“Of course they would say that, but that illustrates the silliness, doesn’t it?” Keeler frowned. This was why he didn’t get religion, he decided. “Anyway, get to the point. You didn’t come here to debate theology with me.”
Redfire got to the point. “I want to go with you.”
“Why?”
“Because some believe that when we die, all the truths of the universe are revealed to us,” Redfire replied.
“And you believe that load?”
Redfire shrugged. “I need to know the truth about myself. Who am I, really? And why am I here?”
“So, then, you do believe that load.”
Redfire leaned closer to him, and there was an intensity in his eyes Keeler had not seen since before the amnesia had taken hold. “It’s been three years, almost four, since you rescued me from that planet, and I haven’t recalled anything. I had a wife I can’t remember. I read my old journals and they sound like they were written by a completely different man. And nothing the mind-doctors and the truth-machines have done for me have given me even one clue or brought back a single memory. I don’t have anything to lose. If anything, I should go, and you should stay behind.” When he finished, Keeler set his unfinished drink down on the table. “All right, then, you can come with me. Every Dante needs his Virgil, and every Bill needs his Ted.” Pegasus – Main Bridge – Specialist Atlantic felt Pegasus acknowledge when the ship reached the revised coordinates. “Orbit re-established at 14,400 kilometers, polar at 37-point-five degrees inclination.”
TyroCommander Change sounded satisfied for once. “Very good, Mr. Atlantic.
Maintain this orbit for the next 6 hours.”
Pegasus’s acting executive officer turned her attention to the rest of the details on her command priority list. A minute or two later, she touched the COM Link and confirmed the Geosciences Laboratory was ready to monitor and record the next Gateway activation.
She then turned her attention back to the command schedule, and then linked to Geological Survey again to inquire about a different item. The Bridge Crew overheard only her side of the conversation.
“It’s been brought to my attention that Geological Survey Core requested an Aves to map the rogue planet. What is the justification for this request? … Why are we conducting a detailed survey of a planetary body that won’t exist in a few days … But what real use is the terrain map of a doomed asteroid? … (sigh) … Request approved with one change.
Aves Ginger will take the terrain mapping mission instead of Prudence. I’ll instruct Flight Operations to install terrain-mapping equipment in its sensor bay. Change out.” She looked at the next item on her command schedule. Acting Tactical Chief Kitaen was requesting permission to conduct urban combat search and rescue drills in some of the abandoned cities, as well as conduct air-to-ground combat drills. She briefly visualized Aves firing Hammerhead missiles into devastated cities, then decided that wasn’t going to happen. She approved the combat search and rescue drills and denied the bombing runs pending further review.
When she had finished the command list, she pushed its display back into the arm of her command chair and barked a crisp order. “Mrs. Winterborn you may relieve Mr.
Atlantic at helm. Mr. Atlantic, I will speak with you in the command conference room.”
Among the crew of Pegasus, the words “I want to speak to you” from TyroCommander change ranked somewhere between “you have received a fatal dose of radiation” and
“Eddie Roebuck would like to discuss religion with you” on the list of things crewmen were most eager to here.
Atlantic rose from his station, shoulders slumped as though bearing the weight of a large, smelly animal carcass, and followed TyroCommander Change off the Main bridge.
The other Bridge crew shifted sympathetically as he followed Change into the Briefing Room. Some of the more religious muttered prayers, thanking the Allbeing it was Atlantic and not them.
Inside the conference chamber, Change took a position at the head of the large, conference table, and indicated that he should take a seat near to her.
“Flight Captain Driver will be joining us,” she informed him.
“Why?” Atlantic asked.
She surprised him by saying, “Because you are the only other person on the ship besides him who knows the last system we visited was not Croatoan.” Atlantic admitted. “I knew the navigational coordinates you gave me were wrong.”
“And yet, you entered them into the NAV Core anyway, why was that?” she challenged him.
“Is this a test?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What am I being tested about?”
Change scowled. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll let you know.” Atlantic told her what he thought was the truth. “Because you ordered me, to.” He could not read from the look on her face whether that was the right answer, so he continued, “Is that what I was supposed to do?”
“Of course it is, and I would add that it’s a good thing Lt. Cmdr. Alkema knows better than to check my navigational inputs,” she smiled a little bit at that, which unnerved Atlantic deeply. “Do you know why I gave you the wrong coordinates?”
“I knew it wasn’t a mistake,” Atlantic admitted.
The hatch chimed just then. She opened it to reveal Flight Captain Driver. He had been on the Odyssey Mission for eleven years, two years longer than the rest of them, but the people of Republic and Sapphire were long-lived, and he remained trim and handsome in his Flight Core uniform. His eyes were brown and thoughtful. His hair was also brown, but, being hair, was not quite so thoughtful.
He extended greeting to them. “TyroCommander Change, Specialist Atlantic. It is good to see both of you.”
If she seemed warmer than usual to Atlantic, she turned almost balmy at the arrival of Flight Captain Driver. “Hello, Matt, take a seat next to Kyle. We need to talk.” Atlantic thought , Matt? Kyle? It was like hearing your parents use their first names on each other. It just wasn’t right. Driver took a seat next to Atlantic while Change pulled up a pair of reports on her datapad.
“Save the children of Gethsemane,” she said spiritedly. “Does that sound familiar to you?”
Driver nodded. “When we on CH-53 Liminix, I experienced a flashback to my time in the Chronos Universe, and that phrase was in the vision that I had.” Change addressed Atlantic. “As I reviewed your report from the planet Fallon, that same phrase jumped out at me. ‘Save the children of Gethsemane.’” Atlantic remembered. How could he forget? The message had been passed to him by a hallucination of Specialist Brainiacsdaughter he had experienced on Fallon colony. He had almost not included it in his mission report.
Driver was surprised. “You mean, two of us had the same phrase come to us, and now we’re here at Gethsemane.”
“No,” Change corrected. “Three of us had that phrase come to us. I’ve been hearing that phrase in the back of my mind ever since we arrived in the Orion Quadrant. In the last year, it’s dominated my every waking hour. And I knew we had to get to Gethsemane.
“When Commander Keeler ordered us to Croatoan, I deliberately gave him coordinates that would lead us to the wrong system, and make Gethsemane the nearest system after.” Driver added quietly. “I had a strong feeling the last system we visited was not Croatoan.”
Change went on. “If we had gone to Croatoan, we would have been delayed, and we never would have made it to the Gethsemane system in time.”
“Why didn’t you take us directly to Gethsemane then?” Atlantic asked.
“The transit would have taken too long. Even Alkema would have figured it out,” she explained. “I thought we would be able to dismiss the system we arrived in quickly, and then move on to Gethsemane. I did not anticipate the presence of a polymorphic entity in the system we arrived at.”
She gestured to the three of them. “All three of us are Navigators. I have the gift strongly. Specialist Atlantic somewhat less than I, and you, dear Matthew, have just enough to sense the
future when you’re in contact with someone who is a stronger precognitive than you. But all three of us understand we need to be in this system.” Atlantic frowned. He never asked for the gift of precognition, and if it meant having to deal with weird crap like this all the time, then he was even less thrilled with it.
“All well and good,” Driver said. “But the population of Gethsemane found their own way off the planet. We don’t need to rescue them.”
“So it appears,” said Eliza Change. …”
“Maybe it’s not literally the children of Gethsemane we’re here to save,” Atlantic suggested. “Maybe it’s something else.”
“I don’t know what it is, but I know we’re not through here,” Change argued. “I sense it. You do, as well. That’s why I called us together. I can’t see the meaning of the vision right now, but I think it will soon become clear to all of us.” Pegasus – Travel Tubeway – David Alkema rode with Keeler on the Transport Pod to the Hangar Bay, and took advantage of the trip to make a last pitch at talking his commander out of going.
“I just don’t see why you are putting yourself through the risk. There are surely other personnel who we could risk. I could go.”
Keeler continued staring straight ahead. “You have a wife and… how many kids are you up to?”
“Four.”
“Four kids, most of whom are yours, as far as you know.” Keeler shook his head.
“Sorry, kid, I need to do this. And before you ask ‘why’ it’s for reasons you could not possibly understand.”
Before Alkema could pitch another argument, Keeler continued. “While I am absent, I have approved orders placing TyroCommander Change in command, you will serve as Executive Commander, or whatever the title is.” Keeler paused. “And if for any reason I do not return, those orders will become permanent…”
“You’ll come back,” Alkema said, sounding almost prayerful.
“Who knows, I might like it on the other side,” Keeler mused. “In any case, review the missions I left in your command docket. The most important one is the cultural survey. I want you to take a team to the largest city…”
“Port Gethsemane,” Alkema interrupted.
“… and as many of the other large cities as you can get to in the time remaining, and I want you to recover any databases and any artifacts that may be of interest. Look for museums, large commercial centers, libraries… If you can find recordings of their dramas, their comedies, their informational broadcasts, that would be the best. Entertainment is how cultures imagine themselves …”
Alkema protested. “You’re talking about looting the planet…” Keeler thundered. “Why not? Gethsemane was the major port-of-call for colony and trading ships for three sectors of space. There may be extensive records, star charts, archeological artifacts. We may even find a star chart with the location of Earth on it. The planet’s going to be rubble in a few days, four thousand years of human history are about to be destroyed, unless we loot them first.”
“What if Kahn refuses?” Alkema reported.
“And why should that be a problem?” Keeler asked. “She’s isolated at the Gateway with a small garrison of security people. They are in no position to stop us.” With that the argument ended, as the transport pod arrived at the Hangar Bay.
Pegasus – Hangar Bay Alpha – Phil Redfire was waiting for him. Keeler felt oddly happy that Ranking Phil would be joining him on this journey. He had missed the companionship of his former Tactical Officer, and if he had to go through the gateway with anyone, he would have chosen Redfire. “Good Afterdawn, Ranking Phil. Ready to ring the curtain down and join the choir invisible?”
Redfire nodded, and looked away. “I asked Eddie Roebuck if he wanted to join us.”
“Who?” Keeler asked.
Alkema reminded him. “The Brianist Holy Man you fought an apocalyptic battle with back on Yronwode, Back when you were the leader of the Ten Tribes of the Tsi Bai.” Keeler frowned. “I’m almost sure I would have remembered something like that.”
“Eddie Roebuck didn’t want to come,” Redfire continued. “He said it was not the business of mortal man to try and get a sneak peek at Eternity.”
“That’s a Holy Man for you,” Keeler replied.
“How do you mean?” Redfire asked.
“Um, I don’t really know. It just seemed like something to say.” He dismissed Alkema with a stern admonition to conduct the cultural survey and began walking toward the dock where the Aves Zilla awaited to take him back to the surface.
“What do you think it will be like?” Redfire asked.
Keeler turned over his hands. “I don’t know, but if I end up playing chess with a skinny guy in a robe and hood, I’m going to be incredibly disappointed.” As they came to the Aves’s hatch, they were met by an incredibly sexy woman carrying a landing pack. Her skin was a lustrous caramel color, her hair dark blonde, and her Science Core uniform was stretched tight over the relatively few parts of her body that weren’t exposed.
She checked the name on the side of the Aves to make sure she was at the right ship, then prepared to lift her two heavy bags into it.
“Let me help you with those,” Redfire offered.
“Thanks, but I can handle them.” The way she said this was sweet, in the vein of “I wouldn’t want to trouble you,” rather than, “Back off! I can carry my own bags.”
“I know you,” Redfire said. “Lt. Scientist Hardcandy Banks. You sit at a corner table, late evenings, you drink a single Panrovian cordial.”
“Panrovian cordial,” Keeler interrupted. “Is that when the Panvorian asks politely before he pees in your sink?”
Hardcandy Banks smiled, showing white perfect teeth. “I’m from Panrovia province, Commander.”
“O.K, I’ll repeat the joke slowly…” Keeler offered.
“There will be no need for that,” she assured him. She was cool as a Borealan cucumber. Keeler realized he would not be able to get under her skin, or any other part of her.
But it didn’t stop him from trying. “If you’re the hostess on this strip, remember I like my martinis wet and occasional neck message before take-off, before landing, and throughout the flight as needed. I’m a very tense man.”
“Commander, I’m here as a scientist.”
“I didn’t ask for your life story,” Keeler protested.
“Why are you here?” Redfire asked.
She smiled. “I’m going to study the Gateway. As a high energy physicist, I want to study how it works, and see if we can learn something from it.”
“You do know that seven days from now, this planet turns to rubble,” Keeler reminded her.
Banks interrupted, “Actually, it will be a ball of molten magma surrounded by a debris field of rocky material. Eventually, it will coalesce back into a planet, and probably be habitable in another few hundred million years or so.” She grinned. “I have a sub-discipline in geology.”
Blade Toto appeared at Zilla’s hatch, where his eyes accidentally met with Hardcandy Banks’s for a brief second.
“Hoy,” he said awkwardly.
“Hoy,” she answered, in a tone that was not cool, but actually icy.
Blade Toto had been more or less Keeler’s pilot of choice for the last eight years. He had grown up a lot in that time, no longer looking like a scary young hick from the badlands of Sapphire’s Graceland province. Now, he looked like a scary, grown-up hick from the badlands of Graceland province.
Looking past her, Toto told Keeler and Redfire. “Pre-flight check is complete. How many besides you guys?”
“I’ll have four technicians joining me,” Hardcandy Banks replied while busying herself with the large packs of instruments she was bringing, obviously to avoid looking directly at the pilot.
Blade Toto looked unaffected, mumbled “OK,” and went back into his ship. Keeler and Redfire follower him in, leaving Banks on the landing dock to wait for her crew.
“They used to date,” Redfire whispered to Kee
ler as they entered the main deck.
“Used to,” Keeler sputtered. He reached out and cuffed Blade Toto hard upside the head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Chapter 03
Gethsemane – Heaven’s Gate – There was a thin veil of dusky cloud in the morning sky as Zilla descended and parked at the edge of the Gateway Complex. Thall and a pair of guards met the crew outside the hatch and drove them into the complex.
“There are 140 scheduled departures for today, aside from you two,” Thall explained to Keeler and Redfire as the bus trundled into a tunnel beneath the entrance. “You’ll be segregated from the other departures, the two of you, so you’ll be… separated from people from our planet when you pass through.”
“Why?” Keeler asked.
“President Kahn thinks that your presence could prove disruptive to the other departures.” Thall explained.
Keeler turned to Redfire and wiggled his eyebrows. “My reputation precedes me.” Just as he said that, there came a rumbling sound. A few seconds later, the ground beneath them shivered.
“Are groundquakes common on your planet?” Redfire asked.
Thall assured him, “That’s the gravitational flux created by the rogue planet.” Hardcandy Banks was surprised. “The rogue planet should still be too far away to trigger groundquakes.”
But there was more on Keeler’s mind than geophysics. He butted in to ask Thall, “What was it like, when you found out your planet was doomed.” Thall seemed a bit startled by the question. “I haven’t much thought about it. I was just a boy when the Kariad warned us of the rogue planet. It’s been part of my life as long as I can remember.”
Keeler persisted. “Did people panic? Were there riots?” Thall set his jaw. He looked too old to have been a boy when the Kariad came. “Not very many. It seemed like a long time away, at first. Thirty years. The Emergency government called up an emergency conscription to keep public order. When I was 19, I was conscripted into the security forces. A few years later, the Gateway became operational. I was stationed at the Port Gethsemane Relocation Point for ten years during the height of the evacuation. I was transferred up here when Stage 2 Evacuation was complete.”
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