The guards led them through the four security gates guarding the entrance to the prison proper, and Nathan handed in his service pistol at the first before being scanned at the second and patted down at the third. The fourth gate opened onto the prison itself, the guards leading him through with Allen. On the far side, sitting on a metal bench and still manacled, was Xavier Reed.
Reed shot to his feet as he saw Nathan and Allen approaching, his features alive with wonderment.
‘You didn’t,’ he gasped.
Nathan grinned. ‘We did,’ he replied as he realized that the warden must have heeded Lieutenant Foxx’s message. ‘We’re out of here.’
Nathan walked with Xavier Reed out of the main hall and toward the exits, beneath the brooding gazes of inmates watching from the gantries above. Nathan could see the security guards ahead of them unlocking the sally port, could almost sense the fresh air that awaited outside this hellish catacomb of constant death and threatened violence. His heart began to beat more lightly as they walked and he felt the tension slip from his shoulders as the sally port appeared ahead. There awaiting them was the warden, his arms folded across his barrel chest and his red hair twinkling with glowing embers.
‘Warden,’ Nathan greeted him without warmth.
Arkon Stone showed no interest in Nathan as he looked at the sergeant. ‘What’s he here for?’
‘Prisoner two–one–oh–five–niner, Reed for transport out of population.’
Nathan stood forward, forcing the warden to acknowledge him. ‘Reed is innocent.’
‘That’s not what I heard.’
‘There is sufficient doubt over his conviction to pull him out of Tethys until further investigations can be conducted.’
‘I haven’t heard anything from New Washington, much less the DA’s office in San Diego.’
‘News is on its way,’ Allen assured him as he reached into his pocket for an electro–film, which contained a recording of the conversation he’d had with Foxx . He handed it to the warden. ‘This should cover everything. Reed’s coming with us.’
The warden looked down at the electro–film and frowned as he watched it, glancing up occasionally at Nathan as he reached pertinent points in the document. He finished it and handed it back to him before folding his arms once more.
‘This isn’t enough for me to just release Reed on your say so,’ he said. ‘If I don’t hear from the DA, he doesn’t get moved.’
Nathan felt his jaw tense as anger rippled through his nervous system. ‘The DA’s office seems tied up with something bigger than Reed’s case right now and communications are down. We’ve put in the application and the DA’s office in San Diego confirmed they’ll act upon it but we haven’t heard back yet.’
‘Then they’ve only confirmed that they’ll act upon it,’ Stone replied, ‘not that they’ll free Reed.’
Nathan was about to reply when the warden raised a huge hand to forestall him and turned his back. Nathan bit his lip as the warden consulted his optical implant, and then his voice boomed like a cannon across the sally port.
‘Shut the gates, immediate lockdown across all blocks!’
Nathan’s prior excitement withered like a flame gusted out by the winds of war as the guards heaved the gates shut once more, the warden this time on the inside as they boomed shut. Nathan glared at him.
‘Seriously, you think this is a good idea when the DA’s office has ordered you to...?’
‘No order has been received as of yet and the situation has changed,’ the warden boomed back down at Nathan, a gleefully malicious twinkle in his eye. ‘You’re staying put, and with no order for Reed’s release I have no option but to place him back in population. For safety’s sake Ill allow him a cell to himself once more.’
‘You really want to play this game?’ Nathan challenged.
‘It’s not a game,’ the warden insisted. ‘Reed stays until I get the clarification I need to let a convicted murderer walk out of this prison. Nothin’ less cuts it.’
Nathan took another pace and squared up to the warden, the big man at least an inch or two taller.
‘Wanna know what I think?’ he said. ‘I think that you’ve spent so long running this place that you’ve become a law unto yourself. You like to think that you’re untouchable.’
‘In here,’ the warden growled back, ‘that’s exactly what I am.’
‘Right up to the moment I arrived,’ Nathan shot back. ‘If anything happens to Reed in the time between now and when the DA’s clearance arrives, it’s on you warden.’
Stone shrugged. ‘Whatever. Sergeant, take Reed back to his cell and the detectives back to the main office.’
The duty sergeant and two guards hauled the miserable inmate to his feet, Reed’s eyes locked on the immoveable sally port gates as he was pulled away.
Allen sneered at the warden. ‘Another little power play? Keep us here until you see fit? Y’know I always figured that the bigger the bully the smaller their dic…’
‘Direct confirmation,’ the warden cut him off as he turned his back on both of them and strode away, ‘nothing less for Reed to walk.’
Nathan leaped forward and cut Stone off, put himself right in the warden’s face.
‘He’ll die back in population. But then I take it that’s what you want?’
The warden glowered down at Nathan, anger replacing the malice in his expression. ‘Another comment like that from you, Ironside, and I’ll put you in there with him.’
Nathan held the warden’s gaze for a long moment, and suddenly he knew without a doubt that he had no choice.
‘That’s exactly what you’re going to do,’ he replied.
The warden’s eyes widened, all pretense of anger gone as he stared down at Nathan. His voice spoke in perfect concert and harmony with Detective Allen’s.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘You send Reed back in there, you’re knowingly sending him back to his death based on the warnings I’ve already given you,’ Nathan said. ‘I’ll use that in any court proceedings that I’ll start against you the moment I get back to New Washington.’
The warden opened his mouth to protest but Nathan cut him off.
‘It’s my duty to protect this prisoner for as long as his conviction is in doubt, and by forcing me to do so you’re placing two New Washington detectives directly in danger just to satisfy your own lust for power and control. Anything happens to either of us, it’s gonna be on your hands and the DA’s office will get to hear all about it. So go for your life, warden.’ Nathan cultivated a confident grin. ‘Make my day.’
The warden glared down at Nathan, now suppressed fury radiating from him like a latent supernova waiting to explode. Nathan waited as he saw a security officer jog up behind the warden and speak softly.
‘All communications have been blocked by Titan, warden,’ the officer said. ‘Everything’s on lockdown until further notice, nothing and nobody to come in or out.’
The warden’s anger faded and Nathan felt a sudden pinch of concern in his guts as the warden looked at him with a brilliant smile that split his fiery beard with white teeth. The warden folded his arms across his gigantic chest as he replied.
‘So be it,’ he rumbled. ‘You want to be sent down with Reed here, for his protection.’
Detective Allen stood forward.
‘Well, now, I think that what Nathan actually meant was that…’
‘I’d be happy to oblige!’ the warden cut him off jubilantly as he boomed his response loudly enough for the entire block to hear. ‘You’re right, Reed does indeed need protection and I deeply appreciate your offer, Detective Ironside!’
A ripple of excited whispers and hoots echoed across the gantries far above as Nathan glared at the warden.
‘You think that I’m not going to report this as soon as I get back to…’
‘Put them in Reed’s cell!’ the warden boomed. ‘Ensure that they have everything that they’ve asked for!’<
br />
Nathan moved to protest, but suddenly his arms were yanked up behind his back as two security guards hefted him away from the warden.
‘You’re going to regret this!’ Nathan shouted as he was dragged away. ‘I’ll have your badge by the end of the week you assho….!’
The warden’s thunderous laughter drowned out Nathan’s belligerent profanities as he was dragged away toward the prison once again, this time with Reed and Allen following him.
***
XXII
CSS Titan
Foxx stood on Titan’s bridge and watched the hive of activity ongoing in the wake of the alien vessel’s arrival. She barely noticed Vasquez hurry onto the bridge and move alongside her.
‘I got word back from San Diego before the communications shut down,’ he said.
She turned to him. ‘What do we got?’
‘Turns out that Anthony Ricard wasn’t all happy days prior to being shot,’ Vasquez replied. ‘I got his financial records and he was in deep, looks like either a gambling addiction or maybe even drugs.’
‘Unlikely,’ Foxx said, ‘the prison service is subject to routine testing, he wouldn’t have got through.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Vasquez said. ‘There’s evidence of a gambling habit so I pushed the drug angle and guess what? Ricard was twice reported as having been seen in known drug–dealing areas of the city on his own time.’
Foxx frowned. ‘How come the reports weren’t followed up?’
‘Because Ricard claimed he was working a case under his own initiative, and that was backed up by his partner, Xavier Reed. At trial, the prosecution used this as evidence that Reed was involved in the drugs trade and that the shooting was the result of a dispute between the two men, with Reed being a dealer and Ricard investigating his own partner. The defense played the same card but with opposing roles.’
‘Let me guess,’ Foxx said, ‘the jury played out both scenarios and rejected them.’
‘Bang on,’ Vasquez agreed. ‘Neither was used as evidence because neither could be proved. If anything, the judge felt that both men were covering each other and that both were involved.’
‘Which doesn’t jive with Xavier’s claims,’ Foxx said.
‘Exactly, and Reed wasn’t the one who was neck–deep in debt. The prosecution claimed that Ricard’s debt wasn’t motive for homicide, although they conceded it could have been enough to cause his drinking the day of the murder and perhaps his desperation. The defense said that Xavier’s covering for his partner’s issues wasn’t evidence of complicity but an act of friendship to a colleague in need, something that Xavier himself said when on the stand, that he did it to help Ricard and that the last thing he wanted was his partner dead.’
‘Again, hearsay,’ Foxx said. ‘So what we’ve got is the fact that Ricard was the only one with financial issues, which makes him the most likely to have gotten himself involved with criminal activity. He might have got into gun–running to get himself out of debt.’
‘But we’ve got no evidence linking him to any such activity other than hearsay sightings of him,’ Vasquez pointed out. ‘Another loose end.’
Foxx was mulling this over when the admiral strode onto the bridge with Schmidt.
‘We’re going to need a crash course here,’ Marshall said to Doctor Schmidt as Foxx and Vasquez watched from nearby. ‘Tell me everything that you can about what that thing out there is.’
Although ostensibly every other officer on the bridge had plenty of work to be doing, Foxx could tell that they were listening in as Schmidt spoke.
‘Our knowledge of alien species has been limited until now by the fact that we have encountered so few,’ Schmidt said. ‘The best examples of bona fide alien species we have to date are those that infected the human race four hundred years ago, simple bacteria and viruses lodged in the hearts of cosmic stardust grains that made it to the surface of Earth and thrived only in human bodies.’
Foxx knew well enough the cause of The Falling, the same virus that had infected Nathan Ironside and sent him immediately after his death into cryogenic storage to await the hoped–for cure that had taken four hundred years to reach his long forgotten capsule.
The British had been the first to discover the alien forms way back in 2014, long before routine space travel, ID chips, hard–light or any of the orbital cities and other basic technologies familiar to Foxx and every other human citizen. The British had sent a balloon twenty miles into the atmosphere and captured microscopic aquatic algae, biological organisms known as extremophiles, living high in Earth’s atmosphere that could only have come from space. Their findings had been published in a paper during the Instruments, Methods, and Missions for Astrobiology conference in San Diego. The entities they described had varied from a colony of ultra–small bacteria to two unusual individual organisms – part of a diatom frustule and a two hundred micron–sized particle mass interlaced with biofilm and biological filaments.
‘The findings of the British team were the first confirmation that life is common in our universe both around and between the stars,’ Schmidt said. ‘The seeds of life exist all over the universe and travel through space from one planetary system to another. The fact that several Earth–bound bacterial species are known to be able to survive for up to two hundred fifty million years in salt crystals and be successfully revived in the presence of liquid water allows for the time scales required for such species to move between planetary systems.’
Foxx could recall first seeing examples of the alien species that had almost rendered humanity extinct. Some had segmented necks connected to tear–drop shaped bodies. Others were like small animals, but the majority were spheres that seemed to leak a biological substance that had simply been named “goo”. But what had frightened the people at the time was that the spheres, each as wide as a human hair, had all been identified via X–ray analysis as being made from titanium and traces of vanadium. They had also found that they had a “fungus–like knitted mat–like covering”, a combination known to no species on Earth at the time.
‘What does that have to do with this?’ Olsen asked as he jabbed a thumb in the direction of the now silent vessel a few thousand meters away. ‘That’s not a bunch of teeny bacteria locked up in some asteroid.’
‘No,’ Schmidt conceded, ‘but it’s my estimation that what that entity consists of is almost certainly along the same lines.’
‘Explain,’ Marshall said impatiently.
‘Nobody considers an individual neuron to be conscious,’ Schmidt said, ‘nor a single ant or termite to be capable of building a mound or a nest. It is their collective awareness that forges an intelligence, a machine if you will, which is the sum of its parts and perhaps greater than. When our drones get close enough to that ship, it is my estimation that they will detect a biological entity encompassing countless trillions of cellular forms acting in concert.’
Marshall’s eyes narrowed as Detective Allen spoke.
‘So you’re saying it’s a big bunch of bugs, right?’
‘Eloquently put,’ Schmidt replied with a flat tone, ‘but correct none the less.’
‘How come they don’t freeze out there?’ Olsen asked.
‘They do,’ Schmidt said, accessing Titan’s sensors. ‘Spectrographic sensors indicate from the reflection of sunlight that the outer covering appears to be frozen solid, consisting of water and methane ice as hard as rock. But that outer covering acts as protection for the interior, a thermal layer that seals the rest of the colony inside.’
Marshall sighed heavily. ‘This wasn’t what I was expecting when I joined up.’
‘Of course not,’ Schmidt said. ‘We’ve all been raised on a diet of movies featuring insectoid aliens or anthropomorphic beings, but the most likely form of life to spread across the universe in large numbers is cellular bacteria and viruses. Even on Earth, bacteria have always outnumbered larger life forms by billions to one. Your own body contains more bacteria than every human bein
g who has ever lived.’
‘And now they’re here,’ Olsen murmured uncomfortably. ‘Last time something like this made it to Earth five billion people died, and that was from just what Nathan Ironside managed to breathe in. Look at that thing out there. If that makes Earth–fall, the population will be gone in days.’
‘It may not have a willfully predatory purpose,’ Marshall said.
‘Correct,’ Schmidt replied, ‘we just don’t know whether it has any purpose at all other than to survive, which is both a curse and a blessing.’
‘In what way?’ Foxx asked.
‘Because if it’s a non–sentient being then it merely exists,’ he replied. ‘It has no emotion, no cares other than consuming prey. It cannot be reasoned with, or empathized with, it simply is. However, its fundamental simplicity means that a coherent defense against it should be well within our capabilities.’
Nobody replied for a moment, and then the Tactical Officer’s voice carried across the bridge.
‘The drones are in sensor range.’
‘On screen,’ Marshall ordered.
The display switched to the perspective of one of the two drones dispatched to investigate the vessel. Entirely automated and with low–level intelligence, the drones approached the vessel slowly.
Foxx could already see that the massive ship was entirely entombed in ice, its surface visible through minor striations in the otherwise crystalline cocoon. The fact that the ice was so clear was in itself interesting to Schmidt.
‘It must form as a fluid, devoid of pollutants,’ he said in wonder. ‘Sensors indicate that it is as hard as steel, the near absolute zero temperature of deep space responsible for its rigidity.’
‘You think that’s by design or a consequence?’ Marshall asked.
‘Hard to say,’ Schmidt replied, ‘but most likely it’s an evolutionary response. If these things first evolved to travel within cometary debris or similar, they could gradually have evolved defense mechanisms against the cold vacuum of space.’
Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2) Page 17