“It says, ‘XO Katherine Bogle, call Kaden Jaxx home…’” It was Lon’s turn to let the information sink in. His audience was, predictably, silent. “That’s right, folks. The AI on Callisto knows Jaxx and Bogle by name. Now, want to tell me how we’re going to outwit them?”
4
Starship Atlantis - M-Quadrant, Solar System
Starship Atlantis. He was really, truly on Starship Atlantis, a cruise ship in space, but a hundred times bigger. Jaxx stood in front of a holographic kiosk, Slade next to him with his arms crossed at his chest, and watched the Public Service Announcement for the fourth time. He bit his lip, only now understanding why everyone—from his room to the first deck’s lobby—stared at him like he was a Hollywood A-List celebrity.
His own face jumped out at him from the PSA which ran like a soda pop commercial. “Archaeologist Kaden Jaxx, the man who knows pyramid power inside and out, will hook us up and hook us into the pyramids, giving all of us electricity. It is he who figured it out. It is he who will bring you light. It is he who will give you the luxuries you deserve. Kaden Jaxx!”
President Martelle’s image popped up on the hologram, jolting Jaxx back to reality. “This message has been approved by the President of the United States.” Martelle’s hologram smiled, his teeth glistening a pearly white—far whiter than they should have been. “When you see him, thank him. He is the reason we can live safely on Callisto, and the reason you and your family will have a beautiful new place to live.”
A futuristic house spun across the kiosk’s holographic frame. “The future is now and your home awaits. Imagine amenities, such as your own self-cleaning pool; compliant, double-safety-locked robots as butlers and maids; and don’t forget, your very own rock waterfall smack dab in the middle of your living room. Or, you can choose...”
“Let’s go, Jaxx.” Slade turned on his heels and headed to the ops room.
Jaxx followed, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the kiosk. “You’re telling these people that they can live on a moon that you have never visited, that hasn’t been tested other than by a satellite. It’s a lie.”
“Those pyramids have an energetic signature that’s off the charts, Jaxx.” He leaned his head to the side, veins bulging out of his thick, reddening neck. “Don’t play with me, Jaxx. You’re going to do what you said you could do.”
They strode up to the central ops room. Jaxx slammed his hand against the door, keeping it shut. A power rose in him, and he swallowed it down. The kind of power that could rip off a door. He enjoyed the intellect it somehow brought him, but not the raw violence, the uncontrollable fire he’d seen in Rivkah. If he could keep one side of the ability at work while shoving down the other, he’d be good with that.
If anything, he didn’t want to scare the scientists, didn’t want to freak Slade out again. And didn’t want the nutcase stigma that came with it. “Those were theories.” His voice was low and urgent. If only he could get Slade to understand his position and turn the damned ads off. “Yes, I think the theories and the blueprints are sound. Have I ever turned a pyramid on? Hell no. You don’t just mosey up to a car and rebuild its engine because you have blueprints on how to rebuild it, especially when you’ve never worked on an engine before. You need the three E’s, experience, expertise, and erudition evolution.”
Slade frowned. “Those are four E’s, Jaxx. Two of the E’s are in this room and I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about with the two other E’s, but they're probably in that room as well. Now, get your goddamn hand off the door.”
Jaxx lifted his hand and Slade pulled the door open, pushing Jaxx in first.
The room was full. There were more scientists than Jaxx remembered, plus a window, something he didn’t have back in the Underfoot Black ops room on Grenada. Man, but that felt like it was a lifetime ago, though it was only a matter of days since they’d been underground, on Earth, studying an impossible moon…and here they were, much less than half-way there already. So, he’d been kidnapped and taken into space against his will. Worse things had happened.
The thrum that had struck him earlier, hit again, making his entire body vibrate. It was a song, of that he was sure. It had a melody he’d never heard, notes he hadn’t known existed, and words he could barely hear, but it was building in him, this song. And teaching him a new way of…
“Welcome back, buddy.” A small, bulbous man with a receding hairline patted Jaxx on his back. He held a smile and a beaming aura.
Jaxx couldn’t help but grin. “Jon Shaughnessy.” He gave the guy a hug. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
Shaughnessy looked down at his belly, pursing his lips. “At least you aren’t seeing me in my skivvies, this time.”
Jaxx frowned, extending his hand. “About that—”
Shaughnessy waved him away. “No, no. No need to apologize. I know you were in a predicament and couldn’t do anything about it.”
Jaxx relaxed, his shoulders dropping. Rivkah had forced him into Shaughnessy’s room at gunpoint when she was trying to escape Underfoot Black. It was very decent of Shaughnessy not to hold a grudge.
“Well, where is our computer station? I heard you need help?”
Shaughnessy motioned to a station. “Your throne, sire.”
“Find anything interesting?”
Shaughnessy shrugged and leaned in, whispering. “I just can’t figure out half the shit I’m supposed to figure out. I’m faking it the best I can, but you’re the only one I know who can get the majority of these hieroglyphs from sight to paper.” He pointed a finger at the screen, showing Jaxx an icon. “Click on that one.”
Jaxx nodded. “Got it.” He clicked on the icon on the computer’s desktop and pulled up a glyph. “Where is this one located on Callisto?”
“It’s one of the first taken. It was written on what we think is a landing pad of some kind, just north-east of Princess Leia. And since we haven’t had response from TECS IV satellite in a while, we’re trying to figure out older images we kind of tossed aside as can’t-understands, which is technical-speak for no-fucking-clue.” He checked to see if Colonel Slade was listening.
The colonel gazed out the window into deep space.
“In a way, it’s a load off our backs to have their satellite down for a while. We don’t have to hurry through everything like we did when TECS IV was taking pictures daily. We’ve had more time to assemble glyphs and study them. There’s a series over here I…”
Jaxx tapped the computer screen and gave a soft whistle to get Shaughnessy’s attention back to his question.
Shaughnessy pushed his glasses farther up his nose, squinting. “Yeah, that’s what we think is a landing pad. It’s a big glyph, extending across the entire pad. There are a couple more pads on Callisto with the same hieroglyph.”
Wings, or what might be glyphs of feathers, surrounded a six-pointed star etched in the middle of the landing pad. Carved inside the star were Atlantean symbols; an arch, a bird, and a bird inside a doorway, an ancient eye off to the left of that bird, along with three planets, which to Jaxx were clearly Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. Next to Earth sat another smaller star with more hieroglyphs inside, also surrounded by feathers. Identical, albeit smaller stars, surrounded by feathers were spaced out directly between Earth and Mars, the third star right next to Mars’ magnetosphere. Three more identical hieroglyphs were positioned similarly between Mars and Jupiter, in the same type of configuration and distance.
Jaxx frowned. He knew what he looked at. He dropped his hands to his side, sighing. He didn’t know if it was a good idea to tell anyone. He’d only seen this once before, but on a pyramid-shaped granite piece found somewhere near the Great Pyramid of Giza and now tucked safely inside a museum that no one visited. Even if someone had stumbled into that museum, to get out of the heat and press of the Bazaar, and accidentally come upon that granite piece, they’d see no explanation of what it was, except the name, 'The King’s Sarcophagus'.
He pre
ssed his finger on the screen, touching the glyph with the bird inside the doorway. “That’s not a doorway, by the way. That’s probably what’s screwing you up.”
Shaughnessy squeezed his shoulders together. “Yeah… yeah. I… uh… didn’t even know it was a doorway, actually. I was just shooting for the moon with that, trying to impress Slade.”
“Don’t let him know you’re faking anything. He’ll shoot you on the spot.”
Shaughnessy yanked his ear, clearly uncomfortable. He looked everywhere but at Jaxx. “I helped build the TECS IV satellite. I at least have that as some leverage, if I ever need it.”
Jaxx nodded. Leverage would get Shaughnessy only so far with Slade. “Anyway, the hieroglyph of this doorway isn’t actually a doorway. It’s a hieroglyph of the sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid’s King’s chamber.” He studied it a second longer. “Usually, you see a person depicted inside the sarcophagus glyph. This, on the other hand, has a bird. A bird symbolizes flight.”
He heard the note again, deep inside his chest. It was getting louder, more insistent. He closed his eyes in an attempt to ward off the spins. A word rose from the pit of his stomach. A word he’d thought about, dreamt about, written about, and taken hours and hours of ridicule for.
Portal.
Jaxx broke out in a sweat. “Any computer with sophistication beyond these computers? One that can quickly map and detect vortex energy?”
“The Lectern,” said Shaughnessy.
“Where’s that?”
“There are two. One on the bridge and one in the Admiral’s Quarters. I could ask Slade to let us use his for a moment.”
Jaxx dismissed the idea. “No, no.” He didn’t want Slade to know that these were portals; ways to move from one galaxy to another, in nanoseconds. Or from one location in the Solar System to another location. Again, in a nanosecond. If anything, he wanted to delete the glyphs off the entire ship’s network, so Slade couldn’t get to Callisto any sooner. The guy was willing to take the entire United States government and all her top scientists, along with their families, to what was essentially the wild west. In space. Without confirming whether the 'wild west' had breathable air.
If there was a glitch or something wrong with any calculation or formula that went with the glyphs, and Jaxx didn’t know about it, he didn’t want Slade to blindly lead the ship into a star portal disaster, perhaps crashing them straight into an asteroid belt, or worse yet, a black hole.
Another thread wound around his worries. It was a worry for the Beings on Callisto. There had been no reports of sentient life on Jupiter’s moon, but Jaxx was certain that Callisto was inhabited. Quietly, carefully, deliberately inhabited.
By humans. More specifically; Atlanteans.
Jaxx sat at his station, pulling up another glyph. He needed to find the calculations and the right star-set that told him how to activate and use these star portals. And then he’d have to get into the Admiral Quarters…without Slade’s permission.
Again, the note that entered his body and activated some latent learning system inside him, boomed through his brain thanks to his pineal gland. Maybe the gland acted as some type of extrasensory antenna, able to pick up waves made for geniuses.
He looked back at the glyphs on his screen. He’d always had a knack for decoding them, but they were no longer symbols requiring translation. They were a language he understood, fluently. And, boom. There it was, the next image on the pyramid—an instructional ideogram. A snake, a DNA strand, a right triangle, and two knives, which meant frequency. Then, a backwards 'L', a lower case 'j' with an oval dotting the 'j', and a slanted equal sign, all meaning numbers; 5, 100, 8.
If Jaxx was correct, and he’d bet his right hand he was, the moment before entering the star portal, the radio comm line frequency in a ship had to be dialed to 51008.
The ops door opened and a man in fatigues hurried inside. “Colonel Slade Roberson.”
Slade turned. “What it is?”
The soldier and Slade convened for a moment. Jaxx couldn’t hear them, but he knew instantly that Rivkah had broken out of her cell. He extended a chord of light from his center to hers and wrapped her in his protection. If it worked, he had no idea. Somehow, for some odd reason, his body and mind acted on its own accord and just 'did' at that instance. In his mind’s eye, she tried to shake him off, but he wasn’t going to leave her unprotected while these jackals hunted her down.
Slade took quick steps into the corridor, the door sliding shut behind him.
Jaxx looked at Shaughnessy. “Do you have a way to access the Admiral’s Quarters now?”
“I do, but I don’t.”
Jaxx knew what he meant. “Show me.”
5
Charlotte, North Carolina - Earth
Jaxx’s nephew, and world-class journalist, Drew Avera watched the news, his unused bong in his hand. He’d been ready to take his first toke for several hours, but somehow never made it to that first, blissful hit. His bong just didn’t sing to him like it had before he’d been to Portland, Oregon; before he’d witnessed his mom’s murder.
The world was split in two; there was 'before' and there was 'after'.
And 'after' sucked ass.
It had been several days since the funeral. A funeral only a few Tanner Spring Assisted Living Facility employees cared to attend. Drew was the only family member in attendance. No surprises there. His mother had cut herself off from her friends and whatever family they had left when she pulled her whole, “I am demented and don’t know my own ass from my elbow” routine.
Drew tried to pin the murder on the actual murderers—the G-men who hovered around his mom since the whole 'government evacuating to Callisto' debacle kicked off—but without a working government, and the country in panic-mode and soon to be chaos, he knew nothing would come of it. He’d have to wallow in his anger, exact justice on his own. He’d cracked the so-called 'evacuation' story and he knew damned well he could crack the mystery surrounding his mother’s murder.
Who wanted her dead was simple, his no-good, shit-for brains father; Colonel Slade Roberson. But why? The woman had spent the better part of thirty years faking her own dementia, to stay off Slade’s radar. She’d only stepped up as a good mother to help Drew out of a jam. He hung his head. No matter how he spun it, her death was on his hands. He reached for his lighter, packed the Mellow Kiss-kush into the bowl and settled in for a bong night.
He leaned back against his sofa, papers strewn on the floor and coffee table. He wasn’t relaxed though, half-watching a replay of a rocket carrying the last of the government personnel off Earth soil and to the stars. And with the same story; “They’ll be back for us.”
They wouldn’t. That much he knew.
Why is the military just standing idly by? Shoot those bastards out of the sky.
In truth, what could they do? Could NASA stop them? Maybe NASA was part of the entire United States government evacuation in the first place?
This was all too far-fetched, but somehow real. The world couldn’t believe it if it didn’t happen right under their noses. He took another hit. He needed to get his brain to stop spinning and his nerves firing in all directions.
World News Network's Connor Eves spoke on the tube. His white teeth shone, though his eyelids crinkled in worry and swollen with little sleep. “That was rocket fifty-eight on our count. It left Earth’s atmosphere four days ago, being the last in our ongoing story of Event Hightail.” He looked down and squeezed the ridge of his nose. “In the words of so many famous journalists and reporters, may God help us now.”
It went to commercial.
That was a little dramatic, thought Drew. Why aren’t I being more dramatic?
He took a long, leisurely bong hit, easing up the ball of anger growing in his heart.
He perspired, not from the shock of the day, of the week, or a month of nearly being killed on several occasions, or watching the news, or his mother dying. It was another record heat day. Maybe there was so
mething to this global warming thing.
Yes, it was getting hotter. No, it couldn’t only be because of humans’ atrocities with the environment and fossil fuel addiction. Or, could it? It’s not as if the United States government stuck around to find out. They left. No warning. No public announcement other than letters. And no help for the rest left behind.
Nothing new. Government as usual.
“Drew?” Laura, Drew’s mom, walked in from the kitchen, arms folded across her chest, lips pursed. He’d been having these hallucinations since she died. He didn’t know if it was because of the amount of weed he’d been sucking into his lungs or if it was because his brain, his mind, his body was trying to cope with her death.
“Care to put that bong down?” She stepped over a pile of clothes and grabbed a hold of the bong, setting it down on the only bare spot on the coffee table. “It’s time to go.”
He stared at her, open eyed, mouth agape.
He decided to talk to her this time, though he knew this was a figment of his own imagination. Maybe his brain would answer for her, would give him the explanation he needed. “You think you could have told me? Maybe gave me a warning? A hint that you didn’t have Alzheimer's this entire time? I could have gotten to know you.”
Laura put her hands on her hips. “We can talk about this on our way.”
“On our way? Way to where?” He shook his head. His mind wasn’t cooperating. Drew sat up, his nostrils flaring. “No, we talk about this now.”
Her tone softened. “Who knows what would have happened to you or to me had Slade known I didn’t have Alzheimer’s?”
She would be dead long ago, like she was now.
She bent over and tossed a shirt on Drew’s lap, tapping her foot. She held her chin high. “Get packing. We have a long road ahead.”
“A long road where?”
She stiffened. “I know you’re a genius and all, but what about not having a government hasn’t gotten into that genius brain of yours? Who is going to step into the power vacuum? And, by God, who is going to restore food flow, electricity, and water if that goes offline? There are a million scenarios in play here, Drew. We need to act swiftly. You’re the one who’s going to make it safe for humanity.”
Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller Page 30