by Ray, Joseph
“Where’s the power cell?”
“Being recharged. It usually sits behind my shield when it is in storage. It had plenty of charges left in its cells, but my superiors insist that it be checked after every use. Can’t have a dead Commander due to a faulty power cell I suppose.”
Nathan nodded and stood up straight. His mind pictured the fear a common criminal must feel when their bullets are seen orbiting around the Commander’s shield, moments before the golden gun is drawn upon them. He knew that the crime rate was low on Eden, but now he was starting to understand why.
“Shall we?” Bastiian asked, gesturing towards the door.
Calloway followed the Commander out of his personal arms room, and further on down the long tunnel. The reached a thick, metal wall, its frame reinforced with thick beams, and four guards standing watch over the entrance. They each gave the same bow as one pressed a button on the control panel in front of him. Heavy locks broke free as the doors slide inside their frame, grinding as they inched open.
The air smelled stale as it blew through Nathan’s hair, blowing brown locks off his forehead. The Commander stormed into the hall, plate glass cells lining each side, each reinforced with a metallic frame. Each cell held two men, none of which looked to be from Eden, based upon their attire. A few recognized Calloway’s uniform, practically throwing themselves upon the glass as he passed. Their mouths opened, but Nathan could not hear their cries as the glass was too thick to allow sound to penetrate.
“These are the prisoners you see, all seven of them,” Bastiian informed him. “There condition is the same as we found them. It seems they are slavers from Mesa, traveling here to fetch the, in their words, unspoiled young women from our villages.”
“How exactly did you get them to tell you?”
“I assure you, Agent Calloway, that none of these men have been tortured. They’ve seen, with their own eyes, the power that gravity can unleash when it is properly harnessed. I merely had to mention how we execute slavers on Eden. That seemed to loosen their tongues quite nicely.”
“So what will you do with them now? Will there be a trial or shall I take them to Mesa for sentencing?”
Bastiian laughed, sending a chill down Nathan’s spine. He wasn’t sure what to expect when he left Earth, but having the Commander laugh at the notion of either a trial or transferring the prisoners did nothing to make him feel at ease.
“We shall do no such thing,” he laughed. “They will be executed of course. We do not condone slavery on Eden, Agent Calloway. The execution will be made public for all to witness what happens when you break the laws of our Queen.”
Nathan looked to the prisoners, understanding why they were so eager to see an Agent from Earth. He stared at the prisoner before him, noting the desperation in his weary eyes. The Agent could only imagine what horror awaited them at the hand of the Commander and his fellow Overseers.
“Then why did you call me here?” Nathan snapped, turning to the Commander. “Why drag me all the way out here if you’re just going to kill them?”
“I’d thought that’d been obvious. Please walk with me, Agent Calloway.”
Nathan was becoming sick of having his title and last name used in every sentence, but he followed the Commander out of the prisoner cell. The heavy doors slammed close behind him as Bastiian led him back to the front entrance of the Overseer stronghold.
“The times are troubling for our people,” Bastiian started, staring up at the high sun. “By that, I mean ALL of our people. Eden, Earth, Mesa, Parasus, and all of the planets. This attack by your Cybers is only the tip of the blade. Whoever is behind these attacks has a vendetta against you, as well as sinister plans in their hearts. I believe we should work together to end this threat before their plans see fruition.”
Nathan followed his gaze, catching the faint hum of motored traffic. As he was yet to see a vehicle on the streets, he was left to ponder where he was hearing the noise. Above him, and to the right, a long stretch of stone and metal reached high into the sky, reaching around buildings, and held firm by beams in the streets.
“Where are your transports?” he asked, unable to hold back his curiosity.
“Above us,” Bastiian replied. “Those are roads up above us. Our transports stay high above the streets, allowing for pedestrians to walk safely amongst the markets and storefronts. It also helps with the noise, though we do limit the amount of traffic that passes through the kingdom.”
Nathan raised a brow, wondering what would happen if two transports collided above and fell to the street below. To the best of his knowledge, there were no less than fifty people on a street at any given time. Any accident resulting in a falling vehicle could lead to several casualties. He shook off the thought, returning to the matter at hand.
“I don’t see how these slavers are connected with the Cyber attacks,” Nathan informed him. “I appreciate the thought of every planet working together, but you’re losing me.”
Bastiian dropped his head, focusing his gaze upon his guest. His features cast shadows on the lower half of his face and neck, displaying the fit state the Commander kept himself. Nathan stepped closer, not wishing for the passing crowd to eavesdrop on their conversation.
“An attack on the Earth, especially that of a military courtroom, encourages other aggressors to follow suit. Somehow, I doubt that the slavers arriving on my planet are a mere coincidence. They see that a small group is able to thwart an entire government, and their balls swell to twice their normal size. Had the attack not occurred, then the likelihood of these slavers coming to Eden may have been reduced. I will not allow for my Overseers to be seen as weak, Agent Calloway. We managed to avoid the loss of life this morning, and the deaths of these dogs maybe prevent more casualties in the future.”
“But there were lives lost,” Nathan snapped. “You personally killed two men this morning. Just because they weren’t from Eden doesn’t mean that their lives meant nothing.”
“Their lives MEANT nothing. In all your travels, how many slavers have you come across? Dozens? Hundreds? If you were raised on Eden, you would not feel so compelled to holster your weapon when logic dictates that you should fire.”
“They’re prisoners, not wild beasts. They should be returned to Mesa.”
“Mesa has no laws opposing slavery. Your mentioning of their return to their home world is an insult to the women they tried to take this morning. Do you know what would have happened to those young girls? They would be sold, Agent Calloway, to the highest bidder. Their tender flesh would have been molested for months, perhaps years before their owners grew weary of the sorry state their bodies would reach, and then they would sell them off as slave labor to a mining colony or some small factory. The youngest girl they would have taken was ten years old. Does the blood not boil in your veins when you imagine some fat, disgusting slob having his way with a ten-year-old girl?”
Nathan thought back to the Koranth sisters, the youngest being groomed to please the late Lord Elsmere. His blood had boiled then, but his position had prohibited him from acting upon his urge to kill the foul man. Deep inside, the Commander’s words rang true, but his training and upbringing had led him down a more civilized path.
“Don’t play coy with me,” Nathan snapped. “I know your sources told you about Lord Elsmere. Is that why you asked me here, to draw upon my sympathy about the sex slave trading?”
“I assure you my sources have said nothing,” Bastiian informed him. “However, I would like to hear this story.”
Nathan thought about it, wondering whether or not it was professional for him to discuss such matters. A voice told him that he could trust the Commander though he hadn’t a clue as to why. Somehow, that same part of him urged him on, begging for him to tell the Commander just how awful the man was.
“Joseph and I were called to Parasus to investigate a crime,” Nathan started. “What we didn’t know was that the late Lord Elsmere wanted us to travel to Mesa to retrieve his
property. Somehow, the man conned a father into using his four daughters as collateral for some business loan. I suspect that Yomiel was forced into the agreement, but we had no way of knowing without more evidence. I just stood there, watching him parade those young girls, nearly in their birthday suits, as if they were objects that he owned. Somehow, Joseph found a loophole in the common law and Mesa. Sure, they allow slavery in the markets that line the shadows of their cities, but they pucker up real nice when it comes to an MA referring to the common law. He got them back to their father, somehow, and I’m guessing you know of his trial.”
“So, let me see if I’ve understood your story. This Joseph, this Cyber, did what the human could not by freeing those poor girls from a horrific man, who forced their father into signing their bodies away. Joseph, or the champion of the MA’s as I will now refer to him, was then brought to trial for his actions. Do you not see the sorrow in that statement?”
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“It never is that simple.”
“Joseph acted outside of his programming. He killed a dignitary.”
“He put an animal down, nothing more. If he were one of my men, I would have him in the blue armor before the dog’s body grew cold. There is the difference, Agent Calloway. Your hands are bound by the laws of your people, and your ancient traditions and misguided sense of justice. Here, on Eden, we use our laws to free ourselves, to punish the wicked who prey upon the weak.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“No, it is YOU who misses the point. Perhaps I should not have called you. Perhaps, I should have called the people who set Joseph free of his programming. It sounds as though their blood runs red, rather than the green and black of most planets.”
The metaphor wasn’t lost on Nathan, calling people from other planets greedy, or poor of heart. He wanted to lash out at the arrogance of the man though he knew that the law prohibited him from acting against the laws of Eden. It was difficult, the emotional roller coaster the man was putting him on, slapping him in the face one moment, then praising the actions of his lost friend. Joseph was special, in more ways than just his breaking of his programming. Perhaps, by sharing the tail, his memory would be praised rather than tarnished. Still, he had a duty to perform, and slavers to save from execution.
“I need to speak with your Queen.”
****************
“This is getting us nowhere,” Vanessa barked, turning to the next article that mentioned the Cyber known as Gabriel.
The last several hours had been spent by pouring over each article, trying to piece together a timeline for the life of Gabriel, in an attempt to locate the Cyber and his technology. Thus far, they’d managed to confirm that Gabriel had left the Earth in 2592, and never reached a known destination.
Jones worked at a separate terminal from the others, pretending to pour over the same articles while secretly downloading the surgery procedure for the second gen Cybers. Twice he’d nearly been caught by the suspicious eyes of Sanchez, the small man refusing to allow the mysterious man to work in peace as the so-called ‘experts’ continued their research.
“At least, we’ve confirmed what historians have suspected,” Keenan added. “Gabriel was seen boarding a ship. While the fact remains that he was never found afterward, we can still assume that he never returned to the planet. Thus, we can rule out Earth as a location for the Cyber’s remains and research.”
“The ship was never found either,” she replied. “It was supposed to reach Taurus, but the manifest showed it never reached the large ring of the system.”
“Then what rings did it reach?” Sanchez asked, barely able to stay awake.
The two experts looked to one another, their eyes widening.
“You’re kidding me. You never thought once to track the manifest of every ring? All you have to do is go through the archives. Then you’d know what system the ship disappeared in. Thought you were supposed to be smart or something.”
The two went to work, their fingers feverishly sliding across the screen until they found the government’s connection to the Gabriel Rings. It took a lengthy phone call to the capital before they were allowed access to the archive, but having the Vice President back your efforts made many doors open.
The hours passed before they were able to locate the archives from the day of Gabriel’s disappearance. They searched through each line, looking for the ship’s identification code, which both of them had memorized hours earlier. They checked each system, one by one, ruling out various planets as they went. Keenan had a star chart on his pad, placing a red ‘x’ over each planet as it was ruled out.
“There’s nothing,” he muttered.
“That can’t be,” she replied. “That ship has to have shown up somewhere. Are you sure you were looking for the right code?”
“Of course, I’m sure,” he snapped. “I’ve repeated it so many times that I can’t remember my own pad number. The number simply does not exist on ANY of the archives.”
“Perhaps someone erased it,” Jones offered, looking up from his screen. “I’m sure this wasn’t the first time someone tracked the ID number of Gabriel’s ship. If it doesn’t show on any of the ring archives, then either it never passed through a ring, or someone erased it from the archive. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now, debating over where the Cyber disappeared.”
“So what are we missing?” Keenan added. “What is the one thing that no one else has thought of? We can all agree that the ship never passed through a ring.”
Vanessa jumped from her seat, frantically backing out of the archives. Her dark fingers slid through multiple files, searching for the file that held her current thought. Keenan looked at her, puzzled, then to Jones before standing from his workstation and walking to her side. He peered over her shoulder, watching her frantically flipping through directories.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Jones already said it, and you just repeated it,” she muttered, still flipping through the directory. Her hands stopped, finally coming across the file she was searching. The screen showed the picture of the system-to-system Gabriel Ring. Keenan’s jaw dropped open as he watched her open the archive, displaying the rows of pictures from inside the structure.
“Each of the big rings is forty-seven miles long, and five miles in diameter,” she stated. “They hold a crew of a thousand people, but they have to switch them out in a four-month rotation so they don’t get space fatigue. Think about it, Kohl. There're forty-seven miles of the last place we knew Gabriel went, left unchecked. The crews swap out so often that no one would have remembered him being on the ring itself.”
Jones perked up, uncertain if he liked what he was hearing. His screen went dark as he strolled over to the group, huddled over the same workstation. Even Sanchez had revived and was now standing on the opposite side of the station, eagerly waiting for them to reach a discovery.
“Look at these schematics. There are OVER a thousand bedrooms, perhaps ten thousand. They never knew how many people it would take to operate the station, so they overloaded the facility, just to be certain.”
“Actually, it was more than that,” Keenan interrupted. “They weren’t certain if they would be able to work safely from Earth anymore, so they built onto the large ring, in case they needed to transfer this lab to it. There are labs up there, bigger and better than this place. I don’t think they’ve been used for centuries, but they’re there.”
“Look at all this unused space,” she said, her finger tracing unnamed quadrants on the schematic. “These areas aren’t marked as vital components. There are no fuel cells, oxygen cells, water cells, or any types of wiring and technology that make the ring work. Maybe they planned to put an army up there, or the entire government in case the Earth was to fall victim to war.”
“That’s a ton of ground to cover,” Sanchez added, staring down at the schematic. “We could spend weeks, maybe months up there with just this lot. You’ll
need more manpower if you want this done quickly.”
“Will Jana give us what we need?” Vanessa asked, looking to Jones.
He looked down at the schematic, running a calculation in his head. To the group, he seemed to be thinking of what the Vice President’s reaction would be to request more manpower to their cause. In truth, he was stalling.
“The President was adamant about keeping a low profile to this,” he replied. “Asking for more manpower, and then parading them on board a ship to the Gabriel Rings could draw a lot of unwanted attention. I don’t think she would be able to fulfill the request.”
The group hung their heads, each attempting to discover a new way to search so many unmarked chambers. The ring may have been forty-seven miles in length, but the majority of the structure was built for making the protective shield ships reach the next system. In the grand scale of things, the actual area that would need to be searched was five miles long, and five miles in diameter. However, there were a number of maintenance tunnels that ran the length of the ring, leaving an endless possibility of nooks and crannies to check.
“What about the workers on the ring?” Keenan asked. “Could she request that a dozen or two dozen of them aid us for a short while? It would go much quicker if we used people who were familiar with the ring itself.”
Jones tried to think of an excuse for Jana Wilkes to say ‘no,’ but he foresaw every counter-proposal that the group would make. He ran the thought through his head, over and over, searching for a loophole that would make it impossible to search the Gabriel Ring. All of his efforts came up empty.
“That could work,” he finally replied. “We could request no less than fifty workers. There are just under a thousand people up there, but the bare minimal to run the ring should be no more than four hundred. I imagine there are medical staffs, cooks, cleaning crews, security details, and a few other groups that I’m not thinking to mention. The crews work around the clock, but I’m sure she could request a few of the off shifts work a little overtime to aid us.”