by Terry Mixon
That was interesting information. They had operational gates. Somewhere.
“My companions and I traveled through one quite recently. We’re not familiar with your world.”
She frowned. “I find that most difficult to believe. Unless, of course, you claim that you have traveled through a gate under the control of our enemy.”
Clayton shrugged. “I’m not even certain who your enemy is. This entire world and its peoples are new to me.”
“All this dancing around the subject bores me. I refer to the Asharim, as you undoubtedly know.”
That made him blink in surprise. From what he knew of the aliens, they were used to gravity significantly lighter than held sway on this world. They’d fallen a great deal if these primitive people were able to fight them.
He leaned forward on the stool. “Perhaps I might be permitted to question. From your accent, I would guess that your people originate somewhere in the Caribbean. Would that be true?”
Her eyes narrowed. “That is a name I haven’t heard in many long years. I find myself wondering how someone unfamiliar with my people would even know it.”
“That’s simple enough. I’ve been to many of the islands there.”
The woman smiled widely. “Finally, you interest me.”
Chapter Eleven
Chen had been expecting Secretary of State Queen’s summons, so he allowed only mild interest to show on his face as the man’s guards escorted him into the American’s office.
“You wish to see me, Mister Secretary?”
“You’re goddamn right I do! What the hell do you people think you’re doing?”
Chen smiled blandly. “I presume you’re referring to our repossessing our property on the Yucatán Peninsula. The spaceport, to be specific. I should think that that our actions are patently clear. You had no right to seize our property and we won’t allow that situation to stand.”
Queen surged to his feet. “This is an act of war.”
“Your original seizure of our property was an act of war. Our re-taking it is merely seeing justice done.”
The other man stared at him for a long moment before he apparently mastered the anger inside him. “On behalf of my government, I give you one day to withdraw your forces from the spaceport and release our people.”
Chen spread his hands slightly. “I do not need such time. We refuse to relinquish our property. We will release your personnel, however. In fact, that task is already under way as we speak.
“Now it falls to you to decide how our countries proceed. Will you initiate a war to seize property in our possession? Do you believe you can win that fight?
“We are both aware the United States military is not what it once was. China is ascendant. You would do well to consider your next words very carefully.”
Queen took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “If you think for one second that we’ll allow this situation to stand, you’re wrong. Others have misjudged how strong American will is to their sorrow. We bow to no one. That is something you should consider carefully.
“Send this message to your masters. We will forcibly eject whatever Chinese forces are still present inside the Yucatán spaceport in twenty-four hours. If they resist, our soldiers will use whatever force is required to dislodge them. Any deaths will be on your hands.”
Chen bowed slightly. “I will pass your message along to Beijing, however they have already authorized me to speak to this eventuality. If your forces attack the Yucatán spaceport, we will view this as an act of war and strike at you wherever we choose across the globe.
“Our navy is better positioned than yours to strike any number of targets. Our ground forces outnumber yours ten to one and they are better outfitted. Take this moment to save face or feel our wrath.”
Without waiting for a response, Chen turned and walked out of the room. His guards flanked him in the embassy car and on his way back to Chinese territory a few minutes later.
That had proceeded just about as poorly he’d expected. Good.
He honestly wasn’t sure what the United States would do in the face of his country’s provocation, but it hardly mattered. Everything he’d said was true. The United States could ill afford a direct confrontation with China. It was a fight they would lose.
More importantly, it was a fight that would distract them from the critical tasks they had before them. They could hardly exploit the technology that had come into their possession if they were busy fighting a war for survival.
That gave the Dragon an opportunity to act, if they played their cards correctly.
The expected courier had arrived to collect the information he’d gathered and to give him specific instructions on how to proceed. The Dragon had its claws into the highest levels of the Chinese bureaucracy. It would dance to their tune.
He considered his options as the limousine drove through the gates to the embassy. Once more securely on Chinese soil, he felt somewhat safer. The possibility always existed that the United States would violate diplomatic norms, but he personally doubted he was in any danger.
His expulsion from the United States was the worst threat facing him. That was hardly something to fear, though it would make his job more difficult.
No, it would probably be better to have his forces in place before trouble erupted.
The Americans thought they were clever using Area Fifty-One in Nevada to house the research on the Asharim technology. He had to admit it was an isolated, well-guarded facility.
Still, its very isolation provided him an opportunity. It wouldn’t do to have a direct conflict here in the United States, but the Dragon had personnel inside the secret base. In fact, one of their operatives was assigned as a senior researcher to this very project.
Doctor Tran Lee had been in place at Area Fifty-One for several decades now. The Americans trusted her, and rightly so. Her instructions had been precise. She made obvious her distaste for the Chinese government. That wasn’t difficult. There was much to dislike about it.
He climbed out of his limousine and sauntered into the embassy. His official tasks concluded, he headed for his quarters. The guards standing by outside his rooms were not only Chinese security, they were also vetted members of the Dragon.
He had no cause to worry that anyone had invaded his privacy, but he still instructed them to do a sweep in case someone had managed to place listening devices anywhere inside. He waited patiently for them to conclude their search.
Once they declared his rooms clear and departed, Chen settled down in front of his personal computer. This unit wasn’t connected to any external networks.
In fact, he’d paid quite a bit of money to be absolutely certain it was impossible for anyone to connect with it at all. Everything was encrypted and the external connections required both a fingerprint and voice recognition for a very specific phrase to activate.
Once that was done, the system still logged every action. He checked the file to verify no one had attempted to access it during his absence. No one had.
He activated the external reader and plugged the chip from his pocket into it. A different courier had brought it from Nevada.
The woman had met with someone who worked outside the confines of the base. Discreetly, of course. The deep cover agent had collected the chip from Doctor Lee in a manner designed to pass muster with the security people that undoubtedly watched her every move.
She’d then waited half a day before leaving it in a specific location where Chen’s courier had retrieved it. The courier had then driven to Las Vegas and taken a flight through Texas before changing identities and flying to Washington.
It was all suitably spy like, but very effective in making sure his connection to his agent was not compromised. Above all, that could not be allowed.
Once he had accessed the chip, he’d reviewed the covert images Lee had sent to him. There was no written report, but that was to be expected. Merely getting the images was challenging enough.
Le
e utilized an exceptionally miniaturized camera built into her glasses. The security apparatus at the base regularly checked everyone for bugs and other monitoring devices, but these were designed to be virtually undetectable. They were literally part of the frame.
The courier had to recover the glasses themselves in order to read the data from the camera. Lee had swapped her pair for an identical set at the spa.
Once Chen knew what the Americans had, he would determine what level of force would be required to infiltrate the base and destroy the equipment. If nothing were important enough to require retrieval, the task would be straightforward.
If there were an item the Dragon required, that would make the task significantly more complex.
He preferred the former case. If he arranged for the destruction of all the Asharim equipment, he would not have to see it removed from the United States. All that truly mattered in that case was denying the Americans access to the forbidden technology.
Forbidden to them, anyway.
If the United States decided it wanted a military confrontation with the Chinese, Chen suspected the Dragon would use that conflict as an opportunity to destroy the Indian-built Mars craft that the Americans had purchased.
Honestly, that could be the only reason the Americans were making the Yucatán spaceport into such a flash point. They had to have some means to access their craft if they wanted to contest Roger’s ownership of whatever he’d discovered on Mars.
The Chinese government was unaware of the Asharim. The Dragon would prefer to keep it that way for as long as possible, but that wasn’t likely to hold for a great deal of time. The best the Dragon could hope for was to ensure everyone on the Chinese-built craft belonged to their organization.
Then, no matter what happened on Earth, the Dragon would reap the benefits of whatever Rogers had found.
* * * * *
Kathleen Bennett stared out from the massive viewport over the engineering section of the ship at the debris swirling around them. It was both glorious and terrifying.
The way the ship was oriented, it seemed as if the planet was above their heads. It was obviously not Earth. The colors were similar and the cloud-covered view of the continents delivered the same impact as seeing images taken from orbit around Earth.
This was quite the counterpoint to the death and destruction she’d witnessed on her journey from her hiding place to the rear of the ship. She’d seen a lot of blood and pain over the years, but never anything like that.
She turned to her son. “Are you sure that you got them all?”
He shrugged. “It’s been hours and no one has turned up. None of the places I checked had any indication there were holdouts. All we can do is shoot anyone that appears.”
“What about this junk? Are we in any danger?”
“Probably. Again, I have no frame of reference. If something large enough comes along and smacks into us, it’ll rupture the hull. Nothing we can do about that.”
That was true, based on what Nathan had discovered in searching the forward part of the ship. The control room—if that was what it was—didn’t even have chairs or consoles. Everything seemed to be computer-controlled.
That might indicate the computer wasn’t worried about the debris. She supposed she’d have to hope this turned out favorably.
“Well, now that we control the ship, we have to figure out what to do with it,” she said. “If we can get it back to Earth, we can bring more of our people on board.”
Nathan snorted and shook his head. “You’re not thinking, Mother. The only way on or off this ship is through that damned gate. Unless you know of one on Earth that I am unaware of, that means going back to the base in France. You know that one. The one full of terrorists.”
It was her turn to smile. “Actually, I do know of another one. Remember how I used the controls of the fighter to activate the gate? I took pictures with my phone. There were two others on that screen.
“From reviewing the records, I know one leads to the far side of the moon and another one leads to a jungle somewhere on Earth. Probably in South America.”
“I hope you know which one is which,” Nathan said dryly. “I’d prefer not to open the gate to the moon.”
That was a concern, she admitted.
“That isn’t our only possible destination,” she said after a long moment. “There’s always that.”
She extended her hand and pointed. Floating just off to the side of the ship was something she’d at first dismissed as debris, but now seemed to be whole. It looked like some kind of space station.
Nathan considered it for a long moment. “Since we don’t know what the code is to open a gate to it, I’m not sure how that’s going to help us.”
“Do I have to think of everything?” Kathleen asked waspishly. “I’ve already seen an answer to that question, too. Look down.”
Her son leaned forward and stared out the viewport. “Is that a—”
“A ship?” she asked, cutting him off. “It looks like one, doesn’t it?”
Seated directly in front of the observation area and below it was the nose of what certainly appeared to be a small craft similar to the one she’d stolen from her ex-husband. Only this one seemed to be in excellent condition.
“I’ll wager this ship went many places that didn’t have gate access,” she said. “It only stands to reason that you’d need a ship to land on a planet with no gate.”
“I didn’t see any way to access it, but I wasn’t looking at every single hatch,” Nathan admitted. “Even if we can get inside, what do we do then? It’s not as if either of us knows how to fly these damned ships.”
“One problem at a time,” she said firmly. “If we can’t figure something out, there’s always the gate. A fifty-fifty chance is better than none.”
Chapter Twelve
Climbing up the mesa in pitch-black darkness was significantly more difficult than Harry had anticipated. That didn’t mean it was impossible, though.
Slipping out of the camp in the dead of night was probably the easiest part of this operation. These people were rescuers. They weren’t military guards used to keeping watch. Everyone was sound asleep by midnight.
He waited an additional few hours to be sure no one would get back up before starting out.
As the woman leading the rescue operation had explained earlier, someone had tumbled a large rock down the path up the mesa. It was totally blocked. A rope trailed into the darkness above.
The moon provided some illumination, but hardly enough to provide any safety margin whatsoever. He needed to go slowly and cautiously or he was going to fall to his death.
Forty-five minutes passed before he stood on top of the mesa. It was a fairly large swath of territory to search, but this was where his father had been seen last. If there were an accessible entrance to the base, it would be up here.
As he was above the camp, he felt fairly safe in bringing out a light to assist in his search. He was only in danger if he flashed it towards the edge facing the tents. That being the case, he started his search there and moved away from it.
It took an hour, but he found what the other searchers had missed. An opening that led deeper into the mesa.
Someone had used brush very astutely to conceal the cave, but once he suspected it was there, it was simple enough to move it out of the way and descend into the darkness below. He made sure to put the brush back in place. He didn’t want to chance the New Zealanders finding the base.
It quickly became obvious that the depression was actually a collapsed ceiling above the first level of the base. There was no telling how long ago the roof had come down, but it had been a significant amount of time.
The corridors inside were laid out in a similar fashion to the base in France, but there was no power. The lights were completely dark. There were also signs of combat. Nothing recent, but the scattered bones and armor of long dead fighters littered the floor.
He recognized the body shape
of numerous heavy-worlders. Obviously, they’d found this base and attacked.
There were signs in the dirt on the floor that led him toward the stairs. He knew the gates would be on the lowest level. Since his father hadn’t reappeared, the safe bet was that he’d gone through a gate.
Even though the base seemed to be without power, he wagered the gates were still operational. He’d find out soon enough.
The door at the bottom of the stairs was wedged open and led into a corridor. That was different from what he’d seen at the French base. There must be different floor plans.
The corridor led to an intersection. He chose to go one way and found what seemed to be a large power generation room. He’d seen one like it at the French base. Huge machines filled with light from massive cubes.
The cubes were missing from this room and everything was dark. That explained why there was no power.
He reversed course and went the other direction. Inside another door, he found the gate room he had been expecting. It was just as dark as the other room, but much larger. It was obviously used for cargo handling, too.
A small machine holding one of the blue cubes that powered the Asharim ships sat near one of the arches. Perhaps a makeshift power supply for the gates.
It had a large cable running to the arch, undoubtedly to provide power for its operation, and a second smaller cable that lay on the floor. That one was more confusing. Why did they need the second cable?
He shrugged. The question would answer itself if he could figure out how to reopen the gate to its last destination.
Harry pulled out a gate controller from his backpack and brought it online. It found one gate, but not the other two. As he’d suspected, this device was providing power for it.
Unfortunately, the gate was locked. Nothing he did released it to his control. He couldn’t even determine the last address it had used.
He eyed the cable again. It stretched toward the gate as though someone had pulled it after them.
What if they had? If the power supply was jury rigged, perhaps they’d needed a hard-wired controller as well. If so, they might’ve taken it with them when they left.