Project Atlantis (Ascendant Chronicles Book 1)

by Brandon Ellis

  He walked under the ship, looking for a way inside. Thoughts of sneaking in and stowing away crossed his mind. He touched one of the wheels, looking at the ship’s underbelly, amazed at its size and width and grandeur.

  The ship, however, wasn’t large enough to take the miles of supplies on the other side of the facility, along with the number of people who needed those supplies, and the assembled buggies and small aircraft.

  He took another picture.

  Walking out from under the craft, he saw offices in the distance. They needed to be photographed.

  The first office was empty, items gathered up and placed in taped boxes. He went to grab for one of the boxes to rip it open, to look for anything that might give him a clue at what this place really was and what was really happening, and thought better of it. He needed to be meticulous and a ripped apart box would be a dead giveaway that someone had been here.

  He went to the next office. It was the same as the last, except more boxes filled the room.

  The third office was empty except for three filing cabinets in the back. He turned on the overhead light, opened the first cabinet, and rifled through contents.

  There were hundreds of files. Perhaps thousands. Why hadn’t they been digitized? How old was this damned program? A name caught his eye. Couldn’t be. He grabbed the file and pulled it from the cabinet.

  There it was, plain as day: Kaden Jaxx. Drew slumped against the wall. What were the odds? Here he was, in the bowels of a secret building, which housed some secret program to take people off-world and he’d found a file dedicated to his uncle. He opened it. Almost the entire file had been redacted. It was nothing but blackout and gibberish. Still, it meant his uncle figured – and figured big – in this enterprise, though he was still confused about the goal of the program.

  Drew took a picture of the file number and put the folder back into the filing cabinet.

  He walked straight ahead and pushed another door open, feeling yet another cool draft. He stepped through the doorway and onto clay-like soil. Lights glowed from above, lighting up a massive tunnel that a cruise liner could easily float through.

  He stared into the cavernous space, incredulous. “Holy shit.”

  Four single rails, similar to the rails used for monorail systems, were parallel to each other and set far apart. The tunnel was wide, but why was the ceiling so high?

  He walked down the tunnel, touching the monorail. It was cold, meaning it hadn’t been used in a while. He placed his ear on it, wondering if he could hear a distant sound of a potential train coming or going.

  Silence.

  A moment later, chaos.

  The rail started vibrating. Drew was hit with a sound, like rushing water echoing through the tunnel, soft at first, then louder and louder. He looked down the tunnel, backing up as fast as he could. A single light, faint and growing bigger, was headed his way. Whatever it was, it was coming at an incredible speed.

  24

  June 5th, 2018

  Underfoot Black, Grenada

  “Nice to see you alive, Mr. Jaxx.” Donny lowered his eyes, peering above his glasses. He leaned back in his chair, reading the clipboard in his hand. If Donny wasn’t wearing brown khakis and a tan sweater, Jaxx would have pegged him as Santa Clause.

  “I heard about Captain Richard Fox.” Donny put the clipboard down, leaning forward. “Between you and me, the guy needs to be scrubbed between the ears. You know, with a razor wire. He’s caused me fits and problems in the past.” He waived his hand in the air. “Nothing like he did to you, but my God he’s a nuisance.”

  I was shot. That’s a little more than a nuisance. Jaxx couldn’t believe how this place operated, as if being shot several times and being brought back to life was an everyday thing.

  “Yeah.” Jaxx lay on the couch, determined to say as little as possible, just in case Fox or Slade were watching. He didn’t want to screw anything else up.

  “I have a question before we begin,” Donny said, his frown deepening. “Are there any times in your life that you just don’t remember? Like five years of your life that seem a blur or simply erased from your mind?”

  Jaxx thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “You’re the only person that I’ve met who has no memory of being in the SSP except through hypnotherapy.” Donny tapped his clipboard with his pen, eyeing Jaxx. “Maybe some memory loss in your mid-thirties?”

  Jaxx looked off to the right. “I...uh...can’t recall not remembering anything. Then again, you wouldn’t, would you?”

  “How old were you when you graduated from college?”

  “Twenty-four. I went for longer than most.”

  “So, you graduated high school, then graduated college, then started as an archaeologist right away?”

  “I didn’t just start as an archaeologist – ”

  Donny palmed his clipboard. “Skip that question. Did you ever have any interest in the military?”

  “Actually, I did. I wasn’t getting any archeology field work and was mostly an apprentice for another archaeologist, which wasn’t exciting and the pay was terrible. I was behind on bills so I checked out the Navy, where I could get an actual paycheck.” Jaxx scratched his temple. “I was around twenty-eight years old.”

  “Did you join?”

  “No. After a few months, I realized enlisting would be the wrong course of action. Navy just wasn’t my passion.”

  “Did they run tests on you?”

  “Just a physical before I enlisted. Like I said, I didn’t enlist.”

  “Okay, what did you do when you were thirty years old?”

  Jaxx smiled. “My sister threw me a surprise party.”

  “Excellent. Sounds fun. What did you do for your thirty-first party?”

  Jaxx wiped his brow, thinking. “Hmm...there was this time – ” He scrunched up his nose, staring at the ceiling. “A recruiter met with me when I was thirty-two.”

  “Then what?”

  Jaxx pursed his lips. “He just came by, asking if I wanted to join. If I had a change of heart. I asked him if I was too old and he shook his head. That was that and he went on his merry way.”

  “He came to your house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s odd.” Donny jotted something down on his clipboard. “What did you do for your thirty-third birthday party?”

  Jaxx put his hands behind his neck. That time of his life was hazy. The memories weren’t there. “I...well...” He scanned his brain for anything, for something. Nothing came to the surface. “It’s blank.” He wiped his forehead. “What the hell? And, for my thirty-fourth?” He rubbed his eyes, disturbed. “No clue. I don’t remember a thing. The last party I remember was when I was thirty-seven, when I had my first book launch.” Jaxx sat up. “That was the first time I put myself out there to the world. The world came back, calling me names. It’s odd how you can think you’re so smart and when you attempt to show the world your research, they can torch you without hesitation. That’s when I realized I wasn’t as intelligent as I thought. So, I write books more or less to satiate my book-writing and research-loving appetite.”

  Jaxx gently slapped his cheeks, an attempt to get himself back on track. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is where the hell my memories went.”

  Donny shook his finger. “And, why the Secret Space Program or whoever, wiped your memories. My guess is that when you were around thirty-two or thirty-three the Secret Space Program took you. Don’t beat yourself up for not remembering. They have tech neither you nor I have even heard of. And I’ve never heard of them erasing someone’s memories. I wonder why?” He sighed, long and heavy.

  Jaxx stared at Donny. Was he signaling that he was an ally? Was he going to help him work this fucking infuriating puzzle out? Was he going to stick his neck out and be a real man?

  Donny doodled in the margins of his paper. “I wish we could go back to that time and pin-point the exact age you were taken and the exact reaso
n your memories were deleted.”

  “We can,” said Jaxx, as excited as he had been on that first day, when Slade had told him he’d be earning silly money interpreting hieroglyphs from space.

  Donny let out one of his trademark sighs. “Slade has me looking for something else with these sessions.”

  Jaxx threw himself back down on his mattress. He shouldn’t have been disappointed with Donny. He shouldn’t have expected anything in the first place. He was a yes-man, through and through. He wasn’t going to help him. “What does he have you looking for?”

  Donny grimaced. “Well, apparently Rivkah Ravenwood has similar...let’s say...abilities as you. We think she developed them shortly before she left the Secret Space Program. And we think you may have something to do with her abilities.”

  Jaxx sprang to his feet. “Rivkah? Rivkah’s here?”

  Donny realized his error.

  “How is that possible? Who brought her here? What are they doing with her?” He charged Donny’s chair and got right up in his grill. “Tell me you’re not doing this shit to her, you measly little worm.”

  Donny didn’t flinch. “Sit down, Kaden.”

  Donny never called him by his first name. It gave Jaxx the heeby-jeebies. “Let me see her.”

  “That’s not on today’s menu, Mr. Jaxx. Today, we’re going to investigate how and when you transferred your abilities to Miss Ravenwood.”

  “That’s bullshit,” said Jaxx. “I couldn’t move objects with my mind before I got here. I can’t have given these ‘powers’ as you call them to anyone.”

  “Though there is the matter of the missing years. The years you don’t remember? The years I believe you worked for the SSP, more likely than not, with Ms. Ravenwood.”

  “That would be Pilot First Class Captain Ravenwood, to you.”

  “As you wish,” said Donny. He was a smooth asshole when he wanted to be. “Pilot First Class Captain Ravenwood.”

  Jaxx narrowed his eyes. “Can’t you just put me under and take me back there. We need answers. Now.”

  “Certainly,” said Donny. “You’re going deeper...and deeper...”

  Jaxx was out before Donny said another word.

  ∞

  Jaxx was in his starfighter, parked inside one of Star Warden’s large Star Carrier bays. Dammit. He’d landed back in his memories, but only minutes after he’d steered a rock into a crack in a ship and brought it down. Where was Rivkah? Had she made it back? Where was the rest of his squad?

  A knock on his cockpit window jolted him out of his racing thoughts and into the carrier bay. A man stood on a ladder and waived, then knocked again. Jaxx pressed a button and his cockpit window lifted. The man climbed down the ladder, jumping to the bay floor.

  Cheering engulfed the bay, people clapping and hollering.

  A crackle came over his helmet comm line. It was Rivkah.

  Jaxx was swamped with relief. She was alive.

  “I’d like to think I helped out there too. But, this is your day. Enjoy it.”

  “How did I do that out there?” Jaxx asked, still sitting in his cockpit, dazed at what he had become in combat.

  “That’s what I think everyone will want to know. Get out of your starfighter and celebrate, because tomorrow the enemy will be back. We’ll need you.”

  Jaxx stood. It was the applause he’d been waiting for his entire life. If he knew how he had flown with such precision, how he’d merged with his craft, how he moved things with his mind, then he’d be able to walk down the ladder with confidence and embrace the whoops and hollers from his comrades. As it was, he felt like the world’s greatest fraud. What he’d done was a fluke, an anomaly. His legs and arms shook with each step down. He did his best not to faint or lose his grip and fall backward.

  He held down his comm tab. “Thank you, Rivkah. I pushed the control stick forward when exiting the launch tube. Your advice saved my life.”

  “It did. Now, get to your celebration. Rivkah, out.”

  Jaxx touched ground and unstrapped his helmet, placing it under his arm. People slapped him on his back as he walked by, making his way out of the bay and into the star carrier’s large lobby. If he could go to his quarters and sleep, he would. Sleep, though, would probably evade him tonight. He imagined the stress and the excitement would be too much for his brain to handle.

  The lobby was full of people buzzing around, hastily moving from one place to another, down hallways and into offices. Medical techs ran by Jaxx and down adjacent hallways, heading to the carrier’s stern. But every three or four steps, someone took the time to congratulate him. He was, if they were to be believed, a star, a legend, a damned wizard out there.

  “Attention on deck!”

  Jaxx turned. It was the Admiral. Jaxx didn’t recognize his face, but his epaulets said it all. A guard walked with the Admiral, decked out in armor from head to toe, a large rifle strapped to his back. The guard looked about a foot taller than Jaxx, and Jaxx was above average height.

  They halted in front of him. The Admiral put his hands behind his back, beaming with the kind of confidence only an admiral could have. “I’m Admiral Gentry Race. Follow me.”

  Jaxx straightened his posture. “Yes, Sir.”

  Jaxx followed Gentry up a flight of stairs and into a large room with a long meeting table in the middle. A woman in full flight gear was sitting at the table, hands folded in front of her, her helmet resting on the seat next to her. She was breathtaking and for a second, Jaxx couldn’t take his eyes off her. He knew who she was. She’d broken through his memory barrier, on the other side of time, and made herself known to him. He’d remembered nothing of his time as a pilot, until he was under hypnosis, but she had visited in his room’s mirror, asked for his help. She was someone. She was special. She was Rivkah Ravenwood.

  When Rivkah saw the admiral, she immediately stood and saluted.

  He gave her a nod and gestured for the large guard to wait outside, then dipped his head at the uniformed man.

  “Take a seat,” the admiral ordered.

  Jaxx sat, wondering why he’d been led here. He’d never met the admiral, the guy in the uniform. Was he in trouble for some reason? If he was, he wished they’d ship him back home.

  Gentry motioned to the woman. “You already know Captain Rivkah Ravenwood.” He sat straighter in his seat, chest out. “Behind me is Captain Richard Fox.”

  Fox said nothing.

  Jaxx eyed the woman, stunned that this really was her – Rivkah. Black hair, blue eyes, and light brown skin. “Again, thank you.”

  Expressionless, she replied. “No need to thank me. We’re squad mates. It’s what we do.” She brought her attention to Gentry. “Why were we brought here?”

  Gentry interlocked his fingers. “I was a starfighter for many years and have been in combat for almost as long. I’ve never seen a pilot fly like Lieutenant Kaden Jaxx here.” He turned to Jaxx. “You did things in your starfighter that defy logic. Your precision in flight was extraordinary, your accuracy was for the record books.” He cleared his throat. “I watched you on the vid screen once Captain Fox alerted me that one of our starfighters was executing extraordinary feats. It seemed that debris around you moved in unpredictable – dare I say it – physics-defying ways. Shooting left, shooting right and always hitting an enemy ship. I saw it occur over and over again. And always you were the nearest pilot to that debris.”

  The admiral took a deep breath. “How did you maneuver the way you did, Jaxx? How were you so accurate with every ion blast?” He pointed to a screen on the wall. “Every starfighter has a camera placed on it. It reviews every weapon’s fire and every hit, amongst several other things. The only weapon’s fire in which you missed were when we think you purposely missed.”

  Jaxx remained silent, not knowing what to say. He was just as baffled as Gentry.

  “Who trained you?” asked Fox.

  “I was trained just outside Gliese Space Station in Libra quadrant.”

 
Fox frowned. “Yes, that’s where you learned to pilot. What I’m asking is who trained you to do what you did out there?”

  “Just the instructors at Gliese Space Station. Do you want actual names?”

  Fox and Gentry gave each other a look. Gentry rubbed his hands together and eyed Jaxx, a grin plastered on his face. “No. Not necessary. Have you ever heard of planet Taiyo?”

  “Planet Taiyo? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “The Taiyonians,” Gentry added, “are an evil group. They have taken resources and stolen a planet from the Kelhoon. They renamed the Kelhoon’s world, Taiyo. So in response we have aligned with the Kelhoons to help them take back their world.”

  Jaxx put his hands on the desk. “What does this have to do with me, Admiral?”

  Gentry, steely-faced, replied, “You’ll be under Captain Rivkah Ravenwood’s command from this point forward. You’ll be going into Taiyo’s quadrant. Only the best of the best pilots are being allowed to join this mission and liberate the Kelhoon world. We’ll be drafting you a formal letter in a half an hour. You’ll be leaving immediately.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “Captain Richard Fox will act as leader of this mission.”

  Jaxx didn’t get a choice in the matter, so he responded like any good Lieutenant would. “Yes, Sir.”

  Gentry stood and walked out of the room, followed by Fox.

  “If you don’t have any questions, Lieutenant Jaxx, then you are dismissed,” Rivkah said. She was clearly blind-sided by this. She bit her lip, doing her best to hold in her anger.

  “Why are we going to go to Taiyo’s quadrant?”

  She crossed her arms. “Didn’t you just hear what the Admiral just said?”

  “But, why would we help this Kelhoon group?”

  Rivkah’s shoulder’s drooped and she shook her head. “I don’t know. Taiyo probably has precious minerals and ore that we can extract from their planet. The Kelhoon are a pretty ruthless group. The only reason we’d align with them is if we’re profiting by them...somehow.”