The image of Drahkori kneeling in front of a shrine slithered its way to the forefront of Kenon’s mind again, and Doramire’s words echoed.
Heed my counsel.
Find your purpose.
Find your place.
What if the old warrior was telling him to visit the temple? Maybe there was something of importance to be found there. “If you are correct about what you saw, we should go there as soon as possible,” he said.
Knoble laughed as if he thought the idea was absurd. “You’re kidding, right? We have the Nephera tripping on our heels and you want to make a spontaneous jump across the system?” He tossed his stick into the burning pit. “Forget it.”
It was a bit of a hasty suggestion considering the current state of affairs, yes, but if Jhiral was right, then the temple could conceivably hold the secret to ending this war. “The Forge may hold the answers we have all been looking for,” Kenon insisted. “It could lead to a solution—a way to stop the Nephera!”
“We already lost three people in the crash, and my team is in no condition to go planet-hopping. Our best bet is to lay low and wait for the dust to settle.”
“And do what, twiddle our thumbs?” Alana argued. “Lance, the Nephera won’t leave until they get what they came for. If anything, our best bet is to keep moving—make it as difficult for them to track us as possible. Besides, what if he’s right?” She glanced at the young warrior. “If there’s a chance the temple could lead to an endgame, we can’t ignore it.”
“What if he’s wrong?”
“Then at least we can say we gave it our best shot.”
Rubbing his neck, Knoble drew a pensive look over his teammates. Though Bennett’s recovery would be swift, West and Sevadi were in need of medical attention. Their injuries weren’t showing any immediate signs of worsening, but there was no telling when they might flare up.
“Who said we all had to go?” Jenkinson pointed out. “The wounded can hop a med ship while the rest of us travel to Dyre to see what this temple is all about. If they want, and if they’re able, they can just rejoin us later.”
“Sounds good to me,” West said.
Sevadi and Bennett murmured in agreement, then the three of them turned to Lieutenant Knoble and awaited his authorization. After a brief moment of contemplation, he gave his approval.
“Then it’s settled,” Jenkinson affirmed. “We leave at dawn.”
1830 Hours, September 10, 2442 (Earth Calendar) / Charab’dul Metamorphosis Research Division, planet Chelwood Gate
Dr. Chambers strolled into the examination room. The steady hum of machinery filled her ears, interrupted only by a repetitive beep from the vital signs monitor. To her surprise, Desmond was sitting up in bed with a computer in his lap. After three days of sleepless travels, she had expected to find him resting.
Then again, insomnia was a symptom of the plague.
She hung her lab coat up on the hanger beside the door and made her way over. “What do you have there?”
Desmond looked up from the screen. He made a swirling gesture to his head, indicating that it was indeed the virus keeping him awake. “I couldn’t sleep, so Doctor Larson brought me some reading material.”
“Nothing too boring, I hope.” Chambers parked herself on the side of the mattress. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, I think.”
“And your memory?” When she first posed that question on the shuttle, he scarcely remembered the events between isolation and cryo. If any of those memories had returned, it would be nothing short of a miracle.
“Still just bits and pieces,” he said. “Things are coming back, though. Slowly. Some good, others . . . others I wish had stayed buried.” He glanced down at his right arm, which was haphazardly bound in bloodstained cotton.
“Speaking of . . . Can I take a look at that?”
The heart rate monitor’s beep quickened. Clearly the thought of it made him anxious, but he gave a reluctant nod regardless. As Chambers lifted his arm and started to peel the cloth away, he shifted his attention to the laptop.
The contractures in his forearm ran deeper than the others, particularly around the jagged laceration in his wrist—an injury he had inflicted upon himself in quarantine. Old blood glistened wet around the wound. The bandages must have held in the moisture.
She twisted his arm slightly to inspect his hand.
The skin was stretched taut, worn so thin it was a wonder anything was being held together at all. There was hardly any muscle mass in his palms. The veins near the surface had shriveled, and his fingers were curled unnaturally—frozen in position.
Desmond didn’t react when she tried to straighten them.
In fact, he hadn’t reacted once during the examination.
Chambers pressed down on his wrist, within centimeters of the gash, then moved up his arm—hoping to evoke some sort of response. He didn’t so much as flinch until she reached a tender spot near his elbow.
More than half of the limb was dead, petrified by the plague. If Desmond really was on the road to recovery—and that was a big if—they would likely have to amputate it and get him fitted for a prosthesis.
For now, she decided to keep that diagnosis to herself.
“Whoa.” Desmond’s brows shot up. He had stumbled upon a folder full of photographs and expanded one of the images to fill the screen. The photo depicted a Drocain squadron gathered outside a burning library on Anahk. “These are the things you’ve been fighting?”
“That’s them,” Chambers said. “The big ones are called Khael’hin.”
“They’re huge . . .”
“Most are around ten feet tall and weigh close to a ton. Being the giant bullet sponges they are, it can take two whole teams just to bring one down. Or a well-placed sniper round.”
Desmond moved on to the other pictures. Battlefield snapshots, Drocain autopsies. There were even a few images of crytal weaponry. He continued clicking through the album until he came to a photo of a human shaking hands with one of the aliens.
“Uh, what’s this?” he asked.
Even Chambers hadn’t expected that to be among her colleague’s files. “That is something I was going to explain later—after we’d caught you up on everything else.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Don’t suppose you want to wait now, though?”
“Not really, no.”
Thanks, Larson, Chambers thought with a huff.
“That’s the admiral of Home Fleet, Phillip Anderson.” She pointed to the man in the white dress uniform and embroidered cap, then swept her finger to the blue warrior in shining armor. “And that is Levian ‘Nher, the commander of the Drocain Separatist Fleet. This photo must have been taken right after they signed the peace treaty.”
“You mean they’re our allies now? So we can make peace with genocidal aliens, but we can’t even patch things up with our own kind?”
“It’s not that simple, Des. This is a lot more complicated than our relationship with the rebels. But let’s save that conversation for another day, shall we?” Chambers reached for a fresh roll of bandages and began redressing his wound, if for no other reason than to spare him the sight.
Desmond rubbed his shoulder, wincing as his fingers grazed by the raw plague scars running up his neck. “Charlotte . . . is there even going to be another day?”
She frowned at him.
“No one has told me anything,” he went on. “I have no idea what’s happening. All I know is that I should have been dead hours ago, and—”
“Hey, hey. It’s okay.” Chambers cupped his face in her hands. “We’re going to figure this out, alright? The tests earlier weren’t for nothing. There’s a whole team working on them in the lab, but they can only go so fast. You just have to be patient.”
As if her words had summoned him, Dr. Larson burst into the examination room. He stood in the open doorway, panting. No mask, no gloves. No hazmat gear whatsoever. He was totally unprotected, and gulping what could very well
be contaminated air.
Dr. Chambers leapt to her feet in a panic. “Larson, are you nuts?” she exclaimed. “You can’t be in here without a suit!”
Despite her alarm, he made no move to leave. Instead, he walked further into the room, held up a tablet, and grinned. Ear to ear. “Charlotte, we found it.”
“Found what?” she asked. Not a second after she posed the question, it dawned on her. She gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Larson, I swear to god, if you’re joking—”
“I’m not. We ran the tests over and over . . . The results were the same every time. This is real, Charlotte. We have a cure.”
We have a cure.
Those four words held so much promise, so much hope. Dr. Chambers had dreamt of them for decades, fantasized about the day she would sing them from the rooftops. They had once seemed so unattainable that hearing them now, beyond the bounds of her imagination, had rendered her speechless.
Larson walked to the end of the bed and met Desmond’s bewildered stare. “Mr. Pérez, I am pleased to announce that you are officially in remission. Your body is healing, and your blood will be the catalyst for a cure.”
“I-I don’t . . . How is that possible?”
“I’m sure you’re aware long exposure to the cold slows those transformed by the plague due to the difficulty they have generating body heat. Similarly, the virus itself has trouble coping in lower temperatures because it can’t feed on frozen tissue.”
“So you’re saying it starved to death in the chamber?”
“And gave you a fighting chance, yes.”
With a breath of relief, Desmond sank into the stack of pillows behind him and pushed his hair back off his forehead. As tears beaded at the corners of his eyes, Dr. Chambers gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. She would have swept him up in her embrace if his body wasn’t still so tender.
Larson turned to her. “Well, let’s go deliver the good news, shall we?” He tucked his tablet under his arm, and together they left the examination room.
Excitement sparked like electricity between them.
Desmond’s recovery gave Earth hope. While the odds of finding survivors on the planet were slim, if even half of the cryo facilities had remained intact, there could be at least ten thousand people down there. And the unearthing of a cure meant search and rescue teams could retrieve them without worries of contracting the virus.
Not only that, it meant the human race might actually see their home planet restored to a habitable state in the near future. To think they could return someday was surreal. Exhilarating.
But as they rounded the corner to the foyer, Chambers’ daydreams dissolved at the sight of a BSI convoy parked outside. Six SUVs had clogged up the driveway, and a band of sharp-suited agents was marching toward the front entrance.
And leading the party was Special Agent Leonard O’Connor.
Anger seared through Dr. Chambers. “You!” she bellowed as he strode in through the doors. “You’re supposed to be dead!”
“I could say the same about you, Doctor.” O’Connor stopped in front of her and folded his sunglasses away. “Oh, how the press wept for you. What was that one headline, Stedman?” He looked to the blonde woman beside him, hands raised and fingers splayed. “One of the Galaxy’s Greatest Minds, Lost to War.”
“I was trapped in slipspace. You wiped yourself off the grid!” Chambers prodded him in the chest. “Now you turn up out of the blue and barge in here like you own the place? Why? Have you come to arrest me for some bullshit crime you pulled out of your ass?”
“Believe it or not, I’m not here for you. I’m here for Orion.” O’Connor pushed by Chambers with Agent Stedman on his heels, leaving her and Larson standing dumbstruck in the foyer.
Exchanging a concerned glance, they jogged after the agents.
“Wait, what exactly do you think he did?” Larson asked as the four of them piled onto the elevator.
Stedman pressed the button for the basement. The doors closed, and they began their descent. “Your AI has been communicating with a foreign construct,” she said. “We’re not sure what it’s capable of yet, and we’re not waiting around to find out. We need to nip this in the bud before it gets into our database.”
Dr. Chambers scoffed. “Look, I know Orion has crossed some boundaries, but he’s not stupid. Putting the Bureau’s systems at risk puts him in danger too. He wouldn’t jeopardize his own core.” She looked up to the camera in the corner of the elevator. “Would you, Orion?”
Lights flickered. The elevator came to a grinding halt.
Chambers and Larson grabbed the silver handrail. O’Connor and Stedman braced themselves against the mirrored walls. When the shaking ceased, Orion materialized beneath the projector on the ceiling.
He cast a sidelong glance at Dr. Chambers. “. . . I meant to tell you sooner,” he said, then looked off to the right and spoke to the empty space beside him. “It’s all right. You can come out now.”
A flurry of orange particles descended from the projector. They spiraled like dust in a whirlwind, coming together to form a slender figure dressed in elegant attire, an oval face with pointed ears, and a set of wings—delicate as a dragonfly’s. They held her aloft until a golden disc of light formed beneath her feet. Once she had settled, they folded at her back, and she looked at the humans gathered around her.
“Greetings,” she said. “I am CP-zero-seven-four-SERENITY, overseer of the Sovereign-Class Pevancy starship Barlow.”
“Oh my god.” Larson slapped a hand on his forehead. “Serenity. SRN. You’re the AI who was communicating with Orion’s core three years ago!”
She dipped her head in affirmation.
“Serenity reached out to me via Echo Team’s hyperlink comms when they passed through the Deadlands,” Orion explained. “She continued sending data to my core following the portal incident. I wasn’t able to read her transmissions until we returned to normal space, though I suppose you were.”
Larson nodded. “The sudden influx of data blew the power to the building.” He shifted his focus to Stedman, who appeared to be having a silent conversation of her own with Agent O’Connor. The pair of them were exchanging sharp gestures and mouthed words.
They stopped when they caught him staring.
“I alerted you to those transmissions three years ago,” he said to Stedman. “What else have you learned since then? Why do you think this construct is a threat?”
Stedman folded her arms. “That’s classified.”
“Classified, my ass!” Chambers snapped. “Don’t forget we’re trapped in this box together. Unless you want to walk out of here looking like you just got mugged, you’d better start—”
Serenity gasped and doubled over, covering her ears. A high-pitched whine sent shivers across her avatar, and the elevator lights intensified to such a degree that the bulbs burst, leaving it illuminated only by the glow of the two AIs.
Orion extended his wing toward her. “Serenity?”
She straightened up as her image began to stabilize. “We don’t have long. I need you to listen,” she said. “The Nephera will not surrender until their weapon is destroyed. Valinquint holds the key. All he needs to do is get to the activation chamber.” Serenity took Orion’s holographic hand. Threads of light flowed from her arm into his. “Take this data to Echo Team. It will show them the way.”
“I’ve heard enough of this.” O’Connor pounded the emergency open switch by the doors and stepped out onto Sub-Level A—one level above the basement. Stedman followed, heels thudding atop the carpeted floor.
Chambers leaned out and called after them. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Neither agent responded.
“The core,” Larson said. “They’re going to shut down the core!”
At that, the scientists bolted from the elevator and dashed down the hall. Dr. Chambers slipped in front of Agent O’Connor as he grabbed the handle of the basement door, splaying her limbs to bar the
way.
His nostrils flared. “Move, Chambers.”
“Make me,” she retorted.
He jostled the handle, and she pressed herself deeper into the doorway. If O’Connor wanted to get past, he would have to drag her out of the way.
“Doctor,” Stedman said. “Your AI voluntarily compromised our systems. The penalty for such an offense is immediate termination. If you do not grant us access to his core unit, you will be charged with obstruction of justice. Do I make myself clear?”
Dr. Chambers ignored her and held O’Connor’s glare.
They had never been friends, never been even the slightest bit friendly. From the start, their relationship had been strained—their every interaction peppered with resentment. However, they did have history, and he had listened to her in the past.
Perhaps he would listen to her now.
“Please, Leonard,” she said in a hushed tone. “Orion is my property. I created him. Therefore, he is my responsibility. One way or another, I will take care of this, but I cannot let you terminate him. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
O’Connor closed his eyes, lips pursed. After a moment, he forcefully released the handle, pivoted on his toes, and headed for the stairwell. “Come on, Gretchen. We’re leaving.”
“Wait, what?” Agent Stedman swept her arm toward the basement door. “Leonard, we have a job to do. We can’t just let this continue.”
He kept walking. “We’ll deal with it later.”
“Leonard—”
“Now, Gretchen!”
Stedman shot one last glance at Dr. Chambers and Larson, then huffed and stormed off after O’Connor. As soon as they were out of earshot, Chambers looked to her colleague and said, “We need to contact Echo Team.”
Chapter
———TWENTY———
1925 Hours, September 10, 2442 (Earth Calendar) / Va’rien Falls, Kingdom of Oe’Nhervon, planet Thei’legh
The Calypsis Project Boxed Set (Books 1-2 - The Echo-Alpha Duology) Page 46