The next ten minutes were spent over tepid tea and a raft of introductions and pleasantries. Oddly, Vellusk brought up the sport of cricket, which apparently he had learned of from the Xan’s nascent diplomats and thought to be one of the finer pinnacles of human achievement. Weatherby was forced to admit having participated in a handful of matches, and was quizzed as to his particular abilities. The Xan, it seemed, relished detail, and Vellusk in particular seemed enamored of the minutiae of culture, though Administrator Sallev seemed almost impatient with the idle conversation—surprising, given the Xan predilection for manners and ceremony.
Finally, the talk turned to the business at hand. “So it appears you were most perceptive and correct, Ambassador Morrow,” Sallev said. “I am most glad that the English pursued this renegade French ship, and that it was none other than Thomas Weatherby himself sent to stop them.”
Morrow and Weatherby traded a sidelong look; the latter had told the former of the ignominious origins of this chase across the Known Worlds. While both men had great respect for Nelson, neither bore him great love, either. “We were most fortunate that Captain Weatherby was the one to arrive,” Morrow agreed neutrally. “Perhaps you might update the captain, Administrator, as to what has transpired?”
And so the administrator did, without the excess of formalities Weatherby had feared he must endure: A week prior to the arrival of Fortitude, the Xan’s alchemical-electrical methods discovered an Earth ship on a direct course for great Xanath. However, much to the Xan’s consternation, this ship was able to cloak itself—much as Fortitude was kept from prying eyes—just as the Xan’s self-defense forces had arrived to investigate. However, the great scryers amongst the Xan did catch a glimpse of the French tricolor, as well as the name Franklin prior to the ship’s disappearance. Despite the Xan’s best efforts, the ship’s whereabouts remained unknown, which further increased their anxieties.
Of course, Weatherby could understand the consternation that erupted at this, and easily inferred the source. The Xan jealously guarded their space, and unannounced vessels that simply disappeared into the Void would aggrieve them to no end. Plus, it implied that the Great Work of humanity was starting, in perhaps some small ways, to approach that of the Xan themselves. Reports from Morrow himself, and many other ambassadors besides, pointed to a growing schism within Xan society with regards to humanity’s increased presence in the Known Worlds, as well as the appropriate Xan reaction.
And so the Xan’s dilemma became clear. Should word spread of a human “invasion,” though it be one ship, the Xan would likely take a hard stance against Earth. There were a small portion of Xan who wished nothing more than to return to their old war-like ways, with humanity as the target of their long-simmering wrath. This prompted still others to fear that humanity would be a catalyst that would drive the Xan away from their peaceful ways—and that such a catalyst should be contained . . . or removed.
Administrator Sallev—administrator of whom or what, Weatherby could not say, though Morrow seemed to attach nigh-monarchical importance to the title—seemed to be of the mind that violence would beget violence, and that the Xan should stay out of human affairs; hence, his joy at finding a human vessel in pursuit, for thus the Earthmen would take care of the issue, and leave the Xan still in peace, perhaps to remain so at least a short while longer.
“That is why we cannot help you overmuch,” Sallev concluded. “We wish for you to find and apprehend your adversaries, but we cannot be seen as taking sides or interfering. We officially take no positions in the wars of mankind, and many of us, myself included, fear that entering combat against you would result in the awakening of our old martial rage—to the great detriment of all the Known Worlds.”
“Do we know, then, why the French are here to begin with?” Anne asked.
“No, my dear lady, their course told us nothing of their aims, I am most sorry to say,” Sallev responded. “They seemed to be heading straight for the Main Administrative Complex responsible for all Xan affairs, but nothing has been reported amiss since then. They could be anywhere.”
“Have you searched the Earth Quarter?” Weatherby asked. “For even a cloaked ship might wish to show up in port, or at least its men might.”
“We have, but to no avail,” Sallev sighed musically, with a few slow notes of saddened discord.
Weatherby sat back and thought a moment, his mind reaching back to his very first encounter with the Xan, upon Callisto. “There is more to this,” he said quietly. “There is something that has vexed me since ’79.”
He looked to Morrow, who nodded sagely. “I told you Captain Weatherby had a fine mind, Administrator,” he said. “As I have said in the past, it is possible that the French are being aided by those among your people who may disagree with your peaceful approach to mankind.”
Anne and Philip looked perplexed at this, but Sallev merely slumped back in his massive chair. “As you requested, my friend Ambassador, we conducted an investigation into our partisans. There has been . . . increased activity,” Sallev sang mournfully.
Morrow nodded. “As I thought. Just as there may have been a handful who aided Cagliostro in his awakening of Althotas by giving him access to the Sword of Xanthir back on Callisto, we may now see that there are those Xan willing to aid the French in whatever fell task they’ve set themselves.”
“And our society and our peace of millennia will be torn asunder,” Sallev cried softly, echoed by mourning minor chords from his fellows on either side. They sat in silence like this for several moments, with only the music of the Xan’s pitiable sorrow filling the small room.
Then Sallev’s chest exploded in a burst of fire and green blood.
Weatherby bolted to his feet and drew his sword in one smooth motion—but felt a hammer-blow to his back that sent him flying over his small table and onto the floor. Struggling mightily against the pain, he turned to see a Xan.
And by God, it was a Xan in full fury.
One of the guards that had accompanied them into the room had thrown back its cowl, featuring a face most surreal and dangerously expressive. The creature’s head was long and drawn, bulbous at the top, thin at the chin, topped with long, black ropes of braided hair that seemed to move of its own accord. Its eyes were white pools with horizontal slits of inky blackness, set against its light blue skin. There were but two small holes were a proper nose ought to be. And on either side of the creature’s chin was a mouth. It had two.
And they were both smiling with what could only be described as otherworldly malice.
Weatherby made to stand, but the Xan fired a weapon at him. It was all the captain could do to jump and roll away, and the weapon’s discharge—God only knew what fell energy it fired—lanced into the floor with a crack-hiss and a bright light.
And then it was gone, out the door, leaving Vellusk and Sallev’s two compatriots calling out in staccato bursts of disharmony and fear. Sallev was clearly dead, as was the second guard. Morrow and Anne were on the ground and appeared to be unharmed.
“Philip?” Anne asked, looking here and there. “Philip, where are you?”
Weatherby cast about as he gathered his feet. The boy was nowhere to be found. And a look of sheer terror grew upon Anne’s face.
That was all it took for Weatherby to rush out the door, running in the general direction of the disharmonic screaming that now echoed through the halls.
June 20, 2134
“Goddamn it, Maria! There’s a limit to the kind of ops we can cover for!” growled Admiral Hans Gerlich, head of the Joint Space Command and, as of two years’ ago, Earth’s response to extradimensional incursions. DAEDALUS was his baby. And it was getting spanked.
Diaz nodded at the holoscreen in front of her, her head bowed, dejected. “I’m sorry, Hans, but you know as well as I do that there’s more to it than the story Total-Suez is feeding us.”
“So show me the data,” Gerlich demanded, his features getting redder. “Because if we don’t have
any evidence of malfeasance, Total-Suez is going to make a stink about this, and we’ll either have to buy them off with some massive asteroid contracts or give them free rides to Jupiter and Saturn until we’re both retired.”
“How long can you stall them?” Diaz asked, looking up. “I need more time here.”
“A day, maybe two. And if there’s nothing there?”
She frowned. “Then print up their round-trip tickets. But I swear, it’s there.”
“Thirty-six hours. Then you come home and we start making amends with Total Suez. Gerlich out.”
The holoimage winked out, to be replaced just as swiftly by the image of Major Coogan walking into the room. “New orders, ma’am?”
Diaz leaned back on the sofa of the well-appointed luxury condo the team had appropriated, courtesy of Egyptian intelligence. “Just running out of time. How’s the analysis?”
“We may have struck on something, if you want to take a look.”
Diaz pried herself off the sofa and joined the rest of the team in the dining room, which had been converted into a conference room. The resort at least had the latest toys, which meant holoprojectors on demand pretty much everywhere in the place, along with SmartSurface tech that could present data on any flat surface, horizontal or vertical. Thus, at the moment, the dining room was awash in information, from schematics and spreadsheets on the walls to 3D holomodels of the fusion station on the table.
“How we doing?”
Greene looked up. “Maggie may be on to something,” he said, though he didn’t look particularly excited..
Diaz arched her eyebrow at this. “Didn’t know you were good at this science shit, Captain.”
“Neither did I, ma’am,” Hutchinson said stiffly. “But even a jarhead knows when there’s an extra pipe coming out of the sink.”
Hutchinson pulled up a schematic and, with a few flicks of her hand, enlarged it so that it covered an entire wall. “This is the main trunk line, right? It goes out to the substations, and from there, all the individual buildings in the area. This,” she added, pointing to a small line coming out of the reactor itself, “goes somewhere else. And it wasn’t on the schematics the company had on file with the IAEA.”
Diaz blinked. “So they’re diverting power from their own project?”
“Maybe. It disappears after only about a foot, but . . . well, Dr. Greene can explain it better,” the Marine captain said.
Greene still seemed nonplussed, but dove in anyway. “So you can shield a power line from sensors, right? But by building this line so close to the main reactor and drawing it off prior to the main trunk line, that foot or so is too close to the reactor to be properly shielded. So that’s how we found it. It’s not a dead end. It leads . . . somewhere.”
Diaz stared at the wall-screen for a moment. “All right, I’ll bite. Where?”
Coogan walked up and, with a wave of his hand, batted the schematic aside, leaving a large-scale map of the area in its place. On it, there were literally a million points of light. “Process of elimination. First idea was to remove all power sources with known links to any power plant in the area.” This was done with another wave, leaving perhaps several thousand lights remaining, spread almost evenly across the land. “Now, in this part of the world, there are many people who use their own portable generators. Now whether they use solar or gas or thermal or fusion, each has their own unique characteristics, so we were able to run some cross-referencing checks to eliminate them.”
Another few waves, and there were but three points remaining. “And so we have three. One is, of course, the power plant we visited, because it’s not hooked up to the grid yet,” Coogan said. “This one here is in the center of town, the local hospital. We think it’s simply too new to be included in the records. It may have its own power source that isn’t registered and, if it’s deep enough, doesn’t show on remote sensors.
“And that leaves this,” Coogan said, pointing to a spot about 125 kilometers out of town along a back road, pretty much smack dab in the middle of the desert. With another gesture, he expanded it to show it was a small village with a population of roughly two thousand. “This is Siwa,” he said.
Diaz sighed and turned to Huntington. “Home of your oracle, right?”
Huntington nodded seriously. “Yes, ma’am. The untraceable power emission is coming from the ruins of the oracle temple.”
“And so you think that Harry ran a massive trunk line 125 klicks through the desert without anybody noticing,” Diaz said, sounding very tired. “It’s a nice try, Mags, but you’d have to run the line underground. You’d have to burrow through—wait. Son of a bitch.”
Greene nodded. “Yuna’s experiment. Took me a minute, too. That’s the only reason I think we might be onto something.”
Two years ago, on Mars, Shaila and Greene had stumbled across a homebrew underground particle accelerator—used by acclaimed astronaut Yuna Hiyashi to generate enough power to break through to another dimension. Yuna had used mining equipment to send particles zipping through solid rock, creating a circle around McAuliffe Base that was more than 100 kilometers in diameter. And even if Total-Suez wasn’t replicating that exact experiment, Harry Yu’s experience running the mining ops would give him passing familiarity with any kind of equipment that could burrow quickly and efficiently underground.
“So he could not only drill through, but he could also lay an accelerator there, couldn’t he,” Diaz said, half-asking.
Greene decided to answer anyway. “Depends on what the experiment is. If you’re atom smashing, you could do a parallel track, or smash ’em head on. Or, perhaps even scarier, this could be just one length of a truly massive accelerator, but that would encompass most of Egypt, along with parts of Libya and the Sudan. I think the world would notice if that happened, but I suppose you never know.”
Diaz expanded the map more. “Looks like a lot more people could live here,” she noted.
“When they started building the resorts ten years ago, there was a lot of immigration,” Coogan said. “Up until then, it was like 25,000 people.”
The general gave a wolfish smile. “So you get everybody to up and move, leaving the ruins there for . . . well, hell, Huntington. You did the research. What’s there?”
“This was the site of the ancient temple of Amun-Ra, dating back to the 26th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. Alexander the Great went all the way there from the Nile back in 331 B.C.E. in order to gain the blessing of the Oracle to become a true Pharaoh of Egypt,” the Marine officer said matter-of-factly. “It’s worth mentioning, I suppose, that it was somewhere in Egypt where Alexander is said to have come into possession of the Emerald Tablet, which supposedly somehow contains the highest secrets of alchemy.”
Greene shook his head sadly at this. “Legends and folklore, Captain. You have a nearly vacant town where you can safely do underground experiments without the world noticing. That’s more than enough.”
“Either way, I got more than enough physical evidence to get a move on,” Diaz said. “So whether we find outlaw tech or alien alchemists, I’m good either way. Huntington, get us ready to roll. I’m going to go make Hans Gerlich say sorry to me.”
Two hours and one half-apology later (Gerlich still wanted evidence, after all), the four of them rode into the quiet and largely abandoned town of Siwa. It was nearly 3 a.m., and there were very few lights of any sort still on; even the handful of streetlights were either on the fritz or too weak to cut through the gloom. Thankfully, the moon was nearly full, and without trees or other obstructions, shone beautifully across the town. There were a handful of vehicles, many of which were old enough to be called vintage. Diaz wasn’t a gear-head, but even she knew that the one with the cloth roof and a horse on the grill was well over a century old, and would command a high price back in the States. Here, it was merely useful.
The four team members got out of their vehicle a few kilometers from the ruins. Coogan and Greene carried advanced sensor packages t
hat, ideally, would help them find the source of the power; Coogan had even programmed his glasses to overlay electrical flows across his field of vision, which he then fed to Diaz’ datapad and via satellite for the DAEDALUS team in Washington to monitor and save.
Diaz and Huntington walked behind them, each armed with a machine pistol as well as a microwave emitter—a “zapper,” in common parlance. These handheld weapons emitted a short burst of microwave energy that prompted searing pain and unconsciousness in the target without causing any physical damage. The only aftereffect was the memory of feeling as if one’s nervous system was on fire.
They had decided to park well away from the main tourist entrance to the ruins, which stood apart from the village among a rather impressive stand of palm trees, still drawing water from the ancient oasis. As they approached, they could see the shuttered souvenir stands and food stalls growing more numerous; the oracle temple was pretty much the only draw for the town now, especially since the formation of Siwa Bay—it wasn’t even necessary as an oasis any longer. Here, there were a handful of lights on, but it was still far too late, or perhaps too early, for activity on the streets beyond a couple of rats and a stray dog.
The tourist entrance itself was well locked, and there was a tall stone wall around the ruins themselves. Diaz called up the most recent satellite image—all of three hours old, thanks to Coogan—and found the service entrance. She led her team around the wall, brushing past the palms and a variety of small buldings, until they quickly arrived at a pair of chain-link gates, secured with more chain and a padlock, and featuring razor-wire on top. With a nod from Diaz, Huntington made short work of the padlock with a laser cutter, and the four dashed inside and made for the cover of a couple of Dumpsters.
“Guys?” Diaz whispered. “Which way?”
Coogan looked across the facility, minute lights dancing across his glasses, while Greene flipped through pages on his datapad. “The independent power source seems to be coming from under the ruins,” Greene said finally. “It looks like we’ll have to find our way down inside.”
The Enceladus Crisis Page 20