by TJ Ryan
She bit at her lip. That was what she had promised. It was what was supposed to keep her and Tyrese safe. Not that she had ever planned on going through with it, but she never did fill him in on her plan.
“No, of course not,” she admitted to him. “While we’re practicing honesty, I never planned on bringing him the tech. I was going to use it to destroy the cell, and any others that Atria and Crestin were meant to bring back, as well.”
“Why were sent to find more?”
“Why else would he send them? You knew it was never to just have out backs. But that’s beside the point, Tyrese. We can’t stay here. The atmosphere is toxic to us, we will die. We have to find a way to get back, even if that means pretending to find the tech and bring it back to Overwatch.”
Tyrese shook his head. “You don’t understand, Tara.”
“I understand perfectly well, Tyrese. We’re human, this planet is not. Besides, we never learned how to deal with any of this shit at the Academ…” She paused on that word.
“What? What’s wrong?” Tyrese stepped closer towards her and lay a hand on her shoulder.
Bagging Hell. The Academy.
“Atria mentioned something. She said that the Academy had their grip on the planet. That something was coming, and we wouldn’t survive.”
“Atria is delusional and poisoned from the toxins,” Tyrese countered. “I wouldn’t put stock in anything she said.”
He took another deep breath before continuing. “Look. I’ve been out here a lot longer than you. I’ve seen the way they manage things. You were out for days, Tara. We’ll be fine here for now. Things will only get better, I’ll explain it to you later. You have to see something first. It might help you understand this.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. But I still think you’re crazy.”
Dar stepped forward, and Tyrese and Tara diverted their attention toward the man as he raised his hands in a quieting gesture.
“Your Atria may not be completely delusional. What did she speak of, when she mentioned something was coming? Most delusions stem from truth. You mentioned the Academy. Who are they?”
Tara shook her head. “The Academy is where we all train. It’s a part of Overwatch, our military organization and base. Yours, too, I guess, if you really are human. It’s what has kept us alive for so long, and what protects the planet from attack so that in the event that one day it may rejuvenate, humanity can return to Earth.”
“Well, this Overwatch you speak of, hasn’t done a very good job. And, not to alarm you, but the planet has been rejuvenating for centuries. It’s due to the continued attacks that the planet has remains toxic.”
“What are you talking about?” Tara stared at him, wide-eyed, unable to fully grasp what he was saying. Tyrese stood rigid as well, his eyes fixated on Dar.
“The attacks have been coming every twenty four lunar months since as far back as our records indicate. Just frequent enough to prevent the planet from fully rejuvenating. The attacks are toxic, not the planet.”
Tara gaped. “What. The. Hell. No, this is crazy. Who the hell are you? This is crazy. The planet is dead, it’s toxic. You’re lying to us.”
“Tara, what if they’re telling the truth? They’re the ones who have been here this whole time, after all. Not us, them. We haven’t even been able to see back the black atmosphere. No one has actually seen the planet with their own eyes. We just don’t know.”
Tara froze. Shit, well maybe no one else had seen the planet with their own eyes. “Tyrese. Back in the pod. I got a glimpse through the black atmosphere. I saw…. Tyrese, I saw green.” He stared at her unblinking. “Tyrese, I saw green on the planet. I thought I had made the whole thing up, but maybe I’m not crazy after all.”
Dar nodded. “Yes, not crazy. How long ago was this?”
“About six weeks ago, give or take.”
“Yes, of course. Right before the latest attack. There is green no longer, I’m afraid. Not for another few months until the planet begins to expel the toxins, at least. You came at a bad time.”
“Bad time?” Tara rubbed her temples. “This is too much. I can’t deal with this right now. Tyrese, we need to go home. Please, find us a way to go back.” Tyrese wrapped his arm around her and steadied her while she shook.
“Engineer Tyrese has explained to me your position as a Defense Engineer. While you may have been protecting the Earth, there may have been those among you that were intent on keeping it destroyed. Could this Academy your colleague mentioned have had something to do with this?”
Tara gaped. She remembered Atria’s burning, haunted eyes, and while she was clearly crazed, her eyes had held truth in them. “What if…oh, damn Tyrese this is going to sound crazy. While Overwatch is trying to keep the Earth free of alien influence. What if the Academy is trying to keep the Earth broken and free of Overwatch’s influence? Atria said… Well, I don’t really understand what she said, but I got the impression Overwatch and the Academy weren’t as buddy-buddy as we’re meant to believe.”
“What?” His eyes went wide as the implications of her suggestion sank in. “Tara that makes no sense. Why would they do that? Why would they be intentionally hurting the Earth? And for that matter, how would they be doing it? That’s absolutely crazy.”
Tara shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past Overwatch to turn the planet into a military base. Perhaps the Academy is trying to prevent that from happening? Bagging hell, Tyrese, this is insane… But, it all kind of makes sense, you know?”
“Engineer Tyrese Gypsum,” Dar said to him. “Your friend speaks truth.”
They stared at the man, this human living here on the Earth where no one should have lived at all, as Tara tried to figure out if Dar was on her side. What side was she on, even? She wanted to save the Earth, to keep it for the human race to return to one day but now there were so many questions crowding her head that—just like this room—she didn’t know which way was up anymore. What was the truth about Overwatch? About the Academy? Why did all those alien species want Earth so badly? What about this blasted, terrifying planet appealed to anyone? She understood why humans fought so hard to keep it. After all, it was theirs. But why would anyone want to take it from them? It made sense now… The planet wasn’t actually dead. No wonder if was so contested.
She shook her head. It didn’t matter, and the only way she would ever have enough time to puzzle over it would be if they got off this rock and back to the relative safety of Overwatch. “Listen, Tyrese, we cannot stay here. Even if the air in here is safe, what are we supposed to eat? What are we supposed to do for clothes, for that matter? Are we just supposed to strip out of our envirosuits and go around in our bare skin?”
“We’re safe in here,” he repeated. “That’s all I know.”
Tara shook her head. “I believe it, but I don’t believe it. Tyrese, this is all insane, isn’t it? Please tell me I’m insane. This can’t actually be real. Everything we’ve been taught, our training, our history… It can’t all be a lie, can it? It’s just too much. I’m not going to believe it. Besides, there’s no way our language would have remained the same in two streams of human existence, having been completely separated for over one thousand years. There’s something not right here. For now, can we just focus on the task at hand, and that’s getting out of here. We can figure this craziness all out after we get back to Overwatch. Until then, I beg you, please, let’s just find a way home.”
“Tara, we’re safe here,” Tyrese repeated. She didn’t know why he was so intent on staying. The toxins must truly be getting to his brain. All the more reason to get back to Overwatch, and fast.
“Well, here’s another question for you. What about your exotech?” Their whole predicament seemed a lot easier to deal with when she pretended it wasn’t happening. Ignorance is bliss, and all that.
He looked at her blankly. “What about it?”
“I mean, what are you going to do when the power runs out? I know they have twenty year power packs, o
r whatever, but eventually they would run out. Are you willing to go back to being in a chair for the rest of your life?”
His eyes clouded over. She’d struck a nerve.
“Not that it would come to that,” she continued. “Danvers would send another team down looking for us long before your mechanical legs froze up on you. Whether Atria was right about the Academy and Overwatch or not, he’s not going to give up trying to get his hands on that fission cell.”
“I know that, Tara, but listen. You haven’t heard everything yet.”
“I’ve heard enough,” she snarked. “We have to go. We cannot stay here. I can’t make it any more clear than that. We have to find the tech, we have to complete our mission, and… I want to find another seed. I don’t know why. I just need to prove that the Earth can be saved, you know?”
“You don’t think these people being here proves that? Besides, weren’t you listening? There is life. The planet rejuvenated. How are you not making a bigger deal of this? If we stay here, we can get a thousand seeds.”
“I don’t believe it, Tyrese. Besides, we can’t get anything if we’re stuck underground!” She threw her hands up in the air to let them fall back down again.
He reached out for her hands again, and she pulled away. “We need to leave. Now. Tyrese, we can’t just sit here and do nothing. We can’t just hide here forever!”
“Actually, we could,” he said gently, “but we don’t have to. I have something else I want to show you. That’s what I was trying to tell you. Come on.”
This time, he held his hand out to her, standing there and waiting for her to take it. Tara wanted to argue with him more, wanted to tell him that he was being irresponsible because Atria was still out there somewhere and the atmosphere was killing them, and they wouldn’t survive for much longer. Besides, Danvers was still directly over their heads and waiting for them and every single living thing in the universe including their own planet was against them and there wasn’t any time for holding hands.
“Please.” She didn’t know what it was, but the look he gave her softened her somewhat. She sighed, and gave in to him. Well, if they were going to die, they might as well die holding hands. Maybe they’ll find peace in his delusions.
And then she folded her fingers into his, and let him lead her to whatever was going to happen next.
Dar and his people crowded around them, trailing in their wake as Tyrese and Dar stepped through one sheeting curtain of sand after another. Where does this stuff come from, Tara wondered? How did they learn to use it? The story of their survival, here on a planet everyone assumed to be dead, must be an amazing tale. She could admit that much, even if she wanted nothing to do with them. If it were even true. How simple would this mission had been if they hadn’t discovered these people underground. Then again, if they didn’t find them, she’d be dead now.
Finally, after seeing more of the underground complex and taking in her surroundings, she was starting to believe it more. There was no way she was capable of imaging all of this. She reached her hand out to the walls as they walked, trailing her fingers along the cold, hard surfaces of the textured metal. It sure felt real. Her training as a Defensive Engineer kicked in and she tried to soak in every detail of everything they passed.
The first thing she noticed was the complete absence of rock in the spaces around them. It was all metal. The walls and ceiling and floor and doors as well. The only organic substance was the sand that fell across every door, purifying the air if that was to be believed, and then emptying into metal grates to be taken away and returned again. The next thing she noticed, was the sound.
At the very edge of the range of her suit’s audio receivers, there was a low hum. She thought maybe it was a glitch in her system’s electronics. The rips in her suit might have caught some of the built in sheet wiring. But no, that wasn’t it. This was a sound in the chambers and rooms they walked through, and it was getting louder.
It was a moment later when she noticed how similar it sounded to the hum of the solar generators on Overwatch. This was a power source. A hidden source of power, buried under how many hundred kilograms of shifting, crawling, cloying soil.
Tara looked up, above their heads, suddenly feeling the imaginary weight of all that dirt crushing down on her. How far underground were they? Certainly far enough that Overwatch couldn’t detect whatever was powering these people’s lives.
“How many of them are there?” Tara asked Tyrese.
“I don’t know.” He looked to Dar for direction before taking a door on their right. “We haven’t gotten that far. I was more focused on finding you.”
“Thanks for that. What’s the power source we’re going to?”
He looked at her with a smile, his helmet still bouncing against his shoulders. “Figured that one out, did you?”
“Of course. I’d make a poor Engineer if I couldn’t recognize the feel of a power supply. So what is it? Can’t be solar. Not down here below the surface.”
“Or on the surface either, I’d bet. No sun, too many particles in the atmosphere.” He stopped them in front of one last door. There was no sand cascading over this one. Just a metal door. Then with a deep breath, he reached over and took the clasps of her helmet in his fingers. “Let me take this off, okay? You’re going to want to see this with your own eyes. Not through the suit’s HUD.”
She hesitated. Then, looking deep into his eyes, she nodded her consent.
The air tasted tinny and metallic when she took a breath. So very different than how it had smelled out in that chamber with Atria trying to kill her. It wasn’t exactly stale, but it wasn’t what she was used to on Overwatch, either. The air there always smelled faintly of death, being the same recycled and refiltered air that had been floating through the station for decades.
Here, the air smelled real.
“I’m not going to die?” she asked Tyrese, with a little tremor in her voice that she couldn’t help.
“We all die,” Dar said, standing right next to her. “But nobody has to die today.”
Tara couldn’t help but smile.
Oh, great, she thought to herself. Now she was starting to believe what the little humans told her. Then again, why not, right? Tyrese trusted them. He trusted this Dar. She trusted Tyrese with her life. Why shouldn’t she trust him with this, too?
Dar smiled, as if her thoughts had been right there to read and understand. With a big gray hand placed on a recessed pressure plate in the wall, the door opened. Dar and Tyrese stepped in without hesitating. Tara went in a moment later.
There were lights on in the floor. There were control modules hanging suspended from the ceiling. Tara reoriented herself, knowing that the place was turned upside down now, and what she was seeing as the ceiling was actually the floor. Those control consoles were upside down now, and somehow still flashing with lights and indicator screens. Technology that was a thousand years old, still functioning. Still humming with power.
“That’s incredible.” Tara walked around to see the front of the screens. She almost understood what she was seeing. The tech that she used in her Defense Pod, that Overwatch ran on, the tech that everything in her life ran on wasn’t that far removed from what she was seeing. It was all based on the same concepts. Made to be used by human hands.
Only, it was on the ceiling, high above their heads. There were no hands operating it now. Not even the humans who claimed to have lived down here the whole time. So who was running things?
“Tara,” Tyrese said to her, “I’d like you to meet the power behind the continued life here on Earth.”
She looked from him, to the control consoles, and wondered what he meant by—
“Greetings, Defensive Engineer Tara Royce,” a mechanically synthesized voice said to her. Computerized or not, it was definitely male. Somehow, Tara had the impression that the voice was looking right at her. “It is good to make your acquaintance.”
Tara jumped, an uneasy feeling settling into th
e pit of her stomach. “It talks?” she asked. She did not like the sound of that.
“He talks, yes.” Tyrese came around to stand next to her. “He’s not what you might expect. He’s not just a power source.”
“You keep calling it a he. Who are you talking about?”
“Engineer Tyrese Gypsum is talking about me,” the voice said to her. “I am the power source for this complex, and the reason that people were able to stay alive here on Earth all these years.”
Dar waved to the upside down metal consoles. “We are in your debt, Ravnak.”
There was a subtle shift in the sound of the voice from the console. “You are welcome, Dar. It has been my honor to serve you all these generations.”
“You were here?” Tara was starting to form an idea. One that couldn’t possibly be true. “You were here a thousand years ago? Who are you?”
“I am the person responsible for everything,” the voice said to her. “I helped design the fission weapons. I created the escape vehicles that saved the members of the human race that made it to the stars. I kept the survivors here on Earth safe from both the environment and the things that came after. This is all because of me.”
Ravnak, Dar had called him. That should have told Tara who this was. Their language was consistent with hers. She knew that name.
It was just completely impossible. It couldn’t be. Still, when the voice gave her the answer she had been waiting for, it wasn’t even the most surprising thing that she’d heard all day.
“I am,” the voice told them, “Professor Viktor Ravnak.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Batteries,” Ravnak said to himself, barely above a whisper. “Batteries work by using two opposite poles to create an energy flow.”
He was crying now, but he didn’t bother to try stopping the tears. He was about to die. The entire Earth was about to die, except for those lucky few souls who got into the escape ships on time. They would have to clear the Zalite armada, then get into their cryo chambers while in deep space, and then the ships would do the rest. The ships would take them to safety.