by Steve Simons
There was an announcement in several languages that the temple would be closing in twenty minutes, so last admissions were happening now.
The boys set off again for the entrance.
They arrived at the entrance, which also served as exit, as a mass exodus was taking place. Luckily Ed spotted that those leaving the complex were using some form of electronic pass. He turned to Paul and said, "Oh I think I left my camera at the bath temple."
Paul looked at him quizzically at first, then realised that there was something wrong. When they were out of earshot of other tourists, Ed said, "That's how they keep track of the visitors, by those electronic passes that we've seen hanging around many people's necks. So there's no chance of us getting out without one. We'll have to head back to our secret entrance.
They got about three quarters of the way, when Paul suddenly remembered hearing a familiar voice. He recognised it more clearly the second time around, it was Sylvie. She had told him that she was at the main entrance with Edward and Richard and asked if Ed and Paul were safe and together. Paul thought back their current position and their plan to exit via the back, he imagined the administration block. Sylvie confirmed that she would meet them at the cupboard E226.
Paul relayed the message in a series of whispers to Ed. He said, "Ah that's what's going on, I thought I was going mad, remembering conversations that hadn't taken place."
There were a couple of occasions when the boys nearly got caught, the staff were obviously checking the grounds to see if there were any stragglers still wandering around the temples. The boys managed to get back to the first temple that they had hidden in. There was quite a lot of activity around the administration building so they were unable to sneak through the gap between that building and the temple.. They hid in the temple again, listening for the sounds to die down. Paul put Sylvie in the picture. She was still making her way around the outside of the temple complex.
Eventually activity around the administration block died down and the boys were able to quickly sneak into the gap between the buildings. Ed made it just-in-time, as he heard two people chattering as they headed towards the administration building, one said he thought he had seen something between the buildings, luckily it was the end of a busy day and his colleague didn't want to do anything more than hand in his keys, so he accused his friend of drinking too much chandalook the previous night. They continued on to the administration building without stopping.
Ed and Paul found their way into the cupboard where the air sleaker was still safely stored, they retrieved some more food from its storage area before closing the cupboard door again and finding themselves in total darkness.
Paul "heard" Sylvie report that she could see the administration building now. He guided her to their hiding place and soon daylight seeped between the gap formed by the open door. Ed turned on the Airsleaker's lights and they shared out the food and remaining drink with Sylvie. When they'd had enough of a rest and some food. Ed suggested that to save their legs, they could drag the air sleaker out beyond the bushes and they would be able to ride round to the place that Edward and Richard were waiting.
"I can't believe it that dad has been rescued and is really here." said Ed.
Sylvie pointed out, "You won't recognise either him or Richard at first as they are heavily disguised."
"You can talk about disguises, if I hadn't held the mental conversation with you before seeing you I'd have walked straight past you without recognising you." said Paul.
"Yeah we're pretty good at our disguises these days." agreed Sylvie.
They soon had the air sleaker behind the bushes with engine purring ready to take them to Edward and Richard. It only seemed to take a few minutes to get to the front entrance. Mind you no-one took any notice of the speed that they were travelling at.
Soon the three were approaching on foot the two distinguished gentlemen who were seated near the main entrance. As they approached the gentlemen stood and reached out to shake the hands of the two young men. Without any fuss the group headed towards the Tubevec along with loads of other tired and weary tourists. It seemed most strange to the boys not to be making a fuss over the fact that their father and uncle were both safe and what's more together! However, they followed the behaviour of the adults around them.
Richard bought the boys their tickets.
A security guard challenged the group and asked if the two young men could explain why their e-dentity bracelets were apparently not working. Paul explained that there had been an accident in the bath temple and their bracelets had been damaged by the waters. There was a very convincing voice that said, "This is a perfectly acceptable explanation, let them go through."
"I'm not sure about this." said the security guard and he was about to press a communicator button on his control panel when the voice again said, "This happened last week if you remember, the people involved threatened to sue the temple authorities for the repairs, but you managed to calm things down."
The security guard almost talking to himself was heard to say to Paul, "Oh yes the same thing happened last week, you'd think they'd warn visitors about it. I hope you had a pleasant visit to the temples and will come back again soon." He waved them on.
The group were soon heading towards the city again, hurtling through the countryside at amazing speed.
"Won't you miss your Airsleaker?" asked Paul.
"I think I can live without it, although it was nice having independent transport again." replied Ed.
Sylvie reminded them that Tubevecs were often bugged so they should keep quiet.
The rest of the journey was spent in painful silence, they watched the countryside then the city pass by them at speed, noting the occasional wildlife.
Sylvie's private transport was waiting at the station. Once again she had to remind the boys that the transport could be bugged. They soon reached the safe house and it was an enormous relief when the door closed behind them and they could drop all pretences. There was much hugging and such chatter that it was difficult to follow a particular conversation. Sylvie decided to go to the food prep area and fix something to eat and drink.
~~~~~~~~
Chapter 13 - Suspicions
Edward filled the boys in, with his side of the story. He told them that when he visited Jerestican, he at first suspected nothing, being glad to see an old friend that he hadn't talked to in a long time. However, he got the impression that all was not as it seemed, especially when he had mentioned imports of chemicals. Edward said that he'd gained the impression that Jerestican was somehow involved in disguising the true nature of the imports to Regenis 4. Edward knew that Jerestican would not be able to do this on his own. So when he offered to take Edward to see his old friends Gerherp and Yestant, he suspected that they were also involved, being in the import and export business they may be transporting the goods so to speak. When they met up, his old friends seemed as sincere and honest as they ever were. During their conversation about the chemical imports, Yestant said he thought he'd seen some communication about something coming from Genthaed, they'd been offered the opportunity to ship it into Regenis 4, but at the time they didn't have easy access to a space freighter in that region of space, as it would mean a lot of messing about with transfers involving extra costs, they'd declined the shipment. Yestant suggested that if Edward wanted to follow-up that lead they could get him a free flight, Yestant handed Edward an e-reader with a code on it. It not only carried the code but also the message, "be very careful I feel there's something wrong here, could be a trap".
Edward said he showed the screen to Yestant and pointed at the word "trap" then said "OK, this is the code here eh?" Yestant had confirmed that it was correct. He then offered their Galcomnet terminal so Edward could book a flight. Whilst Edward was at the terminal he did a search to see if there were anything suspicious about Gerherp and Yestant's shipments and whether there had been any coming from anywhere near the
Galtoid Sector, but found nothing.
Yestant had came over to the terminal, asking Edward if he were having any trouble "logging on", then he had smiled at Edward as he realised what he was doing. He'd said "That's OK, you seem to be doing alright now, there's no dodgy flights on this carrier, I can assure you. I have trouble with this thing sometimes, that's why Gerherp is the main operator." Then he took over the interface for a short while and navigated Edward to the flights booking section. "There you go, that's the screen you need."
Edward said that Jerestican seemed to be quite relieved when Edward left early the next day. The flight went without a hitch, he was not surprised when he was greeted at the space port by what appeared to be security personnel. He knew they were fakes of course. He was taken to some sort of warehouse, but he managed to escape and hid for several days, before being discovered and captured.
He then described the set-up that he was taken to and it was almost identical to that at which Ed and Paul had "stayed". Luckily he wasn't there for too long before his brother Richard and some other agents managed to rescue him. His captives had managed to get nothing of use from him, despite their best efforts.
Richard took over the narrative, he filled everyone in on the story from his perspective. The secret service had discovered that Regenis 4 was not the only target for secret factories, reports had come in in the last few days that several other mining planets appeared to have unlicensed factories, that were cloaked in the same way as that on Regenis 4. The agents had also discovered that the mechanism of getting supplies to the planets revolved around the mining machines that were being shipped. A Government employee on one of these planets had realised that there were too many crates being imported for what appeared to be one trial machine. The extra crates mysteriously DISAPPEARED a day later. The plan was to use the chemical weapons to undermine the local populations of the mine rich planets so the Galtoid sector can take over their resources.
Richard then turned to Ed and said that he was sorry to inform him that Elcesior and Jenny's father had been arrested as he was suspected as being a agent working for the Galtoid sector operation, they thought he was managing the import of the chemicals and extra equipment for the factory.
Ed couldn't believe his ears and wondered if Jenny and Elcesior knew anything about the plot and their father's involvement. Then he felt sorry for them on a strange planet, no one to turn to, their father gone and they would be under suspicion of collaborating. Then his thoughts turned to the fact that Elcesior had easily given away the fact that Ed and Paul had borrowed Academy equipment to make their discoveries. But then if he'd been involved in the Galtoid plot, surely he'd want to cover things up not confess to the whole thing. His mind was spinning with all the possibilities.
"Leave it to the professionals" said Richard reassuringly, "We'll find out the truth of the matter."
Edward put his arm around Ed, "I know it's a cruel old world when you can't trust your feelings and ears, but I can assure you the truth will come out, we just need to have faith in the service and bide our time whilst we wait for them to thoroughly check things out. And having worked for them I can assure you they will be thorough and leave no space rock unturned."
Ed smiled and hugged his dad. It took Edward by surprise. Ed said, "Thanks dad, it's just a bit of a shock to find out that people you thought you could trust, may have plans to destroy everything you believe in, but hey you've had nearly two weeks of it."
Edward replied, "I have at that and I agree it's quite a shock to my system. At least we've discovered the plot before any real damage has been done. Those who are guilty of wrong doing will have to take what's coming to them. I just hope that innocent people don't get unjustly accused."
Richard joined in by saying, "I agree whole heartedly with you there Eddy, the service will do it's utmost to ensure that we find the real truth before the justice system takes over."
Ed and Paul, couldn't believe their ears, "Eddy" their father, the "stuffer duffer" was referred to as "Eddy" by none other than his brother.
Edward looked somewhat embarrassed at being called "Eddy". It was obviously a nickname that Richard had used in childhood. Ed and Paul remembered back to when they'd first met Richard, he'd referred to their dad by his more formal name, "Edward".
Richard seemed totally unaware of the stir he'd caused. Paul detected an "Oops" coming from Sylvie, in the food prep area.
Ed, Quick thinking, asked Richard, "Have you got a Secrenet terminal here?"
Richard surprised by the request replied, "Er.... yes it's in the office over there." He pointed towards the open doorway.
Ed detecting an unasked question responded, "It's just that Paul told me about a game he was playing at his last safe house and I thought he'd want to show it to me."
"Of course you're more than welcome to use it, suggest you use the ID "QUESTOR98" with password "GAL98C", rather than the previous user ID that Paul was given; in-case anyone is monitoring users and waiting for Paul to come back on-line." suggested Richard.
Ed and Paul went to the office and once they'd left the room, Edward rebuked Richard, "Eddy! You haven't called me that for years."
~~~~ Later ~~~~
"So what did you two get up to as lads", asked Paul of his dad and Richard as they settled down for the meal.
Edward replied, "Pretty much the same as you and Ed really. We fought battles on far off planets, we were ace fighter pilots battling some ruthless foe, whom of course we defeated. We had our own hobbies and interests.
Richard interjected, "I seem to remember yours involved a lot of girls."
Edward went red and got his own back with, "And yours mostly involved computers, cyphers and codes."
Richard pointed out, "Ah but it was a good grounding for the service," then he turned to Sylvie, "Excellent Hepsiganian stir fry by the way Sylvie."
Sylvie blushed and muttered, "Thanks."
The others also issued praise.
Paul turned to Richard and said, "You two were similar to us then. He...", Paul pointed to Ed and continued, "...is an ace pilot, whilst I'm into techy stuff like Galcomnet, materials science and the like. Our skills and knowledge have proved useful on this mission."
Edward interrupted, "Hey don't go getting any ideas about joining the service you two, it can bring a lot of risk and heartache can't it?" He turned to Richard for support.
Richard quickly picked up on his brother's plea for help, "It certainly can, we've lost a good many close friends and colleagues, not to mention loves of our life."
Ed and Paul were thinking the same, "Hello sounds like some interesting stories here."
Then Paul detected Sylvie saying, "Don't go there, as there's still plenty of pain."
There was silence for a while, until Ed asked Richard, "When did the secret factory on Regenis 4 get raided? Only I'm curious as to why our captors continued to pursue and capture us."
Richard replied, "We didn't raid it, as we thought it might put everyone at greater risk and in any case we could find out far more intelligence from other planets. They had a back-up plan as they shifted their operations to an alternative site. However, we were able to monitor them closely this time and see how they operated. It confirmed Jerestican's involvement in the incoming shipments of equipment and chemicals, it also pointed us to the mine and Grakeon's possible involvement, although that still remains to be proved.
~~~~ Later ~~~~
The flight back to Regenis 4 went well. They travelled via Placeedees in order to throw pursuers off the scent. There was a one night stop-over. When they checked into the hotel, Ed and Paul shared a room. Paul expressed disappointment at the fact that it wasn't an 'e-room'.
"What no chance to startle passing girls with your shower antics?" ribbed Ed.
Maria was overjoyed to welcome back the "four men in her life", as she put it.
Richard was given the "guest suite" as Edward put it. Richard was going to go back
to his flat, but Edward had insisted that he come back with them, "Maria would never forgive me if you didn't come and stay for at least one night."
Maria told Ed that Jenny and Elcesior had been over several times in the last couple of days looking for Ed and Paul. Maria confirmed that their father had been arrested and she said Jenny was quite distraught with worry.
Ed was tempted to say something about the reason for their father's arrest, but decided it would be best to just sound sympathetic. He promised to pop round and see them both.
Maria seemed quite content with that statement.
They were soon all seated and enjoying a meal together. Ed and Paul felt like flies on the wall as Richard, Maria and Edward were exchanging comments about past events and the phrase, "remember when we went to...... and ..... happened." was well used by end of the evening. The boys certainly learned a whole lot of stuff about their parents that they'd never dreamed of. Places that they had only seen in e-books or heard about were discussed in some detail.
~~~~ Later ~~~~
After breakfast and his first fix of "Tastiday" for several days, Ed invited Paul to join him on a visit to the Fluerescens dwelling.
Ed and Paul were greeted by a very tearful Jenny, "Oh thank goodness you're back. Did your mum tell you what has happened?"