by Lee Stephen
Ironic, or was it fitting? Glitches weren’t the only things that came to mind when Scott thought about the Pariah. That ship, for all its wear, had always brought them home. Well, almost always. “Yeah, well, if there’s anything we need to discuss of significance, this is probably the safest place to do it. Just be careful. Safest doesn’t necessarily mean safe.”
“Understood.”
Rising, Scott walked to the troop bay door and hit the button to lower it. The Vulture’s gears moaned as the ramp lowered to the floor, the fresh, frigid Norilsk air hitting them through the hangar doors once again. Bitter cold. It was their lot in life. With Esther in tow, Scott walked down the ramp.
The hour that followed felt like three. Scott contacted the members of the Fourteenth, informing them that their meeting had been pushed back to allow for Valentin’s attendance, as well as making them aware of Max’s arrival at the base. Though he’d considered dropping that as a surprise at the onset of the meeting, a desire to hit the ground running and without distraction ultimately won. It was better to give them that extra hour now to get the excitement out than let it impede the progress of what was going to be a critical gathering.
Scott also contacted Valentin, who met his request to free Ju`bajai with laughter. Though Scott made every case and argument that Esther had for him, the keeper was clear that the alien would remain locked in her cell. It wasn’t a decision Scott could rationally argue against. He understood Esther’s reasoning, especially with Ju`bajai possibly withholding information, but the fact remained that the Ithini was an enemy. For a man as paranoid and controlling as Valentin was of Northern Forge, it would have been a shock had the keeper even entertained the possibility of freeing Ju`bajai. Scott relayed the update to Esther, who sounded disgusted to a degree that somewhat surprised him. Just the same, she accepted the answer—or so she claimed. All in all, things felt as positive as they could be going into the meeting.
Walking to the conference room that Valentin had set apart for them to use, Scott began his preparation.
* * *
Thrusting her palms forward, Esther crashed open the doors of the medical bay. Inside their cells, Natalie and Ju`bajai jumped. Gavriil and Marina’s collective heads whipped in Esther’s direction, and the doctor opened his mouth to speak. The Briton’s sharp words cut him off. “You!” she said, pointing at Ju`bajai in her cell. The alien stared at her expressionlessly. Esther snapped her fingers and pointed to her head. “Get in here, now.” Turning around, she stormed back out of the room, leaving the doctor and Natalie dumbfounded.
Stepping into the same room she’d gone in earlier to communicate with Ju`bajai, Esther slammed the door behind her and locked it promptly. Arms folded across her chest, she tapped her foot and waited. A second later, the construct began.
Esther was once again in Room 14, once again staring at a bunk room in familiar disarray. This time, there was no stopping to take in the view. The scout made a beeline for the lounge. As soon as she rounded the corner that led into it, she saw the ponytailed version of herself waiting.
“Well, well, well,” said Ju`bajai, still stirring her bowl of porridge. “That was a tad brazen, don’t you think?”
Esther never stopped walking. She trekked right across the lounge, slapped the bowl of porridge right out of Ju`bajai’s hand, and grabbed the wide-eyed construct by the collar. Slamming Ju`bajai back into the wall, Esther shrieked at the top of her lungs, “Give me something to work with, you revolting little squid!”
“Have you gone mad?” the alien asked.
“I need something to tell them! Some clear indicator that you’re willing to help, even if to the faintest sodding degree. You can’t demand I not rouse suspicion then place me in a position that begs for it!” Letting go of Ju`bajai’s collar, Esther shoved her against the wall then stepped back. “Regardless of what you do to me, if I don’t succeed, you rot in that cell. Act like that matters.” Setting her hands on her hips, Esther blew the hair from her face. She waited in silence.
Her eyes narrowing, Ju`bajai stared at Esther from against the wall. At long last, she drew a breath and replied. “As you wish, Miss Brooking. A taste—but just a taste. I can still ruin you.”
“Only if I let you,” Esther said.
Lifting her hand, Ju`bajai snapped her fingers. The construct melted away.
Esther was once again standing in the room she’d slipped into from the hallway, right near the medical bay. Room 14 was gone, and there was no additional presence in her mind. Ju`bajai had left her.
But she’d left something behind.
It took a moment for Esther to find it, but surely enough, the new information—the taste—drifted to the surface of her consciousness as it awaited discovery. When her mind seized it, the scout’s eyes opened widely. She inhaled out of shock. “Oh,” she said. “That’ll do, sprite. That will do.” Without another word, Esther unlocked the door and made her way down the hall.
17
Sunday, March 18th, 0012 NE
1130 hours
Norilsk, Russia
GAME TIME. At long last, after fleeing from Cairo on the wings of a prayer and surviving the flight to Northern Forge, Scott was on the verge of actually holding a unit meeting. It felt a million years overdue. The only strange part now was that it wasn’t going to be held in Room 14’s lounge. But the Level-3 conference room would suffice.
The conference room had a distinct Old Era smell to it, a certain agedness, that almost made Scott feel as if he was about to begin a discussion about nuclear weapons or Cold War politics. Just the same, he was grateful for the space, which was more than adequate enough for everyone to have a seat around the table.
The news about Svetlana had been a punch to the gut. Though the time spent alone in his room had been helpful, this wasn’t an ache that was just going to go away. Svetlana was missing. There was no silver lining to that. The best Scott could hope for was that some kind of update would turn up. Press on became the phrase of the day.
There was no trickling in of participants, as had been customary back in Novosibirsk when bullet points revolved more around upcoming workout regimens and determining who would walk Flopper that week. This time they were facing world-altering events. This was a meeting universally recognized as mission critical. Nothing highlighted that more to Scott than the distinct lack of chatter as everyone made their way inside and took seats. With so many people in the room, the level of silence was downright eerie.
Valentin, expectedly, took a position at the head of the table, with Scott to his immediate right and Colonel Lilan to his left, like three heads of state. Scott realized as he sat across from Lilan that he hadn’t even had a chance to talk with his former colonel yet about the events that’d occurred between Richmond and Novosibirsk—most importantly, Scott’s fall as a Golden Lion. There was a lot that Scott needed to say. But that would have to wait.
“Begin when you are ready,” said Valentin in a tone that hinted that Scott needed to be ready now.
Shifting to face the group, Scott began. “As everyone here knows, we have a lot to talk about, and I think we all realize that time is critical. So let’s get right into this.” And right into Max. “I know everyone here has gotten the word already that Max is here.” He briefly looked at the non-Fourteenth members present. “For those who don’t know, Max is our chief combat technician. For everyone in the Fourteenth, I’ll save us all some time and say that I don’t know what his condition is yet—it was quite a scene when he arrived and they’re still working on getting him set up in the medical bay. I hope to get more information on him soon. Until then, though, let’s just pray for him and be glad he’s back with us.”
It wasn’t the most informative little blurb, but it was literally all he knew. The rest, he’d have to get from Gavriil after things settled down. So right on Scott went. Nodding in Lilan’s direction, he said, “I don’t think anyone’s had a chance to formally get introduced to Colonel Lilan yet, so…this
is Colonel Lilan.” There wasn’t much else to say. “I think most of you guys know that he was my own colonel back in Richmond, where I myself was in Falcon Platoon along with David, Becan, and Jay.” His focus shifted to the colonel. “Colonel, I know you and I have a lot to talk about, about a lot of different things. For the moment though, just so we can all be on the same page, would you mind sharing with all of us what exactly happened in Falcon Platoon when you guys got shot down?”
Nodding his head, Lilan looked down the table. “Good afternoon to those I’ve met and to those I haven’t.” A quick acknowledgment in Valentin’s direction indicated a special inclusion for the keeper in that statement, which Valentin met with what seemed genuine respect. Lilan continued. “The story from our side is not too complicated. Four days ago, Falcon Platoon got called out on a mission over the Great Dismal Swamp, which is a swamp that runs between North Carolina and Virginia. It was a routine Bakma callout—nothing spectacular. What matters, though, is that shortly after our arrival over the swamp, a squadron of Vindicators showed up on radar, and without communication, engaged us and shot us down.”
For as much as Scott and company had been through, he couldn’t imagine being subjected to an attack as vile as what Lilan had encountered. This wasn’t the Nightmen who’d upended him. This was EDEN, the organization Lilan had dedicated the past decade of his life to. Scott listened on as the colonel continued.
“Shortly after we were shot down, what I can only describe as a sweeper team of sorts landed to look for any survivors. Oh, and they shot at us while we were in the water, too,” he said, pointing for emphasis. “That’s really when I realized this hadn’t been some kind of friendly-fire incident. A mistaken one, I mean.” Craning his neck a bit to see Tiffany, he indicated to the pilot. “Ms. Feathers ended up in one of their Vultures—”
Cordially, Tiffany interrupted. “The Pariah, actually. The one we flew in to get here.”
“Right,” said Lilan, “then she—” Right then, the colonel stopped. Blinking in Tiffany’s direction as if her statement had just registered, he asked her flatly, “Excuse me? You flew here in…?”
“Yes, sir. The same Vulture.”
Well that must have been a surprise. One of the same Vultures that was involved in their attempted murder was the one that’d brought them out of Krasnoyarsk to Northern Forge. Scott wasn’t sure if that was ironic or morbid. It was probably both. Clearing his throat a bit, he said, “The Pariah was actually our Vulture, sir. A few months before any of this went down, it’d been damaged in a mission and shipped off for repair. We got word back from EDEN that it’d been totaled, for lack of a better word, but obviously that wasn’t the real case.”
The colonel eyed him, almost suspiciously. “So your Vulture was one of the ones that engaged us?”
Leaning forward against his elbows, Scott said to the colonel, “This whole time, we were under the impression that that Vulture, the Pariah, was out of commission for good. The way things sound, it seems as if EDEN may have been collecting aircraft from Novosibirsk for the very purpose of setting us up.”
His eyes growing distant, it seemed as if Lilan was putting things together in his mind, right there on the spot. At long last, he slowly nodded his head. “I think the fact that it was Svetlana who came for us tells us all we need to know.”
That it did, and Scott was thankful for the way Lilan phrased it. It was probably as concrete an endorsement as the colonel was capable of dishing out. Looking down the table again, Lilan motioned to Tiffany. “So like I was saying, Ms. Feathers ended up going off in that Vulture, then the next thing we know, here comes Svetlana in a Noboat to save us.”
It was the briefest of closing summaries. Scott could feel that Lilan was working things out in his head. He probably wanted to get his part of speaking over with so he could start connecting the dots in his mind.
“Ms. Feathers, you want to tell us what all happened from your end?” Lilan asked.
The blonde sat erect, whipping some loose strands of hair from her face before speaking. “When I got into the Pariah, it actually took off on autopilot. It wasn’t until I managed to find a comm and talk to Travis that we were able to figure out that it was heading to Novosibirsk. He talked me through the process of regaining manual control, and from that point on it was just surviving to make it to their base. I probably would have been shot down had Novosibirsk not sent a squadron to escort me. I got to Novosibirsk, met everyone…met Thoor, who was a total creeper, then the rest, I think we all know. I sort of hung out with the Fourteenth until everything went down in Cairo.”
Scott felt the need to pick up, there. “We were sent to Cairo to retrieve a Ceratopian—the one in recovery here now. Thoor believed, and I do, too, that this Ceratopian and another who is now dead, were aware of some sort of alien-human conspiracy with EDEN Command. Specifically, with Judge Benjamin Archer.” The presumed mastermind of all this, whom Scott had never even met. “We had encountered these particular aliens before, on that same mission where we lost the Pariah. When I met them, they tried to communicate with me. They kept repeating a phrase that I couldn’t quite figure out. It wasn’t until later on that I realized they were trying to speak to me in German.” Across from him, Lilan raised an eyebrow. “The aliens were trying to tell me, ‘The Archer betrays you.’ That’s what gave us the inkling that somehow, Archer was involved in all this.”
“Why the hell would an alien speak to you in German?” Lilan asked.
“Well, think about it, colonel,” answered Scott. “Do you know any prominent soldiers on Earth who happen to be from Germany?”
Lilan’s brow furrowed, before his eyes opened widely. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
He’s catching on. “We think the Ceratopians were trying to contact Klaus Faerber to tell him about a conspiracy. And if that’s true, then apparently not all of these aliens are on the same page when it comes to humanity. On the Ceratopian side, at least.” It was a big pill to swallow, particularly for an old-school fighter like Lilan. By the look of it, though, that light was coming on. “Thoor found out the alien had been sent to Cairo, which is why we’d been sent there. Actually, I uhh…” He deliberated momentarily whether or not to include the next part. “I was forced into going to Cairo. Thoor used my relationship with Svetlana against me. She would have been harmed if I hadn’t gone.”
His eyes on the colonel, David said matter-of-factly, “Not the first time that stunt had been pulled.”
“Thoor had a penchant for using loved ones as leverage,” Scott said before getting back on track. “We never expected Cairo to erupt the way it did. Our plan was to get in, extract the Ceratopian somehow, then take it back to Novosibirsk. Knowing Thoor, he was going to use Centurion—that’s what we call him—as sort of a big reveal against EDEN. He was probably saving you guys up for that, too.”
“Speaking of people being used as leverage, I’d like to say something,” said Lilan. Scott and Valentin, to whom the statement seemed directed, gave him their attention. “I appreciate that you guys took us out of that cell. Believe it or not, the last time we could all walk freely, we were back at Richmond. As much as we appreciated the Nightman rescue, they weren’t exactly very accommodating—no offense,” he added to Valentin, who seemed anything but offended. “I would like to make a suggestion, though. Consider freeing that girl you guys got up there. There’s no need for her to be held up in a cell.”
Natalie.
“She got wrapped up in this just like the rest of us,” the colonel said. “I think, with a little extension of trust, you guys might find an ally. Who is a lot like you used to be,” he said directly to Scott, semi-quietly.
Used to be? Scott wasn’t sure if the compliment was intended to be backhanded or not. “I don’t think she’s ready, yet. She has a lot of trust issues right now.”
“Go figure,” said David.
“But in the event that she can sort herself out, then yes, I agree with the colonel. She could def
initely be an asset.”
Valentin groaned as if annoyed. “Any other captives you would like to release?”
Scott shook his head. “The Falcons and Natalie would be all, I think.” From her seat, Esther fidgeted.
“There is no chance that I will release a potentially hostile combatant,” said Valentin flatly. “End of that discussion.”
As much as he wished he could, Scott couldn’t logically argue—at least not right now.
“What is your next discussion point?”
Turning his eyes upon Esther, Scott said, “I had spoken to Esther about gleaning a little information from Ju`bajai. Did you have any success with that, Ess?”
Sitting upright and clearing her throat quietly, the scout answered, “Yes, I was able to finagle a little information out of her shortly before our meeting.”
That was good to hear.
The scout leaned forward. “In the time Ju`bajai’s spent with Centurion, she’s been able to extract a small bit of information, some of which she shared with me—and it’s considerable. Apparently…he and H`laar’s mission was to deliver a device to Klaus Faerber.”
“H-what?” Lilan asked.
“H`laar,” said Scott.
The colonel shook his head and muttered.
Esther elaborated. “H`laar was who we initially went to Cairo to find. Centurion, the Ceratopian we have here, was apparently his bodyguard.” When none of them looked any more or less informed, her focus returned to Scott. “The device was on the ship that you met H`laar and Centurion in. It contained recorded evidence of communication between the Ceratopians and Benjamin Archer.”
“Hot dog!” said Lilan, looking excitedly at Scott. “That’s what we’ve got to find!”