by Ken Lozito
“Colonel, I think you underestimate how well you communicate, but I will stay here and help out however I can,” Oriana said.
Sean thanked her and told her to stay at the workstation to his left in the Command Center.
“Colonel,” Specialist Sansky said, “Captain Boseman and the Spec Ops team are ready to deploy.”
Sean opened the comlink at his workstation and gestured for Major Brody to stand at his side.
“What are the mission objectives, Colonel?” Captain Boseman said.
“Primary objective is to rescue General Gates and the other colonists. Secondary objective is to disable that facility. Destroy it if possible.”
“Understood, Colonel, but I have one question. Connor Gates is retired, but your reference to him is at his former rank. Do I have command authority on the ground?” Captain Boseman asked.
It was a fair question, and Sean could feel the weight of Brody’s gaze as he waited for Sean’s answer. “This is a special case, Captain. Gates is already on the ground and will bring you up to speed there. You are to carry out your mission objectives, but command authority is with Connor Gates. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Colonel. We’ll get it done.”
The comlink closed and Sean looked at Brody.
“Are you sure about this, Colonel?”
“Which part? Giving Connor command authority? There’s no one more qualified.”
“I understand that. I mean the secondary orders to cripple or destroy the enemy base. We could be inviting more trouble if they discover our home.”
“They already know about our home. We knew the NEIIS were afraid of an overarching threat, but we never considered that it came from another universe. They have our people captive, and my guess is that they’ll want to know more about us even if we escape. No, we need to hit them. Accomplishing that just might give us a head start when we make it back home.”
Major Brody frowned in thought for a few moments. In the absence of COMCENT, the decision to engage the enemy was Sean’s to make alone. Major Brody, as Sean’s executive officer, had the responsibility to sometimes question command decisions of this magnitude. He could voice his objections if he had any, but Sean doubted that Brody would ever become mutinous over the decisions he made.
Major Brody looked at him. “Understood, Colonel.”
“Colonel,” Lieutenant Burrows said. “Combat shuttles HX-36 and HX-37 are ready for stealth launch protocols.” The operations officer began a countdown.
The heavy combat shuttles would use maneuvering thrusters to leave the main hangar bay and then wait awhile before heading for their target. There would be comms blackout until they’d rescued the others.
“I have two new marks detected on passive, Colonel,” Lieutenant Russo said from the tactical workstation.
Sean looked at the main holoscreen. The two ships were heading away from them. “Tactical, I want our high-res optics to trace their trajectory. They have to come from somewhere.”
Sean wouldn’t risk anything other than periodic passive scans. The Vigilant was close enough to the planet’s atmosphere for it to mask their presence from the enemy, but the hunt for how the enemy came to be here had only just begun.
“Dr. Evans,” Sean said, “I want you to make the sensor data we’re collecting available to Dr. Volker and the rest of the scientists. We’re looking for another arch or gateway large enough to accommodate the ships we’ve seen. I’d like them, and you, to help figure out how it works so we can get back to our own universe.”
Oriana was quiet for a moment, and then she brushed a strand of hair back from her cheek—a small and oddly vulnerable gesture. “I don’t know if we can do that, Colonel.”
“We’ll help you,” Sean said. “I didn’t mean to imply that the entirety of the effort was on your shoulders, but you’re the authority on the theories at work here. We have a much better chance of figuring this out together.”
Oriana listened, and the lines at the corners of her honey-brown eyes pulled down with the weight of what he was saying.
“We just need to know enough to use it one time to get back home.”
“We’d need to understand how they identify one universe…” Oriana stopped speaking and frowned. “Once we can do that, it should be a matter of feeding the information we have into whatever machine they’re using so we can get home.”
Sean smiled and felt a small pang in his chest when she smiled back at him.
Major Brody cleared his throat. “How would this work?”
“It depends on the criteria they use to travel between universes,” Oriana said. “There are going to be a lot of assumptions, but at the root, it has to be something that makes one universe unique—some kind of defining characteristic that separates one from another.”
Brody pressed his lips together and looked at Sean. “This is beyond a needle in the haystack. The universe is a vast place, and now we need to figure out what makes our universe unique so we can get back there?”
“That’s part of it, but the problem isn’t what you think it is.”
“Oh, good…” Brody said.
“I think what Major Brody is asking for is some clarification,” Sean said.
“One of the theories for the multiverse is that you can phase through or cross over if the two universes vibrate at near the same frequency. However, this was believed to only occur at the microscopic level, which doesn’t work for us. But the foundation for the theory is the same.”
Sean’s eyes widened in understanding. “We know the exact time that we…phased through to this universe,” he said and gave Oriana a sidelong glance. “If they’ve perfected this technology, they would have the data available to identify our home universe. We’d need a way to qualify it, but this is definitely possible.”
Major Brody’s mouth hung open for a moment, and then he looked at both of them. “You two make a good team. I’d never have understood that on my own.”
“Just a matter of having the best people for the job at hand,” Sean said, and perhaps for the first time he started to believe they actually had a chance to make it back home. They had an objective to strive for, and sometimes that made all the difference.
35
“Do the words ‘needle in a haystack’ mean anything to you?” Dash said. The young man looked away from the holoscreen, rubbing bleary, screen-fatigued eyes.
Lars traveled a lot. Noah had had no idea how much his friend got around, but he knew there had to be a pattern.
“Maybe we’ve been going about this the wrong way,” Noah said.
“How so?”
“It could be that Lars isn’t traveling to some base camp by himself. He could be hitching a ride with somebody else.”
Dash nodded, and his facial expression pulled together in a thoughtful frown. “That should narrow it down to—I don’t know.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m seeing log data when I close my eyes now.”
Noah knew the feeling. He was tired, too, but he felt like they were getting close to figuring this out. More than once he’d thought about bringing in extra people to help. Spreading this workload over a few more people would definitely allow them to go faster, but it would also increase the risk of alerting whoever was involved. They hadn’t found definitive evidence that Lars was involved despite Dash’s hunch that he was. And it was a creditable hunch; otherwise, Noah wouldn’t have even considered it.
“Okay, let’s take this one step at a time. We know Lars frequently travels to Delphi, but his father has no idea he’s been here. According to his schedule, he has meetings at the CDF base with some colonial officials, so it seems that his visits here are legitimate. What if the records were forged? Not the flight records, but his schedule after that,” Dash said while pacing around the shipping container they were still working in.
“I think you’re onto something! I have an idea,” Noah said.
He created a new search filter that showed the flight schedule of all th
e ships leaving the landing areas Lars frequented when he came. He then limited the search to departures within fifteen minutes of Lars’s arrival. The list still looked pretty long, so he brought up another window on the holoscreen that divided the space evenly. He then mapped out the flight plans according to their destinations. The map quickly filled with major travel routes, as well as a few smaller routes that went to nearby FORBs. Sometimes it was better to have a visual representation than an alphanumerical list to examine.
Dash stepped closer to the holoscreen, looking at the spider web of routes. “This area here,” he said, pointing to a region between Delphi and New Haven, “just seems familiar.”
The area Dash had gestured to was over eight hundred kilometers long. He looked at Noah. “Can I connect to the Colonial Research Institute from here?”
Noah authorized the connection and Dash brought up a smaller secondary holoscreen. He navigated the interface for a few moments.
“You can close the connection. I got what I needed,” Dash said. He gestured toward the new holoscreen. There was a series of multicolored lines through the region of the continent that the colony had settled. “These are the landrunner migratory patterns. This area right here,” he said and gestured toward a spot on the map, “is known for a few large ryklar packs moving through. There are actual travel advisories that urge people to avoid it whenever possible. So why would these shipping routes take them right over that area for their delivery runs to these FORBs here?”
Noah merged the two maps together so they could see the flight paths over the landrunner migration map. The colonists put a lot of effort into avoiding disruption of the local fauna, so it was no surprise that this data was readily available.
“Can you change your search filter for departures from New Haven that cover the same region?” Dash asked.
“For when?”
“For when Connor went missing.”
“I told you, Connor can take care of himself.”
“Yes, and he brings an arsenal with him to rival a small army. However, how many people does he have with him?” Dash asked.
Noah frowned, trying to think. “I don’t know. Ten or fifteen.”
“Including the person you sent?”
Noah nodded.
“Aside from him, how many were former military?”
“Most of them. I don’t see the point of this. I told you that whatever happened to Connor, he—”
“Can take care of himself,” Dash said, mimicking Noah’s tone. “Yes, I know. Just humor me. We’ve already established that whoever’s doing the spying and collecting NEIIS stasis pods has a significant operation. These would be people with similar skill sets,” Dash said and looked at Noah intently.
Noah took a deep breath, considering the implications of where Dash was headed with this. “You think he was captured? Why would they want to do that?”
“I have no idea, but with an operation the size we think it is, it would have more than ten to fifteen highly trained former military personnel.”
Noah brought up the data. “The pattern from New Haven doesn’t match what we found from Delphi,” Noah said. He started closing down the holoscreens. “I don’t think we’re going to find what we need here.”
Their time using the shipping container was up, and they needed to leave. Dash didn’t reply but began to help him gather their equipment. Connor had taken Dash under his wing much like he’d done for Noah, Lars, and Sean. It was obvious that Dash was concerned for Connor, and the fact that he’d been missing for over a day now was wearing at them both. Noah could only imagine what Lenora must be thinking.
They headed back to the C-cat and packed away their equipment.
“So what do we do now?” Dash asked.
“You made a good point before about the shipping routes. I found one that made a run through that area just a few days ago. Plus, there are some others we can look into,” Noah said.
They climbed into the C-cat, and an automated preflight sequence began performing its checks of the systems.
“Didn’t you speak to Lars the other day? Wasn’t he in Sierra?”
“The comlink indicated that the signal was coming from Sierra, but Lars could have been anywhere.”
Dash glanced at him for a moment. “So you’re a believer now?”
“Somebody with intimate knowledge of how we do things could be the reason we haven’t been able to find them. It could be Lars or somebody using Lars. I don’t know. Either way, Lars would know how to make a comlink appear to be coming from a place other than where he really was.”
Dash frowned while looking around the C-cat’s interior. “Wouldn’t somebody see us in this if we start flying around those areas?”
Noah smirked, and Dash’s eyes widened after a moment.
“Do you have weapons systems on this thing, too?”
Noah engaged the flight controls and the C-cat rose into the air. “No, of course not, but I do have stealth systems.”
Dash whistled in appreciation.
When Noah installed the stealth kit for the C-cat, he hadn’t thought he’d be using it for something like this. He brought up the stealth interface and engaged it. They were still close to the ground, so they hadn’t registered with the traffic control systems that monitored flight activity in the area. He was sure it would anger a lot of people if they knew he had this capability. Not even Connor knew.
“What if Lars had a transport ship with stealth capability?” Dash asked.
“This one is something I modified and based off the ones used on combat shuttles. With all the running around Lars has been doing, I don’t think he’d even be able to get one of these, let alone adapt it like I have.”
For the next few hours, they retraced the flight plans of midsize transport carriers that had left Delphi after Lars arrived. They didn’t follow the exact path, but they were close enough that they could do a survey. They also didn’t use any active scanning systems and relied mostly on high-res camera feeds, as well as passive scans configured to identify power sources. Noah didn’t want to take any chances of alerting anyone who could be watching.
Doing a visual ground survey was time-consuming, which was why it was so important they narrow down their search area. With so many tracking satellites looking for NEIIS bunkers, Noah expected that what they were looking for would be hidden from direct aerial view. He’d flown on enough missions to remote FORBs to quickly identify the telltale signs of a large encampment, even one that was hidden amid heavily forested areas. Noah figured that the camp would be constructed a short distance from areas frequented by landrunners. Since most ryklar deterrent systems were actively tracked and easily detectable, the remote camp would likely rely on high-voltage electric perimeter fences to keep local predators out. The power requirements for a large encampment would be detectable with passive scans.
Noah flew the C-cat at an altitude of thirty-six hundred meters, which put them high enough to have a clear view of the ground below. The high-res cameras could zoom in and pick out objects with stunning detail. A little more than halfway between Delphi and New Haven, they detected a significant power source ahead of them. Noah slowed the ship down and changed course. He knew they couldn’t detect him, but if he didn’t slow down, someone could hear the ship when they flew in for a closer look.
“Whatever that camp is down there, it’s not registered with Field Ops,” Dash said.
Noah nodded.
“Do you think…” Dash paused and frowned. “This seems like it was too easy to find.”
Noah shrugged. “Only if you know what you’re looking for. Sometimes hiding in plain sight is the best strategy. We’ll fly in as close as I can get us, and then we’ll take a closer look on foot.”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t call for help now?”
“What would we tell them? This place could be any number of things. We have to take a look around and confirm what this is before we get anyone else involved.”
“What if they capture us? No one knows we’re here.”
“Not to worry. I’ll set something up to start broadcasting our position if we miss a check-in with the C-cat,” Noah said.
Noah landed the ship two kilometers away from the camp. He flew in “low and slow,” as the saying goes, and the C-cat quietly touched down on the forest floor. He retrieved a large case from the outer storage compartment and opened it up. Inside were two smaller cases, and Noah handed one to Dash. He took the other one and opened it up. Inside was an MPS. These were series-three suits, which had been significantly updated since the prototypes Connor had used months ago.
“It’ll fit over your clothing and can do things like contain body heat, so we should be able to sneak around just fine,” Noah said.
He slipped into his MPS and pulled the hood up over his head, then reached back inside the heavy case, pulling out two compact AR-71 assault rifles.
“Have you used one of these before?” Noah asked.
“No, I haven’t. I’ve just used the CAR-74s. They were modified, but I can still hit what I’m aiming for,” Dash replied.
“The principles are the same. The default setting is three-round bursts. It has more stopping power than the CAR-74s. The ammunition load-out is definitely different. Once you authenticate to it, you’ll see what the options are. I would suggest you stick with the standard configuration since I don’t anticipate trouble. These are more to protect us from local wildlife than what we may find in the camp.”
Noah watched Dash activate the AR-71. He recalled Connor teaching him how to shoot when they were training at the first Search and Rescue base all those years ago. While he wasn’t a natural sharpshooter like Sean, he, too, could still hit what he was aiming for. They closed up the C-cat and began making their way toward the encampment.
They were both quiet as they hiked through the woods, each of them focused on what was ahead. Noah kept thinking about what they would find. He also thought about what he hoped he wouldn’t find. He really wanted this to be a misunderstanding, but he doubted it. There were too many secrets for it to be a misunderstanding. As they got closer to the camp, Noah began to wonder if Dash was right and these people had captured Connor.
