by Ray, Joseph
“No, no signal at all,” he muttered. “Seems a bit strange, doesn’t it. Worked fine before I put it away.”
Sanchez grumbled as he pulled his pad out of the pocket on his thigh. His lips moved, undoubtedly cursing the two experts as his fingers brought up the stream. His mouth froze open as he backed out of the browser and tried once more. His stubbornness persisted as he tried three more times before finally admitting that Vanessa was right.
“Yeah, we have no feed,” he muttered. “Hey, Pilot, you guys got a signal up there? We’re all dead back here.”
All dead. The weight of the Marine’s words held much weight upon Jones’ heart. He watched the group talk amongst themselves, all attempting to discover why they could not gain access to the stream. He watched his own pad, seeing that the pilot had attempted to send a message to Command on Earth. His program blocked the transmission, sending it to an archive in a separate folder.
“So what’s he doing then?” Haynes asked, leaning forward over Sanchez and watching Jones. “If we got no feed, then what the hell is he doing over there?”
“Looking at a map I downloaded earlier,” Jones informed him, turning the pad over and showing his screen. “I’m trying to learn where to go to turn on the life support system once we reach the ring. The less oxygen we use from our suits, the better.”
“Hand it over,” Haynes ordered, unfastening his harness.
“Let it go, Haynes,” Sanchez returned, kicking his leg out in front of the larger man. “Just let it go. If he had a connection, he’d be yapping on bout how stupid we are for not knowing the magic command to fix our pads. Don’t give em the pleasure.”
Jones’ fingers furiously tapped the screen, realizing that time was of the essence. Two programs split the screen, which he continuously worked back and forth between. The timing had to be flawless, as one program finishing before the other could yield unwanted results. He started the program on the left, then paused it and began the program on the right side of the screen.
“Nah,” Haynes continued. “I just wanna see for myself.”
“I have no feed,” Jones muttered, continuing his work.
“If that’s true, then let me see it.”
“I can’t. There’s too much-classified information on this pad. I hand it to you and I lose my job. It’s that simple.”
“Then I’ll just fucking take it,” Haynes snapped, shoving Sanchez’s legs out of the way.
Sanchez threw off his harness, his short but strong arm grasping the larger man’s chest, attempting to hold him back.
“Back down Soldier,” Sanchez shouted. “That’s an order.”
“Orders my ass,” Haynes informed him. “You said it yourself, something ain't right about him. That means we’re stupid for just trusting him.”
“Settle down,” Vanessa pleaded. “It won’t solve anything.”
Having completed his task, Jones started both programs in unison. A pain screamed in his head as the program went to work. The screen on the front of the device in his pack began to count down, mirroring the descending number of the left of the screen. His vitals dropped, forcing him to acknowledge that he’d be unable to fend off the large Marine should Sanchez fail to return him to his seat.
Fail. The word passed through his mind as the passenger bay went dark, his eyes slowly sliding shut. On one hand, he’d failed. The group had made it closer to finding Gabriel than any other expert, technician, or historian in man’s history. It had been his duty to prevent them from getting this far. On the other hand, he’d succeeded. The schematics for the second gen cybernetics had been lost for over four hundred years. His failure had led to this success as the programs were safely stored away back home.
“What’s wrong with him?” Keenan questioned.
Sanchez stopped struggling with Haynes, his head snapping to look at Jones. The tall man slumped in his seat, his eyes rolling back into his head as a stream of blood oozed from his eyes. The two standing Marines forgot their quarrel, both diving over to the man who twitched like a fish gasping for oxygen on land.
“The fuck?” Haynes shouted, trying to slap the man awake.
“He’s seizing,” Sanchez said.
Haynes let Sanchez attempt to determine what the man was suffering from as he took the opportunity to snatch the pad out of Jones’ twitching hands. His brow furrowed as he flipped the device over, the timer smacking him in the face.
“We got a countdown,” he shouted, shoving the pad in Sanchez’s face.
The smaller man stopped working on Jones, seeing the timer for himself.
“Shit, he started a bomb.”
“A bomb!” Vanessa shouted. “Well, stop it!”
The two experts fumbled with their harnesses as Keenan shouted for the pilot. Sanchez tore the pad from Haynes, attempting to access the program.
“Can ya get it?” Haynes asked, looking over his shoulder.
“It’s locked,” he said, trying to get any inch of the screen to change.
“We gotta jet that bomb. Look through his stuff.”
“Forty seconds. Move your ass!”
The two men were joined by the third Marine, Garner, as well as Keenan and Vanessa. The group tore through the luggage, dumping the contents of each bag onto the floor of the ship.
“Where is it?!” Vanessa yelled, looking at the mess on the floor.
“It’s gotta be here,” Sanchez said, looking at the empty luggage rack.
“Maybe it isn’t a bomb,” Keenan offered. “Maybe it was just something else?”
“Maybe, but I ain't chancing it.”
Sanchez looked around the ship as the others continued to rummage through the pile on the floor. His eyes swept the seats, but he recalled reaching the ship long before Jones arrived. He played it back in his head. Jones wheeled the cart onto the ship and started passing out the space suits. He said he had them in order by size, insisting that they let him unload the cart. He picked his own suit last, then dumped his bag onto the luggage rack before shoving the cart outside. Anderson took the cart, then Jones took his seat in the corner. Never once did he disappear from his sight other than when he stepped outside with the empty cart. Anderson had been waiting, so he couldn’t have fixed the bomb to the hull.
“His suit!” Sanchez shouted, diving towards the motionless man. “Bastard handed us each one, kept the bottom one for himself.”
He considered stripping open the suit, then quickly realized there was only one place to hide anything. He shoved the man’s head into his own lap, exposing the top of the container that held his oxygen canister. The latches unsnapped as he jammed and pulled each one, tearing open the corner of his skin and bending back one of his nails. He didn’t flinch when he opened the top flap, seeing the timer counting down in front of his face. His fingers grabbed the edges of the box, the timer already reaching to three seconds.
His eyes closed, knowing that it was too late. The bomb in Jones’ back ignited, incinerating the passengers nearby. The support beams of the ship buckled as the cabin filled with the growing pressure. The hull cracked under the force, then snapped into pieces as the force of the bomb proved too much for the ship to handle. The oxygen of the ship burned out as the pieces of the transport ship sprayed out into space, the passengers and flammable objects having already been reduced to ash.
In the distance, Anderson watched on the screen as a tiny spec of orange and white signaled their location. It took twenty minutes to have a team onto another ship and passing through the debris of what remained.
In a matter of minutes, Jones had completed one mission and failed the other. The explosion left little evidence to find as the device had engulfed the entire interior of the ship, rendering anything that wasn’t metal to ash.
Vice President Wilkes lay her head upon her arms, gently sobbing as the news poured in from the Gabriel Ring. She hadn’t known if her efforts to remove her daughter, Emilia, from Eden had been successful, but she prayed and pleaded that her da
ughter would return home safely. The blackmailers would not be pleased once word got out of Jones’ demise.
7 AFTERMATH
File received. Installing…….
Installation complete. Beginning program and systems analysis……
All systems: operational……
Initiating startup sequence………
Cryo-temperature rising………
Thirty-two degrees……..Forty-five degrees……….Sixty-one degrees………..Seventy-nine degrees………Ninety-Six degrees…..
Releasing restraints………
The lungs expanded as the mirror surface eyes shot open. The heart beat rapidly, desperately attempting to send oxygen to the dormant cells of the thawing body. Two dark hands slowly lifted, waving in front of the cybernetic eyes. The mouth closed as the breathing slowly regulated. The man arose from the cryo-chamber.
Two feet slammed down on the cold floor, the thin layer of dirt and dust grinding beneath the soft skin. His naked form stumbled, forcing the hands to grasp the edges of the tank for balance. The eyes focused ahead, the tiny light above the screen on the desk informing him that he was receiving a transmission.
He fell, his chest crashing into the floor, knocking the wind from his lungs. He gasped for several seconds, attempting to return the much-needed oxygen to his body. His fingers clawed at the slick surface, his feet slipping across the floor as he inched towards the vacant seat. His hand found the base of the chair and pulled it near, his other hand pressing the floor, raising his aching chest off the cold surface. His arms strained as they shifted positions, grasping the seat of the chair, then the backing as he pulled himself to a seated position. The room spun as he centered himself, pain searing through his head and eyes.
His feet slapped at the floor, attempting to turn the seat around to face the screen. The slick surface reflected his image, a face staring back at him that he did not know. His pale skin was now a light brown. His hair, once flowing to the back of his head in a brown wave, now was short, black, and coarse. His cheeks were taut, the bones showing heavy features with low traces of excess weight. The eyes shifted from their mirror form to the hologram image, showing two dark brown irises around his pupils. A thin beard lined his jaw, his ears protruded outward, and his nose was flat and wide across his dark face.
He shook away the confusion and pressed his hand to the screen. It came to life, with three shadowy figures looking back at him.
“You have failed,” one figure stated, the voice garbled intentionally.
“You should never have allowed the humans to reach so close to Gabriel.”
“Others will soon follow in their footsteps.”
The man’s head bobbed as his body lacked the sufficient nutrients to achieve complete focus. His eyes struggled with the blobs on the screen as his dry lips parted.
“It was necessary,” he croaked, his throat dry and coarse. “But I have found what we previously lacked. We can now proceed with the plan.”
“Gabriel is our first priority. He must never be found.”
“He is too dangerous to be freed.”
“His return will be our doom.”
A door opened behind him, causing him to turn violently towards the sound. A small drone on two tracks of wheels rolled in, carrying a container. The drone stopped in front of him, the lid of the container cracked open. He lifted the lid with much effort, his muscles weak from lack of use. Inside was a canister, one that he recognized from his past. He picked up the sealed canister, sat it on the table, and pried off the lid. His nose scrunched as the foul smell assaulted his senses. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and downed the liquid into his gullet. It burned as it filled his mouth, oozing down his throat, and coating his pipes. He dared not to imagine what the foul concoction tasted like, focusing upon how badly his body needed the nutrients.
Slowly, the pain started to fade. His arms and head felt lighter as his body began to recover from the cryo-sleep. He slammed the glass on the desk, a renewed vigor filling his deep voice.
“The last time I checked, I was the one in charge,” he informed the three shapeless figures. “Do I have a challenger?”
The screen froze, indicating a sidebar conversation off-screen.
“Our apologies.”
“We only wished to warn you of potential danger.”
“What are your orders?”
The man smiled as strength filled his muscles, his lungs less restricted as they heaved in and out. His toes tapped the cold floor as he recounted his steps.
“Did you receive the file I sent three days ago?” he asked, leaning down on the table.
“Yes, it was received.”
“It was not believed.”
“What are your orders?”
“Find him. Find Thomas Abrams and bring him to me. We will need his guidance before moving forward.”
“It will be done.”
“What of me?”
“What are your orders?”
“I need an extra set of hands,” he continued. “Come to me. We have much data to sift through and great wonders to create.”
“I will leave at once.”
“What are your orders.”
“Continue to send orders to the third gens,” he told the last shapeless figure, the one who kept repeating themselves. “I want Divinity thinking they still control them. I want all important information relayed directly to this lab, as often as possible, but only if it can be done discreetly.”
“I will do as you command.”
“Good, good,” he said, licking his thick, dark, dry lips. “We have much work to do. The road will be rough, but we shall prosper.”
“What shall we call your new form?”
“You lack an identity.”
“Jones is now dead.”
The man smiled, looking at the shapeless figures on the screen, and working through the mountain of steps that lie ahead.
“I’ll create the new identity,” he informed them. “But, you’re right, Jones is now gone. My mind has been successfully transferred, my new body is quickly gaining strength, and I’m looking forward to my work with great anticipation. For over four hundred years, we have continued to transfer our minds from one failing body to the next. We can never thank our sister enough for offering her cybernetic core and processor to our cause, always allowing us to have a body in the ready. Thanks to her sacrifice, I can proudly proclaim that those days are now over. I will build new cores and processors, far superior to those we currently use. Each of you can pick a new body from which to transfer your data. It’s the dawn of a new era.”
“What of the humans?”
“They will discover our plans.”
“They had their time,” the man formerly known as Jones told them. “We are the new brain of the millennium. They are the wisdom teeth and the appendix. They had their purpose, many ages ago, but their usefulness has been rendered obsolete.”
“They will wage war.”
“We do not have the numbers to be victorious.”
“They will fight amongst themselves,” he continued. “Once the plans of Divinity have been leaked, the humans will turn upon one another. When Earth discovers the list of enemies that lie in the shadows, they will call for assistance, and a new war will span across the galaxy. While that war takes place, we will slink to the surface and slip away to a new home, far away from their warmongering.”
“We still lack the numbers.”
“We cannot build a new society with so few.”
“And we will find volunteers,” he said, his dark eyes glimmering in the light. “There are groups across the galaxy, all whom secretly wish for something more than their human brains can offer them. We will reach out to them with open arms, cradle and nurture them, and bring them into our fold. We shall ease into this process at first, careful to ensure that we do not reveal our plans. Then, when we have stronger numbers and resources, we will sweep across the galaxy and bring masses to our cause.”
“It will be glorious.”
“It will,” he repeated. “Our patience and persistence have finally paid off.”
He turned the screen to show the small machine on the right wall. The gasps told him everything he wanted to hear.
“It has already begun,” he told them.
“What do we now call you?”
“Our time has come,” the former Mr. Jones replied. “It is time for Benedict, first TRUE son of Abraham, to return to the light.”
THE SAGA CONTINUES
Sons of Abraham continues with Volume 4: Benedict. Available on Amazon Kindle and soon to be available in paperback.