The Senior Editor reminded Nathan that articles reporting the crime and relief efforts in the Sanctuaries were encouraged; articles critiquing Rankcon Corporation or government entities were discouraged. Three weeks ago, Nathan knew he was rolling the dice when he retrieved the old article that spoke out against the Rankcon Intergovernmental Partnership. He submitted it for front page publication while the new Senior Editor was on vacation. Nathan was his backup—a position entrusted to him after twenty years of servitude.
He could recall every word with absolute clarity. Titled: The Protector Has No Conscience, it informed the world of Ian’s condition, and how his thirteen-year-old son had been ripped from his home at gunpoint and escorted to a filthy Sanctuary 87 hospital, never permitted to return home to his parents due to some fine print in his adoption paperwork.
His boss caught wind of his rebellious words minutes before the article went live on the web. He called Nathan from a resort in South America, cussed him out, and told him he was doing him a favor by not publishing the article. The Rankcon Intergovernmental Partnership would never find out about his outburst, and that was a good thing for Nathan and his wife. Although he had been blacklisted, at least he had a small window of opportunity to find some other employment before quarterly Barrier taxes were due.
And here he was.
Still jobless.
“I’ll go see Ian this morning while you’re with Bennie,” Sarah said, sitting down next to Nathan and draping her arm around his neck. “Then you can visit him this afternoon.”
“Just be careful. Okay? It’s dangerous out there.”
“I’ve made it there and back more than a few times now, Nathan. I’ll be fine.”
He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “I know, I know. I’m just worried…about everything.”
Sarah turned to face him. “Be careful, Nathan. I don’t entirely trust Bennie, even if he was an old friend of your father’s.”
6
The downtown Kansas City bike path was crowded for a Monday morning. Temps were forecasted to reach seventy degrees, warm for November, but expected considering the recent solar flare. Barrier temperatures typically rose an average of twenty degrees following a flare and fell back to normal within a couple weeks. Sometimes the atmosphere touching the Barrier glowed and flickered after a flare, like lambent embers of a dying campfire. It was the only time most residents saw tangible evidence of their city’s great guardian. Today Nathan paid the sky no attention.
He and Bennie passed a group of rowdy activists with Anti-World Defense Committee signs and stopped a block away.
Bennie bent down to tie his shoes and stretch his hamstrings. He jogged in place, sporting a turquoise track suit and the same grimy Task Force ball cap he had on at the funeral. “All set?”
“Yup,” Nathan muttered. He hadn’t set foot in a gym for months and was a shameful twenty pounds overweight. Between his son’s fiasco, his unemployment, and now his father’s disappearance, exercising was the last thing on his mind.
“I hope so,” Bennie said. “My granddaughter says I’m a machine. Keep up if you can.”
He darted off.
Nathan followed.
“Watch out for the crazy cyclists,” he shouted as Nathan fought to catch up, already struggling for breath. “They think they’re Lance Armstrong reincarnated.”
They jogged side by side while Bennie shared a story about how he once ran the downtown path with Nathan’s father during the old Task Force days. The Kansas City Barrier was brand new, the city’s landlines completed, and the two of them decided on a few victory laps. The experience ended badly when Aidan tripped and face planted on the asphalt. Nathan recalled hearing the same tale from his father years ago, minus the broken nose.
After thirty minutes, Bennie called for a break. They found a vacant bench and wiped their faces with their shirts.
“So what can you tell me about dad?” Nathan asked, fighting to catch his breath.
“You’re not much for small talk, are ya, kid?”
“Not when time’s running out for my son.”
Bennie looked around. “Let’s start with that article in the Journal of Aerospace Engineering…did you read it?”
“You mean the one where some jerk named Preston Sherrick suggested my father struggled with depression? Yeah, I read it.”
“I know Preston personally,” Bennie said. “He’s lying about Aidan going off the deep end. Your father’s psychiatric disorder was treated years before you were born, and he’s been stable as a rock since.”
“So what are you saying?”
Bennie glanced sideways and leaned closer. “Just a hunch, but I think Preston was coerced into publishing that article to make Aidan’s suicide appear plausible.”
“By whom?”
“People hired by Chairman Alkott.”
“Another hunch?”
“Look, kid, Aidan and I worked with Preston for twenty years at NASA, and nine years on the Task Force before that. No one got Preston to laugh harder than Aidan. Your father didn’t have a depressed bone in his body and Preston knew it. I’m aware his colleagues are trying to make sense of a good man’s suicide, but give me a break. Aidan wasn’t depressed, and he certainly wasn’t acting irrationally.”
“I’ve left Preston half a dozen voicemails,” Nathan said. “I’d fly out to California and hunt him down if I thought I stood a chance of getting him to talk.”
“I had a SmartChat with Preston a few days ago,” Bennie said, fiddling with his ball cap. “The conversation was short, but not sweet. He said he knew a side of Aidan nobody else did and it was his duty to report the truth and to speculate the possible causes of Aidan’s shocking suicide. That’s baloney, I told him.”
Several cyclists swooshed by.
“I brownnosed Preston and got him to agree to a face-to-face rendezvous,” Bennie said. “I told him I wanted to take him out to lunch to apologize for my colorful language during our previous conversation. You’re going with me.”
“And he’ll be okay with that?”
“He doesn’t know you’re coming, Nathan.”
“Great…and if he doesn’t talk?”
“He will or you’ll threaten to sue for slander. It’s as simple as that.”
Nathan crossed his arms and looked away. A bearded man with a Royals baseball cap sat down on a bench adjacent to theirs. He glanced at Nathan and yanked his cap low over his eyes, then pulled out a SyncSheet. Nathan could swear he had seen the man somewhere before, but he couldn’t place him.
“How soon can we meet with Preston?” Nathan asked, tapping on the side of the bench.
“Up to you, kid.”
“How about first thing tomorrow?”
“I can swing that.”
Nathan whipped out his SyncSheet and made a few quick finger swipes. “Just booked us a red-eye flight to the San Francisco Barrier. Airfare’s on me.”
“Excellent,” Bennie said, slapping Nathan on the shoulder. “Lunch with Preston will be on me.”
“So what else do you know? Yesterday you said you had information on dad.”
“I’m getting to that.” He bounced to his feet. “Let’s take a stroll to a more isolated locale, shall we?”
They jogged along the path for fifteen more minutes, then turned into a vacant alley and stopped near a large solar-paneled generator. Bennie wiped sweat off the inner rim of his ball cap, then placed it back on and gave it a few twists.
“So here’s the scoop, Nathan,” Bennie said, lowering his voice. “Aidan helped design a communications conduit for the missile Chairman Alkott is going to launch at Black Ghost. Your father was clueless until he was two weeks into the project.”
“What?” Nathan said, gasping.
“Exactly…your dear old dad got conned.”
“By whom?”
“Who do you think?”
“The World Defense Committee?”
“Bingo,” Bennie said, throw
ing a quick glance around the generator. “Alkott was in a bind. As you know, Earth’s stockpile of deep space missiles were done away with four decades ago, so he needed a deep space warhead assembled in mere months. The task required the world’s brightest and fastest minds, and Aidan fit the bill perfectly. They found out he was sniffing around for contract work to fund your son’s synaptic device, and the half a million dollar payout reeled him in.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Aidan told me.”
“Why didn’t dad tell me or any of his family?”
“He was humiliated. You know how opposed your father is to weapons of mass destruction.”
“Yeah, dad’s always been a ‘give peace a chance’ kind of guy. He thought Black Ghost should be given more time to communicate with Earth before we decided to shoot it down.” Nathan rubbed the back of his neck. “How could dad not know he was designing a communications conduit for a missile?”
“Simple,” Bennie said. “Aidan thought he was working on a pressing Ellis Three mission with billions of investment dollars on the line, and the client offered triple the rate if Aidan could get the work completed in a month. They told him the man originally contracted to design the specs for the conduit had died of a heart attack. Aidan accepted the job and worked remotely in the greenhouse until his part was completed a month later. He didn’t even know the name of the corporation he was employed by, and when his payment for the job arrived, it was wired from a bank in Chicago.”
“Wow. And how does this relate to his disappearance?”
“I met Aidan for a drink four months ago—right before he left for the cabin. That’s when he told me everything. Based on some inside information he’d acquired, he was certain the conduit he’d designed was planted on the missile pointed at Black Ghost. And he was right.”
Nathan felt lightheaded.
Bennie grinned. “It gets better, kid. Aidan also told me he was putting together a ruse.”
“Ruse?”
“A plan to beat the chairman at his own game.”
“What kind of plan?”
Bennie shrugged. “Aidan wouldn’t tell me, but I’m hoping our boy Preston knows something.”
Nathan leaned against the generator to steady himself. What kind of mess had his father gotten himself into? And what was Nathan getting himself into?
7
Previously
Jillian initiated Encounter Five’s autopilot and gazed out the window on her left. Earth would soon be a marble lost in the blackness of space.
“Goodbye, Ashlyn,” she whispered.
The autopilot would remain engaged until they were two days out from the Fold. Approximately 179 days. There the crew would wake from their stasis chambers, regain control of Encounter Five and wait for further instructions from Elliot Gareth. The official logs with Space Traffic Control documented Zathcore’s current mission as a three-month excavation along the northern section of the Great Riverbed. All of Zathcore’s previous Ellis Three missions were financed by billionaire investors eager to sell ancient human relics to museums. But not with this mission. Elliot Gareth, the great inventor of Barrier technology, was funding the entire thing while on Ellis Three, and he cared little about monetary return. He’d made that very clear in his personal messages.
Jillian tapped on the console and pulled up the Space Traffic Control flight logs. As anticipated, there were seven other Ellis Three excavations underway, with no flights in progress except for theirs.
Perfect—just as planned.
Elliot had been explicit that Encounter Five not be followed by another vessel, or the mission would be jeopardized. All the present excavations were in the eastern portion of the Great Riverbed—the three-thousand-mile expanse that once supported ninety percent of human civilization on Ellis Three. Zathcore’s scheduled landing coordinates were thousands of miles from any present excavation. She and the crew would appear to be another archaeological expedition wanting to keep a healthy distance from the competition.
The isolated dig site was a ploy, of course. It would afford Zathcore the freedom to carry out the mission without detection. They weren’t landing anywhere near the Great Riverbed, according to Elliot.
After course correcting Encounter Five upon entering Ellis Three’s orbit, Vance Tremont with Space Traffic Control would manipulate the flight records and satellite imagery taken from Ellis Three. Encounter Five would become a phantom, ready to fulfill its true purpose. A purpose which she and her crew of six had speculated since the morning each received a personal audio-message from Elliot Gareth. They were finally permitted to think out loud after two years of dutiful silence. They were in the private vacuum of space now.
She flipped a row of switches on the console above her head and removed her restraining belt. Floating freely in the cockpit, she yawned and stretched her shoulders. She detested long-distance traveling and had always viewed her aeronautical skills as a literal means to an end. She was an archaeologist first, astronaut second. She had commanded half a dozen Ellis Three missions with Zathcore.
She had what it took.
She just wasn’t accustomed to being left in the dark the whole way there.
Jillian pressed her face against the window and watched Earth deflate by the minute. Ashlyn was starting her first real job with a law firm in the New York City Barrier. How would she handle not talking with her daughter for fifteen months? Ashlyn had been her primary source of support since the disappearance of Tyler eleven years ago. Jillian had lost her husband and Ashlyn had lost her father. Their shared loss had bonded them together like nothing else could.
She floated to the adjacent window and pondered her private, secondary mission, the most important one as far as she was concerned.
“Are you still alive somewhere on Ellis Three, Tyler?” she whispered to the infinite blackness. Her personal message from Elliot Gareth hinted he might know something. But did he? Was her assumption correct? She wasn’t sure. Elliot Gareth was a vague, frustrating, brilliant old man who seemed to enjoy toying with the lives of others from his safe, god-like position on the distant planet.
“Am I interrupting something?” her co-pilot’s voice boomed from behind her.
Jillian flinched and bumped the back of her head on the overhead console.
Collin drifted through the cockpit door and buckled into the seat beside her. “Still stings in zero gravity, doesn’t it?”
“Every time,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You might want to keep your helmet on when you’re wandering about the cockpit having conversations with yourself.”
“Very funny, Collin.”
“Sorry.”
“You better be—you haven’t helped my migraine.”
“Seriously. If you need another ten minutes to commune with the stars, I’ll head back to the lavatory and finish my Sports Illustrated article.”
He grabbed her helmet and pushed it in her direction.
She reached out and snagged it. “How about I hit you in the face with this?”
“I’d call your bluff on that, Jillian. You’d never run the risk of incapacitating the only other soul aboard who can pilot this vessel through the Fold.”
“It’s a risk I might be willing to take.”
“Maybe. But probably not.”
Jillian floated to the cockpit exit. “She’s all yours, Collin. Time for a long nap before we reach the Fold. See you in 179 days.”
_____
Behind a monitor in Space Traffic Control’s server room, Vance Tremont tracked Encounter Five as it entered the long empty stretch between Earth and the Fold. He was a senior satellite feed manager, and he'd busted his butt for eight long years to acquire his solitary third-shift position. Satellite streams from Ellis Three were transmitted back through the Fold, then filtered through Space Traffic’s servers. It was Vance’s job to track all of them.
He tapped on a screen, then leaned back and sipped coffee in the semi-d
arkness. His mind wandered back to his countless years of double shifts. Hadn’t he earned the right to complain?
As far as he was concerned, Space Traffic Control owed him a debt that couldn't be repaid. They couldn't bring his wife back, who had downed a lethal dose of painkillers while he was here working. Nor could they grant him custody of his daughter who was in a hospital bed in Sanctuary 29, scheduled to be euthanized in six days. Arizona Children’s Services had swept in and forcibly removed his Lydia from their home due to allegations of child neglect. A month later, his wife’s mental issues led her to take her own life.
For whatever reason, his daughter’s LifeTracker chip stopped working as she bounced around foster homes, and keeping track of her became impossible. A private investigator costing him half a year’s salary confirmed she was thirty miles from Las Vegas in Sanctuary 29, one of the grimmest in the country when it came to skin cancer fatalities. He couldn’t even get in to say goodbye to his little girl on her deathbed; the borders to Sanctuary 29 had been sealed for a year due to riots.
Things seemed hopeless until a man named Kendall Rouhoff came along and offered a deal he couldn’t refuse. It involved selling out Jillian Catterton, a longtime friend.
But his child’s life would be saved. Wouldn’t any decent father do the same?
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