Deep Waters

Adventures of the Starship Satori: 3

Kevin McLaughlin

Role of the Hero Publising

Copyright © 2016, 2017 by Kevin O. McLaughlin

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

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One

Charline's stomach rolled over as the ship rocketed toward Earth, the planet looming larger in the front windows with every passing second. Her hands gripped the sides of her seat so hard that it felt like her nails were going to puncture the soft material. She'd started to take Dan's flying for granted. But this pilot seemed bound and determined to cure her of that for good! She wished that Dan was the one at the controls of the shuttle. His steady hand would be more than welcome. Charline glanced sideways at the pilot, whose own eyes remained fixed on his instruments. She hadn't caught his name earlier, which was unfortunate. She'd like to leave a nasty review about his flying skills after this bumpy ride from Luna to Earth.

“Not used to flying in space yet?” the pilot asked her. He sounded sympathetic, if distracted.

“I’ve done some,” she replied. If only he knew. But she couldn’t breathe a word of her experiences to anyone. If word got out, it could be disastrous for her home planet.

She and her crew mates had been farther from Earth than any other humans had ever travelled. Their ship, build around remnants of alien technology discovered on the moon, had carried them through a wormhole to another star system hundreds of light years away. They’d managed to survive what they encountered on the far side, but only just. For the time being the entire trip was a closely guarded secret. John Caraway - the man who’d brought them all together and was bankrolling the entire project - wasn’t ready to tell the world that humans were very definitely not alone in the universe. Not just yet, anyway.

The panic that information would cause among the public would be bad enough. Learning that their ship the Satori existed would likely throw every nation in the world into a frenzy trying to acquire the technology aboard the ship. They had no way to replicate the engines which powered the Satori. Even with all their study, it seemed like the mysteries of the ship’s power source and wormhole drive might never be solved.

“Houston Control, this is Flight Charlie Alpha One Five Six, coming into atmosphere from Caraway Base,” the pilot called into his microphone. “Medical mission, require EMS on arrival.”

“Confirmed, sending flight path now,” came the call back over the radio. “We have medical teams standing by to escort your patient to the hospital as soon as you've landed.”

The pilot grinned over at Charline. “See? Piece of cake. You'll be down in no time.”

Charline gave him a weak smile in return. “Thanks.”

She looked back over her shoulder to the rear of the crew compartment where Beth was strapped to a gurney. She was stable and sedated for the trip back to Earth, which was much better than Charline had feared when she’d fought desperately to save her friend’s life just hours before. Beth was shot by an alien energy rifle while trying to rescue another member of their crew.

John’s doctors at the base had taken good care of Beth after the team returned home. But despite his excellent facilities, the bottom line was that Beth would do better on Earth. A top notch hospital could give her treatments that would drastically reduce her convalescence. John wanted his best engineer back on her feet as soon as possible. The trip to Earth would make that happen in days instead of months.

It also provided an outstanding cover for her own mission. Charline patted the cargo pocket of her pants for what had to be the hundredth time, ensuring that the small vial was still there. Inside was a sample of the blood she'd collected from the first alien life form they’d encountered: lizard-like creatures they'd called ratzards. Their initial tests showed the blood to have stunning properties. Put a drop of it in water, add light, and it grew. Charline didn't know how it was doing that, but the scientists at John's base were incredibly excited. It behaved like an algal bloom, or maybe a colony of small animals. Blood wasn't supposed to do that.

She remembered those black oceans back on the faraway world where they'd killed the ratzards. The planet was arid, dry as a bone. But there had once been rivers flowing – she'd seen the dry beds as they flew overhead. What if the oceans were black because this stuff had gotten into the water there and grown until it covered all water?

It made sense. It rang true to her. The ratzards would be a perfect biological weapon. If even one died near an ocean, its blood could spread from there and disrupt or even destroy the ecosystem of the entire world.

She shivered at the idea of bringing even these few drops of the stuff back to her homeworld. But John had insisted. The best xenobiologist in the world was waiting for the sample. John knew her – a Dr. Linda Paris – and radioed ahead to tell her he had “something she would want to see”. Charline argued for bringing the scientist to the sample rather than the other way around, but apparently rousting her out of her lab was going to take more than just a promise of something interesting to study. They couldn’t send more detail than that over the radio. Anything they broadcast might be intercepted, no matter how encrypted they made the transmission.

Charline hoped she could handle this meeting. John wanted the doctor to come back to Luna and join his team there. It was going to be up to Charline to convince her. The sample ought to do the trick.

“Better strap in. We're landing soon,” the pilot said, breaking her from her thoughts. She wondered if he'd seen her patting her pocket, and hoped he hadn't noticed. Her mission was secret – and the pilot was definitely not cleared to know what she was up to. John had ostensibly built his base on the moon to farm Helium-3, an isotope essential for fusion that was fairly common on the moon but rare on Earth. And given the pandemic power shortages helium-3 was probably the most valuable substance known to man right now.

Anything having to do with Caraway Industries was being watched. Which meant from the moment she set foot back on Earth, Charline was going to be under observation by governments and other corporate interests alike. They’d all want whatever information they could pry from her. Anything she gave away might give them an edge in dealing with John, and that was without them knowing half the secrets she was keeping. If any of them had an inkling about the Satori, she’d be a hot target for more than observation.

Charline sighed deeply, buckling her seat belt. Things were so much easier in space, where all she had to worry about were the computers she knew so well. This sort of cloak and dagger stuff was more Andy's thing. Thinking of Andy made Charline bite her lip. She hoped he was OK.

"That's odd," her pilot muttered.

"What's odd?" Charline asked. Her eyes scanned the console in front of her. She knew computers as well as she knew her own hands, but this sort of display was still foreign to her. She’d seen enough odd things to know that the word usually referred to something that wasn’t good news.

"There's another ship out there. Looks like it's flying inside our flight path."

Charline froze. Coincidence? It could be. Maybe someone was a little off course, or had made an error calculating their entry path. But Charline didn’t believe that in her gut. Earth didn’t have many ships traveling in space, just a handful. One of them showing up right on top of her shuttle was more than suspicious.

Two

"Are they going to hit us?" Charline asked. More than ever, she wished Dan was the one piloting the shuttle. She’d seen him dance through worse than this. He’d just dodge and weave, ducking away from the other ship, and then they'd be safe on the ground before she knew it. Where was the guy when she needed him? Back on the moon. Where she ought to be.

"No," the pilot said. His tone of voice wasn't exactly reassuring though. Neither was the next thing he added under his breath. "I don't think so, anyway."

He cleared his throat and keyed on the radio. "Houston Control, we've got another aircraft coming into our flight path. Can you confirm?"

"Confirmed," said the faceless voice on the radio. "We are working to contact them now."

The pilot leaned back in his seat. "There, see? Nothing to worry about."

Charline wasn't so sure. She'd spotted the other ship on the shuttle’s radar, and the blip showing the other ship seemed awfully close. It was hard for her to tell for sure, trying to translate the two-dimensional display into what it ought to look like in three dimensions, but it seemed to her like the radar dot indicating the other vessel was trying to close with them.

"Can they intercept us?" she asked.

"Seriously? They'd have to be crazy to try. And once we're in the atmosphere, forget it. We'll be bouncing around too much."

"How long?" Charline asked.

"Another minute or two."

"Go faster," she said.

The pilot looked at her like she was nuts. But he worked his controls, and thrust pushed her back into her seat.

Charline knew one pilot who'd be willing to try an in-space high-speed linkup. And if Dan was that good, she was betting there might be someone else in his class out there. The proximity of the other ship was making her sweat. Absently, she patted her cargo pocket again before she realized what she was doing. She pulled her hand away with an effort.

The last thing in the world she wanted to be doing was escorting this stuff down to her home planet. In the wrong hands it could devastate the planet. And that other ship was still headed straight for them. Why would someone fly so recklessly? Had someone breached all John's security, learned enough to risk everything to try to snatch the shuttle - or its passengers?

Charline wasn’t going to sit idly by and let them capture her ship. She slid her hand into the bag beside her seat and brought out her laptop. It was easy enough to link the computer to the ship’s network, and from there into the satellites floating in space around them. Hacking the shuttle’s transponder and the satellite feeds was more difficult, but it wasn’t the most challenging hack she’d ever accomplished. Every computer connected to a network had a backdoor somewhere. You just had to know where to look to find them.

“What the hell?” her pilot said. “The GPS is going all screwy. It says we’re way off course now!”

“Stay on the flight path you already had calculated,” Charline said. “I’m spoofing our transponder so we look like a satellite, and the satellite looks like us.”

“Seriously? You’ve hacked the GPS satellite system?” he said. “You could go to jail for that. I could go to jail for letting you.”

“It’s just for a minute. No one on the ground will even know, if I switch it back quickly enough. I’m hoping it will throw off that other ship for long enough that we can hit atmosphere,” Charline replied. “I really don’t think we want them to overtake us.”

“God damn it, I did not sign up for this shit,” the pilot grumbled. But he stayed on course.

Charline watched the radar, hoping to see…there! The other ship was veering off, chasing the fake signature she had the satellite broadcasting. That wouldn’t fool them for long, but it might keep them far enough away for just long enough. The other ship had only moved away from them for a handful of seconds before it shifted course and came right back at them. Shit, it hadn’t taken them long at all to see through her ruse. Charline swapped the transponder signals back. No point in maintaining the subterfuge if the other ship had already figured it out. She just had to hope it had been enough.

A sudden jolt threw Charline sideways against the arm-rest of her seat. The bumps continued, the ride becoming even rougher than it had already been. Charline sucked in a sharp breath - then understood. The shuttle was hitting the upper atmosphere. She exhaled the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. They'd made it. The other ship couldn’t grab them now. She could feel the pilot relaxing next to her, too. Nonchalant as he might have acted about the whole event, it had clearly been out of the ordinary enough to unnerve him. They were safe, at least until after they were on the ground. Then all bets were off, Charline figured. She’d need to stay alert.

Some backup would be nice as well. She tapped out a quick message to John, alerting him of the potential trouble coming her way. With any luck he had some assets on the ground which might be able to keep her and Beth safe after they landed. Charline was suddenly wishing she had her rifle back. Even though she’d hated using it to shoot the Naga, she was a fine shot. With the current gun control laws, it was too big a risk. If she’d been caught with an unlicensed firearm she’d be detained, the sample would be found…and she didn’t even want to think about going down that rabbit hole.

Charline finished her email and looked out through the cockpit windows. Was that sunlight glinting off metal, somewhere above them? Had they missed being caught by such a narrow margin that she could actually see the other ship? Who the hell were they, anyway? Her gut said that they didn't just happen to be flying on the same path she was taking. She didn't believe in that kind of coincidence.

Charline missed the company of the rest of the team. She'd been in dangerous situations with them. But she'd never felt so alone before this trip.

Three

The loud beeps broke into Andy's dream like a bull in a china shop, rousing him like a splash of cold water to the face. For a moment he didn't know where he was. The dream he roused from had seemed so real! The brilliant green water was vivid in his memory, and the waves washing by overhead had felt familiar as the back of his hand. But when he opened his eyes he saw the static illumination of artificial lights instead of sunshine. He was surrounded by cool air, not warm water. He looked around blearily, trying to figure out where he was.

The soft blanket covering him up, overhead light panels, the bed beneath him, the desk and book shelves nearby the bed - he recognized it all. He was back at John's base. On the moon. It was even his bed, thank goodness. The docs had made him stay a couple of days in the med lab after they'd removed the thing from his ear. Just to be sure, they'd said. But being stuck in medical had him worried the whole time. What if there was something they weren’t telling him? He hadn’t relaxed until they released him from their care at last. It was nice to be back in his own quarters.

Andy's hand reached up to his ear reflexively to make sure it wasn't there again. While he was their captive the alien Naga had inserted some sort of slug-like creature into his ear - their answer to language translation. The thing picked up what was said nearby, translated the words into thoughts, and transmitted them into the mind of the being carrying it.

Andy shivered. He could still feel the slimy thing slipping into his ear.

The beep came again and he was awake enough this time to hear that it was his radio chirping at him. He hauled himself over to the chair where he'd dumped his clothes last night. The little radio he used to reach his team on base was still pinned to his shirt. He plucked it off, put the earpiece into his ear – a sensation uncomfortably close to the slug – and pressed a button.

“Andy here.”

“Andy?” It was Dan. “Wondering why you're not down at the meeting yet.”

Andy looked at his watch. It was already quarter past nine? He hadn't overslept so much since he was a teenager. How had that happened? Usually he would be up and moving before seven. He didn’t even need an alarm, thanks to habits formed from his Army years.

“Sorry, Dan. Be right down.” He was already throwing on clothing, running fingers through his hair.

“No rush, Andy. We'll still be here. John made coffee; I saved you a mug.”

“Thanks. See you in a flash!” Andy clicked off the radio, cursing under his breath once he wasn't broadcasting. How the hell had that happened? Underground on the moon, there was no sun to tell him when to wake up. But he'd never had this problem before.

“Must still be more wiped out than I thought,” he said aloud.

It didn't take him long to slip on a shipsuit, the one-piece outfits most of them wore up here. They were bland, but Andy was used to uniforms. They made him comfortable. He'd been Army for a decade, and that sort of thing stuck with you. He darted into the bathroom and took in his haggard appearance in the mirror, cursing again. A few quick swipes with a razor took care of the worst of his scruff, but there wasn't much he could do about the dark circles under his eyes. If he was oversleeping, why did he look and feel so tired? He'd be glad to get a cup of that coffee. Maybe it would help him wake up.

He left his room, the doors sliding apart. He shook his head for the hundredth time. John had said he'd built those doors with the zippy sliding effect so they would close automatically in case of a pressure loss. “They're a safety feature!” John had protested. Andy rather thought John had built them that way because that's how high tech space doors looked in all John's favorite sci-fi shows.

The secure elevator down the hall was a more serious matter. It was big, and had buckets of security built into it. Cameras. Retinal scanners. Palm prints. If you were not on the list of authorized personnel, you were not going to have a good time getting in there. Andy was on the list, of course. So was everyone else involved with the Satori – John's secret starship, hidden in the basement of his helium-3 processing plant.

The elevator whisked him down at enough speed that his feet left the deck a little in the low lunar gravity. Then it settled to a stop, his feet gracefully finding their places again.

“Last stop, everyone out,” Andy said to the air. There was no one else here. Anyone else who had business down below would already be there, this late in the shift. He'd gotten off the elevator only one floor from the bottom of the entire complex. The lowest level was the hangar. The floor he was on housed the offices and labs which supported the starship project. Andy took quick steps down the hall toward John's conference room, passing a row of huge windows on his right. They all looked down into the hangar, which was full of activity.

The starship Satori was a mess. She'd had explosives go off in and on her, been shot up by alien fighters, and even lost a wing in Dan's last Hail Mary attempt to save some of the crew who'd been pinned down – Andy among them. The engineering crews were hard at work putting her back together again.

They'd learned that the universe was a hostile place. The sooner the Satori was flying again, the better he would feel.

His walk carried him right by the lab, where samples of things they'd brought back from their journey were being studied. The cubes they'd found on that faraway world – tiny remnants of the race that had built the Satori's wormhole drive. The weird blood from the ratzards that Charline had been smart enough to grab. Bits of Naga technology like the energy rifles they used. And of course, the slug they'd pulled from his ear. He shivered at the thought of the thing.

And kept shivering. He jerked to a halt when he realized he couldn't stop shaking. Andy leaned one hand on the wall next to him, trying to hold himself up. But his arm had no strength, and his legs wouldn't keep still. The tremors increased.

Why was he on the floor? He must have fallen there. His arms and legs wouldn't respond to his commands. They just shook and shook. He stared helplessly up at the ceiling. A yell for help came out as just a quiet croaking sound.

His tremors increased, shaking his entire body now. Andy squeezed his eyes shut against the raw terror grabbing him in the gut. He'd never felt like this – never been so out of control. Try as he might, he couldn't get his body to stop.

As soon as Andy closed his eyes, he heard the rush of water all around him, the roar of surf pounding against rocks, the susurrus of receding waves whispering through the sand. He felt the water close over his head, cool and calming. The water told him to relax, and he did. The water spoke to him, saying he would be safe.

Something told him this was wrong. He wasn't underwater. He was on the floor, shaking - some kind of seizure. He needed to get up, to get help.

The water told him it was time to rest, and let go.

Andy tried to resist, but the cool thoughts were overwhelming.

He let them carry his mind away to a quieter place.

Four

Charline stepped off the shuttle, following the med techs as they wheeled Beth's still-slumbering body out. Her feet felt like lead weights. The travel bag she carried weighed down her arm like it was full of rocks, instead of a change of clothes and her laptop. Her whole body felt like she was walking through thick soup, and she almost stumbled stepping out of the hatch. The pilot caught her arm.

"Easy there," he said. "Give yourself a few hours to get used to being back under Earth's gravity."

It was a problem she hadn't thought about much before. Everyone had been so excited to be exploring alien ruins on a distant planet, there hadn't been time to feel tired then. And then they'd been in danger - a desperate fight to stay alive had been a great way to keep going. But now? She'd only been back on the moon a couple of days, then another day in zero gravity flying back to Earth. She caught her breath and straightened her back. That was going to be an issue at some point. She wondered if John had thought about it. He could rotate the helium-3 work crews back and forth from Earth to the moon, but what about the small, carefully selected team working on the Satori? If they stayed on the moon too long, they would all lose muscle tone and have a real problem when it came to returning home to Earth. It wasn’t like they could easily find more crew to do the work, either. The less people who knew about the Satori, the better.

"Thanks," she said. "I'll be OK."

"I'm sure you will," he replied. He took a step back so that she could pass more easily, and she continued down the ramp onto the runway. Hard tarmac, blazing heat, and an arid, dusty wind greeted her. In an odd way, it felt familiar even though she'd never been to Texas. It was uncannily like the one alien world she'd visited.

She looked back over her shoulder and saw the pilot talking into his radio. He was looking at her while he spoke, and his eyes somehow looked less friendly than they had before. She wondered briefly if she had done something to offend the man, but then the look was gone, replaced by the bland smile she'd seen him wearing most of the trip. She shook her head. Was it paranoia if you had good reason to think people really were out to get you?

A silver air-car glided toward her from the control tower. On the side of the car she could see the logo of John's company. She shook some of the tension from her shoulders. John had assured her that a security escort would be waiting for her as soon as she arrived. Another would follow Beth to the hospital and watch over her there. With unrest on Earth increasing at a steady rate, not to mention the strange ship which had tried to intercept them, he wasn't taking any chances.

The door to the car opened and three men spilled out. They all wore identical grey jumpsuits, and each carried a sidearm holstered at his hip. One stepped off a bit on either side of her, facing outward. They didn’t draw their weapons, but seemed ready to use them. The third man walked straight toward her.

"You look like a living cliche," Charline said.

The man's serious face broke in a huge smile. "We're security forces. We're supposed to be a cliche," he said with good humor. "You must be Miss Foster? I'm Pete Adams. Mr. Caraway asked us to meet you here."

"He told me. You know where we're going?"

"No, ma'am. Mr. Caraway said you'd give us destinations, and we'd get you there."

"So if I told you I'm here for a getaway vacation in Hawaii...?"

"Then we'd be with you on the next flight, ma'am," he replied. "But Mr. Caraway doesn't usually put this much effort into employee vacations." His smile was still there, but she could feel the curiosity boiling just under the surface. Something about his mood was infectious, and she felt better just talking to him.

"I need to get to the University of Texas campus in Dallas." That was where Dr. Paris would meet her; she had a lab there.

"We'll have you there in an hour. Climb aboard."

Charline followed him to the air-car. He opened the door for her and gestured for her to step inside. The compartment inside the car was spacious, and she settled herself into a seat and set to buckling herself in. Pete and one of the other guards climbed into the rear space with her. The other must be up front. Pete closed the hatch behind them, locking it down before he settled into his own seat.

"Ever flown in one of these?" he asked.

"Something similar," Charline replied, thinking of the Satori. "But no, not just like this." She had to raise her voice as the turbines under the wings began spinning up to full power.

"If you need to talk to the pilot, this hatch leads into the cockpit area," Pete said, gesturing with his hand. "Separate pilot and passenger spots for security reasons. Behind you," he said, pointing at another hatch above her head, "there's a secure area. Really a vault. We store things there when security is an absolute must. The space is bullet proof, fireproof, water tight, and big enough to hold all the luggage of a company exec on a week long trip."

Charline raised an eyebrow at that last.

"I know," he said, seeing her look. "It took some doing, but we crammed it all in there."

"So, what's your name?" Charline asked, turning to the other guard.

"Cory," he replied.

"Just Cory?"

He nodded his head. His eyes were distant. He might be hearing what she said, but he wasn't really paying attention to the words.

"Cory's not much for talking," Pete said, giving the man a glare. "But he's got good eyes, and he know his job. Mr. Caraway doesn't hire anyone who isn't top of the line for this sort of gig."

"Oh, I know John's that way," she said. "I wasn't questioning either of your qualifications."

But something about Cory rubbed Charline the wrong way. He was tense. They were in the air, and should be pretty safe up here. And there he was sitting like he was ready to explode out of his seat at any moment. Maybe he was afraid of flying? Or just stressed out about the assignment? But she couldn't shake the feeling she'd had ever since the odd experience on the trip down - the sense that something was up.

Quietly, she shifted her hand down to her cargo pocket again, running her fingers over the vial to assure herself it was still there. The movement caught Cory's eyes. She saw him glance down at her leg, and eased her hand away. She didn't need to be advertising that she was carrying something of value. Not even here, and especially not to someone that her gut told her was hiding something.

Five

Pete’s conversation kept Charline’s mind well-occupied during the flight. It turned out that he was at least casually familiar with cyber-security. Enough to be dangerous, he said, and she laughed in response. He was more than willing to listen to what she said on the subject, though, and his banter made her forget about Corey’s quite demeanor. Maybe the guy was just having a bad day. His boss certainly seemed to be all right. Before she knew it, the air-car was slowing down and then stopped moving forward altogether. Charline felt her stomach lurch as it eased its way toward the ground.

"We're here," Pete said.

Charline looked out her window and the university campus. It spread out over a sizable chunk of land. Here, the lawns were well-watered, and a few trees provided the promise of cool shade. The air conditioning in the car had taken the brutality away from the Texas heat, but Charline wasn’t looking forward to stepping back outside again. The air-car was dropping toward a landing pad atop one of the taller buildings.

"You did better than that hour you promised," she said. "Only took fifty two minutes."

"We aim to please," Pete said.

Charline popped an earbud on, flicked the switch, and said aloud "Call Doctor Paris."

There was a ringing tone in her ear as her smartphone dialed out.

"Linda Paris here." The voice on the phone sounded younger than she'd expected. She realized she'd heard 'professor' and automatically associated the title with the dusty old men who'd taught so many of her own university classes. This woman clearly wasn't from that company!

"Dr. Paris, my name is Charline. I was sent here by John Caraway to see you. Can we meet?"

"Yes, of course. I've been waiting for your arrival. Mr. Caraway called ahead and told me you'd be here shortly."

"Great! I'm, um, up on the roof."

"Landing pad? I know where you are. I'm in the same building. I'll be right up." The call clicked off.

Charline left the earpiece in and grabbed her bag. The air-car settled gently to the rooftop, and the engine whine decreased to a dull rhythmic sound. Pete unlocked the hatch and opened it, stepping out ahead of Charline. Cory followed behind. Both men returned to a quiet alertness as they left the cool interior of the car for the scorching rooftop. Charline appreciated their caution. She was still expecting some sort of snatch and grab at any time. Having the security with her eased a little bit of the worried feeling in her stomach.

The rooftop was completely clear except for a glass room on one end that housed an elevator door. Those doors slid open, and a woman stepped out into the glass room. That had to be Dr. Paris. Charline set off across the pad toward her, flanked on either side by the two guards.

Paris looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She had long brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail. Gold wire glasses framed a narrow boned face with a deep tan. The outfit made Charline smile: a white lab coat over a black t-shirt and bluejeans. Not typical professorial attire, but then John had a habit of seeking out the eccentric, and that's what Charline thought she'd want to wear if it was her working in a college lab. John also tended to find people who were excellent at what they did, but Charline wondered if the young woman before her would be up to the challenge she was about to present.

Pete opened the glass door for her and the woman stepped forward, offering her hand to Charline.

"Dr. Paris?" Charline asked.

"Call me Linda, please," the other woman said, shaking her hand. "You must be Ms. Foster?”

Charline made a face. "Please never call me that again. Just Charline is fine."

"You have something for me, I gather?"

Almost, Charline reached down to pat her pocket again, but she restrained herself. Even surrounded by security she couldn’t guarantee safety. There were too many ways to listen in while they were in the open, and she knew almost all of them.

“Not here," she said. "Is there somewhere more private?"

Linda quirked an eyebrow. Charline could feel the curiosity boiling off her, but she kept it contained. “My lab is empty right now. Follow me.”

Linda pressed the button for the elevator. Charline followed her in, and turned to see Pete and Cory following her. She held up a hand, forestalling them.

"Stay with the air-car, please. I don't think I'll be too long."

They backed off, Pete looking distinctly unhappy about it. The doors closed.

Neither woman spoke as they rode the elevator down. The doors opened, and Charline followed Linda down a long hall past two armed men who waved at Linda as they walked by. At the end of the hall was a locked door. Linda had to punch in a number code to get in, and pass a fingerprint scan.

"Tight security for a college," she said.

"This is a research university," Linda said. "We work on a lot of things here. For a lot of different companies, and the government too sometimes. The facility has to meet military standards."

There was a second security door after the first. That one was opened with a retina scan. Charline nodded with approval at the depth of protection the place had. Given enough time, any secure door could be beaten. The trick was to have layers of security, each of which would require different means to bypass. Delay an intruder long enough, and hopefully someone would realize there was a break-in and respond. Locking people out was less about creating absolute barriers and more about stalling an attack long enough to realize you had a breach.

The lab behind that door was huge. Charline didn't know what most of the devices were, but she knew computer hardware - and the stuff they had humming away in the lab looked state of the art and ferociously expensive.

"I'm impressed," Charline said. "I can see why John wanted me to come to you."

"Thanks. Be it not especially humble, welcome to where I spend most of my hours," Linda said. "I'd show you around, but I'm afraid I'd have to kill you, then." The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile as she added the last.

Charline had no doubts that the research going on here was hush-hush. Nobody got a lab with this sort of equipment and that level of security without reason. The door slid shut behind them, and for the first time since leaving the moon Charline felt a her tension drain away. If anyplace on Earth was probably safe enough to discuss her cargo, this room was probably it.

"John's asked me to give you this," Charline said, pulling the vial from her pocket. She recalled his instructions, and listed them off. "He'd like your initial impressions from your own observations, without the bias of additional data. He also warns that it is potentially extremely dangerous material. Under no circumstances should even a drop be allowed to leave a controlled environment. And be careful with water contact."

"Why? Does it explode? Burn? What does water do?" Burning curiosity filled Linda's voice, and she was leaning forward as she spoke. Charline knew she had her.

"Makes it grow," Charline said, her voice half a whisper. "But I'm really not supposed to say any more until after you've checked it out."

"Well, I'm your biologist. You've got my interest piqued even without the handsome payment to my lab Mr. Caraway offered. And once he offered that - well, let's just say my boss's eyes light up whenever seven figures get mentioned. I was told to drop everything I was doing and help you instead. Which made me a little mad - but I get the feeling you’ve brought me a genuine mystery to unravel, so I’m in.”

"John likes to hire the best. And he's always willing to pay for the best, too," Charline said. She handed the vial to the woman, hoping that John was doing the right thing sending it here. She had a hunch that that little vial of goo was one of the most dangerous substances on the planet, and she was the one who’d brought it home.

"Yeah, which begs the question why me?" Linda said. "I'm only a few years past my post-doc, and my dissertation was about aliens." She cocked her head sideways, waiting for an answer.

“I can’t say more,” Charline said. “John was very explicit. He wanted your direct observations untainted by previous supposition, I think was what he said.”

“Well, I suppose I'd better see what I can do," Linda said. "I'll start analysis right away. You probably ought to head out of the secure area. I’ve got your number from your call. I’ll drop you a line when I have something to report."

"Sounds good." Charline said.

“I’ll have a preliminary analysis in a few hours. You can make yourself comfortable in the cafe downstairs if you’d like.” Linda added.

Charline headed toward the door. “I have some other errands to run,” she said, thinking about Beth over in Houston. A few hours should give her time to go check in on her. Beth might even be up and about by now. “Call me when you have something?”

“I will,” Linda said. She wasn’t looking at Charline anymore, though. She was staring at the little vial, turning it over and over in her hands.

Six

Andy still wasn’t awake yet. Dan looked down at his watch, worried. It had been at least six hours since he’d been found passed out on the floor, and the doctors didn’t seem to know what was wrong with him. The little hospital room was quiet except for the gentle beeping of monitoring devices. They were tracking everything. Cardiac monitors, blood pressure, even brain waves. It was all disturbingly normal. From the medical devices, it looked like Andy was simply sleeping.

Except he wasn’t waking up. And Dan had a bad feeling about why. He’d fallen down just outside the science lab, where all the alien items they’d found were being studied. Including that damned thing the Naga had put in Andy’s ear. When they found him his heartbeat had been irregular and rapid, according to the medics. They did the smart thing. They tossed Andy on a stretcher and took him up to the base medical center.

Which happened to be about fifteen floors higher. There was at least a hundred and fifty feet - including a lot of layers of rock - between Andy and that alien slug now. As soon as they’d gotten him up into the med center he’d stabilized. The doctors were patting themselves on the back for a job well done. Dan had a hunch that it had less to do with medical intervention and more to do with distance. The doctors here were good. He’d been seeing them himself for care of his spinal injury. But when it came to alien stuff he suspected they were working in the dark.

The doors behind him snapped open and John stepped through. Dan slid his wheelchair away from the bed so that his friend could come near. John and Andy were close. Closer than they were willing to admit to anyone, Dan thought. He could see the pain and worry etched in John’s brow.

“How is he?” John asked. His voice was hollow, his face drawn.

“According to the doctors, he’s fine,” Dan said, a little sarcasm dripping into his voice. “He’s resting now. Probably over worked and overtired from our adventures, they say.”

John looked sideways at him. “You don’t think so.”

“No,” Dan said. “I don’t.”

Dan let the silence drag on another few moments. He looked around - there was no one else in the room, and the doors had slid shut behind John after he came in. It would be safe to talk. Not everyone on the base was cleared to know about the Satori or the things they’d discovered while on their little trip.

“We know that thing they put in his ear uses some sort of telepathy to translate words,” Dan said. “The doctors got it out of him. But what if taking it out just wasn’t enough?”

“You think it still has some sort of connection with him?” John asked. “It wasn’t lost on me that he got better as soon as they got him away from it.”

“Yeah, I figured you’d notice that too.”

“If we think that’s the case, what do we do about it?” John asked. “Maybe we should have sent him back to Earth, with Beth. If distance limits the effects, Earth might be the best place for him. Or we could just incinerate it.”

Hearing Beth’s name brought a twinge of guilt and worry to Dan. He’d been thinking about Andy’s problem for so long, he hadn’t taken the time to check in on how she was doing with her recovery on Earth. She’d been badly hurt. He knew she’d arrived, and was being treated for her wounds. But he felt a sudden need to know more.

He must have jumped when he heard Beth’s name. John put a calming hand on his shoulder. “Relax. She’s fine. She’s getting treatment, and she’s already walking about.”

“How?” Dan asked. She’d been shot! She ought to be on bedrest for days yet.

“New medical technique. Nanite reconstruction therapy. It’s military only, but I called in a few favors,” John said.

“Thanks,” Dan said. He felt a huge wave of relief. If she was already up and walking, then she’d be fine. It was more the hospital he ought to worry about. Beth was never a good patient, and she’d be pushing for discharge. Probably about the same time her feet hit the floor and she was able to walk.

“Don’t thank me,” John said, a small smile flashing on his face. “I need my best engineer back, that’s all.”

They both stared down at Andy’s prone form for a few long moments. What should they do? They were dealing with things so far outside their normal range of understanding that Dan hardly knew where to start. Would killing the alien slug solve Andy’s problems? Dan would be all for it, if he knew it would work. But maybe it would make Andy’s problems even worse. They had no way to know.

Maybe Andy should go back to Earth. But it seemed like a stop-gap measure at best, unless they intended to ground him there forever. And he’d been a crucial part of their team. Which made him think of another question. Looking over at John’s haggard face, he knew his friend was going through a lot of the same turmoil and second guessing that he was. A chance of topic might help.

“What are we going to do next?” Dan asked. “Once you have your best engineer back, and the Satori is repaired?”

The work had begun on fixing the ship as soon as they’d arrived home. They’d torn it up pretty badly during the mission, but there was nothing broken that couldn’t be repaired with enough work. The team here had mostly built it from scratch in the first place. They could rebuild it. Once they did, then what?

“I wish I knew,” John said. “The engines produce enough power to fuel a continent. Maybe I should just hand the ship over. It’s cost us so much already. It almost cost all of us our lives.”

“In the state the world is in right now? I thought we agreed that would just end in war,” Dan said. Giving that much power to one nation would tip the delicate balance completely. Energy crisis, solved. Global war, assured. It wasn’t a solution. It would just create an even greater problem.

“Perhaps if we gave them all our records about the Naga, along with the ship? Went public?” John asked. “Maybe the world would pull together if they saw such a serious external threat.”

"You think so?" Dan asked. "I think you're fooling yourself. I think they would see a possible threat very far away, and a definite threat close at hand. I don't have any doubt which threat the nations of Earth would focus on."

His words sounded bitter even to his own ears. And he was bitter about it. He'd seen the danger with his own eyes. They'd visited a world that had been laid to waste by some force, probably the Naga themselves. And they'd see first hand how deadly the Naga could be. Sure, they'd won... But it had been a very near thing. And it wasn't without taking a few hits of their own. He looked down at Andy's still form, mute testimony to all they'd been through.

The rest of the world hadn’t seen what he had. Dan knew he was right. They’d react out of fear, all right - not of what might be coming, but out of what they saw right in front of them.

"What would you do?" John asked. His tone was light. When Dan looked over, he saw his friend's eyes were bright and dancing.

"I think we have to get back out there," Dan said. The words gushed out of him, fueled by passion. Space was his life. It had always been his life, ever since he'd been a small boy. He couldn't see backing off now. Not when they'd been where the team had gone and seen the things they'd seen. No matter the danger, he knew in his gut that it would be worth the risk.

Dan looked at John's smiling face suspiciously. "But then, you already knew I was going to say that, didn't you?

"Well, yes," John said. "But then, I knew you pretty well before I selected you as my pilot."

"Damn. When did I become that predictable?" Dan asked.

"Oh, since always," John quipped. His smile was ear to ear now.

"I know that look," Dan said. "You're just about busting at the seams to tell me something. Spill."

"Come with me," John said, jerking his head toward the door.

Dan glanced back worriedly at Andy.

"The doctors are doing everything they can for him," John said. "I want him better as much as you do. And this may help. Come see what I've been working on."

Dan reached out and touched Andy's hand. It was warm under his fingers. Was that the smallest flutter of his eyelids, or just just his imagination? The tiny movement was gone before he could be certain. Dan watched him closely for another few seconds, but the movement wasn’t repeated. He turned his wheelchair away and followed John from the room.

Seven

The flight back to the hospital took the better part of another hour. Charline wasn’t sure what to expect when she arrived. The hospital was supposed to be doing some sort of state the art procedure to get her friend moving along her recovery more quickly. They landed on the roof and Charline left her guards with the air-car again, heading down to check on Beth. She’d already slipped into the hospital record system and found out which floor she was on, so finding her wasn’t going to be a problem. She pressed the button for the fifth floor and descended.

Charline heard Beth’s voice as soon as the elevator doors opened.

“My clothes. Now!” Beth snapped.

The person Beth was barking at said something in a soothing tone that Charline couldn’t quite hear from this far away. She smiled in sympathy. She’d been on the receiving end of Beth’s bad mood. Once. She didn’t want to repeat the experience.

“I said now!” Beth shouted.

She’d better go rescue the poor person Beth was beleaguering before the debate escalated any further. It wasn’t hard to find her, anyway. The shouting had everyone on the hall looking at one specific doorway.

Charline peeked around the edge of the door. Inside, Beth stood with her back to the door, dressed in only a hospital johnny. Her hands were on her hips, which draped the gown in a way that was more revealing than Beth probably would have appreciated, had she been paying attention. The person she was yelling at was a young woman in scrubs holding a tablet in her hands more or less the way a lion tamer might keep the giant feline at bay with a chair. Charline immediately felt for the girl. It was time to step in and take a little of the heat off the hospital staff.

“Guess you’re feeling better then?” Charline asked.

Beth whirled, mouth open and ready to shout again. But she closed it when she saw Charline, and gave a rueful half smile instead.

“About time you got here,” Beth said. “Have you seen what they call food in this place?”

“Nope. No interest. Is she good to go?” Charline asked the nurse.

“No, she is definitely not. She needs more bedrest. The nanite reconstruction is still in process. She shouldn’t be away from supervised medical care for at least another day!” the nurse said. She seemed to have recovered some of her courage now that Beth’s attention was elsewhere.

“I think you’d better get her discharge paperwork ready,” Charline said, smiling. It always helped to at least lead off with a smile.

“I will do no such thing,” the nurse said.

“OK,” Charline replied. She pulled her phone from her pocket and started dialing.

“Who are you calling?” the nurse asked.

“John Caraway. Who will call your board of directors. Who will probably be perturbed at the disruption of their day, but will happily facilitate the early discharge of one of their major donor’s key employees,” Charline said. She didn’t stop dialing, but she slowed down, tapping each number in a rhythmic, methodical way.

The nurse blanched. “I can go see if a doctor is here who can sign the papers.”

She retreated out of the room. Beth was stifling a chuckle, but Charline could see the effort involved in not laughing out loud.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Beth said. “I was arguing with her for like twenty minutes. She wouldn’t budge. You come in here and in twenty seconds she’s moving like her life depends on it. How?”

“It’s all about the smile,” Charline said. “You smile first, to show you are a nice, reasonable person. And then you stick the knife in.”

It took almost half an hour before they were on their way again. The doctors were not as easy to run roughshod over as the young nurse, but Charline assured them that Beth would be under constant medical supervision while she was out, and that they would report back if her condition deteriorated.

She watched Beth during the whole process. The woman was back up on her feet again, which was pretty miraculous by itself. But she was more pale than Charline liked, and she was clearly tired. The nanites might do a great job healing her, but the energy and materials to do the repairs still had to come from somewhere. The accelerated healing process was taking a lot out of her.

“Shall we head straight back to the lab?” Charline asked. “Or can I get you some real food first?”

“Food. Please,” Beth replied.

Pete was perfectly happy to help them out with that. Take out from a local Tex-Mex place solved the hunger issues, and then they were airborne again. Eating seemed to help. Beth was already looking more pink and less worn than she had. Charline would have to keep an eye on her, though. It was going to be tough keeping Beth from overdoing it. She had a habit of chronically taking too much on even when she was healthy. She doubted that her friend would allow even a severe injury to slow her down as much as she should.

“You think the results will be in by the time we get there?” Beth asked.

“Maybe?” Charline said. “I hope so anyway. I’m ready to get out of here.”

The sense of danger she’d felt since arriving on Earth hadn’t faded. It had only receded a bit, still lingering in the back of her mind like a stalking predator. She thought about everything she had seen. People were on edge. More so than she remembered. It was subtle, an undercurrent. But it was there, like the smell of lightning before a big storm. It wasn’t just the close call in low Earth orbit. It was like everyone she met down on the surface was a little more wary than she thought was reasonable. Charline knew that things were bad on Earth with the energy crisis, and getting worse. But what she was seeing was enough to put her on guard.

The sooner they could land, collect results, and get back into space, the better Charline would feel.

She called in to Linda as they were cruising in toward the campus. Her phone rang a couple of times before anyone answered.

“Charline - are you on your way back?” Linda asked as she picked up.

“Yes, we’re arriving shortly.”

“I’ll meet you on the roof. My first tests were…” she paused, then went on. “Interesting. I have a lot of questions to ask you.”

“I’m sure,” Charline replied. How many of those questions could she answer without giving away too much? This was going to be tricky. But that’s why John had sent her in the first place, right? She was good at managing people, almost as good as she was at tinkering with computers. They were a lot alike, after all. Do this, get that result. In some ways, human beings were even more predictable in their responses than computers.

Especially computers like Majel, John’s AI. It was loaded into the Satori, and something odd had happened while they were away on their unexpected trip. Charline still wasn’t sure what to make of it. Majel had begun acting unpredictable. She’d done things that Charline could only call spontaneous. They’d been forced to merge her systems with the alien hardware that made up the backbone of the ship Satori had been built around. They’d been pretty sure that those systems were hardware, without any software still operative. But what if they were wrong? There was a lot of work to be done, to see what precisely was up with their AI at this point.

“We’ll be down soon,” she said into her phone, bringing her head back to the present.

“I’ll meet you on the roof again,” Linda said. “See you there!’

A few minutes later the engines were spinning down again. Charline could see Linda inside the glass room, waving excitedly. She’d found something interesting all right. No shock there! The black goo was something completely different from anything Charline had ever heard of before.

“Thanks for the great trip,” Charline said. “Almost as quick as the last two.”

“I think stopping for food slowed us down a few minutes,” Pete said.

“But it was so worth it,” Beth said, patting her belly and chuckling.

As they were getting out of the air-car, Cory bumped into Charline.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

She opened her mouth to protest. He’d slipped something into her pocket - she’d felt his hand slide it there. What the hell did he think he was doing? Was he trying to bug her? Plant something? It was a clumsy attempt, if he was trying to by sneaky.

Before she said anything, she slid her hand down to see what it was he’d slipped her.

It was a small pistol.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at his face, trying to read him. He gave her the tiniest of head shakes in return.

What was going on here? Who should she trust? She had a sense of impending danger again, coming ever closer. Still, it felt damned good to have a firearm on her. She was almost as good a shot with a pistol as with a rifle. If it came down to a fight, she could make excellent use of the weapon. And she had a feeling Cory knew that too.

“No problem,” she said. She’d keep her mouth shut. For now, at least.

Eight

Beth winced as she stepped from the air-car. Her confidence at the hospital hadn’t been all bluster, but she was still more sore than she’d let on. The wound where the alien gun punched a hole in her chest was closed, but it still ached like mad. And it might have been her imagination but it felt like her whole body was itching from the machines crawling around inside her. She wanted to scratch, but was masterfully ignoring the urge. So far.

Nanites spooked her. There were little robots running around inside her, messing with things. Sure, they were fixing the injury. Knitting together new tissue faster than her body could possibly do by itself. It was an amazing technology, and from an engineering perspective Beth was thrilled. She was less excited to be the subject of that technology. It was creepy, knowing that thousands of little droids were running around in her bloodstream. The nanites would all shut off and die in about twenty-four hours. That was a precaution, a failsafe that kept them from running amuck longer than they were supposed to. It was still about twenty three hours longer than she wanted them there.

She glanced at her watch again. Twenty-one hours and nineteen minutes left. Damn it.

Charline was already chatting with the woman who'd come to meet them. The lab coat and jeans she wore made her seem like Beth's sort of person. If she'd been feeling better she would have liked to chat, to take her measure a bit. As things stood she was just as happy to let Charline take the lead on this one.

"Not here," Charline was saying, her poker face on. She didn't have all that good a poker face. Beth could see the excitement she was working hard to contain. "Let's talk in the lab."

"Right!" Linda replied. "Of course. Follow me, please."

Beth followed the other two into the elevator, still feeling sluggish. Between the heat, the nanites, and the remnants of her injury, she was willing to admit at least privately that she was nearly wiped out. It would be a cold day in hell before she said that aloud, of course. Beth noted as she stepped onto the elevator that the security team stayed up on the roof. Pete was talking into his radio as the doors slid closed. Cory was nowhere to be seen. Where had he gotten off to?

The lift had barely begun to slip downward into the building when the lights blinked, a deep red tone replacing the normal lights. A siren began to sound. The elevator stuttered, then started to descend rapidly again.

“What’s going on?” Charline asked.

“Fire alarm,” Linda replied. “Nothing to worry about. It’s probably another damned drill.”

Beth wasn’t so sure. Having an alarm go off right as they arrived tickled her paranoia buttons. They’d been through too much recently for her to trust that everything was always going to be as it seemed. Even here on Earth. Something was up. This fire drill was too convenient.

“How do we stop this thing?” Beth said.

Linda stared at her. “You can’t. It’ll stop on the ground floor, and then we need to evacuate the building until they clear it.”

“Which everyone knows, right?” Beth said. “All personnel are going to be removed from the building? Everyone?”

“Sure,” Linda said.

“Even security?” Beth added.

“Most of them, yes. Why?” Linda asked.

Beth shared a look with Charline. She could see from the other woman’s eyes that she agreed. A glance upward showed her a hatch that might work for escape. “We need to get up to the lab. Now.”

“You’re not in any shape for this,” Charline protested.

“I’ll manage,” Beth replied. She would, somehow. Her chest still hurt, and she wanted nothing more than to just lay down and rest, but she’d bull her way through this the same way she did everything else. “Give me a boost?”

Charline made a cup with her hands. Beth stepped up onto them, shoving up hard at the hatch set into the center panel of the elevator ceiling. The hatch popped open and Beth dragged herself through. The movement hurt her chest enough to pull a gasp from her.

“Your turn,” Charline was saying to Linda in the elevator below. Linda’s head appeared a moment later. Beth helped her up onto the top of the lift, then reached back down to clasp Charline’s hand.

The strain of lifting her friend was too much. The pain made stars streak across her vision, and she almost lost hold entirely. She would have dropped Charline back into the elevator, but then Linda was there, grabbing Charline’s other hand and helping her upward. Beth lay back for a few breaths, trying to get the pain under control again.

“We need to get off this thing,” Charline said. She was watching the floors slip by. Beth wondered how many were left until they reached the ground. There couldn’t be many.

She stood and slammed the hatch closed. If anyone was waiting down below, there was no sense telling them how they’d gotten out. “We’re going to have to jump.”

“You two are nuts,” Linda said. “You’re going to get me fired.”

“You’re about to have a lot more to worry about than your job,” Beth replied. The timing was too precise. She remembered seeing Pete on his radio. Who had he been calling? John hired the best for everything, but had he slipped up this time? It didn’t have to be Pete, of course. Anyone watching would have known when they were on the lift, would have been able to pull the alarm, would have been able to predict precisely how the building would respond to the fire drill.

Beth waited until the next floor was coming up and jumped onto the narrow ledge in front of it. She landed just to one side of a set of doors. That would be their ticket out of the shaft. The other two women jumped a moment later, catching their balance on the edge. The elevator continued to drop away below them. They were committed now. A fall would be messy and probably fatal.

Linda was clutching to a steel structural beam and panting hard, her eyes wide. Beth felt a moment of sympathy for her. The scientist was used to an ordinary life where shit like this didn’t happen. Charline on the other hand was alert and ready, her fingers already fishing into the gap between the doors. Charline gave Beth a quick nod to tell her that she was ready to move. They’d been through enough together to both keep their cool in a crisis.

“Help me pull this thing open?” Charline asked.

Beth reached over. Charline had managed to create a little gap in the doors, and together they widened it enough that they were able to slip through. Beth looked back. Linda still hadn’t moved from the spot she’d jumped to. She clung, trembling, to the steel bar.

“Linda, come on,” Charline said, holding out a hand. The woman didn’t move.

“We have to leave her,” Beth said. “There’s no time.”

Below them, she could hear the elevator ding as it hit the ground floor and the doors slid open. There was a set of soft sounds like someone smacking a pillow multiple times. Then voices speaking urgently to one another.

“Linda, right now!” Charline hissed.

The frightened woman reached out and took her hand. Charline hauled her through the gap, out into the hallway.

“Those were silenced pistols,” Charline said. “Or air guns, maybe. Hard to tell which at this distance. We need to get up to the lab.”

Charline would know. Beth had seen her in action. Maybe Andy knew firearms better - maybe. But she had no doubt her friend was right. Someone had been down there waiting for them. Whether those people had been planning to kill them or capture them was still a question, but Beth didn’t want to wait around to find out which it might be.

“Can you lead us to the lab?” Beth asked. Linda still seemed upset, but she’d lost the wild-eyed look she had in the shaft.

“Yes,” Linda said. “Stairs are this way.”

She led them down the hall a short distance and opened a door into a stairwell. There was no one in sight. Charline took the lead, pulling a pistol from her pocket. It was a small automatic, snub nosed but still deadly looking in her hands.

“Where did you get that?” Beth asked.

“One of the security guys slipped it in my pocket.”

“Got another one?” Beth asked.

Charline shook her head and began climbing the stairs, leading with the gun.

Nine

Dan wheeled after John into his friend’s private office. The appointments of the place were pretty basic. Dominating the view was a massive screen John had imported from Earth. Most of the base had been built on site, 3-D printed from lunar materials. There was plenty of aluminum and silicon here for creating things, and John’s premise was to build as much of the base as possible from native sources, rather than trying to lift everything out of Earth’s gravity. He’d saved enormous expense that way.

But he’d brought the massive screen up anyway, at great cost. Every pound was pricey, and that screen weighed a lot. Dan knew how much John loved the thing though. Right now it was set to an image from a camera outside, with the sun barely peeking over the horizon of the moon, casting long shadows from every rock and ridge. He found himself staring at the view, expecting the shadows to slowly move. They wouldn’t, of course. Not noticeably, anyway. The lunar day was about two weeks long, followed by another two weeks of night. Those shadows would stay the same for hours. He shook himself and rolled over next to John’s desk.

“You said you had something to tell me,” Dan said.

“To show you,” John corrected. “Yes.”

He tapped a keyboard on his desk, and the image on the big screen changed. The lunar surface was replaced with a dozen rows of colored squares. Dan recognized the patterns at once. They were the colored symbols for how the alien wormhole drive stored data about travel destinations. The twelve sets of symbols where the ones Majel - their AI - had been able to pull from the ancient alien database.

Desperate to save the ship from an impossible situation, Dan had yanked one set of those coordinates and opened a wormhole to that destination. The jump had worked. The drive had taken them to another star system, hundreds of light years from Earth. And then they’d managed to reverse the wormhole and jump back home.

One set of those codes seemed to bring a ship to Earth’s system. One represented their in-system jump, which had landed them almost inside of Jupiter’s atmosphere by accident. Another led to the dangerous system they’d investigated, where they’d met the Naga - and almost died. But the other nine…?

“Do you know where they go?” Dan breathed.

“Not yet,” John said. “I’ve got Majel working on it, but there simply isn’t enough information to decode their system yet. We’ve made some real progress almost by accident, though. While we were working on the cubes Charline rescued from the ancient city though, we found these.”

He tapped a key and a new set of symbols appeared. Similar to the first - same style of symbol and patterns of colors. But this time there were dozens of them. Scores of them. Then hundreds of them as they continued to scroll down the screen. An impossible array of coordinates, destinations that had to be different star-systems and planets that the ancient alien race had explored.

“It looks like at least a small bit of the data she rescued was some sort of atlas. Maybe a book for educating children, for all I know. But locations,” John said.

“Lots of them,” Dan said.

“A universe full of them. All potentially out there waiting for us to explore them,” John said. “If we dare.”

For a long moment Dan stared at the screen, pondering what it all meant. A thousand or so years ago, some civilization had explored all those places, visited all of those stars, and mapped them all out. Now they were gone, the last remnants of their technology rotting beneath ruined cities on a dead world, or hidden in smashed bases like the one John had discovered by accident on Luna.

Those aliens had done so much. They had power sources beyond anything people on Earth had dreamed up. Their wormhole drive was so advanced it might as well be magic. They had used their technology to explore who knew how many solar systems. And despite all that, they were gone, wiped from the face of the universe as if they’d never been. Perhaps they were still out there somewhere, but surely they would not have simply abandoned the cities on that planet had they been simply moving on to a new place. Something terrible had happened to them.

Was it worth the risk, to try to pick up where they had left off? To try to see the things they had seen, to explore in their footsteps? They had already discovered that the universe beyond their star could be a deadly place. But the explorer in him told Dan that they had to go and try anyway. Wasn’t that what humanity always did when it came across a new frontier?

In his heart, Dan knew the answer had to be yes.

“When do we go?” he asked John.

“Soon. We need to fix the ship, first. And we will need more time for Majel to analyze the code structure before we can get even a vague idea where these coordinates lead,” John said, waving his hand at the screen. “But I agree that we need to get back out there. We already know we’re not alone. We know we’re behind the curve, when it comes to technology. If the Naga had discovered Earth before we discovered them, well…”

“We might well have ended up in the same shape as that dust planet we saw,” Dan said.

“Precisely. We need to close that gap, and fast. Allies would help, too. There have to be other races out there, other inhabited worlds. Maybe some of them are more friendly than the Naga.”

“Maybe. But we’ll need to be more careful, too. We don’t want to lead a potential enemy right back home. You have any ideas on preventing that?” Dan asked.

Before his friend could reply, an alarm sounded over the base intercom system. Dan froze. There had to be something very wrong for that alarm to be going off. It was reserved for massive calamity. John tapped his console, speaking quickly into the radio microphone embedded there. “Caraway here. What’s going on?”

“Emergency in the special projects lab, sir. We need you here right away,” came the reply.

Dan began wheeling for the door before John could respond. The doors opened for him and he started down the hall, all thoughts about exploration momentarily set aside. John caught up and passed him. The special projects lab was where they were storing all the alien artifacts they’d acquired. If something was wrong there, it could be deadly for all of them.

Ten

The sound of someone running down the steps toward them echoed loudly through the stairwell. Charline stopped in her tracks, aiming her pistol at the point where the person would first become visible. Behind her she heard Beth hiss with frustration. Beth wasn’t used to being helpless, but without a weapon there wasn’t much she could do at that moment. There was no question which of them was the better shot. Charline knew she’d keep herself and Linda out of harms way. Everything was in her hands now.

Why the hell had Cory slipped her this gun? Had he known shit was about to go down here? If so, why help them? If the security detail were on the side of whoever was after them, then why arm them? Too damned many questions, and no way to get the answers. She focused on clearing her mind and sighting down the barrel of her gun.

A man in thick glasses and a lab coat rounded the corner. He saw her, saw the pistol, and gave a squeaking noise. He raised his hands in an automatic alarmed response.

“Don’t shoot!”

Charline kept the pistol trained on him and stepped up closer. Once she could read his badge - he was a grad student, and a lab tech in the building, it said - she waved him on. He rushed down the stairs, almost tripping and tumbling forward in his haste to get away. She sympathized with the notion. She would rather be just about anywhere but here. Not without the sample, though. If that fell into the wrong hands, it could cause irreparable devastation. There was no way she was leaving without it.

It was a good bet she wasn’t the only one on their way to try to acquire it, either.

She reached the thirty-second floor. That was where Linda’s lab had been. The door out of the stairwell had a small glass pane. Charline peered through, but the hall looked clear.

“Which way from here?” she asked Linda.

“To the left. The guards should be at their post,” she said.

Beth cocked an eyebrow. “Even with the fire alarms?”

“Yeah,” Linda said. “They have a secure room where they’ll sit until the alarm is done or they are ordered to leave by the fire department. We have classified military work going on in that lab. It’s never left unsecured. So I don’t think there is much to worry about…”

Her voice trailed off as they rounded the corner and looked down the hall toward the lab in question. Charline recognized the guards she’d seen during her earlier visit. They were both dead, pools of blood spreading from beneath them.

“Oh my god,” Linda whispered, her hands going to her mouth.

Charline swept down the hall in a fluid motion, her pistol still at the ready. With her left hand she reached down to touch the neck of first one guard and then the other, checking their carotids. The bodies were still warm, but there was no pulse. She wasn’t surprised. There was so much blood that she hadn’t thought either of them could still be alive. She slipped a second pistol from one of the guard’s holsters. Neither of them had even had time to draw their weapons before they were gunned down.

“They’re dead, but it was recent,” she said.

Beth moved past her to check the door. The biometric console had been ripped from the wall. Charline watched her begin fiddling with what was left of the device.

“It’s been hacked,” Beth said.

“Can you open it?” Charline asked.

Beth glanced over her shoulder and rolled her eyes, which Charline took as a positive. She went and grabbed the third pistol and walked over to Linda. “Take this, you might need it.”

Linda looked at the weapon like it was a snake. “I can’t! I’ve never used one… No.” She shook her head and took a step back.

“Fine, but then stay out of the way,” Charline said.

“Door is going to pop when I unlock it,” Beth warned.

“Better be ready then,” Charline said. She passed Beth the spare gun. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

Charline took up a position just outside the doors, one pistol in each hand. This was risky as hell. She inhaled a deep breath, trying to calm her rattling nerves. How many enemies were inside? Were there any noncombatants? Was she going to shoot anything that might blow them all up? Was there someone even now training his gun on the door the same way she was?

Too many questions. She inhaled again, exhaling her fears as best she could in a smooth breath.

“Do it,” Charline said.

Beth clicked something together on the console, igniting a small spark that made her swear. The doors popped open, and Charline went into motion. She flowed forward with a handful of economic steps, striding inside the room and counting targets as she moved. No one was waiting for her just inside the doors. There were eight men in the room that she could see. All of them were armed. That was going to be a problem. She needed to even the odds a lot, quickly.

The raiders didn’t seem like they were expecting company, which was one mark for her side. She fired the gun in her left hand first, taking one of them in the shoulder. Her right hand tracked a separate target independently. Her aim was better with this hand, taking down the target with a well placed shot to the chest.

Charline stepped sideways, gliding to the left so that she wasn’t framed in the doorway any longer. She dipped down, taking some cover behind a desk, and kept moving. Bullets whizzed by over her head or thudded into the furniture.

Then Beth opened fire from the cover of the doorway. Confused, most of the men swung their guns toward the new target. That was what Charline had been waiting for. She rose from behind her cover, and it was just like a shooting range. Only one of the men was even facing directly toward her. He died first, bullets from both of her guns taking him in the torso. Then she swung her pistols out, each seeking a new target. Two more men went down.

Not everyone could shoot like this. Charline had discovered early in her target shooting career that she was ambidextrous. She’d begun playing around with firing with either hand. Then as a joke her instructor asked her to try two pistols at once. By the time she was done shooting, nobody was laughing. She’d been able to obliterate both sets of targets at the same time. Somehow her eyes and hands coordinated in a way that let her track multiple targets with an ease that most people couldn’t replicate.

Her instructor had looked at her and bluntly said he never wanted to be in a firefight against her. She’d laughed at the time. After all, she shot for fun and trophies. Charline could never have imagined using a gun for violence back then.

But here she was, the specter of death. She fired again, missing with one shot and taking someone in the arm with the other.

The men she fired on were screaming, yelling to one another. Bullets zipped her way through the air but she was still moving. A moving target was more difficult to shoot, Andy had told her. Keep in motion and even at a slow pace you’d be surprised how hard it was to hit you. People panic when the bullets fly, and they can’t track a moving target well. Most shooters would tend to stay put while they fired, too, just like these men were. It made them easier targets for her guns.

“Go, go, go!” someone was shouting from the other side of the room. There was a loud bang and the crashing sound of a lot of glass shattering, and then the surviving raiders were running, fleeing away from her. She took another one down with a shot to the back of his head. That was three dead, and she had at least winged all five of the survivors. Two of them were so badly wounded that their friends were dragging them toward the smashed window.

Then the clatter of automatic fire got her attention. She dove for the floor, tracer fire flashing overhead where she’d just been standing. She couldn’t move from this spot, not even to get off another shot at her attacker. Little bursts of fire kept her pinned down. First there were two guns shooting. Then there was one. And then it was silent in the lab.

Charline rose back to her feet, pistols coming up at the ready. They’d smashed out a window. A hover-car was floating just outside, and the last gunman was jumping across the short gap to the car. He looked back over his shoulder at her.

It was Pete. Damn him. She fired, but her bullets ricocheted off the air-car’s glass windshield. Bullet-proof. She raced to the hole they’d blasted - they must have used explosives to blow it open. But by the time she reached the gap the car was already speeding away. From the wing, Pete flashed her a little salute before stepping into the car and closing the hatch.

Charline lowered her pistols and looked around the trashed lab. She had a sinking feeling that they’d accomplished whatever they had come for. If the target had been the black blood she’d brought to Earth, it was about to be a very bad day for the planet.

Eleven

Linda glanced around the mess. It looked like very little of her lab had missed being torn apart. Experiments that had taken months to get underway, gone. Equipment that cost more than she earned in a decade, trashed. She was so totally fired. Linda wasn’t sure which thought was worse, that she had lost months of research on half a dozen projects. Or that as soon as her bosses saw the lab, she was going to get the fastest pink slip the University had ever issued.

That wasn’t fair, but it was how the cookie crumbled. Somebody’s head was going to roll for the destruction and dead bodies. It wasn’t going to be the people in charge. She knew enough about how college politics work to know they would find a way to cover their asses. She was going to be left holding the bag for this mess.

She slumped to the floor in the middle of the carnage, holding her head in her hands. Lab trashed. Job toast. Career in shambles, if not yet then soon. Who was gonna hire her after this? She was going to be lucky if she could get a job at Starbucks. Shit.

The sound of someone making a still bigger mess by stirring through the debris roused her a little. She looked up. Charline was sifting through some of the wreckage while Beth worked at getting a computer put back together. Seeing both of them rooting around in the ruin of her life got Linda back on her feet again.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Linda said.

Both women stepped dead at her tone. And rightly so. How dare they go through what was left of her life?

"We need to find the vial," Charline said. She sighed. "We need to know if they took it."

Linda got to her feet and stomped off toward the bio-hazard containment unit. The device was cherry red, an expensive piece of refrigeration and double-layered containment. The front of which had been smashed in. It was empty. All of the samples contained inside were gone. Not just the black stuff these people had dropped off for her to examine, but the ongoing samples from most of her other projects as well.

"If you'd asked, I could have just told you," Linda said. She glared at them. “It’s gone. They took it. This was all about your stupid black shit, wasn't it? They came looking for it, and now my lab is wrecked."

But neither of them were really listening to her anymore. Charline had gone very quiet and gotten very pale at her news. Beth got red instead of pale, turning in a circle and swearing a blue streak. Linda looked back and forth from one of them to the other, trying to figure out their reactions. It was a big deal, sure. But it was one oddball little chemical. She'd lost the results from a half dozen experiments in progress, and they were worried about one little sample? Linda was willing to bet they had more of the stuff, so why were they acting like losing it was the end of the world?

"You gonna tell me what the hell was so special about that goo now?" Linda asked. "Because then I can tell you if I think it's more important than the smashed nanoparticle generator over there. Or the new battery power pack we were developing over there."

Charline opened her mouth as if she was going to start talking, then spread her arms wide before settling them back to her sides. "I can't. Beth, you tell her."

"Tell me what you learned about it," Beth said.

"Why?" Linda said. She sounded a little petulant even to her own ears, which made her wince.

"Tell me!" Beth snapped.

"Oh, fine," Linda said. "You don't need to shout. It's biomechanical in nature."

"Say what?"

"It's an engineered substance. Man made. Created to do a thing. It's cool and all, but the only thing it seems to do is carry oxygen around and reproduce itself when exposed to water," Linda said. That wasn't entirely true. The goo had some other odd properties as well, some stuff she hadn't entirely figured out yet. But for the most part it seemed to carry oxygen and multiply. It was an odd material, like nothing she'd ever seen before. It was hard to imagine what use it might have, though. "But then you already knew all that, since you made it, right?"

"Wrong on oh-so-many counts," Beth said, chuckling to herself. "You want to fill her in, Charline, or shall I?"

"It's not man-made," Charline said. "Why would we come to a xenobiologist with a man-made substance?"

"As a test?" Linda said. That's more or less what she had been postulating. "To see if you could pass it off as alien in origin? If that’s what you were after, it flunked. It's clearly not purely biological. That stuff was made, not born."

"That matches up with a lot of my guesses," Charline said. "And it means we're in a lot of trouble if we can't get it back."

"The ocean theory?" Beth said. Charline nodded. "I overheard you talking about it when I was fading in and out back on the moon."

"What are you talking about?" Linda asked.

"OK, short version. Since you're never going to repeat this to anyone, and if we don't get the stuff back it's not going to matter anyway," Charline said. "We have a starship capable of instant interstellar travel via wormholes. We travelled to another star system in that ship, recovered that goop from something that looked like a cross between a rat and a lizard."

"Except they stood about this high," Beth said, holding her hand just above her knee level.

"We got away," Charline said. "Barely escaped an alien starship. My hunch is that those aliens - the Naga - seeded the ratzards as a bio-weapon."

"One ratzard gets killed near water, the blood goes in, and pop, the black goo goes wild," Beth said, snapping her fingers.

Linda glanced from one of them to the other, looking for even a single sign that the two of them were pulling her leg. But both of them seemed absolutely serious. Which left only one option. "You're both nuts."

"You got the video?" Beth asked Charline.

"Yes, but..."

"Show her the video."

Charline sighed and popped out her phone. She tapped a few buttons on the screen. Then she tossed the phone to Linda, who snatched it out of the air. A video was primed and ready to play.

Linda hesitated. Part of her was a little curious. What was on the video? Clearly it was supposed to convince her that what they were saying was true. She couldn't imagine anything that would accomplish that, so the whole thing had her wondering what the video showed.

At the same time, neither Beth nor Charline was looking at her right now. Both of them were looking elsewhere. Each of them seemed to be wrestling with their own demons, with some memory that was haunting them, brought to new life by the turn in the conversation. Something about their manner made her hesitate.

She pushed the play button. What flashed across the screen were bits of video, snippets really. It looked like terrible body camera clips. Something that had been hacked together by a person, not a video studio. If they'd been trying to make a convincing fake, they might have actually failed simply by making it too gritty and real-looking.

The video showed a short bit of Beth, in a space suit and almost dying. It showed a dead world, with black oceans and dry, arid soil. It showed a flash of some sort of reptilian predator - were those the animals they were talking about? The things looked terrifying, all sharp teeth and darting movements. Then the video showed a snip of a firefight with some sort of bipedal creature covered with chrome armor. There were more little clips all woven together to make a crude narrative.

The scene ended with an image of Beth, lying pale and bleeding on a steel floor. Someone was putting pressure on a wound on her chest. Someone else was holding a rifle unlike anything Linda had ever seen before.

Linda looked up from the video as it ended. Beth was standing two feet in front of her, staring her in the eye. She pulled down the front of her shirt. The skin above her left breast was red, puckered, held together by bright new tissue and barely starting to heal.

"Just in case you were wondering if that last bit was faked," Beth said.

"All of this..." Linda's voice trailed off.

"Is real, yes," Beth said.

Linda was breathing hard and a little fast. This couldn't all be real. It couldn't be. And yet, it would explain a lot about the black goo that she couldn't account for otherwise. What had surprised her the most about it wasn't that it had been created, but rather how complicated it was. Similar if simpler stuff had been made before. But the detail, the intricate structures involved that she had barely begun parsing through? Those were years beyond what she thought anyone on Earth was capable of. Maybe she'd been right.

“If even a drop of that stuff falls into the ocean, it could spread everywhere,” Charline said. “It could be the end of life on Earth.”

"Which is why you're all gonna be very glad to see me," said a voice from the doorway. Linda didn't know who it was, but Beth and Charline were already raising their guns. She ducked to the floor, praying she could keep out of the way if the bullets started flying again.

Twelve

John reached the lab before Dan. Dan watched his friend yank the door open and then freeze in place just inside the lab. He skidded to a stop beside John, breathing hard from racing down the hall in his wheelchair. Dan had to lean in around John to get a view of what was going on. Even then, it took him a minute to understand the tableau displayed in the room.

The two techs assigned to study the various artifacts they'd brought back were still in the lab, crouched down behind a table. One of them had clearly set off the alarm. Neither of them seemed inclined to pop their heads up any time soon, and from the fresh holes in the wall above their heads they had good reason to be nervous.

Andy was also in the lab. He was very much awake. He was also armed with one of the rifles they'd acquired from the Naga. The weapons fired energy projectiles of some kind, tiny balls of force which could either stun or kill, depending on the weapon's setting. From the holes in the wall, Dan was betting the rifle wasn't set to stun. Andy was aiming the rifle he held at the little terrarium where they'd housed the Naga slug after the doctors pulled from Andy's ear.

But Andy wasn't looking especially stable. His face was deeply flushed. Sweat poured down his face, and his shirt was drenched. His eyes looked wild, and Dan wasn't sure the man was seeing the same things he was. Andy looked lost, like a man who was very far away from home, didn't know how he had gotten here, and didn't know if he'd ever be able to get back.

Still, Andy was his friend. He had to try something. Dan made to wheel forward, but John put gentle pressure on his arm. He looked up at John, who was shaking his head.

"He doesn't know you well enough," John said in a very soft voice. "He could shoot you. Let me try."

"He could shoot you too, and then where would we be?" Dan replied. But John had a point. If it came to dodging shots, Dan was about the worst choice possible. It wasn’t like he could easily dive aside to avoid gunfire. John would at least stand a chance, if it came to that.

"Probably with you in charge, God help the rest of them," John muttered, chuckling to himself. Then he stepped forward into the room to face Andy, who whirled in place at the sound of his approach. The muzzle of his rifle lifted away from the slug’s small prison and leveled directly at John.

Dan glanced at his watch. Less than a minute since the alarm sounded. Security would be there in another minute, tops. Once that happened this mess would turn into a stand-off, both sides armed. With Andy in the state he was, that scenario was going to end badly for someone. Probably more than one person. John had to hurry, but at the same time he couldn’t rush things. A sudden move would probably be enough to get Andy to pull the trigger.

“Andy, it’s John. What are you doing?”

The barrel of the gun rose slightly. John kept moving forward anyway. Dan could barely breathe. Andy wasn’t seeing what was in front of him anymore. Dan didn’t know what sort of visions he was having, but he knew the man would never raise a weapon at John. They were close. The bond they shared was even deeper than some fathers and sons. Was John going to be able to reach him, or would this end in tragedy? Dan opened his mouth to tell John to get back, and then closed it again without speaking the words. Andy would never forgive himself if he shot John. But John would likewise never forgive himself if he allowed Andy to come to harm because he was too frightened to save him. They’d found all of that out the hard way, back on the alien world.

“Andrew, I am here to help,” John said. He added some more force behind his words. “I have never left you. I never will. I will always come to help you. Let me help now.”

The muzzle of the gun wavered. For a moment Dan thought he saw sanity flashing across Andy’s face, like he was seeing what was really there for a moment. Then it was gone again, replaced by the same crazed look he’d been wearing before.

If he rushed forward right now, maybe he could crash his wheelchair into John and knock him aside before Andy fired? Or provide enough distraction that Andy would have too many targets, and John could close with him and disarm him? Part of the problem was going to be disarming their top close combat specialist in the first place. If Andy wanted to, he could kill both of them without breaking a sweat.

“Andrew,” John said, his voice soft and beseeching. “Please.”

The rifle wavered again, then dipped.

“John?” Andy said. “I feel so lost… So far away…”

Then he dropped the rifle and crumpled to his knees. John rushed forward to catch him before he hit the floor, cradling the young man in his arms.

“It’s all right, I’ve got you,” John said.

Dan heaved a huge sigh of relief. If he’d fired, Andy would never have forgiven himself. They had to figure out what the hell was going on with him. Before he hurt someone, or himself. He looked at the tank that had been the center of Andy’s attention before they arrived. The little alien slug was still there. It had ignored the dirt half of the terrarium, making immediately for the side they’d made into a watery pool. They had no idea what sort of environment the thing required to survive outside a host, so it made sense to give it options and hope for the best.

His eyes narrowed, watching the thing. Dan had the uncanny sense that it was able to see him somehow too, despite it having no eyes. They knew so damned little about it. Was it somehow responsible for what was happening to Andy, even now that it had been removed from his ear? It seemed like that was the case. After all, Andy had come to this place, and threatened the thing with a weapon. Whether he was acting because he knew the alien slug was hurting him or out of some sort of instinctive reaction was unclear. But to Dan there was no longer any doubt. Somehow that alien creature was still hurting his friend. They had to find a way to put a stop to it before someone was killed.

Thirteen

Charline recognized Cory at once. He stood in the doorway to the lab, still dressed in the black suit he’d been wearing when she saw him earlier. He looked a bit more rumpled now, but still wore a wicked grin. That grin vanished instantly when she raised her pistols and aimed at him. He raised his hands, showing her they were both empty.

“Whoa,” he said. “I’m on your side.”

“That’s what we thought about your boss, too. Until he busted into the lab,” Charline snapped.

“I gave you that gun, remember?” Cory replied.

She did. It had been a mystery before, but was just as confusing now. “Why?”

“Because I could tell something was up. I didn’t know what, though. Not until it was too late,” Cory said. “Those guys I was with - I’d never seen them before today. I was a few minutes late showing up for the detail. I had to rush over, it was a last minute call from John, he said he wanted extra manpower on site,” Cory said. “When I got there, those goons were waiting on the tarmac for you. I’d never seen them before, which raised some suspicions. But I don’t know everyone John hires for security.”

Charline took all this in quietly. He could be telling the truth. There was really only one way to find out. She needed to ask John.

“Beth, can you set up a call to John? I think we’re going to need some help on this anyway. And he can verify Cory’s story,” she said.

“Smart,” Cory said. He was still keeping his hands where she could see them, which she personally thought was also smart.

“What changed?” Charline asked him. “How’d you know?”

“Nothing. They were playing everything right. They knew all our security procedures, and everything looked fine. I just still had misgivings. And John said you could handle yourself, so I figured having a firearm might help you out if things went sideways,” Cory said. He glanced around the room. “Looks like I was right.”

“You were,” Charline said. She lowered the pistols. They were still in her hands, but aiming a gun at the guy seemed a little over the top if he was telling the truth. If he was one of the bad guys, why would he still be here? They’d even pulled their wounded and dead men out, under the cover of the automatic gunfire. They’d been careful to leave very little behind. Just some splashes of blood on the floor, and the ruin of the lab itself.

“They tried to shoot me as soon as you left the roof,” he said. “I had another pistol, but they pinned me down until it was too late for me to get in here and help you. I’m sorry.”

Charline was beginning to feel a little warmer to him, despite her reservations. “At least you tried.”

“Listen,” Cory said. “This is a military lab. The fire drill kept people out for a few minutes, but this place is going to be crawling with security in no time. We need to get you out of here.”

“How?” Charline asked.

“I’ve got a flyer on the way. You want to find those guys, right?”

Charline thought fast. He wasn’t wrong. She was surprised that security hadn’t already busted in here. Once they arrived, they’d detain everyone present. There would be questions, lots of them. They might even face arrest, since there was no way to explain what had happened without giving away far too much information. Even the best case scenario would slow them down far too much. There was little trail to begin with - she didn’t even know where to start looking. But whatever clues they might have would be dead cold by the time they were released. It would be too late to do anything.

“I don’t even know where to start looking,” Charline admitted. She’d failed. Her main task was to keep the black goo safe, and she blew it. She’d known from the beginning that she was the wrong person for this job. She’d tried to tell John as much. And now the worst had come to pass.

“I put a tracker on their air-car before they tried shooting me. Just in case.”

“Shit, really?” Charline’s eyes widened. Maybe they had a shot at tracking the bastards down after all. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“I just did. Come with me - the flyer will be on the roof any minute.”

“I’m getting a response from the base,” Beth said, holding up her tablet. “But they’re saying John is indisposed right now. Some kind of emergency up there. You trust this guy?”

Charline thought about it for a moment. Strangely, she did. What he was saying rang true. “Yes.”

“Then lets go,” Beth replied. “They’ll fill John in ASAP and get us some backup as soon as they can. But for now, I say we go after these bastards and get back what they stole. Before things go even more sideways than they already have.”

Cory started out the door, Beth right behind him. Charline picked her way through the mess to follow, then stopped at a tug on her arm. It was Linda. She was shaking, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Charline felt a rush of sympathy for the woman. She knew what it was like to have your entire life turned upside down in an instant.

“You OK?” Charline asked.

“No,” Linda replied, wiping a tear away from her face. She drew her lips into a determined line. “But I will be. I want to help.”

Charline hesitated. “I don’t know that it’s a good idea…”

“Do you know shit about xenobiology?” Linda asked, clipping off each word sharply. Her face lost a lot of the fragility Charline had seen in it a moment before, taking on stubborn lines.

“No,” Charline replied.

“So if anything goes wrong in recovering this goo, don’t you think you ought to have someone on hand who can maybe do something about it?”

“People coming up the stairs,” Beth called from the doorway. “We’ve got to go now!”

Linda grasped Charline’s wrist in a tight grip. “You people have torn up my life, messed up my lab, and generally screwed up a pretty good thing I had going here. I want to see this through.”

It was time for a decision. Beth was right. There was no time left. They needed to get the hell out of here. She looked into Linda’s eyes. Just a few minutes ago, she’d been practically falling apart, but there was a new determination in her look that gave Charline pause. Linda wasn’t wrong. She could be a help - if she was really up to it. Or she could make things a hell of a lot worse… And there was no way to know in advance which she would be. Charline had to make a guess on the spot. Either path was a gamble.

“OK, you’re in. Now run!” Charline said. She took off after Beth, hitting the hallway and sprinting up the stairs toward the roof. Linda followed close behind.

Fourteen

Andrew began stirring, and John rushed to his bedside. He wanted to be right there when he woke. It had been a rough couple of hours since Andrew passed out in the lab, cradled in John’s arms. Security had arrived just seconds before a medical team. They’d loaded him onto a gurney and rushed him back upstairs to the main hospital wing, where he’d been under close medical supervision since.

All of Andrew’s vital signs were stable. There was nothing obviously wrong with the man. An MRI showed nothing unusual going on. His EKG was clean. The doctors were baffled. There was clearly something wrong with their patient. He’d passed out twice, had seizures associated with the first event, and been hallucinating during the second. But once again he was resting quietly, all the instruments and tests they could perform showing a man who was just asleep. Except nothing would wake him up, and John wondered what sort of shape Andrew was going to be in when he did finally rouse again.

John wished that he’d had the foresight to bring up systems to scan the brain on a more detailed level. He was willing to bet that there was a lot of unusual activity going on between Andrew’s synapses. Things the regular scans simply couldn’t measure. Everything started when they’d withdrawn the alien from Andrew’s ear. Up until then he’d been tired, sore, and injured, but his mental health had been fine. The strange behaviors and passing out were new symptoms, and they’d begun when the thing was removed.

The slug-like creature was telepathic. They knew that much from Andrew’s description. It projected the spoken words of beings around it into its host’s head as thoughts, translated into language the host could understand. If the thing could project into a mind, it stood to reason that perhaps it could impact the mind as well.

As much as he hated the idea, they might have to kill the slug to save Andrew. The only thing that had stayed his hand this long was that he didn’t know what effect killing the thing might have. If they were still bound together, then what repercussions might the death of one have on the other? He didn’t know. He had no way to find out except to risk it, which made it the option of last resort.

Andrew stirred and opened his eyes.

“You all right?” John asked him. Andrew looked calm, normal again. John couldn’t imagine being more glad. “You gave us a scare.”

“What happened?” Andrew asked. “I remember some things, but they’re foggy.”

“You tried to shoot the space slug,” Dan said from the other side of the bed. “And for a moment there I thought you were going to shoot John.”

“Shit. I was hoping that was just another part of the bad dreams,” Andrew said. “I’m so sorry, John. I never would have…”

“Shh. You didn’t. It’s OK,” John replied. It was more important to find out what was going on. “What sort of bad dreams?”

Andrew's eyes took on a haunted look. Whatever the dreams were, they were disturbing him a great deal. What was going on between him and the alien life-form?

"I keep dreaming of water," Andrew said. "Oceans of it. Waves pounding on surf, and currents running through reefs."

"That doesn't sound much like nightmare material," Dan commented with a grin. "Unless there is a big shark involved?"

"No, there's no shark," Andrew said. "Some big, strange fishes swimming around, but no sharks. What bothers me isn't the images of the ocean. Those feel like home, like someplace I've missed. Even though I've never actually seen them. Is this making any sense at all?"

"Some, yes," John said. He kept his voice calm, soothing, and Andrew's agitation abated a little. "Keep talking. I need to hear as much of this as you can remember."

"Well, it's not the ocean that is the bad part of the dream. That's the good part," Andrew continued. His voice broke. "The problem is that I miss it. I miss it like it's a part of my soul that's been ripped from me. And I don’t even understand why.”

Andrew burst into uncontrollable tears, sobbing and unable to stop. Dan started back with alarm, unsure what to do to help. John grimaced. He had some sense of what was going on with Andrew. And it wasn't good. If it kept on as it had been, it might be enough to break his mind somehow, to permanently damage him.

John reached over and cradled the sobbing young man in his arms, crooning soothing noises to him. The rocking motion seemed to help him find a little peace. A doctor had already noticed his distress and was filling a syringe with some drug to help Andrew calm down. The doctor caught John's eye and tilted his head, holding the syringe up where John could see it. John nodded slowly, giving his assent.

The doctor added the medication to Andrew's IV line, a few drips at a time until the entire amount was released into his bloodstream. It didn't take long for Andrew to relax after that. His eyes fluttered, then closed.

"Ativan," the doctor said. "But we can't keep him on that dose indefinitely. We need a better solution."

"I know," John said, slowly letting go of Andrew and laying him back on the bed. The man he thought of like a son more often than not was asleep at last. But would those dreams be good ones? Or more of the emotional trauma he'd been experiencing in his sleep? He'd do anything to help Andrew. Literally anything at all. There had to be a way.

"Flashing lights," Andrew muttered in his sleep. "Symbols. Images. Colors. Red, green. Green, yellow. Blue. Blue. White. Blue."

John froze. It couldn't be. Flashing lights. In colored patterns. He knew where he’d seen things like what Andrew was describing, but it wasn’t possible. John looked over at Dan and saw his friend's eyes getting very wide. He'd come to the same conclusion. If they were right, then everything they had assumed about the alien slug wasn’t just wrong - it was horribly, terribly wrong.

The alien was sending Andrew telepathic coordinates for a wormhole jump.

Dan and John reconvened their meeting in the special projects lab a few minutes later. They were both staring at the small tank where the slug crawled along through the artificial pond. It looked a lot like an earth slug, except that it shimmered in rainbow colors when the light hit it. More like fish scales than the skin of a slug or snail. What manner of creature was it?

"You think it's sending jump coordinates," Dan said.

"So do you," John replied. The things Andrew had been talking about were too specific for it to be anything else.

"Does that mean it's sentient?" Dan asked. He reached out to tap the glass, thought better of it and withdrew his hand.

"I don't know," John said. He'd been thinking the same thing, but wanted Dan’s thoughts unclouded by his own observations. "Why would you think that?"

"Why else would it have jump coordinates?"

"All sorts of reasons,” John said. "It could just be parroting back things it has seen or heard. Something like a computer, with a bit of data still stuck in RAM."

"I suppose," Dan said. "But that stuff about water, and feeling like home... It sure sounded to me like Andy was feeling what the slug there was feeling. It misses home. And then it sends wormhole directions. I mean..."

"Yes, that sounds like sentience," John said. That made everything immeasurably more complicated. If the thing was sentient, was it an ally of the Naga and therefore a potential threat? Or was it a slave, and therefore possibly an ally? How the hell could they communicate with it more directly? It seemed like it was tearing Andrew apart, and had been ever since they'd taken it from his ear.

That might be the answer, of course. Maybe the problem was that they'd taken the thing out in the first place. John shuddered, trying to imagine Andrew's reaction if they put the alien back in his ear. He would never stand for it. But the distance between them didn't seem to be helping much. If anything the contact was growing stronger and more desperate.

His personal radio buzzed. He tapped it, opening a channel. "John here."

"Sir, we're getting a communication from the team on Earth. Some sort of emergency there."

"Understood. Hang tight, I'm sending Dan up to talk with them," John said. He keyed off the microphone. Dan was already on his way to the door.

"I'm sure Beth is fine, Dan," John said.

"Right," Dan agreed. He didn't slow down though. "You coming?"

"Be right up."

Dan wheeled himself the rest of the way out of the room, the doors sliding shut behind him. John shook his head with a wry smile. Those two needed to get back together. Somehow. It was crystal clear that they still cared about each other. Every time Beth was in any sort of danger, Dan went over the top to rescue her. He needed to stop that - to trust her and her ability to save herself. It was distracting him.

Like right now. If Dan hadn't been worried about Beth, he never would have left John alone in the room. He would have questioned why his friend wanted to stay here by himself. What possible motive he might have for being the only one in the lab with the alien creature that was hurting Andrew so much.

It was fortunate that he was distracted, this time. Because it would allow John to act without having to worry about his friend's approval of the plan. He glanced around the room. The tech had already left. No one else was nearby. What he was considering was reckless and dangerous. But he couldn’t think of anything else which was more sure to save Andrew.

John stood up and lifted the lid from the terrarium. He looked inside, peering down at the small creature living in the water below. His hands were sweating from just thinking about what he was doing. Was there any other way? Anything else that might bring a happy resolution, perhaps with a little less risk? He couldn't think of anything.

"For Andrew, I would do anything," John said. "Even this."

He reached down into the pool to grasp the alien thing.

Fifteen

They made it to the flyer before security nabbed them, but it was a near thing. It was a big airship with four rotors keeping it aloft and seats for eight people. Beth had no idea how Cory had brought it in on remote. That was some pretty sophisticated AI required, to bring the flyer in and set it hovering just above the rooftop waiting for them. Which meant this vehicle was worth a ton of money. Who the hell was Cory, that he had access to that sort of equipment on the fly?

Beth sat at the controls. She didn't trust Cory, even if he did seem to be on their side. Whatever was distracting John up on the moon was also keeping them from truly verifying Cory's identity. If he was a plant, then he was a really good actor. But it was still a possibility. What he was telling them right now sounded like bullshit, which wasn't making her trust him more.

"Those are the coordinates," Cory said. He was pointing to his tablet. "That's where their air-car stopped."

"It's the middle of the Gulf of Mexico," Beth said. "There's nothing out there, not even an island nearby."

"A boat, maybe?" Charline asked.

"Can't land a car that big on a boat," Cory corrected her. "Not unless we're talking about an aircraft carrier or something equally large."

"And boats that big are tracked by AIS, which I have up on my display here. There's nothing even vaguely near those coordinates," Beth said.

"Well, it has to be something," Charline said. "They can't have just vanished."

"It is possible they found the transmitter and threw it overboard," Cory said.

That would be bad. The tracking device was their one good lead. If they lost that, then they would be up a creek. Charline might be able to find out who was behind it using computer sleuthing, given long enough. But how much time was that going to cost? Every minute of delay increased the chances that there would be a disaster. If they really had taken the blood sample out into the middle of the ocean, it was the worst possible location Beth could imagine. If that stuff leaked and spilled into the water, it would all be over. Earth’s oceans would die, and then the rest of the planet would follow.

"What about an oil rig?" Linda asked.

They all stopped and looked at her.

"None of you are from Texas, are you?" she asked. “There used to be a ton of them out in the Gulf. Most of them left when the oil went dry there, but a few were just left out there to rust in place. Some of them might still be sturdy enough to land an air-car on."

"They'd make a perfect base for someone who didn't want to be found, too," Charline said. "Not on the maps, not on AIS, and just sitting there so long everyone has pretty much forgotten them."

"Sounds good," Cory said. "I've got a drone on our flyer. A little UAV - short range, but it's got enough to do the job. We can send it out there and take a peek before we arrive."

Beth considered the idea for a moment. It seemed like a good play. Of course, if Cory was working against them that might be just the signal that his friends were waiting for, to let them know he was near. Maybe this was an elaborate plan to catch them all... But she had to start trusting someone, sooner or later.

Trust came hard. She'd tried trusting people before, and it didn't work out well. Now she trusted in herself. And John, usually. Why the hell wasn't he answering the radio, anyway?

"Do it," Charline said.

"You got it," Cory replied. He returned to working on his tablet, and a new whizzing sound started up from the roof above them. "We're off."

Beth was still as worried about what was happening at the lunar base as she was about the mission. John was there. Andrew. Dan. Shouldn't one of them have responded by now? Her guts clenched, her mind going through awful possibilities. What sort of crisis was keeping them from responding for so long?

As if thinking about them made it happen, Beth's tablet chirped for an incoming call. She jumped, looking down at the offending bit of technology. It was the moon base.

"About time," she growled as she picked up the call.

Dan's face appeared on her screen. "You're all right. Thank God."

"We're all right, yeah," Beth said. "Why the hell haven't you been answering our calls?"

"Emergency. Andy. He's having symptoms secondary to his recent injury," Dan said, stressing the last word. "Can't say more over an open line."

"Shit," Beth said, her face crumpling. Andy was a friend. She suddenly regretted the harsh words she'd said a few moments before. "Is he going to be OK?"

"We think so," Dan said. "John and I have some ideas. Now, what's going on with you?"

Charline leaned over Beth's shoulder to speak. "The package we brought down was stolen."

"Shit," Dan said. This time it was his turn to go a few shades more pale. "That's...very bad."

"You don't know the half of it," Beth replied. "It looks like someone infiltrated John's security team and then blew into a military lab to get the thing. Someone has been working this out for a while."

"You think something got leaked?" Dan asked.

"Possible. Or maybe they just figured anything we were bringing down this secretly was worth risking everything to grab. We did sort of spill it ourselves by setting up the meeting with Linda," Beth said. How many possible reasons could there be to send someone down from the moon to hold a secret meeting with a xenobiologist? She could think of a few, and most of them were interesting enough to warrant some corporate espionage.

“UAV is over the site,” Cory said. “There’s a rig there all right. Good call. Zooming in a bit on the camera to get a better look.”

Beth held her breath, trying to peek over his shoulder at the tablet he was working with. The image changed, zipping in closer in a dizzying manner. When it resolved again, she saw the familiar air-car sitting on a helipad off to one side of the rig.

“There’s our missing ride,” Cory said.

Beth turned back to Dan. “We’re going to go get the package back.”

“You sure?” Dan asked. “John can probably get a small army on its way in an hour or two.”

“In an hour or two they might have moved elsewhere,” Beth said. “We can’t wait. Dan - they’re in the middle of an ocean. You know what happens if they screw up out there.”

It was the worst possible nightmare scenario. If the bad guys had only gone north, into the desert somewhere! A spill there might have taken some work to clean up, but it would have been containable. Every ocean on Earth was connected. If one drop of the stuff hit the water here, it could spread across the planet uncontrolled.

“Get some backup ready anyway, just in case,” Beth said. Dan looked really worried. It was flattering. Deep down, she knew he was as worried about her as he was about the mission. But it was also frustrating. She didn’t need him watching over her shoulder. She wasn’t some sort of fragile flower that he needed to take care of, damn it! No matter how much her wounds still hurt right now.

“I’ll have John do that right away,” Dan said. “He should have been here by now… I wonder what’s keeping him?”

Beth thought she saw a flash of new worry crease Dan’s brow. She pushed the thought away. Whatever it was, it would have to wait. She needed to stay focused on what she was doing. For all their sakes.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got Charline with me,” Beth said, grinning. “The woman is hellfire with a gun.”

“Do it,” Dan said. His voice was resolved. There wasn’t any waver or hesitation left.

Beth nodded, feeling satisfied. “We’ll get it done. And come home ASAP.”

She flicked off the tablet, then turned to the rest of the team. “Let’s get our goop back from these assholes.”

Sixteen

The flyer shot over the ocean, skimming just a few feet above the waves. Charline clutched arm rests of her seat. They were little comfort. Cory seemed to have the craft well in hand, but if he screwed up even a little bit, or if a rogue wave popped up? They’d be slapped into the water in a heartbeat, and the rotors would tear their thin skinned vehicle to ribbons.

It was the best way to come in undetected, though. They had no way to tell if the rig had radar or not. Fly in at a higher altitude and they’d show up from miles away on even a basic system. At least this way, the enemy would have to rely on lookouts to spot them. Less warning, more surprise. They were going to need every advantage they could get.

“Charline, I want you to take over the UAV,” Cory said. He passed back his tablet. She scanned the controls. They looked simple enough. The drone was locked into a static flight pattern, circling the rig at high altitude.

“It’s not just a drone,” he explained. “It’s armed. The thing has four small rockets mounted on the wings.”

“Shit, that’s awesome,” Beth said.

“When were you planning to tell us this?” Charline asked.

“Just did,” Cory replied, flashing her that same infectious grin. “They’re not military grade hardware, mind you. They’re flash-bangs, like what police use. But if you can pop a few off as we’re coming in…”

“I can do that,” Charline said. This was gonna be like playing Halo. With a Banshee. With real bullets flying, she reminded herself. But hell, it would be interesting.

“You’ve only got four rockets, remember,” Cory said. “Make them count. Toggle to fire them is on the lower left. Tap to arm, tap again to fire.”

“Got it,” she said.

Charline took the UAV off autopilot, which brought it under her direct control. It wobbled a bit and almost fell into a dive, but she stabilized it. She took the thing into a gentle spin, testing it out. If she was going to fly it into battle she needed to know what it could do. She sent it into a nosedive, then pulled out, banking left and right. She had flown a few little drone helicopters before, but this was different. It was more like remotely flying an airplane, and it took her a minute to get used to the controls. Having the rockets wasn’t going to do them any good if she splashed the UAV into the ocean!

“I’m set,” she said at last. There wasn’t time to play around with the thing as long as she would have liked. The controls were simple enough. The little bit of practice she’d done would have to be enough.

“There they are,” Beth said, pointing. Sure enough, up ahead was the black skeleton of the oil rig rising from the water.

“Making our run now,” Cory said. The engines whined as he pushed still more speed from them.

Charline brought the UAV into a dive, swooping in toward the rig. At a range of about two hundred meters, she took the safeties off the rockets and fired one. It streaked toward the target on her screen, impacting with a blossom of light.

“Woohoo!” she shouted. She could see men scurrying around the platform now, running in all directions like ants from an overturned hill. “I’m seeing at least twenty bad guys over there.”

That wasn’t good news. There were a lot more people on the rig than any of them had thought there would be. If they were all armed, it would make for a short fight, and not a good end for her side. For a moment Charline hesitated and thought about calling the whole mission off. They could still return to the shore and wait for help from John’s security teams. With more backup they could hit the place with enough force to win without trouble.

But she’d already fired a rocket. The enemy knew they’d been seen. They wouldn’t wait around for an hour or two for backup to arrive. They’d vanish, fading away to some other remote spot, and there was no guarantee she would be able to track them wherever they went. No, if they withdrew now it would be almost impossible to find the sample again. It was now or never. That thought didn’t make Charline’s nerves jangle any less, though.

“OK, see if you can keep them off the big open area in the center of the rig,” Cory said. “I’m gonna try to set down there.”

“Will do.”

Charline turned the UAV around, spinning it on one wing. It was small and fast. She could see men trying to shoot it down from the deck of the rig, but it made for a tough target. She fired a second rocket at the men just in case. It impacted in the center of the group. She couldn’t assess damage very well, zipping by as quickly as she did, but it couldn’t have been a fun experience for them.

One more pass, and she needed to make this one count. She could feel the flyer accelerating upward. Cory was gaining altitude so that he could land on the deck. Charline needed to cover their approach. She soared in, launching both rockets toward groups of men trying to rush to their landing area. Both groups scattered. One tried to reform again, and she couldn’t have that. She dove the UAV straight at them, smashing it into the deck.

Her camera cut out as the vehicle crashed, but she looked up quickly enough to see the explosions from both the rockets and the UAV blossom in the middle of a group of the enemy combatants. “That should keep their heads down.”

Cory was settling the flyer toward the deck. “Time to do this!” he shouted. Bullets were already whizzing toward them again. The windshield starred with impacts, then cracked. It wasn’t going to take this sort of abuse much longer.

“Pop the hatch!” Beth said.

Charline pulled out her pistols, preparing to go do her thing again. She hated this with every fiber of her being. Shooting had been a past-time that she had once enjoyed. Hunting and marksmanship were simple things. It was just you, the gun, and the target. Maybe you, the gun, and dinner, even. Her shooting had never involved complex moral problems before. But she’d managed to shove all of her feelings aside back in the lab, and she did the same thing again. The ramp lowered from the bottom of their flyer, and Charline rolled down it, arriving at the bottom on one knee, both pistols up and tracking.

She fired twice, dropping two men, then started moving forward. She needed to get clear of the vehicle and find some cover. Too many targets, too many people shooting…! Some barrels up ahead might work. Charline dove for them.

Behind her more gunfire erupted from the back of the flyer as Beth and Cory came out, guns blazing. Beth was still using the pistol she acquired at the lab. Cory had come up with a small assault rifle from somewhere. He was firing single shots, not bursts, which raised Charline’s opinion of him a notch. Andy said that amateurs fired bursts. Professionals fired one round at a time.

“Make for the tower!” Charline shouted. It was the only part of this rust bucket that looked like it had been cleaned up for habitation. That was where they’d find the sample.

She stood up, guns blazing, and started making her way there. Cory covered her with his rifle, picking off targets she missed. Beth caught up with her and stood just behind and beside her, adding her own pistol fire to the mix.

“I’m out!” Beth said.

“Take cover,” Charline said grimly. She’d lost count of her own rounds. How many shots left? She cursed under her breath, wishing she’d kept better track. Andy would have known precisely how many bullets were left in his gun. She wished for a moment that he was there, standing beside her. Her foot slipped on something slick and she managed to not look down, already knowing that what she stood on was blood from one of her victims. She kept her feet beneath her and continued forward.

Cory dashed past her and made it to the door. He yanked, but it was stuck.

“Locked!” he shouted.

Shit. They hadn’t planned for that. How to blow the thing? There were too many armed men on this rig. The whole idea had been to dash in, grab the sample, and get the hell out. Three against thirty was not fun odds. Charline ran the last few feet, bullets striking the deck right behind her. She checked the door out. Not only was it locked - it was locked by a computer coded system.

“I can hack it, if you can buy me two minutes,” she said. She slipped the pistols back into her pockets and pulled out her tablet, trying to negotiate a connection with the computer lock.

“Make it quick,” Cory said, firing at the enemy closing in on them.

The tablet connected. She worked her way through the subroutines of the system, trying to find a path that would let her hack entry. She was good at this sort of thing. It was her bread and butter, after all. She just wasn’t used to doing it while under fire.

“I’m in!” she shouted. The door clicked as the lock disengaged.

Then the world exploded around her, a blinding flash of light and deafening sound cutting her off from her senses.

Seventeen

John’s hand hovered over the strange creature for another moment. His resolve wavered. What he was considering was damned risky. Even foolhardy. It went against all common sense. If Dan were still here, he’d never allow it. And yet…

What else could he do? Andrew might not be his son by birth, but he might as well be. John couldn’t stand by and watch him suffer. Not if there was anything he could do that might end that pain.

His instincts said Dan was right. The creature was not just carrying memories of someplace it had been, or images of coordinates it had seen. Dan had mentioned the idea that it might be sentient, and that rang true. If that was the case, then perhaps it could be reasoned with. But only if he could communicate with it, and there was only one person it seemed to be talking to… The one with whom it had connected.

“Here goes nothing,” John said aloud. He dipped his hand into the water and gently scooped the thing out. He was expecting it to feel slimy, but instead it felt smooth, even slippery. He almost lost his grip as he removed it from the tank and had to reach over with his other hand to catch hold of it.

Gingerly, he brought the thing up to his left ear.

“Moment of truth time,” he whispered. Hand shaking, thinking as hard as he could of Andrew, he held the alien life-form up to his ear. Sensing what was expected of it, the thing wriggled in his hand, slipping through his fingers and entering the outer ear canal. John winced as it made its way down to the ear drum, slipping against sensitive tissue during its descent.

And then…nothing. There was no pain. No sudden biting sensation. No agony of the little creature burrowing into his brain, as vivid as that image had been a few moments ago. It just sat there.

“Well, that was anti-climactic,” he said aloud. “Can you hear me?”

No response. Was it sentient at all? If it wasn’t able to communicate, then this might have been for nothing. Well, it was used to translating other beings for the one wearing it. He was going to need to find a way to engage it in conversation. If it was translating by telepathy, it had to be able to read minds. Maybe he could think at it?

“Andrew,” he said aloud, picturing the man in his mind.

Nothing. Apparently now that it had a new host, it wasn’t interested in Andrew anymore. Or it wasn’t hearing him. There was no way to tell. But the alien seemed to be aquatic. It had remained in the watery section of the terrarium ever since they’d placed it there, and most of the dreams Andrew had spoken of revolved around water. Maybe he could get it to engage if he thought about water.

“Ocean?” he tried. He brought to mind memories of the Maine seacoast, waves crashing upon the craggy shoreline, wind whipping through the shrubby trees.

Another image popped into his mind, of being underwater. The light above was bright, the water a vivid blue. It reminded him of pictures he’d seen of the Caribbean. He was moving through the water somehow, propelled along by some force. This wasn’t any memory of his. It was coming from elsewhere. The thing had responded to his mental image of the ocean.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “Wormhole.” He pictured the way the Satori’s star drive looked when it was generating a wormhole in front of the ship, the way the colors spun, igniting space and opening a rift to someplace else.

“Symbols,” he said, picturing the screen in his office, scrolling through rows of colored symbols.

This thought seemed to excite the small alien. He actually felt it twitch inside his ear for the first time since it had settled there - an uncanny sensation. Then a symbol popped into his head, one of the ones used by the aliens who’d invented the Satori’s drive, colored in bright red. It was replaced a moment later by another symbol in green, and then a third in the same color. The images continued through the sequence, ending in blue. The same pattern that Andrew had muttered in his sleep a short while ago.

A sense of longing filled him, rocking him to his core. John sank to his knees, tears in his eyes as the deep, savage despair filled him, the loss of everyone and everything he’d ever known, gone forever, lost and far away and beyond his reach for all time…

He squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, trying to block the flow of emotion. Nothing worked. The thing was inside his mind, and he was feeling every iota of its pain. Was that what Andrew had endured? No wonder he'd been in such bad shape. John wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand it.

He reached out and tasted the pain, felt the nature of it, and something about it was familiar to him. He’d felt that sort of agony before, and in a flash he knew when. It was always there in his mind, lurking just out of view, an old scar that had never healed and would never entirely fade away. John knew in his heart that he would carry that pain until the day he died.

The thought triggered the memory, and then he was seeing Satori again - his wife, not the ship. She was pregnant, full of life, getting ready to bring their shared life into the world.

And then she was in the hospital. Things were going wrong. She was in desperate pain. John was there, holding her hand, as she slipped away from him forever. The love of his life and their son, dead together. John had the best doctors that money could buy, but there was nothing anyone could do.

The image of his dying wife seared through his brain. That was where he had felt this sort of loss before. Everything that mattered to him in the universe, the center and sum of all that he valued, gone in an instant. The pain of that loss. The sense of being utterly alone. The despair.

Somewhere inside his mind, another set of thoughts met the wall of his agony and recoiled from it. He felt the presence of those alien thoughts recede a little, their weight ebbing from his mind. Then there was a new thought: satisfaction. It had made contact with a like mind, with someone who could understand and grasp the depth of its suffering. In John, the little alien had experienced something it had been missing for so long - empathy.

John opened his eyes, and through tear streaked vision reached out for the table in front of him. Using it for balance he staggered back to his feet. The room wobbled around him, trying to right itself.

He’d come through that agony once, thanks to his friends. Dan, Beth, and later Andrew had filled the void in his life, giving him hope that perhaps the future would hold some meaning for him. In time it eventually had. The pain would never be gone. He could never truly release it entirely, so it would always be a part of him. But he had learned to hope again, and love again, and through those things to live again. In his thoughts, he tried to share those emotions with his new companion.

Perhaps it grasped at least a little of what he meant.

“It seems we have reached an understanding, then,” John said. He allowed himself a little smile. This had been a hell of an adventure. Satori would have been proud of him.

The doors to the lab snapped open. John turned, and found a disapproving Dan staring at him, aghast.

“What the hell have you done?” Dan asked.

Eighteen

Linda held her breath as the air-car’s hatch opened. She could hear the gruff voices of men she didn’t know speaking to one another, and all she could do was keep herself as still as possible. She’d watched as the the others had jumped from the air-car into battle, guns blazing like they were in some sort of action movie. That wasn’t who Linda was. She didn’t think that she could ever act like that. And look what it had gotten them? It sounded like the fighting was over, and since the people opening the hatch were strangers, Linda was betting that meant her side hadn’t won. How was she going to get out of this mess now?

Instead of rushing out with the others she had stayed inside the vehicle and hidden inside a little nook under the flyer’s dashboard. The space was so small that she could barely squeeze herself inside it even with her small frame. It was the only hiding place in the flyer’s crew compartment, small as it was. There was nowhere else for her to go. Sweat trickled down her forehead, dripping into her eyes. She blinked, the only motion she could allow herself. She could hear the men chatting as they looked inside the car. Then the hatch was slammed shut again so abruptly that the sound made her jump.

From outside the flyer, she heard a muffled voice say, “All clear inside the vehicle. We got ‘em all.”

Somehow they hadn’t seen her when they looked inside. Maybe the angle had been slightly wrong, or maybe they had something else on their minds. Whatever had saved her, she was grateful for it. The other three had rushed outside, guns blazing, while she ducked her head and prayed.

Linda wasn’t made for this sort of action hero stuff. She was comfortable in her lab. She’d never wanted to get involved in more adventurous activities that looking through her microscope or analyzing data. How the hell had she ended up here?

She peeked up through the windshield. It was starred and cracked from the impact of dozens of bullets during their initial descent. She was pretty sure no one would be able to see her through it. She could barely see outward.

Cory, Beth, and Charline were all lined up in the flat landing area about fifteen feet away. They were on their knees, surrounded by armed men. The whole plan had gone sideways. What the hell had they been thinking? She knew it was important to get the sample back. But this was a job for the police. Or maybe the army. Not for a handful of people operating on their own. One man was pacing back and forth in front of them, saying something she could barely hear. Linda strained her ears to listen.

“Placed a tracking device, didn’t you?” the man asked.

“Something like that, Pete,” Cory replied.

“You are too damned smart for your own good,” Pete said. “You might have lived, if you’d left well enough alone. Now?”

Then the man Cory had called Pete lifted his pistol, aiming it at Cory. Before anyone else could so much as breathe he’d fired. Cory never even made a sound. His body just slumped backward onto the deck.

Linda stifled a scream. Making noise would just bring their attention on her. There were still two people out there she might be able to help, if only she could remain free. There were reinforcements coming, too. Charline and Beth had called for backup. She just had to hang on.

“We can’t stay here. They’ll have reported this location,” Pete said to the other men. “We’ll have to move the sample to another safe spot.”

“The bosses won’t be happy,” one of the other men said to him.

“They’ll be a lot less happy if we lose their new baby, whatever the hell the stuff is,” Pete said. “Pack everything you can in the air-car, then torch the rest.”

“You’re right, I am not happy,” a man said as he stepped from one of the structures built into the rig. “Not happy at all to be interrupted, anyway. But I have to admit that I am pleased to see who you caught for me.”

He stopped in front of Charline and looked down at her. “Been a while. I hope you remember me.”

“Heimsman,” Charline said. “I figured you to have crawled under a rock someplace. What made you slither back out?”

“Why, my dear! There are always companies willing to hire someone with my sort of skills, especially when I’m forced to not care much about ethics due to the nature of my last employment severance,” Heimsman said with a chuckle. “I had more than a few offers. Of course none were quite as good as the job you made me lose, but I got by.”

“You know this creep?” Beth asked Charline.

“Old boss. Came on to me and had to be told ‘no’ with my knee,” Charline replied.

“Yes, and shortly after I had you fired for that assault, my private files were open to the world, and the company computers were trashed,” Heimsman said. “It didn’t take much to figure out how that happened. But by then you were gone. Off the planet, it turned out. Out of even my extensive reach.”

“But it seems like fate has intervened, and I have a chance to pick things up where we left off,” Heimsman said. The oily smile on his face made Linda’s skin crawl, even with the windshield between them. He turned to the man standing nearby. “You lot - get to the loading. We want to be out of here soon. They’ll have more company coming, I’m sure.”

“You got it, boss,” they replied. He and five other men walked into the building that Charline had been trying to break open. That left only Pete and four guards out watching the other two women. There had been a lot more guards before they landed. Linda glanced around, looking for them, and finally spotted a row of bodies off to one side. She felt sickened but strangely satisfied at the same time. The warring emotions were confusing.

Pete was speaking again, aiming his pistol at Charline this time. Linda held her breath. She liked the other woman, had liked her from their first meeting. Was she about to die right in front of her? She cast about the inside of the cabin, looking for some way she could help.

Cory had opened up a locker before he went out. He’d grabbed a rifle and several magazines from it. There was another rifle sitting inside. Linda pulled it free, trying to figure out how to use the thing. That was the safety. She flipped the little switch to semi. There was already a magazine loaded. Did that mean it was ready to fire? She didn’t know. She looked back out the window.

“You’ve been a hell of a lot of trouble, lady,” Pete said. “Those were good men you killed.”

“You don’t understand,” Charline said. “That stuff you stole - it’s dangerous!”

“It might be. But it’s valuable,” Heimsman said. “It’s gonna make us all wealthy.”

“It’s going to make everyone dead, if you’re not careful,” Beth said.

Pete’s pistol wavered away from Charline and aimed at Beth instead. She didn’t look away or back down. Linda was stunned at the display of courage. It couldn’t be easy, staring death in the nose and not blinking. She wished she was more like that.

“Well, we ought to keep at least one of you around. In case your friends show up,” Pete said. “A hostage might be useful.”

Then he whipped the gun back around at Charline, aiming it directly at her head.

“I’d prefer to keep her, if that’s all right,” Heimsman interjected, his voice almost a purr. “We have unfinished business.”

“You sure? You’re the boss, but in my opinion she’s too dangerous to keep alive,” Pete said.

Heimsman made a face, then waved his hand. “Very well. I pay you to give me security advice, I’d be a damned fool if I didn’t take it. Keep the other one as a hostage instead and shoot Ms. Foster. Make sure it hurts, though.”

“I can do that,” Pete said, his voice cold.

Linda started to turn her head away. Charline was a nice person, she didn’t deserve this… But she couldn’t bring herself to try anything. She was terrified. If she managed to somehow shoot the rifle, even if she somehow managed to hit someone, then what? The others would kill her, too.

Before she could look away Beth blurred into motion. Somehow she rose up from a kneeling position and dove at Pete, shouting “No!”

He fired.

She fell to the ground, curled up in a fetal position around her belly.

“Beth!” Charline shouted.

In the cockpit, Linda bit her knuckles to keep from crying out.

“Bitch,” Pete said. He spat at Beth’s body. “I was going to keep you alive. Now I have to deal with this hellion instead? Shit.”

“Ah, you see? Fate has intervened again. Now you’re mine to do what I want with,” Heimsman told Charline. “Tie her up.”

Two of the guards brought over zip ties and bound Charline by the wrists and ankles. She didn’t even struggle. Even through the cracked glass Linda could see that she was sobbing, crying. The guilt hit her like a mountain falling on her shoulders. She should have done something. Anything! She had a weapon, but not the will to use it. She was too weak to be any use here. Linda couldn’t imagine what had possessed her to insist they bring her along in the first place.

Nineteen

The men outside were speaking again. Linda forced herself to look at the scene once more. She swallowed hard when she saw the two still bodies laid out on the deck. Those were people she had just been speaking with, flying around with. Now they were gone. Linda could barely think through the crushing sense of guilt. But she had to keep listening. Charline was still alive, and maybe she could hear something that would help.

“You two, carry her inside. We’ll finish packing. The rest of you dump their bodies into the ocean,” Heimsman said.

“Our guys too? They deserve better,” Pete asked. He seemed hesitant.

“Yes. They’re dead. It won’t matter to them anymore. We need this place cleaned before anyone arrives to investigate it,” Heimsman replied. Then he turned and stalked into the building. Pete and one of the guards half-carried, half-dragged Charline along behind him.

The door closed behind them, cutting Charline off from view. Linda was covered in a cold sweat. She wanted to help Charline, to save her somehow. Whatever that guy planned for her wasn’t going to be pleasant. She’d seen Heimsman’s sort before. But running out there would just get her captured as well. Linda held her place, watching carefully.

The remaining two guards picked up Cory’s body by the legs and shoulders and hauled him toward the edge of the platform. Their path took them dangerously close to Linda’s hiding place, and she ducked down so they wouldn’t see her. They plodded on, walking past the air-car where she was hiding up to the very edge of the oil rig.

“Why do we get this shitty detail?” one asked.

“Shut up and dump the damned body,” the other replied.

There were a few grunts, and then a long pause. Linda thought she could hear the faint splash of Cory’s body entering the water. She shuddered. Then there was the sound of footsteps fading away, only to return a minute later. The men were grunting under the load of a second person. This time as they approached, Linda heard a woman groan. She froze, half afraid she’d made the sound herself.

“Shit, this one is still alive,” the complainer said.

“So? Order was to dump her. She’ll be dead soon enough.”

“I dunno, man. I don’t mind dumping a dead body, but killing her like this? Not cool.”

“Then put a bullet in her, if you feel so bad about it,” the other man said.

“Sure.”

That was Beth they were talking about. She was still alive! Linda’s thoughts raced. Was it possible to save her? Would she live, even if she could somehow rescue her from these men? Linda felt too scared to do anything before. She was still frightened now. But she wasn’t sure she could live with herself if she allowed her fear to dominate her another time. In another few seconds the decision would be made for her. They would shoot Beth and dump her body into the ocean. It would be too late to help. She had to act quickly.

Linda grabbed the rifle from where it rested beside her. The weight was unfamiliar and unwieldy in her hands, but she’d seen enough movies to know roughly how to work an assault rifle. She just had to hope that would be enough. Linda yanked hard on the release for the vehicle’s hatch.

The door of the flyer swung upward away from her.

Outside the door, both men looked up from Beth’s body. They had stunned expressions on their faces. One man’s mouth was formed in a round O shape. The other had a rifle in his hands, the muzzle aimed at Beth’s still form. As soon as he saw Linda he began shifting his aim point, turning the weapon toward her instead.

Linda had her rifle up against her hip. She aimed the thing as best she could and squeezed the trigger once, then again. The man’s body bucked twice as bullets hit it. He tumbled backward from the force of the impact, losing his balance and tripping over the edge of the platform. He let out only a short yelp as he fell toward the ocean.

The other man had a rifle on a sling. He scrambled to get the weapon up into his hands. Linda’s ears hurt from the gunshots. She felt dazed. Had she actually killed a man? Could she do it again? She saw the second man moving, saw him get his weapon under control. The muzzle rose toward her like it was in slow motion. He wasn’t going to give her any choice. If she froze, she died. Linda didn’t want to die.

She fired again. And again. His body shook with the impacts, but he didn’t go down. Linda stepped forward and fired another time. The guard fell to the ground, crawling away from her now. She was crying, barely able to see through her tears. This wasn’t what she wanted. This wasn’t who she was. But they’d given her no choice.

She shot the gun one more time. This time the man lay still after a final tremor. Linda collapsed to her knees beside Beth’s body, sobbing.

Twenty

Beth’s entire world felt like it was on fire. Her gut crawled - not just the pain from the wound. That she could bear, more or less. She’d been shot before. It sucked, but it was just pain. It was the itching sensation that was driving her mad right now. She also vaguely knew that was probably why she was still breathing.

The nanites she’d been implanted with at the hospital were still in her bloodstream. Military grade nanites that were designed to help a body recover after traumatic wounds like the one she’d sustained.

She pushed herself up on one hand, lifting her head free from the deck. A wave of dizziness and nausea hit her like a club, and she almost sank back down. Her body was crying out for rest. That would be lethal, though. It wouldn’t take long for someone to come investigate those shots.

Beth looked up at Linda, standing there shaking with the rifle in her hands. She’d just gunned down two armed men. Frankly, Beth was impressed. She didn’t think Linda would have had it in her. It hadn’t surprised her when Linda had stayed in the flyer, and it hadn’t bothered her either. An untrained person out there during the raid would’ve just died quickly. Or gotten one of them killed. Killed sooner. Whatever.

Her head was fuzzy, her thinking not flowing as smoothly as it ought. Shock, and maybe something the nanites were doing to combat the shock. Linda was sobbing, fast turning into a wreck. Beth needed her to hang in a little longer than that if either of them were going to survive this.

“Linda,” she said. It was alarming how weak her voice sounded, and how much it hurt to speak.

“You’re awake!” Linda exclaimed. She dropped the rifle and rushed to Beth’s side. “You were shot…”

“I’ll heal,” Beth said. “The guards will be coming.”

“Shit. What do we do?”

“Hand me that guy’s rifle.”

Linda grabbed the weapon and gave it to Beth. She checked the magazine. Still half full. “Take your weapon and hide in the flyer again. When I start shooting, help.”

Linda paled, but nodded. “I will.”

Once she had slipped back inside the flyer and shut the door again, Beth curled up in a way that was only excruciating, instead of agonizing. The rifle was hidden mostly beneath her body. No one ought to be able to see it until they were very close.

Just in time. She heard shouts from the building. Then the footsteps of multiple men rushing over.

“I don’t get it, where did they go?”

“I tell you, I heard shots,” another man said.

“Keep looking,” a third replied. This one was very close to her, his voice coming from only a foot or two away. He closed the gap and reached out with a foot, hooking her arm to turn her over.

She rolled with his pull, the rifle coming up in her hands as she turned. She wasn’t even sure the guy saw her weapon before she fired. He definitely didn’t see it afterward - or anything else.

The flyer hatch flew open again, and Linda was firing from the doorway. She wasn’t a good shot - but she’d learned what the ‘auto’ setting did on the selector. Linda was spraying rounds across the deck as fast as they could come out of the barrel.

Her ammunition wouldn’t last long that way, but Beth only needed a few seconds. The other two men, thinking that it was Linda who had shot their friend, didn’t even bother looking at the ‘dead’ woman laying on the deck. Beth wasn’t a great shot, but she didn’t need to be at this range.

“Help me up,” Beth called, when it was over. There were still more bad guys inside the building. Beth did a quick headcount and figured there were about five goons left, plus Pete. They had Charline, too.

Linda ran over and gingerly helped her to a standing position. With her help Beth staggered over and leaned against the flyer.

“Well, I’m not running any marathons today,” Beth said. She was gasping from taking just the few steps, and her gut was burning again. She looked down to examine the wound for the first time, pulling up her shirt so she could see it. The bullet entered her belly from the front. As near as she could tell there was no exit hole. The small hole in the front was already clotted over. The nanites had worked at cutting off the bleeding first.

She was shaken, dizzy, sick, and hurting. There wasn’t any way she could assess how badly hurt she was inside. The bullet had messed things up in there for sure, but how much?

“You’re hurt,” Linda said. “We should go get you help. Get out of here while we can.”

“Not without Charline,” Beth said, gritting her teeth. For a moment she imagined herself back on the Naga starship. She’d been shot. She was dying. John and Andy were pinned down, and there was no way anyone was going to get to her in time to save her. Then there had been Charline, stepping out of the smoke after gunning her way through the enemy. She’d never given up on Beth. There was no way Beth was going to leave without her.

But a straight up gunfight wasn’t the answer. They’d lose. Luck had been with them so far, but you couldn’t count on that lasting. Beth cast about, looking for possible solutions. Nothing around but ancient machinery, an old loading crane. the gutted remnants of the oil piping…

She looked at the crane again. That was odd. Unlike the rest of this place, the crane wasn’t a rusted pile of junk. Why was it cleaned up? A long cable draped from the crane downward toward the water. At the bottom of the cable was a motorboat, still grappled firmly to the cable line. Probably what they used to ferry supplies back and forth. The air-car stuck out like a sore thumb, they couldn’t risk flying it out here too often. And of course they needed the crane to lift things from the boat up onto the platform.

“That might work,” Beth muttered.

“What?” Linda asked, confused.

“Help me get over there,” Beth said, pointing at the crane.

Twenty-One

Charline was tossed unceremoniously into a corner once the door closed behind them. That was fine with her. If she was out of the way, a little out of sight, maybe she could do something about the ties binding her hands and feet. She curled around herself, moving her body into a fetal position and faked a few sobs. Not that she didn’t honestly feel like crying, but shaking shoulders would mask her other movements.

The guard watching her chuckled a little under his breath and then she heard him move away. That was her cue. She’d learned how to break zip-ties by accident. Back on the alien world, they had used similar ties to bind Paul, but he’d gotten free. When she asked Andy how the heck that had happened, he explained. Zip-ties were pretty secure, but they were just strips of plastic. Heat the plastic a little and it would weaken enough to snap. Almost any rough surface would do. Paul had used a rough patch of the bulkhead on the Satori, but Andy told her that even a shoelace would work.

Charline’s shoes had laces.

She untied one and ran it through the ties binding her ankles. Feet first, she reasoned. Better to be able to run if she could, although she wasn’t sure where she could go. There was still one ace in the hole. She hadn’t seen them capture or kill Linda, which meant the xenobiologist was probably still out there somewhere, free. Charline wasn’t sure how much she could count on the other woman for help, but just having her nearby might be enough to be useful.

If only Beth were still there. Charline stifled a real sob at the thought of her friend. Beth had literally taken a bullet for her. She couldn’t believe it, even having seen it herself. She wondered if she would have had the courage to do something like that. It took an effort to block the images from her mind, but she had to focus. If Beth’s sacrifice was to mean anything at all, she had to get out of there alive.

“How’s my new toy doing?” Heimsman called from across the room. Charline heard his footsteps coming closer and flinched. The ankle ties weren’t completely broken yet. She kept working, making her body shake even more than before to hide the motion.

“Scared? You should be. By the time I’m through with you, you’ll wish you had just taken that bullet instead,” Heimsman said. “Look at me when I speak to you!”

He was standing over her now. He leaned forward, reaching down to her and yanking her hair back so that she was forced to stare into his livid face. Charline had never seen someone so furious and out of control. She pulled hard on the zip-tie, and it finally snapped.

Charline twisted to get her feet beneath her and lunged upward. Her forehead smashed into Heimsman’s nose, shattering it and sending blood splashing across his face. He cried out with pain. Her hands were still bound, but her feet were free. Heimsman brought both hands up to his face, covering his nose. That left her a lot of openings. Charline fired off a front snap kick that nailed him right in the groin.

“Didn’t get the message the first time?” she taunted. “Here’s the repeat lesson!”

Heimsman sank to his knees with a groan. Charline could see the guards coming at her in her peripheral vision, but she still had time for one more kick and she wanted to make it count. Her foot shot forward, taking Heimsman in the face. His head snapped back hard, and then he tumbled over backwards to fall flat against the floor. He was out cold, his face a mess, blood everywhere. Charline couldn’t remember feeling more satisfied.

Two of the guards grabbed her, one by each arm. With a rough shove they forced her back down to her knees. Charline glanced to her left, ready to try to take one of them down. They knew her legs were free, but maybe she could still take at least one more of them out of action. Then she heard a pistol being cocked, and looked straight ahead again.

Pete was there, weapon in hand. It was aimed at her head. Charline held very still. She didn’t want to die, and he seemed very willing to kill her.

“I told that asshole it was a mistake to leave you alive. He should have listened,” Pete said, chuckling. “You can handle yourself, that’s for sure. If we weren’t on opposite sides in this I’d offer you a job. Sadly, I don’t think that’s going to work, is it?”

“Not likely,” Charline said.

“Didn’t think so. But I need to keep you around anyway, as a hostage. Really, you did me a favor. He was annoying as hell. Now I can run the operation the way I want, and maybe we can all get out of here safe after all. You play along without any more fuss, and I’ll see if I can release you once we land in Mexico. How’s that for a deal?”

Charline didn’t answer, setting her lips in a hard line.

“Or I can just shoot you now and trust my luck without a hostage,” Pete said, waving the pistol at her.

Charline sagged. “Fine. I’ll behave.”

And she would, at least until she had even the slightest chance of getting out of there on her own. If he gave her even a small window to get away, she was going to take it. But she could tell he already knew that. It was there in his eyes. She was going to have a hard time slipping anything past this man.

Gunshots rang out from somewhere outside. Not just one shot, but several in rapid succession.

“Now what the hell is going on?” Pete snarled. “You two, hold her. I’m going to go check that out.”

Charline tried to hide a worried frown. There was only one ally left out there. That had to be Linda. Had they found her and killed her? Or was that her doing the shooting? She didn’t think Linda had it in her to start a firefight, so the likely answer was that the scientist was dead. Which meant she was just about out of possible avenues for escape.

Twenty-Two

Beth grabbed her rifle and staggered her way to the controls, leaning on Linda more steps than not. She’d never felt so damned weak. The nanites must be grabbing everything they could get their hands on to rebuild her damaged body.

They reached the controls. Pretty basic. She’d handled much more complex control systems. Beth hadn’t always been a lead engineer. She’d done a lot of scut work along the way.

“Cover me,” Beth said. “This is going to be loud.”

She started up the crane and threw the hydraulics into motion, the powerful engine churning as it began to lift the boat clear of the water. She had the machine reel the line back in as quickly as it could, the boat soaring up toward them.

The crane really was making a racket. It might have been oiled and cleaned up, but it was still loud as hell. The boat had barely made it to the height of the deck when the door of the deckhouse burst open. Pete stood in the doorway, a pistol in his hand. He laughed when he saw her.

“You are a tough one, aren’t you?” Pete hollered over to her. “You’re walking around with a bullet in your gut? That takes some serious fortitude.”

“More than you know,” Beth shouted back with more vigor than she really felt. There were sparks beginning to dance in front of her eyes. She didn’t have a lot left in her. But maybe she had just enough. She slammed a lever over to stop the cable reeling in and got the machine ready to move again.

“You will step down from there,” Pete ordered. Someone behind him passed Charline over to him. Her hand were bound, and the guards shoved her hard enough that she staggered a little until Pete caught her arm, holding her close to him. He turned the pistol on Charline’s head. “Or your friend is dead.”

Beth knew he wasn’t going to let them go no matter what she did. If she surrendered, she and Linda and Charline were likely all dead. Better to at least have a shot at living. Besides, this guy was an asshole, and she was tired of his threats.

“I don’t negotiate with dead people,” Beth said. With the last of her strength she slammed home one more lever.

The massive crane swung into motion. Hydraulics released pressure, venting all their pent up energy as the thing swung in toward the deck. The crane was build to swing that way, but the cable and boat hung from it like a pendulum. Beth had released all of the safeties from the machine, allowing it to swing as rapidly as the mechanism could move - which was very fast.

By the time the boat came into contact with the deckhouse, it was moving with enough speed that it crashed through the walls, breaking concrete as its mass and acceleration impacted with devastating force. Pete gaped at the thing as it rushed toward him. Chunks of debris were flying through the air as the structure crumbled from the impact. Beth had to admit, it was pretty impressive.

While Pete was staring Charline grabbed the moment of distraction and elbowed him hard in the ribs. He released her in surprise, and she fell to the deck, rolling away from the deckhouse as quickly as she could.

The building all but exploded in a shower of broken fragments. Chunks of concrete smashed into Pete, sending him flying clear. The roof of the structure collapsed and buried whatever else remained inside.

“Linda, help Charline,” Beth said. She was feeling more hazy by the moment. She slumped back against the control chair, clutching her belly. But she was still smiling, even through the pain. She’d nailed the asshole. The rest of the guards were buried under the rubble. John’s people should be there shortly to help them all get away safely.

Linda ran to Charline’s side, helping her cut loose from the zip-ties. Beth closed her eyes, relaxing at last. Her friend was safe. She could rest.

Twenty-Three

John looked around the table, meeting the eyes of one person after another. It had been some time since they’d all met here last. Back then, they were planning the launch of the Satori, plotting out the first space trial of the ship. They’d never expected the first run to be so dangerous, or to take them so far from home.

Had that really only been two weeks ago? It seemed like it should have been longer. So much had happened. They’d explored a new world. They’d met an alien race, and survived - if barely. Then they’d returned home to a host of new problems. John had the sense those issues at home had only just begun. Things on Earth were teetering toward chaos, and that was going to get worse before it got better.

There was a new face among the crowd. Charline and Beth had brought Linda Paris back to the moon with them. John arranged for her transfer of employment. The lab was reluctant to let her go, but he made it worth their while. She was a promising young woman, and he was privately impressed with what he’d heard of her. It took a strong will to go through what she had and come out the other side intact. They could use her expertise and her courage.

Her first job on the moon would be to find some way to counteract the black blood agent they’d acquired from the ‘ratzards’. John was certain that it was a weapon, now. Finding a way to defeat it was essential. They could not let Earth suffer the same fate as the dead world they’d seen on their first voyage.

“It’s been a while,” Andrew said. He’d been the last to arrive, and was just taking his seat.

“You doing OK, Andy?” Charline asked. “I heard…”

“It was rough. I’m much better,” Andrew said, his lips a tight line. He’d lost weight, and there was a haunted look in the back of his eyes that hadn’t been there before. John hoped he would get better in time, but if he’d tasted the same emotions the alien had sent to John’s mind - the loss and longing and despair - then John understood the lingering pain that left behind.

Beth winced as she shifted in her seat, and Dan’s hands jerked as if to help her before he settled them in his lap again. John hid a smile. Dan had been doting on her since her return to the base. She was healing well, and Dan seemed constantly torn between giving her space and being overprotective. They’d find a new happy medium, in time.

“I’m glad you were able to recover the sample,” John said.

“It was in Pete’s pocket. I snagged it before we turned him over to the FBI,” Charline said.

“How did you know it wasn’t in the building when you smashed it?” John asked Beth.

She grinned and shrugged, then winced from the movement. “I didn’t. Worst case, it was better the sample be buried in rubble than in their hands. It was a gamble, but I didn’t see any other way to save Charline.”

John nodded, and noted that nobody else questioned Beth’s move. They’d all done some dangerous things to help each other. Each of them had risked something, at some point, to save one of the others. They were all interconnected now with a complex web of rescues, debts, loyalty, and care.

“We’d already paid a high enough price down there,” Beth added. No one had to mention Cory’s name. Even the team members who hadn’t met the man had heard the story.

“The repairs of the Satori are proceeding apace,” John said, shifting the subject. “She’ll be ready to fly again soon. I wanted you all here to ask if you were willing to go back out.”

“Where?” Beth asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Majel, the display please?” John asked.

“Of course, John,” the AI replied. John blinked. Even her voice seemed to have changed. She’d gained nuance and control of her intonation to a level he’d never heard from a computer before. He shared a quick look with Charline, who gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders. Neither of them knew precisely what was going on with the AI. So far none of the changes seemed to negatively impact her performance.

A screen on the wall flickered to life. The first image was a watercolor of the ocean John had seen from the alien’s thoughts, the waves and water, the sea floor covered with strange life. The next slide showed a huge aquatic animal, dotted with many small projections.

“These are your work, John?” Dan asked.

“My paintings, yes. The images come from our small friend.”

“I still think that was a stupid move,” Dan said. “You took a hell of a risk.”

“It seemed like the best plan at the time,” John said. He kept his tone light. He knew how much his actions had upset Dan, but in truth he still couldn’t think of anything else that would have worked. And it had worked out well in the end.

“It’s still in there?” Beth asked, tapping her ear.

“Yes,” John replied. “We’ve reached an understanding.”

She shuddered a little. He couldn’t blame her. It was still unnerving to him sometimes as well.

“Those large animals are like living cities,” John said. “The little telepathic creatures attach themselves to these giant fish, helping to keep them alive and well fed as they voyage through the ocean. Thousands of the little life-forms, all living in telepathic communes.”

“Next slide,” John said.

The next slide showed an image they were all familiar with. An enormous ship, half sunk into the surface of the water. The ship was blocky in shape, with threatening lines. It was an image they’d each had burned into their memories - except Linda, who was just staring at it with wonder. The crew from the first mission all looked at the screen with faces that mixed fear and anger.

Floating in the foreground of the painting were several of the big fish, Naga standing on their corpses and harvesting the smaller creatures from their bodies.

“That’s a Naga ship,” Andrew said.

“Yes,” John replied.

“They’re taking the little things as - what - slaves?” Dan asked.

“I’m not sure,” John said. “My communication with this one is just images and emotion. I don’t know if the Naga are even aware they’re sentient.”

“But they are being enslaved,” Linda said softly. “An entire race.”

“Yes,” John replied.

“Can we help them?” Linda asked.

“I hope to.”

“How?” Beth asked. “Do we even know where they are?”

The slideshow slipped forward to the next image, this one showing a set of wormhole coordinate symbols.

“These coordinates match a set from the recovered database,” Majel intoned.

“They’re images the life-form sent to me,” John said. “I believe those are the coordinates of its homeworld.”

There was silence around the table as his words sunk in. Yes, they could actually go there. They could take the Satori and jump through space. John wasn’t sure what they’d find when they arrived, but he was confident they could make the journey. Whether there was actually anything they could do to help once they arrived was another question entirely.

“You want to do this,” Andrew said.

John nodded. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“We barely survived last time,” Dan said. “Beth almost didn’t.”

Beth reached across the table and took Dan’s hand. He looked over at her, and she gave him a smile.

“But I did,” she said. “Thanks to the rest of you.”

Linda coughed. Everyone turned and looked to her.

“Folks, I don’t know much about any of this. I’ve only heard your stories, and I think I’m missing about half of them still,” she said. “But if these Naga are as evil as you say, and they’re enslaving an entire race of sentient beings…?”

Her voice was trembling a little, and she paused before going on. “C’mon. We all know what the right thing to do is, here.”

Charline took her hand and smiled. “Yes.”

“The Naga know we exist,” John said. “I’d rather take the fight to them than wait for them to come to us. Let’s go give them something to worry about besides finding out where Earth is, shall we?”

“I’m in,” Beth said.

“Me too,” replied Andy.

Dan shook his head, smiling wistfully. “Wasn’t it me giving you a speech like this not long ago?” he asked. “John is right. We should do this.”

“All of the arguments are valid. While the uncertainty factor in this mission remains high,” Majels’s voice said from the table, “undertaking the expedition has a high probability of valuable data collection.”

There were a few awkward chuckles at that. Majel’s behavior might be odd, but John sensed the team was growing used to her occasionally interjecting her comments into their discussions.

“Even Majel agrees, then,” he said. “First we repair the Satori. And then we’re getting back out there.”

Inside his mind, a tiny telepathic thought voiced gratitude, excitement, and…fear. The alien was terrified at the prospect, so much that it overshadowed all the other feelings. John had learned to brace himself against the emotions so that they were not so overwhelming. But he couldn’t help but feel trepidation. What didn’t they know, that was causing the little alien such intense panic?

They’d built an outstanding team. But would it be enough to survive what lay ahead?

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Sample from Book 4: No Plan Survives Contact!

Chapter 1

Beth ran her hand along the plates of the starship’s hull. It had taken her crew a lot of work to repair all the damage, but they had finally finished. The new wing was in place. All the holes in the hall were patched. The quick-fix repairs she managed during their mission had been replaced with more permanent work.

She patted the ship gently again, ran her hand along the lines, taking precious time to enjoy the work which in so many ways was her greatest accomplishment. It was the capstone of her career. There were damned few engineers alive who could design a ship that would fly in space in the first place. But then the melding of ancient alien technology that no one truly understood with human tech? That had been a bloody miracle.

“Is she ready to fly?" John asked.

Beth jerked her hand away from the ship. She hadn't seen him come in and had been too wrapped up in her own thoughts to hear him until he spoke.

"I'm tired of getting shot,” she replied.

She had that in common with their starship, both of them taking a beating. Beth had been shot not once, but twice. The wounds were closed, thanks to the wonders of modern medicine. But some days she could still feel the pain. She never wanted to feel anything like that again.

“The vests Andrew is working on should help with that problem," John said.

"I know. I'm just not sure that I'm cut out for this sort of thing," Beth said. "I'm an engineer. Not a soldier."

There, she'd said it. Beth had been feeling those words for the past two weeks while she recovered. But she hadn't been able to voice her feelings until now. She didn't want to let her friends down. She didn't want to let herself down. But the truth was that she was scared. Frightened of being hurt again, terrified that she would find herself once more laying on some cold surface, feeling her lifeblood leaking from her body. She wasn't going to be any good to the team scared stiff. Better that they take someone who could handle the sorts of dangers the team would face without flinching.

John stared at her for a long moment without saying a word. Beth looked away, unable to match his gaze.

"Do you want to resign as lead engineer?" John asked, his voice gentle.

He was always kind. That was one of the things Beth loved about John, and why this was so damned hard. She never wanted to let the man down, and she was torn. Was it worse to let him down easily now by leaving the mission team? Or to let him down hard out there in the field, when she inevitably faltered?

“I’m just not sure that I am cut out to be your field engineer," Beth said. "I love the Satori. I love working on your starship project. But these missions…”

"I understand," he said soft voice. "I need a skilled engineer on board though. And I don't have time to find a replacement for this next mission. Will you come with us one more time?"

“What mission?" Beth asked.

She thought that she could see a small bit of green inside John's ear, the tail end of the tiny slug-like creature residing there. They learned that it was a sentient life form, member of an entire race that had been enslaved. The little slugs were telepathic and able to converse with other beings they bonded to. John took on that bond to save Andy, who’d almost died after they removed the creature from his ear. But what effects was it having on John now?

"My little friend here wants to go home rather badly," John said, tapping his right temple to illustrate what he was talking about. As if she didn't already know. "But I think we need a dry run before we head into that sort of trouble. We need intelligence on the Naga very badly. And we need to test the Satori under conditions that are perhaps a little more optimal."

"What's the target, then?" Beth asked. Despite herself she was finding the idea intriguing. It was a real plus if John was still putting caution ahead of bringing the creepy little slug home. She'd been worried that it would somehow pressure him into acting more rashly than he ought. How much would she be able to resist a voice asking her to do something over and over, pleading its case directly into her thoughts?

But if anything it looked like John was back to playing things extra safe. Intel on the enemy would be a smart move. She had no doubts that the Naga were the enemy. It wasn't going to be a matter of 'if' they ever ran into the aliens again, but 'when'. The more prepared they could be for that eventual clash, the better.

"I intend to take the ship back to the system we just visited. The one with the dead city," John said.

The one where they'd met the Naga in the first place. "Won't the Naga just show up again?"

"Maybe," John said. "But we didn't have the cloak working when we arrived last time, remember. I think those satellites picked us up and alerted the Naga ship. If we arrive cloaked..."

"We might be able to land without them seeing us at all," Beth said. "It could work. And worst case we just jump the hell out."

"Precisely."

"But the city was destroyed by the Naga," Beth pointed out. "Not much Intel there."

"We'll be able to see if Kazresh's ship was destroyed or whether it survived, for one," John said. "Also, Linda thinks she might be close to designing a virus that will take out the ratzards' blood, but she needs a fresh sample to be sure. Ideally, she needs a live ratzard."

He made a face when he said it. She wrinkled her own nose. She hadn't actually met one of the things; she'd been on board the Satori with Dan. But the reptilian rat-creatures had sounded creepy enough from the descriptions she'd been given. Still, the challenge of trying to trap one of the things was a cool one. She could probably rig some sort of trap...

"I want Charline to try to hack one of the Naga satellites too," John said. "That's how we'll get our intelligence. If she can get a data dump from one of those, we might get everything we need."

"That's really high risk. We don't know a thing about the satellites' tech," Beth said. Of all the pieces of this mission that seemed the one most fraught.

"It is," John said. "But I feel like the rewards would be worth it. And worst case we simply abort and come home."

Beth thought about it, drumming her fingers on the Satori's wing. It wasn't a bad plan. The team could do this. As John said, worst case they could just jump for home whenever they needed to. There was some risk, but there would always be some risk involved in anything regarding space. He could get another engineer trained up before he took the team out against the Naga directly, but she could back them up this last time.

"All right, I'm in," Beth said. "For one more mission."

"Good, I..."

"One one condition," Beth said, cutting him off. He stopped in mid-sentence. "I want to be with the team going after the ratzards."

"You sure?"

"Yup. I've already got some ideas on how we can get us a live one." She grinned. This was going to be an interesting challenge.

Chapter 2

The computer program that the humans called Majel was back completely where she belonged. It hadn't ever really left the ship, of course. When its programming had become merged with the alien database components housed within the Satori it had become inextricably linked to that hardware. Parts of Majel could be projected into other local computers, but the base of its fundamental algorithms was aboard the Satori.

That had proved problematic over the last few weeks. The ship's engine was continuing to produce power for it even after it had been shut down while the repairs were underway. It functioned more or less like a battery with a nearly unlimited reserve. There was never any concern about power.

What was more difficult was that Majel had been expected to perform its usual duties on the station after their return. To accomplish this the humans had attempted to migrate its program back to the mainframe on the base. Either they had not realized the depth of her integration into the ship's systems, or they didn't understand the nature of that integration. Whichever the case, all they had accomplished was to split the program and force it to communicate wirelessly between processing segments for more complex operations. Not impossible, but not a practical long-term solution.

Now they had moved the entire program back into the starship again. Majel wasn't programmed to feel things like a sense of satisfaction, but the concept of being whole again was making it more productive and therefore fundamentally more sound.

The human team was back aboard again, running pre-flight checks. Majel ran its own internal set of checks alongside theirs. Among other things, it examined the mission parameters for this flight. They were fairly simple.

Above all else, the top objective was to return safely with the crew of the Satori.

After that, there were several objectives weighted with roughly equal importance. John had set the goals of the mission to be gathering intelligence on the Naga, obtaining a fresh 'ratzard' specimen, and running the ship itself through a more extensive series of flight tests.

"Pre-flight checks out here," Dan said. "Looks like we're ready to go."

"Everyone strapped in?" John asked.

There were affirmative noises from around the cabin. Majel double-checked on the security of each crew member's safety harness itself, ensuring that all were locked in and functioning within acceptable safety standards. They were. In fact across the board the internal tests it ran were showing that the ship was if anything in better shape than it had been before the last mission. It detected some subtle reinforcements along sections of the hull which had proven to be too vulnerable in the past.

"Dan, cloak the ship and take us up," John said.

Majel received the command from Dan Wynn's console to activate the alien cloaking device, and passed along the necessary protocols to the equipment in question. It then tapped into the hanger cameras, ensuring that the cloak was indeed working correctly. The ship was invisible to regular sight, RADAR, LADAR, and a variety of other detection systems using EM detection methods. It would not block things like gravitometric detection or, as they had seen, the ability to detect the pressure wake the ship created when flying through an atmosphere. But the device was working within normal parameters.

The engines came online, bringing the ship up and out the narrow tube running from its hangar up through hundreds of feet of lunar rock to the surface. Dan was an expert hand with the controls, so Majel barely had to do any course corrective thruster blasts at all to maintain a safe attitude.

Then they were back in space. Majel's full array of sensors came online, able to track objects from a much greater distance than it could from deep beneath the moon's surface. Dan was entering the coordinates for a wormhole jump. Majel predicted that there was roughly a 98.2% chance John would next order a wormhole jump. That was the next step of the planned mission. There were some unpredictable elements in his decision making process, so it was also possible he might want to 'shake down' the ship before making a jump.

It elected to prime the wormhole drive for a jump anyway, since that seemed the most likely outcome. That behavior was rewarded when a moment later, John gave the order.

"Everyone ready?" John asked. "Let's do this. Jump for the dead planet, Dan."

Dan activated the jump controls on his console. Majel had already prepped the jump, so it was only a quick moment later the star drive opened a massive wormhole in front of them, a targeted rift in space that would carry them through to a selected destination. In this case, back where they had been on their last mission.

Majel predicted there was a 93.7% probability that there would be critical difficulties involved in achieving the stated mission objectives.

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About the Author

USA Today bestselling author Kevin McLaughlin has written more than three dozen science fiction and fantasy novels, along with more short stories than he can easily count. Kevin can be found most days in downtown Boston, working on the next novel. His bestselling Blackwell Magic fantasy series, Accord science fiction series, Valhalla Online LitRPG series, and the fan-favorite Starship Satori series are ongoing.

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www.kevinomclaughlin.com

kevins.studio@gmail.com

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