by Tom Hart
There was a reason why Triglesium caused the first Vofurion civil war. There was simply no material as valuable, desired or deadly in the spiral. Scarlett touched the Triglesium pendant around her neck. Knowing her dreams could become reality was invigorating. She deleted Harper's report and sent a message to the Captain of her Royal Yacht, 'make ready for a journey to deep space'.
The mercenaries in Scarlett's employ were frightening individuals. The first and only meeting she had with their leader, General Kristian had been a scary experience. The man only possessed one eye and one ear. His face was lined with so many scars she'd had trouble working out if he was frowning or smiling. She sent the special code to his communicator with the co-ordinates for Earth. Kristian's acknowledgement was immediate. ‘We will be there, the Viceroy's minions won't know what hit them.’
Scarlett smile evaporated instantly as she noticed what appeared to be a wrinkle in the mirror. Surely not! She moved closer, placing her face inches from the highly polished surface. It was a wrinkle, tiny, less than three millimetres but a wrinkle all the same. Unacceptable. She opened the drawer to her dresser and removed a lead lined box. It was locked with a forty-four grade titanium lock with an anti-tamper genetic failsafe. The vial of powder inside the box felt cold to the touch. Triglesium powder had some strange properties, it felt cold no matter what the external temperature. The exotic material broke every law of thermodynamics but that was a matter for the Royal Academy to resolve, not her.
Scarlett applied the powder to the wrinkle with delicacy. It disappeared five seconds later. She sighed with relief. It must be the anticipation. She needed to relax. Turning the vial in the light she marvelled at the beauty of the powder, its colour changed depending on the mood of the holder. It was presently a bright blue to reflect her happiness.
Scarlett left the mysteries of Triglesium to her personal physician. She found his explanations on how raw Triglesium was toxic to organic life forms unless magnetised and combined with silicon odd. How could a substance that extended life when magnetised kill it when it was not. When she was younger she'd been on a tour of the Triglesium refinery. She never went back. The facility made her uncomfortable, such immense magnetic fields gave her a terrible headache and a nose bleed. How the staff put up with it was beyond her.
Scarlett returned the vial to the drawer. Even a trace amount like this was worth several moons. ‘So many wars, so much death,’ she whispered to the box. She knew she owed her life to the powers of Triglesium. The Prometheus gene limited a person's lifespan to two hundred years without it, even that of a Royal. Like her parents and siblings she was assured of several hundred years more. If she could just get her hands on Arcanum's cargo of Triglesium she and her allies could forcibly unite the Confederacy and Union once and for all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DUKE
Duke was on his third martini of the morning. He was on vacation so who cared what time it was. He took another sip and watched the blue and white sail boat in the bay tack poorly against the moderate south westerly. It was obvious the skipper knew little about sailing. A waste to have such a fine vessel and not know how to handle her.
Duke knew a lot about sailing, he had grown up in Hobart. His father had been a successful investment banker who retired in his mid-40s and spent most of his time on the water. His father’s pride and joy was a beautiful 30 footer which Duke spent more time aboard as a child than on land.
A young lady wearing the navy polo top of the resort staff approached and asked if he was ready to order. He ordered two beef burgers.
The waitress paused and he could tell she was trying to determine if both burgers were really for him. Not many guests holidayed at the exclusive resort by themselves. Her training kicked in and she smiled politely. ‘Of course sir.’
Duke's phone buzzed. ‘Shit.’
Commissioner Becker. The voice message said to call immediately. Damn. He had two more days of vacation left. He decided to finish the burgers before he called Becker back.
It did not take long to pack. He always travelled light. Decades in the service had taught him to be flexible. As the most senior hostage negotiator in the Australian Federal Police and with the rank of Inspector, Duke was better able than most to adapt to changing circumstances.
Becker's voice message was brief. Get on the next plane to Jakarta and meet the senior AFP liaison Officer at the Australian embassy.
Jakarta was a strange destination. He could catch a flight easily enough via Cairns but it would be bloody expensive. Duke knew something bad was going down because Becker was a penny pinching bean counter who usually made senior officers travel economy. The ticket Becker emailed was Business class all the way.
Cairns airport was busy. Duke had never seen it so full of aircraft. Every bay was occupied. Most of the aircraft were Chinese airlines.
Duke helped himself to the complimentary spirits in the arm rest. He knew his file at police headquarters had a section about his alcoholic tendencies but he had been in the force for over twenty years and his record as a hostage negotiator told the story. High command was willing to overlook his episodes because he had so many medals, including from foreign governments, so no one dared touch him. His work in Afghanistan negotiating the release of forty-five Red Cross workers had won him global praise and fame. No less than the Director of the FBI said he had never met anyone capable of negotiating with suicidal Islamic terrorists to achieve the release of all their hostages.
Few knew Duke had a PhD in psychology from Oxford. He certainly did not look the academic type. His hair was usually unkempt and he rarely shaved despite it being AFP protocol to be clean shaven. He took pride in being non-conformist. Becker told him time and time again he needed to clean up his act and lead by example, he was an Inspector after all. Duke ignored the man, the Commissioner was a typical bureaucrat with no idea about real world policing, let alone hostage negotiation.
What Duke couldn’t be bothered telling the Commissioner was that a hostage negotiator who was too clean cut or wore a suit was never going to build rapport with a hostage taker. By looking scrappy and unkempt the hostage taker would hardly feel threatened or intimidated by Duke. Most hostage takers had real problems with institutions and people with authority so the key was to make sure you did not look like you were associated with any of that. This would all be wasted on the Commissioner who was more concerned about budgets and media appearances than getting results and saving lives.
Duke flicked through the media catalogue and selected a three-part special on Angkor Wat. He was a sucker for B grade history documentaries. He fell asleep half way through the second episode. The martinis and the additional alcohol on board were the culprit.
The air hostess touched Duke lightly on the shoulder to wake him. He looked around. The aircraft had landed. He was the only person remaining in the Business Class cabin.
The embassy sent a car with a driver. The drive to the embassy was typically boring. Jakarta traffic was unbearable. An hour later he was escorted through embassy security to the Ambassador’s residential wing. Duke was a regular at the embassy so most of the staff along the way recognised him and said hello.
The Ambassador was waiting with the senior AFP liaison Officer, also of Inspector rank. She was technically Duke’s superior but Inspector Jenny Henderson knew it wouldn’t matter if she were the Queen as Duke Fletcher never followed orders from anyone. The best she could hope for was Duke agreeing to the mission on his own.
Duke listened to what Inspector Henderson and the Ambassador had to say. He was used to listening to crazy people but these two were not the crazy kind. They were deadly serious.
Duke imagined that convincing an alien artificial intelligence to help expel the Chinese military in the middle of a secret invasion would be hard. But his friend from his university days Robert, the serving Australian ambassador to the United Nations had asked for his help. He and Robert went way back. Duke had been Robert’s best man and
was the god-father to his eldest daughter Sarah. He remembered the drama Sarah caused when she had joined ASIO and insisted on taking her mother’s maiden name so no one would know her father was a then high court justice. She wanted to succeed on her own merit. The girl was headstrong.
Sarah was like a daughter to Duke. His only condition for helping the Americans talk to their alien sphere on Robert’s behalf was that Sarah be safely extracted from Australia. Inspector Henderson said she would take care of that personally and would use deep cover AFP Officers in Perth to get her out of the country.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
AREA 51
Duke was collected by a pair of dark sunglass CIA types and driven to the US embassy’s private hanger at Jakarta airport. He boarded a private jet and was handed a folder with some truly weird stuff inside.
An attractive CIA agent named Lisa sat next to him for the flight. Apparently she was his CIA liaison officer. He suspected her only job was to keep him motivated. He was a known womaniser and imagined the CIA had obtained a copy of his file noting this point, whether or not the AFP willingly provided it.
It was curious Lisa had the same hair colour, eyes and look of Duke’s ex-wife, only ten years younger. Well the CIA weren’t the only ones capable of playing mind games. Duke Fletcher was the master of mind games and he liked to play.
Less than an hour into the flight he had Lisa opening up about the effect of her parent's divorce on her teenage years. She started crying and Duke comforted her. When they moved onto her breakup with her long term boyfriend she started to bawl.
Repressed Type A personalities were always the same. Lisa was replaced with a middle aged male agent on the stop over at Hawaii. Duke smiled to himself. It was too easy. The male agent lasted a little longer, he confessed he'd fallen in love with an Italian counter-espionage agent on his first mission. He had never told anyone before but felt like he could tell Duke anything.
Upon landing the agent was taken away by two more sunglasses types who did not seem at all happy with the man. Duke smiled to himself as he walked down the ramp.
He was met by a stony faced bald man in his sixties. The man wore a slightly oversized suit. Duke was experienced enough to know it wasn’t the man’s tailor who had made a mistake. The oversize suit was to enable easier access to the two pistols concealed in the man's jacket. Secret service no doubt.
The man simply gestured towards a black saloon car. Obviously not a man of many words Duke thought.
Special Agent in charge Lyndon Myers had been assigned as Duke’s personal escort/bodyguard. Lyndon looked old and slow but Duke was not foolish enough to underestimate the man. He had worked with the secret service in Iraq and they were as hard as nails. Lyndon had a long scar running across his throat and a faded purple scar on his wrist with the tell-tale pattern of an exit wound.
Who Lyndon was protecting was a bit of a mystery. Duke suspected it had more to do with keeping him on his best behaviour and away from local bars. A blacked out part of Duke’s file mentioned his service in the French Foreign Legion in his early twenties. He had been involved in some serious scrapes in North Africa. He looked back at that period of life as a misguided romantic notion of soldiering, he joined the legion straight out of school with dreams of beautiful French women and exotic adventures. The truth of the legion was far grittier but he enjoyed his time in Africa and still kept in touch with many of his buddies, most of whom were serving time in various prisons around the world.
Duke was proud of the scars from street brawls in Algiers and the exit wounds from insurgents in Morocco. No one could match Duke Fletcher in a street brawl, he still had it. Duke's legion commander always said if Duke had not joined the legion he would surely be on Interpol's most wanted list. Luckily the commander remained unaware Duke had been sleeping with his wife at the time.
The saloon car drove for half an hour down a dusty track through what Duke imagined had once been farmland from the amount of rusted out sheds and barns.
The car came to a sudden stop at a concrete ramp. Duke recognised it as an anti-tank ditch.
A squad of soldiers appeared from within a small bunker nested neatly in the scrub alongside the ditch.
The squad looked like professionals. They stood straight backed and alert. Duke had no idea why. There was absolutely nothing out here except for dust and a few hawks circling a thousand feet above. But the soldiers were packing some serious heat. Each man carried a pistol, a sub-machine gun, a Taser, a baton and a combat knife. One had a high powered rifle with a ridiculously large scope while another carried an anti-drone gun which Duke knew could fry a drone’s electronics from a mile away.
Duke's passport was scrutinised, as was his Australian Federal Police Inspector's badge. He was told to place his finger on a finger print scanner. Duke told the guard to shove it just to see what happened. The guard forced a tight smile then clenched and unclenched his fist before Lyndon told the man the fingerprint scan would not be necessary.
Good, he had just determined he was to receive special treatment. They must really need him. He could play it to his advantage.
Duke and Lyndon were led through the bunker and reached an atrium with three lifts each labelled with the letters ADN. The lifts had no call buttons but the guard didn’t seem to mind. He stood patiently for a minute until the middle lift opened and the guard gestured for Duke and Lyndon to enter. The lift had no buttons on the inside either so Duke had no idea how far underground he was going.
As the lift opened he was met by a heavyset man in a US Air Force Brigadier General’s uniform. The General introduced himself as Tennison. The man was all business but made an effort to be polite to the unshaven Australian wearing a pair of old khaki shorts, loose white t-shirt and battered sandals. As he was led down another Cold War era concrete corridor two US Air Force Captains stepped aside and saluted him. He saluted them back. Duke was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve back home but he hardly did anything other than his minimum training obligation of ten days per year anymore. So they thought he was an Army Officer not a police officer. He would play that part then.
An Air Force Sergeant opened a heavy timber door into a wardroom where a US Army Colonel and an Air Force Major sat waiting. The General sat down at the head of the table. They looked expectantly at Duke while Lyndon stood quietly near the door his hand never too far away from the fold in his suit jacket. Who was Lyndon getting ready to shoot? Probably me thought Duke.
Duke knew with men like these in the room the only thing that worked was supreme confidence and authority. ‘Where is my uniform?’ he said rudely to the Major. He would isolate the lowest ranking man first.
The Major looked confused. ‘I, uh, we don't have your uniform sir.’
‘Why the hell not, orders were sent in advance. You expect me to do this job and you can't even arrange for my uniform to be ready.’
The General looked at the Major quizzically. Good Duke thought, the first seed of doubt. Duke turned to the General. ‘General, I see there has been a miscommunication between your embassy and your staff. My uniform and equipment should have been ready. I am unable to work without it.’
The General looked at the Colonel this time. The Colonel looked confused too. ‘Ah, Mr Fletcher,’ the General said, ‘what do you mean by your uniform?’
Duke feigned irritation. ‘I suggest the Major do his job and work that out, I am not in the habit of repeating myself, time is critical here gentlemen we need to get working.’
Time pressure was obviously something weighing on the General’s mind. He nodded. ‘Of course, yes.’
Now for the part where the General tried to re-assert control.
‘Major, get Mr Fletcher his uniform and equipment on the double. Mr Fletcher I apologise for the delays here. The Colonel will escort you to your quarters while your uniform and equipment is brought to you.’
‘Thank you General,’ Duke said.
On his way to his quarters the Colonel tri
ed to ask subtly what Duke’s uniform and equipment might look like. Of course the man had no idea. There had never been a message from the embassy. Now Duke was doing a favour for the man so he was indebted.
Duke explained his uniform was a US Air Force Colonel's uniform and his equipment was two IPads, three of the latest Samsung smart phones with ten sim cards, a glock 9mm pistol and a bible. He said bible to see whether the Colonel would take all the bait. The Colonel did not even question it. ‘Yes sir,’ he said.
Twenty minutes later there was a knock on the door to his quarters. A pair of Air Force Airmen carried two bags with his equipment and uniform. The glock was in a polished leather holster which fitted neatly onto the belt of his US Air Force Colonel's uniform. The Airmen saluted and left.
Duke was surprised they were letting him carry a gun around here. He checked the magazine. The ammunition was real, not blanks as he had imagined would be the case. The bible was a St James edition. He had absolutely no need for anything in the bags but it was all part of the theatre that was Duke Fletcher. Duke entered the bathroom and reluctantly selected the razor from his travel bag.
Lyndon was waiting outside. He looked at the clean shaven neatly groomed man wearing a US Air Force Colonel's uniform and blinked. That was probably the equivalent of shock for a Secret Service Agent Duke thought.
Duke walked back to the wardroom. The room was filled with more Officers this time. A pair of Air Force Lieutenants, a Navy Lieutenant Commander, an Army Captain and two Air Force Sergeants. They snapped to attention when they saw Duke. He returned their salute. ‘Please take a seat,’ he said. Lyndon smiled.
The General arrived ten minutes later. By then Duke had extracted most of what he wanted to know from the junior officers around the table, all of whom had been keen to update the Colonel from the Pentagon (or so Duke claimed) on the status of the alien sphere.