“You can always wait outside if you prefer.”
Leon shifted his eyes so he could focus on why they’d come here. Skyhawk took another look at the lightshow beyond the dome and decided he liked it better where he was.
“Leon,” Patent said. “Looks like those fools are trying to follow us.”
Leon shifted his attention to meet Patent’s gaze; the American and Chilean military personnel were making a run for it, motivated, no doubt, by seeing Leon and his people pass through the energy field.
“They won’t stand a chance,” Patent said, not believing his eyes.
Leon sighed. “We’re to blame for their bravado. Do what you can for them, Patent.”
“Satellite, hack their COMMS and try and talk them down. Tell them we’re Special Forces working in conjunction with both governments. Do what you have to to sell them on that. Might mean hacking into secure data bases to find out what the hell they’re doing here in the first place.”
“Yes, sir,” Satellite said.
“Don’t bother,” Cassandra interjected.
A nanite swarm wafted off her headed toward the troops like a nest of angry hornets—just a good deal smaller. No sooner had the nanite dust reached them than the troops dropped where they were.”
“Cassandra!” Leon barked.
“Relax. They’re just down for the count. The nanites will keep them under until we’re clear, and clear of the kill zone.”
She didn’t wait for Leon to give the order, just marched ahead of him toward the curious opening in the rocks. That’s about all it was. But the fact that it was a perfectly shaped doorway—that is to say perfectly rectangular—carved into solid granite—and that there was nothing on the other side of that granite boulder but a few other rocks did bear some kind of investigation. A portal that went nowhere would not have garnered this kind of attention.
“Anything yet, Satellite?” Leon asked.
“Well, needless to say I started hacking into why the two military units are stationed here before we even arrived.”
“And?” Leon sounded impatient, partly because one of his assets had just stepped through that portal unprotected—even if it was the most dangerous woman on the planet.
“Myths and legends abound about it being a portal to other realms. But the lack of anyone in recent times being able to get it to work for them has just led to additional speculation about why it must be a portal, as opposed to a hoax. Like maybe you have to have a particular altered state of consciousness to activate the portal. Or some kind or cosmic alignment. Or that it only activates during times of alien invasion—like possibly they wait until we get advanced enough to be worthy adversaries, and then they send their armies marching through. And that possibly explains why Atlantis and other more advanced civilizations that actually predated us came and went so many times over the last few billion years.”
Leon answered him while keeping his eyes on the portal, whose meaning he was trying to discern for himself. “If you wanted to send in an army, you wouldn’t create a choke point like that. That portal would be the size of the moon.”
“We can’t work our magic from out here,” Skyhawk said.
“And if you’re wondering why he suddenly sounds so gung-ho,” Ariel chimed in, “it’s because you’re now speaking Alpha Unit lingo. We live for this shit. You might want to call up the rest of the team. If that portal is activated, this is an all hands on deck scenario.”
Leon eyed Patent, who just groaned. “You want me to head back and fetch them, Leon, say the word.”
“Nah. I’m not giving Cassandra that much time on the other side by herself. If there’s one person who can singlehandedly start another war with another alien civilization, it’s her. And in case you haven’t noticed, we have our hands full.”
“If there’s intel on the other side that can benefit our clone team on the Nautilus,” Ariel said, “we’re going to need a way to get it back to them.”
“Already working on that,” Satellite said, toying with calibrating his handheld scanner with multiple displays and multiple scanning functions. “Can’t say for sure, of course, until we’re on the other side of the portal, if it’ll work or not.”
“I’ll help him, if it comes to that,” Skyhawk interjected. He was stepping on Satellite’s toes proverbially, and Satellite flinched noticeably. But Skyhawk was suddenly ready to say anything just to get to walk through that portal. And bravery was hardly his forté. What was it with these kids and the allure of the alien and the strange? Still, Leon couldn’t dismiss his boast. There wasn’t a one of them on Alpha Unit with an IQ less than 160, and the three smartest of them were with them now, and Skyhawk—well, no one had even tried to put a number on his brilliance, especially when it came to pulling ad hoc tech out of his ass when in the line of action and under fire, if only to save his own ass.
“Let’s go,” Leon said.
Ajax sighed. “What’s the definition of bravery? A man with diarrhea chancing a fart.” For all his lip, he followed second behind Leon. Though he might just be using Leon’s broad shoulders as the best shield for miles.
Their party crossed the threshold to find themselves in a domed chamber covered with alien script. It might have been a dead language from a long dead civilization here on Earth, but again, the military presence outside would have ruled that out by now.
Cassandra was busy trying to make sense of it, though it was hardly her field of expertise.
“What is it?” Patent asked in awe.
“An IQ test,” Skyhawk said, “to make sure that before we go any further, we’re worthy. I suggest we get to work on it.”
Satellite scanned the dome, getting all the symbols stored into his device.
“We might need Mother for this,” Skyhawk said. “It’s a fair bet they’ve already subjected it to Earth’s best supercomputers for months now and gotten nowhere.”
Leon nodded to Satellite.
Satellite gasped. “I’ll see how she responds to one more burden being placed on her. No promises. Surprised she took us seriously last time.” He mumbled the last phrase.
“Shit!” Satellite said.
“What?” Leon and Patent barked at once.
“There are eleven Nautili surrounding the globe presently. All are linking their supersentiences together to fast-track breaking the code,” Satellite said.
“I’m guessing she’s tired playing catch with meteors.” Patent chuckled hollowly.
“They’ve spit out the solution already, sir,” Satellite said.
“I should hope so, with that much mind power,” Leon replied.
“It’s a song meant to be sung with vocal chords, tongues, and a palate we don’t really have. The Nautili have downloaded its best guess to my device, which I hasten to say, really wasn’t built for this. The speaker quality is likely nowhere good enough.”
Cassandra glared at him. “And yet if you want to live a second longer, you’ll play it.” She wasn’t known for her patience.
Satellite pressed the button and the song commenced.
It ended, and nothing.
“I told you,” Satellite said.
“Mother. My nanite arrays. Now.” It was Cassandra speaking with her usual commanding abruptness.
She was essentially commanding the Nautilus to feed her hive mind arrays whatever intel they needed to morph her accordingly.
Her head arched back and split open to make room for the new verbalizing apparatus, like a series of trumpet flowers arranged in order of scale.
When she was finished singing the song, she changed back into her old self.
Still no response.
But then the graffiti on the wall lit up, and the entire chamber started spinning.
“Oh, joy.” Ajax was being sarcastic. It was in his tone, his tensing body language, and his gun being pivoted into position that said it all.
“I know, huh!” Skyhawk blurted; he hadn’t caught the sarcasm.
“Tell me
about it!” Satellite said with the same resonance of glee. Evidently his sarcasm meter was busted as well.
“This is the best day of my life!” Ariel blurted.
Patent shook his head and frowned Leon’s direction. “Feeling old yet?”
Leon smiled warily. “Let’s just hope whatever we find on the other side is of some help in this war effort. A dead end is one indulgence we can’t afford.”
“Or another war,” Patent mumbled.
The latest meteor impact caused one of the blocks with chiseled characters to get knocked off the wall. They had arrived not a moment too soon. “Let’s hope this portal stays functional long enough for us to get back,” Leon thought. It was more of a prayer, actually.
FOURTEEN
LOS ALAMOS LABS
NEW MEXICO
OMEGA FORCE CLONE TEAM TWO
Omega Force Clone Team Two had been tasked by the Nautilus, and specifically by Natty, with seeing that cutting edge tech continued to get disseminated far and wide—and not remain solely the province of the top one percent. Left to the latter, there would be no DIY drugs you could print out yourself with a home computer printer, no DIY cars, DIY solar panels, and entire DIY homes. If the Age of Abundance wasn’t to be perennially held at bay by the powers that be that preferred having all the wealth concentrated in their hands, and relished an Age of Scarcity never coming to an end, Omega Force would have to intervene.
Although still assessing what of Los Alamos Labs’ technology might well benefit the civilian sector, Omega Force Clone Team Two was pleased to find not one, but several applications of a non-military nature worth leaking. Not the least was a neural net, the kind Elon Musk was allegedly working on, ready to go. The prototype worked by different principles, but if nothing else, it had to be saved. The kind of widespread mind upgrade it represented for the entire planet might well be needed if they were going to survive whatever the hell was going on presently.
Leon couldn’t help but notice someone else—not of this world—had taken an interest in Los Alamos Labs.
A keen interest.
Leon was losing count of what was going on in the sky.
First—the stars had changed on them, indicating that the artifact on the moon had activated, doing much as Natty had predicted, teleporting the planet, except not out of the way of an impending alien invasion as hoped, but right smack into one.
Then came the meteor shower without end—clearly aimed at military targets—and they alone—meaning it couldn’t possibly be natural. Whatever they were up against—their tech was way better than anything Earth’s scientists had stowed away at Los Alamos.
And yet…
It had been under constant asteroid bombardment for hours now.
The only thing that had kept it from being blown off the map was a mysterious energy shield which no one could argue at this point was protecting Los Alamos Labs.
A brief study of the sky suggested something was running interference for Omega Force Clone Team Two overhead.
The best candidate was the Nautilus—with the Originals on board, as opposed to the cloned teams left behind on Earth.
But the defensive shield was weakening.
Even if it weren’t, something damn curious was going on.
Explosions had just come from beneath the energy dome, scattered across the entire compound.
The suggestion that the Los Alamos scientists were destroying tech before the enemy could get their hands on it had been bandied about.
But it felt to Leon more like a coordinated attack.
Satellite rushed up to him, his head buried in his display, per the normal. “My scanners read two hundred and fifty aliens infiltrating the compound, sir.”
“Aliens? How can you be sure?”
Satellite showed him a picture of one of them on the scanner, better than what an MRI machine could do. “Okay, I’ll take your word for it that’s not some Los Alamos genetic experiment to make nextgen soldiers gone awry. Especially in lieu of the sustained attack from above. But why not wait until they were finished softening us up first?”
“Maybe that was the plan, sir, before the Nautili intervened.”
“The Nautili?”
“There are eleven of them, recruited from other timelines, blanketing Earth, helping to protect it from the barrage. And they’re generating these energy domes for the asteroid hits they can’t block.”
“Why then didn’t the Nautilus shield keep the alien ground troops out?”
“I think it tried, sir, but they’re excellent chameleons. Just before passing through, they shapeshifted into scientists stationed here,” Satellite showed him on his monitor, “other dignitaries, military personnel associated with the base, including the ones that do pop inspections. They would have had to hack the Los Alamos databases for that information on the fly.”
“Something smells fishy here. If we were such a threat to them, then why not blow the world to bits? They clearly have the technology to do it. Why spare any of us? And I doubt any Warehouse 13 device, however many light years ahead of what’s on the market, is going to be any threat to these people, suggesting even the precision targeting of strategic assets seems bogus. Again, if they were a real threat, then blow the planet to hell before we can use the tech against them.”
“Maybe they want to get their hands on it first, then blow the planet to hell,” Satellite volunteered.
“Hell, the Nautilus could beam us up off the planet if it wanted to. You think they can’t just beam up whatever it is they’re so keenly interested in? No, this battle follows a child’s logic, that is, the logic of minds not yet fully formed, not yet fully capable of logic. Such a race might not have engineered this level of technology, but they might put it to use as only a child would.”
Satellite took a closer look at his earlier scans. “What if they are kids, sir? The Nautilus was designed as a toy chest for Natty that once opened would give him the play things he needed to explore the universe. Maybe we’ve been drafted into a cosmic play pen for children, using technology more advanced still, not just capable of procuring a ship, but turning an entire galaxy into a playground. Maybe that artifact on the moon is one of their children’s toys, deployed by one of the kids themselves.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The scans, sir. The scanner’s AI has found correlations with our own youth, signs that these are juveniles of the species, their bodies still growing. And, ah, my backdoor access to the Nautilus—in our timeline—suggests the Originals have come to a similar conclusion. And I’m afraid there’s more, sir.”
Leon braced himself with a deep breath.
Satellite, cued by some change in his expression that he was prepared to hear more, though on the inside Leon hardly felt that way, continued, “This is a trans-galactic civilization we’ve bumped into. And so far no one has seen but a few of the ‘burbs’ if you will, a few of the galaxies. And these aliens are from one of the burbs, a galaxy that appears to be little more than a playpen in which the children raise themselves—and the kids are attempting to absorb or assimilate us into their galaxy for the purposes of playing war games.
“There is also a Dead Zone galaxy,” Satellite continued, “populated by technology whatever civilization was once there has long since abandoned, as if it was just cheaper and easier to move on than rebuild. And that technology they abandoned…”
“Let me guess, more advanced than anything we have.”
Satellite nodded. “Theta Team is poring over it now to see if there are still any insights worth gleaning that can give us a leg up on our adversary.”
“Well, that’s one advantage the Nautilus has that we don’t, a Theta Team. We’re going to have to make do with cloned Omega Force and Alpha Unit teams here on Earth. Let’s hope that’s enough for our end of things. That’ll be all, Satellite. Thanks.” Satellite was already shrinking back into the darkness when Leon said, “One more thing. The instant we encounter anything under that dome
that has the remotest chance of assisting us in repelling this alien invasion, or colonization effort, whatever this is…”
“I’ll get the intel to the Nautilus, sir. I won’t wait for you to identify tech-assets that I and the rest of Alpha Unit are more qualified to evaluate.”
Leon smiled, despite the unwitting dissing the teen had just given him. Satellite was a bit like Radar in that old TV series M*A*S*H. His mind was a bit of a satellite dish in its own right, and he had to be forgiven for reading Leon’s mind. He wouldn’t be him and he wouldn’t be half as valuable the asset if it weren’t so.
They had delayed long enough. Those Los Alamos scientists, even with their secret tech to protect them, weren’t going to last long against alien soldiers—even if they were just teens like Patent’s Alpha Unit teens.
Speaking of Patent…
He found his way to Leon’s side next. “What are we waiting for? A bloomin’ invitation?”
“No, we are not. Omega Force will take the lead as always. Follow with your Alpha Unit brats to put down what good soldiering alone won’t squelch. Techa only knows what hi-tech wonders we’re going to find in there which only they’ll know what the hell to do with. What I’d give to have that cushy bastard’s job on the Nautilus, working with technology that’s a hundred years ahead of what even we’ve got.”
Patent smiled. “You mean the other you?”
“Yeah, that lucky, spoiled asshole.”
FIFTEEN
THE NAUTILUS
LEON’S PRIVATE SUITE
Leon eyed the picture-in-picture inlays of his clones on Earth on the bottom of the port giving him a view of space about the Earth. Whereas this Leon had a tattoo of a Nautilus shell on the back of his shaved head, the Leon in charge of the forbidden zones on Earth had a No Trespassing sign tattooed on the back of his head. The Leon in charge of seeing Age of Abundance tech got disseminated far and wide on the planet had a big Blue E enclosed by a red circle—a symbol for egalitarianism—tattooed to the back of his shaved dome. Otherwise, you couldn’t tell the three of them apart. Right now, he wanted to know not what was on their heads but going on inside them.
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