by Don Foxe
“Reinhardt teaches there?”
“He does something there, but he doesn't teach, lecture, or have any notable interaction with administration, faculty, or students. They moved the school employees out and moved their own people in about six months ago.”
“You think he’s creating a chemical formula to break up the UEC?” she asked.
“UEC is moving toward space more every day,” he replied. “Space platforms are growing. Mars is receiving more people. Space Fleet will soon be its own branch of the military,” he confided. “That means genetic research and the psychological difficulties of humans living in hostile environments is back at the forefront. Reinhardt has offices on EMS2 and research labs in Toronto and Atlanta. Whatever he’s doing in Hattiesburg is off the books. I’m of the opinion he’s working on alternatives to the directives he receives from the UEC.”
“When he finally comes out against them, he can present an argument against unification, and provide proof of the dangers associated with eliminating borders and cross-pollinating the species,” Driver mused aloud.
“Something like that,” Tab agreed. He liked the MP. She had a brain and was not afraid to use it. “What can you add?”
With a nod of her head, she provided the information she thought relevant.
“Forty-five miles south of Southern University are facilities that once belonged to the old space exploration group, NASA. Originally, it was a propulsion testing facility. They built it on the border of a wilderness preserve to prevent anything going boom killing civilians. Over the decades it bounced from one government agency to another, but always had something to do with space flight. A year ago it was sold off to private investors. They official word is the facilities will be used to develop and test new propulsion systems for in-atmosphere transportation.”
“Interesting timing,” Tab agreed.
“More interesting is the VIPs currently descending on the location. We received a heads-up to expect a number of private shuttles and the security accompanying the honchos. It’s a private launch party. Get it? ‘Launch’ party. Launch pads.”
“I’ll laugh later,” he assured her. “Do you know who the guests are?”
“Not all of them, but I’ve seen reports naming a couple of media moguls, at least one UEC representative, and an officer of the US Navy.”
“The Navy is represented,” Tab repeated. “I didn’t see anything about this.”
“The report didn’t come from official sources,” she confessed. “Meridian is a bit boring, as you can imagine. When a late-model government issued semi-hover ground shuttle passed through, a couple of jet-jockies decided to use it for practice. Target acquisition. They laser pinged it all the way to the no-fly zone east of the wilderness.”
“Navy markings on the ground shuttle?”
“Better,” she replied, calling for a refill of her tea before continuing. “Made a pit stop for the passenger to relieve himself. Pilot said the zoom on his laser cannon allowed him to read his nameplate. Hawks.”
“Going to a party or a confab?”
“After the scary story you just told, I’m believing your conspiracy theory more and more,” she admitted.
“I was going to take a look around the facilities in Hattiesburg. Looks like I might take a quick trip south after that,” he said.
“You need directions?”
“Have ‘em to the university. Old style. If you can get me to the old NASA site?”
“Pay the bill, Colonel,” she said. “Other than forced to use old highways and byways, nothing in Mississippi is hard to find.”
CHAPTER 14
UESE HQ. TORONTO
“Following a hunch, or just revisiting old trails?”
Director Cassel asked the question as soon as he entered the secure room. Patterson sat at the lone table, her old computer placed in front of her, the screen dark.
“The same stumbling block,” she replied. “You checking up on me, Paris?”
“Time on my hands,” he said. “I saw your code flash when you entered the building earlier. I wasn’t going to bother you, but I have to admit I’m still curious about Tab myself,” he said. “Never believed the suicide, but never saw proof of foul play in the reports from the NCIS investigation.”
“If I could determine why Tab was on the edge of that wilderness preserve, assuming he did not travel from D.C. to Louisiana to find a swamp monster, maybe it would clue me to what he was working on.”
“You had access to his investigation files,” Cassel reminded her. “Nothing in them related to Louisiana, or anything along that part of the gulf?”
“Tab was old school. He kept things out of the files so no one would get wind of him looking at them,” she replied. “His personal pad had that bogus journal. The one proving he was going through an emotional crisis.”
“Not to play Devil’s Advocate, but Marine, Naval, and even Nathan Trent’s computer people would not say the pad had been tampered with. Files, date stamps, back logs all said those were legit entries, and made by Tab.”
“Bullshit,” the former Admiral answered. “They didn’t read like anything Tab would write.”
“They progressively degenerated,” Cassel countered. “Exactly the kind of consistent lack of cohesion a mental break would cause.”
“First, Tab was too grounded to go emotional bonkers. Second, it wasn’t the entries, but the use of words.”
“I admit I only met the man a couple of times,” Cassel said, “but I remember he used words.”
“Not if he could think of a short-cut,” Patterson replied. “You know how Coop is always giving people nicknames? He says it’s because the nickname is shorter, easier to use in tense situations.”
“Always felt left out,” Cassel admitted. “Never got a nickname from him.”
“Not much can be done with Paris,” she said. “And I was already Pam. The point I’m trying to make is Tab did that with everything. He said it helped him remember strings of information by assigning a simple keyword. A trigger mechanism.”
“No triggers in the journal?”
“Not a one,” Patterson confirmed. “The one hand-written note recovered was more his style.” She pulled a paper with a copy of a note. “In this case numbers and words, but I have no idea what it means. Every top cypher and linguist in the country took a stab at it. Every possibility led nowhere.”
“Map coordinates?”
“Nope, and not star coordinates either.”
“Dates or times?”
“Not that make sense.”
“Old fashion country codes, zip codes, or area codes?”
“Nope, and Nope, and No.”
“I give,” the security chief said. “If it was something simple, you, or someone, would have figured it out years ago.”
“Or it’s so simple we can’t see it,” Pam replied.
Dorm
“Twenty, twenty-two, and four?”
Chaspi sat cross-legged on her bunk.
“Those were the first set of numbers on the top line of the note,” Stacey said. “You can see a separation, and then he wrote fifty-nine, sixty-five, and one-hundred ninety-eight.”
“Handwritten?” Billy asked. He sat on the bunk, next to Chaspi, with his back against the wall, his legs straight out, feet dangling over the edge.
“Yep,” Stacey answered. She sat at the student desk, her back to the data terminal and display system. The system idle. “The paper was found on the floorboard of the vehicle. Pam’s notes indicated she believed it was the key to solving Barnwell’s death, but no one could decipher the numbers.”
“You said there were words, too,” Rosz prompted. He sat in his comfort place, on the floor, supported by the wall.
“Second line had the number 31, and then Montague Research,” she said. “Before anyone asks, there was a massive attempt to determine what Montague Research meant. The closest match came from the early twenty-first century. Montague Mineral Research, Switzerlan
d. Henri Montague researched mineral properties, and he explored caves. The company has been gone for decades, and no one remembers the research facilities.”
“None of the numbers or words relate to anything musical I can think of,” Rosz said. “The last line?”
“Fifty-nine, ten, and six-hundred seven, written six, zero, and seven,” she answered.
Chaspi uncrossed her legs, spread them wide, and leaned forward in a display of flexibility that ended with her elbows on the bed. “There must be somewhere we can start?”
The blue alien from Fell turned to the desk and waved her hand over the display terminal, spoke a command, and called up a map of the region around the Honey Island Cypress Swamp. The bayou ran northeast of Slidell, Louisiana. This is where Col. Barnwell’s clothes and transport were found. She zoomed in and out, and moved the image left and right.
As the other three watched, she fiddled with the display. It transformed into 3-d, switched to a weather model, layered decades-old maps, zoomed out and slow zoomed back in until she asked, “What does this mean?”
CHAPTER 15
Dojo
Rosz stood left of center mat. Two escrima sticks held waist-high. His MUSIC ROCKS sweatshirt earning the name as a hard beat pounded through his earbuds. Dark, wet stains trailed from under his armpits, across his chest and upper back. His loose cotton pants were rolled at the bottom to prevent tripping as he moved. His bare feet exposed, the three toes splayed for balance.
“Your love of music speaks to the rhythm of your kioi, your fighting spirit,” Sensei said. The master stood far right of the mat’s center. He held a long stick. His previous attacks relentless against the young Bosine.
The second day of Rosz and Billy’s lessons began with Sensei handing Rosz two sticks. Both rattan, twenty-four-inches long, about an inch thick.
“Sticks?” Rosz asked. His doe-eyes narrowed as he addressed the shorter, thicker Japanese. “I thought you were going to teach me karate.”
“You did not come to my dojo to learn karate,” Sensei replied. “You came to learn to defend yourself and to protect others. Karate takes years of disciplined practice to master. You have to train your body to act without hesitation. I intend to train your kioi, the fighting spirit within you.” He fist-pumped his own chest for emphasis.
“Music, therefore rhythm is part of that spirit. Those sticks are called escrima or bastons. The rattan is from a vine that grows in Southeast Asia. The wood is hard, durable, and will never splinter. The baston can counter a bladed weapon. Unlike many weapons, you can carry sticks anywhere. If you try to take a knife with you, it will eventually be taken by an authority.”
“So I have sticks, and I have rhythm. I still don’t get it.”
“Fighting with bastons is one of the few techniques where someone does not first require hand-to-hand combat skills,” Sensei explained. “You only need to dance.”
“Dance? Seriously? If I am attacked, I’m supposed to dance with them.” Rosz turned to Billy, who stood watching from in front of the wall holding various martial arts weapons. He gave an amused expression and a shrug in response, but held back comments.
“Sinawali,” Sensei said. “To weave is the proper translation. It is movement designed to keep your defenses up, probe those of your opponent, and deliver strikes to disarm or down the other person.”
Today, Saturday, counted as Rosz’s sixth lesson in two weeks. Lesson a term used loosely. His time on the mat required defending himself against the Sensei’s attacks. In the first two sessions, the master made certain the student listened to music with a slow, constant rhythm.
In the beginning, the Sensei delivered attacks consistently, but never with violent intent. By the end of the fourth lesson, both sticks moved fluidly over and under one another (like the stitching of fabric). Sensei explained this stitching allowed one stick to remain capable of defending whilst the other could attack. It also meant one baston could recoil to prepare for the next strike while the other continued attacking.
The master introduced sinawali exercises by forcefully moving the alien around the mat, herding him with weapons. He attacked with long sticks, nunchucks, his own bastons, and swords. He taught Rosz the basic skills and motions relevant to two-weapon blocking and response. Using the younger man’s desire to avoid a painful hit, Sensei engrained body positioning and distance relative to an opponent’s attack. Without using words, or wasting time with non-weaponed drills, he influenced Rosz’s rotation of his body. The student quickly developed better balance by learning the proper turning radius, realizing how to find his center of gravity, and maintaining that center, even as he moved to avoid a thump. His eye–hand coordination, target perception, and attack recognition, increased ambidexterity as he repeatedly got whacked. With each lesson, the thumps grew harder, and the desire to avoid or block the blows became more imperative.
The music became his choice after the third session. His performance of rhythmic structures for upper body movement became more obvious. The flow, the constant weave around the mat, progressed into a more fluid movement. The muscular development of his wrist and forearms helped his blocking. As his strength grew, the soreness dissipated.
The only spoken encouragements by the teacher were to help teach the novice escrimador proper elbow positioning while swinging his weapons.
Today’s training, utilizing double bastons, required Rosz to use both left and right weapons in an equal manner. Sensei attacked to test the Bosine’s talent as well as his resolve.
At the completion of their session, for the first time, the Master bowed first. Not one blow penetrated the student’s double-handed defense. He held his hand out, requesting the bastons.
His hesitation did not last long, despite the unease at relinquishing the weapons he had grown to accept. With a deeper bow, he placed the two sticks in his trainer’s open hand.
Sensei waved Rosz off the mat, and motioned Billy forward. Before the young man reached the center of the training area, the Japanese attacked. Without thought, Billy began his own version of the weave, moving his feet to a dance as his hands and arms rose, relaxed and ready.
Escrima-shaped bruises and welts would hurt later, but he parried and blocked more than landed. Twice he caught his teacher’s wrists and flipped Sensei across and down. The martial arts expert never hit the mat hard, rolling his lithe body across the floor and back into position in less time than it took for Billy to regain his own balance.
The attack and defense lasted only five minutes. It left both men damp, and Billy pulling deeply to recapture spent oxygen.
Sensei halted following double arm blocks by the student thwarted his attempt to land the sticks to his opponent’s ribs. He presented Billy a small bow.
“You need to improve your breathing,” he said. “You have learned quickly, but your conditioning sucks. Aikido is a way of life, Billy. For you to master the techniques, you will need to learn how to observe everything, and take from the environment what you need to succeed. And at the moment I need a fucking bath.”
Billy and Rosz both gaped at the language, and exchanged grins.
Sensei departed, returning Rosz’s sticks as he passed on his way to the private section behind the center. The two knew the drill. They would clean the dojo, then shower, and change into street clothes in the small locker room. They would not see the Japanese instructor until their next lesson.
Home
“Is it worth the risk?”
Sam Patterson stood at the entrance to his wife’s home office. The former Admiral Patterson sat on a chair commandeered from the dining room. Stacey sat in the office chair in front of the holo-display computer system Nathan Trent gifted Pam following her departure from Space Fleet.
“Stacey, does your detection devise show anything?” Patterson asked.
“No intrusion beams,” the girl from Fell replied. “If anyone tried to monitor or hack the system, the monitor will warn us, but, as I told you before, by then it will b
e too late. The beams are simply too quick to shut down before they pick up the display.”
“How sure are you about the research center at the university?”
Stacey swiveled enough to see Pam directly, and Sam from the corner of her right cat-like eye.
“I called up a geo-link view of the Honey Island Cypress Swamp site where Barnwell supposedly committed suicide.” She had given the Patterson’s an overview of why she suspected involvement by the research center at Southern University of Mississippi in Tab’s death. She required a more powerful, better connected system to invade the center’s security matrix than her own high-end mobile tech, or anything available to her at school.
“Pearl River Wilderness north of Slidell, Louisiana,” Pam said. The location seared into her memory.
“Connected by the Old Birmingham Highway,” Stacey said. She silently connected the trans-com chip embedded in her neck to the Trent Industry commercial computer. The ability to remote access systems with the embedded trans-com was a feature only a select few knew about. She could now direct the system seamlessly with quiet voice commands or by hand gestures.
The holo display created a simple map that hovered above the desktop. She expanded and zoomed in on the region north of Slidell. A red line went up and bent right at a green space labeled Pearl River Wildlife Management. Block lettering left of the line read OLD BIRMINGHAM HWY.
“If you look beneath the words, you will see the number fifty-nine.”
Sam, curiosity in control, moved into the office. He stood behind his wife, and they both leaned nearer the holographic map. Stacey zoomed in on the lettering until the [59] stood out.
“Fifty-nine appeared twice on the note left by Col. Barnwell,” she reminded Pam and informed Sam. “I asked Billy what the number represented. He told me the United States, decades previously, used numbering systems for roadways.”