Chapter 2
Lucas Stone
“Prack, how could we lose containment?” Lucas slammed his hand down on the bench, his armor suddenly deploying.
“No idea, but we’ve got it back now. No problem,” Alex replied.
No problem? Like hell. If there’d been no problem, they would never have lost containment in the first place. No problem meant the experiment going off without a hitch and Lucas finally getting one freaking night off.
With his armor now in place, he was picking up readings from his environment that were being transferred directly to his central nervous system. It sharpened his senses, gave him details that he couldn’t see with his ordinary eyes and couldn’t hear with his ordinary ears. The armor was like a living second skin. As soon as he activated it with a single thought, it would grow up and cover his whole body in a second. He had to admit that he thought it was some of the coolest technology out there and definitely the most fun.
Fun was nowhere on his mind right now.
“That thing is meant to be dead,” he said, crossing his arms, the move easy despite the bulk of his armor.
“Well, it is still dead,” Alex replied.
“I just saw it move, Alex,” Lucas snapped, tone tense. He knew at some level that he should relax. Alex was right, and the containment field was back in place. Nothing was damaged, and nothing had happened. However, Lucas couldn’t shake the feeling that this was important. Hell, ever since he’d been given this command, he couldn’t shake the feeling that every single action was the most important thing he would ever do. He was hardly sleeping at night because he would spend every minute of every day going over the troop manifest, the personnel list, the supplies, even the programs that were to be loaded on the computer. Every detail, every hour of every day – he was already living his mission non-stop, and it hadn’t even started yet.
“It could have simply been a fluctuation in the power grid,” Alex said, his voice calm and reasonable.
“I swear I saw it move.”
“I’m pretty sure you haven’t slept in the past 48 hours.” Alex raised an eyebrow as he popped his head up from staring at the computer panel. “As I’m soon to be your Chief Medical Officer, let me tell you that’s not a good look.”
“Soon to be Chief Medical Officer, Alex. I think you will find I’m fine and that I look great,” Lucas added with a chuckle.
Alex put his hands up. “Far be it from me to say that the great Lucas Stone doesn’t look fantastic. What exactly would the good Senator’s daughter say?”
“Don’t bring that up again,” Lucas warned, but his tone was playful.
Perhaps Alex was right – perhaps he was just tired, and he’d imagined the whole thing. Because now Lucas had his armor on and he had access to the onboard computer and his augmented senses, he couldn’t deny that there was no evidence that the specimen had moved a nanometer, let alone an inch.
Lucas let out another massive sigh, finally allowing his armor to melt back into his implants.
“I’m telling you, you need to get some rest.” Alex waggled his finger. “Our friend can wait. After all, he has waited for the past 100 years. I really don’t think he’s going to mind if you take the night off.”
“Right,” Lucas managed.
“Really, that’s your comeback? I thought the great Lucas Stone was meant to be charming and witty? You call that witty?” Alex smiled.
“Knock it off.” Lucas put a hand up to his brow and started to massage it, letting his eyes close for a thankful moment. “I just don’t want anything to go wrong; this is probably the most important mission I will ever go on.”
Alex shrugged. “Why would anything go wrong? You will have the best team, the best ship, and the best leader: you.”
Lucas rolled his eyes. He knew Alex was just teasing him, but it was fair to say Lucas was starting to get fed up with all the attention. Lieutenant Saber had run up to him only last week to let him know there was going to be a documentary series on Lucas’ life that was going to run on all the major Galactic news channels before the mission. That was on top of the fact that he’d learned only the month before that he had a fan club with a subscription of over 1 million Galactic citizens. It was all too much. Hell, Alex had told him yesterday there were some people on the moons of the Dia System that now worshiped Lucas as a god.
Lucas hated it. He’d never done this for the attention; despite what everybody liked to believe, he hated attention. It had never been about that; it had always been about something more. Though the Galactic media liked to think he did it all because he was some kind of hero, they were wrong. He just always found himself the only person around when trouble erupted, and it always seemed to be up to him to solve it. He didn’t seek it out; he just found himself having to face it alone. Prack, sometimes he thought he was cursed. The number of transports or cruisers or battleships that he’d been on that had faced terrible crashes or some dastardly plot that only he could solve – it wasn’t normal. Or maybe it was normal and other people were doing what he was doing, but they weren’t getting the attention for it.
Now, that was something that kept Lucas up at night. He had a whole Galaxy telling him that he was the bee’s knees, in the prime of his game, the absolute perfect man for the job. But what if he wasn’t? What if he’d always simply been lucky? What if there was somebody out there, or millions and billions of people who could do the job better than him?
He knew he was tired and that he was thinking negatively, but Lucas also knew he wasn’t going to get any less tired. For the next several weeks he would be planning the mission, and then for the next several months he would be implementing it. As everybody kept telling him, it would be the most important operation of his life and perhaps the most important mission mounted by the entire Galaxy in the past 100 years.
Lucas swallowed hard and massaged his brow again.
That wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was in the containment field two meters to his left.
That was the real reason they were heading through Hell’s Gate. It wasn’t to study quantum singularities. It wasn’t to study the planets beyond the rim. Oh no, it was all about that thing two meters to his left.
“Look, Lucas, just go home. There is nothing more you can do here tonight. I’m running the tests, but I really don’t need you to stand there and look sullen. Go home and stand in your own house and look sullen.” Alex kept shaking his head as he looked up from his console. “If you keep staying up all night and poring over all of that data, you will find the mission short indeed, because I will call you up and send you home the second we get out of space dock.”
Lucas looked up from under his hand.
“Go home,” Alex mouthed again.
Lucas shrugged. “Fine, fine, but I don’t want to run any risks, so have the computer triple the containment field.”
Alex gave an impressed whistle. “Triple the field? That’s going to be a mighty drain on power. Lucky you are Lucas Stone, or you would be getting dragged up before the Chief Engineer in the morning.”
Lucas replied with another massive sigh, turned on his heel, and walked out the door.
Alex was right – he needed sleep. Then again, the Galaxy needed him to pull this mission off. If he didn’t… hell, he had no idea what would happen. Because that was the thing, there was much more to this mission than the public were being told. Of course there was more to it. The powers that be wouldn’t fund such an enormous operation if all they wanted to do was have a look at a couple of swirly whirly twisting space oddities.
It had to do with them. Those things they’d been finding. The peculiar, frightening things that had been popping up throughout that area of space for the past 50 years. Nearly every day they would find new samples, new signals, new artifacts that hinted at something far darker, far more menacing than a bunch of quantum singularities.
That was why Lucas Stone was going on this mission, and that was why he was popul
ating his team with more than scientists.
He was aware that his thoughts were rambling; he was so damn tired. He clamped another hand on his temple and tried to push the fatigue and worry out. It wouldn’t work, but at least it would distract him. Plus, he had every intention of ignoring Alex’s demand. He was going home, not to sleep, but to do more study. Lucas wouldn’t go on this mission, with so much at stake, without knowing exactly what he was up against.
Lucas didn’t live far out of town. While everyone else he knew chose to live in the city, in one of the beautifully appointed apartments full to the brim with modern technology, he chose to live outside. He had a rustic-style house from 300 years ago out in the country. It was an old but well-preserved log cabin, and it had something that nobody seemed to talk about anymore: charm. When Lucas had been growing up with his grandfather, he’d learned the importance of charm. The future could bring you every technological advantage you could imagine – it could bring you convenience beyond your wildest dreams; it could open up your abilities and your mind to frontiers that humans had once thought impossible – but it couldn’t give you charm. Waking up in the morning to see the sunrise from an old log cabin in an old-style bed had a hell of a lot of charm. Lucas had been nearly everywhere you could go in this Galaxy, and he’d never found charm like that anywhere else. So though it set him apart from his friends and colleagues, he lived outside the city. He knew he was probably the only one who did so in the entire Galactic Force. When he’d been going through his studies, his friends had labeled him a Luddite and a technophobe, but he wasn’t. He simply had different priorities.
It would definitely be something he would miss on the mission, as he was well aware it was scheduled to take several months. Scheduled, that was. If they found whatever mysterious race was out there, then… god, he had no idea. He just hoped it wouldn’t come to war.
Lucas realized he was walking in a daze and was on automatic pilot as he half jogged across the Galactic Force grounds toward the nearest transport hub. There was a report on recent archaeological activity close to the rim that he hoped would give him valuable insight on what was out there.
Lucas walked along, paying the bare minimum attention to his body and surroundings so he didn’t fall over or trip into a bush. He was in such a daze that it took a while to realize there was a hum in the air. This close to the transport hub, there was always a low vibration to be heard. Yet the hum he was detecting was a higher, discordant pitch. When he looked up, eyebrows pressed down in confusion, he saw something.
That was when he ran.
…
Jane
It happened too fast for her to react. One minute she was walking toward the transport hub, the next something had flown at her from out of the shadows, pressing into her shoulders and pushing her to the ground in a snap. She didn’t scream; the thing was on top of her chest, crushing her lungs in an instant, and she didn’t have the breath.
The thing, whatever it was, pulled back its lips and let out a sharp and intense hiss. Out of the corner of Jane’s eye, she saw something like a tail with a sharp, pointed end whip around from the side. It flashed around, and Jane saw the light from the nearby transport hub glinting off it.
It shot toward her. As it did, her mind, far from filling with fear, filled with a heavy, charged energy.
There was a buzzing in her head, a buzzing that vibrated through her whole skull.
The tail was milliseconds from stabbing right through her.
Before it could strike, something slammed into the side of the creature, and she heard a considerable grunt as it was pulled to the side.
Shaking, blinking wildly, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts, she remained on the ground, stock still.
The buzzing in her mind started to abate, leveling out and disappearing behind the wall of fear that now pressed in on her from every side. She could see a security officer in full armor grappling with something. She could discern him because of the distinct blue and white lines down one shoulder which glowed in the dark. But whatever he was fighting was black and indiscernible.
It was over quickly, and in a few seconds, the security officer snapped up, punching a hand to the side and latching it onto the same tail that had almost killed Jane only moments before. He tugged on it then pulled a pulse rifle from his back holster and shot the thing.
… It had barely lasted 30 seconds, yet now it was over.
But what was over? What on Earth had just happened?
“Are you okay? Are you okay, ma’am?” The soldier straightened up but kept his rifle trained on the black shape. His head was half-turned toward her, but she couldn’t tell his expression as his face was covered by the dark black of his helmet and visor.
Jane didn’t answer him; she just kept standing there. She was aware that her mouth was hanging open, her lips pouted, not in an attempt to look attractive, but because she didn’t have any control over them. Her gaze, though it did flick up to the soldier, now locked on the creature at his feet. She couldn’t tear her eyes off the weird black tail – the glinting, pointed tail that had only moments before been ready to slice right through her chest. It felt as though her body had frozen in place, as if she had no control over it whatsoever.
The buzzing was still in her head, but the more she stared down at the creature, and the more it remained still and lifeless at the soldier’s feet, the more the ringing subsided.
“We need a security team here,” the soldier snapped. He didn’t move or clutch a hand to any kind of communication device. He just spoke. Though Jane had never had the fortune of trying out one of the fancy biomechanical armor suits that all the security forces wore, she knew what was happening here. They could connect to the wearer’s motor and sensory systems, wind right in there as if they were an extension of the wearer’s body. They were controlled by thoughts alone. So if the guy wanted to make a call, all he had to do was think about it.
“Make it quick. We need a MAG team as well,” the soldier snapped out his words quickly and efficiently but didn’t once shift his gun, keeping it pointed at the thing by his feet.
Jane began to shake. It was a seriously delayed reaction. But as the ringing subsided, the fear flooded in and filled her like a balloon ready to pop.
“What the hell is this thing?” the soldier asked. His voice was low, his words directed more at himself. “How did it get to Earth?” There were long pauses between his words as he no doubt accessed the onboard sensors of his armor to scan the creature.
Jane didn’t have that advantage, and the only thing she could use to gain information on the now lifeless carcass that had almost killed her was her sight. And she couldn’t stop looking at it.
“Are you injured?” the soldier asked again. “Are you okay?”
Jane could hear the man, and she also knew that she wasn’t injured, but she still didn’t answer.
“You work in the Administrative Division, don’t you?” The soldier kept trying to engage her in conversation.
How did this man know where she worked? The question was enough to break her out of the pall of fear and surprise she was drowning in, and she tore her gaze from the black creature.
“I’ve seen you around. You’ve been here for a while, right? What’s your name?” While he still had his gun pointed at the creature, and he only half turned to Jane as he spoke, it appeared that the note of concern in his voice was genuine.
As Jane heard the sound of heavy footsteps running over the Galactic Force grounds toward them and the sharp blare of a warning signal as a security field was set in place around the building and grounds, she recognized the voice she was hearing. It was Lucas Stone. It had to be. She knew that distinctive deep baritone.
Before she could ask him, the security group arrived, and the commotion began anew.
Soon, Jane was whisked away by a medical bot, even though she was plainly not injured. And soon, though not soon enough, she whispered her name. “Jane.” But Lucas Stone was n
o longer there to hear it.