For those first six months, she had begun to compensate for her blindness in a natural way, relying more on her other senses: hearing, touch and smell. After the surgery, even though she had adjusted to life as a blind person, her visual prosthetics had been a huge crutch for her. The only time she was without technological aid was in the comfort and safety of her apartment. The sensory skills she had begun to cultivate over that first half a year had never fully developed.
Now, she had no time to expand her natural abilities and compensate for her loss of sight. Her current situation was indeed dire, and her life was in very real danger.
The Cruzados had shown their complete disregard for life by experimenting on the captured members of the security squadron, and Justine was more than helpless; she was an added burden on the remaining soldiers, and on Clive.
She was relieved and more than grateful to have him with her. As if she were a toddler, he hovered over her day and night. From helping her navigate to the lavatory, to ensuring she was able to eat the tray dinners their captors brought in, to holding her hand whenever there was a sharp unexpected sound; Clive never left her side. Justine knew he had to be going through his own emotional journey, and the shame of putting the burden of her wellbeing on him filled her with guilt and despair.
…And anger.
She had been a commissioned officer of the United States Air Force, the decorated captain of a NASA space vessel. She had traveled to Pluto and been on the team that discovered evidence of alien cultures in the galaxy. And here she was, hiding in a darkened room, barely able to care for herself, and fearing for her life.
There were others in her group who were far worse off.
When she had realized Private Jackson was the Cruzados’ first attempt at creating a Kinemetic pilot, she was outraged.
That outrage quickly turned to horror when the young man went into spasms and cried out in agony as his body began to die from radiation poisoning.
Over the next three hours, he developed an angry rash that turned first red, then black, as Clive described to her in a very low and somber tone. The private’s skin bubbled with melanomas, and he continuously secreted bloody pus from all of his orifices. At the end, he could barely summon the strength to moan before he finally died. Justine could still recall the wretched sounds the poor man made; they haunted her.
Dormant Kinemet carried extremely little risk to humans. The minimal radioactivity it gave off was considerably less than getting a medical X-ray.
Kinemet reacted differently to other forms of radiation. Once it was bombarded with hydrogen photons, it quantized and became an extremely powerful fuel source.
Justine knew, from reading some of the briefing reports, that Quantum Resources had experimented with ultraviolet radiation and Kinemet. When exposed to this combination, humans exhibited symptoms similar to Alex Manez’s: a few of the subjects who had volunteered for the experiment reported a heightened sensitivity to any electronic field in their area; they seemed to experience a kind of heightened perception, as if they were dislocated from their corporeal bodies; and they described a high-pitched sound that permeated their hearing. It was like a ringing in the ears, if the ringing changed pitch on a random basis.
They also exhibited classical symptoms of radiation poisoning, and died of rapid mutagenic melanoma. The same melanoma that the private exhibited.
The remaining members of the security detail kept a silent vigil while Private Jackson died a painful death. Over the next thirty-six hours, two more soldiers were taken.
Private Anderson was the next subject; he was gone for ten hours, and when they brought him back, he seemed physically unaltered, except that he was completely catatonic, and had to be force-fed by one of his fellow servicemen. His condition worsened, and though he displayed no physical symptoms, he was dead for an hour before they realized it.
Private Teegs was missing from the room before Justine had woken up that morning.
The soldiers had largely grown silent with despair.
Lieutenant Jeffries made his best effort to boost their morale, but no one laughed when he cracked jokes, no one responded when he tried to make idle conversation, and he had no takers when he attempted to start a few parlor and word games. He gave up trying after a few hours, and the entire group settled into a general atmosphere of malaise.
The injustice of it all made Justine simultaneously want to rage against her circumstances, and curl into a little ball in the corner and cry until she ran out of tears.
Justine did neither, however. She was determined to put on a brave face, despite her handicap, and try to think her way out of this situation. A kernel of thought had gestated in her mind over the past few days, and if she could only concentrate hard enough, she might come up with a solution.
The only comfort Justine found, as they passed the anxious hours, was being as close as possible to Clive. The two of them found a spot a little way off from the others to get some semblance of privacy. Backs against a wall, they both sat with their legs touching. Justine folded her hands in Clive’s and leaned her head against his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry to get you involved in all this,” he said to her quietly.
“Nonsense.” She clucked her tongue. “It’s not your fault.”
“Maybe, but I feel responsible just the same.” Clive reached an arm around her and pulled her close, tucking her safely to his side. “We all feel like there should be something we could have done differently. Second-guessing is part of being human.”
“And so is speculation,” Justine said.
“How’s that?”
“I’ve been so scared over the past few days my brain feels like it’s been dipped in molasses.”
“Not to mention lack of proper sleep,” Clive said. “I would kill for a mattress or even a blanket. I think my hip bone is going to come right through my skin.”
Justine patted his hand. “Do you get the sense that there’s something we’re missing in all this?”
“Like what?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Well, up until a week ago, I had never heard of the Cruzados movement. No one was forewarned about this uprising until they stole the old Mayan scroll. Since then, somehow, they’ve managed to infiltrate Canada Station Three, hijack the Diana and bring us to Venus. I mean, they’ve obviously been here at the observatory for some time, setting things up. From the briefing I received in Houston, the authorities didn’t really think the Cruzados were a serious threat.”
“And what do you make of that?” he asked.
“First of all, if they didn’t think the Kinemet was at risk, why move it to Luna? Why not just put it on a military base?”
She felt Clive shift. He said, “Perhaps they thought moving the Kinemet was a preemptive measure. Remove temptation and all that. Like you said, no one thought the Cruzados had spread beyond Central America.”
“Then why on a commercial liner? Why not on a military transport?”
“That was the first plan,” he said. “However, a few hours before take-off, the rocket developed some kind of computer glitch. It would have been days before it was repaired.”
“Still,” Justine said with an edge to her voice, “there’s something more going on here than we’ve seen.”
“How so?” he asked.
“I don’t think the Cruzados are the only threat here.”
“Uhm—” Clive started to interject.
“No, listen,” she said, holding up a finger to illustrate her point. “Honduras doesn’t have a space program at all. Even the nearest spaceport is Mexico City. There has to be someone else behind the Cruzados. It can’t just be a grassroots historical preservation movement. Someone has supplied them with arms and training. Someone got them to Canada Station Three. Someone set things up here on Venus. This whole thing had to have been planned for months, or even years. And—”
Justine fell silent as the missing piece of information came to her. A hundred thoughts bombar
ded her, and she struggled to make sense of it. She stood up suddenly, as if the motion would clear her head.
A moment later, Clive got to his feet. “What?”
“They had to have inside information and help.” Justine tapped a finger against her lower lip.
Clive scoffed. “How would that be possible?”
“Someone has to be using the Cruzados as a cat’s paw,” Justine said. “They can’t have the resources or information to pull this off.”
She had spoken loud enough that Lieutenant Jeffries and the others heard.
Corporal Marks, sitting across the room, asked, “Then who would have the resources?”
With a quick tilt of her head, Justine said, “At this point, it could be any of the major country corporations. USA, Inc. and Canada Corp. haven’t been keen on sharing the tech, hedging against the future. World resources are strained; one of the country corporations might be getting desperate enough to make a play. They might think they can do a better job, or they might have been doing their own research all along and thought they’d made a breakthrough which we overlooked.”
Lieutenant Jeffries said, “If that’s the case, they’ve been playing it pretty close to the vest. I haven’t heard anything through military channels.”
“I’m on the mesh all the time,” Corporal Marks added. “If an entire country corp. were making this kind of move, no one’s made a peep about it.”
“Then who?” Justine wondered out loud. “They had to have someone who could pilot the liner. Someone who knew the Kinemet would be on the flight, and according to Clive that was a last-minute decision.”
With one hand lightly touching a wall, she stood up and began to pace. “Maybe if we work backwards,” she said. “I know it’s a wild shot, but if we can figure out who might have pulled the strings, maybe we can make the connection.”
Corporal Marks asked, “Do you think it might be someone in Lunar Lines?”
Shaking her head, Justine said, “I found out about the shipment the morning of the flight from Director Mathers. He’s been with the company for almost twenty years. He’s a family man, a decent guy. I can’t believe he had any part in this. What about you?” she asked the soldiers. “When did you find out about the mission?”
Lieutenant Jeffries said, “I was called in for a briefing by Colonel Gagne the day before. He told us he’d received the request for a security squad from NASA that morning. The decision to move the Kinemet had been made only moments after we found out about the theft of the Mayan scroll. The way everyone was scrambling, it was all news to the military. I wasn’t even aware there had been another ship involved.”
“Well,” said Justine, “none of this explains anything. It’s obvious someone higher up is involved. Someone with access to both the military and NASA.”
“I have a question,” said Corporal Marks. “And I really hope this isn’t out of line, ma’am.”
“Go ahead, Corporal.”
“Why you?”
For a moment, the question caught Justine off guard. “What do you mean, why me?”
“Well, pardon me for saying so, but the only factor that doesn’t make sense is why they chose you to accompany us. I’ve been on two missions in conjunction with Lunar Lines in the past year; we’ve never had an attendant assigned to us before. We’ve always sent a private up to get food. And, no offense, ma’am, but why would the military request someone with a handicap as part of an important operation like this?”
Lieutenant Jeffries cleared his throat. “That’ll be enough, Corporal.”
Justine fought to control the flush of heat that rose to her cheeks. “I certainly hope you don’t think I had any part in this? I’ll have you know I have dedicated my life to NASA. I’ve—”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Corporal Marks sounded clearly uncomfortable. “But if you remember, Lieutenant, even Colonel Gagne sounded bewildered that we were assigned an attendant at all. The request must have come from NASA itself.”
Justine barked out a hollow laugh. “It’s nothing so nefarious as that. Clive is the NASA liaison. He just thought it was an opportunity for us to spend some time together. Right?” she asked Clive, turning her head in the direction she thought he would be.
But he didn’t reply to her question. Justine, unable to see, felt a sharp needle of panic at his lack of response.
“Clive?”
“That’ll be quite enough of this,” he said finally, but his voice came from the far side of the room. “Everyone stay where you are.”
Justine shook her head. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
It was in a low, steady voice that Lieutenant Jeffries said, “He has an ion pistol.”
“A gun? —Clive, what’s going on?”
But then, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Her mind screamed that she was wrong; that she’d leapt to the wrong conclusion. She didn’t want it to be true. How could it?
“You arranged everything?” she said in a gasp. “No, you can’t be part of this. It’s a mistake. It has to be.”
She took a step in the direction of his voice, but Lieutenant Jeffries’ firm hand held her back.
“Clive, tell them they’re wrong.”
She heard a vigorous knock from the inside of the lab door. “You weren’t supposed to know until it was all over, and we had the power,” Clive said, his voice harsh and angry.
“The hijacking … the experiments!” Justine could not fathom any reason why Clive would be involved in such a heinous conspiracy. A man she had begun to love. She had opened her heart to him. “No, I can’t believe you had a hand in this. It’s treason. It’s murder!”
“It was necessary,” he said, and Justine heard him knock on the door again, this time harder. “NASA is filled with bureaucrats and politicians, more worried about their funding than about progress.”
Lieutenant Jeffries growled. “How long have you been working against us?”
“Since the beginning,” he said. “Every time the news announces massive layoffs, or higher taxes, or government corruption, it makes it easier to see what needs to be done. People are tired of having their lives run by faceless corporations who don’t care about them.”
“Clive!” Justine still couldn’t wrap her mind around it. “You’ve been lying to me all this time?”
“Not about us,” he said. “It’s not too late, Justine. You can come with me. You were there at the beginning. The world needs to unite under one banner, one power. You can be part of that.”
“You’re insane!” Justine screamed, and Lieutenant Jeffries could not hold her back as she lunged towards Clive’s voice.
She heard Clive yell, “Get back, all of you!” and then the electric whir of the ion pistol.
Someone beside her screamed, and she barely registered it as she collided with Clive. Not thinking about what she was doing, she lashed out at him in an attempt to knock the gun out of his hand. He was stronger than she was, and he was not blind. It was all too easy for him to disable her, grabbing her arms and pushing her to the ground.
Another heavy body crashed into the two of them, and they all fell in a tangle, Justine pinned beneath them. She heard someone grunt as a punch connected.
With her feet, she tried to push herself out from under them, all the while flailing about with her hand, trying to locate the ion pistol.
Just as she felt the metal of the nozzle, and tried to grab for the handle, the gun was pulled from her grip.
There was another whirring sound, and then the two fighters were no longer in motion.
Justine heard the sounds of the three other soldiers rushing over to help their lieutenant.
Justine, her head ringing from the fight, reached out and, in a ragged voice, demanded of anyone, “What’s happening?”
A voice, thick and deliberate, answered, “Justine.”
“Clive?” Her fingers touched the fabric of his jacket, and she squeezed her hands around his arms.
�
��It was supposed to be you and me until the end. I made a place for us in the new regime. I’m so sorry,” he said, and let out a wet cough. And then he spoke no more.
She moved her hands up to his chest and felt the warm spread of blood running from a gaping wound. A sob came out of her, and her eyes stung from the sudden tears that flowed down her cheeks.
Corporal Marks spoke from just off to the side. “Someone help me get Lieutenant Jeffries up. He’ll be fine. Just knocked out.”
Her mind threatened to close in on itself. There was too much happening in too little time. It was as if she could hear the sound of her heart breaking.
“Clive,” she gasped out, calling to the memory of the man she thought he was; not the man he turned out to be.
“You,” Corporal Marks ordered to one of the soldiers, “see if Miss Turner’s all right.”
The soldier—Justine couldn’t tell who—gently drew her away from Clive’s dead body and pulled her to her feet.
“It’s over now,” he said in a soft, consoling voice.
Grief, fresh and raw, swelled inside her, and Justine let out another cry, and buried her head in the unknown soldier’s shoulder.
Before anyone had time to catch their breath, though, a new voice permeated the room.
“That will be quite enough of that. Put the gun down, Corporal, or my men will open fire.”
Justine heard the sound of boots on the floor as a number of men entered the room.
“Thank you. Now if you would all be so kind as to move back to the other wall, we can sort this out.”
The newcomer had a slight, somewhat familiar accent. Justine’s mind, hit by too many revelations and too much emotional pain at once, was muddy and slow to respond. She didn’t move from where she stood.
“What’s going on? Who are you?” she asked meekly.
“Major Justine Turner,” the man said. A moment later, she could smell his hot breath as he stepped in close to her. “Do you not remember me?” he asked. “We never met, but I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll figure it out.”
“Klaus Vogelsberg!” she gasped. “You? You were behind this? Why?”
Music of the Spheres (The Interstellar Age Book 2) Page 17