by R S Penney
Larani stood with her fists on her hips, shaking her head as she stared down at the thing. “Sometimes I wonder,” she murmured to herself. “Would we have been better off if we had never found this Overseer tech?”
Clamping a hand over his mouth, Jack shut his eyes. “Maybe,” he muttered into his own palm. “But we wouldn't all be standing here today. We never would have found each other, and that would suck.”
Anna let her head hang.
Before Jena could put too much thought into what was going on there, Ven chimed in with his…her…their report. “My suspicions have been confirmed,” the AI said. “I am detecting another Gate on the network.”
“Where?”
“Tracking coordinates now.”
They all turned around to watch a hologram form above the black-tiled floor, the Earth expanding from a point to form a globe nearly six feet tall from pole to pole. Red dots in orbit marked the space stations her people had built.
From one of those red dots, green lines extended–not toward Earth but off into the depths of space. “This is odd,” Ven went on. “These coordinates I have received would put the other SlipGate approximately…”
The green lines that extended from Station Twelve intersected at a point, and from that point a second globe expanded. Not a planet but a dried-up ball of gray dust about one quarter the size of Earth.
“The moon?” Jack said. “The Key is on the moon?”
“Roughly thirty kilometres beneath its surface,” Ven answered.
Anna stepped forward with her hands in her pockets, her head bowed as if she were fighting off her own exhaustion. “No wonder we couldn't find it,” she said. “We scanned the Earth dozens of times–”
“But it was never on Earth,” Harry said.
Ven's hologram descended with its arms spread wide, stopping half a foot above the floor and hovering before them. “Your best scans wouldn't have found it anyway,” the AI remarked. “Not that far beneath the surface.”
“So, are we going then?” Jack inquired.
“Can you confirm a hospitable environment on the other side of the SlipGate?” Jena asked the hologram. Under normal circumstances, SlipGates would not activate if the surrounding area was not compatible with human life. Gates that were underwater or floating in the vacuum of space simply refused to accept a connection.
That was one reason why many people thought the Overseers had designed the SlipGates specifically for human use. Perhaps that was true of the primary network – it stood to reason that the Overseers wanted humans to use their technology or they would not have left so much of it behind – but there was no reason to assume this secondary network followed the same rules.
“I suggest we send a probe through,” Ven said. “Just to be sure.”
The probe was a small box on wheels about the size of Jena's foot; it rolled over to the corner with a high-pitched buzzing sound. It stopped there, one light blinking as it waited for instructions.
Jena stood with her shoulders slumped, watching the damn thing. “All right,” she said, her eyebrows rising. “Send it through. Let's see what the Overseers left behind when they moved out.”
“Sending now,” Ven said.
The puddle of flesh began to writhe, stretching and contorting until it formed a thin triangle of veiny skin. There was a humming sound as the SlipGate began to glow with a cool blue light, and then the probe was caught up in something that looked so very much like a soap bubble.
“Everything looks good,” Ven said.
The bubble vanished, taking the probe with it.
Knowing their luck, the probe would reveal that it had been deposited into a dense atmosphere of fluorine gas, which would require them to wear bulky space suits on top of all their other gear. It wasn't as if they could just decide not to go if the environment turned out to be inhospitable; why she had signed up for this, Jena would never-
“Probe results coming in.”
A two dimensional hologram appeared along the lab's back wall, depicting nothing but blackness. Half a second later, the probe's flashlight revealed what appeared to be a cavern floor, but there was no telling how far the darkness extended.
“Well, then,” Ven said. “Atmospheric composition 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen. Air temperature is a balmy 23 degrees Celsius with pressure holding steady at 100.45 kilopascals.”
On the far side of the room, Jack stood with arms folded, watching the hologram. “Everything but mints on the pillows,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I'm calling it now; the instant we show up, zombies are rising out of the ground.”
“It does seem a little too good to be true,” Ben added.
Jena winced and let her head hang. She pinched the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “We don't get much choice in the matter,” she said. “Even if this is a trap, we're still going to walk right into it.”
“Admiral Ackbar would be proud,” Jack muttered.
“Power up the Gate,” Jena said. “Let's get this done.”
As he sat behind a wooden desk in his small office, Slade watched code appear on the screen of his computer. The soulless abomination that the Leyrians called an artificial intelligence had transmitted the completed cipher to reconfigure the SlipGate – Slade had listened to their entire conversation – and now the bug Isara had planted was delivering that information to him.
Of course, it would have been easier to have taken the ciphers directly – that would prevent his enemies from being able to access the Key – but wise men always developed contingency plans. He would kill Hunter, Lenai and the rest and then reclaim the Key for the Inzari. In so doing, he would bring about the End of Days.
He sat hunched over the desk with his elbows on its surface, his chin resting upon laced fingers. “Excellent,” he said, looking up at the man who stood on the other side of the room. “Now, it begins.”
A tall, handsome fellow with fair skin and a thick golden beard stood just inside the door. Dressed in blue jeans and a hooded-sweater, he looked positively normal except for one thing.
A strip of veiny flesh curled around his right ear and hooked tendrils into the side of his forehead. One of the many gifts of the Inzari. It increased aggression, minimized fear and turned a man into the perfect killing machine.
Slade leaned back in his chair with his hands folded over his chest, staring up at the ceiling. “Gather your men,” he said. “We're going to finish this now.”
Chapter 25
When the warp bubble popped, ending their SlipGate trip, Jena found herself total darkness. A darkness so perfect it seemed as if she had been swallowed up by an abyss. Spatial awareness allowed her to see six people standing behind her, and she could make out something that looked like a triangle melting into the floor – the SlipGate returning to its puddle state – but her eyes were useless here.
That changed quickly.
The walls of this cavern began to glow with a soft blue light, exposing a wide, open chamber a little larger than the Science Lab. Of course, it also revealed the fact that these walls were made up of a soft, fleshy substance. They were quite literally inside the belly of the beast, and worst of all…It knew they were here.
Their little probe was just a few feet away, waiting patiently for instructions. That was good; they could use it as a homing beacon to find their way back to this place.
There were three passageways out of this chamber, each one leading deep into the cavern. That only made her more uneasy; now they would have to split up.
Jena stood with fists clenched at her sides, trembling as a shiver went through her. “All right,” she said, stepping forward. “I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd prefer to get out of the creepy alien cave as soon as possible.”
She spun around to face them with arms folded, lifting her chin to study the lot of them. “Jack, Larani,” she began. “You two go left. Anna and Ben will go right. Melissa, Harry and I will take the middle path.”
&nbs
p; It was best to separate Jack and Anna for the time being; she didn't want whatever drama had come between them to keep them off their game. And she wanted Harry and Melissa where she could keep an eye on them. Her boyfriend was far too comfortable with that N'Jal he carried, and his daughter had fragments of Slade's memories floating around her mind. Prudence was essential.
Melissa pushed forward between two other people, approaching her with an open mouth, panting as if she had just run a marathon. “We need to find the Nexus,” she said. “It's sort of a control room.”
“Any idea of what it would look like?”
“Fleshy and blue?”
Jena winced, hissing as she sucked in a deep breath. “All right then,” she said with a nod. “Keep an open comm-line. I want regular check-ins every five minutes, and make sure you report anything that seems out of the ordinary.”
Jack cleared his throat.
“I'm standing in a weird glowing cave with my bosses, best-friends and the ex-cop who tried to arrest me for liberating an alien symbiont from a downtown skyscraper. The floor is squishy, the walls glow – I know I mentioned that already, but really, just let that sink in for a moment – and I'm pretty sure the whole place is watching us.”
“Jack…”
“You said anything!”
“Let's move.”
A few moments later, she was walking with Harry and Melissa down a long tunnel with glowing blue walls and doing her best to ignore her sense of foreboding. Something was going to go wrong; she knew it.
Closing her eyes, Jena let her head hang. “So,” she said, rubbing her forehead with the back of one fist. “About this Nexus…I need to know everything that you can tell me, Melissa. Take a moment and try to remember.”
The girl walked with a pistol clutched in both hands, her shoulders hunched up as if she were trying to ignore the cold. “There's not a lot I can say,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Raynar wasn't able to figure out what the Key does.”
“Any idea where it is?”
“Overseer ships are living organisms,” Melissa said. “This place is no different. The Nexus is like a hub.”
Harry stood with one hand outstretched, pointing his open palm into the distance. That strange N'Jal seemed to hum. “A hub for what?” he asked. “Are you telling me this place has a brain?”
Melissa shut her eyes tight, breathing deeply through her nose. “Not a brain,” she said. “But it does have a nervous system. You might say that the Nexus is the focal point of that nervous system.”
“Swell.”
Jena couldn't blame him for being uneasy. Being inside another living being was unnerving to say the least. How conscious was this place? It turned on the lights when they arrived, but that could have been an autonomic response to a human presence. So far, she hadn't seen any signs of intelligence.
They came to a large, open chamber similar to the one they had left behind a few minutes ago. This one had only two entrances on opposite sides of the room. There were no fixtures of any kind, just walls, floor and ceiling.
Sliding her finger across the screen of her multi-tool, Jena unmuted the mic so the others could hear her. “Nothing so far,” she said. “Just a whole lot of creepy blue tunnels and musty air. What do you have to report?”
“Much the same,” Larani replied through the speaker.
“We haven't found anything either,” Anna chimed in.
Jena muted the microphone again. It was beginning to seem as though this whole trip was just one gigantic tease. So, the Overseers had built a structure beneath the moon's surface. What exactly did that get them? There was no useful technology here, no secrets of a lost civilization.
Bleakness take her, Jena was beginning to feel tempted to just plant a few explosive charges and reduce this place to rubble. That would keep it out of Slade's hands. It wasn't as if they had much to learn from an empty cave.
As if she sensed Jena's thoughts, Melissa stopped in the middle of the chamber and looked back over her shoulder. “We have to keep looking,” she pleaded. “Come on. The Nexus can't be far.”
Jena sighed. “You're lucky I can't say no to children.”
The glowing tunnel seemed to curve and descend down a gentle slope. Larani knew it was a bad idea, but she couldn't resist the urge to touch the walls. To her surprise, they weren't nearly as slimy as she would have imagined. Of course, there was really no way to predict how Overseer technology might behave. She might very well have set off some kind of security system. “It's not so bad,” she said. “This place has a kind of otherworldly beauty, don't you think?”
Behind her, Jack's silhouette stood with one hand on the grip of his holstered pistol, staring off into the distance. “Yeah, it's gorgeous,” he said. “You know…In that 'abandon all hope' sort of way.”
She spun to face him.
The boy wore a tight frown as he studied her, and his blue eyes seemed to want to drill holes into her skull. “Permission to ask a question, ma'am,” he said in a voice that made it clear he resented having to request it.
“Please do.”
“Why did you reassign me?”
Crossing her arms, Larani smiled down at herself. “I suppose now is as good a time as any other,” she said with a shrug. “From the very moment you joined our ranks, you've been nothing but skeptical about the Justice Keepers.”
“Hardly a great resume builder.”
“But absolutely vital to me now.”
Chewing on his lip, Jack squinted at her. “I get it,” he said, nodding once. “Slade's got any number of double agents hiding among us. You're hoping that since I was able to see through Breslan's bullshit, I'll be able to help you find the others.”
It was difficult to suppress the urge to laugh; she didn't want him to interpret it as mockery, but it was truly wonderful to watch a keen mind cut right through to the core of the issue. Just one year ago, she would have written Jack Hunter off as a foolish boy who did not appreciate the gifts he had been given.
He had such a frustrating habit of bucking authority, but it was that very habit that allowed him to see what so many of her colleagues unconsciously chose not to notice. A year ago, she would have called Jack's mistrust of Slade paranoia, but he had seen. Even then, he had seen.
Larani spun around.
She started up the tunnel with hands clasped behind her back, smiling down at the floor. “There is much I can teach you, Jack,” she said. “Director Morane has always had her own unique way of doing things, but I can show you why many of our time-honoured traditions exist.”
Jack stepped up beside her with his arms crossed, frowning as he stared off into the distance. “I'm sure that's true,” he said cautiously. “But wouldn't you rather have someone like Anna working for you?”
“No. I need you.”
“Why?”
Larani felt a grin blossom, then shook her head with a sigh. “Because some of those traditions need to be changed,” she admitted. “You're so very much like the Keepers who lived centuries ago.”
“They were all obstinate pains in the ass?”
“To the governments and institutions of that time?” she said. “Yes. Very much so. It was something of a mission statement.”
History was always one of Larani's passions. There were moments when she half wished she could have lived in the Time of Founding – when the nations of Leyria came together to form a unified government – but the truth was that someone like her would not have lived a happy life in those days.
Back then, her world hadn't been much different from Earth in terms of technology. They had barely even mastered the ability to visit their own moon. The first Bonding of a Nassai and a human had been an accident.
“Four hundred years ago,” Larani said, “when my world looked very much as yours does now, things were very different. Racial inequality was still a major issue. Same-sex relationships were still taboo, and there was a lot of violence. The first Keepers played a major role in changing all t
hat.”
Jack looked over his shoulder with a curious expression, his blue eyes sparkling in the light of the glowing walls. “How?” he asked, raising one eyebrow. “I didn't think you could solve racism with the ability to Bend space-time.”
“It wasn't the abilities the Nassai granted us.”
“Then what?”
“It was who the Nassai chose as hosts. The first Bonding was sheer accident. After visiting our moon for the first time, we took back a sample of the atmosphere. We didn't know that the organisms within it were sentient until they broke out of their containment unit and Bonded with one of the scientists.
“After that, others volunteered for the joining. The Nassai were very selective with potential candidates. They had none of our prejudices; so when they chose the best and brightest of us, they inadvertently created a truly diverse group of people from all races, genders and orientations. The third Justice Keeper to accept a symbiont was a transgender woman like myself.”
Jack blinked.
“You didn't know?”
He went beet-red, then lowered his eyes to stare down at his own feet. “No, ma'am, I didn't,” he said softly. “Forgive me, I feel like maybe I should have been more aware of your circumstances.”
“It's not something that I speak of often,” Larani replied. “The truth is that I sometimes wonder if perhaps I should. I know from my studies of history that there was a time when people like me were ostracized and demonized, but Leyrian society has learned to move past such bigotry.
“Earth, however, is an entirely different story. I sometimes think it would do good for others like me to see that a transgender person can rise to the very top of the Justice Keeper hierarchy. However, my government made a treaty with your United Nations on the understanding that we would not try to sway Earth's political climate toward Leyrian sensibilities. I must walk a fine line.”
All of a sudden, Jack stopped and stood in the corridor behind her, heaving out a nervous breath. “I never realized how difficult your job was,” he said. “I guess I owe you an apology for being such a pain in the ass.”