“If I may add, Maar,” Crain interjected. “The whole idea of using Androgynes on a manned mission to Saturn was to preserve USARIC’s bottom line. A minimal financial outlay.”
“What does that mean?” Nutrene asked.
“Quite simply, it was the cheapest option. All we need to know now is what happened to them. Quickly, and quietly.”
Alex shook his head and took a final look at Pox and Neg, “So you’re sending humans up with the new generation?”
“That’s right.”
“And you want us to kill everything that moves?”
Maar and Crain nodded with a quiet solemnity.
“You leave in four days’ time,” Maar waved the Opera Charlie vector image away from the table, “It’s a three-year round trip. I suggest you put your affairs in order as soon as possible.”
Ten Minutes Later…
The men’s bathroom.
Alex splashed cold water on his face. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked at his face in the mirror. A fine USARIC logo imprint loomed in the bottom right-hand corner.
“You look like hell,” his reflection moved its lips as he spoke. “A year and a half to Saturn and we might not find anything.”
Biddip-biddip…
“Damn it.”
He rolled up his sleeve and looked at his forearm. The Individimedia ink sluiced around and from three blinking dots. He took one last look at his face and thumbed the ink to his wrist.
“This is Alex.”
“It’s me,” the voice of a woman came through the pricks in his wrist, “Are you alone?”
“I’m in the bathroom.”
“How did the briefing go?”
“Yeah, it went fine,” Alex turned to the stalls. Two of the five were locked but he knew he was alone, “Listen, I can’t talk right now. I’m still with the crew.”
“You’re definitely on, though? Right?”
“Yes, I’m on—”
CLUNK.
The door to the bathroom opened. Oxade walked up to the floating urinal concourse in the middle of the room.
“Hey, good buddy,” he said to Alex. “All set?”
“Yeah, amaziant, thanks,” Alex pressed his right palm over his left wrist. A muffled question from the woman warbled through his fingers.
“Who you talking to, there?”
“Oh, you know,” Alex fake-smirked and made his way over to the hand drier, “Women trouble. She’s always calling.”
“Ha. Tell me about it,” Oxade unzipped his front and proceeded to relieve himself, “Seems you have an admirer. Nutrene’s got the hots for you.”
“Has she?”
“Don’t act like you haven’t not noticed.”
“Hmm,” Alex turned to the drier. A bead of sweat formed across his brow and rolled down the side of his face. He spread the pinpricks on his wrist and dipped his left hand into the drier. He couldn’t afford Oxade to overhear his call…
Interstate 45
North Texas Border
Grace had the face of an angel. Her long, flowing brunette hair raced down the back of her combat fatigues.
She pushed her finger against her ear and tried to keep herself steady in the passenger seat of the 4x4 as it raced along the uneven ground.
“Siyam, please,” she said to the driver. “Can you at least try to keep us steady?”
“I am, I am,” Siyam, the African-American driver, said. He focused on his rear view mirror. “You want us to get pulled over?”
“Sorry, Alex,” she returned to the cables streaking out from her wrist, “I didn’t hear what you said. Can you say again—”
SWWIIISSSHHHHHHHHH!
A deafening, prolonged thunder rocketed through her ears. The frequency forced her to snap the earpiece from her head and fling it to her lap.
“Jesus Christ!” she screamed. “What’s that noise?”
Siyam threw Grace a look of anger as he stepped on the gas, “What’s up with him?”
“He said he was in the bathroom, and then this—Ah, my ears feel like they’re bleeding,” she fumbled for the device and pulled the wire from her wrist.
“Maybe he can’t talk?” Siyam said. “If he says he can’t talk, then he can’t talk.”
“No, I need to know he’s okay. I need to know the mission is on,” she slung the earpiece against her head and spoke into her wrist. “Alex? This is Grace. Do you read me?”
“Yes—” his voice chimed in to a static rumble, “Everything went well, but I can’t talk right now.”
“Did you pass the training? Please tell me you passed at least.”
“Yes, I did,” Alex snapped and hushed his voice, “Where are you?”
Grace looked over her shoulder and watched the border control center disappear from view, “We’ve just passed border control. About five miles from Corsicana.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, the usual,” Grace said, “Those Nazis at border control practically performed a cavity search on Siyam.”
“That figures. Racist scumbags,” Alex snorted through her earpiece, “Any news on where the subjects are headed?”
Grace grabbed Siyam’s left arm and ran her fingers over the ink.
“Hey, what are you—”
“—Shut up for a minute and keep your eyes on the road. I need to look at something.”
She held his arm up and looked at the white ink break apart into thirty separate dots.
“Ten miles south-southwest,” Grace said.
The screen on the dashboard of the 4x4 showed thirty flashing dots swarming toward a dotted line, “We know from Moses’ absorption effort in the compound that they’re chipped. We have their locations on screen.”
“Okay.”
“I just hope we can find them in time. Alive, ideally.”
“Be careful when you get there. USARIC have reprogrammed them. You don’t know how they’ll react.”
Alex pushed through the USARIC reception area and headed for the entrance. An iron bust of Dimitry Vasilov took center stage in the middle of the area.
He glanced at it as he walked into the bright, clear sunshine. The warmth of the sun rays calmed him down despite the noise coming from the launching jets on the airstrip.
“I can’t believe this is where Denny took the shot.”
“Are you there right now?” Grace asked.
“Yes.”
“I made contact with the kid. Jamie.”
“Oh, really?” Alex seemed surprised, “You found him?”
“Yeah, there must be a million Jamie Andersons on Viddy Media. Struck gold on the hundred and twentieth one. You’d have thought those Brits—”
“—Did he confirm Anderson’s involvement with Opera Beta?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Good,” Alex said with relief, “that tallies with what I heard at the briefing. Both ends covered. That’s better than substantiated fact, now.”
“Anderson took Bisoubisou’s place. She’s up there with them.”
“I knew it,” Alex punched the air with excitement. A gaggle of USARIC officials on their smoke break looked over at him in bemusement, “Good work, Grace. That’s exactly what we thought.”
“I know, right? If Beta’s report is correct, then Jelly is the one who decoded Saturn Cry. They’re in receipt of the answer. We just have to hope they’re alive.”
Alex turned away from the spluttering officials and caught the magnificent Space Opera Charlie spacecraft standing proud within its scaffolding in the horizon.
“Five more days, Alex,” she whispered from his wrist.
“You got that right.”
He took in the sheer enormity of the spacecraft standing in the distance, “Five more days…”
Chapter 9
The Control Deck
Space Opera Beta - Level One
Space Opera Beta hung in the vacuum of space surrounded by zillions of tiny, bright stars. A bright and vibrant Enceladus drifted behind it. The last o
f its pink light blossomed against the universe’s canvas and swallowed in on itself.
Nothing left. The universe was serene.
Saturn’s surface took up the majority of the view through the windshield by the flight deck, appearing to oversee the vessel like a maternal juggernaut. Her rings no longer revolved.
The communications panel lay dormant, a giant husk of its former self. The emergency strip lights across the ground provided the only indication of life or action aboard the spacecraft.
The communications console rumbled to life. Its light snapped on. The processor fired up as if it was struggling to awaken from a deathly slumber.
WHIRRR-POP.
A shower of orange sparks blew out from the mainframe. Four sides of a rectangle fizzed a few inches away from it. Its outline stormed through the air and produced a full hologram of a book.
Manuel had awoken.
“Oh, my,” he fluttered around and wrestled with the pages between his covers.
FRII-II-ITT.
The sheets shuffled together like a deck of playing cards. He slapped his covers together and fanned every page out like an extended accordion.
“Ah, that’s better.”
He shifted around to the communications panel, “Ooh, we’ve left Pink Symphony, I’m happy to report.”
The holographic tome opened out and cast a beam of green data light at the communications panel.
Each circuit within the mainframe whirred as they fired up.
“This is Manuel. Autopilot of Space Opera Beta. Open communication channels, ports one through one-zero-fifteen.”
The screen on the panel snapped to life.
“Assess current location.”
A slew of white text ran up the screen.
“Feeling better, I see.”
BEEP.
The screen displayed its update:
USARIC S.O.B. SIT-REP_
Date: September 1st, 2122
Location: Enceladus (orbit)
Engine & Payload: Operational
Thrusters (Auto & Manual): Operational
Communication channels: Open
Distance to Earth (miles): 750m
Communication incoming_
“I see you’ve survived whatever happened to us. I thought we’d never see each other again,” Manuel shut his beam off and fluttered up against the screen, “Twenty-one-twenty-two? Did we really skip three years? Feels like it was just yesterday. I guess to us it was, actually. Hmm.”
He folded the edge of one of his pages and brushed over the last entry, “Communication incoming? Run banked communications.”
The text bled out into a white flat line. A mountainous waveform sprawled across the screen from the right-hand side.
Static blew from the speakers as the flat line wriggled around. It curved up as Oxade’s voice spoke.
“This is Captain Oxade Weller of the rescue vessel Space Opera Charlie. Do you read me?”
Manuel flipped over two pages and copied the waveform across the blank slate, “Keep playing.”
“I repeat, this is Captain Oxade Weller of USARIC’s Space Opera Charlie rescue program. Contacting Opera Beta on a frequency of zero, five, four, niner. Does anyone read me?”
Manuel slapped his pages together with applause.
“Oh, my. We’re going to be rescued,” he pressed his pages back and transmitted a beam back to the panel.
“Speech-to-text.”
As Manuel spoke, the panel transcribed his message in white text, “This is The Manuel, autopilot of Space Opera Beta. Can confirm connection. Crew are in hyper-sleep. Oxygen conservation in process. Ess-oh-ess. Please confirm bridging instructions. Send.”
The text appeared on the screen and then vanished.
“Thank God. How very thoughtful. Good old USARIC, sending a ship to come and take us home.”
Hyper-Sleep Arena
Space Opera Beta
The five occupied hyper-sleep pods buzzed to life. Their transparent plastic panels slid open one by one.
Tripp, Wool, Jaycee, Tor, and Jelly lay asleep with peaceful looks on their faces.
Manuel burst to life by the energy tube and slapped his pages together, “Guys, wake up. I have some amaziant news.”
“Huh?” Tripp was the first to wake up. The others shuffled around and groaned, half awake, “Are we dead?”
“No, quite the contrary,” Manuel zoomed over to Tripp and lowered himself to his face, “We’re being rescued.”
“Rescued?”
“Yes, Opera Charlie is hours away. They are here to rescue us.”
Tripp gripped the edge of his pod and jumped to the floor, “That’s great—Whoa,” he yelped and lost his footing. The disorientation hadn’t quite left his body.
“Be careful, Tripp. Take it easy. We don’t want you falling over and hurting yourself before our visitors arrive.”
“No, you’re right. I’ll take it real slow for a while,” he said.” Where are we?”
“We are no longer on Pink Symphony. According to the geo-scan we have returned to our solar system, just out of Saturn’s orbit.”
Tripp closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. He looked over his shoulder and caught Wool and Jaycee open their eyes and yawn. He turned back to Manuel on the verge of crying for joy, “Thank God.”
The book took a bow, “It’s on my to-do list if we ever meet him. Or her.”
“Did we make contact with Charlie?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What’s that meant to mean?”
“They left us a message—”
“—Right, did you send one back—?”
“—I was just going to say… yes, I did. They should have received it by now. No response so far, but by the time we return to control I think we can commence bridging procedures.”
Tripp stood to his feet and felt his jaw. Baldron’s replacement cheek had settled in nicely during the hyper-sleep. He felt like a million bucks once again.
“Good idea. We’ll get everyone oriented and ready to disembark.”
“Certainly,” Manuel threw a beam at each of the pods and pulled the front hatches down, “The question is, what do we do about Opera Beta? We have forty-eight hours left on oxygen and general supplies.”
Tripp watched Jaycee and Wool start to wake up.
“We may have to abandon Beta, depending on her state. I’m sure between us all we can make it back to Earth.”
“I knew you said disembark a few seconds ago,” Manuel muttered and ducked his head, “But if you do that, I’ll be left on my—”
“—Everyone, can I have your attention?” Tripp ignored Manuel and clapped his hands together. Jelly rolled around in her bed. She didn’t want to wake up.
“Ugh, did we get off that godforsaken disc?” Wool muttered.
“Yes, we did. Guys, I have some good news.”
“What?” Jaycee asked.
“We’re going home.”
The crew didn’t believe what they’d just heard.
“Are you serious, right now?” Wool asked.
“Yes, I am. I’m going to the control deck with Manuel to make the arrangements. I suggest you do whatever it is you need to do to prepare.”
“Comms are back on?” Tor asked, somewhat giddy with excitement, “Can we send messages?”
“Yes,” Manuel said. “Comms are fully operational, now.”
Tripp walked to the door in just his underwear. Wool snorted and sighed, “Tripp?”
“Yeah?”
“Put your pants on first?”
“Oh,” he looked down at his bare stomach and legs, “Yes, good idea.”
An anxious Tor stepped out from his pod, “What does this mean for me?”
Tripp approached the slider on the wall, “What do you mean ‘what does this mean for you’?”
“Well, if we’re going home…” Tor thought out loud, arriving at the obvious before the others had a chance to dish it to him, “I, uh, can’t
go back home.”
“You damn well can and will, dickhead,” Jaycee planted his bare feet on the ground, grabbed the edge of the pod, and pushed himself upright, “USARIC will deal with you properly.”
“Guys, look,” Tor said. “No one knows anything. Please, I beg you. Don’t say anything. Don’t turn me in.”
“That’s rich coming from you,” Wool spat with sarcasm, “You’re lucky Jaycee didn’t switch you off and wear your reproductive organs as a bracelet.”
Tor sighed, close to tears. A pathetic sight, aided none by the fact he was standing in his briefs, “Please?”
“It’s out of our control now, good buddy,” Tripp patted the creases on his inner-suit pants, “You made your bed. You sleep in it.”
Wool cleared her throat and held her head in her hands, “God, my head is pounding. My guts feel like they’ve been through a grinder,” She held her arm over her bra in a bid to protect her modesty, “Did I hear you correctly?”
“Yes, Wool. We’re going home,” Tripp tore his eyes away from her chest and slipped the top half of his suit over his head, “Better get ready.”
Wool scanned the room. All but one crew member was accounted for, “Where’s Bonnie?”
Everyone looked at their feet. They’d remembered what happened and were as stunned as each other that Wool hadn’t.
“She didn’t make it,” Tripp unraveled his inner-suit down his front and slipped on his boots, “Don’t you remember?”
Wool stared at the ground and bit her lip, “Yes. I remember now.”
Images from the battle on Pink Symphony flooded into her brain. She took a deep breath, puzzled by her feelings on the matter.
One crew member remained unaccounted for.
“Where’s Jelly—?”
CRREEEAAAAAKKK.
All eyes averted to the cat’s hyper-sleep pod.
CLUNK-CLINK-CLINK-CLINK.
Four Titanium infinity claws rose out from the pod and pressed their way across the ceramic edge.
“Me… owww…”
Wool held her chest with amazement, “Jelly, honey?”
Tor and Jaycee backed up and watched a huge furry arm lift up from within the chamber.
Star Cat The Complete Series Page 57