Gethsemane

by James Wittenbach

  Ten warfighters would remain behind in case Kahn had any more tricks up her pantsuit.

  Taurus Rook informed the rest of the warfighters that they would return with her to Port Gethsemane. There were at least 2,000 more children to evacuate by day’s end. She was determined not to leave any behind.

  As she was checking on the status of Trajan Lear’s mission to Fort Abaddon, Eric Molto’s voice came over her COM Link. “Mission commander, we’ve reached the control room, but there’s nobody here.”

  Taurus Rook realized Kahn had not given up, but she wasn’t sure what the trick was, yet. “Stand by, I’m going to join you in the control room.”

  “There’s something else you should know, sir,” Molto said.

  Before she could ask for more information, Taurus Rook and the entire ground crew were knocked off their feet. A sensation - like a lightning bolt hitting near enough to make your hand stand on end but not near enough to fuse your teeth together – shot through their bodies and left them lying stunned on the ground.

  After a few long moments, Taurus Rook pulled herself up, disoriented with a ringing in her ears. Warfighter Topkapi was saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear his words above the ringing in her ears. It was the work of a minute to clear the sound.

  “Report!” Taurus Rook shouted.

  “I said, ‘They activated the Gateway!’ Topkapi shouted back.

  Gethsemane – TheGateway: The control room was empty. Anaconda Taurus Rook, Specialist Fangboner, and a squad of warfighters made their way deep into the complex to the site of the control room.

  They met up with Eric Molto and his team of warfighters near the Control Room, It was as empty as they had reported. Worse than empty, everything in it had been smashed.

  Someone had taken an axe to the equipment, the monitors, and the control boards. Wiring had been torn out of the control stations.

  “It was like this when we found it,” Molto insisted.

  There was one monitor that had not been damaged. Taurus Rook flipped the rocker switch next to it.

  The face of Hildegard Kahn appeared. “Hello, anatch,” she said.

  “What have you done?” Taurus Rook almost asked, but Hildegard Kahn had some things of her own to say.

  “This is a recorded message. If you are playing this message, it means you have discovered that the main control room has been irreparably sabotaged on my orders. I and the remaining cadre of personnel have evacuated using the auxiliary control room. Don’t bother looking for it. I have left a charge to destroy it after we have left.” A rictus… a frightening parody of a smile … stretched across Kahn’s lips. “You may have taken our children, but you will never get your commander back.” She then raised three fingers and thrust them at the camera in what Taurus Rook could only assume was a gesture of contempt.

  Taurus Rook assessed the situation and turned to Fangboner. “Does anyone know how to operate this thing?”

  “Lt. Scientist Banks has seen it activated,” Fangboner reported. “I don’t think anyone else knows how to work it. And I don’t know if anyone can figure it out, even if we can repair it in time.”

  Taurus Rook grimaced. “Get me Lt. Cmdr. Alkema. Now!” Chapter 14A

  Between: The river was rough this time. Though the boat held steady, wind and rain pounded the river’s surface into towering whitecaps. Thunder and lightning raged.

  There was an old hooded man at the rudder, whom Bill Keeler once again recognized as his father.

  Bill Keeler stood up unsteadily and made his way down the pitching deck to where his father was, and he asked. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a disturbance in the path between worlds.” Arthur Keeler answered. “I can’t guarantee I’m going to be able to get you back.”

  “Hmph,” was all Bill Keeler could add to that.

  “How was it?” Arthur Keeler asked him.

  “On the whole, I’d rather be in Baden Baden Baden.” Arthur Keeler whistled low. “That bad, huh?”

  “I saw Delia,” Bill Keeler told him. “And I learned several truths I was deeply unprepared to deal with.”

  “People aren’t normally prepared to deal with the truths they’ve been denying about themselves,” Arthur Keeler said. He touched his son on his shoulder. “Would you care for a life-saver?”

  Bill Keeler observed the churning waves. “I think that would be advisable.” Arthur Keeler handed him a ring-shaped flotation device.

  “What would happen to me if I drowned in the river between worlds?” Bill Keeler asked.

  “Hard to say,” Arthur Keeler replied. “You broke some pretty major rules to get here. You see, the Allbeing really doesn’t like it when people try to sneak a peek at his plans. And… well, gosh darn it, penalties are going to have to be paid.” Bill Keeler asked. “Like what kind of penalties?”

  “I don’t know the details,” Arthur Keeler replied. “But I have a strong feeling you’re not going to be passing this way again. Not for a very, very, very long time.”

  “Thanks,” Bill Keeler said. He shrugged. “I guess there could be worse penalties.” Arthur Keeler shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. But you have no idea what you’re in for. It won’t all be bad, but it’s going to be, definitely, a long life filled with isolation.” Bill Keeler wondered. “Does it have to be? One of the things Delia warned me about was not to isolate myself from my crew. She thought I should form relationships with more people.” Arthur Keeler signed. “I can’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen to you, but I can tell you that you will outlive every other person on your ship. Oh, and you’ll never see Sapphire again.”

  “I did not expect to,” Bill Keeler assured him.

  “If we make it through this, would you do one more thing for me?” Arthur asked.

  “What?”

  Arthur Keeler smiled. “Say ‘hi’ to Lex.”

  Chapter 15

  Gethsemane – The Gateway – 32 Hours to Impact – David Alkema surveyed the damage in the control room. He moved aside the smashed display monitors, brushed the broken pieces from the control boards, and scowled hard at the equipment. Finally, he pried open the side panel of the control board and peered inside of it, using a small pen-light scanner to examine the interior.

  “I think you’re right,” he said to Hardcandy Banks, the closest thing Pegasus had to an expert on the device. “They did a lot of damage to the surface. The control boards are inoperable, but their internal components are intact.”

  “So, the Gateway controls can still work if we can find away to operate them without using the control panels,” Taurus Rook deduced.

  “Correct,” Alkema confirmed. “We will need some displays though.” He pulled open a wall panel on the side. To his surprise, its interior was still intact. “This could be useful.”

  “What is it?” Rook asked.

  “It could be a switchbox,” he said. “A sort of manual over-ride in the event of a control board failure. The Gethsemanians left it intact.”

  “They did a real half-assed job of sabotaging the place,” Technical Specialist Black said.

  He was somewhat new to the Technical Core, and bore enough of a resemblance to Blade Toto to pass for a younger brother.

  “I think that’s what they meant to so,” Taurus Rook said. “Hildegard Kahn was a piece of work, but that doesn’t mean the people under her were all bad.” Taurus Rook asked Alkema, “Can you use it to activate the Gateway.”

  “I don’t have a clue what any of these switches do,” Alkema replied. He turned to Technical Specialist Plover. “Take a crew out into the complex, see if you can find four large display devices like the ones they broke. Bring them back here and hook them up.” Taurus Rook checked her chronometer. “Do you think you can figure out how to operate this technology?”

  “The gate will have to be activated by by-passing the control boards and running the operation from within the system itself. I can’t do that,” he sighed. “But I know someone who
might be able to. And I’ve already sent for her.” Gethsemane – Fort Abaddon – The storm had weakened but had not let up. Trajan Lear regarded his datapad grimly.

  “It isn’t just here,” he told Miranda. “There are seismic and atmospheric disruptions going on around the planet. I don’t think we have a choice any more. We’re going to have to evacuate through the storm.”

  Miranda protested, her voice rising and punctuating each point of her objections.

  • “There’s no way to get from here to the landing field!

  • Through all that dust and debris!

  • From three separate storm shelters!

  • Without losing some of the children!”

  “We’ll lose all the kids if we don’t start evacuating,” Trajan Lear answered. “This storm isn’t gong to dissipate in time. I’m going to signal Pegasus to move in the…” He didn’t finish because just then the door exploded. Several of the children screamed, and their voices were lost in the howling wind.

  Six figures clad in heavy black armor and wearing dark helmets and heavy tactical vests with weapons strapped to them marched swiftly into the room, two taking positions by the door while the others cut through the crowd of children to approach Trajan Lear.

  The lead soldier stripped off his helmet brushed off a cake of dust as he greeted them.

  “Hoy, Trajan Lear,”

  “Hoy, Johnny Rook,” Lear returned. “Why didn’t you link?”

  “What? And spoil our entrance?” Rook got straight to business. “There are six Aves on the landing field. The planet’s going to go boom in under twenty hours. And I plan on surfing the debris in an Accipiter when that happens in honor of Max Jordan, who is wounded…”

  “Wounded?” Trajan Lear asked.

  “Shot in the leg by a squad of Authority Security Forces. He’s going to make it. But that’s not important right now. I gotta get you guys off the planet. You’re the last ones still here. Who’s the lady?”

  “My name is Miranda,” she answered. “How are we going to get the children to the storm to the landing pad.”

  “We’ve got ten Rockatansky Road Warriors waiting outside. It’ll be tight, but we can take 200 kids at a time out of the shelter and to the ships. As soon as these six are gone, we’ll move in six more to finish off with the rest of them.” Trajan Lear did the math in his head. Loading the trucks; driving to the landing pad, loading the kids on the ships. “That’s cutting it really close.”

  “You wanna stay here?” Rook asked.

  “Negative,” Trajan Lear replied. “Let’s get these kids on the trucks. Little ones first.”

  “Good plan. More of them will fit in the trucks.” Rook barked an order. “Let’s move

  ‘em.”

  Miranda hand-picked the first two hundred kids to move out. She was methodical, arranging it so that one of the older children was responsible for two of the younger children as they were arranged into groups of twenty-four for the transport out.

  The Road Warriors were lined up outside with their rear hatches open. Even though they were parked only a few meters away from the shelter, they could barely be seen in the blowing dirt. It was impossible to tell whether it was day or night outside, and the blowing grit smelled like cinders. Also, the temperature had dropped almost to freezing, which was highly unusual. Gethsemane had always been a warm planet, even lacking ice caps at the poles.

  The kids were loaded into the backs of the trucks in less time than Trajan Lear would have expected. He looked up, expecting to see the rogue planet, but instead seeing nothing but a sky full of roiling clouds.

  All around him, lightning bolts pounded the arid landscape, all the time, continuously, eight, nine, eleven, more bolts of white lightning striking the ground all at once.

  Ashes and sand blasted through the air. Trajan Lear felt himself oddly connected to all of it. And he also thought that this was Hell, minus the tormented souls.

  He was caught up in staring for a few moments, watching the clouds make shapes and patterns. Rook hit the truck’s air horn to get his attention. “Are you coming with us?” he shouted.

  “Just one minute,” Trajan Lear said. He fought the winds and made his way back into the storm shelter.

  “Are you coming?” he asked Miranda.

  “There’s still four hundred children in this shelter,” she told him. “And another eight hundred in the other two shelters. You take these to the ships. I’ll organize the next group.

  I’ll be on the last ship out.”

  “That will be mine,” Trajan Lear told her.

  “I’ll be there,” she promised. “Now, go.”

  Trajan Lear spared her a look, then fought his way through the wind to the front of the truck.

  Johnny Rook strapped himself into the driver’s seat. Trajan Lear rode shotgun. They could see nothing through the darkness and blowing dust on the windscreen. “Road Warrior 6, give me virtual.”

  The windscreen changed to a projected view of the surrounding landscape, well-lit and free of dust. This was thanks to the scanners and sensors in the vehicle’s bumper and on the roll-bar atop the cabin.

  He pushed the accelerator forward and the vehicle lurched into motion. It was a rough-ride. The Road Warrior was a combat vehicle, and offered almost nothing in the way of comfort, and the path to the landing field was rutted and filled with debris.

  “Strange day, isn’t it?” Rook remarked. He turned on the Road Warrior’s music unit, and began blasting Auroran hardcore.

  Pegasus – Main Bridge – Specialist Smith announced that the Rogue planet was exactly sixteen hours from impact. Change gave the order to Atlantic, “Increase distance from the planet to 700,000 kilometers, maintain our position behind the Rogue planet’s trajectory.”

  “Increasing distance,” Atlantic answered, bringing the Gravity Engines to power.

  The models predicted that debris would remain within 330,000 kilometers of the planet, but Change had first hand experience in what happened when rocks bumped in space.

  She ordered the ship to a high safety margin, and put it behind the point of impact so it would not be in the path of debris blown out by the force of worlds colliding.

  “There are four inbound Aves from Gethsemane, and eighteen ships still on planet,” Specialist McCormick reported from Flight Operations. “Maud will depart the Rogue planet in twenty minutes. I will alert them to our change of position.”

  “What of the Aves Lt. Commander Alkema requested?” Change asked.

  “Arrived on the surface eight hours ago.” McCormick reported. “Retro-fitting the special equipment he requested took longer than we anticipated.”

  “How long before the planet’s surface becomes too unstable for surface operations?” Change demanded.

  “Hard to say,” Geophysical Scientist Lattermilk answered. “I don’t think it will start really falling apart until four hours before impact, but with its unpredictable acceleration, I can’t say when that will happen. I can say that the last two hours down there are going to be like something out of Hell.”

  Gethsemane – The Gateway – Technical Specialist Suzuki lugged a very heavy device into the center of the Control Room. The meter-and-a-half tall, silvery cylinder was a data node, a miniature version of Pegasus’s braincore, a matrix capable of storing the amount of data generated by one reasonably competent civilization in 500 years, (“Or, a thousand years of Republicker civilization,” Keeler would have joked.)

  “Perfect,” Alkema said. “Position it in the center of the room.” Suzuki moved the cylinder as ordered.

  A tremor shook the building as Alkema performed a final systems check on the device.

  They were down to nineteen hours from impact. The groundquakes were becoming more frequent and more severe as the Hour of Doom approached.

  “Is the data-link ready?” Alkema asked.

  “It is,” answered Technical Specialist Black.

  Hardcandy Banks activated the displays they had jury
-rigged and connected to the Gateway’s devices. At first, there was nothing but interference and gibberish. She tapped on the interface device. Columns of numbers and letters appeared on one of the display devices. Another activated, showing schematics. The other two flickered, but then displayed graphs. “Got it!” Banks exclaimed.

  “What about power?” Alkema asked her.

  “I think I’ve switched the Gateway’s power source to auxiliary.” Before leaving, Hildegard Kahn had sabotaged the capacitors that fed energy into the Gateway, but she…

  or more likely someone else… had left the auxiliaries intact. There was enough reserve power in them for one activation, Banks thought, although she was not sure. Most of the controls and read-outs in the control room were not labeled with clear statements of their purpose. There was no panel labeled “Auxiliary Power,” just one labeled UX-139.

  Similarly, the switches and buttons in the wall panels were labeled only with letters and numbers.

  “All right, let’s try this,” Alkema said. He activated the data node.

  A holographic projection appeared above it, a slender woman with a silver-black body and bright purple hair. Her eyes glowed blue.

  “Hoy, Caliph,” Alkema said.

  Caliph’s Avatar looked past him and out toward the Gateway. “It’s so shiny!” she raved.

  Alkema tried to keep her on task. “Caliph, we need you to get inside this tech, and activate the Gateway so we can pull Commander Keeler back through.” She looked at the banks of old tech equipment that lined the control room. “This isn’t as easy as you seem to think it is. It’s not like I can just merge programming with this technology and instantly figure out how to make it work.”

  “You didn’t have any problem figuring out the StarLock,” Alkema reminded her.

  “The StarLock’s mind was not too different from Pegasus’s braincore, or me. This is whole different kind of technology… altogether.”