“What sort of weapon?”
She said a word, but the translator just made the beep that it gave when it didn’t have enough information to translate. Dornen always had to suppress a laugh when it did this, because it sounded like the old pirated Thelanian holovids, where they censored profanity by covering the words with beeps.
“It’s not really a [beep],” she said. “It’s a device that weakens the [beep] bonds that hold matter together.”
Dornen stared at her, thinking that the translator must have glitched. She couldn’t possibly be asking what she seemed to be asking. “Excuse me a moment, please,” he said.
*****
“There are maybe a hundred people in the CDF who even know about the planet-killer project,” said Delio Starn. “You and I are two of them. Last I heard, we don’t even have any solid evidence it exists. It’s just a rumor somebody overheard.”
“Well, I think we can consider this confirmation.”
“Or an elaborate disinformation operation.”
“You think the Izarians captured a human civilian, brainwashed her, put her on a ship with a hundred-year-old propulsion system, and sent her to the edge of the galaxy on the off-chance a CDF ship would pick her up?”
“I suppose not. But what’s the alternative?”
“She’s who she says she is. A Terran on a mission to retrieve a weapon to give them an advantage in a war with an alien race.”
“Well, I can certainly sympathize with her position.”
“No kidding. I wonder if these Cho-ta’an are related to the Izarians.”
“Ask her to draw you a picture,” Starn said. “She certainly seems to be willing to share information.”
“It is a little suspicious, isn’t it?”
Starn shrugged. “Maybe not, if you buy her story. I mean, if she thinks we’re Izarians, then she obviously doesn’t know anything about what’s going on in this corner of the galaxy. Bluffing isn’t going to help her. Her only hope is to lay her cards on the table and hope we’re the good guys.”
“Yeah,” Dornen said, rubbing his chin. “That may be our best move too, come to think of it.”
*****
“It seems we find ourselves in a similar position,” Dornen said. He had just given Freya a broad outline of the CDF’s war with the Izarians.
“I admit to being a little confused,” Freya said. “I didn’t realize there were humans in this part of the galaxy.” She had told Dornen a little about the Terrans’ war with the Cho-ta’an, but hadn’t explained the time travel part yet.
Dornen nodded. “There’s some confusion about that among our people as well. It’s generally believed we originated on a planet called Terra, but our records of Terra’s location, as well as how we first came to this part of the galaxy, have been lost. One theory is that our ancestors were abducted from Terra by another race, centuries ago.”
“It wouldn’t be the strangest thing to happen on Terra,” Freya replied.
“However we came to be separated,” Dorned said, “we are of the same race.”
“But your enemies are not our enemies.”
“No. We may yet be able to help each other, though. Is the ship you traveled here in representative of the technology on Terra?”
“It’s a Cho-ta’an ship.”
“Oh. Is your technology not as advanced as the Cho-ta’an’s?”
Freya laughed. It was the first time she had done so since she’d come aboard Varinga. “That is a difficult question to answer. The short answer is no.”
“But you have fighting men?”
“Oh yes, we’ve got those.”
“We’ve extrapolated your trajectory backwards to a yellow dwarf star with at least seven planets.”
“Nine, actually. Yes, that’s the one. Terra is the third planet from the sun.”
“It’s over eighty magthars from here.”
“Is that a long way?”
“Not with a hyperspace drive.”
Chapter Fifty-six
Dan O’Brien watched in awe as the landing craft descended toward the plain north of Camp Collins. He hadn’t seen anything like it in over fifty years.
The craft made almost no sound; he wouldn’t even have seen it if he hadn’t been working on the garden outside. “Helena!” he shouted. “You have to see this!”
“I know you’re excited about your tomatoes, O’Brien,” Helena said as she exited the rear of the little house they’d been living in for the past eighteen years, “but there’s a point at which the thrill….” She trailed off, her mouth falling open as she caught sight of the spaceship landing only about a hundred yards off.
“Come on!” O’Brien said, taking her hand. Neither of them could move very fast these days, but they hobbled as quickly as they could toward the craft.
As it settled to the ground, O’Brien had to correct his earlier assessment: he’d never seen a ship like this. Its design was sleeker than anything in the IDL fleet, and its propulsion system was of a sort he had never seen. The ship’s markings were strange, although a serial number across the rear seemed to be stenciled in something approximating Arabic numerals.
O’Brien and Helena now stood less than twenty paces from the ship, staring up at it in wonder. It was no larger than the lander they had crashed in Norway fifty years earlier. Whether it had been built by humans, Cho-ta’an, or some other race entirely, they could not know. The only explanation for its presence was that Freya had somehow directed it here. But why?
As they stood there, wondering about this, a hatch opened, and a ramp slid down. Two men wearing armor and carrying blaster rifles ran down the ramp, crouching at the bottom. Having apparently determined there was no immediate threat, one of them gave a shout. A moment later, a young blond woman exited the craft and began to walk down the ramp toward them. It was Freya, looking hardly any older than when she had left, eighteen years earlier. She ran to embrace them.
“My God,” O’Brien said, when he’d recovered from his shock. “You came back! But why?”
As he spoke, he saw a swarthy, dark-haired man in a blue military uniform coming down the ramp. He approached them with his right hand outstretched.
“O’Brien, Helena, this is Commander Tertius Dornen of the Concordat Defense Force,” Freya said. “He has a proposal for us.”
Chapter Fifty-seven
United States Air Force Colonel Emily Rollins sat in a worn plush chair in a small office overcrowded with books and knickknacks. The office, which belonged to Major Alan Hume of the Royal Air Force, had a small window far up on one wall through which one could theoretically see the Thames, but Emily was too tired to climb onto Hume’s desk to test the theory. Besides, that sort of behavior was probably frowned on, even here in this backwater office of the RAF.
Her visit to Iceland had been disappointing; she and Hume had found nothing of interest at the Vatnajokull to supplement the find of the single artifact found by an American hiker. That artifact, which was for all appearances a thousand-year-old space helmet, was currently being examined in a laboratory somewhere beneath this very building. Eventually it would probably be sent to the secret warehouse at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where it would collect dust with all the other artifacts they’d found.
Emily wanted to believe that somebody was putting together a unified theory to explain the artifacts, but she knew that the Brits didn’t have the resources and the Americans didn’t have the interest. Hume did his best, but it was difficult to argue for funding when you couldn’t explain what exactly you were doing. Project Firefly, as they called it, was viewed as a holdover from World War II, when the Allies were trying to keep holy relics from falling into the hands of the Nazis. Even during the war, nobody seemed to be able to explain what Hitler would be able to do with the Holy Grail or the bones of some saint or other. Hume’s theory was that the Nazis weren’t looking for relics at all; he believed they were looking for artifacts of a highly advanced ancient civilization that ha
d once existed in Europe. Needless to say, this theory didn’t get much traction in either London or Washington.
Despite its unloved status, it was undeniable that Project Firefly possessed dozens of artifacts whose existence could not be explained, and the release of these artifacts after so many years of secrecy would only fan the flames of the conspiracy theories. There was some truth to the theories, of course: a conspiracy did exist, although it was borne more of inertia and indecision than malevolence. The existence of something like a thousand-year-old space helmet was an uncomfortable fact, and the easiest thing to do with an uncomfortable fact was to bury it and hope nobody found out. So rather than shut down the operation and release the artifacts to the academic community, the American and British governments sustained Firefly with a level of funding that allowed it to continue to collect whatever artifacts it found but do little else with them.
Heading the American branch of Firefly hadn’t been Emily’s choice; she’d taken the job on the condition of receiving a promotion to colonel, which had thus far eluded her, thinking that she would transfer to another position in a few years. She should have known then that Firefly was a dead end. Like the artifacts she collected, once Firefly got a hold of you, it wouldn’t let you go.
“Sorry for the delay,” Hume said, walking into the office. “Bit of confusion with the Virgin Islands office. They thought the hiker was arriving on Thursday.”
“The hiker?”
“What’s-his-name, Howell. No, Holloway. The American who found the space helmet.”
“You’re really going to put this guy up in the Caribbean for the rest of his life? Just because he saw something he shouldn’t have? How do you have the budget for that?”
“Oh, we’ve several properties in the Virgin Islands we’re not using. Every time something shows up there, we buy the property. Give it a good combing-over, make sure there are no more artifacts, and then put it on the market. The transactions are all handled by a Jamaican brokerage firm that’s a front for MI6. We have a standing agreement with them. We never see any money, and nobody notices if we hold onto a house for a few years. It’s come in handy in cases like this, as you can imagine.”
“Do you find a lot of artifacts in the Virgin Islands?”
“Oh, yes. All over the Caribbean, but mostly the British Virgin Islands. Nothing too exciting, mind you. The occasional titanium gear or half a vacuum tube, but enough that we’ve kept a permanent presence there for over a hundred years.”
“Over a hundred years? Firefly wasn’t started until World War II.”
“No, but Britain’s been around for a bit longer than that. You didn’t think this all started with Firefly, did you?”
More Books by Robert Kroese
The Saga of the Iron Dragon
The Dream of the Iron Dragon
The Dawn of the Iron Dragon
The Voyage of the Iron Dragon (December 2018)
The Starship Grifters Universe
Out of the Soylent Planet
Starship Grifters
Aye, Robot
The Mercury Series
Mercury Falls
Mercury Rises
Mercury Rests
Mercury Revolts
Mercury Shrugs
The Land of Dis
Distopia
Disenchanted
Disillusioned
Other Books
The Big Sheep
The Last Iota
Schrödinger’s Gat
City of Sand
The Foreworld Saga: The Outcast
The Force is Middling in This One
The Voyage of the Iron Dragon Page 39