by Terry Mixon
It was damned impressive. She couldn’t imagine why the original builders had needed so much capacity. From everything she’d been told, these people had been active here on Earth until just a few hundred years ago. Hell, they could’ve been here last week for all she knew. Probably not, just based on the general conditions inside the base, but it hadn’t been all that long.
Realistically, they’d probably been gone no more than fifty years. That meant these people had been present during the Industrial Revolution, all the way through the moon landing and beyond. They’d seen Earth as a technologically advanced civilization. Why had they stayed so long, only to depart abruptly? What had their true goals been?
“We should check the gates to see if we can pull any addresses off them,” Victor said from beside her.
She turned to face the large man. “Do you think they’d have left the buffers in place? If it was me, I’d have erased all the destinations that this base had record of. They took the computers, for God’s sake.”
“Never hurts to check. You’re probably right, but if we don’t look, we don’t know.”
She nodded. “Give each of them a check and then open a wormhole to the gate in our building. If we need any other people or supplies, bring them through. They need to know how to dial us here.”
The large man nodded and trotted off toward the first gate room. Granger stepped up beside her and watched him leave.
“This is kind of spooky,” the doctor said. “I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why someone would be behaving like this, and I can’t exactly come up with a decent answer. These people pulled up stakes pretty recently. Why did they do that and where did they go?”
“I was just wondering that myself. Do you think there’s any way we can determine how long ago they left, just to verify?”
He nodded. “Somewhere in this base is going to be a hydroponics room. We should be able to look at the plants there and do some double checking. It’s not an exact science, but I’d be very surprised if we couldn’t at least determine within a decade how long everything had been dead.
“Hell, I can’t imagine they got every single tablet out of this place. We may be able to find enough information to figure out when they were here. This is a huge place. It’s going to take us a while to search it from top to bottom, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“They had to have stripped the computers because they were afraid that the regular humans here would find this facility,” Brenda said. “By the time they’d departed, they had to have known that destroying the base would draw far more attention than just leaving it abandoned.
“The area around it was declared federal land at some point in the past. I’d be willing to bet that whoever built this place pulled some strings to make that happen. Until they departed, they were probably plugged into the United States government, much like the Families are today.”
Granger rubbed his chin. “Do you think they still are? Could they still have spies in place to tell them what’s going on? If so, word that we’ve started discovering old Asharim-based facilities scattered around the system might draw them back.”
“There’s no way to predict what they might do, since we have no idea who they are and what their original goals were. Since they cut off the power, I can’t imagine that they intend to return here via the gates.”
Granger shook his head. “Someone threw those breakers. Someone had to leave via lander or on foot. The people that built this place still have some contact here on this planet.”
“Perfect,” she said with a scowl. “Just what we need. Another player.”
Victor came trotting back a few minutes later. “No dice on the buffers. Someone wiped them clean. That means that someone was here after the rest left.”
She nodded. “We were guessing that. Did you find any gate controllers?”
The large man shook his head. “And there aren’t any ships or cargo movers that have gate controllers either. If we hadn’t brought our own, I’m not certain that we could’ve gotten into the gates at all.”
Well, they weren’t going to figure out what happened today. Karl was going to be pissed that she was just taking this base over, but she’d make it up to him.
There was no way that she was going to turn this thing over to the US government. Not a chance. This base belonged to the Families, and they were damned well going to keep it, no matter what Queen said. Let the bastard pound sand.
Queen sat in a secure bunker below the Pentagon and watched via remote as the Special Forces teams worked their way deeper into the Yucatán spaceport. While there were guards searching the port for intruders, they’d started too late. His people had infiltrated the area hours before the demonstration had started. The Chinese were behind the curve, but they didn’t realize it yet.
Part of the information that the CIA had dug up on Clayton Rogers included complete schematics and plans for the spaceport. Those pilfered files included the locations of the self-destruct devices as well as how they operated.
He’d made certain that the teams had specialists with them that were more than capable of rearming and reconnecting the systems as was required for them to operate. It might seem counterintuitive to reconnect the self-destruct devices to the general systems and controls, but plausible deniability demanded it. They had to make this look as if it was a rogue signal that set them off. If the systems were still isolated, the finger would point squarely at saboteurs.
“What’s the status of our people?” he asked the general who was seated at his side. He’d already forgotten the man’s name and didn’t feel like looking at his name tag. That would make it seem as if he didn’t care—which he didn’t—but he didn’t feel like getting into that particular pissing contest.
“All six teams are on schedule, Mister Secretary. We should have everything lined up and reconnected within the next twenty minutes. Once everything is in order, we’ll exfiltrate our people. They’ll kick off the self-destruct via remote timer planted in the system before they leave the spaceport.”
“Highlight the locations that we are rearming,” he ordered. “I want to see exactly what we’re working on here.”
Six areas lit up on the screen. Three of them were in the midst of the refueling tanks, two of them were on the launch gantries, and the final one was inside the control center.
“I can see how we’re going to get people to the five exterior positions, but what’s the plan for getting the team into the control center itself? It’s going to be heavily guarded, since that’s where Chen has his office. I can’t imagine they’re going to leave any side doors unlocked.”
The general nodded. “You put your finger on the most difficult portion of this exercise, Mister Secretary. That’s going to be the sticking point if there is one. That team will go in last so that the other teams have an opportunity to finish their work. At that point, all the other Special Forces operators will be in position to assist in the extraction of the final team if things go bad.
“As for entry, there are some underground tunnels servicing the building. Those are out of general view of the guards, and not all of them are very well marked. In fact, one of them seems to have been erased from the maps. We suspect that it was supposed to be used by Clayton Rogers in case he needed to evacuate the building in a hurry.”
Queen nodded. That made sense. The old bastard wouldn’t have trapped himself someplace that he couldn’t run away from. Not on purpose.
“What’s the status of that last team?”
“They’re in the tunnel and have scouted far enough ahead to disarm all of the sensors that might allow anyone to know that they’re there. Once the exterior teams have completed their work and are in position, they’ll move forward.
“From the basement, they go up two levels and into one of the backup computer centers. They can rearm the entire security system from that location and plant a Trojan horse that will set off the explosives and then erase itself. By the time everything
goes boom, all our people should be away from the spaceport entirely.”
The two of them watched the operation play out through little dots on the screen. The exterior teams completed their work and moved to the secondary locations where they could support the lead team. Then the lead team infiltrated the building.
Things couldn’t go smoothly. That was just the way it was. The interior team ran into a pair of guards inside the building and had to take them down. At least their suppressed weapons made it less likely that any of the other guards would become aware of their presence before the sabotage was complete.
Queen wasn’t concerned at all that his people had had to kill the guards. Chen hadn’t exactly cried over the people he’d murdered when he’d blown up the lab at Area 51. Compared to that operation, this one was going to be relatively bloodless.
After what seemed like an eternity, his people were done and moving out. They’d relocated the dead guards to the area inside the control center where the self-destruct device would go off. It was in the middle of the computer center and would vaporize all the controls and files in addition to the bodies.
It was conceivable that the Chinese wouldn’t be able to prove what had killed those guards. That would be the best outcome.
Of course, it was also likely that others in the control area above the computer center would be killed in the explosion. His experts had given 50-50 odds that the floor would collapse and dump a number of people into the computer center after the explosion.
If that happened, there would be no video record of who was in the control room, and so the guards might have been assumed to have been there as well. Honestly, he didn’t care how it worked out, so long as the Chinese didn’t catch his people red-handed. The United States had plausible deniability, and that was good enough for him.
Chen was going to go through the ceiling when this happened, so Queen needed to be ready to deal with the fallout. Hot accusations would be coming his way, and he needed to make certain that he looked the part of a wrongly accused man.
The goal of this was to sting the Chinese without actually goading them back into overt conflict. Queen thought that he’d be able to pull that off, but one never really knew until push came to shove.
“The primary team is moving, Mister Secretary,” the general said. “All the teams are on their way to the extraction point. The timer is set to blow all six self-destruct charges in exactly nineteen minutes and twenty-four seconds.”
A handy timer at the corner of the display showed that countdown. When it had spooled down to less than a minute, the general spoke again.
“Our teams have extracted from the spaceport grounds. They’re all in vehicles moving in different directions and will rendezvous with the helicopters some distance away. At this point, there’s no reason that any of them should be bothered. All we have to do now is wait for the explosives to go off.”
“Put up the real-time satellite image,” Queen ordered.
It was still dark in the target area, but he was going to be able to see the explosions due to the high-tech visibility the satellite conferred upon him. It was able to see into the infrared and ultraviolet. Nothing would be lost.
Right on the tick of zero, a number of massive blasts appeared on the monitor. A quick count showed five. The one he didn’t see was inside the building, but that was most likely because the building itself had shielded the exterior from the explosion.
“Zoom in on the control building,” he said tersely. “Did the explosion there go off?”
The general nodded even as the image zoomed in. “There is significantly more IR going on inside the building than there should be. That’s the sign of a massive fire. The explosive went off, and the building is most likely going to burn down. We should be able to see the fire in short order.”
In less than three minutes, he could see the flames licking the outside of the building. The entire control center was on fire. Excellent. With the loss of the fueling tanks, which he double-checked and made certain that they were all gone, the main gantries, and the control center, the spaceport was now just an expensive office park. The amount of time and money that it would take to rebuild it into a working spaceport would be significant.
With that piece off the board, Queen stood and headed for the door. “Excellent work, General. Discreetly pass my congratulations on to your troops. I think I’ll head home now. I’m expecting an angry phone call shortly and want to make the gentleman wait while I supposedly get dressed, drive in to work, and deny everything.”
Queen walked toward the interior parking area with a smile on his face and a bounce in his step. Today was going to be a good day.
25
Harry made sure he was standing by when Jess led her group through the gate onto Volunteer World. “What’s going on?” he asked quietly as he pulled her aside.
“A lot,” she said with a smile. “The Volunteers are insistent that they take part in your attack. I’m not sure how we can protect them while that happens, but we did make them a promise. If I could’ve snuck past them, I would have, but they caught me, so here we are.
“The initial negotiations with the heavy-worlder high priest seem to be going well, but he was insistent that his people see what condition the Asharim are currently in. I think seeing them in this fallen state will help forge an alliance between the heavy-worlders and us.
“I’m sure you recognize Kerrick Vidar. The woman next to him is his daughter, Vera. They’re both warriors. He’s given his parole, and she is under what they call a truce bond. Neither of them should cause us any trouble. What about you? What’s the situation here?”
He considered her for a few moments and then inclined his head, accepting what she’d said. “We’ve formed a firebase at the top of the hill. It took a couple of hours to fully push the Asharim slaves off the high ground, but we’re in control now. I figure it’s about four hours until dawn, so that’s about how long we have before the counterattack begins. They’ll want to see what’s going on before they make the push.
“How many Volunteers are we going to have to fit into our lines? I need to work with Krueger to get them situated so that we’re still strong all the way around and can protect our allies as well as we can when the counterattack comes.”
“Not that many,” Jess assured him. “At this point, they only brought along a couple of their best squads, so it’s more making a point than anything else. Once we expand away from the hill, they plan to bring the rest of their armed forces back through and participate in capturing the city.”
He considered that and slowly nodded. “They have a much better knowledge of the layout inside the city and know where the gates are. If they can do the primary pushing to get there while my forces provide overwatch and heavy firepower, we may be able to secure the city faster. There’s really no way to know until we start trying.”
He gestured toward the tunnel leading out to the surface. “Let’s go up to the top of the hill so you can take a look around. The enemy is on the plain below us, and there’s still some shooting, but it’s a pretty random affair. The range is pretty long for black powder weapons.”
It took five minutes to get everybody out of the cave and up to the crown of the hill. As they were moving, Harry made a decision to speak to the heavy-worlders. That presented a challenge, since he didn’t speak their language. Jess was going to have to translate.
After laying out to his partner what he intended to do, he escorted the two heavy-worlders up to the platform looking out over the remains of the Asharim city.
“My name is Harry Rogers,” he said, allowing time for Jess to translate. “I understand that you’re Kerrick Vidar and this is your daughter Vera. Is this correct?”
The large man nodded. “Your understanding of the situation is correct. I assume that your associate has passed along that I am under parole and my daughter is operating under truce bond?”
“She has,” Harry said with a nod. “We call this place
Volunteer World. The origin of that name is probably going to be somewhat obtuse to you, so if you’ll forgive me, I’ll leave it unexplained for the moment. The city that you see there was once occupied by the Asharim and their slaves. In fact, it still is.
“As best we can tell, the Asharim and their slaves continue to assert dominance over that city because of the gates that are inside of it. The humans on this world occasionally seize the gates and communicate with other human colonies out there in the greater universe. I’m not certain how long either group maintains control, but they take it back from one another on a fairly regular basis.”
He gestured down toward the altar that they discovered on their first trip. “Over there is an altar that either the Asharim or their slaves had been sacrificing humans on for some time. It seems to have some type of religious significance. Is that something the Asharim commonly did when your people had contact with them?”
Vidar shook his head. “The Masters were never religious. If anything, they promoted themselves as gods over those who served them. None of the legends speak of any kind of sacrifice. I am also unaware of any of the servant races having that particular trait. I find it somewhat… unsettling.”
Harry could certainly understand that. The idea of murdering sentient beings in some type of ceremony made his stomach turn.
“It will be dawn in about four hours,” Harry continued. “At that point, we’ll see what type of forces have been drawn up below us, and we’ll plan our attack accordingly. We’re going to make a beachhead down on the plain and move more forces through the gate onto this world.
“The Volunteers had relocated to our world, and they will be providing the majority of the troops and the knowledge on securing the city. What are you hoping to see during this operation?”
The large man grunted. “I hope to see the condition of a live Asharim. If they have fallen from the heights of their knowledge, that is important for the People to know.