by Greg Logan
Jake said, “Scott has a plan. It’s a wild one, but I think it has a chance of working. He’s going to start on it as soon as this meeting is finished. I’m assigning Sammy and April to his team.”
Sammy said, “Won’t I be needed in getting the computer up and running?”
“Nope. We’re going to operate without a computer. I’ve decided we’re going to do this old-school. The hangar deck’s wide open, and we’re going to have to leave it that way for now. Keeping our operation a secret isn’t so important at the moment. Once this is finished, we can build a new base somewhere else if we need to. But right now, we need you on Scott’s team.”
Sammy nodded.
Jake said, “I’m forming a task squad to go after the shape-shifters who have been infiltrating us. It sounds like some of them might be willing to join us.”
Ashley said, “You shut off their controller boxes, and you might find most of them will.”
“Akila, you’re in charge of this squad. Think like a warrior, but think covertly. We have to win this war without any major fire fights. Too many innocents could get hurt.”
She said, “Regrettably, in every war there is collateral damage.”
“To Scott and me, that’s not acceptable. This is a new kind of war, and we’re going to fight it a new kind of way.”
Akila nodded. Not disappointed, just a warrior receiving instructions. “Understood.”
April was beaming a smile from Jake to Scott. Her team was back together and functioning like a unit. When Jake and Scott pulled together, she didn’t think anything on Earth could defeat them.
Jake said, “I’m assigning Chloe to this task squad, for obvious reasons. Also Sara, Ashley and Rick.”
“What’re you going to be doing?” Jeff said.
“I’m going to working here, getting the lights back on.”
“I can be a help with that,” Ashley said. “I’m majoring in electrical engineering.”
This got a blink of surprise from Jake. “Really? All right, then. You’re assigned to me.”
“What about me?” Chuck said. He seemed a little sullen. Rightfully so, Jake thought. He had just been dressed down in front of the entire group. Things had always been run rather loosely around here, and without warning Jake had brought the proverbial hammer down on him.
“We need you here,” Jake said. “We’ll need security. This base is totally unprotected at the moment, and you can provide a whole truck load of security without requiring any firepower at all.”
Chuck nodded, and allowed a little grin. It felt good to be needed.
“Before I get started,” Jake said to Jeff, “I would like you to beam Scott over to Boston. The Darkness has been here..,”
“He has?” April said, looking nervously at the shadows beyond the edge of the firelight.
“No kidding,” Rick said.
Jake continued, “...and he’s briefing the Boston group on the situation right now. We need to bring them in on this. Add some of them to the task force. We will also need to coordinate with other metas in New York and London. Begin building a task force, in case Scott’s plan should fail.”
Akila said, “You referred to this place as our base. Everyone always calls it the Facility.”
“Well, we’re at war now.”
She gave a little smile. War was one thing she could do. It was what she was trained for.
Jake said, “Okay, people. Let’s move.”
ELEVEN
The Boston contingent was more than willing to join the fight. Mother, sitting in a rocker in the dilapidated building that was once a jewelry store and now served as her home, said, “Anything we can do to help, let us know.”
Quentin stood in a long dark trench coat, his hands thrust into his pockets. His hair, as dark as his trench coat, fell to his shoulders. With his rigid posture and an aristocratic nose, he gave the impression of looking with disdain on everything he saw.
“Are you sure you want me along?” Quentin said in his gentle British accent. “Would you really trust me to work alongside you? We were enemies not that long ago.”
Scott put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good man. I’ve seen that. I welcome you to the team.”
“Don’t go all mushy on me, please.”
Scott had to chuckle. “I’ll try to resist the urge.”
“What’s the first thing we have to do?”
“I need you to come back to the facility with me and serve as a mind link between my team and me. Essentially, I have to learn how Jeff’s time-travel ability works, and I don’t have the time it would require for us to talk it out.”
Jeff was standing there. He had served as the taxi to bring Scott here. Akila was present also, along with Sara. So he wouldn’t tax Jeff’s ability too much, Rick decided to run the distance himself. It took him less than an hour.
Akila said, “We’ll be starting here, to begin screening people for controller boxes.”
Scott nodded. Akila, as head of this task force, had decided to begin the screening with the Boston people, as they needed to know they could trust their allies.
“I should go first,” Mother said. “A showing of good faith.”
Snake was there, in a long, tattered trench coat. His slouch hat was resting on the counter. He said, “I should go just after Mother. We can’t ask our people to do something we wouldn’t do ourselves.”
Sondra was sitting on the counter. She looked about eighteen, and was in jeans and a sweatshirt. She tended to hang out with Mother during the day, when the Darkness was inactive. At night she communed with him, even though no one in the room, not even Mother, understood quite what that meant.
Sondra said, “I should go, too. Also as a showing of good faith. I sort of represent the Darkness to everyone.”
Mother said, “Not that my son could be a shape-shifter. As I understand, nothing inorganic like the controller box they described can transfer into dark energy with him.”
Sondra looked at her and nodded. They all knew when Sondra was taken into his energy field to become sentient dark energy with him, her clothing fell to the ground empty.
Mother said, “What will this scanning involve?”
Akila pulled a tricorder out of a pouch on her belt. “All I have to do is run a quick scan with this. Chloe would be able to do it herself, but she can’t be everywhere.”
Akila had gotten extremely techno savvy during her four years on this Earth. She was to the point that April often acquiesced to her on technical matters. April tended to stay away from monitor duty all that she could, but Akila made it look easy.
Akila activated the scanner function of her tricorder and it hummed and whirred for three seconds.
“There,” Akila said. “All done. You are officially not a shape-shifter.”
Mother smiled. “Good to know.”
She then scanned Snake and Sondra. Both were clear.
Akila said, “Hasani, you can go next, if you’d like.”
Hasani had been hanging to the back of the room, leaning against the wall. He stepped forward and looked at Akila but said nothing.
She ran the scan, and said, “You’re clean.”
He continued to say nothing to her, but instead looked to Scott and Jeff.
“I would like to help. I can serve as a shuttle between your base and here. You’re going to be busy doing other things,” he focused on Jeff, “and if there is any kind of attack, you’ll need to power-up, and you won’t be able to access your shuttling abilities.”
“Welcome aboard,” Scott said.
Akila looked at Hasani curiously. When she and the others had arrived, he grunted a short greeting, looking away from her when he did so, and now was clearly avoiding speaking to her. He had been this way since they arrived on this Earth. She wondered if maybe he somehow blamed her for them being here. Or maybe he blamed Jake for the destruction of their world. She was left guessing because of Hasani’s silence. This left her a little saddened, because the
y had been friends. They had also occasionally been, as they say on this Earth, friends-with-benefits. Of course, the benefits had ended now that she was committed to Jake, but they could still be friends. It had always been the friendship part that meant the most to her.
Akila decided to give up on Hasani, for now. But when this entire alien invasion thing was over, she intended to have a talk with him.
“All right,” Scott said. “Let’s get going. Quentin, if you’ll come with us, we can form the mind-link back at the base. I need to first learn how Jeff’s power works, and then share my idea with the team.”
Snake said, “Maybe I should go along, too. My father was an electrician and taught me a few things. Maybe I could help Jake get those lights back on.”
“I’m sure Jake would welcome the help.”
“But before I do this, I need to focus on rescuing the prisoners taken by Kincaid. We owe them that. The Darkness has located them and we move tonight.”
Akila said, “Maybe Rick and I can join you. After all, we are all in this together.”
TWELVE
Scott met with the team in the conference room. The power was still out at the facility, so he stood a couple candles at the center of the table.
It was dark outside. Akila and Rick were with the team led by Snake, freeing the members of the Boston community taken in the raid by Kincaid and his SWAT team a week ago. The raid that had seen the Jeff from the future shot and killed. Chloe had wanted to go along too, because she had lived among Boston society for a few years and had many friends among them. Jake had given her the go-ahead.
Jake and Chuck were outside, utilizing the anti-gravity functions of their battle suits to fly about and provide security. Once Snake was here, then Jake would turn security duty fully over to Chuck, and then start working with Snake to begin trying to get the generators working again.
Scott sat at the head of the table, a coffee cup in front of him. It was a little cool in here, as with no power there was no heat. The only ventilation came from the open hangar deck door, and the night air at this altitude was a little cool. But Scott’s battlesuit was insulated, so he was comfortable. To his right sat April, and to his left was Jeff. Both were also in battle suits. Quentin was there, and with his trenchcoat pulled tightly, he was keeping the coolness of the night away. Sammy at across the table from Scott. He also wore a battlesuit, but the cold wouldn’t have bothered him, anyway. Scott had built Sammy to withstand more severe temperatures than this. The final member of the team was Ashley. She had no battlesuit, and was wearing a jacket over a sweatshirt.
The mind link was already done. It had been accomplished in two stages. First, Quentin served as a link between Scott and Jeff, so Scott could learn everything Jeff knew about time travel.
This had taken only minutes, because of the nature of Scott’s mind. The extremely high IQ plus the four-dimensional thinking. When the link was finished, Scott was staring open-mouthed.
“Are you okay?” Quentin said.
Scott nodded. “Wow. All I can say is wow. Unbelievable. But one thing is clear. My plan does indeed seem to have merit.”
The second step was to inform everyone here about the nature of Scott’s plan. This had taken only a few seconds. Sammy could not take part in this because his brain was not organic, but Scott had explained the idea to him earlier, to get his feedback before presenting it to the group.
“I still don’t see how this could possibly work,” Ashley said. “I don’t mean to criticize, but..,”
Quentin finished it for her. “Do you actually intend to try to move the entire planet? Isn’t this a little far-reaching, even for you people?”
Scott had shared Jeff’s knowledge of time-travel through the first mind link. No one else here had. An explanation was in order.
Scott said, “See this coffee cup?”
Ashley nodded.
Scott said to Jeff, “Can you push this a couple seconds into the future?”
Jeff touched the cup and actually gave it a little push. The cup seemed to fade from view in front of them.
“Wow,” Ashley said.
Jeff said, “The cup is still there. It’s just two seconds ahead of us in the timeline.”
“So, it’s there but we can’t see it.”
Scott said, “Jeff can see it.”
Jeff nodded confirmation.
Quentin said, “And this is what you intend to do to the Earth?”
Scott nodded. “Maybe more than a few seconds ahead. In case the aliens have any sort of ability to see beyond three-dimensional space.”
“None that I know of,” Ashley said. “But my knowledge of their technology is kind of limited.”
Scott had noticed how whenever Ashley and Sara talked about the aliens, it was never we or us or ours, it was always they and them and theirs. Even though these girls were actually shape-shifting aliens themselves, they had lived their lives as humans and were now going to be in human form indefinitely. Probably for the rest of their lives. They clearly thought of themselves as human.
Jeff said, “We can push the Earth more than a few seconds ahead. Maybe a full minute.”
“But,” Sammy said, “the power source. How can we come up with such a thing?”
“It sounds harder than it will be, I think. We have to generate a tachyon field around the entire planet. That’s going to be the trick. Once we have the field set up, then it won’t require anymore power to send it a year into the future than it will a second.”
“How can we possibly set up such a field?”
Scott said, “Now that I know how time-travel works, you and I can build a device that will allow us to set up a full-dimensional tachyon field. Not like the one we use now, which can only open up a flat-line field.”
“I must confess, I’m not really sure what that means.”
“We’ll need to set up tachyon field generators in the form of satellites. Place them in crucial points in orbit. We should be able to coordinate the entire process right from here.”
Sammy nodded. “I can see this being done. Once we can set it up so the terminal in the computer alcove can act as a control panel. We can essentially drive the Earth from there.”
“What will happen to everyone?” Ashley said. “I know what it felt like to be yanked through the time stream by Jeff. And we were only in there a second.”
Jeff said, “I expect minimal effects. If we can move the Earth ahead, we’ll be moving the very ground people will be standing on. They shouldn’t notice any effects at all, really. Just like if I had pulled the entire building you were standing in, then you probably wouldn’t have noticed any effects.”
Scott nodded. “Even now, the Earth is rotating at a speed more than a thousand miles an hour at the equator. And we’re orbiting the sun at a speed of approximately sixty-seven thousand miles an hour. And yet, we feel no effects of any of it. Buildings are not being knocked over, tsunamis are not being generated.”
Ashley nodded. “Kind of mind-boggling, though.”
“This way,” Jeff said, “when the fleet gets here, the planet won’t be here. It will be, but just a little ways ahead of them in the time line and they won’t be able to see it.”
“And,” Scott said, “the astronomers won’t see the fleet, either, because the fleet will be a few seconds behind us in the time line.”
Ashley said, “This can actually work?”
“I’m quite sure,” Scott said. He reached for his coffee. It wasn’t there. “Jeff..,”
Jeff reached his hand toward where the cup had disappeared. His hand actually faded from view, and then when he pulled his arm back, his hand reappeared holding the cup. He slid it to Scott.
“Thank you.” Scott took a sip. “Now, for materials, we should be able to get most of what we need by accessing other satellites in orbit.”
“Just take them?” Quentin said.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have time for niceties. We have to have this assembled, and fast.�
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Sammy said, “Though we still haven’t really moved beyond the problem of a power source. Something powerful enough to move an entire planet. It just seems to me, the more mass an object has, the more energy it should require to move it.”
Jeff said, “Mass isn’t really all that relevant inside a tachyon field. It won’t take any more power to move a planet than it would a feather.”
“As long as the field is large enough to encompass the entire Earth, the atmosphere, and the moon beyond it,” Scott said. “As long as we can do that, we should be in business.”
Jeff said, “Scott, I really should be going. I want to join Snake’s team.”
Scott nodded. “Go. I can fill in the others on the details.”
Sara stayed with Sondra at Mother’s Jewelry Store. The only light in the building came from a streetlight outside. The front window was boarded up, but a little light leaked in through gaps in the boards.
Sara said, “I find this so incredible, an entire culture of meta-humans living off the grid like this, but right in the middle of the city.”
Sondra was sitting on the counter. “I find it hard to believe you’re actually an alien. A real, honest-to-God alien. Standing right here in front of me.”
Sara shrugged. “I’m an alien, technically. But I have no memories of any kind of life beyond this planet. The life I was leading out in San Jose. Sort of a sleeper agent. I was called on once in a while to do a little reconaissaince work, but little else.”
“And you’re a shape-changer?”
“Again, I am technically. But not really. I’m stuck in this shape. And quite frankly, I don’t want to change into anyone or anything else. I want to just be who I am.”
Sondra said, “It’s kind of dark in here. I usually keep it dark because the Darkness can move around better if there’s not a lot of light. I can light a candle though, if you’d like.”
“No, that’s okay.” Sara’s pale green eyes took on a phosphorescent glow. “I can see in the dark.”
“Wow.” Sondra jumped down from the counter to stare. “That’s so incredibly cool. I don’t have any kind of meta-power. I so envy you guys sometimes.”