Worlds Away (The Interstellar Age Book 3)

by Daniels, Valmore

  Several women, who had been far enough away to have escaped the blast, ran to the stream outside the village, buckets in hand. I knew I would not be capable of helping fight the fire, but I had another job to do. I was the village priest, and it was up to me to help heal the wounded.

  My mother was on her feet. Though she’d also suffered burns, the look of shock on her face was not because of her injuries. She was staring in the direction of the common area, as if trying to understand what had happened.

  “Mother,” I said to her. When she didn’t react, I grabbed her arms and gave her a gentle shake. “Mother.”

  She looked at me, and her mouth opened, but no words came out.

  “You must help me,” I said. “My house is destroyed, and all the priest’s scrolls and medicines are gone. We need to make a salve to ease the burns. I need you to find pots and utensils. I will gather the flowers I need to make the medicine.”

  When my words sank in, my mother nodded and said, “Yes, of course. I have everything in our house. I will get them ready for you.”

  I called out to the more able women who were helping the others, and instructed them to bring everyone to my mother’s house, where I would try to heal them.

  As I made my way out into the fields, searching for the plants and flowers called for in Balam’s recipe scroll, there was one thing I realized. Though everyone else who was near me had suffered burns when the fire pit exploded, I’d remained completely untouched and unharmed.

  19

  Qin Station :

  Sol System :

  “What do you think you are doing?” Alice asked in a shrill voice when she came into the lab and saw Alex at her computer station.

  Forcing a disarming smile, Alex looked up at her. “Like I told the guard, I’m beginning to outline the notes for the Song of the Stars, and convert the sound frequencies to their light-wave counterparts.”

  “How did you get onto my computer?” Alice demanded, striding forward and looking at the screen. Indeed, Alex had begun to build a comprehensive analysis of the song.

  Shrugging, Alex said, “I used your password. I thought I’d take the initiative and get started. After all, the faster we finish this, the sooner you’ll let me go, right?”

  There was a clouded look on Alice’s face that told him not to get his hopes up, no matter whether they promised to release him.

  He noticed another person in the room following closely behind Alice. Alex glanced up at him and said, “Hello.”

  Alice introduced the newcomer. “This is Sian. He’s our computer genius.”

  “Ah,” Alex said, and got up from the chair. He gestured to the seat. “I got it started for you.”

  Sian, giving Alex an inquisitive look, sat down and went over the work. Letting out a grunt of approval, Sian said, “Good start. If you can finish this analysis, I can begin writing an algorithm to determine the most likely possible combinations for the primer.”

  Alice, seeming a little out of her depth in this area, gestured to another computer terminal. She said to Alex, “You can use that one.” To Sian, she asked, “How long will it take to write the program?”

  Sian bobbed his head back and forth, calculating in his mind. “Alex seems to know his way around a computer. With his help, we should have something ready in a week or two.”

  “A week or two!” Alice looked positively outraged.

  Sian seemed to shrink into himself. “If I had a team of programmers—”

  “No!” Alice glared at him. “No one else. Can’t you do it any faster?”

  “Maybe if we had Klaus’s notes…”

  Alice shook her head. “They were destroyed in the attack.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” Sian said. “It’s a complex algorithm. I’m sure Klaus worked on it for months before getting the raw data. At least we have that advantage.”

  As if sensing that any further browbeating would not speed up the process any more, Alice said, “I’ll hold you to your estimate. I’ll prepare samples and ready our subjects. The moment you receive the first possible combination for the bombardment formula, you will inform me, and we’ll begin the trials.”

  ∞

  For the following two days, Alex worked alongside Sian.

  The first afternoon, he finished converting frequencies for the song. After that, he assisted the programmer in coming up with identifiers on which frequencies were most likely part of the priming sequence.

  They didn’t engage in any conversations of a personal nature; the guard standing in the room was an effective deterrent. When they did talk, they kept it professional, limiting their exchanges to technical aspects of the program and the desired results.

  When Sian was done for the day, the only words he spoke to Alex were, “Until tomorrow.”

  A new guard came in to relieve the other one, and turned off all the computers, giving Alex a look of warning.

  With nothing else to do, Alex spent the night thinking about how to delay, or even stop, Alice and Chow Yin. Deep into the night, when his thoughts started to turn to his parents, Kenny Harriman, George Markowitz, Ah Tabai, Aliah, and even Klaus, Alex despaired at the enormous loss of life that had happened from the moment of discovering Kinemet.

  To keep despair at bay, Alex distracted himself by offering to play a game of cards with the guard.

  “It is not permitted.”

  “What about solitaire?” Alex asked. “What harm could it do?”

  The guard spoke into his communicator, and within five minutes, another solider arrived with a deck of cards for him. Since Alex could not sleep, and he soon tired of the more familiar games, he made up his own versions. It was mind numbing, but it was better than staring at the wall.

  ∞

  The second day unfolded much the same as the first, but at the end of the third day, Alex knew Sian was stalling. From what he saw of the programming, the coder should have been able to complete that portion of the application in one day. Alex was far from an experienced programmer, and he hadn’t spent much time pursuing it since he was a teenager. He saw, however, where Sian included several unnecessary redundancies in the code, as well as dozens of extraneous pages of instructions.

  When Alex followed a logic thread and found himself in an infinite loop, he was certain something was up.

  He didn’t give anything away, and carried on assisting as if everything were progressing as it should have.

  To test his theory, Alex, added a small code to the program. When Sian ran that segment, his computer’s clock would begin to run in reverse. It was a question, and soon after Sian ran the segment, Alex saw that his code had been deleted, and a new code was in its place.

  He didn’t need to run it: he recognized it as an ‘oxbow code’—a fragment that was once needed, but no longer.

  Alex knew that once his efforts were successful, his usefulness would be at an end, and with it, his life. Sian was obviously aware of this, and most likely thought he was in the same situation. He was playing for time, trying to help the both of them.

  In response, Alex sent back a code that would produce a false positive, intending to let Sian know how he should proceed.

  They did not share any more messages through code after that, or else they might risk alerting anyone monitoring them that they were in collusion.

  ∞

  On the fourth day, Alex had nothing more to contribute to the effort until the algorithm was completed. When Alice came to check on their progress, she ordered him to follow her out of the lab and leave Sian to his work.

  She brought him to an adjacent room with a plain table and two chairs. It was obviously someone’s office, perhaps even Alice’s. Now, it served as an interrogation room. There was one window, but it was covered with a blind.

  Gesturing for Alex to take a seat, Alice sat opposite him.

  “We held up our end of the bargain,” she said, her words hard. “You have not held up your end.”

  “Michael and Yaxch
e…?”

  “They have been delivered as promised. You, however, have withheld vital information.”

  “I’m not sure what—”

  “Please,” Alice said. “Don’t insult our intelligence. We were aware you were keeping secrets, but we didn’t want to press you until we had proof.”

  Alex felt his skin grow hot. “Didn’t want to press? You killed my friend, held a gun to our heads. I’m surprised we weren’t tortured.”

  Leveling her eyes on him, Alice said, “Don’t worry. Unless I get the answers I’m looking for today, I have been authorized to engage in more aggressive interrogation techniques.”

  Pushing thoughts of torture to the back of his mind, Alex spoke in a calm voice. “What information do you imagine I’m withholding?”

  Letting a small smile escape her lips, Alice said, “First of all, we are all aware that a quantum drive can only fly just under the speed of light. Your first adventure to the Centauri System took a little over eight-and-a-half years, round trip. Now, you’re back in half that time.”

  “We were—”

  She held up a hand to stop him. “If you’re going to come up with some excuse that you turned around halfway there, or that you were hiding just out of range all this time, spare me.

  “No,” she said, “we are quite confident you traveled to the Centauri System. It would have taken you the four years or so to get there, but the return trip must have been near instantaneous.”

  Alex pursed his lips.

  “That led us to speculate on the means. Up until a few hours ago, we had no evidence, but now we do.”

  She stood up from the table and drew the blinds from the window.

  Alex looked out into the large room beside him. There, being dismantled by a crew of engineers, was the Gliesan escape pod. A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Alex realized there was no way for him to deny it. He’d hoped it would take months, if ever, for someone to return to Pluto and recover the pod near the Dis Pater.

  “The moment we received word they’d found you, we launched a nearby salvage ship. It arrived here this morning. Oh,” Alice said, a smug smile playing over her face, “at first we thought it was just an unfamiliar design … until we got to the communications computer.”

  Drawing the blinds once more, Alice sat down and folded her hands in front of her on the table. “Now, please leave out no details. Who are the alien species? What is your relationship with them? What is their level of technology? What are their intentions here?”

  A dozen thoughts raced through Alex’s mind, then. Every one of them ended with the same conclusion: he couldn’t hide the truth from Alice and Chow Yin any longer. If he did so, they would see through it.

  Also, he knew the clock was ticking. Sol System was running out of time, and though he had hoped to play for that time, and give the nations of Earth a chance to gain the upper hand on Chow Yin, he knew he was gambling with the lives of billions of people.

  After all, sometimes it was better to side with the devil you knew.

  “There are tens of thousands of species out there, but the ones you need to worry about are called the Kulsat. They are like the Huns of the galaxy, but they don’t care about conquest; their purpose is the annihilation of any race who stands in their way. They’ve had millennia to build their armada of warships, and have destroyed thousands of alien cultures.”

  Alice’s eyes slowly grew wider as Alex spoke, but her mouth opened in a silent gasp when he concluded:

  “And they’re actively hunting for Sol System. For all I know, they could arrive any minute. If they do, we’re all dead.”

  20

  Tegucigalpa, Honduras :

  Central American Conglomeration :

  It wasn’t until they were several miles outside Tegucigalpa that the driver pulled off the highway and down a dirt road to a small industrial development.

  For the duration of the trip, the driver did not speak to them, not even to respond to Michael’s questions. At no time did they slow down enough to let anyone jump out. Even if Michael had attempted such a foolish escape, Yaxche would never be able to follow him. Most likely, neither of them would survive the fall.

  It occurred to him at one point that he was an old man in a young man’s game. The problem was, there didn’t seem to be anyone else to play his role.

  At the end of the country road, they turned into a long driveway leading to what looked like a storage facility. There weren’t any signs on the property or the building, but Michael spotted several guards wandering around, all armed with hunting rifles.

  Shutting off the engine after he parked in front of a bay door, the driver turned in his seat. “Say nothing and follow me.”

  He got out, and stepped back to open the passenger door for his two captives. They slid out of the car and looked around. The heat of the morning hit Michael like a wave. Of course, the last time he’d been in Honduras, it had been later in the year. High summer was nearly unbearable.

  Holding a finger to his lips to make sure the two kept their silence, the driver headed toward a door off to the side. Without knocking, he stood in front of it and waited. Michael assumed there was some kind of camera or recognition system in play, for a moment later, there was a short beeping sound, and the door swung in.

  The driver motioned for them to go in first.

  Reluctantly, and with a sidelong glance at the driver as he passed, Michael went in, his imagination running wild. Was he simply a lamb going meekly to his own slaughter?

  It was completely dark beyond the door, and Michael hesitated. The driver waved him in again. It seemed there was no other option.

  Michael stepped in, Yaxche following, and the door closed behind them, trapping them in darkness and silence.

  Holding his breath, waiting for the sharp crack of a rifle shot, or something worse, Michael was startled when he heard the hum of electricity surrounding him. It lasted a few seconds, and then someone turned on a light. He winced against it, but his eyes quickly adjusted.

  In sharp contrast to the ragged, worn building outside, the chamber they’d stepped into was high-tech. Michael recognized what it was: a security gate similar to the one at the airport terminal. Providing state-of-the art metal detection, x-ray, and electromagnetic scanning, they didn’t come cheap.

  The gate was completing its cycle. When it finished, a stocky, olive-skinned man with a thick mustache appeared at the other end of the gate. His short-cropped hair showed streaks of gray at the temples, a change from the last time Michael had seen him.

  Mind racing to figure out what was going on, he blurted, “Humberto?”

  “Sí.” He had a wide smile on his face. “It is good to see you again.” He nodded and focused his eyes behind Michael. “Yaxche, my old friend. You look well.”

  “As well as can be.”

  Facing Michael once more, Humberto said, “I must apologize if I alarmed you. We needed to take precautions.”

  “Against what?”

  Pointing to the security gate, Humberto said, “We found several listening devices planted on you. They have been disabled. Unfortunately, your luggage has a GPS tracker in it. We put an EM damper in the trunk of the car to kill the signal. Our driver, Migel, will drive to another location and dump the baggage to throw them off. Don’t worry; we’ll get you fresh clothes.”

  “What is going on?” Michael asked.

  Humberto motioned for them to step out of the security gate, and he led them down a long hall to an office.

  Inside was a sofa against one wall. The back of the office had a boarded-up window, and in front of it was a plain desk and chair. There were a few folders and papers on the surface of the desk, as well as a palm-sized portable holoslate. Humberto sat on the edge of the desk and picked up the slate. He tapped a few commands into it as Michael and Yaxche sat on the sofa, and then handed the slate to him.

  Michael looked at the readout. It was written in Spanish. He glanced up at Humberto.

>   “It’s a list of encrypted messages sent from a private commlink of a guard at La Granja Prison.”

  “A guard?”

  Nodding, Humberto said, “The first message, sent an hour after you left Canada, is to a customs agent at the Toncontin airport, telling him of your arrival this morning, and to delay you as long as possible. The second message is to Servicio Informático Rápido—the computer company subcontracted to the autotaxi service—instructing them to shut down the taxis. A third message was sent to a driver who works for Tegucigalpa Chauffeur Service, with instructions to take you to the Canadian Embassy.”

  “That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “There are several other messages—twenty, in fact—to various organizations and companies across Honduras. All of them are instructions to follow you and find out what you are doing here. Everything is set up to ensure their people are near you at all times. It’s easier to keep track of you if one of their operatives is accompanying you.”

  “Operatives?” Michael asked. “Whose operatives? Not the Honduran Conglomerate?”

  “No.” Humberto took the holoslate back and laid it down on the desk. “Though it could easily look that way. We managed to get Migel, who works as a mechanic for the chauffeur service, to pick you up first.”

  “You?” Michael couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You set this all up?”

  “No. Our man in the prison is a double agent. Do you remember Oscar Ruiz?”

  Michael blanched. “Yes. I never followed up on what happened here after I left. George and I thought he might have been coerced by the Cruzados.”

  “As it turned out in the investigation, he was one of their main sympathizers. Though he never condoned the violent aspect of the organization, he did not speak out against it either.”

  Then Michael made the connection. “Let me guess; he’s in La Granja?”

  “Yes. He still has a lot of power, and controls quite a few large companies in Honduras, though not in name.”

  “What does he want with me?” Michael asked. “Revenge?”