“You really think I would believe that you got into a fight with a Drocain warrior and made it out alive when all you’ve got on you is a pistol?”
She returned her focus to the floor. “. . . You’ll be mad.”
“No, I won’t.”
“You’re mad now!”
Knoble rubbed his eyes and ran a hand over his stubbly chin, then walked over to the bed and sat down beside his stepdaughter. He put his arm over her shoulders and they sat there in silence for a few minutes before she raised her right hand and held up her pinky finger.
“I want to tell you what happened, Lance. I really, really do—but you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone else about it and that you’ll support me to your best ability, and please, don’t be angry.”
The Lieutenant smiled inwardly. Twenty-seven years old and she still held this small gesture close to her. It was a heartwarming surprise. He hooked his finger around hers and said, “Promise.”
Alana laid back, hands folded over her stomach as she gazed up at the ceiling. She told him that what she was about to say would be hard to believe, and it would probably disappoint him. That instantly triggered concern in him and he almost didn’t want to hear what she had to say.
But he needed to know what was going on.
“When the tyliven attacked my team, we scattered. I ran to the nearest tree and climbed as high as I could. Once it was gone, I started calling out, but nobody came for me. A while later, I hear a noise, look down, and there’s this Drocain warrior standing there with a rifle aimed at my head . . . He didn’t shoot, he didn’t even try to capture me. He didn’t do anything except talk to me.
“After a bit, he walked away and I don’t know why I did it, but I followed him. There was another warrior a little ways off—a ship commander, if his armor was anything to go by. The ship that crashed yesterday was probably his. Anyway, he was injured, dying. The other warrior agreed to let me live if I treated his friend’s wounds—that’s why my hands are blue—and in the end I shared all the information with him that I shared with you. He said he would see what he could find out about it. Then I left and came back here.”
Alana met Knoble’s unblinking eyes, likely trying to read him and find out what he was feeling. But he didn’t know how to feel. He was speechless. It was like there were a thousand tangled threads unraveling in his head all at once, confusing him.
She had been right, though. He was angry. He was disappointed in her. She’d handed over what seemed to be extremely valuable information to the enemy; information that Knoble and his team had been tasked with recovering. She had healed, and possibly saved the life, of a Drocain ship commander—the commander of the Legacy of Night, no less. And to add to that, he was also now carrying the weight of this top-secret project on his shoulders.
“Say something,” Alana pleaded, sitting up. “I hate it when you get all quiet.”
“What you did goes against just about every regulation in the book. We were trained to take these bastards down—destroy them before they destroy us! We’re supposed to be protecting humanity, ensuring that our species survives this war—not skipping around running our mouths and having goddamn tea parties with the enemy!”
“I’m tired of fighting, Lance! I want this war to be over and I want to live to see it finished! I want to make a difference, but the only way I can do that is if I step outside the lines and break a few rules. Mom always said that if I set out to do something, I should aim to get it done.” Her voice cracked at the mention of her mother.
Knoble had promised he wouldn’t be angry with her and yet here he was right now, livid. He was well within his rights . . . but still, he’d promised. He apologized, knowing she would forgive him just as she had done in the past. She knew he had a problem when it came to keeping his temper under control.
“. . . Lance,” she said. “A Drocain warrior wouldn’t give a human his name unless there was some kind of trust there, right?”
Knoble shrugged. It was a weird question. “I wouldn’t think so. The only introductions we’ve ever had are from ship and fleet commanders, but that’s more of a ‘let’s-be-formal-in-conversation-even-though-we’re-still-going-to-blow-each-other-up’ kind of thing. Why?”
A smile pulled at the corners of her pale lips and her eyes lit up. “Kenon . . . The warrior I met last night—that was his name, and all I did was ask him for it. I don’t get it. Why is he so much different from any other Drocain we’ve come across before?”
“You say that like he’s not one of the ones we know.”
“Oh, no, he wasn’t. I’ve never seen any like him. I mean, he was still a lizard, no mistaking that, but he wasn’t the same.” she was starting to get excited. “You know, I’m sure Dr. Chambers would love to hear this.”
“I wouldn’t risk it if I were you,” Knoble warned. “She would be interested, definitely, but you can’t go anywhere in that lab without being watched. That entire building is littered with surveillance cameras.”
“Cameras that she can shut off,” Alana pointed out. “I trust her, and you obviously trust her too, despite the fact you haven’t really had the chance to get to know her. She won’t tell anybody anything if I tell her to keep it to herself.” She was prompting him for a positive answer, and at last, that was what she got.
“If she shuts off the cameras and agrees to speak to you privately, then yes, fine, you can talk to her about the weird alien you met in the swamp—but under no circumstances are you to mention a word about the Calypsis Project. That’s one thing that will stay between you and me for now. Got it?”
“Hell yeah, I got it!” Alana jumped to her feet eagerly and thanked him a few times over before she left the room in a hurry.
Lieutenant Knoble pushed a small button on the black watch strapped to his wrist and sighed when the holographic clock opened up. It was 11:47 in the morning. He’d been lying here on the bed for hours now trying to fall asleep. He hadn’t slept the previous night, nor the one prior to that, and it was beginning to wear on him.
Unfortunately, just as he was beginning to drift off, the lights in his quarter dimmed to a deep red and the alarms began to blare. He sat up quickly with an irritated grunt and swung his legs off the bed, swearing under his breath as he slipped into his uniform. He snatched the holo-photo frame from the nightstand, turned it off, and stuffed it into his pocket.
Knoble exited his room and ran down the corridor, almost colliding with a passing squadron when he reach the end. He took a step back to get out of the way and examined the main hall, trying to see what all the commotion was about.
There were two squads standing outside the gates, loading their equipment up onto the back of a transport truck. Several more were gathering by the wall, counting heads to make sure all of their men had reported in.
Knoble then spotted Captain Nicholas heading toward the gates, skirting the masses by sticking to the far side of the base.
When there was a gap in the green and brown river of camouflage coats, Knoble entered the main hall and picked his way through the crowd, eventually meeting Nicholas on the other side of the building. He asked what was going on, and to his surprise, Nicholas grinned at him and answered excitedly.
“A Drocain dropship’s been spotted en route to the Terrak Mountains. Took off from that wrecked carrier. We have known for quite a while now that the lizards have got a hideout set up in those rocks, but now that we’ve seen proof that the alien bastards are amassing their troops up there, we have all the more reason to burn it to the ground,” Nicholas explained. “The repairs on my ship are almost complete—at least to the point where I can take her out just long enough to drop an ANVIL on the bastards. They’ll never know what hit ‘em.”
“With all due respect, Captain, are you completely out of your goddamned mind?!” the Lieutenant exclaimed.
ANVIL nuclear warheads were not the most effective explosives in the UNPD’s arsenal, but they had a 1.1 kilometer blast radius and, while it would destr
oy the Captain’s target, the probability that the nuke would take the city in the mountains with it as well was far too high.
Surely Nicholas knew that!
His outburst caught the Captain off guard and that proud grin disappeared from his old face to be replaced with a baffled frown that seemed to suggest he really didn’t understand the Lieutenant’s concern.
“The mountains won’t hold under an explosion that size,” Knoble told him. “They’re hollowed out on the inside and you know that! If you drop that nuke, the mountains will cave in—you’ll destroy the city!”
“Those mountains have taken quite the beating over the last few years. They’ll hold,” the Captain smirked, then gave the Lieutenant a hard pat on the shoulder and said as he walked off, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”
It was obvious the Lieutenant wasn’t about to change Nicholas’ mind, and there would be no point in complaining to the Sergeant Major—it was likely Nicholas had already discussed the plan with him and gained his approval.
Knoble would have to take matters into his own hands.
Chapter
———EIGHT———
1200 Hours, December 02, 2438 (Earth Calendar) / Chambers Metamorphosis Research Division, planet Calypsis
Corporal Alana Carmen stood in silence outside the steel door of Dr. Chambers’ office, trying to peek through the glass that formed the forward walls—but the blinds were closed, allowing only a few slivers of light to seep into the hallway.
To the right was a keypad, a small screen and a speaker; and to the left, a retinal scanner. Alana pushed a button next to the speaker and requested permission to enter.
No response.
As she was about to turn and walk away, she heard a ping and looked back to see the lights on the door flash. It then slid open, and standing there with her hands folded behind her back was Dr. Charlotte Ann Chambers.
Her short dark hair was streaked gray, and the wrinkles on her forehead had become more pronounced since the last time Alana had visited. Physically, she appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties. Yet, in truth, she had just recently turned seventy-one.
Chambers was a woman of remarkable intelligence. However, it had been noted by many that her intelligence was often overshadowed by her tendency to lash out and become involved in snappy arguments—many of which were, unsurprisingly, ignited by the Doctor herself.
This didn’t help her reputation at all, and neither did the fact that she was known to deliberately disobey orders from her commanding officers simply because she didn’t want to comply with them. But thus far in her career, Alana hadn’t heard of a single person that’d had the guts to fight her into submission.
Perhaps her attitude could be connected to the small piece of her history that nobody seemed to know about.
On her left hand finger, Chambers wore an engagement ring. But strangely, no one had ever seen or heard anything of a fiancé—or if they had, they didn’t say. Was he a soldier currently fighting in the war? Had he died? Left her for somebody else?
“It’s good to see you again, Doc,” Alana said.
“Likewise,” Dr. Chambers said cheerfully, and then stepped aside and waved her hand for the Corporal to come in. “Hurry inside—we’re being watched,” she said, leaning to the right to look over Alana’s shoulder.
Alana followed her scolding stare across the carpeted hall and saw a middle-aged man sitting at his desk, peering into the laboratory with a curious look that quickly changed to a nervous smile when he realized that he had been caught. He then went back to his work and the lab door closed down behind Alana.
“Robert, my assistant. He likes to try to catch a nice long look in here while I’m at work,” she said amusedly. “He’s a good man—a friend if you will—but he knows I’ll never give him that luxury.”
Alana’s eyes darted around the room. She had never been in the Doctor’s laboratory before and wanted to get a good look around the place.
On the back wall were two large screens that displayed simple standby images. In between them was a heavy gateway with no visible control panel—probably a storage area for the more valuable equipment.
A redwood counter ran along the left side of the room. The mountains of paperwork sitting atop its surface surrounded a small laptop and several glass cases containing foreign plant life.
On the opposite side was a long table topped with testing equipment—vials, beakers, Petri dishes, and microscopes—and next to it, a writing desk with a PDA and three tablets of different sizes and colors.
It was obvious that the Doctor didn’t care much for a neat and tidy workspace.
Spanning from ceiling to floor in the center of the lab was a ten-foot-tall containment tank filled to the top with a teal-colored liquid. The tank was locked into a transportation rail. A slew of cords and tubes trailed from its base the cylinders mounted on the back wall.
Of course, it was what was in the tank that was impressive.
Suspended in the liquid under several rings of white lights was an alien warrior—a Leh’kin. Captured in the midst of a battle and stripped of his armor, he was now forced to sleep under the influence of heavy sedatives. A mask had been slipped on over his jaws, allowing him to breathe, and a number of sensors had been adhered to his skin. His eyes were closed.
Alana had never seen one of these blue lizards up close before. They were always on the move during a fight—never stopping, not for a single breath. And it was strange to see one looking so defenseless and at peace when she’d already witnessed what they were capable of . . .
“Aggression in its most elegant form.”
That was the description of the Leh’kin given by Fleet Admiral Stanforth, one of very few men who had come face-to-face with the blue aliens and survived. It was irritating just how accurate that description was, too.
When the war began it seemed that humanity had about a fifty percent chance of victory, but that changed in the beginning of the second year when the Leh’kin showed up with their superior weaponry and combat skills. It was then that humanity’s odds of winning narrowed to an appalling thirty percent.
We lost a lot of people in that second year . . .
Alana stepped closer to the containment tank and stared straight up into the face of the Leh’kin warrior.
“That’s Peter,” the Doctor said. She went on to explain the name when the soldier raised her brow inquiringly. “Subject P-three-seven-E-R-dash-zero-one—the identification tag given to him by the Bureau of Scientific Investigation. That combination just screams ‘Peter,’ don’t you think?” she inhaled deep and then let out a sigh. “But that reason alone is not why I chose to give him that name, nor why I chose to give him a name at all. He’s not just some limp body sitting in a jar for me to jab with needles and scalpels—he’s a sentient being, one who has managed to teach me so much without uttering a single word. He had a life outside of war once—a family of his own, perhaps. A wife, kids . . . I took him away from that, and now it’s my responsibility to take care of him, to comfort him with my words whether he can hear what I’m saying or not.”
There was a deep sadness in the Doctor’s voice, as if she had experienced something similar herself. Alana wanted to ask about it—she wanted to ask what Chambers meant by “that” name—but figured that she would either be pulled into a painfully long discussion or snapped at for prying.
Probably the latter.
“Is there any specific reason why you’ve had him here for so long, or . . .?” she murmured.
The Doctor cleared her throat, coming back to reality after drifting briefly into a daydream. “Well, I’m an easily captivated individual. Foreign technologies, cultures, languages, religions—they all fascinate me. Also alien anatomy, but that’s not an interest I have in common with any of the people in this building. They all cringe and hide behind their mounds of paperwork if I start talking about it. Goddamned prudes won’t leave their comfort zone for two seco
nds.
“Nonetheless, the Metamorphosis plague is still my top priority. The reason I sent for a Leh’kin test subject in the first place was because I thought that maybe I would be able to find something in them that could potentially bring me closer to discovering a cure. It’s obvious nothing has come of that, though, isn’t it?”
Metamorphosis . . . Alana had read bits and pieces about the plague on the internet; however she’d never taken the time to fully educate herself on the matter. All she knew was that it sparked up on Earth late in the 24th century and practically destroyed all human civilization there. Billions died, the United Earth Government saved as many as they could, and so far a cure had not been found—not even by the brilliant Dr. Chambers.
“So,” Chambers said. “I find it unlikely that you came down here simply to pay me a visit. What’s on your mind?”
Alana took a glance around the room, eyes searching for surveillance cameras. She looked to the corners of the walls, the ceiling, on and near the desks, above the doors—everywhere she could think to look, but she couldn’t find a single camera. She requested in a whisper that the surveillance systems be deactivated and, as expected, the Doctor was suspicious.
“It’s . . . kind of a private matter that should be kept solely between you and me,” Alana explained, and was relieved when the Doctor sat down at her desk and motioned for the Corporal to sit as well. She then nudged her computer awake, accessed the laboratory’s security module and with the click of a button, shut down the surveillance systems.
“Go ahead,” she invited, swiveling her chair to face the soldier.
Alana nodded, silent for a moment as she recalled her strange experience with the alien warrior who called himself ‘Kenon.’ She took a breath and began to explain, making sure to leave out all the details regarding the private communications device and the so-called ‘Calypsis Project.’
The Doctor was enthralled, and when Alana finished she just sat there quietly with her eyes narrowed, pale lips pressed tightly together, and her brow creased. She inhaled sharply and looked to the computer screen on her desk almost as if she were searching it for answers. She was in disbelief.
The Calypsis Project Page 11