Carthage Prime

by Toby Neighbors

  Nyx nodded. She understood that things had forever changed. If people knew what Alex could do, they might be inclined to force answers from anyone connected to him. The truth was, Nyx worried that VP Haley and the newly promoted Colonel Chastain might do exactly that.

  “I have a soft spot for Alex,” Haley continued. “As you know, he saved my life. What you might not know is that before joining the CDF, his colony on NP8261 was attacked. He saw one of our operators struck down and took it upon himself to take the operator’s place in an MP Defender.”

  “He told me that story,” Nyx admitted.

  “Yes, I figured as much,” Haley continued. “I picked you especially for him. My hopes for his career were high, and I wanted to pair him with the best controller we had available.”

  “You set up the ‘accidental’ meeting in the administrative offices?” Nyx asked.

  Haley nodded. “I needed to know you’d be compatible before making the assignment official.”

  She didn’t like being manipulated, but she also understood what was at stake.

  “He really operated the Defender alone?” Nyx asked.

  “The unit had been hit with an electric blast that fried many of the unit’s systems,” Haley explained. “There was no connection with the controller. But he saved one of our own, got the unit working, and took out four disrupter drones all on his own. The funny thing is, he didn’t pass our entrance exams. I even had him retested. He shouldn’t be fit for the CDF, much less able to operate the most advanced MBS in our fleet.” The VP shook his head at the mystery.

  “What are you going to do to him?” Nyx asked.

  “That depends on Alex and yourself,” Haley went on. “Step one is to get him up to the Republic.”

  Nyx looked at Colonel Chastain, who answered her unspoken question. “It’s back in the system, as per orders.”

  “For all we know,” Haley continued. “Being surrounded by the powerful computer systems and multiple battle suits might drive him insane.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “We’ll have to run a few more tests,” Haley said. “But we have the most powerful secret weapon ever devised by man. History will judge us for our actions, Sergeant West. If we misuse him, we’ll be seen as tyrants, but I think we have an obligation to the company to keep him in the field.”

  “Doing what?” Nyx asked.

  “Doing what no one else in the galaxy can do,” Haley said with a straight face. “He’s a hero at heart. He’s proven that time and again. I say we let him do what he can do. Our job is to stand by him, guiding him at times, following his lead at others, and to protect him from those who would hurt him or take advantage of his abilities for their own gain.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Nyx asked.

  VP Haley stood up, rubbed his face, and looked over at the monitor that showed Alex in his bed, talking with his friends.

  “I can’t deny it,” Haley said. “But he signed up to be an asset of the CDF. If he’s still willing, I think we can put him to use.”

  Nyx nodded. She knew there was no morally correct choice, but she could help him. She made up her mind in that moment: no matter what happened with Alex in the days ahead, she would stand by his side no matter what.

  Chapter 42

  A day after waking up in the medical center, Alex was helped into a wheelchair and taken to a transport outside. It was a large vehicle on oversized wheels. His team was with him, along with their controllers. Nyx stayed close, and he liked that most of all.

  After Alex was on board, Colonel Chastain and Vice President Haley boarded, and the vehicle carried them out of the small colony and into the flat plain. The plain was covered in fresh snow and looked peaceful and pristine, as if battle had never been fought there.

  Alex had been expecting VP Haley to speak to him. He had saved the man’s life twice, and all of his friends had been called in for a briefing—but not Alex. Neither the colonel nor VP Haley had spoken to him yet. They approached a shuttlecraft, and everyone hurried from the ground transport to the ship. Alex had instructions not to put weight on his leg. The bone was mended but still brittle. He needed rest and additional light therapy to make the bone strong. Twice a day he was taking calcium supplements, and he had been given old-fashioned crutches to help him move about without putting weight on his leg.

  He hobbled from the ground transport to the spaceship. There were rows of comfortable chairs in the ship. Ash and Sly were sitting side by side, and Nyx was only one seat over from them across a small aisle. Alex moved to join them, but VP Haley had other plans.

  “Sergeant Evans,” he said without getting up from his own wide seat. “Why don’t you join me?”

  The cabin was small enough that everyone heard the VP’s request, which wasn’t really a request at all. Alex sat down, stretching out his bad leg and propping the crutches against the next seat over.

  “Comfortable?” Haley asked.

  “Sure,” Alex said.

  “Good.”

  They fell into a strange silence as the ship lifted off Carthage Prime. Alex wasn’t sure what the VP wanted from him, and Haley was in no hurry to talk. The ship rose higher and higher through the planet’s atmosphere, and still Haley didn’t speak. They were almost in orbit when he finally spoke up.

  “I want to know if and when you notice the Republic’s EM waves,” Haley said.

  “Yes, sir,” Alex replied.

  “You would tell me if there was some reasonable explanation for your abilities, wouldn’t you, Alex?”

  “Sir?” Alex asked, sincerely confused.

  “I’m on your side,” Haley explained. “I always have been. I guess I see a bit of myself in you.”

  “Thank you,” Alex said.

  “That being said, you’ve done things that no one else has ever done,” Haley continued in a soft voice.

  Everyone else was chatting or absorbed in an app on their PIL. Alex guessed that the VP had been waiting for everyone else on board to get busy doing other things so that he could have a private chat.

  “Sir, I promise you I have no idea how I’m doing these things,” Alex said.

  Haley nodded. “So you’re an anomaly—that’s okay. But we’re entering uncharted territory here, Alex. No one knows what you’re fully capable of, and we can’t let other people know about you. We’ve got a lot of decisions ahead of us. But the most important right now is: what do you want to do, Alex? Do you want to stay in the CDF?”

  “Yes, sir,” Alex said without hesitation.

  “Hang on, don’t be so hasty,” Loman Haley said. “You need to think about this. It’s possible for us to remove your INC and give you a reasonable cover story for the discharge. You could join your parents on Skandia Seven. I hear that your father is proving himself to be a real asset to the work being done there. You don’t have to worry about repercussions from the company if you choose to leave, I guarantee you that.”

  “But I don’t want to leave,” Alex said. He felt a little confused. Did the VP want him to quit? Alex didn’t know, but leaving his team and going on to some boring job somewhere wasn’t appealing at all. “You took me from a place with no hope and showed me that I could be something,” Alex said. “I love the CDF. I love being an operator. I don’t want to give that up, no matter what.”

  “Even if your entire career is viewed under a microscope?” Haley went on. “I won’t lie, your abilities are incredibly exciting. But the power you possess makes you a target. Everything you do will be scrutinized by committee. You’ll have to give an account for every action you take and every decision you make. I won’t lock you up in a lab, Alex, but we’ll have to run tests on a regular basis. And once the other senior execs find out what we can do with an operator that possesses your abilities, well…I can’t promise that you’ll like it.”

  “So don’t tell them,” Alex said. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “It’s not that easy,” the vice president said.

>   “Sure it is,” Alex said. “I don’t have to do anything above what’s expected of a regular operator.”

  Loman Haley frowned. “You mean, we just pretend it never happened?”

  “Why not?” Alex asked. “Keep me with my team and task them with keeping tabs on me. You have people that watch for impropriety. Have them keep me under surveillance—I don’t mind. I have nothing to hide.”

  Haley cleared his throat. It was exaggerated, and Colonel Chastain was clearly listening for it. She moved from her seat to join them, and Alex could tell they had the entire onboard interview planned out. What wasn’t clear was the result. Haley seemed surprised, and Alex wasn’t sure if it was genuine or not.

  “How many people know about Alex’s abilities?” Haley asked.

  “Outside this cabin,” Chastain said, “no one. The pilots know something happened, but they don’t really know what. And they certainly don’t know it was Alex using his INC to sync with their ship.”

  “So hypothetically,” Haley said, “we could keep it all a secret.”

  The colonel shrugged her shoulders, “I don’t see why not.”

  Alex heard a gentle hum. He wasn’t sure if he was just hearing it for the first time, or if it had been in the background of his mind for a while and he was just noticing it. What he knew for certain was that it had the deep, low thrum of powerful systems that were transmitting large EM waves.

  “Sir,” Alex said. “I can hear it.”

  Haley nodded, picked up his PIL and spoke directly into it.

  “Pilot, how far are we from the Republic?”

  “Just shy of a hundred kilometers sir,” the pilot responded. “We’ll make orbit in the next few minutes. ETA at the Republic is forty-two minutes.”

  “Very good, thank you,” Haley replied. He powered the PIL off and set it aside.

  “Could you sync with the ship from here?” Chastain asked.

  “No,” Alex said. “I’m just aware of it. I’d have to be closer.”

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Haley said. “When you feel like you can sync, you do it, but don’t change anything. I don’t want the officers on board to know you’re doing it.”

  “Roger that.”

  “We’ll get everyone else off the shuttle,” Haley went on. “You stay put and wait for medical to come and get you. What we need to know is how you’re going to respond being on the ship, surrounded by their systems. We need to know if you can handle it when you’re not synced.”

  “But you want me to sync?” Alex asked.

  “I want to know if and when you can,” Haley said. “The one thing you’re wrong about, Alex, is that we can just pretend you’re like everyone else. I know what you’re capable of, and right or wrong, I need someone with your skills. The only question is: what’s the best way to use you? Colonel, as soon as we get on board, I want you to begin scrubbing the information on Evans and the Titan Team.”

  “Controllers too?” Chastain asked.

  “That’s right. We’ll classify them as black ops. I don’t want anyone being able to find them in our system.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Haley.”

  “This could work,” he went on, but he was merely thinking out loud. “A secret team of operators. No one knows about them but the two of us. Opportunities like this don’t come along very often…let’s do it.”

  Author’s Note

  Thank you so much for reading Carthage Prime. The story took a turn I wasn’t expecting and I’m excited to share the start of the third book of the trilogy. I hope you’ll read on for a preview of Titan One (Ace Evans Trilogy Book 3).

  Titan One Preview

  Prologue

  The drill bot chewed through the massive pillar of concrete with a steady, grinding sound that echoed through engineering space deep in the bowels of the Ahzco universal head quarters building. The man working the small robotic tool looked around nervously. It was clear that he was up to no good, but he was one of the few people in the company who even knew where the engineering space was. All the executives and managers depended on him, even if they didn’t know his name.

  Hundreds of people worked in the Ahzco building. They were dependent on the massive machines that propelled fresh air up into the towering building. The transformers in the dark, narrow, engineering space provided electricity to power their computers and devices. Water, sanitation, networking, heating and cooling, it all depended on massive machines under the building. Not to mention the dozens of support pillars that created a steady foundation for a building that was over a kilometer tall were all located in a space slightly taller than two meters, with bare concrete floors and poor ventilation.

  The man looked around his domain and smiled. He had served Ahzco faithfully for years. His job was to keep the big machines under the building functioning. No one liked it down in the hot, crowded, engineering space, but that was finally working in his favor. The odds of getting caught drilling into the support pillars was very low. A beep sounded once the drill bot had reached the desired depth inside the thick column. The man pressed a button and the drill bot reversed, quickly propelling itself out of the hole it had made.

  He took the small robotic tool and returned it to the case it was kept in. From a separate bag he took a long cylindrical explosive device. He hadn’t made it. The explosives were delivered to him by someone outside the company. He slipped the explosive into the pillar. It had a small detonator with a wire receiver to pick up the signal that would arm and eventually set off the explosion. The man packed the hole with putty that perfectly matched the concrete. The only trace of what he had done to the pillar would be the short, wire protruding from what appeared to be seamless concrete.

  His work done, the man began to gather his tools. No one knew what he was up to. He could have spent the entire day loitering in the engineering space without raising suspicion. But no one spent more time down in the engineering space than absolutely necessary. It was hot, humid, dark and foul down in the bowels of the massive building. Yet his job required him to monitor and maintain the machines that kept the building functioning. Unfortunately, his compensation was not equal to the conditions he endured to ensure that those at the top of the company’s workforce had the essential elements needed to do their job. It was the primary reason he had been approached with an offer that far exceeded his yearly wages. All he had to do was plant the devices, then take the small fortune he was being paid and leave the system. Others would do the truly dastardly work.

  Chapter 1

  “Where are we going?” Alex asked.

  Executive Vice President of Security, Loman Haley, turned around and took a sip from the flask he kept inside his coat pocket before answering.

  “To Arcadia,” Loman said, once his sip burned down his throat and began to spread heat through his body. He found that alcohol helped him to relax in stressful situations. And while he didn’t mind confrontation, his job required him at times to utilize his skills of manipulation. It was a distasteful practice in his mind.

  “Arcadia? I don’t understand,” Alex said.

  “You’re the hero of Carthage,” Loman said as he was announcing Alex’s new title to the world. “You saved the company, Alex. There needs to be recognition for that.”

  “You said we weren’t supposed to talk about it,” Alex said.

  “And you aren’t... not the details anyway,” Loman confirmed. “We’ll come up with a suitable cover story. But the bottom line is that you and your team, in our state of the art Titan battle suits, saved the day. That’s what the people want to hear.”

  Loman looked at the small group he had summoned to the Captain’s study on the carrier ship Republic. Three Operators, and three Controllers — the optics were perfect.

  “So we’re in marketing now?” Ash asked.

  She was the one he worried about. The fearless Operator who had no filter might be a problem, but she also played the perfect counter point to Alex’s “good-boy” image
.

  “You’re employees of a galactic corporation that has many, many needs,” Loman said. “Your first priority is the security of the company’s employees and assets. To that end, I need to put you together with some of our top security administrators. There has been a systematic attack against us, and if we don’t find a way to fight back, we could all be out of work.”

  It was a grandiose statement, but true non-the-less.

  “But, while you’re on the Ahzco homeworld,” Loman continued. “We can let the company and the shareholders known that they’re in very capable hands. Think of it as a mini-vacation. Have any of you ever been to Arcadia?”

  They shook their heads. Loman already knew the answer. Arcadia was an old world, one of the first colonized planets, and essentially one massive city. It wasn’t just a level one planet, it was the planet, home of the rich and famous. Every major corporation had their headquarters on Arcadia. Most holo-films were made there. It was a planet of dreams and opportunities. If you could make it on Arcadia, you could make it anywhere.

  “It’s a fabulous place and you’ll have plenty to time to explore, trust me,” Loman said. “We’ll give you all a bonus for your heroics on Carthage Prime. You’ll have credits to spend, and everything you ever wanted or thought you might possibly want, is available there. Trust me, you’re going to love it.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Sly said.

  “That’s the spirit,” Loman said.

  “We’re appreciative, don’t get me wrong,” Alex said. “But, I thought we had work to do. You tasked us with finding who was behind the false information about Carthage Prime.”

  “That’s right,” Loman said. “Which is why I’m setting up a meeting with you and my top investigator, Ciara Prince.”