His search results indicated a large amount of resources—steel, glass, reinforced titanium, etc.—had been pulled into a storage location outside of the colony. But why? The question echoed in his head and faded without an answer.
After searching though a variety of locations and subsystems, he became frustrated with the search; he had found nothing that could link the Aethpisians to the invasion on Lunara. He recorded a number of folders for more in-depth analysis. Finally, he found a header marked, GALA UNVEILING. He pulled the data from the system and looked it over.
To his interest, an enormous subsystem lay underneath, detailing plans for a massive starship. The biggest starship he had ever seen in his life. The information he had been looking for was here . . . or was it?
The more he read, the more it became apparent in the design that the designers didn’t lay it out like a military-style ship. The cruisers over Lunara were sleeker and mounted with a massive front weapons system. This design called for an extremely large engine compartment and several crew and passenger quarters. He couldn’t discern a weapon on the entire craft. A few hangars contained security crafts, but that was standard on any large bulk freighter or transport vessel. So this was where the extra resources from Aethpis were going.
Parker’s second and final datapad filled up. He wished his acrobatics across the canal hadn’t cost him so dearly.
"I didn’t find anything," Jan said. "He didn’t hide any datapads around the office."
"He isn’t that dumb, but we needed to check."
"What did you find?"
"Lots . . . I think."
"You think?"
"I didn’t find our invaders. I am sure—"
The clank-clunk of sheet metal compressing and popping back into place came down the ventilation duct. Swinging his head toward the opening, he stretched his ears, trying to sense movement. He heard small murmurs and a voice: "I found a rope—someone is in the building. Call down to security. We need a sweep team."
"Parker . . . they found us," Jan choked out.
He froze. The guards weren’t as nonchalant or as inept as they had figured. He and Jan must have tripped a silent alarm along the way, and now there was no hope of escaping from the direction they had entered. They would have to draw the guards away and circle back. He crept toward the opening and positioned the grille back into place over the frame. When it snapped in, the metal made a clunking sound. He winced.
He took a step back when he heard a rustling sound and realized that someone was rapidly crawling toward him.
A voice called from the vent, "Hey, stop. Don’t move."
He ignored the command, grabbed Jan by the sleeve, bolted to the door, and hurried into the lobby. The elevator beeped as he went for the button. Instead of waiting for it, he pivoted to the side and ducked along the side of the wall toward the door to the staircase.
Jan froze in place.
"Come on," he said as quietly but as forcefully as possible.
"Go now," she said. "Take the evidence to Eamonn. He will understand. They’ll think only I entered the facility."
"I can’t—"
"Go!"
Four men rushed out of the elevator and pointed their guns directly at her.
She raised her hands. "You got me."
"Anyone else?"
"No," she said. "Just little old me."
Parker slipped into the staircase.
Inside the stairwell, the security guard relayed orders from above Parker’s position. Parker had already scampered down to level 8, doing three steps at a time.
When he reached the landing for level 7, the guards were hurrying around above and below him. He stopped. Time to leave. He swung the door open and charged into level 7.
The floor was deserted. The rows of cubes suggested this was the clerical level, and the employees would definitely have the day off for the gala. He ran around, trying to find the outside of the building . . . a window. He scampered down hallway to hallway, his heart beating faster and faster. Finally, he entered a section that contained windows. Clipping his hip against each corner, he rushed around the cubicles and down the lanes toward the closest of the windows.
Without warning, from behind a cube wall, an arm struck his temple . . . he bobbed back and forth to find his balance. Trying to process what had happened, he staggered a few steps forward, but his mind wouldn’t allow two thoughts to latch together.
Before he could recover, the floor streaked up toward him, then there was darkness. He had failed Seth and Chloe.
Chapter 23
"Are you sure this will work?" Roche said.
"Yes," Gwen said, as they walked toward the main doors of the Zephyrian Security Center. Her eyes pierced through the darkened shadows of the cloak across her face. She was concealing her identity to hide suspicions from her father and security.
They came upon a card reader for entry into the secure portion of the building. Her hands shook uncontrollably. She was far more nervous than she had expected. With effort, she pulled the ID card down through the slot, and the access light flashed from red to green.
The door clicked open. She gasped, realizing that in triggering the door, she was making an irrevocable foray into the Zephyrian Security Center and thus betraying her father.
Her muscles tensed for a long moment.
"Go!" Roche said.
"I can’t—"
Roche pushed her through the door, and they were inside the facility.
"Which way?" Roche said, walking down a hallway.
"Not sure," she said.
"Do you have any idea what we are looking for?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "No," she said. "But I think we should look in the sublevels."
"That will limit our escape opportunities," he said. "We haven’t tried the top level yet. The offices of the people in charge will be up there."
"No. We are more likely to find hard evidence in the sublevels." With some effort, she recalled the layout of the facility. "This building is on the far side of the colony in Dome 3 and built on a ridge. The sublevels are set down into the ground, but the east side of the building runs along the edge. So we should be able to escape along the edge and scale up toward our hovercar."
"But—"
Not listening to him any further, she moved toward the elevator. She swiped the card and entered "S1" into the panel. "Quick, come inside. I got access to sublevel one."
He followed.
The click to the door signaled their arrival in sublevel 01. To their surprise, when the door parted, four blank walls greeted them. The room was empty. The light shone brighter than in the standard levels. The walls were stark white with no shading to break up the monotony of it: no furniture, no wall hangings, no ceiling tiling or seals. There was only a single door, with a shiny nickel knob, positioned to the opposite side of the elevator. In the middle of the floor, a tiled symbol of Zephyria rested.
Gwen and Roche inched quietly into the room. The only sound was that of their boots hitting the polished floor.
"Creepy, no cameras, nothing at all," he wondered aloud. "Only the door."
"Should we enter?" she said, a part of her still apprehensive. The part that thought she was betraying her father.
"Use the ID card on the other door."
She hurried over to it and scanned the wall around her. "I don’t see a slot for the card. Perhaps there is a flip panel on the frame. Check."
He did so and found nothing. "Try waving the access card around the knob. It might be a touchless scanner."
She did and the door clicked. They had entry, but she felt an even greater weight on her shoulders.
Judging by the room, security would monitor her entry and guards would be close behind in an attempt to capture them. Would her universal card provide enough anonymity to elude her father’s scrutiny? She hoped it would, but she planned to get in, find the information, and get out before they could respond. Her only hope was that security had been reduced here
and shifted to the gala.
Beside her, Roche reached out and grasped her hand tightly, yet with a sense of comfort, which told her she would not be alone.
Without thinking further, she moved into the corridor, and he followed.
The stillness of the sublevel and the faint ammonia scent rippled goose bumps up her arm. When they entered their fourth corridor, she knew she found something. Enclosed in the upper half of the wall, the wrong side of a one-way pane of glass blocked their view into the adjoining room. A faint glow of orange pushed out into the hallway. The strong pungent scent of ammonia strengthened.
She crouched along the wall.
Scuttling along the floor, making sure she didn’t allow herself to be visible on the other side of the window, she crept toward the middle of the corridor where the door was located. No sound came from the room to indicate that they had detected her.
Her hackles rose. She hadn’t seen a single person in the facility. Her intuition said she should escape, and fast, because something wasn’t right. Security should have responded to their access to the sublevels, but she hadn’t sensed a sign of them. She almost wondered if the Zephyrians had abandoned this level, and security was laughing at them. She pulled her cloak tighter across her face, wiped her damp palms against her pants, and pushed her sonic pistol toward her face, readying for a strike.
She inched toward the door, putting her hand down to balance herself, feeling the cool, smooth surface of the tiled floor. She peeked inside the open door and saw no one inside the main room. Sliding over to the other side of the door, she scanned the room. It was definitely empty. She stood and paused at the doorway. Thoughts of her father swam in her mind. Betrayal of his government might result in a more serious punishment than being sent to Lunara. What would he do to her next? Disown her?
"Gwen," Roche said. "Snap out of it. Remember the crew."
"Yes," she said. Of course, the Protector means more to me now than his opinion. Seth wanted answers, and I wanted to help.
She stepped into the room.
In the laboratory’s main area, banks of computers lined one of the walls, while another wall contained a row of cabinets. The large laboratory contained many medical devices, and a distinct bubbling noise came from an orange liquid circulating inside a series of four tanks. The smell of ammonia intensified, forcing her hand to her nose. Her throat tightened, suffocating her breath.
After a few moments, the sensation passed.
Beside the tanks were two operation tables with leg, arm, and head restraints. Her mouth gaped. Immediately, she retrieved her digicam and snapped several pictures to record what she knew she couldn’t describe later without proof. What the room showed didn’t happen on Mars, not the Mars her family envisioned. No human experimentation. People protected one another, and they protected their planet. Fear coursed through her heart, beating it faster. She purposefully paused to slow it.
Her throat was dry, and as she swallowed, she felt a gravelly pain. "I found something here . . . human experimentation . . . but I can’t tell for what."
"Why is this in a security center?"
"Roche, I find it hard to believe you don’t understand that government is usually more than you see or are told. This is a research facility as well, but I had no idea it was this kind of research."
"Come look at this." He stood beside an opened cabinet. "I found the pendant and a couple of uniforms."
She rushed over and grabbed it out of his hand. After looking at it front and back, she muttered, "This has Aethpisian markings . . . this bird. Just like the one on the video and the one similar to Kyle’s." She thought for a moment. "What are Aethpis markings doing in a Zephyrian security center?"
Her mind raced. Hans and Dakota wanted Seth and Chloe as prisoners.
"Let’s not find them guilty yet," she said, wanting to keep an open mind for the benefit of her father. "We should search the computer system. Maybe that will give us some clues to the mystery."
She moved over to the desk and inserted the card into the authentication input slot. "This shouldn’t take long. So Parker wanted us to go against the captain’s wishes."
"He was right," Roche said. "He’s sure that Seth and Chloe are in danger."
"And the captain believes I am in danger. My father thinks so, too."
"So Parker is wrong?"
She shook her head. "No, he is more right than my father or Eamonn. It only makes sense that they are in danger and not me. With my profile, I would be quietly kidnapped during the night, taken to a hangar, and shipped out on the next freighter before anyone found out."
"What did Hans Bauer do that was so terrible? You and Parker are really sure he did something wrong."
"It is circumstantial, but he abused his power."
Roche nodded. "Parker doesn’t tolerate government strong-arming."
"Which seems so strange, with his military service and his upbringing on Trivium."
"He had some pretty wild stuff happen to him when he served in North Tharsis," Roche said. "He doesn’t talk about it. I think it is classified, but he was a hero there."
Gwen nodded. "I read the report when I was prepping to serve on the Protector. He fought for the miners against Aethpisian rule and laws. An administrator was abusing miners’ work rights, and he lead a revolt against the corruption. They stripped him of his combat status, but he was allowed to transfer into military engineering. Ending any hope for him to run a unit or move up in the ranks to captain or higher."
"I knew there was more to him than a simple wrench head."
"A lot more." She paused for a moment, thinking about the operation tables in the back room. Had Parker been right about Seth and Chloe being the targets? Or were the two tables a coincidence? This was Zephyria, and her father wouldn’t sanction such actions.
"Do you think those two operation tables were meant for Seth and Chloe?" Roche said.
She shook her head. "They might be, but this is Zephyria."
"You know what this means, don’t you?" he said.
"What?"
"Seth was right. Jinx. Seth was right."
"I know," she said. "We should have listened." Seth’s intuition was correct, and she wondered if Chloe’s senses were a part of him, too. Perhaps his gifts were more than physical ones.
"Jinx," she said. "By now, I should trust his feelings."
"You couldn’t guess this . . . especially when it is your own father."
"No!" she screamed. "He isn’t involved! We are looking at this all wrong."
"You can’t deny—"
"I’m in. The computer system will tell us more," she said. A terror rippled across her skin. Her father had to be innocent, or her world would crash, and no amount of rationalizing would pacify her.
She perused the files. Hundreds of headings lay inside the system, but only a few caught her attention right away. She opened the one marked SETH and CHLOE.
Her eyes hardened as she read though the file.
CHLOE JONES displays exceptional gifts of the mind . . . SETH SMITH displays exceptional gifts of healing and strength . . .
She reached for her breast pocket and pulled out a datapad to record the information on the screen. "We can read this later. We don’t have time, and I’m sick with worry. Where is security?"
"We need to warn Seth and Chloe."
"I know. If they ever get hold of either of those two, they will be in some serious trouble," she agonized.
Flipping through the files, she found even more folders on the experimentation on other people and the results, which were mostly unsuccessful. The rest displayed the blueprints of the cruiser-class ships that had attacked Lunara, specs for other smaller aircrafts, and an entire header detailing the attack on Lunara. She recorded everything she thought important. They used six datapads in all.
"We have to get this information out of here, or Lunara will continue to be at risk," she said.
Before he could reply, a loud crash rocked the comput
er terminal, and it fell off the desk to the floor. Roche grabbed her by the waist and slung her toward the laboratory staircase.
Bullets sprayed into the wall behind them.
Rolling over onto his side, Roche drew his gun and fired several shots toward the open door.
The scent of burnt sonic-fire overrode the ammonia.
Gwen staggered along the floor. She hadn’t expected this violent turn of events. Her tumble had knocked her cloak off, and she immediately pulled it back over her head.
"Gwen!" Roche barked. "Grab the knapsack and head down the stairs."
"Not my name!" she shouted but did as instructed.
Roche huddled on the fourth step leading into the laboratory. He peeked over the steps, listening for movement from the attackers in the hallway, and returned fire randomly toward the doorway, trying to move the three guards he had seen through the one-way glass back down the corridor.
The loud report of the shots rang out in the confined room.
A surge of panic flowed through Gwen. Roche wouldn’t be able to hold off too many of them with one sonic pistol, which was rapidly running out of ammo.
Roche unclipped a smoke grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and threw it toward the doorway.
POOF!
Several people coughed, at least five of them.
Fright quickened her breaths. They had caught her now. Her father would disown her.
Roche’s resolve hadn’t ended. He pushed her farther into the laboratory area, strengthening her.
She swiveled her head, searching for an exit.
Roche’s eyes darted around the room. "Do you see anything? They’ll be coming shortly."
She found a vent on the far side of the room. Rushing over, she struggled to get it off. She kicked the dense metal several times. It didn’t budge. She yanked on the frame, severing fingernails. Blood appeared on the floor.
He dashed toward her and thrust his foot into the grate. A bang and then a pop echoed through the laboratory. Awkwardly, he teetered on his right leg as he extended his left leg high inside the vent. He yanked his leg back, ripping the remaining bars from the frame.
Lunara: The Original Trilogy Page 22