The Glorious Becoming (Epic)

by Lee Stephen

  Svetlana walked to the sink to wash her face. “That this has not been the worst day of my life is a testament to my many bad days.”

  “Hey, I know this is changin’ the subject,” Max said innocuously, “but where’d you put that pie?”

  The medic spun around wide-eyed. “What?”

  “Hey, hey, chill, I was just wonderin’. Big Will went to the cafeteria ahead of us and said you walked out with a pie. I was looking for it after breakfast.”

  Throwing her hands up, Svetlana muttered in Russian.

  “What’d she say?” David asked Dostoevsky.

  “It was about William, and it was very bad.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Max said, “I just didn’t know where you put it. I didn’t see it in the fridge.”

  Eyeing him frustratingly, Svetlana answered, “It wasn’t for the unit.”

  “Oh. Okay.” An uneasy silence floated between the men, who looked at one another expectantly. Finally, Max prompted at the inevitable. “Sooo...”

  She whipped around to face him. “It was for Scott, okay? The pie was for Scott.”

  “Bleedin’ daisies,” Becan said, “Remmy ate a whole pie for breakfast?”

  Svetlana stared pointedly at Becan for several moments before begrudgingly continuing. “Listen. If I tell the four of you something, it can never leave this room. Got it?” When they affirmed, she narrowed in on Becan. “Got it, Becan?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it. Cross m’heart.”

  Svetlana’s gaze shifted between them for several seconds, deep contemplation etched on her face. Leering fleetingly, she spoke. “We sent it to the orphans.”

  Blinking, David asked, “You sent the orphans a pie?”

  “Who are the bleedin’ orphans?” Becan asked.

  “The orphans in Novosibirsk,” Svetlana said. “It was a nice thing to do. So we did it.” She turned back to the sink.

  Looking at her strangely, Max asked, “Why didn’t you want us to know?”

  “Oh well, you know,” she mused, “we are not supposed to brag about the good things we do. Okay! So I need to get my rest so I can see Tauthin.” After drying her hands on a dish towel, she walked away and waved. “I will talk to you later, goodbye!” Seconds later, she was out the lounge door.

  As the lounge fell into silence, stares of bewilderment were swapped between the four men, until Dostoevsky spoke. Shrugging obliviously, he said, “I suppose if I was an orphan, I would want a pie.”

  “Well yeah,” David said. “Who wouldn’t? Pies for orphans. Sounds like a good cause.”

  Nodding in agreement, the four of them dispersed.

  * * *

  CAIRO, EGYPT

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  “LANDING IN two minutes!” the pilot said over the loudspeaker.

  Looking out his window, Scott stared at the endless expanse of desert sand. It was like an ocean of gold. He’d watched the terrain gradually shift during the flight, though at times cloud cover had left the earth hidden. Without a cloud in sight now, the African landscape could be seen in its entirety, painted in vibrant hues. Warmth. He could barely even fathom it.

  Scott had taken special care during the flight to reevaluate his motivation for the mission, if not out of sincerity, out of necessity. Svetlana couldn’t be his sole driving force—not for a mission this dangerous and important. His perspective needed to be planet-sized. With that mindset, he forced Svetlana out of his thoughts as much as was possible. He could only hope his cohorts had done the same with their potential distractions. He most certainly hoped Esther had.

  “Play the part right now, everyone,” said Scott. Ready or not, the mission was about to be on. “We’re transfers from Novosibirsk. Keep your eyes and ears open. We’ll meet up again after we’ve met Rockwell.”

  The ship’s inertia shifted as it slowed to a hover. Beneath them, the concrete surface of a simple runway stretched toward several mediumsized hangars. Sand and dust were being blown about by the transport’s thrusters. Looking across the aisle, Scott stared out the other side windows, where he saw the bottom of a comm tower. Cairo was one of the smaller major facilities, comparable to Richmond back home. But so far, Scott only saw a handful of structures. Where was the rest of the base?

  Clunk.

  The whine of the engines decreased as the rear door of the transport came down. Standing with the others, Scott approached the daylight outside. More notably, he felt it. The temperature wasn’t scorching—it felt somewhere in the eighties—but it wasn’t bitterly cold like Novosibirsk. For as long as Scott could remember, the only heat he’d felt was from heating units inside the base. To feel natural warmth was absolutely splendid.

  Grabbing his duffle bag and slinging it over his shoulder, Scott stepped out from the transport. The others followed suit.

  A pair of jeeps waited for them on the tarmac, one noticeably larger than the other. In front of the jeeps stood Captain Rockwell and Lieutenant Marshall. The lieutenant was every bit as cut as Scott had imagined. Same shaved head, same scars, same warrior’s stare. He was about Scott’s height, but much more well-built—and Scott was one of the more built men in Novosibirsk. If this mission went bad, Marshall could be trouble.

  As for the captain, she was almost his height, too. Her chestnut ponytail whipped behind her; her eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. She was slender, but that wasn’t all. There was something distinct about her, and he noticed it in Marshall too. Something Scott hadn’t seen in almost a year.

  They had tans.

  “At ease,” the captain said, smiling at Scott. “Commander Remington.” She extended her hand. “Captain Natalie Rockwell. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Scott accepted the gesture. “Pleasure’s mine, ma’am.” The words came out fine, but internally, they just felt wrong. He was shaking the hand of a brand new captain, and he was a fulcrum elite. This was going to be strange.

  Natalie stepped aside to allow her lieutenant to approach. “My lieutenant, Logan Marshall.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, commander,” Logan said. He was Australian.

  “Likewise.” Scott shook Logan’s hand. He turned to his team. “Lieutenant Auric Broll, and Delta Troopers Esther Brooking, Jayden Timmons, and Boris Evteev.”

  Natalie acknowledged them with a nod, her stare lingering on Jayden and Auric for brief moments. A one-eyed man and a lieutenant with half a face. Scott could only imagine the questions racing through her head. Behind them, a maintenance crew hauled their equipment to the larger jeep.

  Hands on her hips, Natalie spoke. “First things first, let’s get you guys acclimated. Commander, you’re with me. Lieutenant Marshall will drive the rest of you. Take your weapons with you for now, until we figure out which ships you’ll be assigned to. Let’s go.” Turning, she made her way for the smaller, roofless vehicle. Sparing his comrades a brief glance, Scott followed her. Natalie got in the driver’s seat and buckled herself in. Scott did likewise in the passenger’s seat. The engine roared thunderingly to life, and the vehicle rolled forward.

  Speaking loudly above the sound of the jeep, Natalie asked, “What do you know about Cairo, commander?”

  He shook his head. “Not a whole lot!” Shouting was their only option to hear each other. “This is about as different from Novosibirsk as you can get!”

  She laughed. “So that’s how you pronounce it? I don’t even want to tell you what I’ve been calling it.”

  Novosibirsk didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. As they passed the comm tower, Scott scanned the horizon for the rest of the base. Where in the world was it?

  “Marshall and I have been here about a week!” She shook her head purposefully. “I don’t want to sugarcoat this for you—we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  “How so, ma’am?”

  Several loose hairs danced across her forehead as the wind whipped past. “As a base, this place is about as advanced as they come! They do a lot of research here. But as a strike fo
rce, they barely cut it. They’re sloppy, disorganized. This whole region has relied on local city stations for most defense efforts. Cairo’s hoping to change that!”

  Scott stared as they passed a man with a camel.

  “I remember you from Chicago!” she said, smiling at him. “Very impressive. Not many men get to wear a golden collar!”

  Chicago seemed like another lifetime. “Yeah, it was a ride, all right.”

  “How’d you end up in Russia?”

  “I ask myself that every day!” She laughed as he went on. “Things just happen.”

  Natalie nodded. “I hear that.”

  Scanning the area, Scott still couldn’t make out any central facility. They were passing buildings here and there, but there was nothing substantial at all. “Ma’am, where’s the base?”

  “You’re on top of it, commander!”

  “On top of it?”

  “When they reset the calendar for year zero, a billionaire by the name of Adjho Mubarak bought everything you see here. He wanted to build Earth’s largest amusement park—celebrate world peace! The Bakma came two years later, so he sold it to EDEN. In a better life, that comm tower would have been a water slide, and these buildings we’re passing would have been rides.

  “It was in the middle of construction when he sold it. He’d only finished the underground. It was supposed to be a way for employees to move back and forth without bothering customers! Now it’s a sub-surface military network. You can get to any building you want without coming up top. Also helps with sandstorms, supposedly, but I haven’t been through one of those, yet!”

  Pulling into a garage, Natalie killed the engine. It was the first time either of them could talk without yelling. She removed her sunglasses to look at him. “This is definitely not a conventional place.” She glanced behind them. Logan’s jeep still hadn’t arrived, and her focus returned to Scott. “And by the looks of it, you don’t exactly run with a conventional crew. The one with the eye patch, Timmons...I didn’t see him on the transfer list.”

  “He was a last-second addition, ma’am.” Time to drop the bomb. “He’s your new sniper.”

  Her brow shot up alarmingly.

  “Lost his eye in a mission late last year, could have easily died. He bounced back, maintained his accuracy, and was cleared to return to duty.” Only because Scott forced it. “Then there’s Brooking, she’s a Type-2 scout. Evteev’s a technician.”

  “You got some pretty specialized players.”

  He had to agree. “All you have to do is look at them to know they’ve been through hell. Broll lost half his face to a plasma bolt, but it hasn’t stopped him. They’re a solid crew.”

  For a moment, Scott almost forgot that he was using this woman. The conversation felt completely natural—as if they were genuinely starting up a new squad. Maintaining focus was going to be hard. “So does our unit have a name, ma’am?” He already knew its name from his meeting with Antipov. Feigned ignorance was the concept of the day.

  “The Caracals,” she answered, smirking. “I didn’t know what it meant, either. It’s a black-eared desert cat. You’d know one if you saw one.” She looked in the rearview. “There they are.” As Logan’s jeep approached, she climbed out of her seat. Scott left his, as well.

  His mind was constantly reminding itself why they were truly there. It wasn’t to help Natalie. It wasn’t to bolster the Caracals. It was to infiltrate EDEN’s most influential base in the realm of Xenobiology—to deceive, manipulate, and betray. Scrutinizing Natalie from behind, he forced himself to see her for the role she was playing: as a sheep entertaining wolves. He wanted to care about her, to wish his mission wouldn’t cost her her career. But it was inevitable. One day, she would wake up to the news that members of her unit—half of her command staff—had used her as a vessel for the equivalent of treason. Because of the actions of those in her unit, EDEN would suffer. Because of her, Thoor would grow stronger. It was as good as already done. She trusts me. She has no reason not to. She was a walking piece of collateral damage. In that moment, Scott hated himself.

  “Did you give them the rundown, lieutenant?” Natalie asked Logan.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She addressed them as a whole. “Everyone is responsible for their gear. After your comms are refitted for our frequencies they’ll be delivered to your rooms.” She looked back at Scott, and for a moment, seemed to hold back a smile. Almost as if she knew something none of the new arrivals did. “You’re about to see what they call the Anthill—the heart of Cairo.” Her focus became all-inclusive again. “Brace yourselves, team. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  Motioning for the group to follow, Natalie led them to a row of elevators built into the wall of the garage. “Every building on the surface has Anthill access.”

  The irony didn’t escape Scott that he’d left one underground fortress for another. First the Citadel of The Machine, now the Anthill. As soon as they were in, the elevator doors closed. Their downward journey began.

  “Since the underground was already completed when EDEN took over, the only choice they had was to adapt their plans to make the layout work. The worker dormitories became our barracks. The rooms that were supposed to house the mechanics for the surface-level rides became everything from storage units to security checkpoints. Some of the larger rooms were transformed into sub-surface garages—you can drive straight from the Anthill to the surface if need be.” The elevator stopped; Natalie smiled. “Welcome home, crew.” The elevator doors opened. She stepped aside to allow them exit. And simultaneously, Scott and his crew gasped.

  The halls were as wide as city streets—their floors polished white marble. Ivory pillars adorned the walls, reaching up toward an endlessly high ceiling that was painted like the nighttime sky for as far as the eye could see. It was like standing under a Greek villa at twilight. Like a temple for the gods.

  Even Esther exhaled an awed breath.

  Personnel, few of which seemed even remotely militaristic, chatted jovially with each other as they passed in the halls. Everything was bright and alive. Like a glimpse at utopia.

  “It’s like I told you, commander,” said Natalie, smiling slyly. “The man was rich.”

  Not once since the day he left the Academy had Scott dreamed EDEN could have a place like this. Philadelphia was nice. This was pure splendor. Scott didn’t want to infiltrate Cairo—he wanted to live there.

  Natalie pointed to a tram track at the far right. “Hover trams pass about every ten minutes; you’ll see the pick-up points as you walk the halls. It works just like the subway. They’ll take you to a junction point, and from there you can get where you need to go. Most people are stationed near their workplace, so the tram is really for when you’re going somewhere far. I still walk when I can.”

  It was impossible to pick out a dominant ethnic group. There were Caucasians, Africans, Asians, Indians...it was a scientific melting pot.

  “About sixty percent of the staff here belongs to the science department,” Natalie said as she led them forward. “This place is known for Xenobiology, but they do just about everything here. The rest of the base’s inhabitants are your pilots, engineers, custodians. Pretty much everything it takes to run a base. Actual troops only make up about seven percent.”

  Earlier, she’d mentioned that Cairo relied on local stations for defense efforts. Now Scott understood why.

  Natalie smiled at Scott as she walked alongside him. “I’ll be honest. I never dreamed I’d end up in Cairo. This place is full of scientists, not soldiers. And the soldiers who are here would barely pass muster at a traditional facility.” She looked ahead again. “I don’t know how you ended up on my list, but I’m thankful to have you. We really have a chance to make a difference in a place that desperately needs it.”

  In spite of the mission, in spite of everything that was at stake, in spite of the determination he’d forced himself to have, he couldn’t help but become snared in her statement. Make a diffe
rence. Was that what he was doing in Cairo? Was this betrayal, this impending destruction of a good woman, really for the greater good?

  This is for more than Svetlana. I’m not just doing this for one woman. This is for humanity.

  “Here comes a tram,” said Natalie. “It’ll take us to the barracks.” As the elongated car hovered to a stop, she hopped on board. The others followed. Moments later, the tram set off again.

  As the tram ferried them around the main rail, Scott took in the sights of the Anthill. He couldn’t think of a better name for this place. It was like an underground city. Hallways were connected everywhere—some hallways even had names. He never imagined a place like this could exist. All for an amusement park. “You said this place was big into Xenobiology, right?” he asked. “Where do they keep everyone?”

  She frowned halfheartedly. “It’s classified. I don’t even know. There are some trams we’re not allowed to take.”

  Classified. Terrific. He wondered if Esther had heard that. Glancing back, the look on her face confirmed that she had. Their job just got harder.

  At least Esther seems oriented on the mission.

  For the rest of the ride, Scott remained silent, taking in the Anthill as the tram rolled along. Natalie occasionally provided a tidbit of information as they passed something significant, confessing at one point that she still had a lot to learn herself. He was appreciative of her insight nonetheless.

  The tram hovered to a stop as it reached the barracks, its doors opening to allow the group to exit.

  “Officers have their own rooms,” said Natalie. “The rest of you guys will be sharing a quad. That won’t be a problem, right?” she asked, eyeing Esther briefly, then focusing on Jayden and Boris.

  “No, ma’am,” answered Jayden.

  This crew was used to sharing a bunk room. A cohabitating quad was nothing.