Earth Keepers

by Jorge Alejandro Lavera

  When everyone was evacuated from Delta, there was a good-sized group of armed and trained guards. Although there weren’t as many as he’d have liked, they weren’t inexperienced or novices. He organized them, explained the situation and took them to the transporter room.

  GETAWAY

  Rho, November 28, 2027. 9:30 a.m.

  Juan Carlos saw how Marsan was using Raquel as a shield. His heart skipped a beat. Marsan looked at Juan Carlos and let out a laugh.

  “Oh, how convenient is that, you know each other. Even more reason to do what I tell you or your brain will be all over the wallpaper like Tzedek’s.”

  “Don’t shoot, we’ll do what you say,” Juan Carlos gave in, raising his hands.

  “Very well,” replied Marsan, “drop your weapons and keep your hands up while you accompany my men to the area where we’re going to lock you up. Later I’ll decide whether I want to make an example of you with a spectacle of your execution or I keep you for some fun...for a little while, anyway. In the end, which do you think would be more cruel? We’ll be able to laugh for many years about the brand-new Atlantean queen, though, she was queen for what, five minutes?” he laughed loudly.

  Juan Carlos bit his lips.

  “Queen? What are you talking about?” Looking at Althaea, he suddenly understood.

  “Oh, come on, the faithful daughter always going along with her father’s desires, even though he never paid attention to her. Are you going to tell me you never thought about killing Tzedek yourself?” Marsan kept on laughing.

  Althaea looked at him and her eyes filled with tears of rage and sadness. That made Marsan laugh so hard that Juan Carlos was afraid he’d accidentally shoot Raquel in the head.

  “Please, stop aiming at her, you could have an accident. We’re going to cooperate.”

  “Very well, I believe you, though it doesn’t hurt for you to know that with the slightest attempt to escape or resist, she’ll be the first to die,” he threatened, making a gesture at Raquel. “Now, let’s go.”

  He made them follow him and he took them to the floor where the apartments were, to Damaris’.

  “You’ll be in good company,” laughed Marsan, making them enter, and leaving them locked in.

  As soon as the door was sealed, Althaea tried to open it with the panel and with the emergency procedure, but the door was blocked and locked from the outside.

  “We’re locked in.”

  “Sofía, are you okay?” said Damaris, worriedly.

  Sofía was very pale and she was standing with her mouth open, looking at Raquel.

  “Mom? Is that you?”

  Raquel looked at her strangely and said nothing. She turned towards Juan Carlos and for a minute, they looked into each other’s eyes. Suddenly he lowered his shoulders and seemed to deflate with discouragement.

  Sofía jumped into Raquel’s arms, who stood rigidly, and started to cry.

  “But we saw you die! You are younger. And prettier! What...?” she stopped, looking at Althaea. “Have you given her the nanites? But why? When? And where was she all this time?” She was getting more and more indignant. “And why didn’t you tell us?”

  Althaea crossed her arms and said: “They just killed my father.”

  “Tzedek? Tzedek is dead? How is that possible?” exclaimed Sofía, stunned.

  A tear fell on Althaea’s cheek, but she gritted her teeth. “We have to get out of here.”

  “And Mom? What’s wrong with her?” asked Sofía.

  “Raquel has total amnesia with respect to us, daughter. Althaea is right, we have to look for a way out of here.”

  Althaea pressed the panel again, spitting with frustration.

  “I can’t believe we’re locked in our own complex.”

  “I suppose Marsan will have taken away all access to the system,” Juan Carlos mused. These biometric systems are incredible.” Praising it without thinking, he put his palm on the panel, which lit up green and the door unlocked.

  “But what the...” he was surprised, and Althaea and Damaris both exclaimed in surprise.

  Juan Carlos stuck his head out cautiously and didn’t see any guards.

  “Quick, we have to think what to do,” she said, closing the door without locking it.

  “We have to rescue Halius and the others,” Althaea exclaimed.

  “Which means that somehow we have to catch Marsan and his men,” Juan Carlos said.

  “We can’t do all that ourselves,” Sofía protested.

  “First thing is we need to get to a safe place. They could come here any minute,” Damaris urged.

  “Where can we go, Althaea? We have to assume that the city is in the hands of Marsan and his men,” asked Juan Carlos.

  “We don’t know what happened at Delta. We have to try to communicate with them. And for that we need to get to a communications console,” Althaea reasoned.

  “Well, it’s obvious there’s one in the Control Center, which is a place we can’t go right now. Where is there another one?” asked Juan Carlos.

  “Only the one in the Control Center. But we don’t need a communications console, we just need to get into it. And we can do that from any console with remote access,” Damaris explained.

  “Actually, there’s another one in the last chamber of the evacuation center, before leaving the city tunnels, but it’s a long walk to there and it may be useless to walk so much. We have to communicate with Delta from here. If we can count on their help we’ll go towards the exit from the city, if not we’ll have to think about what we are going to do and it would be a waste of time to go there,” Althaea clarified.

  “Okay, where’s the nearest remote access console?” inquired Juan Carlos.

  “Right here, all of the private consoles in this building have remote access, but Marsan could return any minute and separate us or worse. I propose that we get out of here. There are also consoles in some of the main bunkers,” Althaea said.

  “And how will we get to the bunkers without them seeing us or alarms sounding?”

  “Come here,” Althaea guided him to a wall without any particular marking. She put her hand on the wall and nothing happened. “Give me your hand.” She took Juan Carlos’ hand, and pressed it gently in the same place where she had put hers before. The invisible panel that was in the wall lit up green and a whole section of wall slid open right away, opening the door to the antechamber of the bunker.

  “Put your hand on the entrance door panel to lock it again,” Damaris told him.

  Juan Carlos went over and did that and heard the sound of the door locking and the panel light went out.

  “Come on, hurry,” Damaris urged them and got all of them in the antechamber. “Juan Carlos, open the other door, here, and then close the entrance.” She showed him. He did it and they were able to pass into the next chamber, where there were stairs going down.

  They hurried down the stairs. Juan Carlos waited for everyone to go down and locked every door they went through, then followed Damaris and Althaea, opening the doors they couldn’t get through. When they got to the main bunker, Althaea had him activate a different panel that operated a console screen.

  “First, let’s look at the access processes,” Althaea said. She started typing commands and checked out the results, raising her eyebrows. “Wow, that explains it.”

  “What?” asked Sofía.

  “Tzedek programmed the system so that, if anything happened to him, Juan Carlos as well as I would automatically have the maximum level of access and Sofía would have what I had. Except that Marsan removed me from the system before that could happen and didn’t reassign my access, but it’s clear he didn’t consider you a threat and he didn’t do that with you,” commented Althaea, looking at Juan Carlos. “At the moment Tzedek was assassinated, the computer assigned complete access to you. To everything.”

  “And why would I have your access?” asked Sofía.

  “Well, because you’re now the crown princess,” explained Althaea.r />
  “Sofía’s and Damaris’ jaws dropped and they couldn’t say a word.

  “That makes sense,” Juan Carlos acknowledged. “Is there any way you can recover your access and theirs?”

  “Wait.” Althaea typed a series of commands. Windows opened on the screen on which she keyed in more instructions before closing out. She finally said: “Put your hand on the panel, that’s the final authorization.”

  “Ready,” Juan Carlos informed her, putting his hand on the panel.

  The green light went on again, Althaea typed a few more things and said:

  “Let’s try it.” She then put her hand on the panel, which turned green again. “Perfect, now we can go faster. Let’s get out of here, they may be coming to look for us.”

  They left the subterranean hallways behind Althaea, who guided them along, changing directions several times, through various intersections, until they arrived at another bunker. They went in, and as she activated the console, Althaea announced:

  “This was my father’s bunker. I don’t think they’ll look for us here for a while.” Tzedek’s shelter was bigger than the other ones they’d seen.

  Althaea accessed the communications console. She entered different commands for a little bit, until she finally exclaimed:

  “Damn. I can access the internal system, but I can’t communicate in any way with Delta. I think they somehow sabotaged communications.”

  “If we can’t communicate, we’ll have to go there in person,” said Damaris.

  “And how will we get to Delta? Isn’t it in Australia,” Sofía asked.

  “The same way that Marsan and his men got here,” explained Althaea.

  “We’re going to have to go underground until we get out of the city and then walk to the ZSLP,” Damaris explained.

  “The what?” Juan Carlos asked.

  “The transportation system that Tzedek told you about,” Althaea explained patiently.

  “Oh, I suppose going in a vehicle is ruled out,” he lamented.

  “They’d catch us in the act. Walking through the tunnels and then from the exit to the center, we’ll go unnoticed. I hope,” replied Damaris.

  “Before we leave...” Althaea said, typing on the console and pressing a panel in the wall. A hidden section opened in the wall, and they saw several weapons. “...we need to arm ourselves,” she finished, starting to hand them out. She gave them one of each kind. She hesitated a moment with Sofía, but then also gave her a sonic and a laser. Juan Carlos didn’t object.

  “How does this work?”

  “It’s a laser gun, just point and shoot. It discharges a high energy laser pulse that can put a hole in a metal sheet. It has enough charges for a hundred times before it needs recharging. It’s electric, and it has a battery with special technology. You have to aim well with it. The other is a sonic gun, it generates a very low frequency vibratory pulse of such intensity that it can violently hurl any object in your sight. It’s point and shoot, you don’t even have to have good aim—anything more or less in front of the gun will be affected. Be careful. It isn’t usually lethal but it can do serious damage, above all to the internal organs.”

  “What is this?” Sofía asked, pointing to the side of the gun.

  “It’s an indicator of the charge. Green is full, if you have less than twenty charges it goes to yellow and if you have less than five, it gets red. When the shots are out, it turns off.”

  They sheathed them all, left and started going through the underground hallways following the indicators towards the city exit.

  PASSENGERS

  MSC Grandiosa, November 28, 2027. 10:00 a.m.

  The morning had passed without incident. Repairs were going faster than anticipated, while the people aboard dealt with what had happened in their own way. Most of them thought about themselves, and the people they knew on land, but Leora was worried, planning for the day after.

  After reading the manifest and the list of passengers, she discreetly had her officers talk with them, and then had little interviews with each one who she thought had trades or knowledge that would be useful in the near future.

  The young man with a rectangular face, aggressive jaw, prominent cheekbones and well-cut blond hair, smiled at Leora.

  “So, you’d be willing to help in case your services are needed when we arrive on land?”

  “Of course. I took an oath to help.”

  “May I ask what your specialty is?”

  “Genetic medicine and specialized surgery, but I don’t think I can do much of that without the proper equipment.”

  “Genetic med...what is that?”

  “It’s the analysis, prevention, and treatment of diseases of a person’s genome.”

  Leora was surprised.

  “Does such a thing exist?”

  The doctor smiled sardonically. “You might say it isn’t very popular, mainly because of the cost.”

  “Understood,” Leora acknowledged. It must be cost-prohibitive medicine, only used by millionaires. “Well, Doctor...Mederi Democedes...your name is Mederi? I’ll see you if we need your services.”

  “You can count on me, Captain. Whatever you need.”

  “Thank you very much...doesn’t Mederi mean ‘doctor’ in ancient Greek?”

  “You have a good knowledge of the language. Actually, they invented the word after me.”

  Leora couldn’t help but laugh, but tried to contain herself when she saw how serious the doctor was. She’d heard about the incredible egos of some doctors and their God complexes, but this was ridiculous.

  “Well, okay, thank you very much,” Leora said, shaking his hand and heading to the next interview. As she walked, she thought about the young doctor’s arrogance, and shook her head. On the card she carried in her hand, she wrote a question mark in the column next to the doctor’s name.

  She reviewed the next interview. An industrial technician from Buenos Aires. Ignacio Iglesias. She thought for a minute. She’d met this man before.

  “Captain, my pleasure again.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry about your brother. I assume you didn’t get any more news?”

  “No, and I wasn’t expecting any,” said Ignacio sorrowfully, lowering his head.

  “On your bill of lading, you say you’re an industrial technician. Is that correct? What do you do exactly?”

  “Yes, that’s right, I install, fix, modify, and test automatic machines for industries.”

  “That will be very useful for us when we get to land and look for where to settle. Would you be willing to help us?”

  “It would be a pleasure, Captain. I didn’t have much work lately. It will be good to be needed for a change.”

  She was putting out her hand to shake hands when she was paralyzed by hearing clearly in her mind a scream that conveyed fury and terror at the same time, ‘Noooo,’ and she felt a sharp pain in her head.

  “What the...” Leora exclaimed, holding her head.

  “What the f...” the technician yelled at the same time, covering his ears with both hands and then holding his head, as he frowned. “Did you hear a scream?”

  “Loud and clear, but...”

  “Shh, don’t say it. I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.”

  “You can’t be crazy if we both heard the same thing. A scream?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  The captain’s communicator started to ring.

  “Yes,” she answered. She listened for a minute, got a worried look on her face and then answered, “I’m on my way.”

  “Excuse me, Ignacio. I’ll see you later.”

  “Please,” he conceded, still holding his head and waving good-bye with the other hand.

  Leora went to the bridge, where there was a lot of activity. At least four officers were talking on the internal phones, and most of the people there were rubbing their heads as if they’d been hit with something. Robert was collapsed in a chair, holding his head with his hands.

  “Robert, are yo
u okay?” she asked, touching his shoulder.

  The man lifted his head slowly and she saw that his eyes were lightly bloodshot.

  For a moment, the reflection of the sun made her think that she saw a golden reflection in them, but then it passed.

  “I think so, it hit me harder than the others.”

  “Everyone heard the same thing?”

  “We’re verifying,” he indicated, pointing to the officers, “but so far, it seems so.”

  “The whole ship?” she asked incredulously, although she already knew the answer.

  “On both ships,” Robert confirmed.

  “Then, it’s clear that we didn’t really hear it. It’s impossible to have heard it on both ships and below deck at the same time.”

  “But we heard it. And many had the same collateral effects,” Robert reported, rubbing his forehead.

  Leora looked at the others. No one said anything. She was dying to say what she thought, but she was afraid they’d laugh at her. It even sounded ridiculous to her, if it weren’t that she had just felt it. In person.

  Robert looked at her for a minute, until he finally spoke:

  “I think it was telepathy.”

  Leora opened her mouth, stunned, but didn’t know what to say.

  “That’s ridiculous, such a thing doesn’t exist,” she declared when she was able to articulate something.

  Robert looked at her, as if considering what to say.

  “There are military experiments, secret ones of course, that have demonstrated it’s possible to transmit and read thoughts using the right equipment. The secret part doesn’t make sense, so I can tell you that I’ve seen it work and it’s real. The key is that sophisticated and expensive equipment is required to be able to transmit and read thoughts up to barely a few tenths of an inch from another person without equipment. What just happened...never in my life...” Suddenly his face changed and he got quiet.

  “You’ve seen something like this before?” Leora inquired.

  Robert shifted his eyes to one side, then the other. He looked without seeing, lost in his thoughts.

  “Nothing I can think of makes any sense, and yet...” he hesitated, shaking his head.