Xn

by Clint Townsend

  “After everything has been loaded, either myself or one of two other supervisors examines the cargo, compares it with the accompanying manifest, and if the content of the cargo on the platform matches what’s listed in the manifest, then we’ll authorize the release and up it goes. The manifest is signed by hand, scanned, and downloaded to the daily records. After we release the platform, we take four pictures of the load and combine them with the manifest. The cameras are in a fixed position at the top of all four master couplers connecting the SUBOS to the carbon braids.”

  The man spun his tablet around, pressed several buttons, and brought up all four images.

  “Here you go,” he said, spinning the screen toward Armada. “WES capsules, just as the manifest, my boys, and I have said.”

  Armada carefully examined the pictures.

  This is wrong, he thought.

  “Could it be, perhaps, that it is you that is mistaken?” the man asked, retrieving the tablet.

  “Yes, sir,” Armada confusedly answered. “If you’ll please include my control identity on the manifest for the next transfer, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Will do,” the man said, turning to face the dry board. “Load up will commence at two-thirty. You can wait in the locker room if you like.”

  “Thank you, sir. I was wondering if you have a terminal I can use to send a message to my supervisor?”

  “Who? Garret?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can log on from the desk in the corner.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Armada humbly replied.

  Armada went to the desk, sat down, and immediately logged on to the terminal with administrative credentials. He quickly pulled up the WATCHER program and activated a scan. While waiting for the results, he sent a message to Chloe that read: ‘Titan missing. Will give you details soon. Armada.’ He then sent a message to Garret that read: ‘On SUBOS waiting for loadout.’

  There was a sudden ping of the computer and a window that appeared on the monitor, reading ‘Scan Complete.’ Armada opened the report and found Titan’s chip number and current location. The scan now showed Titan, and five others, to be on CARBEL One and in transit to the Halo.

  “This can’t possibly be right,” he told himself. “Six people are supposed to be on the CARBEL and not one sign of them anywhere.”

  To check for accuracy, Armada looked up both his and Chloe’s identity numbers. The WATCHER scan correctly identified both of their locations.

  Armada reluctantly logged off the terminal. He leaned back, rubbed his eyes, and drew in several deep breaths. Utterly confused, Armada retraced his steps, pondering all that he did and said, what he saw and heard and read. He couldn’t figure it out; there was something missing, something wrong. Could it be the scan? The manifest? Then, like a bolt of lightning, it hit him. The pictures.

  Armada sprang from the desk and made a dash to the supervisor’s office.

  He felt a horrible pain in his heart when he asked, “Can I see those pictures again?”

  Growing weary of Armada’s persistence, the supervisor begrudgingly reached for his tablet, pressed some buttons, and handed it to Armada.

  “Didn’t we just go through this not ten minutes ago?”

  “Yes, sir, but I need to verify something.”

  Armada looked closely at the four pictures and counted the number of capsules in each shot. Twenty-four capsules appeared in all four images. In the last picture, however, something captured his attention. On the top row, in the very last stack, that capsule was only half as long as the others and had no markings of hazardous materials.

  “Can you show me where these WES capsules came from?” Armada anxiously asked.

  “I hope you’re going somewhere with this; my patience is wearing thin,” the man said, aggressively pushing the tablet buttons.

  He forcibly pushed it at Armada, “Here.”

  Armada scrolled through the digital manifest and felt the blood drain from his head. The records showed that the original load of hazardous capsules from the SUBOS was only twenty-three in count. That was it! Wyczthack and White, he theorized, would have to have placed Titan in an extra capsule, along with the other five clones in poor health, and dispatch the capsule to the Halo. The container of dead and dying clones would then be ejected, along with the WES capsules, into deep space. That’s why the WATCHER records didn’t show the location of nearly five thousand RFID chips. They’re systematically being disposed of, secretly.

  Armada handed back the tablet.

  “Is that it?” the man asked sarcastically.

  Armada turned away from the man without answering him. He tried to maintain his composure as he approached the door to leave. Visions of Titan lying in a pile of bodies, dead or alive, bombarded his mind.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you!” the man shouted, exiting his cubicle. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  The men in the office stopped what they were doing to witness the verbal altercation.

  “Yes, sir,” Armada sorrowfully replied, grabbing his helmet. “Unfortunately, I found exactly what I needed.”

  CHAPTER 12

  VOICES

  “Armada?” Garret called out. “Has your team finished installing the cleft seals on the joints and seams?”

  Several seconds passed with no reply from Armada; Garret tapped into the live video feed from his helmet camera.

  “Armada!”

  “Sir?” Armada sluggishly replied.

  “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Well, who knows if you don’t?”

  “I’m sorry, Garret, I wasn’t….”

  “Pay attention!” Garret barked, “You’re my eyes and ears out there! You got almost two hundred men depending on you! You might be floating, but don’t let your brain float away!”

  “Yes, sir,” Armada meekly replied.

  “Now, I’ll ask once more: has your team finished installing the cleft seals on the joint and seams in the dormitory?”

  “Give me a moment to get to the interior.”

  Armada left his place on the Arena Two docking port by pulling himself on the rungs mounted on the exterior of the shell. He looked down and to his right at the multitude of his clone brothers as they floated around their areas of work. He pushed off the not yet completed Arena and flew to the end of the adjoining dormitory. As he neared the end of the massive cylinder, from the corner of his eye he observed something strange. From high above the Earth, Armada saw the lights going out. He took hold of the bottommost rung on the dorm shell and focused on the bizarre sight.

  “Garret? Are you seeing this?”

  “Seeing what?”

  “The lights in Las Vegas!”

  “What about Las…?” Garret asked.

  The speaker in Armada’s helmet began to crackle with static.

  “The lights. It looks like….”

  The communication link with the SUBOS suddenly erupted with feedback and distortion.

  “Ugh!” Armada grunted from the loud and annoying sound.

  He watched as darkness slowly consumed the land below. Like a wave on the ocean reaching the shore, blackness swept over the city.

  “Garret?” Armada shouted. The volume of the static grew louder and louder, almost to the point of being unbearable. The buzzing abruptly subsided and the holographic visor in his helmet stopped glowing.

  “Garret? Can you hear me?”

  Garret didn’t answer.

  “Hey, guys, do y’all…,” Armada began and rotated to face his brothers.

  His mind raced and his heart filled with horror at the sight that greeted him. There they were, nearly two hundred of his brothers, floating lifelessly around the Arena. The soft purple and green glow of the interior helmet visors were dark. No one moved, no one responded.

  Armada grasped his airline, pulled the slack tight, and waited for the automatic recoil to engage. After three seconds, the
POG reel started drawing Armada in.

  “Guys!” he shouted, panic-stricken. “Riggs! Garret!”

  He reached out in front of him, grabbed the tube, and began to pull himself toward the generator.

  “Riggs!” Armada screamed, gasping for air. “Garret? Anybody!”

  As he neared the POG, Armada peered down and watched the blackout creep to the base of the SUBOS.

  “Garret!” he again screamed. “It’s coming! It’s moving up the SUBOS!”

  Helplessly he watched as the darkness slowly crept up the tower, squelching out the brilliantly illuminated exterior floor by floor. The POG spool stopped and Armada attached his tether line. He gazed upon his immobile brethren, then the SUBOS, and saw that the shadow was now rapidly ascending the tower. Armada briefly glanced at the CARBEL and noticed that not only had the elevators stopped, but the multimount engines on the Halo were inactive and the carbon braids were beginning to buckle.

  “Hey! Riggs! Garret! Anybody!”

  Desperation took hold of Armada. He watched the power outage conquer Arena One and the dormitories, along with the unexplainable shutdown of the ISS.

  Armada was trapped.

  He sat on the POG and stared out at the void of space. The sun wouldn’t rise for another five hours and the moon was on the far side of the planet. The whole state of Nevada was experiencing a blackout, at least it appeared that way from thirty miles away. The darkness closed in on Armada.

  Wait a minute, he thought to himself. The SUBOS generates its own power. There are thousands of wind turbines and solar collection panels on the exterior. How could a local, isolated power outage affect the tower, Arena, and the ISS?

  As he rationally collected his thoughts, the sense of desperation disappeared. The analytical side of Armada took over and, for some strange reason, he felt confident about his somewhat dismal and bleak situation.

  “Okay,” he said, “the POG batteries will generate oxygen for ten hours. If I’m the only one using it, then I should be okay for about sixteen hours. That’ll be enough time for them to figure out the power failure and … wait a minute. We have triple redundancy on every power source. If the outage affected the whole state, even the ISS … then why is my POG functioning? Everything else is down but the oxygen generator still operational?”

  Armada sensed a strange warmth in his suit, but not created by the suit. His eyes felt heavy, but he wasn’t at all sleepy. Although completely relaxed, he was fully aware of his surroundings.

  “Evan,” a man softly called out. “Evan.”

  Armada didn’t move. He sat on the mounting frame of the POG and stared out at the twinkling stars. He didn’t recognize the voice but knew it wasn’t that of Garret, Riggs, or any of his brothers.

  “Evan,” the man said with more authority. “Evan.”

  The man’s voice was all around him; it wasn’t coming through the speakers of his helmet, but from inside his suit. Although he was in a precarious situation, Armada found the tone of the man’s voice to be calming and soothing.

  “Why is he calling me Evan?” Armada said out loud, still gazing at the stars. “My name is Armada.”

  “Evan,” the man called once more. “Evan.”

  The voice was as comforting as a soft, fluffy blanket.

  Before peacefully closing his eyes, Armada faintly replied, “Here I am,” then leaned into the POG coil and fell fast asleep.

  ***

  “C’mon, Armada, wake up,” Garret said, gently rubbing Armada’s left arm. He knew it was Garret he heard, but Armada hesitated to open his eyes.

  “I know you can hear me. I’m about to run out of sympathy, so wake up.”

  Armada’s eyes fluttered open; he stared up at the bed above him. Garret floated beside the section of bunk beds, waiting for him to speak. He unlatched Armada’s mattress restraints and maneuvered himself to the end of the bed.

  “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. Ever since Titan got himself reassigned, you’ve been acting weird. Tonight is a prime example.”

  “I’m acting weird?” Armada huffed, rolling off the bed. “What’ve I done that’s so weird?”

  “When you tell me ‘Wait a minute’ and don’t respond to me or your subordinates for more than ten minutes and….”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn’t respond? I screamed for you, Riggs, and the others! You don’t answer my request for help and you complain that I’m weird?”

  “Request for help? Help with what? You didn’t say a word about needing help.”

  “I was trying to warn you about the blackout.”

  “The blackout? What blackout?”

  “The one on the SUBOS! It wiped out Las Vegas and even took out the ISS.”

  Garret furrowed his eyebrows.

  “What … are you talking about?”

  Armada paused, scratched his head, and tried to gather his thoughts.

  “I moved to the end of the dorm, looked down, and watched the blackout happen. It took out Vegas, came up….”

  Garret focused on Armada’s story with a look of confusion on his face.

  “What’s that expression supposed to mean?” Armada asked snarkily, mocking Garret.

  “What? You mean my ‘This guy is off his nut’ look? That’s exactly what it means. What am I gonna tell Riggs, and how am I supposed to tell Wycz and White when the EC Program poster boy is experiencing a total meltdown?”

  “I’m not experiencing a meltdown, Garret! I know what I saw! I’m not crazy!”

  “Well, something’s not right. You’re telling me you observed a blackout occur, so powerful that it not only wiped out the SUBOS, it knocked out the ISS as well. Somehow two hundred workers didn’t witness a blackout and lo and behold, miraculously, thousands of governmental employees didn’t observe any sort of power outage in the SUBOS. This is the kind of thing I’m supposed to be watching for and report to Dr. White.”

  “I’m not seeing Dr. White!” Armada defiantly declared, “He’ll find some reason to have me….”

  Armada had to stop himself from completing his statement.

  “He’d have me reassigned in a heartbeat!”

  Not knowing what to do, Garret closed his eyes and repeatedly ran his fingers through his hair.

  Does he know about the WES capsules? Armada asked himself. Maybe I said too much.

  “So, do I simply just forget this incident ever happened and hide it from Dr. White?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m telling you, Garret … I will not see Dr. White.”

  “Well, then, what do you propose we do?”

  “Look,” Armada quietly stated, moving closer to Garret, “for all anyone is concerned, the valve on my comm line seized up and I couldn’t get any oxygen.”

  “I don’t know, Arm….”

  “No one has any idea what I’ve told you. Right? So if anybody asks you, just tell ‘em my oxygen got cut off and I blacked out. It makes sense.”

  The two men backed away from each other when suddenly, one of Armada’s dorm mates entered the room. The trio exchanged quick glances as the intruder glided past them. While the clone was digging through his locker, Garret elected to break the silence.

  “So,” he began, “I’ll, uh, have that coil checked out and, maybe, um, go ahead and replace the tubing and pressure valve.”

  “Thanks,” Armada stated, winking at Garret. “I really think it was the valve that locked up.”

  “You all right, Armada?” the clone asked, closing his locker door.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I was out for only, like, ten minutes or so.”

  “I guess you’re pretty lucky Euclid was so close.”

  “Is that who brought me in?”

  “Yeah. You came to the rim of the new dorm and then we couldn’t hear you anymore. That must have been the moment your comm line malfunctioned.”

  “Did you see what happened?” Garret asked.

  “Nah, I was at the op
posite end attaching the cap. But Euclid was right there, you can ask him. He told me you started moving in, but then your visor shut down and you stopped moving.”

  “I think that’s when he called me,” Garret added.

  “So how long was it from the time Euclid called for you and I was connected to a new breathing coil on the POG?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll need to talk to Garret and Euclid about that. I gotta go.”

  The man swiftly flew to the dorm entry and exited into the transfer tube.

  “How long was I unconscious?”

  “I’d say from the moment Euclid made me aware of your situation, to the moment you got hooked up to the POG … two minutes … two and half … three minutes at the most.”

  Armada listened to Garret’s recounting of the emergency, biting his lower lip in the process.

  “And how long did it take y’all to get me to my bed from the POG?”

  “Oh,” Garret thought out loud, “Another four or five minutes.”

  “Okay, that’s eight minutes max so far that I was unconscious. How long was it before I woke up once they got me on my bed?”

  “Let’s see … Achilles checked your vitals, then he left and … I’d say ten minutes.”

  “That’s eighteen minutes ballpark, give or take. Right?”

  “I think that’s about it. This’ll have to go in my report, you know? I can’t hide or cover up something like this, Arm.”

  “Hey, it’s all right. Just so long as White doesn’t get wind of this, I don’t care what you come up with.”

  “But that still won’t get you out of your monthly eval with him.”

  “That I can handle.”

  “Why are you so afraid of Doc White? What’d he do that’s got you all worked up?”

  Armada turned away from Garret and dragged himself to the tiny window at the end of the dorm.

  “It’s just that….” Armada’s words froze in his mouth.

  I wonder if he knows what’s going on at the WES? he asked himself, and What if he knows that I’ve discovered their secret?

  “It’s just what?” Garret pushed.

  “Nothing,” Armada answered nonchalantly, spinning around. “Really, it’s nothing to worry about.”