“If they did too much, they’d draw attention to their secret spy observatory,” insisted White Rabbit as he slammed a furry paw on the table. “I’ve got it! It’s obviously something they used to spy on Molino, some special FTL detection scope they recovered from Navigator tech. That’s why the invasion never came, because the military could see all the raptors’ moves. Those damn lizards realized something was wrong, but it’s not like they’re going to come over here and do a press conference to accuse the UTC of not playing fair.”
Minho sat quietly, a smirk building on his face. He muttered under his breath but didn’t join in with the back and forth. Garth thought it strange since he was the one who claimed he’d unearthed important evidence about the dangerous conspiracies.
“White Rabbit might be right,” Minho interjected with a gleeful grin. “At least partially. I knew it was the right thing to come to the Brigade.”
“Of course I’m right,” White Rabbit replied. He patted his vest with both paws.
Tim frowned. “You have some proof he’s right? I’m not buying into this supposition without evidence. There’s a difference in seeing through the corporate media and being a credulous moron. I’m not ready for another fiasco like the penguin yaoguai expose.”
“I apologized for that,” White Rabbit muttered. “It was a very convincing video.”
“I agree we need evidence. There’s no proper truth without evidence.” Minho rubbed his hands together. “I wouldn’t have come without it.”
Tim frowned. “Then present your evidence, and let the brigade evaluate it.”
Garth eagerly nodded.
“I wanted to bring this all to you before,” Minho replied, “but I had to spend time checking into the background of the observatory and other things to make sure there wasn’t a government misinformation campaign. The thing is, shortly before the explosion, I was contacted by Gypsy Moth. Remember him?”
Garth furrowed his brow, already suspicious. “It’s been months since he last contacted us. That’s awfully convenient timing.”
“That’s what I’m getting at. He was beating around the bush with some questions about astronomical observations and Solar Systems objects.” Minho took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “He sent me several messages about it, and it was obvious he was trying to be careful to not let me learn too much, but it was clear he was implying that an observatory found something unexpected and unexplained, but not on Molino or any other system. They found it within the local system.” He shook a finger. “Then the so-called accident happened, and I couldn’t find any account information for Gypsy Moth or even copies of the messages in my own accounts. Someone’s cleaning up a mess and trying to make sure that whatever Gypsy Moth was investigating doesn’t get out. It’s obvious that someone on that observatory found something they weren’t supposed to.”
Tim jumped out of his seat. “Shit. In-system? That makes a lot more sense. They wouldn’t even need new tech.”
“Yeah.” Minho nodded slowly. “I don’t know where exactly, but it was farther out than Sedna. Don’t know much more than that, though. I asked Gypsy Moth for specific coordinates, but he was being all cagey. He must have been afraid someone might kill him. Poor bastard.”
Garth grinned and leaned forward. “Don’t you see? It’s a Navigator ship! They obviously have advanced stealth technology, but White Rabbit is probably right. The observatory was a cover for new military detection technology, and they caught on.” He clapped once. “The Navigators are coming to reactivate their platypus friends on Earth.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Tim replied, frowning. “It could be a Navigator ship, and that would be worth killing over, but if it was a military thing, why would the government blow up their own observatory?”
“Navigator agents.” Garth nodded, proud of coming up with the obvious answer. “They’ve probably got indirect control over a number of humans through implants or something like that. It’s too much work to control the entire government, so they just watch for certain things. They didn’t know about the project until it’d detected their ship. They decided to take out the observatory and cover up the traces before someone figures out what’s happening and prepares for the invasion.”
Minho rubbed his cheek, his brow furrowed to canyon depths. “The messages I got from Gypsy Moth made it sound like this was something he was close to. We didn’t know him well, but I never got the idea he was military.”
“He might just have been smart enough to conceal things,” White Rabbit offered. “Pretend to be someone else. Any decent spy can. Maybe he was just trying to smell out potential threats to the secret.”
Garth didn’t take the obvious bait from a man wearing a rabbit disguise over the OmniNet. They all knew there were dangerous people in the government who might take them out if they stumbled too close to the truth, but Garth refused to be afraid. The only way he could change the world and get people to accept the truth was by showing he was willing to risk his life to get it.
Tim shook his head. “That observatory may or may not have been a military experiment, but it makes sense that it was destroyed to cover up that it’d found something. One thing I noticed doing my background research was there hasn’t been a manned observatory lost like that in fifty years. I could blow it off if that was the only thing, but with Gypsy Moth contacting Minho right before the accident? That’s too many coincidences.”
“I think we all agree on that,” Garth offered.
Tim snorted. “Yeah, but I don’t agree with that Navigator crap. It’s obviously not them. We know who the real threat is behind the ship.”
“Not this again.” Garth groaned. “There were no sentient species on Earth during the time of the dinosaurs. Your Original Inhabitants hypothesis has no basis in evidence or reality. It’s just something you pulled out of your ass.”
“My ass?” Tim yelled. “What damned proof do you have about the Navigators being hidden as platypuses?”
Garth slammed a fist on the table. “The Navigators left artifacts behind, at least. Where are your intelligent dinosaur artifacts?”
Tim burst out laughing, clutching his stomach. “Are you kidding me? What do you think the Zitarks are? They’re obviously the descendants of Earth dinosaurs. Something probably happened. Maybe there was a gamma-ray burst they thought might hit the planet, but they didn’t have the HTPs yet, so they had to take generation ships. They didn’t have enough time to build a lot, so they could only take a handful. Chaos and anarchy followed, and the Earth-based civilization destroyed itself.”
“That’s just a bunch of guesses with zero evidence.” Garth shook his head, pitying Tim for his questionable beliefs. “If there was a spacefaring species on Earth back then, some evidence would have survived. And Zitark DNA is nothing like dinosaur DNA or like the DNA of any existing or pre-existing Earth species science has found. Leem DNA is closer than Zitark.”
“That’s what the government wants you to believe. As for surviving evidence after tens of millions of years?” Tim rolled his eyes. “If every human died out tomorrow, no species would be able to tell we existed in sixty-five million years. Don’t be such a tool of corporate media, Garth.”
“I’m not a tool of the corporate media.” Garth narrowed his eyes. “But you’re a tool of the corporate-military-industrial complex and their misinformation campaigns.”
Minho loudly cleared his throat. “Guys, calm the hell down. We need to focus on what we know, not what we don’t know.” He ticked up a finger. “There is a good chance the Llewellyn Observatory was purposefully destroyed by parties unknown.” He raised a second finger. “It was probably destroyed to cover up that the researchers aboard discovered something near the far edges of the Solar System.” He lifted a third finger. “And whatever is out there is important enough to be worth killing people over and erasing all evidence.”
Garth ground his teeth. The truth about the Navigators was ready to come out, and even his fellow Brigad
e members refused to accept it.
He would have to drag them kicking and screaming to the truth.
“Okay.” He sighed with a nod. “You’re right. We don’t have enough evidence to know if it’s the Navigators or Zitarks coming back to Earth. We all need to dig, but be careful about it. If they’ve killed once to cover this up, they will do it again.”
“Are you sure you’re willing to pursue this?” White Rabbit asked.
“I know I am. This is what we’re supposed to be doing, digging and finding the truth. If it was just one of us, they might get away with it. But all of us? No.” Garth gave his head a firm shake. “The public needs the truth, and we’ll bring the truth right to them.”
Chapter Twenty
April 27, 2020, Japanese Territorial Waters, Mizuchi Undersea Resort
Pleasant chimes sounded before an equally pleasant woman’s voice came over the PA, first in Japanese, then Mandarin, and ending in English. “Welcome to Mizuchi Undersea Resort. Your luggage will automatically be sent to your room. Please enjoy your stay, and remember: the ocean will wash away all of your worries.”
Jia and Erik rose from their seats in the first-class cabin, nodding to a bowing trip attendant, who handed them each a suitcase stored in the overhead bin above their spacious seats.
Their attendant’s near-perfect smile suggested she was oblivious to the guns hidden inside.
Their Intelligence Directorate-supplied luggage could beat most common security scans and help smuggle a lot of things, and they preferred their weapons to be close at hand.
It would be annoying and embarrassing to be ambushed right away and not be able to defend themselves.
With a loud groan, a door near the front of the cabin slid open. A ramp extended from the bottom of the doorway, guard rails rising on either side to protect the guests from an unfortunate swim. Soon a bridge covered the short distance between the submarine floating gently in the vast pool of the underwater docking bay and the pier leading to the main resort.
The salty scent infusing the air tickled Jia’s nose.
Erik and Jia gathered their coats and followed other passengers onto the pier. Despite having arrived via a self-sealing tunnel, the docking bay gave them the impression of being directly connected to the ocean, helped by the transparent walls revealing the water, including dense schools of fish clustering near the resort. The surroundings were partially illuminated by the docking bay lighting.
Another long, thin dark submarine approached, slowly descending to the connecting tube that passed from the outside to the controlled water in the pool.
Doors farther back on the submarine opened, and their ramps extended. It was time for the other passengers to disembark and join the streams of people offloading from the currently three docked submarines. Scores of people flowed off the piers. Smiling smartly dressed employees waited at the end of each pier to greet the arriving guests.
Erik and Jia offered them the smallest of nods as they walked past.
Check-in was automated and based on their PNIUs. They didn’t need to do anything but go to their room, which should already have been keyed to their PNIU signals. No need for pesky human interaction.
Holograms of dolphins and whales swam through the air above them. It struck Jia as gratuitous given where they were, but a delighted guest pointing to them proved the resort staff had better entertainment instincts than a detective-turned-ID contractor.
“Emma, you have this placed mapped out?” Erik asked, looking around with a slight frown. “At least the public parts. I looked through the layout, but I didn’t memorize it.”
“Yes, I have maps committed to memory,” she replied, her transmissions flashed directly to Erik’s and Jia’s ears. “I thought it best to save the more thorough system penetration for when we were on site. This might help.”
Nav markers pointing to their room appeared, and the two nodded. They joined the river of people progressing out of the docking bay and toward the main hub in a narrowing tunnel. Moving walkways helped speed the process along.
Minutes of walking in near silence brought them to the center of the resort, with both Erik and Jia quietly observing the situation.
Their views of the ocean outside continued unimpeded, but the ceiling rose. Stalls and smaller buildings filled the central hub. Other major sections of the resort, like the docking bay, resembled bubbles connected by spokes to the main hub.
None of the buildings inside were more than a few stories in height, and their colorful appearance invoked the feeling of a bright, happy small town that just happened to be on the bottom of the ocean.
Erik looked upward. “Yeah, still convinced underwater domes are weirder than space domes. The thought of all that water.” He shook his head. “It can mess with you.”
“If you say so.” Jia’s attention lingered on a woman in a small stall selling intricately woven silver and gold pendants and rings. “If you think about it, anything that requires massive amounts of technology to maintain is unnatural.”
“You saying this place isn’t Purist-approved?” Erik smirked, some of the tension leaving his neck and shoulders.
“I’m just saying we die if the dome in space fails, and we die if the underwater dome fails.”
A silver-haired man in a garish red and yellow Hawaiian shirt stepped in front of them. Jia almost laughed.
It was a vision of Malcolm’s future in the flesh only a meter away.
“Don’t talk like that, ma’am,” the man offered in English, but with a faint accent Jia couldn’t place. He gestured widely with his arms. “You’re in a special place. Think of the miracle this place is.”
Jia chuckled. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Oh, it’s not like I’m offended. I don’t work here.” The man winked. “I’m on an anniversary trip with my wife. It was here or Venus, and after all that nonsense there, I didn’t think it was safe. Crazy terrorists! Earth’s the only truly safe place.”
Jia didn’t point out that there had been far more terrorist incidents on Earth in the last couple of years than on any other planet in the Solar System.
She was also grateful she was using her disguise, so the man didn’t recognize her.
They’d been uncertain whether the excessive heat generated by the technology would put them at risk of detection, but Emma’s research suggested they would be fine.
It remained strange to look at Erik and see a different face and dark hair.
The old man looked at Erik and Jia expectantly. “What brings you two young people here?”
“Honeymoon,” Jia declared before Erik could open his mouth.
The old man grinned widely and gave both of them a firm shake. “Congratulations. I’m glad you didn’t wait thirty years before experiencing a place like this.” He looked past them into the distance. “Oh, my wife’s waving for me. Have a good time, you two.” He scurried away.
Erik leaned toward Jia and whispered, “Honeymoon? That’s not the cover story we agreed on. This was supposed to be a business trip.”
“It makes more sense, especially since we’re sharing a room,” Jia replied with a merry smile.
For all of Erik’s self-control, he wasn’t doing a good job of hiding the faint blush.
It was ridiculous. They spent all their time together and were sleeping together. She didn’t expect a grand romance anytime soon, but he didn’t need to act like a stunned teenager over a simple lie. Being underwater must have lowered his guard.
Erik coughed into his hand. “Let’s get to the room.”
“The room is secure,” Emma declared when she appeared wearing the black and white uniform of the resort employees. She frowned at a shelf where her core was hidden behind a spare pillow in a box, along with a transmission amplifier. “You really think it’s a better idea to keep me there than in the safe?”
“Safes are the first place people look,” Erik replied, sitting on the edge of the massive bed. “Besides, if anyone gets i
nto this room who shouldn’t be in here, we expect you to contact us immediately so we can come and put a bullet in their brain.” His gaze ticked to Jia, and his lips curled in a knowing smile. “Then again, I might be too busy with the new Mrs. Blackwell for anyone to get in here.”
Jia scoffed. “That’s going to be Lin-Blackwell. My mother would murder us both if I dropped the family name. She would then take the bodies and feed them to something in the Scar.”
Erik blinked, unprepared for the counterattack on the joke. Jia grinned and sashayed over to him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had him so off-guard.
“We could just skip the mission and pretend it is our honeymoon.” She offered him her best suggestive look.
Erik stood and eyed the bed as if it were a nest of dangerous yaoguai waiting to ensnare him. “What about Malcolm, Emma?”
Jia snickered, confident of her victory over Erik, though slightly curious why he was so uncomfortable with the idea of it being their honeymoon.
For now, though, he was right. They had a mission.
“I’m coordinating with him to spread out the system intrusions,” Emma replied. “You’re sure you wish to proceed as planned?”
“Yes.” Erik nodded. “This isn’t an emergency situation. You and Malcolm have time to compromise the resort systems. Do what you need, but try to not get caught. We still have two days until our targets show up, and we don’t know how long we’ll have to investigate them.”
Emma smiled. “That should be sufficient to allow me to spread my influence without being discovered.”
“In the meantime, we can scope out the resort and possible meeting locations.”
Jia leaned against a wall with a smile. “The best way to do that is to look natural, honey.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” Erik waggled his eyebrows, his earlier discomfort a distant memory. “You may just get it.”
“Probably not.” Jia nodded toward the door, disappointed she’d lost control of the flirting war. “But I am hoping this doesn’t end with a huge explosion.”
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