by Wilson Harp
“Anyone else I need to make peace with before we can get out of here?” asked Alex. “Let’s get all of the resentment and anguish out of the way now.”
“I have a problem with you,” said Singh.
“Let’s hear it,” said Alex.
“You are close with Ambassador Martin, right?”
“I am. He was my CO for four years, the top of my food chain for another six, and my friend for as long as I’ve known him.”
Singh nodded. “I had family in Hyderabad. Can’t say I like the man.”
“I lost my father a month later. Not my favorite time either,” replied Alex.
“Truce then?” asked Singh as he extended his hand.
Alex shook his hand. “Truce.”
“Unless we are going to dance around a pole by the moonlight, can I assume that all of the huggy-kissy crap is over?” asked Hopkins.
Curtis laughed. “Yeah, I think we have enough estrogen in the room now. Let’s get down to business.”
Alex saw that Manny had gone over to talk to the Pelod. It was probably good that the Iltia’cor wasn’t going to hear the plan just yet. Alex also hoped that he could get some good intel on what the Pelod knew.
“Gunny, follow me,” Curtis said.
Alex followed the Captain toward the main door. It was slightly bigger than the others and was closed. He heard the low hum of an energy field as he walked near. Curtis led him to the next door over and walked in.
“When Benton bought it, I came in here to be alone. I was upset and kicked the bed. Hard. Almost thought I broke my foot on the third kick. I heard a pop when my foot connected.”
He pointed to the floor next to the bed.
“The pop was the bed breaking away from the floor.”
Alex squatted down and looked where Curtis was pointing. A narrow crack was visible along the edge of the bed.
“A way out?” Alex asked as he looked up at Curtis.
“A way out, but a narrow space. Too narrow for most of us.”
Alex was a smaller man. Much smaller than most people would imagine for such a highly decorated Marine. Standing five foot eight inches and weighing one-hundred and sixty pounds, he didn’t stand out in a crowd.
Alex pushed against the edge of the bed and it slid open an inch or so.
“Careful, we don’t know if we are being watched,” Curtis said.
“If we are, then they will come to stop us, have the others get ready by the main door. If they power down the energy shield, jump them when they come in.”
Curtis nodded and left the room.
Alex pushed again and the bed exposed another few inches of the opening. The faint glow inside the access way verified to Alex that this was not just a breach in the construction, but a passage into the prison area. Alex thought that it went either to a more secure area, like the armory or the security office, or to a maintenance area.
He hoped it was the latter. Another shove moved the bed clear of the entrance and he got a good look at the size of the passage. It would be tight, even for him.
He kicked off his shoes and took off his shirt. He was considering whether he should lose his pants when Curtis came back in.
“You’re going in?” the Captain asked.
“Sure, what else have I got to do?” Alex asked. “Besides, maybe it will take my mind off of being hungry.”
“You aren’t hungry,”Curtis said. “Your body just thinks it is.”
“I’m closer to my body than I am to you—I trust it more,” said Alex. He took off his pants as he looked at the narrow tunnel. It looked like it went straight down for about a meter and a half before it went horizontal.
“No, the Pelod explained it. The Otina are pumping in aerosolized nutrients in the air. That faint garbage smell? That’s your food. You breathe it in and the nutrients go straight to your blood stream.”
“Doesn’t make sense to me, but then neither does a lot of what I’ve seen recently.”
“Jeffries thinks that is why the Pelod keep getting weaker. The Otina probably created the nutrient gas for long term holding of humans, not Pelod.”
“Likely not Iltia’cor either,” Alex said. “All the more reason to get out of here quickly.”
Alex lowered himself to the ground and sat on the edge of the entryway.
“If you get stuck down there, I can’t risk anyone to pull you out. If the nutrient gas can get to you, you won’t even be able to starve. You’ll die of old age and muscle atrophy after years,” Curtis said.
“There are many different scenarios that I have imagined myself dying in, Captain. Old age, stuck in a tube, in an alien prison is not one I had considered before today.”
“Good luck,” Curtis said.
“Thanks,” Alex replied as he pulled himself up on his knees and started lowering himself head first into the passageway.
Alex had crawled through caves and buildings before, but always with a line and always with someone who could help him if he got stuck. This was a little intimidating, even for him, but he knew that if the prisoners were to escape, someone would have to go down this tunnel.
Handholds were easy to find for the descent and he knew it would be easy to crawl back up when he made it to the exit point. When, not if, he made it to the exit point.
At the bottom of the drop he was able to see the tunnel before him. Twelve meters and then it went up again. The passage was pretty easy to crawl through. It was high enough that he could almost crawl. Not quite, though. Maybe another inch higher and he could do it. But it was easy to wiggle and squirm his way forward.
He reached the end of the crawl and looked up at the rising tunnel. He breathed a sigh of relief as the tunnel ended about two meters up. He twisted and pulled himself up to his knees and then to his feet. At the top of the shaft was an access panel. It was painted light blue instead of glowing like the surrounding structure.
Alex found some footholds and climbed his way up. he carefully loosened the panel and freed it from its setting. He pushed it up and looked into the room. It was a storage room of some kind. He held onto the panel with one hand and pulled himself into the room with the other. The panel was set near the floor of the room, so there was no drop to contend with.
The room was small, maybe one meter by a meter and a half. Shelves lined two walls and there was a door opposite the access panel. Several stacks of boxes lined the same wall as the panel. Alex knew he had to get back soon, but he saw a problem. He would have to crawl backwards through the passage in order to set the panel back in place correctly.
He wasn’t fond of the idea, but being caught wasn’t an option. He grabbed the panel and crawled back down into the narrow crawl space. He replaced the panel, making sure he felt it click back into place, and then started making his way back along the tunnel crawling backwards.
When his feet hit the end of the tunnel he heard Curtis.
“Gunny, did you find out where it came out?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “I’m going to try to push myself up as high as I can, see if you can grab my legs.”
It took Alex a little time to figure out how to get the angle to start pushing himself into a handstand. The blood was rushing to his head and he felt dizzy by the time he made any real progress.
The feel of a hand grabbing one of his ankles was a welcome relief, even as it was a shock.
“Pull,” Curtis said and Alex felt himself being lifted straight up. A second hand grabbed his other ankle and he found himself being pulled free of the narrow passageway.
“Are you okay, Gunny,” Jeffries asked.
Alex looked around at room. Jeffries, Adams, and surprisingly Liao was there with Curtis.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “I’m good. The tunnel comes out in a storage room. We can get out.”
Chapter 6
Carl checked the records for the third time. He knew what he was seeing was correct, but he was hoping it was a mistake.
When the initial reports came back, he se
nt for additional tests. When those reports came back, he had Karen Swanson and Bill Foster brought to his lab. This morning he had personally run the scanner. Now the results were back. Karen Swanson and Bill Foster had mosar in their system.
The amounts were small. Tiny even. He doubted the Otina scanners would have even picked them up. He knew that he would have missed them if he hadn’t calibrated the tests to look for them and then focused on the areas that gave him the barely perceptible readings.
The idea that humans could have mosar in their system was something that seemed impossible just a week before. And yet Captain Theodore Swanson had died from a mosar based energy field. The captured scan data showed that he had mosar in his system. An examination of his remains confirm that his major organs and bone matter disintegrated in a manner that would be consistent with contamination of mosar.
And now, two of the people he was closest to had turned up positive for mosar as well.
Karen was understandable. She was his wife and he had been on leave for two months before shipping out again last month for Strike Force Alpha.
Foster was Swanson’s bunkmate on the Hemingway. They had served together since right after the Do’yar’on incidence. For almost a year, they had been in close proximity to each other. Foster had resigned his commission six months ago.
Swanson and Foster hadn’t seen each other since then, though. Carl didn’t like mysteries like this. He preferred ones where he could flip to the end and see what happened. He had never actually done that, but it was a comforting thought that he could.
He would have both Swanson and Foster come in for further tests tomorrow or the next day. Today was the funeral for Captain Swanson, and he had poked and prodded them enough during their grief.
How could it spread, though? Carl thought it might be sexually spread, but Foster insisted that he and Swanson had never had any form of sexual contact.
Aerial dispersion? Maybe. Contact seemed to be the most sensible, but he didn’t understand how Swanson had been infected in the first place.
Infected. A odd term for a non-organic, non-viral substance, and yet that is what they appeared to be grappling with. An infection. An infection that was some way contagious.
Carl shook his head and looked back at the specifications of mosar he had. The Hedali were both very knowledgeable about the structure and behavior of mosar in their own physiology and other forms of physical matter. Pure elements, like tin, didn’t have mosar, but any compounds, like bronze, did.
If there was no mosar in tin or copper, how did it end up in bronze? That was a question that had them speaking at length about how silly of a question it was.
They didn’t know the answer.
And because it had always been known that they didn’t know, they couldn’t see that mosar was more confusing and complicated than they realized.
It was confusing enough to Carl that mosar was integrated into a non-organic compound like bronze, but in life-forms it made no sense at all. How could the presence of an extra bond not create problems?
Maybe he was looking at this all wrong. He was trying to figure out how mosar got into living tissue when he didn’t understand the nature of mosar from an inorganic chemistry side.
He was an engineer trying to solve a medical problem. He needed to solve an engineering problem. The Hedali were great when it came to science and chemistry, but most of their focus was on organic chemistry and medical advancements.
He needed to speak to the Pelod. They were the weapons and ship guys of the galaxy. Their engineering and non-organic chemistry understanding was way beyond the Hedali.
Carl pulled up his contact sheet on his tablet. He searched for the name he wanted and hit connect. A few seconds later, his call was answered.
“Marcus Taylor,” said the slim alien. “Oh, hello Doctor Williams. What can I help you with today?”
Marcus was the head of research at the steel factory that the Pelod controlled in Rio de Janero. He and Williams had worked closely on a new titanium alloy that would reduce the mass of Earth’s cruisers by three percent a few months earlier.
“Marcus, good to see you,” Carl said. “I have a problem, but not one I can go into full details about. Can I bend your ear for a few minutes?”
“Bend my ear? Ah, do I have time to listen to you. Yes,” Marcus said. “I have some time this afternoon, Doctor.”
“Good. I am curious about mosar. When two elements are bonded in a compound, mosar becomes evident in them, right?”
“Yes, that is what happens.”
“How? Where does the mosar come from?”
Marcus pursed his lips and wrinkled his forehead in thought.
“That’s a question that occasionally arises, but one that doesn’t have a confirmed answer.”
“Any strong theories?” Carl asked.
“A few, but no way to test them,” Marcus answered. “The first is that mosar is created when the bond is made. It’s an older theory and one that is widely considered unlikely. I believe that it should be tossed aside entirely as your solar system proves that life can exist without mosar.
“The second theory is that mosar is ambient. It is just around everything and becomes caught up in the molecular bonding event. The problem with that is we can’t detect the free floating mosar. The conclusion is that either the theory is wrong or we have no reliable way to test it.
“The third theory is that mosar transfers from one source to another. This theory has some merit and some testing has proved useful, but there are still some problems with the theory.”
Carl made a few notes and then looked back up at the screen.
“Marcus, this has been a huge help. Anyway I could get some of the testing you have done on this?” Carl asked.
“I’ll send you what I can. Is there anything else you can tell me that might help?”
“Not at this time, but if I have some more questions, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“That would be fine. Before I go, there is one thing that I saw in our reports that might be relevant to your line of questioning.”
“Oh? What is it?”
“When we recently received a shipment of iron, we discovered that the iron oxide it was coated in had mosar,” Marcus said.
“Where was it from?” Carl asked.
“I’ll send you the exact record, but it was an asteroid in the Kuiper Belt.”
“Thanks Marcus, that might help,” said Carl. “If I need anything else, I’ll be in touch.”
“Okay Carl, goodbye.”
The call disconnected as Carl lost himself in thought. Iron oxide in the Kuiper Belt had mosar. Although at the very far reaches of the solar system, this was the first example of mosar discovered in native material.
Carl pulled up the records that the Hedali had given him about mosar in their materials and physiology. He then pulled up the records for some of the other races.
He started reading through the data as if he were just handed the reports of an infectious outbreak without any knowledge of other information.
In this case it jumped out at him that the Junniji had a significantly higher level of mosar in their solar system and inside their own physiology than the Hedali had. It was four percent higher, which wouldn’t seem that much greater except when it appeared to be from an infection.
Carl pulled up some data about the two races. He didn’t see anything about their history that would indicate that they had any significant differences.
The only major difference was in their technology level. The Junniji were the most advanced of the races as part of the Lower Galactic Council. They would likely be raised to the Higher Galactic Council within a few years according to Ambassador Martin.
They had discovered interstellar travel about twenty-two hundred years before while the Hedali had only discovered it about nine hundred years before.
Could the discrepancy in mosar concentration be correlated with their discovery of interstellar travel? Ca
rl started going through the archival records he found. He had quickly browsed them when they had provided the information, but he hadn’t been looking for anything in particular. He keyed in the words ‘mosar’ and ‘travel’. Nothing came up on the cross-reference. He keyed in ‘mosar’ and ‘time.’ Again, nothing.
He keyed in ‘mosar’ and ‘anomoly’. He got a hit. In the Hedali records there was a journal entry for one of their medical researchers. It was about seven hundred years ago and he had noted that the Hedali physiology seemed to be growing in mosar concentration.
Carl looked at the numbers and then compared them to the current data he had been given. An increase of twelve percent from the time the anomaly was written about and now. Mosar was growing in the Hedali.
He quickly slid over to his main computer and input the data. He set a simple extrapolation and ran the numbers for a target. If the rate of growth was consistent, the Hedali would catch up to the Junniji in about one thousand years.
That didn’t make any sense. If it was based upon when they first developed interstellar travel, then the Hedali should reach the current Junijji levels in thirteen hundred years, not one thousand.
Something else was causing the deviance in the rate of mosar. It could be physiological, maybe. He needed to find a control substance, something that was found in every system.
Carl pulled up the level of mosar in iron oxide found in each of their systems. He found the level of mosar was perfectly matched to the levels found in the Hedali and the Junijji. Exactly.
There was something about the beginnings of interstellar travel and the growth of mosar. So he was at step one. There was a start point for mosar to develop inside a star system. If this were true, then he could try to track down other pieces of statistical evidence to build a theory.
Carl was scrolling through some more data when his phone rang.
“This is Williams,” he said as he kept his eyes on the screen.
“Carl, Kyle here,” said the caller.
“Kyle, this is a surprise,” Carl said as he paused the data scroll. “Don’t get to hear from you too often these days. What can I do for you?”