***
She heard them coming.
The pool of light that surrounded them was like a bubble of fear. It was thick with it.
Four guards carried his body and four more had fully charged plasma rifles trained on him as they threw him into the cell, slammed the door of bars closed, then literally ran.
She had been hiding in a cell two down and across the hall. When the guards had gone, she moved to his cell, reaching through the bars searching for him as she sobbed. The first thing he hands found was the top of his head.
“No no no no no...” she sobbed. All his hair was gone. His beard was gone. His skin was a solid rocky scab. “No no no no... we were to go. Together.” Her words were cut off when she felt dry empty eye sockets.
A perfect hand came up and rested over hers. She felt his head turn a slight bit.
“Don't cry, peanut.” He said to her in a ruined whispering voice, “Have you ever been swimming? When we go, you and I are going swimming. I can see it. I will tell you secrets while we swim. I will swim with your children too. And their children.” He moved himself closer to the bars so her could reach an arm through a hold her. “I see it.”
“I want that.” She sobbed
“I will tell you a secret now if you like.” His whisper was even quieter.
“Yes, yes yes...” she cried, clinging to him through the bars.
“I can't die.” He choked out. “Even if I wanted too. Atish knows it. It's what he wants from me.”
“Don't die. Please, don't die.” She begged.
“I will tell you another secret, peanut.” She calmed at these words. His voice sounding stronger. “You know how you remember the past. You think, and you know things that have happened to you, things you have seen and said.” His thumb was drying her tears. “That's how I see the future. It's like I remember it. It just hasn't happened yet.”
“Is that why you're sure we will leave this place together.” She wasn't crying anymore.
“Yes. And the closer an event gets, the clearer it becomes. Just as you remember what happened yesterday better than what happened a year ago.” His voice was stronger still.
“You knew they would do this to you? Why did you let them.” Her whisper was almost a scolding. He now knew she believed he would live.
“Today I saved 122 girls. The same age as you.”
“When will we go?” she asked, believing.
“The day you eat the bread offered by The Man From Earth.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “That is the day we will be free.”
***
The airlock pushed open, and she just stood there like she was made of gray stone.
Slowly she stepped over the airlocks threshold and moved into the center of the room. Laser dots covered her chest.
Echo was standing before her unseen as Hagan closed the door.
“I’ve gone mad,” Wes said as the hatch closed and locked. The room began to pressurize.
Hagan’s HUD indicated the increase in pressure. The higher it got, the more distressed her face became. Her hands covered her ears, and her mouth was open in a silent scream.
She collapsed to her knees and fell to her side on the floor. Hagan made no move to catch or assist her. She was unconscious and limp when full pressure was reached.
Wes took off his helmet and one glove. He checked her pulse at her throat. She was impossibly cold, but there was a pulse.
“Echo, what the… Report.” Hagan barked.
“This being is a Scarecrow. She was once human, but at some point in the past every cell in her body was replaced at the atomic level. The process makes them… durable.” Echo reported.
“Replaced with what?”
“It has been labeled L-Matter and a way to detect it has been added to the Warmark scanning system and your HUD implant,” Echo said while pulsing the overlay data in Hagan’s HUD.
“How is it detected?”
“The primary atomic phase contains a dual vibrations.” Echo seemed to kneel down and look at her more closely. “It’s a temporal anomaly detected only in strange matter that is byproducts of heavy metal mass collider experiments. Knowing all this tells us nothing about its nature. Only the detection of it.” Echo stood then.
Without waiting to take off his pressure suit, Hagan lifted her from the floor and carried her to one of the vacant crew quarters. He was surprised to find the bed made, even though he must have made it.
The Warmark loomed in the doorway. Most of its weapons blocked by the wall. Hagan shook his head knowing the wall mattered not at all.
She began to stir just as a maintenance bot came in with a glass of water. Wes picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
She suddenly gasped with a massive inhale and coughed out a literal cloud of dust. She opened her eyes and saw the water and grabbed it from his hand, spilling half of it on the way to her mouth.
She tried to speak, but only unintelligible croaks came out. She struggled to her elbows, then upright just as the bot returned with another glass of water. She took this one more carefully and drank half of it. She looked up to the ceiling and with her eyes fully open she poured the rest of the water on her own face.
“My name is Wes Hagan.” He said to her slowly. She nodded and swallowed hard and took a deep breath.
“Shower.” Was all she could manage in a scratchy whisper.
Wes stood and opened the bathroom door and reached around to the shower controls and activated it.
She stood and untied the belt around the tarp poncho. She flipped it over her head onto the floor, beneath she wore the remains of a tattered flight suit that was once white. The suits legs and arms were gone or in complete threadbare tatters. With both hands, she simply tore the remain off her body as she moved to the shower.
Wes didn’t stay and watch. He left that to Echo and the Warmark. He left her a set of coveralls that would likely fit.
Over an hour later he heard the Warmark walking down the corridor to the cafeteria where Hagan sat drinking tea.
She walked in and looked around. The desperation of earlier gone from her gray face. Color had returned to her cheeks. Her hair was washed and still wet, placed in a French braid down her back.
“Would you like some tea?” Wes said as if she was an old friend fresh out of bed.
She nodded, almost shyly.
“I never thought this day would come.” She said, her voice now restored.
Wes brought her a steaming cup.
“Are you hungry?” He asked.
“No questions but that?” She smiled. Was that a slight British accent.
“Time for questions after I know you are OK.” He said.
“I will be soon. The white is upon me and think I know why this one is so very long.” She sipped her tea and sighed.
“I’m sorry. I think saw you months ago and… I didn’t stay look for you.” Hagan confessed.
“Your ship was the last thing I foresaw. On that high ridge. I saw you go into the long white. Like everyone else then I just guessed where you would go.” She sat and saw the various foods he had set out.
“The white?” Hagan asked.
“When you close your eyes and think of the future, what color is it? Is it the black of the time before you were born? No. It’s white. I see like you now. It doesn’t matter. Not knowing what you will say or do. It’s restful.” She picked up a cold piece of bacon and bit it.
Her eyes closed in delight.
“My name is Ralta.”
CHAPTER EIGHT:
The Beacon
“This was when it could have been stopped. Hagan and Worthington should have played it by the book. They should have stayed there and not brought Barcus or that... that thing back to Earth.”
--Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Senator Johnathon Kendall, Senator and senior member of the Earth Defense Coalition.
<<<>>>
She finished her bacon and tea and without a word returned to tha
t same room and fell asleep.
Echo stationed DS-09 at her door, and Hagan got back to work. It only took him a few hours to connect the final systems to power. When he was ready to go, he sat in the main control center and recorded what may be his last transmission.
“Echo tells me you are leaving soon, and you plan to activate this station as a beacon.” Ralta was at the door. “I won’t be going with you.”
Hagan spun his chair around to see her standing in the hall with the Warmark behind her.
“Why? There is a good chance this station will be destroyed.” Wes said.
“That is the very reason. This war is over for me. I can’t bear the weight of it any longer. Turkot and Miles both must have known what would happen when he sent me here.”
“What war?”
“Never mind. The thing is, it took me a decade to realize Miles knew, but Turkot didn’t. I only saw what happened to me not what I thought about it. I could have sent myself a message in a bottle. As simple as writing a message in the dust.”
“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Just go when you are ready. Beware of Wex because she is the Queen of lies, the greatest betrayer of all. She’s the one that left me here, taught me to lie, even to myself.”
“I can’t just leave you here.”
“You think I can’t survive on my own? You think you could force me to leave? You know how long I tried to get in here with just my bare hands? I will now have power, water, and a warm bed to sleep in for the rest of my life.” She smiled. “I’ll even keep your tower operational.”
It was then he realized that she was lying to him. Just as he was lying to himself. He knew the tower would be destroyed. Just as she did. He also knew he would die as soon as he touched the defense grid.
Let them each pick their own manner of suicide.
***
“We are at 160 kilometers from the tower, Wes.” Echo notified him. “Activating warning beacon.”
Everything was working perfectly, I was a good strong signal. It would be able to reach an increasing area in every direction as the signal expands at the speed of light. Even a ship traveling at FTL speed will be able to hear it. Every direction will get in as the moon managed the orbit around the planet.
“I'm tired Echo.” Wes said, “Can you deploy the cot please?”
The cot opened out from the wall in the main compartment.
“We will discuss the next steps in the morning,” Echo said pleasantly as she lowered the lights. “I will wake you if anything changes.”
Wes laid down after removing his pressure suit and was asleep in less than a minute.
He only got three hours rest.
***
The High Keeper was in the control room trying to understand the reports that were coming in from above the gorge. An entire Unit had been killed in a matter of moments. Even though it was all hardened trackers led by High Tracker Donner himself. He had dispatched the PT-66 for a bombing run. Pounding the rubble in fact according to the recon report.
Alarms began to howl.
“Now what?” The High Keeper demanded.
“There is a moon based warning beacon transmitting in the clear.” The frightened man looked up at the High Keeper, “It’s transmitting our location coordinates and a warning that it is a trap.”
Without another word High, Keeper Atish lifted his Plate Interface and entered the launch codes for the nearest missile to target that transmitter.
At full burn, it will still be three hours.
“Call the high council to chambers. If the Chancellor is behind this, he will regret it. Let’s have a closer look at this Man From Earth.”
***
A klaxon woke Wes out of a deep dreamless sleep, “Echo, Status.”
“Incoming Javelin. Time to impact one minute and seventeen seconds.” The AI replied.
“Turn that alarm off, dammit,” Hagan said as he reached the pilot seat and strapped in.
It became silent in the cockpit. He just sat and looked to the part of the horizon where he knew the antenna station was located.
There was a bright flash just over the horizon. He knew it was far brighter than the display allowed. It wasn't like a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere. He watched the dome of a flash get quickly consumed in the vacuum.
“Signal terminated,” Echo reported.
Wes sighed.
“How much food do we have left?” Hagan asked despair was in his voice.
“Nineteen days at present consumption,” Echo replied.
“Echo, I feel like a big breakfast. Bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast, coffee, and juice. The works.” Hagan said in a cheerful voice so thin that he knew he was not fooling anyone. “After breakfast, I want to start planning our trip to the surface.”
Suddenly the display came alive in front of him. It was full of data he couldn't believe.
Incoming Transmission.
“Wes, are you making all that racket?” He could hear Jimbo's smile in his voice.
Wes couldn't speak. Was he dreaming this? His vision blurred.
“Wes, thanks to you we just took control of the planetary defense grid.” There was a pause. “We now own this planet. You have permission to break radio silence if you are still alive, you crazy bastard.”
“Echo, open a channel” He sat up and wiped his face on his sleeve, he paused and thought of what to say.
“Damn, Jimbo. When was the last time you brushed your teeth? I can smell your breath from here.”
“So... What's new?” Jimbo asked casually. Wes could hear the smile on his face.
“Mom, can you come pick me up?” Wes said equally casually. He wasn't sure he could say much more over the lump in his throat.
Tears began to fall.
***
Echo received the coordinates to the base where the Memphis was parked. The Sariska flew at maximum speed. He was sent all the command codes to the base and to the Memphis before he passed to the dark side of the moon.
It only took him five hours to get there. Echo was analyzing data without being asked. Hagan knew the nature of an Echo AI then.
Wes could only think about Ralta. He should have convinced her to come.
Echo had orders that fit this contingency.
CHAPTER NINE:
Reunion
“During the chaos on Baytirus, a warning beacon was activated on the moon. The High Keeper immediately launched a nuclear missile to destroy it. He thought Barcus was, somehow, behind it. It revealed that the High Keeper did in fact still have control over the defense grid.”
--Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Captain James Worthington, senior surviving member of the Ventura's command crew.
<<<>>>
“Wes, wake up. We are almost there,” AI~Echo said, pausing as if there was more to say.
Wes sat up in the pilot's seat, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The Tesla facility was visible on the horizon. “What's up? Do I need to suit up?”
“No… Wes, recent developments have revealed that original mission objectives are, once again, possible.” AI~Echo was all business. “I have decrypted the mission briefing and support documents for you.”
He began reviewing the files as the lifeboat settled on the pad. AI~Echo left him alone for a long while so he could continue.
“You want me to do this? Worthington will know I am lying.” He kept reading.
***
The lifeboat was already in the hangar when Jimbo and the other survivors reached the moon base. The hangar door quickly closed, and the bay was pressurized, in no time.
The ship was smaller than the Memphis but not by much. It had clear exterior markings. The Sedna's ramp came down and a man with a filthy flight suit, with long hair and a beard stood there.
He looked pissed, especially because he stood there, holding a Frange carbine, and he was flanked by a pair of Warmarks, military drop suits with full weapons and exo-armor.
These were the most dangerous war machines ever made.
They had been activated.
“Wes, what are you doing? Everything's okay, buddy,” Jimbo said, hands forward, palms open.
“Shut up and listen, Jimbo.” Wes did not sound as crazy as he looked.
There was a single laser dot on Hagan's forehead. Hume flanked him. She awaited an order to fire.
“I have been up here, studying. Excellent sensor array, by the way, whoever set that up.”
“Thank you,” Kuss said, “Make point fast or Hume kills you dead.”
There were seventeen laser dots on a tall red haired woman named Wex. Both Warmarks had their weapons trained on her. And, these suits were bristling with weapons.
“This is her fault.” Wes sounded like he was about to rant. “This missile defense grid was not made to keep people out. It was made to keep them in. They are not humans. Well, not anymore. Come out of there. Captain Everett knew. We were to rescue...or to destroy.”
Wex complied, followed by Cine and Jude. She stood fully upright as she slowly descended the ramp. Head held high; her chest was covered in laser dots.
Barcus felt Po tense. They both noticed the bullet holes in her gown as the laser dots danced around them as she moved.
The suits advanced, placing themselves between Wex and the others.
“He was in the Citadel. In the dungeon,” Barcus said. “They had not fed him food, or water, for seventeen years. He was there when the Citadel was destroyed. He told me to tell Wex…” Barcus turned to her, “That he was tired. That it would be all right. That he understood.”
“What the hell are you people doing?” A small woman pushed her way through and finally came to stand with the barrel of the Frange Carbine right against her chest. “She wasn't the only prisoner on Baytirus. We all were! And, we are NOT free, yet.” Wes could see that she had an Indent Code indicator name, Po. Just Po.
Solstice 31: The Solstice 31 Saga, Books 1,2,3 Page 78