by Ken Lozito
After reading this latest briefing forwarded by Nathan, Connor stood in his kitchen and stared into the darkness outside his window. Despite multiple requests for a debrief, the first thing Connor had wanted to do was go home. Since he was still a private citizen of the colony, neither the CDF nor Field Ops had the authority to hold him in custody. He knew there were many days of meetings ahead of him to contend with, but they could wait. The imminent threat was behind them, at least for the moment. All salvage teams had been evacuated from planet Sagan, and the CDF had established several monitoring stations. A search was being conducted for the space gate, or at least parts of the one the Vigilant had encountered.
He heard soft footsteps coming down the hallway, and Lenora smiled at him as she entered the kitchen. When he’d left, she’d been very much pregnant, and now their baby girl slept in the other room.
Lenora crossed the room to put her hands on his shoulders, and he breathed in the lavender scent of her shampoo.
“I have to admit, I was expecting you to come home wearing a CDF uniform.”
Connor put his hands on her waist and smiled. “The CDF has Nathan and Sean, and a lot of other well-qualified soldiers. They don’t need me.”
Lenora looked at him in that way of hers that implied she knew him better than he knew himself. “They’re not you,” she said mildly.
“The CDF has to be more than just me. I can’t be the linchpin that holds all this together.”
“But you are. You’ve always been.”
“What I did these past few months—” Connor began.
“What we did,” Lenora interrupted firmly.
Connor nodded. She was right. “I still can’t help but feel responsible.”
Lenora backed away from him, taking his hands in hers and guiding him toward the baby’s room. Connor looked down into the crib where Lauren Jasmine Gates slept. She was so tiny, swaddled in a blanket and looking entirely at peace. Despite trying to imagine it, Connor hadn’t known what he would feel when his daughter was born. He’d held her for the first time the day before, and she’d looked up at him with startling clarity, as if she knew he was her father. His eyes had instantly welled up, and a deep ache seized his chest. Diaz had tried to warn him, often joking that Connor had no idea what he was in for. He’d been right.
“Things have changed,” Lenora said, and Connor looked at her. “You’ve changed.”
Connor looked away for a moment. “You want me to rejoin the CDF?”
Lenora was silent for a moment. “They need you. You’re not the man you were at the end of the Vemus War, and that’s a very good thing. You’ve never been one to sit idly by and let others protect the colony, and everything you’ve ever done has been to protect our home, but things are different now. You won’t ever cast us aside,” she said, resting her hand on the edge of the crib, “and the fact that you came straight home when you did only confirms that.”
Connor knew she was right, but he wasn’t sure if rejoining the CDF was what he wanted.
They went back into the kitchen, and Lenora told him what had happened to Noah.
A short while later Connor entered the Medical Center at Sanctuary. He marched straight to the long-term care unit and stood outside Noah’s room, waiting. When the door finally opened, it was Noah’s wife who emerged. Her eyes were weary, and her blonde hair was tied back into a tight ponytail. She just looked at him, and her eyes narrowed in anger for a moment.
“Connor,” she whispered and then hugged him.
“I’m so sorry, Kara,” he said, hugging her back.
Kara pulled away from him. “His wounds are healing nicely. It’s his brain we don’t know about.”
Despite all the medical advances scientists had made to heal the human body, some wounds were simply beyond them.
“He wanted me to give you a file. I know you two have been working closely together for these past months because I’ve been a silent partner in that,” Kara said, and sighed. “He loves you, and it would mean the world to him for you to go inside and see him. I’ll give you some time,” Kara said.
A new file message appeared on Connor’s internal HUD, but he ignored it as he took a deep breath and walked into the room.
Noah lay on the hospital bed, and the first thing Connor saw was the tube running from his mouth to a breathing machine. Most of his head was wrapped with healing packs, and Connor noted the purple skin near his neck. There was extensive bruising from the trauma to his head. Connor looked at the holoscreen above Noah’s bed, which showed a steady heart rate, but the machine had to breathe for him. The bones in Noah’s back had been shattered. His brain activity was minimal, but not low enough to declare him dead. Connor covered his mouth with his hand as his throat thickened, and he looked down at his friend.
“What have I done?” Connor whispered. “I put you on this path.”
He opened the file Kara had given him, and a video message appeared on his internal heads-up display.
Noah looked at the camera and gave it a brief smile, displaying hints of the young man he’d been on the Ark. “Hi, Connor. First of all, I want to assure you that you’re the only one receiving this message. Dash and I conducted a thorough investigation, and you were right; I hate where this has led. We found a secret base of operations, and I think that’s where the NEIIS stasis pods are being kept. All the evidence we’ve found so far has led us here, and by now it’s been uploaded to our secure systems.” Noah paused and looked directly into the camera, as if he were seeing Connor. “We determined that Lars Mallory is our primary suspect. He has the knowledge and the skills to—I don’t like it. Mostly, I want to know why he would do this. However, if you’re seeing this message, it’s because something has happened to me and I was unable to prevent it from being delivered. So, either you and I are having a laugh about this, or something bad has happened. I don’t know if you’re seeing this because I’m dead. If you are, I know you’ll do what needs to be done to sort everything out. But either way, I’d like to ask you to do something for me, and I know you’re not going to like it.” Noah looked away from the camera for a moment. “This is much harder than I thought… What I’d like you to do is say a prayer for me. Believe me, I know how you feel about this, but I want you to do it anyway.”
Connor’s legs became weak. He leaned on the bed, squeezed his eyes shut, and wept.
“Damn it,” he muttered. His breath felt hot and his muscles were rigid.
He sucked in a deep breath, forced his eyes open, and placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. He wanted to give him a gentle shake, hoping he would wake up, but he knew better. He blew out a long breath, clenched his teeth, and prayed.
Connor wasn’t sure how long he stood at Noah’s bedside, but when the door opened, he didn’t expect it to be Dash who walked in.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were in here,” Dash said and began backing up. “I’ll come back.”
“No, it’s alright. You can come in.”
Dash took a few steps into the room, and his eyes flicked to Noah.
“They told me you saved his life,” Connor said.
Dash looked away. “No, I didn’t.”
“He has a chance now, and that’s because of you.”
Dash looked at Connor, his eyes full of fury. “I should have done more. I should’ve been able to stop him.”
After Lenora had explained what happened to Dash and Noah, all Connor could think was that he didn’t understand how Lars could have done any of it.
“Lars is well trained,” Connor said.
“I want to find him.”
“They’re already looking for him.”
“Do you think that makes any difference? Lars wasn’t working alone. He had resources and a lot of support. I helped Noah find him, and I know I can do it again.”
“And then what?” Connor asked.
“He has to be stopped.”
“He will be stopped. I know you want to do something, and you’l
l get your chance, but right now I want you to take it easy for a few days,” Connor said.
Dash blew out an explosive breath. “Take it easy! I can’t—”
“You running around with your anger unchecked isn’t going to help Noah. I have to travel to Sierra for a few days. Would you please stay here in Sanctuary and help Lenora at the Research Institute?”
Connor almost expected Dash to demand to go with him, but he didn’t want to risk Dash being taken advantage of by the people in Sierra—the very same people Lars had worked for. Connor needed Dash’s help for what they still had to do, and he knew the only way he’d cooperate with Connor’s request was if he put it in a framework of helping Lenora. Hopefully, he’d learned a thing or two about managing people, so maybe this would work.
Dash said he would stay, but Connor knew that without direction, the young man wouldn’t stay put for long.
47
In the days that followed, Connor was involved in multiple debriefings with the CDF and other meetings he was required to attend because he was still the mayor of Sanctuary. Sierra was the unofficial capital of the colony, at least for the moment. In light of recent events, there was talk of the colonial capital shifting to each of the major cities, regardless of where the governor had served during the term before. Connor thought this was a good strategy going forward in order to prevent the consolidation of power they were seeing in Sierra.
Ten Spec Ops soldiers had been killed in action, and their combat suits were designed to self-destruct to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. But the two missing colonists—Rollins and a scientist by the name of Oliver Taylor—had been left behind in the alternate universe. Since their deaths couldn’t be confirmed, they’d been classified as MIA.
The governor’s office had officially condemned the actions of Lars Mallory. Despite the evidence Noah obtained, there was no actual connection to the Colonial Intelligence Bureau led by Meredith Kane; however, the CIB was under intense scrutiny. There was a lot of mistrust going around, and for good reason.
Connor sat in a conference room at the governor’s offices with Nathan Hayes and Sean Quinn, who were there representing the CDF. Franklin Mallory was also in attendance, looking extremely haggard. Franklin blamed himself for what Lars had done, and Connor felt terrible for him. However, despite Franklin’s position, the subject of how to apprehend Lars Mallory and the rest of his team was still open to discussion. There were some who supported the CDF handling it, which Nathan flatly refused. The role of the CDF was to protect the colony from outside threats, not enforce its laws. So the task of finding Lars would fall to Field Ops and Security, but the leader of that investigation had not been selected yet. Connor planned to keep a close eye on that.
Governor Wolf sat at the middle of the conference table with her advisors, Bob Mullins and Kurt Johnson, to either side. Rather than calling a full assembly, this was a closed meeting to decide what they needed to do next for the good of the colony.
When Connor arrived in Sierra a few days earlier, he’d decided to openly share every NEIIS site they’d discovered but hadn’t yet shared with the Office of NEIIS Investigations. One thing all the colonial leaders agreed on was that there were too many secrets, and too many people were doing their own things. Connor hoped his gesture would inspire more cooperation.
“Mr. Gates,” Governor Wolf said, “once again, I want to reiterate that I appreciate the information you shared, but the fact remains that this sort of covert activity represents a much larger problem.”
“On that, we can agree,” Connor said. “I realize now that the actions I took were a bit shortsighted. The intent was always to share what we learned, but we have a major problem here, and despite the opinion of several people in this room, I’m not at the center of it. This is no time for us to be divided.”
Governor Wolf began to speak, but Connor cut her off.
“Your office is partially responsible for this divide. You sought to control everything about the NEIIS, and that was a mistake on your part. You sought to exclude the very experts who’ve made the biggest contribution to our understanding of them.”
Bob Mullins cleared his throat. “In a first contact event, it’s the elected government who will direct how we interact with another intelligent species. The fact that you were excluded is perfectly within our authority.”
Connor’s brows rose. “So it was you who ordered the stasis pods removed from the bunkers? You were the one who ordered that the NEIIS be brought out of their stasis pods and tortured for information?”
Mullins’ face became red. As much as Connor didn’t like the man, he didn’t believe Mullins could have led such an effort.
“I think we can all agree that there have been missteps all around,” Governor Wolf said. “But now we need to understand the nature of this new threat. I read your report quite thoroughly, Mr. Gates. You believe these beings that closely resemble the NEIIS travel through multiple universes—the multiverse—as a form of conquest?”
“I don’t know how or why they do what they do, but there’s overwhelming evidence in the archaeological record that the NEIIS were terrified of them.”
Governor Wolf nodded. “How would you go about ascertaining the nature of the threat?”
“We need to leverage the best intelligence asset at our disposal. In order to understand the nature of the threat to the colony, we need to bring the NEIIS out of stasis and learn to communicate with them. Ally with them,” Connor said.
There were more than a few puzzled frowns from those sitting at the table. When he’d told Diaz what he intended to say here today, his friend had told him he was crazy.
“The subject of what to do with the NEIIS has been discussed quite a bit over the past six months. The ONI has put extensive effort into understanding the NEIIS stasis pod technology, and more importantly, figuring out when they intended to come out of stasis. The general consensus is that the NEIIS went into stasis knowing that not all of them would survive. That is the measure of their resolve,” Governor Wolf said.
“Excuse me, Governor,” Kurt Johnson said, tapping his pudgy fingers on the table. “What happens if we wake the NEIIS up and they decide they don’t want us on their planet? New Earth is, after all, their home world.”
“We won’t know until we ask them,” Connor said. “You could have thousands of people speculating on the NEIIS reaction to our colony, and in the end, we won’t have a definitive answer until we wake them up. I realize that my pushing this might come as a shock for some of you, but I think this threat we’re facing is much graver than we know. An entire civilization dedicated itself to mitigating this same threat, and their solution was to somehow cause an impromptu ice age and go into stasis. Yes, there’s evidence that they fought wars among themselves. They also genetically modified certain species. But have any of you thought that perhaps the purge protocol used to control the ryklars wasn’t meant for the NEIIS of this planet?”
“How predictable,” Mullins said slowly. “‘Beware the new threat!’ I had to listen to you bang the same drum before the Vemus came. You were right about that, but how do we know we’re not overreacting to this threat? The arch has been destroyed. How would they even get here?”
Connor looked at the advisor and experienced a quick fantasy about taking him out on a survival trek through an area frequented by ryklars.
“So you think I’m being an alarmist?” Connor asked.
Mullins glared at him. “Not exactly, but I don’t think you’re beyond leveraging a situation like this to get what you want.”
Connor leaned forward. “And exactly what is it that you think I want?”
He watched the advisor consider his response. If Mullins came out and actually said what he suspected, he would look like a fool.
“Why don’t you tell us?”
Governor Wolf leaned forward. “I think that question is on more than a few people’s minds, Mr. Gates.”
Connor looked at Nathan and Sea
n for a moment, and then turned back to the governor. “This is my home, too. I think it’s safe to say that everyone in this room wants what’s best for the colony. But if we stop working together, or if we continue to be suspicious of one another, we might have more in common with the NEIIS than we originally thought.”
48
Sean stood in an open atrium among multiple meeting rooms full of people. He’d left his own meeting so he could be out there at this particular time. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around.
“What does a mother have to do to get a few moments with her son?” Ashley Quinn asked.
Sean gave his mother a hug while offering an explanation, but she shushed him.
“I know you’ve been busy. What are you doing out here?” his mother asked.
“Recruiting.”
He watched his mother’s eyes tighten in concern for a moment.
“When will you be deployed?” she asked.
“Soon. I’m leading a task force to search for the space gate at Sagan.”
Ashley nodded. “And you’re hoping to find a recruit here?”
Sean shrugged. “There are a few talented individuals who could really help.”
Ashley narrowed her gaze suspiciously. “Is that so? Perhaps I should stick around and meet some of these ‘talented individuals.’”
“That’s not necessary. I know you’re really busy,” Sean said.
His mother smiled and continued on her way.
A few minutes later, it seemed that all the meetings let their participants go at once, and soon the atrium was full of people. Sean quickly spotted who he was looking for.
“Dr. Evans!” he called out.
Oriana turned around. Her sweetly angelic face looked at him with mild surprise. “Colonel Quinn, you’ve wandered far afield.”
