by M. R. Forbes
“Dozens of keys?” Nathan said. “How do you know there aren’t dozens of doors?”
“Good question. We don’t completely, except the door is substantially larger than the spheres. Fortunately, James Stacker got to a lot of the top secret records before the USSF destroyed them. We know that something large came down on the west coast, near the ocean. We know it didn’t hit as hard as an object falling from space should have. And we know the military got to it before anyone else.”
“Do you know where they took it?”
“They had a base in what was known as Nevada at the time. James Stacker was fairly certain they took it there. But it isn’t likely that it’s still there.”
“Why not?”
“I told you, they buried it after they took a peek at what was inside.”
“But you don’t know what was inside?”
“No. James heard about it from a friend of a friend who knew somebody who worked at the site. Some of this is third-hand, fourth-hand word of mouth intel, so it’s only somewhat reliable, but it’s better than anything else we have.”
Nathan rolled the sphere in his hand. This whole thing seemed so surreal. “But somehow, this thing convinced you that it would be a good idea to let these Others onto the planet? I don’t really understand that part.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen the message yet.”
“What message?”
Tinker held out his hand, requesting the sphere. Nathan was going to hand it over, but he didn’t want the old man laughing at him again. He tossed it softly, and Tinker caught it.
“It took them nearly a year to figure out how to turn it on,” Tinker said, putting the device back between the two pillars. “There are electromagnets at either end, pushing against one another and holding the sphere. When we reverse them so they pull instead…”
He tapped a small screen on the side of the bottom pillar. Both ends of the device separated, exposing a pair of glowing rings which started to spin. Then the sides slid open too, revealing a second pair of spinning rings. They began to cast light an eerie red light around the enclosed space.
“It’s better if you stay low,” Tinker said, lowering himself back to his normal position.
James crouched down beside Tinker’s chair, and Nathan joined them a moment later. Nathan looked around as he realized the spinning rings of light had created a hologram all around them, placing them in the center of what looked like some kind of recorded stream.
It began to play.
Chapter 8
The whole thing remained monochrome, the spinning rings of the sphere casting out light around them, rotating so fast they were able to paint the room with the saved imagery.
Tinker had a semi-bored expression as he watched it, while James was interested but not unfamiliar. Nathan stared, opened mouthed, trying to see everything in one viewing, which was impossible to do.
The hologram depicted what looked like the bridge of a starship. There were six different stations arranged behind a large display or viewport, with the one in the back being the largest and most complex. A single figure stood ahead of the recording device, its back to it. It wore a long robe, its head hooded, its face shrouded in shadow and its hands draped in the darkness provided by the sleeves. He couldn’t see any part of the figure’s actual body. There was no way to tell if it was human or something else.
Based on where Tinker said the sphere had come from, he was assuming something else.
“Does it have sound?” Nathan asked.
“No,” James replied.
Nathan watched as something appeared on the viewscreen, seemingly from out of nowhere. It was massive, and filled the entire display.
The figure didn’t move, watching it. Nathan watched it too. It looked like a starship of some kind. He had little sense of scale, but his impression was that the vessel had to be at least ten kilometers long. Maybe longer.
A dozen small holes appeared in the side of the huge craft. A moment later, they began to spew rocks into space.
Not rocks, Nathan realized. Asteroids. But not asteroids either. Ships. Delivery vessels. The same as the ones that hit Earth. The same as the ones that brought the trife.
The cloaked figure didn’t react to them. It just stood there and watched.
A minute passed. Another. The large craft continued to spit out rock after rock, sending them hurtling through space in the direction of the cloaked figure’s ship. The first round was getting close, and was on a direct collision course.
The cloaked figured didn’t move, but something happened. The hologram flickered, and then the first of the asteroids came in on a direct line for the bridge.
Something flashed and that rock was shattered, broken up and spreading out around the ship. Others raced past it, missing it and continuing.
The figure still didn’t move, but the ship started to turn in space. At least, that’s what Nathan thought was happening. It was hard to discern from the image.
A planet came into view as it turned. It looked like Earth, but it wasn’t the same Earth he had seen on his way from Proxima. It looked larger, and the land masses were arranged incorrectly. It was still fairly distant, but even from his position he could tell the asteroids were heading toward it.
Nearly a minute passed. The scene remained the same. The asteroids poured by the starship unchecked, headed for the planet. Every so often, one of them would get too close to the ship, a light would flash, and it would be destroyed.
The figure didn’t move, but something happened on the ship. He couldn’t tell what at first, because it took place off-screen. But a few seconds later something joined the stream of asteroids heading for the planet. They were difficult to identify through the red beam of the hologram, but Nathan was pretty sure what they were.
Drones.
He was using one of them to watch the scene unfold.
Another minute passed. The asteroids continued to go past. There were hundreds of them. Thousands. There had to be enough to blanket the planet, and the planet was huge.
The cloaked figure flinched slightly, and shortly after another object appeared. It appeared to be made from the same material as the sphere, but it was larger. It tumbled end over end, joining the asteroids in the assault.
The figure seemed to flinch again, as something happened in front of the ship. Something was approaching it. No, multiple somethings. More starships?
They spread out as they neared, revealing half a dozen vessels, each of which was probably close to a kilometer long. In unison, they unleashed individual beams of light or plasma or some other material that was difficult to define in the monochrome of the hologram. Whatever it was, it arced past the figure’s starship and out toward the asteroid-launcher. Nathan thought there was no way the beams could miss, but then they simply vanished, erased from existence a good distance from the vessel.
A dozen new openings appeared on the side of the huge ship.
A dozen beams lashed out at the incoming starships, two beams for each ship. A beam hit the bows of the ships. Another beam hit the sterns. Both pierced the metal hides of the starships, sweeping across the length of them until they met in the middle and vanished.
The defending starships didn’t explode. They just fell apart, crumbling into debris. A lot of debris.
Just like that.
The cloaked figure watched it all. Then it raised its arm, pointing to the planet. It seemed like it was only doing it for the sake of the recording. Nathan noticed its hand seemed longer and more narrow than a human hand.
The figure remained that way for a few seconds. Then it turned around, facing the recording device.
Nathan still couldn’t see its face. It was hidden in the shadows of the cloak. It stepped past the recorder without looking directly at it, returning to the main station and sitting in the chair.
The scene in the forward view screen changed. Something launched from the figure’s ship. It resembled the last artifact it had launch
ed at the planet, except it was bigger. It slowed to a stop in front of the craft, hovering momentarily before two narrow lines began extending on either side — stretching out, folding, stretching out, and folding again. The process only took a few seconds, and when it was done a giant metal frame had self-assembled ahead of the vessel.
Nathan looked past it to the asteroid-launcher. It was changing position; shifting its orientation. It seemed to him as though it was turning toward the alien’s ship.
The space in the frame seemed to wobble slightly, the interior taking on a strange reflection of the universe that Nathan was surprised to find he recognized. He watched as the ship started moving toward the frame until it touched the center.
At that instant, the recording came to an abrupt end, the rings slowing to a stop. The sphere hovered between the columns, still pulled open by the reversed electromagnets.
Nathan was silent for a moment. The alien ship had launched a device that appeared as if it had folded the space in front of it, and had used it to leave the area.
“What did I just watch?” he asked.
It was incredible because it showed an apparent war between the race that sent the trife and the race that lived on the planet, and he could draw parallels to what Tinker had just finished telling him about Earth. What he didn’t get was how it had anything to do with Tinker’s belief that cleansing the Earth of intelligent life, finding the artifact, and activating it would benefit the few who remained?
He turned his attention to Tinker. Judging by the man’s expression, it was obvious he believed what they had just seen was complete vindication for everything he wanted to do.
Nathan wasn’t so sure.
What was safe to guess based on the recording was that the cloaked alien had sent spheres and an artifact of some kind to Earth, just like it had this other green and blue and white world. It was also easy to see that whoever was controlling the ship that had launched the asteroids, they were much more advanced than the world they had attacked. They had cut apart the starships sent to defend it as though they were nothing more than a minor nuisance.
Nathan could imagine how the Centurion warships would fare against something like that.
They wouldn’t stand a chance.
“What do you think you just watched, Nate?” Tinker asked.
“An alien warship sent trife to that planet, and blew the hell out of the other ships that launched to defend it.”
“What else?”
“The cloaked alien,” he said. He paused. “It just kind of watched the whole thing unfold. Then it left.”
“Exactly.”
That was all he said. He sat in his chair with the same satisfied, smug expression, as though the truth was self-evident.
“Do you care to elaborate, sir?” Nathan asked. “Because I still don’t get it.”
“We can watch it again if you want?”
“I would prefer you just tell me, sir.”
Tinker smiled. “You have the patience of a Stacker. All right, Nate. Did you notice that part at the end? How the ship that launched the asteroids started vectoring toward the cloaked alien’s ship?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“Why would they turn toward that ship if they had a weapon that could destroy it?”
“Because they’re the same alien? Or maybe they’re allies?”
“A good guess, but I don’t think so. If they were together, why did the ship launch a portal and evacuate through it? It seems to me the Asteroid Tossers didn’t even notice the other ship until it put out the portal.”
“You think the ship was invisible?”
“I wouldn’t say invisible. But it could have been hiding itself from the other ship’s sensors. Think about it, Nate. Think about everything you just saw. I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“Again, I’d prefer if you tell me what you think.”
Tinker smiled. “Okay then. You asked for it. I think whoever is in that giant ship finds planets that are home to intelligent life. I think they attack them and send the trife as a kind of weapon of mass destruction, altering their genetics as needed to be the most effective against their target. I think the goal of them doing this is to prevent the intelligent life from advancing too far in technological achievement, as a preventative measure to keep anyone from challenging their dominance. I think the cloaked alien isn’t with them but against them, a third party to this whole bullshit deal, which is why I call them Others. I think they’ve been fighting the Asteroid Tossers long enough they’re at a bit of a standoff. But I also think they haven’t been able to overcome the stalemate.”
He paused to take a breath before continuing.
“Based on that educated guess, I think the sphere is issuing a challenge to whoever manages to find one and access it, and whoever is intelligent enough to figure out that it contains a key and that the other thing it dropped was a door. To me, it’s saying that the Asteroid Tossers have moved on, but if we can get rid of the trife and open the portal, they’ll come in and teach us how to defend ourselves, to give us the aid we need so that if they ever circle back, we’ll be here ready and waiting. I’ve spent years thinking about this, Nate. I’ve wracked my brain from here to fucking Proxima. I can’t think of any other reason why the Others would drop a message like that. They’re showing us exactly what to do without having to speak our language. But we have to prove we’re worth it.”
Nathan stared at Tinker for a moment. Then he shifted his gaze to James and back.
“How do we know these Others aren’t scavengers? Fucking vultures? How do we know they aren’t just waiting for us to open the door so we can let them onto our defenseless planet so they can claim it for themselves, and kill everyone who’s left? Isn’t there a reason the USSF closed the portal as quickly as they opened it?”
Tinker shook his head. “Yes, but that isn’t it. We weren’t ready to receive the Others. The trife were still here.”
“How do you know that’s what happened?” Nathan challenged.
“I know,” Tinker insisted, his voice rising.
“How?” Nathan repeated, not giving in.
“I saw it, damn it!” Tinker shouted. “I had a fucking vision, and I saw it!”
Nathan clenched his jaw to stop himself from arguing. He glanced over at James. For a moment, he had been ready to believe Tinker’s theory. But now he understood why James wanted them to be ready, just in case.
If they did open the portal, they really had no idea what would happen next.
Chapter 9
“And that’s how I wound up as Gus.”
“That’s disgusting,” Pyro said.
“Exactly.”
Hayden allowed himself a short laugh at the punchline of the mongrel’s call sign origin story, and then turned back toward the front of the Tourmaster, making his way up beside the cockpit. Isabelle had her attention focused on the road ahead, her robot brain incapable of tiring or getting bored.
The prior evening had been uneventful, which was a good thing. Hayden and the others had all gotten a good night’s sleep and had awakened at first light, refreshed and ready to move. A quick search of the gas station where they had stopped didn’t turn up anything useful, and they had gotten underway as the sun was rising on their left.
Four hours had passed since then. It had taken Gus an hour to tell the story, and he heard the two mongrels in the back talking about what to eat and challenging each other to taste another of the MREs. He was happy to listen to the lighthearted bickering. It helped keep his mind from getting too focused on the road ahead. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do once they reached Edenrise.
He had to make sure they did reach Edenrise first.
They had spent some time navigating one of the interstates, but Isabelle had been forced to bring the Tourmaster off and over one of the medians, crossing the grass and navigating the large vehicle down a steep slope and through a fence to get to the nearest artery. She had taken to slowing down and
nudging rusted junkers with the corners of the RV, shoving them aside and leaving dents and marks in the previously unblemished exterior of the camper. Hayden didn’t care if she left the whole thing a mangled mess, as long as it got them where they were going.
He bent down slightly, leaning over her shoulder to get a better look at the path ahead. They were coming up on another city, thick with burned out skyscrapers, the jagged skyline filling the horizon.
“Do you know what city that was?” he asked.
“Trenton,” Isabelle replied. “We will also pass near Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and Richmond. I can go around, but it will take more time.”
“Should we be worried about cutting through?”
“The Liberator’s base at Fort McGuire isn’t far from the city, and a river runs through Trenton. If the bridges are out, we will have to follow the river around toward the base.”
“Would that be a problem?”
“There may be drones in the area. Trenton is uninhabited, thanks to Tinker.”
“Fort McGuire,” Hayden said, thinking. The Iron General had been sending his attacks from somewhere. Was that it? “Is that the closest base to Manhattan?”
“Pozz.”
“Do you know anything else about the Fort?”
“I was only there once when I was brought north from Edenrise for delivery.”
“But you’re a robot, and you have a stored memory of the experience,” Hayden prompted.
“Pozz.”
“And if we had a terminal, we could get access to it?”
“Pozz.”
Except the only place he knew where they might be able to get a terminal was Fort McGuire.