Artifact

by Vaughn Heppner

  They passed through the first hangar bay door. The snitch had told them sensors lined the opening. The sensors sent a signal to the badges, which were set for various times of the day and night. If the badge didn’t send the right response back, D’erlon Security would appear fast.

  The inside of the building was huge, with various exposed levels and steel catwalks. Huge humming machines carried out an assortment of tasks Jack didn’t have time to figure out. Men and women in coveralls, wearing color-coded caps monitored various consoles.

  Jack checked his clipboard. The two D17 agents turned left. Soon, they exited the giant building. A vast manicured lawn set in a circle had cement paths crisscrossing it. Five people in coveralls used the paths, striding from one place to the next. The sixth person—

  Simon gawked at the man before quickly lowering his gaze.

  Jack felt his curiosity stir at the sight.

  The sixth person on the walkway was huge like a power lifter, standing six-six at least. An ox would have had smaller shoulders. The man wore an open gray jacket with a hand cannon strapped under his left arm. The gun was bigger than a .44 Magnum, more like a .55 caliber weapon. He appeared to be some type of soldier.

  Using his peripheral vision, Jack caught the dense, pit bull-like neck and the arrogant features. It was the eyes, though, that truly were remarkable. They burned with intensity.

  “I’m surprised the snitch didn’t say anything about the soldier,” Jack whispered. “The man’s unusual.”

  Simon nodded too quickly, once again revealing his nervousness.

  Like a wave of pressure, Jack felt the soldier focus on him, making his nape hairs rustle again. A desire to draw his gun—

  I don’t have a gun, remember?

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. It took concentration to keep walking normally.

  “You,” the big man said in a dreadfully deep voice. He spoke English.

  Simon halted.

  Jack stopped too. The big man with the jacket had presence. He faced the soldier, looking up, meeting the gaze.

  The intensity was like a shock in the back of his brain. Jack’s fingers balled into fists. Consciously, he flexed his fingers, willing them straight. Time seemed to slow down for Jack.

  The big man moved toward them, walking smoothly like an athlete. The soldier’s muscles weren’t like Simon’s weightlifting lumps, but long, flat and dense-seeming.

  I bet he weighs four hundred pounds at least. He’s massive.

  The slightest frown appeared on the big man’s square features. Did he suspect them? If he did, if the man drew his hand cannon, the op would be blown no matter if Jack and Simon survived this particular encounter or not. It was possible the soldier’s frown was due to Jack’s reaction—Elliot realized that with a start. The big man almost seemed…

  He doesn’t like me staring back at him. He likes to intimidate others.

  Realizing that, Jack dropped his gaze. He doubted he could fake trembling. Here was the thing. If the op was blown, it was blown. That would be game-over for Jack Elliot. So, the only possibility with the big man was to carry through the pretense to the end.

  The soldier loomed before them.

  Jack took a step back as if frightened, and he studiously kept his head down.

  “Let me see your manifest,” the soldier rumbled.

  Jack held up his clipboard.

  The big man plucked it from him. “It’s a map,” he said in an overloud voice.

  Jack nodded.

  “Are you new here?” the heavy voice asked.

  Jack nodded again, forcing himself to shuffle his feet as if terrified.

  “Didn’t think I’ve ever seen your face before,” the soldier said. “You think you’re tough?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “You sure?”

  Jack almost nodded before inspiration struck. He shook his head again instead of nodding, trying for the feel of being too scared to think straight.

  The big man made a rumbling sound. It took Jack a second to realize it was a chuckle.

  “Better hurry, newbie,” the soldier said. He shoved the clipboard into Jack’s hands, making Elliot stumble against Simon.

  Jack clutched the clipboard against his chest. He’d seen a frightened man do that once.

  “I said go.”

  Simon stumbled away. Jack copied the move.

  Simon began to look back.

  “Don’t do it,” Jack whispered.

  Simon glanced at him. The scientist’s features were pale.

  “We’re not going to be here long,” Jack purred. “In to see what they’re doing and out we go to radio HQ. This will be a breeze.”

  Simon’s features stiffened as nodded. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” his partner muttered.

  “Yeah,” Jack said, wondering why the NFL didn’t believe that. The bigger they are, the less they fall. But that didn’t matter. They’d passed the toughest hurdle. Everything should be easy now.

  -11-

  D’ERLON ENTERPRISES

  ARDENNES FOREST

  Marcus cracked his knuckles as he watched the two workers scurry away. For just a moment there, it had seemed as if the leaner of the two had some balls. The man had actually met his gaze, holding it for several seconds. In fact, the man had seemed ready to fight.

  Marcus cocked his head, grinning at the idea. Imagine one of these lesser men fighting him. One solid blow would shatter the man’s skull like a shell. A kick could snap the man’s spine. It wouldn’t even be sporting.

  The worms—the people—in this facility sickened Marcus. A few on the security team had a flicker of fire in their belly. They always dropped their gazes too, though, when he approached. Marcus had begun to long for a challenge.

  He still worked on cracking Mother’s long-term scheme. That was a matter of a slow gathering of data and piecing the puzzle together. That took his intellect. He wanted something to challenge his strength, his fighting prowess.

  Swiftly, Marcus un-snapped his holster and drew the snub-nosed Knocker, as he called the .55 caliber weapon. He aimed it into the darkness, knowing the experimental hound roamed up there. That would be a test worthy of his fighting skills. Well, in several years maybe, after the hound finished its advanced training. The beast was still too primitive to truly challenge Marcus. According to Frederick—

  Marcus scowled, sliding the Knocker back into its holster. Something nagged at him and he couldn’t place what exactly. He hated when that happened. He had the feeling it had something to do with the man who had dared to meet his gaze for several seconds on the lawn.

  Why would the man bother him? So a worker had some balls. A few of the lesser humans did after a fashion. It shouldn’t mean anything.

  Marcus cracked his knuckles. He doubted the bold worker was the problem. Maybe it was just the importance of the moment. Frederick was coming to take more of the fuel. Yet, this had become routine. Sure, the shipments could theoretically cause trouble, but they never had so far.

  Putting his hands behind his back, Marcus increased his pace. He passed workers at their stations. They cowered, lowered their eyes and trembled if his gaze happened to fall on them. He’d found that staring steadily at a person could break their will in short order.

  It was always the same with women as well. If he lingered on her beauty, any woman would begin to tremble and likely weep. Therefore, he had to find a way to hood his greatness. Lately, he had begun practicing dimming the intensity of his gaze.

  “What am I not seeing?”

  The idea nagged him, and he disliked that.

  Marcus craned his neck, looking up at the highest tower. His subconscious must have drawn him here. Putting his hands to a steel rung, he began to climb the central ladder. It relaxed him doing this.

  Quickly, the fifty-acre complex spread out below him. If Marcus could have one wish, it would be to fly like an eagle. Soaring in the thermals, looking down at the crawling people below—

&
nbsp; Marcus grunted, scowling. The nagging doubt wouldn’t leave him. He halted his ascent and peered into the dark forest. Imagine if this was olden times and he was a knight. He would rule the Ardennes. None would have been able to challenge him sword to sword. Perhaps he would have carved out a kingdom as Charlemagne had in the Dark Ages.

  I would have been the champion of the time, invincible in combat. They would have composed ballads about my greatness.

  Marcus grinned at the thought. Then, he shouted angrily, his fingers gripping the steel rung. He remembered where he’d seen the man on the lawn before. It had seemed like artifice when the man had dropped his gaze. For a moment, Marcus had the impression the man would fight him. Now, he realized his first instinct had been correct. He remembered seeing the man in a manifest of Detachment 17 case officers. The agent’s name was Jack Elliot.

  Marcus had unclipped his walkie-talkie before starting the climb. He didn’t like it catching on the steel webbing around the ladder as he climbed.

  Marcus slid down the ladder, picking up speed as he descended. He had to raise the alarm. D17 agents were inside one of Mother’s most important complexes.

  -12-

  THE CALYPSO

  100 MILES OFF THE COAST OF SUMATRA

  As Selene stood on the Calypso’s bow deck, she extended the antenna of her TR-1010. She turned it on and immediately found a signal. It came from under the ship. She checked the screen, did a quick calibration—

  The signal came from much deeper than the object, which was several hundred feet below the surface. The combined ELF-EMF wave was unique to her theory. The critical idea had come after her breakup with Danny. It had reminded her of Tesla’s statement: “Inventors don’t have time for married life.” She hadn’t been married exactly…but the spirit of Tesla’s statement had proven true nevertheless.

  In any case, this was amazing. The extremely low frequency radio wave originated well below the object by an appreciable distance. Yet, it meant something important that both the object and the deeper emitter lined up like this.

  “Selene!” Lulu called. “You should start getting ready.”

  Pushing the antenna down, Selene shut off the device and hurried to her cabin. She stowed the TR-1010 and climbed down to the stern deck.

  The crane operator lowered the T-9 Driver Propulsion Vehicle into the water.

  The T-9 was torpedo-shaped, made of ceramic-plate so it had a negligible radar signature, and ran off the latest in underwater batteries. There was a cage around the propeller so no user could accidentally cut his hand or arm. Hydroplanes guided the vehicle, while a small motorcycle-style screen protected the controls.

  The DPV would give them more time at the bottom of the dive. This would be a technical dive or tec dive for short. They would be using mixed gas, allowing them to go deeper than an ordinary free dive. That meant it was a much more dangerous dive, however.

  At 160 feet, the water would have a pressure of six bars. That meant a diver would breathe six times as much as on the surface (one bar). The trouble with that kind of dive was that once one reached the deepest descent, the diver would only have a few minutes before she would have to begin the slow ascent, stopping along the way to allow the gasses in the blood stream to normalize so one didn’t get the bends.

  “Look at all the sharks,” Lulu said. “There haven’t been that many prowling around us before this.”

  Selene noticed the triangular fins cutting the surface and the long torpedo shapes gliding underwater. There did seem to be an abnormal amount of the marine predators. Was that weird it should happen now? No doubt, Junior would call this another aspect of the curse.

  Selene wasn’t crazy about swimming with all those sharks. On the other hand, she couldn’t back down now. It would look cowardly. Danny would have still dived: showing everyone how tough he was. She couldn’t do any less.

  “That’s the reason I brought the bang sticks,” Selene said, pointing at the sharks.

  “That’s crazy,” Lulu said, “No way would I get in the water today. Don’t go, Selene.”

  The doctor shrugged. Sharks seldom attacked suited divers. The crew could help keep the predators away as Forrest and she boarded the T-9. They’d be heading deeper than the sharks normally liked to cruise. This was just a matter of keeping her head.

  With that decided, Selene went to her pile of diving gear and began putting it on. After she was done, Lulu handed her two bang sticks.

  In open air, a regular bullet could travel a mile or more from the barrel of a gun. Underwater, with a density 800 times greater than air, the same bullet would only travel a few feet.

  A bang stick solved the problem in an elementary but elegant manner. The stick had two parts: an eighteen-foot fiberglass pole with a hollow tube on the end. One aggressively shoved the end of the tube against any offending fish. That caused an internal firing pin to discharge the round inside the tube. In Selene’s case, that would be a .44 Magnum shell. The bullet didn’t travel through water, but went directly into the sea creature. Interestingly, the bullet did less damage than the pressurized blast. Because of that, blank rounds could prove just as deadly if one used enough gunpowder. In either case, the placement of the shot was critical for immediate success: in this instance, the death of a shark.

  During the trip, Selene had carefully applied a thin layer of nail polish to the rim of each round. Too much polish could gum up the tube. The nail polish sealed the small gap between bullet and shell, making it useable underwater.

  With the bang sticks in hand, Selene allowed Lulu to help her to the scuba platform. From there, Selene jumped backward into the water. After the bubbles cleared, she saw the first shark swim into view.

  It was different thinking about this in their element. Could the combination ELF-EMF waves have anything to do with the shark behavior? The marine predators often used electro-location to pinpoint their prey.

  Sharks possessed the ampullae of Lorenzini, special sensing organs called electroreceptors. Such organs were primarily found in cartilaginous fish—sharks, rays and others. In essence, the electroreceptors could sense temperature gradients and electromagnetic fields. Sharks were the most sensitive to these fields in other animals. Living creatures produced said electrical fields through muscle contractions. Thus, the sharks could sense Selene through electro-location.

  She studied the creatures through her full-face mask. A beautiful tiger shark—it must have been eighteen feet long—glided on a parallel course with her. Instead of waiting for it to turn at her, she swam at the predator with a bang stick extended for a thrust.

  The tiger shark turned its head, regarding her.

  Selene felt it staring with its black eyes. She felt a momentary chill. Sharks had dead eyes like hard knobs of plastic. If the thing attacked— but she needn’t have worried. With a flash of its fins, the tiger darted away. Its swiftness was incredible. Like great whites, a tiger shark could reach speeds of twenty-five miles per hour for short bursts.

  The torpedo-shaped predator disappeared, fleeing into the gloom of the ocean.

  With a conscious effort, Selene loosened her fist. She was surprised at how hard she gripped the end of the bang stick. She forced herself to grin inside the diving mask. It was bigger than an ordinary sport mask, covering her entire face, leaving her lips free so she could talk to Forrest while underwater. They were using modulated ultrasound comm-units.

  The doctor propelled herself like a mermaid, her outsized fins sending her knifing through the water. Soon, she reached the T-9, securing herself onto the forward saddle-seat. She switched on power. The color liquid displays came on, as did the color digital charts. The DPV also boasted a GPS and Doppler velocity log.

  Soon, Forrest climbed onto the rider’s seat behind her. He tapped her on the shoulder to indicate he was ready.

  “You have the ultrasound,” Selene said.

  “Oh, right,” Forrest said. “I forgot.”

  That seemed like a strange comment
coming from him.

  With a small shrug, Selene fed power to the propeller and adjusted the T-9’s hydroplanes. She moved away from the Calypso and the circling sharks, diving into the depths. The DPV’s vibration was slight as water rushed against her. The forward screen only partially protected her.

  “Doc,” Forrest said. Incredibly, he sounded worried. “Look behind and to your left.”

  Selene glanced that way. She saw the tiger shark from earlier. Beside it was a monstrous great white, a creature at least twenty-five feet long. The two sharks burst into high speed, coming toward them.

  They’re moving at attack speed, Selene thought.

  Both the tiger and the great white were man-eaters. Both could also attain speeds faster than the T-9.

  “They’re gaining on us!” Forrest shouted.

  Why are they attacking? Selene wondered. What’s making them so crazy? She increased speed. A look over her shoulder showed it wasn’t going to be enough.

  “Use your bang stick!” she shouted.

  The great white moved ahead of the tiger shark. The giant predator just loomed behind Forrest, already opening its cavernous jaws.

  -13-

  D’ERLON ENTERPRISES

  ARDENNES FOREST

  Jack shook out his sore knuckles as Simon lowered the unconscious worker onto the floor. The scientist then dragged the worker Elliot had hit around a corner, returning with the man’s badge.

  They had watched the worker come out of a special door. The worker had hurried to close the door as the two of them had approached. It was at that point Jack hit the worker’s “glass” jaw.