by Rick Jones
“We’ve much to do, Ms. Moore. So if you please, I need you to follow me to the Central Post. Everything you’ll need will be there.”
She appeared not to hear him, concentrating on the string of characters she aligned side by side on the holographic image. There were symbols and glyphs, archaic lettering with Sumerian and Egyptian similarities, most bearing the telltale signs of slight evolution in character shift.
“Ms. Moore, please. Time is limited.”
Alyssa stood. When she did the holographic panel closed to the size of a pinhole, and then it was gone, squeezing itself out of existence. The chair also took its regular shape, small and less suited to fit her physique.
Amazing, she thought.
As they made their way to the lower levels the rooms became wide open, the corridors leading from one area to the next tall and arcing overhead, meeting at a central point at the center of the ceiling. Here the ribbing along the walls served as luminary conduits, the ribs flaring with emerald-green light. In one section techs had removed a squared panel along the wall where light was emitting from, only to find no originating source or filament. Just . . . light.
When they reached the bottom level it was as spacious as a football field, long and wide and filled with rows of lights, tech benches and computer consoles. The entire floor remained as busy as a factory as engineers milled about with their clipboards and tablets while others managed PC’s. Through the aisles the Tally-Whackers meandered with assault weapons draped over their shoulders, each one keeping a watchful eye.
“Over here, Ms. Moore.” O’Connell was standing next to a long console with multiple monitors and PC’s. “This will be your station,” he told her, holding his hand out to showcase the work area. “The scripts, the lettering, the symbols from this ship have been logged and downloaded onto these computers. Whatever needs analyzing, you will find it right here.”
She sat in the chair facing the screens, then booted up, the three screens coming to life in unison.
There were thousands of archaic symbols, thousands of characters and glyphs. She immediately put her hands on her head, distressed, her mind racing with overload.
“Problem, Ms. Moore?”
She let out a sigh as the monitors continued to scroll through the symbols.
“Ms. Moore?” he repeated.
She shook her head. “This isn’t going to take days,” she told him. “Even if I was able to piece together bits and pieces here and there, it may not be enough to put together what you need for your engineers to begin the process.”
O’Connell leaned forward and tapped the keyboard. The scrolling on the monitor stopped, and then winked off. After tapping in another set of commands, the center monitor showed archaic script. On the screens that flanked the central monitor were linear configurations of the creatures within the menagerie, their images revolving slowly to give a 360-degree view before closing to the size of a computer app and sliding off to the screen’s upper edge. More images came up, more creatures, each one rotating in display before shrinking to a tile and moving to the top edge of the screen, joining others. This process went on until the tiles filled the flanking screens.
“How many of them are there?” asked Savage, whispering, the others not sure if he was being rhetorical. Either way, no one answered.
Dozens of computer tiles turned to a hundred, then from a hundred to several hundred.
How many?
“These images, these tiles, are in essence—at least we believe them to be—the biological history of those within the menagerie,” said O’Connell. “We believe this to be the mainframe instructions that manage the energy walls to the enclosures. If you see here,” he said, allowing his words to drift away as he hit more buttons. When he finished, a series of schematics to the holding enclosures came up, each with alien symbols denoting and pinpointing certain elements of the containment cells. He then stood back. “Every cage has a locking mechanism,” he said. “In this case it’s the energy field. If you can decipher the script and determine the mechanics to shut them off and to turn them on, then we can begin with the rudimentary fundamentals of learning this technology. All we need, Ms. Moore, is for you to start chipping away with the interpretation of these symbols. If we can learn to maneuver these fields even at the most basic level, then my engineers can do the rest.”
She turned to him and cocked her head slowly. “You want me to shut down the stasis chambers?”
“We need you to discover the ‘on’ and ‘off’ switch,” he told her. “Nothing is without their instructions. And we can’t perform the most basic of functions if we don’t know how to turn the switch.” He looked at the screen. “It’s all there, Ms. Moore. Use your skills of interpretation. Please show us the way.”
She turned back to the screen, then back to O’Connell. “And if I do, if I lower the energy shield, what about the creatures within?”
“Then they will become the matter of our biological techs,” he simply stated. “Placed on ice and studied.”
Already she was picking out certain symbols for study.
While she was focused to the monitor, Savage’s thoughts were elsewhere. The Tally-Whackers were keeping them under careful watch. They were keeping everyone under careful study.
“Mr. Savage, Ms. Moore, I’ll leave you to your duties.” O’Connell gave a nod in salutation and left. But before he left the area he stopped by a Tally-Whacker, leaned into him, and whispered something to him in close counsel. The Tally-Whacker nodded and drew a bead on Savage, remaining at his post as O’Connell disappeared somewhere down the aisles.
Although Savage could not see the soldier’s eyes through his facemask, he knew they were not kind, benevolent, or held the hint of mercy. They were filled with a warrior’s stoicism whose personal salvation was meaningless.
Unlike those around him, he sensed great danger within their presence.
Laying a calming hand on Alyssa’s shoulder, she didn’t seem to notice as she tapped away at the keyboard.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Report.” This was not a question, but a flat statement from Daniel McCord, the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
O’Connell was sitting behind a desk located in a partitioned area on the platform. On his monitor screen the image of McCord was snowy. But the audio was clear. In between the whitewash lines of poor reception the secretary’s head appeared distorted in a funhouse way, long and indistinct. “It’s no different than what it was twenty-four hours ago,” he answered.
“And Ms. Moore?”
“She seems quite comfortable in her surroundings. In fact, she was moving the tiles across the holographic board as if she recognized them.”
“You think she can do it?”
O’Connell shrugged. “Unless she can determine the language, then this is going to take time. Perhaps more time than we have.”
“Expound.”
“The remnant of this ship is sitting precariously on top of a marine terrace. With every aftershock a piece of this terrace is breaking off and falling into the abyss below, five miles below.” After a period of three heartbeats, he added: “Eventually this station will fall.”
McCord remained stoic. “How long?”
“Days. A week. Who can tell?”
“Then we need Ms. Moore to apply her abilities in the most immediate manner, wouldn’t you say?”
“If I tell her the truth about the instability of the terrace, if the other scientists find out, then they’ll want an immediate evacuation. I’ve been giving them false hope, telling them that everything’s fine—that Nature’s simply flexing its muscle.”
“A true bureaucrat,” he said. “Tell them what they want to hear. Tell them what they must hear.”
O’Connell closed his eyes for a moment. And then he reopened them to the highly distorted image of the deputy secretary caught between a myriad of zigzag lines.
“Everyone on board that ship,” McCord began, “even those with TS clearance, is ex
pendable. Get whatever pieces of the puzzle you can for our team to reassemble at base. We need to know how to utilize that pure energy for military purposes. We need the upper hand over China. With that technology, we’re everything. Without it, then we’ll continue to fall behind on the world stage.”
“I understand.”
“Give Ms. Moore whatever she needs to widen that fissure enough for our people to get inside and engineer that technology—whatever she needs. She . . . is . . . the key.”
“And then what? She’s not TS clearance. Neither is Savage.”
“Don’t worry about them,” said McCord. “The proper steps have already been taken to wash away any trace of their communication with you. The money wired to their account has already been retrieved without leaving so much as a cyber fingerprint. Our people have seen to that.”
“There was a secretary there as well.”
“Ms. Jennifer DeNardo,” he stated quickly. “Unfortunately for Mrs. DeNardo and her family, it appears that she left the motor of her vehicle running in her garage. While they slept the entire residence filled with noxious fumes, killing everyone. Such a terrible tragedy.”
“Nevertheless, I want a DSRV here at the platform.” DSRV was an acronym for Downed Sub Rescue Vehicle. “All pertinent information comes to me directly. Everything. I will not send them through cyber channels for fear of appropriation by intercepting organizations. I will give them to you directly.” O’Connell held up a flash drive between his thumb and forefinger and wiggled it in a seesaw motion. “I will only deliver this into the palm of your hand. So that sub needs to get here.”
“You’ll have your sub,” said McCord.
“Then that’s when you’ll get your information.” He put the flash drive down. A DSRV, he knew, had a capacity to transport as many as nine people. With the remnant holding forty-two personnel, and regardless of their brilliant minds and potential, the government could always find more since the country was full of them. Life had little worth. Military applications, however, held worth far greater than the value of gold.
“Do the job you were tasked to do, O’Connell. Certain gods residing in the House on Olympus Hill are depending on you.”
O’Connell nodded, and then hit the ‘off’ button. When the connection was severed he fell back into his seat, picked up the flash drive, and toyed with it between his fingers. Around him he could hear the walls shift against the weight of the water, the corrugated sides creaking like ancient timber, an unsettling noise.
O’Connell sighed as he held the flash drive before him, so small but capable of holding countless secrets.
And then he closed his eyes.
And listened.
Around him the walls continued to groan.
#
The Tally-Whackers were a highly specialized wetwork team sanctioned by the DOD and the JCS, the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
At the team’s ruling head stands Marshawn Whitaker, a man of brutish nature whose answer to any threat is by the approach of lethal force, foreign or otherwise. Asking questions first was not even a consideration. Killing, however, was the answer to everything—pure and simple.
His detachment had worked the jungles in the Philippines and in South America, in the Middle East, and along the border between North and South Korea, working covert operations requiring TS clearance. In situations where assassinations were sanctioned by the political brass, these guys were it, a team of polished killers who murdered because the political giants always turned a blind eye to their deeds, the powers that be later pointing an accusing finger at a faction not their own after a kill was made.
In other words, they denied everything.
And the Tally-Whackers would quickly ready themselves to serve again when called upon.
Whitaker stood in full military wear, wearing his specialized helmet and composite armor, watching and observing those around him. Even those with TS clearance were sometimes susceptible to the appropriation of data and selling it to third parties. It happened all the time. And Whitaker’s team served as the scarecrows to keep this from happening.
“So you’re a Tally-Whacker.”
Whitaker saw John Savage approach from the corner of his eye but never acknowledged the man until he stood next to him. The men were of equal height and lean, facsimiles of each other and just as deadly.
Whitaker scoffed and shook his head. “There’s no such thing, man.”
“Really.” Savage crossed his arms and maneuvered next to Whitaker until they were almost shoulder to shoulder, both watching Alyssa work the console. “That emblem you’re wearing—the grinning skull and beret over the crisscrossing tantos, the eye patch representing the blind eye as to what you really do for your government, the employment of assassination schemes.”
Whitaker turned to Savage with his facemask up, the color of his eyes so powder blue they nearly appeared white, a frosty hue. “Something I can do you, Mr. Savage?”
“You know who I am?”
He nodded. “That’s my job,” he said. And then he forwarded a verbal dossier of Savage’s life, beginning with Savage’s employ as a Navy SEAL. “You were once a stellar commander of your unit who fell to drink after your wife left you. In your own self-loathing and self-pity you headed an operations unit into the southern part of the Philippine islands where a terrorist faction was holding a family hostage. You failed to follow the required protocol because you weren’t in the proper frame of mind to lead. And in doing so you lost your team and the targets you were sent to rescue. How am I doing so far?”
Savage’s mouth dropped a bit, obviously taken by surprise.
“On your return you were deemed unfit to command,” he continued. “However, given your prior calls to duty for your government, you were granted a release with full honors and disappeared. Only you didn’t disappear. You wound up working under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church as a member of the SIV, the Servicio de Inteligencia del Vaticano, their Intelligence Agency. And then one day you’re called upon to keep a woman—Ms. Moore over there—from entering Eden and the secrets within. You went to kill her, Mr. Savage. But in the end you found salvation.”
“Well,” he finally said, “it seems that you have me at a disadvantage.”
“The only thing you need to know about me, Mr. Savage, is my name. It’s Whitaker.” He turned his attention back to Alyssa, who appeared lost in her work.
“But you are a Tally-Whacker, aren’t you? Between us. Between soldiers.”
“I’m a soldier,” he answered. “You’re just an attachment to a woman who’s deemed necessary to the cause. What your purpose is, Mr. Savage, is beyond me since you don’t have TS clearing. You’re only here at the asking of Ms. Moore and that’s it.” He faced off with Savage once again. “The man who was once a soldier in you, the man who led his unit to their end, died in the jungle that day along with his team. So don’t think for one moment that I consider you a soldier, Mr. Savage. You never would have made it under my command.”
Savage was taken aback, Whitaker’s words biting deep.
“Anything else I can do for you, Mr. Savage? If not, then have a good day.”
John took Whitaker’s abrupt dismissal as a cue to leave.
And he did, walking along the aisle until he reached Alyssa, then placed a warm hand on her shoulder, giving her a light squeeze.
She reached up and grabbed it. “I’m starting to piece the symbols together,” she told him. She then pointed to the characters in the upper left hand side of the monitor. “The problem is there are so many unfamiliar symbols that it’s almost impossible to determine the proper syntax. This could take days, weeks—”
“Honey—”
“John, you have a photographic memory. In Eden, do you recall these symbols in the arrangement—”
“Honey.”
When she heard the hard edge of his tone she faced him. “John, what’s the matter?”
He turned to Whitaker, who stood as still as a Greci
an statue maintaining a keen watch with those marble-white eyes.
“Nothing,” he finally said. “Go ahead.”
But when he feigned a smile she knew something was up.
Whitaker, observing closely, never turned away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
John Savage sat on the edge of a cot sequestered from the workstations of the compound for those to rest their minds. He, however, sat there with his eyes to the floor living the stain of his past brought up by Whitaker, something that never left him.
. . . You were once a stellar commander of your unit who fell to drink after your wife left you. In your own self-loathing and self-pity you headed an operations unit into the southern part of the Philippine islands where a terrorist faction was holding a family hostage. You failed to follow the required protocol because you weren’t in the proper frame of mind to lead. And in doing so you lost your team and the targets you were sent to rescue . . .
He recalled every word, every pronunciation, with every syllable biting deep. And of course he tried to play it off, not wanting Whitaker to see that his words stung him to the core.
Slowly, Savage closed his eyes with images of recall coursing through his mind—the colors, the smells of the jungle, becoming all too real.
After his wife left him for the clutches of another man, his mind had been in disarray with decisions difficult to make, always questioning whether or not he was making the right move, the wrong move, or whether or not he should be in the position to make a decision at all when commanding a SEAL team on a mission.
Emotionally lost and racked with pain far worse than any broken bone, he had worn his best bravado face as he and his team went to the southern Philippines where a Muslim faction was holding four American hostages and demanding a seven-figure sum for their release. The American government, however, always maintaining the platform to never pay such demands, opted to use military force instead.
Heading up his team to the southern part of the country, through the dense forest and high humidity, under the most atrocious conditions, he could only think of her, his ex. When they discovered the encampment his unit surrounded the area. In the center were the hostages: the mother, the father, and two teenage children, both boys. They looked thin, pale and war torn; their bodies wasted. But they sat there as if they belonged—the Stockholm syndrome.