supposed to have their locations sent to the ONI offices in Sierra.

  Connor shrugged. “I’m sure it just got held up. But regardless, you’re here.”

  Atkinson nodded. “Indeed we are. How long have you been here?”

  “Not that long. I was just about...” Connor paused as the image on the video feed snatched his attention.

  The Field Ops leader narrowed his gaze. “You were just about to what?” he asked.

  Connor glanced at him and saw his name appear on his HUD—Lieutenant Ubari Samir.

  “Connor, is everything okay?” Dash’s voice came over the tiny speaker in his implants. He spoke softly so as not to startle Connor.

  Samir glanced at Atkinson for a moment and then back at Connor. “What are you doing here anyway? You, of all people, aren’t supposed to be here without official permission from the ONI. So why are you?”

  Connor’s chest tightened as a spike of molten irritation blazed a path to his ears. He fixed the Field Ops agent with a flinty gaze. “None of your damn business is what I’m doing here, Lieutenant.”

  Atkinson cleared his throat. “There’s no need to get angry. We just need to know if you’ve found a NEIIS bunker or not.”

  Connor jerked a thumb, gesturing behind him. “The entrance is back there. Looks like the vines have damaged the door. I’ve cut away some of them but haven’t gone inside yet.”

  Atkinson gestured for his team to go on ahead. “Thank you. We brought the proper equipment to get inside. Since you’re already here, would you like to join us?”

  Connor was still dealing with the shock of what he was seeing on the video feed. “I appreciate that, but I’ll leave the site in your capable hands. I was only here to confirm that it was worth investigating.”

  Connor sent a command to the recon drones to upload all their data to the communications drone and then return to his C-cat. He opened the messenger interface to Dash: Comms drone en route to you. Take physical data to Noah. No comms. He’ll know what to do.

  Dash acknowledged the message and closed the comlink.

  “I’m a bit surprised that you don’t want to go inside,” Atkinson said.

  “I’ve just received a message indicating that I have a prior engagement to attend to in Sierra.”

  “Oh, I see. I’m sure Lieutenant Samir can take you to your C-cat.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Connor said and started to walk away.

  A few moments later, a voice called out after him. “You’re abandoning your own rule,” Lieutenant Samir said.

  Connor arched an eyebrow in his direction.

  “About traveling alone.”

  “Oh, that rule. It’s meant to protect other people,” Connor replied and let the rest go unsaid. He watched as Samir tried to think of a response and then continued. “I think you have your hands full with your current duties. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Connor walked away, not waiting for a reply. His C-cat wasn’t that far, and though it had taken him a few hours to find the bunker, he’d be able to get back to his ship in twenty minutes. Given the obvious successful infiltration of their systems—particularly their communication systems—he wouldn’t chance telling anyone about what he’d seen, at least not until they plugged the latest hole in their security. He replayed the drone video feed and gritted his teeth as he ran. He hadn’t been the first person to reach the bunker. Someone other than the ONI had beaten him to it.

  3

  Sierra was a city of renewed vigor and a shining example of colonial rebuilding efforts. During the past two years, Sierra had largely been restored and improved upon. The colonists had cleared away the wreckage of the old city that had been destroyed during the Vemus invasion and repurposed the materials, including construction of a memorial park for the men and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice.

  General Nathan Hayes looked out his high-rise office window overlooking the park. The view from the colonial government building showed a stunning display of the central memorial in the middle of the two-kilometer park. A grand staircase led up to a pavilion that depicted the establishment of the colony, but what caught Nathan’s eye, as it always did, was the monument to the fallen—a massive bronze sphere whose two tones symbolized Earth’s continents and oceans. Nathan had seen it up close and brought to mind the stunning detail within the recreation of the birthplace of humanity. The pride of the colony was rooted in the fact that humans had colonized the galaxy. New Earth was to have been the first—and now possibly the only—place humans lived outside their planet of origin. The colonists of New Earth would always remember where they’d come from, and perhaps one day many years from now they would return to Earth to rebuild the world that had been lost to them.

  Several troop transport ships had been launched from the CDF base toward the southwest. He tried to spend as much time as possible at the capitol’s base and the other CDF bases they had throughout the colony, but demands on his time required him to spend a large portion of it in relatively close proximity to the governor’s office.
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  He turned away from the window and glanced at the pictures of his family rotating through the wallscreen off to the side. The current one showed Savannah holding their son, Malcolm. Big blue eyes framed by straw-blond hair smiled back at him. Malcolm favored his mother, especially through the eyes. After taking a moment to appreciate his family for the hundredth time, Nathan sent a shutdown command to the wallscreen and left his office. It was late in the evening, and most of the people who worked on this floor had gone home. There was no rush for Nathan to get home since Savannah wasn’t there. She’d taken their son for a visit with his sister’s family in New Haven. He had planned to travel there and join them the next day, but he’d likely need to push that back another day. At the Colonial Defense Force, there was always something to do. In the past two years since he’d been promoted to general of the CDF, he’d gotten used to the workload, but lately he’d been contemplating the future of the CDF and its role in the colony. He was of the opinion that the organization needed a new direction, a path to follow beyond the specific purpose for which it had initially been created. Nathan was in a position to greatly influence the trend of the CDF and build upon the strong foundation begun by Connor, but he wasn’t sure what direction would best serve the colony in the future.

  He walked down the corridor, passing closed offices, and came to an atrium. The ambient lighting ahead of him became brighter as the building’s sensors detected his motions. He headed for the stairwell and had started climbing toward the roof where his security escort waited for him when he heard someone clear their throat from the landing below. Nathan stopped and peered downward.