Rogue Star_Frozen Earth_Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller

by Jasper T. Scott

  Glenn asked us to look the other way as he typed in a security code and then provided an audible password. Something inside the doors clunked and they opened automatically for us, parting to reveal the entrance hall of a modern-day palace with gleaming hardwood floors, white wainscoting and intricate moldings. A curving marble banister rose to a balcony that overlooked the entrance. While I was still staring at that, one of the guards from outside brought us our bags.

  Richard whistled softly. “So this is how the other point zero zero zero one percent live.”

  I smiled at that and shook my head. Glancing behind me, I saw Glenn shut the doors behind us from a panel on the wall.

  The doors swung shut and locked behind us with another clunk. “System armed,” a pleasant female voice announced. “Welcome to the Massey residence.”

  Glenn turned to face us. “Mr. Massey has not arrived yet, but he has arranged for you to spend the night here. Please follow me upstairs to your rooms.”

  Glenn took Richard’s luggage, since he was injured, and the rest of us carried our own up the stairs—except for Rachel. I carried her backpack over one shoulder, mine over the other, and my laptop bag with our travel documents and cash around my neck.

  The rooms upstairs were fantastically large. Kate expressed concern about letting the kids sleep alone, and Glenn showed us to one of the rooms that Massey’s kids used when they visited him on weekends. It had two beds in it.

  “He won’t mind?” Kate asked.

  Glenn shook his head, but offered no further explanation. After we all knew where to sleep, Glenn dismissed himself, saying that he would be just down the hall if we needed anything.

  “You can also reach me through the Echos.”

  “The Echos?” Kate asked.

  Glenn pointed to one of the black cylinders sitting on the nightstands beside our bed.

  “Say computer, to wake it up, then say, call Glenn Reese.”

  I nodded along with that.

  “Thank you,” Richard said, and then walked like a zombie to the room across from ours. The wheels of his luggage dragged loudly on the hardwood floor.

  Glenn nodded to us and then walked away. Kate and I went to put the kids to bed, ushering them down the hall ahead of us. Alex rolled over and went to sleep almost immediately, but Rachel was wide-awake thanks to all of the naps she’d taken along the way.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “At a friend’s house,” Kate said, while brushing blonde hair away from Rachel’s forehead.

  “This is a house? It’s huge!”

  I nodded, smiling at her.

  “Can we stay? I like it better here.”

  My throat closed up in a painful knot. “No, honey, we can’t.”

  “Why not? It has lots of rooms.”

  “Because it’s not our house,” Kate replied.

  “Neither is the basement where we live. That’s Uncle Richard’s.”

  Basement. I supposed that was a good way to describe it. Kate looked to me for help, her eyes red with exhaustion. I took over for her. “That’s true, but Richard is family. Mr. Massey isn’t. And Richard invited us to stay with him for a long time, while Mr. Massey only invited us to spend the night.”

  “So we have to get on another plane tomorrow?”

  “The same one, I think.”

  Rachel gave us a big yawn and rubbed her eyes. “Good. This time I’ll stay awake. Alex said they have donuts. I’m going to get one.”

  “Sure,” Kate said through a smile. “Now go to sleep, honey.”

  Rachel shook her head vigorously. “I don’t wanna.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “I had a bad dream.”

  Kate looked to me with a pained grimace. “About the bad man?” she asked. “You’re safe here. Don’t worry.”

  Rachel shook her head again. “No. I dreamed that you and Daddy don’t love each other anymore, so Daddy left us alone.”

  I blinked, taken aback by that. “Sweetheart... I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You promise?” Rachel’s blue eyes glistened, bluer than ever in the pale blue light bleeding through the lampshade of the lamp beside her bed.

  “I promise. Now go to sleep. It’s been a long day.” I kissed her on the forehead, and then Kate did, too. We turned out the lights and eased the door shut behind us.

  We walked down the hallway to our room in an uneasy silence. She shut the door and then we both changed out of our clothes and took turns showering in the en-suite bathroom.

  When we finally crawled into bed, exhaustion hit me like a tidal wave. The room was spinning as though I were drunk.

  “Is it true?” Kate asked.

  Fighting to hold heavy eyelids open, I glanced at her. She was on her side, staring at me. Her features were fuzzy in the pale wedge of moonlight spilling through the window on her side of the bed.

  “Is what true?” I asked.

  “That you don’t love me anymore?”

  The knot in my throat was back. “No,” I said simply.

  Kate nodded. “Good, because I still love you.”

  I wondered if that was a lie. “What about Ben?”

  “What about him?” Kate asked slowly.

  “He’s probably going to die, you know. That doesn’t break your heart?” I couldn’t keep the bitter edge from my voice.

  “I don’t want anyone to die, but I won’t be heartbroken. I told you. We weren’t in love.”

  I accepted that with a frown, but nodded and leaned over to give my wife a kiss. It was meant to be a peck on the lips, but she pulled me close and made it last. I felt a corresponding reaction from my body, and for the first time in over a month I was actually tempted, but far too exhausted to do anything about it.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” I said.

  I rolled over and Kate spooned me awkwardly, hooking one of her feet between mine. Seconds later, I fell into a deep sleep.

  I saw the open door of Richard’s shelter before me, gleaming with moonlight. It was swinging impossibly in the wind, as if it were made of wood and not steel.

  I crept toward the open door with my heart in my throat. There was a pistol in my hand. As I looked at it, the magazine fell out. I hurried to pick it up and slot it back in, but it wouldn’t click into place. I held it there with my other hand, hoping it would still shoot.

  The door swung wide, and two pinpricks of light appeared—eyes peering at me from the shadows of the stairwell.

  I brought my gun up quickly, rattling the slide. “Who’s there?! I’ll shoot!”

  “So will I.”

  Billy the Kid stepped out of the shadows, pushing both Kate and Rachel ahead of him. He held a pistol to the back of each of their heads. Their mouths and wrists were duct-taped, and their cheeks were stained with tears.

  “Let them go!” I screamed.

  Bill’s lips spread impossibly wide, revealing far too many teeth. He grinned at me like a shark. “Didya miss me, Logan?”

  Chapter 22

  —SIX HOURS LATER—

  June 11th, 9:49 AM

  I woke up screaming.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Kate sat up quickly, her blue eyes wide and blinking as they darted around the room.

  I stared dead ahead, horror churning inside of me. My mind drifted slowly back to the here and now, and I shook my head to clear it. “I had a nightmare.”

  Kate looked at me. “About what?”

  I told her, and she smiled reassuringly and rubbed my back. “It was just a dream, Logan. He’s long gone. Probably recovering in a hospital somewhere.”

  “Or dead, if we’re lucky,” I added with a scowl. “What if he comes back? He knows where we are now.”

  Kate frowned. “Now you’re making me scared. Maybe we should have stayed and let the police investigate.”

  “Maybe...” I rubbed my eyes and sighed. “Or maybe you’re right. Maybe he’s not coming back.”

  Sunlight streamed in through the window on K
ate’s side of the bed. My stomach growled, forcing my thoughts in a new direction—breakfast, coffee...

  I glanced at the black device sitting on the nightstand beside Kate, and wondered if I should try calling Glenn for room service.

  That didn’t feel right. Was it his job to get coffee for Mr. Massey’s guests? Somehow I doubted it. I could get my own coffee—probably, assuming the coffee maker wasn’t some kind of fancy cappuccino machine.

  I got up and fished clean clothes out of my luggage.

  “Where are you going?” Kate asked as I changed out of my pajamas and into a pair of slacks and a button-up shirt.

  “I was just going to see if I could find some coffee,” I said as I sat on the edge of the bed to pull on my worn out black leather Oxfords.

  Kate nodded and climbed out of bed wearing nothing but her underwear. “I’ll come with you.” She pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt, then slipped into her sandals, and straightened her hair with her fingers. I marveled at how quickly she could go from jet-lagged, sleep-deprived zombie to drop-dead gorgeous. She had an effortless kind of beauty that I’d always admired.

  Kate grabbed my arm for support and leaned her head on my shoulder as we staggered out the door and into the hallway. Richard’s door was open, the bed empty. We went to check on the kids, but their beds were also empty.

  “Are we the last ones up?” Kate wondered aloud.

  “Maybe.”

  As we walked down the hall, I heard distant voices coming from downstairs. The air was laden with the smells of breakfast and coffee. We hurried down the winding staircase together. There was a guard in a black suit standing just inside the doors, beside the security panel.

  “Morning.” I nodded to him.

  He nodded back, but said nothing. We turned and walked down a short hallway from the foyer, and emerged in a vast living room that looked out on a sparkling Olympic-sized pool. The chain-link cage of a tennis court lay to one side of that. We followed the sound of the voices and of cutlery scratching on plates through an open door in the far side of the living room and emerged in a breakfast nook surrounded by windows. Everyone was already sitting around a big circular table. The kitchen adjoined the nook, and I glimpsed at least two people in black and white service uniforms busy in there.

  A man I recognized but had never actually met looked up from where he sat beside Richard. “Welcome,” he said. “Please sit down. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I replied, nodding. Kate took my hand and led me to a pair of empty seats beside Alex.

  “I’m Akron,” our host said.

  I nodded, smiling at the pointless introduction. “Logan,” I replied, watching as he raised two fingers and waved to a woman in a maid’s uniform who was just emerging from the kitchen.

  “Camila, would you please bring them each some breakfast, please?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen once more.

  We didn’t get a chance to order, so I assumed we’d be getting a bit of everything.

  I saw the remains of pancakes, eggs, and bacon on Alex’s plate, and my mouth began to water.

  Akron’s gaze found my wife. “And you are?”

  “Kate. Richard’s sister.”

  Akron nodded, and the woman in the uniform returned with two steaming plates of food. A second member of the staff entered the dining area pushing a silver cart. She poured us each a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice, and then asked what we’d like in our coffee.

  “Nothing for me,” I said, already raising the steaming cup for a sip. “Thank you.”

  “I’m full!” Rachel announced and pushed her plate away.

  “Me, too,” Alex said.

  Mr. Massey regarded my kids with a smile. “Would you two like to go watch TV in the living room? Or maybe play some video games?”

  Both Alex’s and Rachel’s eyes lit up with that suggestion.

  “Can you adopt us?” Alex asked.

  Still smiling, Mr. Massey called over their shoulders to the living room. “Glenn!”

  Our guide from last night emerged wraith-like from the living room. “Sir?”

  “Would you please set these kids up with some entertainment? Take them to the theater in the basement.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The theater—of course, there’s a theater.

  Glenn escorted my kids from the room. They practically bounced on their way out.

  My gaze returned to Mr. Massey. “They’ve been deprived lately.”

  “I can imagine,” he said, smiling tightly at me.

  An awkward silence descended over the table. Kate and I took advantage of it to dig into our breakfast.

  “Richard,” Mr. Massey began. “I assume your family already knows what you’ve discovered?”

  “They do,” Richard confirmed between popping grapes into his mouth.

  “Good. In that case, we can discuss everything openly. Do any of you need anything else from the kitchen?”

  We all shook our heads.

  “In that case—Camila, Valeria—”

  The sound of dishes being washed stopped, and the two women who’d served us a moment ago emerged from the kitchen. “Yes, Mr. Massey?” one of them asked.

  “Please see to your duties upstairs. You can come back and clean the kitchen later.”

  “Of course, Mr. Massey.” Both women left in a hurry, and suddenly the four of us were alone.

  Mr. Massey propped his elbows on the table and rested his chin on a bridge of clasped hands. “I understand you’ve been staying with Richard during these troubled times.”

  “He was kind enough to invite us,” Kate confirmed.

  Turning to Richard, he said, “I double-checked your findings on my way here. How did you even think to check for such a thing? It’s not an obvious pattern.”

  Richard shrugged. “I set up a program to look for a lot of different relationships in the data. All of the parameters I gave were ones that I would use myself to contact an alien race. You have to think about context. The only common point of reference we have besides math and physics, is the fact of their arrival. Given that, it makes sense that they would encode the physical characteristics of the signal with some or all of the data that pertains to that arrival.”

  “Have you had any luck deciphering the messages themselves?” Massey asked.

  “I haven’t tried.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a waste of time. We don’t know what they might be trying to say, let alone how they’ve encoded the data. It’s like trying to solve an algebra equation that’s all variables. You could find a million different solutions, but who knows which one is correct?”

  Mr. Massey nodded along with that. “Still, we have a year before they arrive. If we could even decode a tiny piece of one of the messages, we might be able to get some advance warning about the nature of the beings we’re about to meet.”

  Richard looked skeptical. “Even if we could do that, how would it help to have advance warning? We can’t prepare for an invasion in one year.”

  “No, we can’t,” Massey replied. “But we can run away before they get here.”

  “You’re talking about Mars.”

  Mr. Massey nodded. “The Colony Mission is ready to go. We can leave either before or after the rogue passes us—after will be easier due to the elongation of Earth’s orbit, but if we’re in the middle of an alien invasion by then, we might not even get off the ground.”

  “We,” Richard echoed. “You’re planning to join the colonists?”

  “I wasn’t, but now I’m considering it.”

  I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. I was bursting with curiosity. “If you weren’t planning to leave Earth before, then where were you planning to live?” I wanted to know about this billionaire’s preparations. Where was he hiding? Did he have room for more? Whatever preparations he’d made over the past ten years would undoubtedly make Richard’s shelter look like an old st
orm cellar by comparison.

  “I have a refuge where I can stay,” Mr. Massey said. “It’s stocked to last for a decade or more.” Turning back to Richard, he said, “And that brings me to the point of this conversation. You obviously have a refuge of your own.”

  “We do,” Richard confirmed.

  “But the fact that you showed up here with a broken nose and two gunshot wounds tells me that it’s probably not as safe as you would like. You need a real haven. The Haven.”

  Richard’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head. “The Haven?”

  Mr. Massey hesitated, then looked around as if to make sure that we were alone. Apparently not satisfied, he wiped his mouth on a napkin and got up from the table. “Let’s go sit outside.”

  He walked over to a pair of floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. They proved to be French doors leading out onto a spacious terrace. He opened the doors and gestured for us to join him. We did so, filing out one at a time. The air smelled of dew and fresh-cut grass, and I heard a lawn mower moaning in the distance. We took our seats across from Mr. Massey on a couch facing the grounds.

  “Before I say anything,” Massey began, “we need to get something straight. Everything I’m going to tell you is in confidence, and I’m trusting you all in good faith to never share it with anyone else. Do you agree?”

  Our heads bobbed, and he went on, “Good. Haven is an underwater colony that I’ve spent the past ten years building. It uses much of the same technology that was pioneered for the Mars mission, and it is where I currently reside with my family, along with nine hundred and twenty-six of the smartest and most skilled individuals that I could find.”

  “Underwater?” I echoed. “Why under...”

  Massey pointed to Richard’s nose. “Because no matter how well-appointed or provisioned a shelter is, once others start to find out about it, they’ll try to take it from you. Underwater the chances of discovery and unauthorized entry are much lower.”

  “How do you grow food without sunlight?” Richard asked. “And what about supplying fresh-air for all those people?”

  Mr. Massey hesitated. “We use UV lamps and a floating solar sheet to supply power, but I’m afraid I can’t disclose anything else about the facility or how it operates. I’ve already taken a big risk just by telling you that Haven exists.”