The Nexus Colony

by G. F. Schreader

  That was yesterday. Today his whole world had changed yet again. It would have been hard for anyone to feel the elation Mike Ruger felt when, earlier this morning about seven thirty, he was suddenly awakened by Jimmy Morrison from a restless, troublesome sleep. Ruger thought he was dreaming again as he was being shaken by his smiling friend.

  “Mike! Mike!” Morrison was calling his name. “Wake up, buddy! Come on. Wake up!”

  “Wha…” Ruger responded groggily.

  “Wake up, man. Good news! Real good news!” Morrison waited to see if Ruger was comprehending any words.

  “What?” Ruger asked, trying to focus on Morrison’s face. “What’s going on?”

  Ruger forced himself to sit up.

  “I’ve got the best news you’ll ever hear, my friend,” Morrison responded.

  Ruger shook the cobwebs out of his brain, holding up his hand for Morrison to pause for a moment. “Yeah, I’m awake. What’s going on?”

  Morrison was smiling. “Allison’s alive,” he said, letting the words deliberately sink in for a moment.

  “What?” Ruger responded hesitantly, still thinking he must be dreaming.

  “You heard me. She’s alive. All four of them are alive.”

  Ruger tried to get up off the bed but Morrison held him in place.

  “I want to see her,” Ruger exclaimed.

  “Just hold on, Mike,” Morrison replied. “Relax a second here. Let me talk.”

  Ruger realized just how exhausted he was. The muscles in his body weren’t responding very well, and he was sore as hell.

  Morrison gently pushed him back down onto the bed. Ruger’s head flopped back onto the pillow. Morrison kept on smiling.

  “Lay back down, man,” Morrison said. “Just lay there and listen for a minute. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Where is she, Jim?”

  “She’s safe.”

  “Where?”

  “Vostok.”

  “Vostok?” Ruger replied, trying to rise up again. Morrison gently shoved him down again.

  “That’s right.” Morrison was still smiling. “Apparently somebody—or rather some thing—dropped them off there. Sometime after one o’clock this morning. Details are still a little confusing as to what in the hell happened over there.”

  “Vostok…Why Vostok?” Ruger kept repeating.

  “I don't quite know what’s going on, but those Ruskies are buzzing in turmoil. Something pretty big went down, but nobody seems to know what yet. We’re sending a plane over later this morning to pick them up…”

  “I’m going…” Ruger started to say.

  “…no you’re not. I’ve got my staff working out some details as we speak. Red tape and all that bullshit. You know.”

  “I want to be on that plane, Jim,” Ruger insisted, trying to get up again. Morrison pinned him down.

  “You can’t. You’re under government detention.”

  “What?”

  “Look, Mike,” Morrison assured him. “Just try to get some rest. I’ve got everything under control. We’ll have Allison and all the rest of them back later today. Everything is fine. There’s nothing to be concerned about.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s in perfect health. They all are. The Ruskies told us that they’re just tired and that they all had the shit-skie scared out of them. That’s all.” Morrison smiled. Ruger smiled, too, for the first time in a long while.

  That was about ten hours ago. A small gust of wind brushed against his face reminding him that he was still standing outside peering into the Antarctic desolation. He had talked to Allison just a short time ago from the communications center, and the sound of her voice sent pangs of wonderful emotion through his whole body.

  “Are you all right?” he had asked her.

  “Yes. I’m fine. I was so scared, Mike. So scared…”

  He hesitated a brief instant, then said, “I want you here with me…” He almost told her that he loved her right then, but wanted to say it to her face.

  There was a moment of hesitation, perhaps the longest moment of Mike Ruger’s life before he heard the most important words he had ever heard.

  “I love you so much…” and he thought perhaps she began crying, but the communications link was full of static.

  But they talked for several minutes more, and it seemed that so many plans were made in the span of that short time period. Yes, she would stay with him wherever he decided to go. Or maybe he would just tag along with her wherever her work took her. It didn’t matter. They’d be together.

  And now he was standing here outside alone waiting for her to come back from Vostok. Storybook ending. But it wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. He wasn’t sure if it would ever end. They—all of them who had been out on the Mulock Glacier—they were going back to the States post haste at the “request” of the U. S. Government. That was to be expected, though. God only knows it was going to take at least ten governments to sort out what they had all just gone through.

  The plane had left McMurdo earlier about one o’clock headed to the Russian base. It was ETA’d back here about eight thirty. It was going to be a long five hours. He’d be over at the hanger waiting when it arrived. Even though he and Allison had gone through that terrible ordeal together, they really weren’t together. They were only in each other’s presence.

  Mike Ruger still needed his solitude. The preliminary questioning had concluded earlier that afternoon. Everybody was getting a little testy. Abbott and Lisk were still fighting with the military people who thought they were in charge of the whole thing. Abbott and him were consumed in military protocol and jurisdiction, whatever that was.

  There were some security people assigned to watch over each one of them who had been involved in the event. They were important “witnesses” as the military guys had said. Ruger had to get away from these people for a little while.

  He started to dress in his outer garb when the security guard assigned to him said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Ruger looked at him. “Outside for a while.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t do that.”

  Ruger only looked at him again. The kid looked more scared than any of them had been out on the glacier. “You got a problem with that?” Ruger responded.

  “Yes, sir. You’re supposed to stand down. I’m to keep an eye on you.”

  Ruger only laughed and continued to dress, saying, “What do you think I’m going to do? Hail a taxi and leave?”

  And here in the quietude of the late Antarctic afternoon, Mike Ruger looked out at the yellowish, surreal sun teetering indifferently on the top edge of the distant mountain range. He realized it was quite a bit lower today than it had been the last time he took a few moments to take in its serenity. No doubt it was. The Antarctic winter was approaching rapidly.

  He thought about what they had all gone through physically. That none of them suffered any devastating effects from the cold and the exposure was nothing more than good old-fashioned earth-type luck. He closed his eyes yet again, trying one last time to etch forever in his memory this image of the ephemeral sun. He opened them.

  Ruger recalled an astronaut had once described the moon as magnificent desolation. Antarctica may be earth, but it, too, was magnificent desolation. The Ice. Some say that it has been here forever. Some manage to put it into perspective, that it really is only temporary. Whatever. The Ice and the humans have not yet reconciled, and in the grand scheme of things, it is questionable they ever will.

  But it was a disappearing world nonetheless, as isolated and as rugged as it may seem. It wasn’t really a matter of whether the face of Antarctica was going to change. It was how. The destruction of the alien colony only heralded that a truth—an incredible truth almost beyond modern man’s comprehension—had been there buried for thousands of years. It was gone now. Totally annihilated. Pressed into oblivion by its caretakers. No evidence left behind. Probably destined to become a myth rather
than a historical fact, because the knowledge of a lost alien settlement was now in the hands of the government. But it didn’t matter to Ruger. Truth or legend. People would come to look again and again and again. Antarctica could never be the same.

  Mike Ruger always knew that someday this desolate paradise would be destroyed, simply because humans insisted to come here to find themselves. He would never have thought that it was going to be destroyed while humans searched for what they are not.

  Chapter 23

  FEBRUARY 12, 20--

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Bill Korbett was sitting in the stiff-backed chair in a waiting room somewhere off the main hallway.

  Ted Payne told him that the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be with him shortly, that they had some other business to attend to before Korbett briefed them on Operation Rookery. Korbett was surprised that the Joint Chiefs were going to be there. They’d all be with him “in a little while,” which usually meant, “sit down and relax, because it’s going to be a long wait.” Although what other business could have been more priority than what had happened two days ago on the Antarctic continent, Korbett couldn’t fathom.

  The room was mesmerizing, the motif fashioned after some by-gone era in American history. Korbett marveled at the reverent quietude. You could have heard a pin drop. He peered outside through the single window which overlooked a garden. Korbett had been so nervous when he entered the White House grounds that he neglected to reconnoiter which wing the staff agents had taken him to. Ted Payne had been waiting inside the room, more hyper than Korbett had ever remembered the man to have been. Maybe it was the continuing crisis the President was facing with North Korea, but then again, that didn’t have anything to do with Ted Payne. Maybe it was this thing in Antarctica that he was going to tell the President about. Maybe it was because Ted Payne was the asshole Korbett always knew he was when the man was around somebody else with more power. Whatever.

  It was a sunny day outside and the temperature wasn’t all that cold. A welcome change. A good day to reflect on the balmy days ahead. Korbett stared out into the peaceful garden and went over in his head the details of the whole episode.

  They, his whole stateside team—Eli Maislin, Rula Koslovsky, Anton Vandergrif, Willard Darbury—they’d spent the last eighteen hours sorting through the landslide of information that had suddenly piled up from the whole project. And was still piling up. Where the hell was it when they needed it in a timely fashion? The debriefing of the field team, which had arrived from Antarctica only six hours ago, was the easy part. How to answer the questions from the President and the Joint Chiefs was what had Korbett so tense. That’s why he chose to wear his military uniform and stars. It always made him feel more in control.

  General Korbett sorted through his head all the things they had been discussing in preparation for the briefing. They were trying to anticipate the questions.

  Why did you go into this mission low tech? Because to go in high-tech wasn’t feasible. This wasn’t supposed to be a military operation. The mission objective was to find the source of the artifacts, not end up storming an alien complex. Besides, high-tech computerized gear—mini-cams, and all the rest of that electronic bullshit—you needed a communications link. The cold temperatures would have rendered the stuff useless anyway.

  Why wasn’t the information more timely? Because you need satellites to communicate anything out of Antarctica. You could have utilized our satellites more effectively. Why didn’t you? Because you don't have enough satellites in a polar orbit, you assholes, and I don't design your satellite program.

  Why no photographs? We had some, but The Visitors took them away. Just like they always do. They never let us have them. You know that.

  Why’d they only abduct four from your group. They could have taken everybody. Why didn’t they? Korbett wished they could answer this one. When we first started snooping around the glacier for the source of the artifacts, The Visitors could have stopped us right there and then. They didn’t. Instead, they pulled off more of their horrifying pranks to get our attention. They’ve been doing that in modern times since World War II for more than sixty years now and we still haven’t figured out why. It’s almost as if they’re taunting us, prodding us forward, and tempting us by fueling our curiosity. In retrospect, it now seems like they deliberately led us to their colony where they let us witness with our own eyes what they had been keeping secret for thousands of years. Only to wipe out all the evidence.

  They weren’t going to allow us any souvenirs for sure. They even stole all the photography equipment and then played games with it. Erased whatever pictures were there. They let us observe only with our eyes and then describe what it is that we think we saw, understanding all too well how fickle the human mind can be. And when you really stop to think about it, what did we really see there? Nothing. There was nothing in the sense that we gained any more understanding about them than we’re already confused about. Oh sure, everyone’s account of the strangeness inside the structures speaks of a technology far beyond our comprehension. But how in the hell are we ever going to know anything more about it? We have only men’s recollections.

  But we managed to fool them on one account. Hilliard Grimes managed to smuggle a few of those strange nodules into his pocket pouches. When we find out what’s inside them, maybe we can get a few answers. But more than likely, it will only add on a few more questions.

  The abductees. In a few days, the hypnotic regression sessions will start to find out if there are any suppressed recollections of what happened to them during their “missing time.” They had to have been in that enormous mother ship the Russians reported. When they were plunked down at Vostok, none of them could remember a damn thing.

  Simple, seemingly unimportant things. Like the box. Artifact number one. Not debris like the other original artifacts. The alien structure was split open to reveal an empty corridor. It was logical that broken pieces would eventually surface. But Abbott’s people reported that there was nothing else located in the corridor. It was absent of any other devices or debris. Very sterile, unobtrusive. Yet this box had been found on the surface along the glacial flow, just as if it had been a part of the debris along the glacial conveyer belt. Speculation now indicates it shouldn’t have been there. Or, in the least, wasn’t a part of the debris flow. Coincidence? That box was probably the real reason they went back out in the first place. Bait?

  And all the other pieces of the “message” puzzle. Like when the communiqué was received from Marsh to get them out. Abort the mission. Oh, Abbott sent a message all right. Somewhere around seven thirty Greenwich Mean Time, or so they claim. Well beyond the close of the satellite communications window. Korbett received a message somewhere shortly before seven. The times didn’t match up. Korbett insisted that considering the confusion and the trauma, they had the timeframe all screwed up in their minds. No way, they insisted. Not the same wording on the message, anyway. Regardless, nobody could find out who passed along the message to Korbett, since it would have had to have been relayed from some other base station.

  Then this Ruger fellow claims to have sent out a message requesting evacuation. Nobody ever got that one. Abbott sent a message to Korbett to come get the body, then received a reply back from Korbett to stay put, and that a plane was on the way to pick up the body. Not only did Korbett never get that message, he never responded as such. The damn plane was dispatched from McMurdo, but nobody could recall who even ordered the aircraft out. All the flight crew remembers is that they just went out to the hanger, got on, and took off.

  The whole damn exchange of communications was shrouded in mystery. Totally out of sync. Totally out of context. There was no doubt in Korbett’s mind who had orchestrated the whole thing. But how these pieces of the puzzle fit into their agenda was still being conjectured.

  And then to compound the matter, there is the body. It was out of place, out of time. When word first came through about its discove
ry, it probably caused the biggest stir since Roswell. Korbett and Maislin were accompanied up to Bethesda by a whole entourage of Ted Payne’s people as they awaited the arrival of the frozen body from Puntas Arenas. And then there must have been twenty people on the medical team conducting the examination and autopsy. It was thawed out enough by then for the team to start carving away at it. Korbett remembered every disappointing detail…

  The medical team had been at it a very long time. Korbett and Maislin had stood in the viewing gallery along with everyone else for over an hour before they knew anything at all. Korbett’s patience was ebbing, but there was little else he could have done at the time but wait. Finally, the man who had been earlier identified as the lead forensic pathologist looked up from the autopsy table at Korbett and Maislin. There was a look of bewilderment on his face. Either things hadn’t gone right or they’d found something.

  “What’s going on down there?” Korbett had asked him when the doctor finally came into the gallery some time later.

  “I’d say at this point, you boys can lay claim to finding a common variety of caveman,” the doctor said.

  “Not alien?” Maislin had asked, although they all had already anticipated the reply.

  “Not nearly,” the man had answered. “This one’s as human as they get. Or rather, as earthly as they get. This one will give the anthro boys a lot of research, though. I’m no expert in anthropology, but I’d guess its Cro-Magnon or somewhere modern along those lines.”

  “What the hell’s it…he, doing in Antarctica?” Korbett commented.

  “Good question,” the doctor responded. He looked at both men. His facial expression told Korbett that there was something more.