PROLOGUE
May 7, 1969
Bimini.
Jenna Munro broke through to the azure tinted surface. Warm rays of sun bathed her shoulders as she tread. One arm cradled the smooth round object. The other arm, fatigued, pushed her body upward circling tiredly through the salty seawater. Her legs burned as they kicked. She was exhausted.
Emotion was a mixture of excitement and disbelief. Holding the object above water she began to sink slowly, but with a series of downward thrusts she was able to keep her head slightly above water.
It was an orb. Looking inside it, there was a sense of something. The temple , somewhere three hundred feet below her, hid among a cloud of swirling sand. Voices, and impressions. Images in her mind of things past. Visions of things to come. Like mercury the revelations slipped away almost as soon as they were perceived. Even if the desire existed, that she would want to relay those thoughts to another person, she could not have. The orb hummed. She listened. The depths beneath her groaned, hollow and yearning. The temple wanted back what she had taken. She would be afraid to return. That much she was sure.
Silently she floated, scuba gear weighing down her tired body. She would not speak to anyone of the things she had seen beneath the ocean--save the orb.
Depleted Jenna Munroe waited for her vessel to arrive.
PROLOGUE II
June 5, 3037
The Neptune Relay swung silently around its gas giant namesake. Intended to strengthen and transmit signals from the Hades deep space probe, no one thought it would ever do anymore than that.
0308 hours Eastern Standard Time. The relay has received a signal. A flicker that was not supposed to be there. Silently the satellite fires its tiny jets and aims its main dish toward Earth, and steadily begins to transmit.
PLUTO
July 1, 2037
It had been two years, three months and thirteen days since Sarah had last seen the planet Earth as she ventured down the egress ramp and stepped on the surface of Pluto. It wasn't as though she missed her home planet, or even particularly wanted to go back. She was simply sick and tired of the processed air and the lighter-than-earth-gravity of the mining complex on Titan.
"This sucks," she said. It made her sick to the stomach.
She was looking forward to a little R & R. Being crammed in her mining suit for the better part of two years had made her more than irritable. The first thing she was going to do was take the damn thing off. It had an annoying habit of chaffing at her waist if it stayed on for more than ten hours at a time. Usually she had it on for fifteen.
Then she would book a cruise to some small island chain, Hawaii or Fiji, or maybe somewhere in the Atlantic like the Bahamas. Somewhere where she would have room to move, and breathe, and stretch, she'd order one of those blue drinks. She didn't care what kind, or how it tasted, as long as it was blue, and icy, and had an umbrella sticking from its top with a sweet, juicy cherry. She'd drink at least three of those until she had an unrecoverable buzz, then make her way to the water. She'd dive in and feel the liquid caress her and lift her body, massaging it as the waves tumbled and tossed her through the coursing tumult. It was her idea of heaven. She had it all figured out. Two months of downtime at the beach. Only then would she begin to unwind. It wouldn't be anytime soon that she'd return to outer space, that was for sure. She couldn't get home fast enough.
And now those bastards at the United Nations, were making sure she wouldn't.
She couldn't believe she was walking on the surface of Pluto. If not for the fact that she'd spent three years on the equally fantastic moon of Titan, her amazement would have translated into a look of awe instead of one of impatience. The area she walked upon was dark, save the circular disc of light, illuminating the ground and the thick beam emanating from her shoulder-mounted lamp. The light cut through the thin atmosphere, wisps of gas and dust swirling, obscuring the view from her fish bowl tinted visor. She wasn't sure, but as far as she knew, no one had been out this far. It was hard for her to accept, that of all the people, of all times in the history of the planet, she was one of the first. She was just a small part of a small crew, aboard a large ship.
The crew of her ship, the Lady Grey were only XT carbon miners. Three years ago she signed a contract with Delta Mining to survey and mine a site containing carbon on Titan. Over a two-year span, they'd mined 200 million kilos of carbon--a more than profitable amount, enough for her anyway. The company paid her $15 million for the two and a half-year assignment. Even so she was still one of the lowest paid members of the crew.
She had been eager to leave Titan. The damn place was cold. Colder than she'd ever thought cold could be. That is, until she'd walked on the surface of Pluto. The company ran her and the crew through simulations while on Earth, but they never seemed to capture the cold's intensity or longevity. It was something she meant to bring up when she returned. Whenever that would be.
The UN tracking relay in Neptune's orbit had picked up something. The Pentagon brass were hesitant to call it a signal, but really Sarah thought, what else could it be. The Lady Grey, hours into it's return journey to Earth, was reassigned by the mining company to proceed to Pluto. There would be monetary compensation for the crew, but no one really cared. They all just wanted to go home.
No one had been out this far. The last human-made object to pass by Pluto and its sister moon Charon since the Voyager mission was the Hades probe in `18. It had turned up nothing important, nothing exploitable anyway. The Earth, with its corporations and resource hungry countries, turned its back on the planet mainly because it was not profitable, and settled on its own problems--until now. Sarah knew it had to be something big, but what she couldn't imagine. She had been afraid to. And the fear she had now, dwarfed whatever she could have dreamt in her imagination.
Instantly she had entered the elite of humankind's explorers as she wandered the dim surface. It was a strange sensation indeed. "I'm the first human being to set foot on Pluto," she said, reaffirming the reality of the now. She wasn't some trained expeditionary operative. She was a surveyor, a near ordinary woman from San Francisco, who forgot to pay her electricity bill before she left for outer space. No one had ever been to Pluto. No missions unmanned or otherwise, not even the marauding pirates of the Outer Ring of the asteroid belt ventured this far. No one came simply because they thought there was nothing there.
She could hear her heavy-booted footsteps crunch in the fine powdered frost. The composition of the surface was surprising. All of the data accumulated to date had foretold the planet's atmosphere would be made primarily of Nitrogen and Methane. But Sarah's instrument's detected water--and there was an abundance of it. The thick layer of ice covered a rocky core made of iron, large amounts of carbon and nickel. She was afraid to report her findings back to Earth. When all of those stuffed-shirt scientists caught wind of her data the intensity of an already twenty-year war would probably escalate. Then, Titan would no longer be a place where she could run to hide from the chaos that is Man. It would merely be a way stop on the course to Earth's newest battleground.
There was plenty of gaseous nitrogen, too much she thought, conducting sound waves for her to hear outside of the tight fitting speakers that rested snugly against her ears. Her steps were more akin to bounds as she sojourned through the lighter-than-earth gravity. "Lady Grey, this is Sarah. Do you copy?" Silence followed by static, fading as a feeble voice filled the internal speaker.
"Lady Grey here," a male voice crackled back. It was Jerry Denton, communications officer onboard. Sarah liked the way he sounded. His voice was deep and filled with bass. She nearly melted every time he spoke to her. "So Damato landed the Westminster, huh? Good. I hoped he wasn't going to give us a reason to have to stay any longer than we'd like."
Behind her, Sarah heard the soft sounds of approaching steps crunching across the fine powder.
Michael Damato came lumbering around the backside of the shuttlecraft Westminster, the cylinder of light from his shoulder lamp guiding him through the darkness. His environ-suit looked cumbersome, as she imagined hers looked to Michael. The shuttlecraft was small, it's shiny metal hull barely glistening from the reflected lamp light. Every few seconds, deep red running lights flashed, giving their surroundings a surreal look. Sarah thought it looked like Hell.
Damato walked closer, one hand running across the lower hull of the craft, steadying himself in the haze. Skipping over the front hydraulic landing struts he bounded toward Sarah, then came to a sudden, frost-scraping stop. He stood in front of Sarah, then thumbed his nose at her.
"We're not home yet," Damato said to Denton. "Besides, when you hear this you're going to want to stay for a while."
"What's there to report?" Denton said, voice rumbling through the speaker.
"I think everyone is going to want to sit down for this," Sarah said. There was silence on the other side of the line. "You heard me. I want to know that everyone is strapped into their seats."
"Go ahead," another voice said harshly. It was Captain Jax with his usual impatient and agitated self. His attitude had nothing to do with their 3 billion-mile detour. He'd been that way from the first day of training at the UNASA base off the Nova Scotia coast. "What is it?"
"I don't know if anything I say will make sense," Sarah said while signaling Damato. Reaching behind him, he connected a small wire to a square pack on his arm, then pulled out from behind his back a small camera mounted on a turret. After adjusting the picture controls, he gave Sarah a thumbs up sign, then began scanning the camera back and forth across the landscape. "I'm just going to let you see it," Sarah said. "I'll allow you to make your own judgements."
"Whatever Sarah," the captain said impatiently. "Just hurry it up."
Damato punched a button on the camera control panel piping the picture into a stream of information transmitted upward toward the Lady Grey. Sarah could hear the faint hum of the whirring camera motor as it focused and turned its eye socket lens about.
"Compensating for darkness," Damato said. The picture appeared in a small square on the upper-left side of Sarah's visor. The eyepiece lightly whirred while adjusting the picture. Darkness faded, and color filled the flat gray-toned display, giving her the first clear view of the surface since she'd stepped outside. The captain's face appeared in the upper-right corner of her helmet's display. He floated above his command chair, stern looking, his scruffy face close to the screen.
The image resolution was nearly perfect but for a few grains of static slipping through the picture. The darkness, now digitally dispersed was nonexistent. The ground looked as it had felt through the hard metal soles of her environ-suit. Small crystals from the thin layer of snow-like frost scratched and popped beneath her feet, crunching as she swiveled around. Heavy pinkish mist lingered in the distance, hugging the face of what appeared to be two rock walls forming some sort of canyon. Somehow the nitrogen stayed in a visible vaporous state. Sarah didn't know the precise physical properties of the gas, but thought it was peculiar that so much of it was not frozen, instead existing in its gaseous form. And something about that canyon. Energy readings were faint, almost negligible, but she continued reading minuscule spikes on her readout. She ignored it, sure that it was merely a glitch from the cold.
"So this is it Cap," Sarah said smugly. "Standing by for you orders?"
"I can't believe he wants us to investigate," Damato said. They walked briskly across the plane toward the canyon, stepping through a large flat field of ice, with patches of rock showing through every few feet. Sarah placed down glowing, green sticks, periodically to mark their progress. Behind them lay a road of emerald lights that trailed away into the dark. "We're not trained for this," he said as Sarah cracked a plastic rod causing its chemicals to mix and begin to glow.
"Listen, I don't like this anymore than you but..."
She didn't bother to finish. She knew he would complain either way. With Damato, dissatisfaction wasn't a choice, it was a state. She always tried to be a little more than positive. Just a little. She never tried too hard. If she did then she wouldn't have gone out to deep space anyway.
Flipping open the silver coated wrist-comm, she adjusted the reception knob, the static fading as a clear channel funneled into her helmet. Carefully pulling a small wire from the device, she attached it to the side of her helmet.
"..you read ground?" she heard a voice say. "God bless Sarah! Would you come in?"
"I'm here Captain. Do you have to shout? I can hear you just fine."
"What took you so long?" he replied. "We ain't have all day now!"
Sarah and Michael looked at each other, and both rolled their eyes.
"The signal started breaking up as soon as we headed closer to that canyon," she said, contempt simmering between every word.
"Capn'" Damato said. "Are you sure you want us to continue. If we lose contact with the ship and something happens..."
"The UN detachment will send us back if we return with a half-assed report," the captain replied. "I want a thorough assessment. Don't mistake that for detailed though. You have three hours down there...tops. If the UN needs to investigate the damn planet then they can send their own blessed ships and troops. We're strictly here to check what's not here. A once over. In and out. Do you understand?"
"How could we not?" Michael said. Sarah checked quickly and saw that it was over their own private channel. She smiled back.
"Aye, Cap," she said. "Three hours." She clicked the switch off, leaving the wire attached to her helmet to continue boosting her reception in case they'd need it. The Captain could be a boar when he wanted to, which was most of the time. "Well now," she said. "He's almost in a good mood today."
"I hate to say it, but I know how he feels," Damato said. He walked holding the camera up recording indiscriminately, the landscape. "Even if this would turn out to be the most important find in the history of humankind, we've been mining Titan for two and a half years. The incredible seems rather moot after that."
Sarah didn't want to respond. She felt the same way. Even if the situation on Earth wasn't to her liking, she called it "home" for a reason. She turned away from Damato, and continued to walk through the viscous dark.
An hour and a half after landing on Pluto's surface, a sensation passed over her. It was strange, that moment when a person sees something that they just could not believe. Tensing her brow then relaxing it, gave her a physical sensation to ground her in reality.
Before she realized it, they had reached the entrance to the canyon.
"Oh my God," she said staring upward in awe. She didn't believe in God, but peering through the mist, she had new reason to evaluate her beliefs. Damato stood silently, his mouth gaping wide open. She could hear his breath picking up pace as though he were beginning to hyperventilate. He was as amazed as she. There was no way she was seeing what she saw.
"What is it?" Damato said, his voice trembling.
"It's beautiful," Sarah said. "It's beautiful."
Capt. Jax sat in his command chair. Strapped in tight to the warm, cracked-leather chair, his chest barely expanding as the restraining harness was too tight to ever be mistaken for comfortable. It didn't matter. He was so tense he could barely breath, his lungs shallowly inhaling the recirculated air of the Lady Grey. It was a mixture of staleness and heavy must. He'd been breathing it for the past couple of years. It always smelled like oil from the greasy gears and pistons that opened and closed the hydraulic doors, as well as oozing from the vents of the ventilation shaft. A drop of moisture landed in his hand. Sweat spilled down his face profusely. He wiped the exploded bead from his hand, then did the same to his face. I knew there was going to be trouble. There had to be.
The X-O sat relaxed at her station, her feet propped up along the long distance sensors as she played a hand held Joy-Boy game. She would look at the outboard sensors from time to time, looking as though she were waiting for a response from the ground. Jax knew better. Whenever she'd pick up that damned game, she'd be lost for at least an hour or two. He knew Sarah would do a good job. She wanted to get home as badly as he, although for different reasons. They'd spent long hours in the mess hall on Titan, talking about their lives on Earth. He with a family he loved. Her with a family she hadn't spoken to in years. Somehow though, they were the same at heart. No fuss, no mess, and as Sarah called it, "a low tolerance for B.S."
He couldn't describe the sensation in his stomach. Queasy? Nervous? He felt dizzy from stress. His stomach rumbled continuously as he waited in his chair. His heart thudded, then soft in his chest, making him feel nauseous. He just wanted to be on his way. If they hadn't come out here to Pluto, they'd have been just outside Mars' orbit by now. He cursed the security council and UNASA equally for the last week and a half of hell he'd gone through.
Suddenly, commotion stirred the bridge. Denton, sat squarely over the comm board, hollering into his headset.
"Come in you two." He turned to the Captain. Jax could see the look of distress grow on Denton's face. "Nothing, sir."
"Well get me something," Jax said. He sat back in his chair, and waited, impatient as ever.
Llewellyn, had been an X-O for the past thirteen years. She had started out as a maintenance worker on asteroid mining operations when she was sixteen, then worked her way up to Command by the time she was twenty one. She entered the corporation, mainly so she could be in outer space. She had no idea that, anything done, no matter how fantastic can seem routine, if done enough times. She barely was excited when she'd heard they would be turning around and heading for Pluto. Sure they were going to unexplored territory, but the trip there was just as scenic as it was from Earth to the Moon. Same stars, the sun was dimmer, the planets larger or smaller relative to their location. She'd done it all before. Twelve missions. Six to Mars, two to the Belt, and four to Titan.
It wasn't until her first mission to Titan however, that she discovered that she was little more than window dressing in terms of the perception of the crew. The command structure aboard the mining vessels tended to be lax, even the Lady Grey, with tight-ass Jax commanding. Every single person on the ship was a millionaire, at least one time, and the rest two or even three times over. No one felt a great need to follow the command of anyone, save for maintaining a safe working atmosphere in the hazardous environment of space. What amounted to being the Executive Officer aboard one of Delta's three deep mining teams was relegating the maintenance crew to keep up repairs, and give a few simple meaningless commands. She fancied herself the Vice President to the President of the American States. She was the second most powerful person on board, but relegated to the equivalent of solely attending funerals and ribbon cutting ceremonies.
She was attending a funeral now as she manned the outer sensor board. Pirate activity had been on an upswing for the past year. Raids had been reported from Earth to Titan. She considered the Lady Grey lucky. They hadn't been attacked once, and in light of their knew found status as explorers, the last thing she wanted to do was engage in a dogfight 80 million miles from home.
The board hadn't registered so much as a ping since they'd left Saturn Spacedock, except for the standard transmissions from the Neptune Relay, as they had approached Neptune weeks ago. She'd become accustomed to riding out her pain. Boredom was a state she'd learned to move past, through years of practice and unintentional honing. She fervently jammed on the control pad of her oldest son's 3DGamer Joy-Boy. She had confiscated it from him after her first return from Titan, discovering he'd been a terror; menacing his entire fourth grade class with a trick he called the flying spaghetti. It was gross. Llewellyn didn't even want to think about, nor did she ever ask, what it involved.
She'd been playing it for five years now, becoming a pro. It always carried her through those darkest dreary hours of nonstop nothing. Today she'd finally cracked the seventh level of the Adventure series Knights of Caliburn. She wanted to advance to the eighth level by the time they were in Earth space. The title of the eighth level was called, "The Face of God." She was game.
She didn't even notice it at first. The silence of space beyond her window was absolute. The flashing and beeping lights from her game console drowned out most sensation from the outside, although she did manage to take furtive glances downward at her display from time to time, to make sure everything was all right. Glancing downward this time did not confirm her beliefs that nothing could be or would be amiss.
It was a Class-7 energy disruption. The amorphous shape of the waves took up most of her screen. She sat motionless in shock, quietly, almost calmly, while Denton was trying to reestablish contact with Sarah and Damato. No one saw what was happening except for her. Next, her hands went limp, paralyzed, as she contemplated her next action. She glanced out her view port. Light washed over her face. It was lovely.
BIMINI
May 11, 1969
The news for Jenna was not good. Two more days, no extensions, no lingering behind. They were to be out of the country within forty-eight hours, unless otherwise instructed. No exceptions. The words hit her square in her heart. It sank as quickly as her body did, back into the chair beneath her. She melted into its fabric, and relaxed her head, the muscles in her neck loosening.
Academia hadn't prepared Jenna for a life any more exciting than turning over a few old bones and interviewing a few natives in the rain forests or wherever she happened to be. The most exciting it ever got was trying to evade some customs officials when she had some ancient Mayan artifact or didn't have the proper papers for exit or reentry. She even once had to evade a rebel faction in Guatemala while researching the ruins of Yaxchitlan.
But, none of that compared to the last six hours. She sat staring at the crystal orb in her hands. It glowed dully, reflecting the light from the soft light of outside her tent. It looked as though it were trying to burst out in a cacophony of light. "This is not real," she said to herself aloud. This can't be real.
She was shocked when the front flap to her tent flung open, gentle yet firm.
Palmer Reed did not look happy.
"They want to ask you some questions," he said. He looked tired, almost haggard. He hadn't shaven in days, probably from having to travel so far on such short notice. Even so, he still had the handsome sharpness that dared peek out from beneath the rough exterior. His hair, solid black, seemed to shine under the light of the lamp inside.
As he passed through the opening , Jenna noticed the weather had gotten worse outside. The sky, already in the thralls of dusk, was blackened from the thick cover of clouds rolling in from the North. The normally hot, humid, air felt lighter, drier. She would almost swear it was cold. A cold shiver moved down her palms, as if resonating from the orb. Bewildered, perhaps afraid, she set it down and turned her attention to Palmer.
He was already sitting on the bed, weary, muscles relaxing into the rickety chair at the far side of the tent. She hoped he didn't mind the clutter. Papers and odd knickknacks; a knife, a compass, littered the dirt floor and a chest at the foot of her cot. There were two things Jenna especially knew about Palmer. He had little energy for departmental matters and even smaller amounts of patience for Jenna's untidiness. He pulled a thin cigarette from a pack in his breast pocket. With his other hand he reached into his pant's pocket, but came up empty handed.
"Gotta light?" he said. The strain in his voice was infectious, almost enough to make her fall asleep. Jenna patted her pockets in a mock gesture then raised her hands, palms upward in the air while shrugging her shoulders.
"Nope. Smoking's bad for you anyway," she replied. She decided to restrain herself from getting too caustic. Normally she was in sarcastic mode most of the time, but right now it just didn't feel appropriate. "Just who is it that want's to talk to me?"
"The Council of Arts and Sciences at the University," Palmer said stretching his hands into the air. He moved his neck side to side, then let out a heavy sigh. "I guess you'll be happy to hear that they have at least considered your request."
"Considering I'm the best they've got here, they damn well better have."
She couldn't help herself. Those people at the university--people in general--annoyed her to no end with their bureaucracy, red tape, and posturing. Here she was, slinking through the forests in ungodly heat, ninety-nine percent humidity, and bus-size mosquitoes at every turn, and they are only "considering" her request.
"Listen Jenna. Save the attitude for later. Much later. It won't help you any if you confront them like that."
He was right. She knew it. But she couldn't help herself. Blame whatever she wanted--her upbringing, her intelligence--whatever the cause, it was just the way she was. Palmer looked at her intensely. So much so, she barely could return the gaze. She knew he was there as a friend, but so rarely did she ever have anyone but enemies. At least that was the way she viewed things.
"So," she said standing from her cot. She had placed the orb beneath a pile of yesterday's clothes carefully trying to conceal it from Palmer. He glanced over anyway, peering beyond her as she walked across the room. "Who is it that wants to speak to me? Dr. Marcus? Dr Gunderson?" She reached a small dresser and pulled open it's top drawer. Reaching in she pulled out a tall bottle of rum, deep amber shimmering in the half empty bottle. "Glasses are behind you," she said.
Palmer made a half-hearted turn, but found the glasses resting on a small dresser table behind him. He picked them up with one hand, then tossed them across the room as Jenna raised her hands to catch them.
"Dr. Marcus is in the field right now, I think at Lake Champlain. They found some Abenaki artifacts on the Winooski River. Dates back to the Stone Age, I've heard a few people saying."
Jenna wasn't surprised. "Like I told him, or at least tried to tell him in that seminar. You remember?"
"How could I forget?" he replied. "What was it you said to him? `100,000 years of a species' existence and apparently some of us are still stuck in the Neanderthal stage?' I don't think he liked that very much."
For the first time in years they laughed together. For a brief moment they saw each other as they had been a few years before. Jenna saw the young grad student from California. A carefree surfer turned anthropologist, giving up the warm sunny beaches of Malibu for the often cold mountainous range of Burlington, Vermont. He was everything back then. Adventurous, dangerous, smart. She took to him on the first day of that first seminar. He was the only one she actually felt had any sort of comparable intellect. He still wasn't as gifted, not mentally anyway, but he understood her outlook more than a few people ever could.
Through the flickering light, Palmer Reed saw the young student Jenna. Brash, sometimes abrasive, but missing the crucial component of absolute confidence. That would come later, through years of constantly proving her teacher's ideas were either outdated or just plain wrong. Back then, she was a simple girl from Hibbing, Minnesota. Mousy, with sometimes stringy hair and wearing overly large and baggy clothes. "A diamond in the rough" he liked to call her. From where he stood, she could have the entire world in the palm of her hand one day, but only if she really wanted it. She was hardened now. But that edge made her more dangerous. He was glad he could call her a friend.
She poured the rum, filling the glass tumblers two fingers high then handed one to Palmer. He took a sharp, tiny sip, then rested it on his lap. Jenna eyeballed the liquid from above, examining the rich color, then proceeded to toss back the entire glass. She wiped her lips roughly then poured another. Palmer looked at her, worried she was letting the stress get to her, but didn't dare mention it.
Anyway," he began. "Gunderson is on leave. Family emergency." He looked at Jenna cautiously now. He was anticipating her reaction. He knew what was coming next.
As he had said those words, her mind had begun to wrap around the circumstances of Palmer's being there, a piece of the puzzle she didn't even know was missing suddenly appearing. Dr. Marcus was normally the governing member, but being that he shied away from the office to stay in the field as much as possible, that left Gunderson to deal with the daily administrative decisions. But with Gunderson gone, that left only one other person that was even qualified to make any decisions. And that person was the one that Palmer had worked under for the last two years.
"McGrath." she said with finality.
"I'm sorry," he said, even as she dropped the tumbler to the ground. For a moment she stood there speechless. Palmer returned the silence, anxiously placing the glass to his lips, taking another light draught.
"When were you going to tell me?"
"I wasn't," he replied in a matter-of-fact way.
"That bastard," she said. Anger began to pour into her face, filling it with red, but turning her full lips into thin white lines. "You're not much better," she said.
"I said I'm sorry," he began. He stood from his chair and walked closer to her, but she pulled back from him. "Besides I'm not the one who..."
"Don't even say it. I don't want to think about it."
Jenna stood silent for a moment, then turned her back to Palmer. She felt like she was going to cry, and didn't want to let him see it, even the possibility of it.
It was a hushed procedure. She had made her accusations to the Dean of Students, among them harassment, both verbal and physical, unwanted advances, and ultimately dismissal from her assistantship post once she would not return his affections. Callously she thought, the Dean dismissed the charges as unsubstantiated and unsupportable. "No one else has ever accused this man of anything remotely as dishonorable as this," the dean had said. She confided in Palmer back then, and was forced to forge on, unwilling to give up her pursuit of education at the school of her choice. But one thing was certain. McGrath never so much as even thought about getting near her agin. The dean successfully quieted the rumors on campus and in the department. Everything seemingly returned to normal. Jenna never forgot though. She buried it, but never forgot.
"You know," Palmer said. "I'm not saying I don't believe you Jenna..."
"But?"
"But...he's never given me reason to doubt his innocence. I mean. I do doubt it, because you wouldn't lie about something like that. But he's been a straight arrow from the day I began working under him till now. The perfect family man, the perfect father, the perfect boss. Believe me. I've kept a close eye on him and not once has he slipped up. If he did I would be sure to let him know, so that the truth would come out."
Jenna shook her head. "You keep a close eye on him huh? Well would you care to tell me what he's doing right now?" Palmer looked shocked. "Come on. What is he doing right now? Talking to his wife? Or bouncing his son on his knee? Or is he at some motel with some other pretty young grad student who is too scared to say no. Tell me Palmer. What's he doing...right now?"
A single tear slipped from her eye. Even as it did she cursed herself for letting Palmer see. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded bandana, bright red and neatly creased. Jenna stood looking at it, Palmer's hand outstretched offering it to her.
"It's unused," he smiled, then pretended to blow his nose with it. Jenna cracked a smile then reached out, taking the bandana and wiping her eyes with it. He didn't speak, instead letting his proximity speak for him. He knew that she knew that he cared. He didn't have to say it. She didn't want him to say it. Of that she was always afraid.
Palmer glanced curiously at the cot, the pile of clothes partially covering a shimmering shape beneath it. He walked back across the tent picking up the glass she had dropped, and poured two more helpings of rum into the tumblers and walked over to Jenna, offering her one. "So," he said cautiously. "Is that it?" He looked past her at the shiny object peaking from beneath her dirty pile.
"What?" she started. The haze of the alcohol began to blanket her senses. The chill she had felt was less sharp, and a cozy warmth began to fill her insides. "Oh that. Yeah," she said grabbing the orb. A thin breeze slid into the tent as she held it up to him. The wind caused the lamp flame at the shelter's opening to flicker, the light in the room seeming to dance and jump. She handed it to him and watched him examine it closely. Palmer pulled his glasses out, hidden beneath his cigarettes in his breast pocket, and began to rotate the orb as Jenna continued. "There's no data from before--besides the Bimini road--that suggests an intelligent species lived here until the arrival of the native population, a few thousand years ago, and then more recently the Westerners." She turned the orb over while he still held it. "Look at this thing. No scratches. Nothing. As if it were just made yesterday."
"Jenna," Palmer said. His voice carefully toned down to rein in any hint of offense. "What if it was just made today?"
She looked at him as if he had just betrayed her. Defensively she grabbed the orb from him and protectively cradled it under her arm. "No Palmer. If you saw what I saw, you wouldn't even be thinking that."
"So what is it you saw exactly?"
She didn't want to say. Her credibility had already been shaken with the mere suggestion of advanced cultures living on the island prior to the arrival of western colonizers. If she even uttered a word, it might destroy her career, or even her. She didn't dare. But then again. She could trust Palmer. Couldn't she?
"Nothing. I don't know what I saw. But what's important is that I found this." She could tell he wasn't buying it. He was a scientist like herself. He needed evidence, strong evidence, to support most of what he believed.
"Jenna, I know the project hasn't been going smoothly. I talked to some of the others and they tell me you've been putting in a monster work load for the past three months. Are you sure you're...I don't know. >From the stress, you weren't maybe seeing things that weren't really there?"
She had contemplated that for the past three days. The images she saw were surreal. Shimmering ghosts that moved slowly through the dark blue water. But the orb was real, however she had gotten it. She didn't want to give up so easily. She never had to mention the phantoms beneath the water again to anyone. She barely believed it herself. But if she could just find some hard evidence to back her findings....
"Did you bring any equipment? A spectral analyzer"
He nodded.
"Then here," she said slapping the orb down hard into the palm of his hand. She almost felt some sort of charge as she did. "Take this tonight. Run some tests. If I'm not mistaken it's quartz. So when you're done just tell me where in nature, or in Hell for that matter, you can find something so perfect."
He took the orb, looked at it once more, then looked at Jenna. "Okay, I'll do it. I guess it can't hurt. But in the meantime you do me a favor."
"What?"
"Get some sleep. McGrath is coming in tomorrow morning. And he wants to talk to you, first thing. I believe at eight."
Jenna wasn't looking forward to it, but this was her last shot. She had to find out what this thing was. And to avoid any humiliation in front of McGrath she needed more. Why it made her fell the way it did she had no idea. She was just stubborn. "You've got a deal Reed."
He didn't respond. He simply turned and exited the tent, not angry, but pensive. Her fate would be decided tomorrow she thought. She lay down, fully clothed on her cot. The rough canvas scratched against her smooth, toned, legs as she closed her eyes, willing the sleep to come.
TRUMAN'S DREAM
July 11, 2037
Truman Sanders' thoughts were so loud he could almost swear the others could hear him thinking over the intercom. Come on you bastards.
He settled back into his seat, tightened his grip on the flightstick, checked his HUD, then pulled back the throttle. The force of the rockets along the sides of the converted fighter violently rumbled, shaking his body as he nosed his craft toward the distant freighter. He could hear mechanical whirring from the twisting nozzles, tiny motors vibrating through the ship's hull and metal. He inhaled the humid air that cycled through his armor plated flight suit. His breaths were even and measured. The squadron flew at full throttle alongside him, the Orbiting Floating Platform disappearing beneath the bubble of Earth's horizon. One part of his thoughts he focused on his respiration, the other on the freighter 100 kilometers away. He wanted to be calm--not to make any mistakes. Remove the focus from yourself. He said it to every new pilot who joined his squadron. Space combat was nothing to take lightly. Warfare was different beyond Earth's atmosphere. The margin of error was smaller. No air meant no mistakes.
"I've got two escorts in front of the freighter," a voice said, slipping into the private zone in his mind. "Repeat, Lieutenant--I've got two."
"Roger that," Sanders said, bringing his full attention to the view screen. Poor bastards are gonna fry. He grinned insanely, his face distorted in the clear shell of the cockpit glass. Twelve sorties and counting. This was his thirteenth. Thirteen was always his lucky number.
A holographic image from the onboard computer spun before him--a crystal-blue hued fighter with a glowing green `two', beneath it. Tenshi- 9-11's. Brought out the heavy stuff. "Squadron," he said to the nineteen fighters that flew on either side of his Lockwood C-7 refit. "We've got two Tenshi."
He was sure they saw the same as he. A large ACF freighter. It was a round bloated looking vessel, lined with high-grade, nano-manufactured steel. Intelligence reports stated they'd have bio-weapons aboard. Beside the behemoth flew the Tenshi's--two metallic wasp-like ships, darting erratically, buzzing around the cumbersome looking freighter. The Tenshi were the first generation of pure space fighters from either side of the war. His Lockwood, built in 2006, was intended for use in atmosphere when built. Back then, space battles were the domain of science-fiction. It doesn't take a fool to tell who has the advantage, now.
The freighter loomed in the distance. It looked strange at first. There was no up or down, no left or right. He approached the ship to his perceived upside down. Little whistles and devices chirped and beeped. A soothing feminine voice came over his helmet's internal speaker.
"Multiple targets locked in," it announced.
Ain't you a babe.
"Good shooting people," he said as a last second motivator, assuming they needed any at all. The missile tone grew louder. An ingenious piece of equipment he marveled at every time he flew into combat. It gave the pilot an audible cue to the target's distance. Too many pilots had been lost during the first few battles in the notorious vacuum. It was difficult judging distances with nothing to reference them with. No landmarks, no mountains or trees. One moment a fighter was a mile away, the next it was in the ship's nose. A dangerous occurrence when whizzing about at two to three times sound's speed.
The ship came closer into view. A loud click sounded, telling him they were at maximum range. "Lieutenant, I..." a young voice stuttered over the comm. He recognized it as Ramirez. Her voice came through crisp over the digital com-link, not a bit of distortion that he could discern. He heard the other pilots heavily breathing. "Visual ident, in sector 13 sir," Ramirez started over the squadron's channel. "They've got backup."
Sanders saw them come into focus slowly. About seven more 9-11's.
"There's only nine more sir," she said. She sounded like a teenager through the speaker.
"I've got them Ramirez," Sanders said. The craft's instruments whirred with sound as they picked up the multiple targets. Not a chance in Hell. Bright flashes exploded from the enemy ships followed by the low tone of the Incoming Missile Siren. "Evasive," he shouted, banking his craft to his left. Eleven missiles appeared on the holo-display in two rows.
The squadron broke formation as the missiles roared in and sighted their targets. The low pitched tone switched to a mid-level alarm that rattled his ear drums. He glanced behind him quickly trying to spot the projectiles. One had sighted him. It was a shiny pill trailing flame and smoke. It slid in behind his X-T. He breathed steadily through his nostrils. The glass panel of his helmet began to fog over then cleared into nothing.
He cycled through the options in his mind and landed on the easiest for his current situation. Reaching down he lightly touched a button on his forward display. Instantaneously a small shower of small metal beads rained out from behind the ship. They pummeled the missile, exploding, slamming into it, and scathing it's sides. The projectile had made it halfway through the storm when it erupted. He looked at the bright spherical explosion, shining against pitch black open space. The ship rocked sharply as the explosion's shockwave passed over him. Then suddenly there was silence. He checked his HUD. The ship had traveled two kilometers away from the squadron. He turned it around then headed back toward the maelstrom. The computer voice sounded calmly again in his cockpit. "Squadron strength at 50 percent." The wasp shaped Tenshi's cut through the squad with deft and swift precision. It would have been impressive if it weren't his own people being killed. "Friendly ships remaining?" he asked.
"Squadron strength at 20 percent," it said.
Five? He reached for the open line for the squadron. "Retreat." He couldn't believe the words as the spilled from his mouth. Jensen, Ramirez, Carter, Wingfield. They were the only ones left. "Get out of their now!"
"Sir, there's too man...." Silence. Four left.
"Dammit," Sanders said. "Damn it all." He aimed his craft toward the remaining ships. They all seemed to be intact except for Jensen's who was trailing smoke and fire. It looked odd in space. The smoke dissipated almost immediately dispersing into the vacuum.
A Tenshi flew across his bow, and he pulled up hard just missing the ship. He chanced a glance backward and saw his fighters jetting off, heading back toward the orbiting platform, a tiny speck in the distance. The ships pursuing them had broken off. He breathed a sigh of relief, again trying to balance his respiration. He was still in the midst of the storm of fighters and explosions when the returning Tenshis engaged him. He aimed the nose of his craft toward his retreating squadron and engaged the secondary engines. He leapt from the battle almost instantly, the returning ships zooming past him in a blur.
"Multiple craft targeting vessel," the computer said through his helmet. The HUD showed five pursuing. The tone was almost deafening. The sounds seemed to overlap each other as the ships locked him in their sites. "Projectiles fired," the voice said, repeating in a monotonous annoying loop.
Sanders closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He thought a moment then realized there would be no escaping. Looking out the backside of his cockpit he could see the missiles coming into view. Reaching down to the left side of the cockpit he slid back the cover labeled "EJECT". He felt ashamed as his clenched hand landed down on the button.
Initially he felt a rush of air escaping the vessel. His armored flight suit loosened from lack of pressure. The seat back shot him into the cold of space just as the first missile exploded into his craft. The ship erupted into flame.
The flightsuit's sensors detected the change in pressure as it shrunk and sealed itself to compensate for the loss of air. The shockwave slammed into his body, threatening to rupture his suit. He tumbled and spun sickeningly as the Earth alternated with the star field in his vision. He gave up hope, when he saw the Tenshis flying nearby. Slowly his vision faded, crowded in by the blackness that was even deeper than space.
He awoke in a rush of terror. The dream had played itself out in the same fashion over the years. Tonight was no different. The feeling of reality slowly crept back in. His sheets were wet where his head had lain. The room was dark except for the yellowish hue emitting from the bathroom's sodium lamp. Beside him, on the mattress, was the indentation of his wife's body. He heard her in the bathroom. The water ran forcefully into the sink. The light clicked off. She walked back into the bedroom. She was carrying a glass of water that glinted from the city lights outside.
"Here," she said. She sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. "Drink this."
He grabbed for the glass and noticed he was trembling.
"Twenty five years and you still have the dreams," she said. He could see the concern in her face even under the gray of the shadows. "They've never been this bad though. Look," she said raising her leg onto the bed. "You were kicking so hard you gave me bruises." She placed a hand on his bald head. He could feel them gently gliding over the stubble. He was cold. She was warm. That was how it always was. "Maybe you should get some help."
"No," he said wiping the sweat from his face. "I'll be all right."
"What you need is to talk about it. Have you seen Father Daly lately?"
He huffed, rose from the bed. Muscles aching and bones popping he walked toward the window. "Not for a month." He turned around and faced her again. "Or three."
"I'm calling him first thing tomorrow morning," she said. She slid across the bed, rose, then walked toward him. She moved her smooth, dark arms around his waist. Her hair tickled his nose. He felt her breasts touching his lower chest. He melted into her. He began to supplant the nightmare with memories of her.
"You don't have to," he said. "I'll do it myself." His lips lightly touched hers. "Now go back to bed. I'm going to stay up for a while and do a little writing."
"All right," she said. The emptiness increased as she walked away from him. She climbed into the bed as Sanders walked to the corner of the room where his desk stood. "I'm still going to call tomorrow, to make sure though," she said. Sanders couldn't see her face to see if she were smiling or not. He imagined it happy.
"I'll do it hon," he said.
He clicked on his old model computer and waited as the screen crackled to life, his face bathed in the bluish light of the computer screen as he began to type. He could see his reflection in the screen. He looked tired, dark skin wrinkled and eyes sagging. He tried his breathing techniques to calm himself down. There was nothing in his head to write. He turned his chair and stared out at the city. Crowded. Filthy. Congested. Below him the city buzzed with life, bright white headlights streaking through the freeways of the city. Sanders never could get over it. 2 am and the city is still wide awake. The Bay was filled with the light from ships patrolling its waters for signs of outside attack. The buildings rose so high that he could not see the tops of them from where he sat.
Turning back to his computer, he called up the address file, and typed in the word DALY. The name popped up with the complete listing. "First thing tomorrow" he said aloud, then, sullen, he continued to look out on the wartorn city.
In the writer's own words:
"I'm a recent graduate from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a Master's degree in English Literature/Creative Writing. I'm currently working on a sci-fi novel and screenplay, after writing a historical novel completed in July of 1997. I have the synopsis for the world's greatest green lantern story and am just waiting for my chance to make right the mess that has become Green Lantern. I live in San Francisco, am 25, and I need a car."
You can contact the writer at: remyvii@yahoo.com.
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