The rich colored liquid poured slowly from the bottle into a tall, slender glass. He replaced the stopper in the bottle and set it down and took the glass in his hand. Turning back to his office, Leskal took a deep smell of his drink and followed that with a sip. Sighing he made his way to one of the comfy chairs facing the window that ran along the length of his office and sat down heavily. Staring out into space, he couldn’t hide that fact anymore that he was worried. His ships were all ready to go. In fact he had to call several of them back as they were wasting energy waiting in their holding pattern. Zenghil’s signal should have been received some time ago and he had not sent any sort of contact since they had received word that he had recovered Nick and everything was on schedule. That schedule meant that by now they should have overthrown the council and been in command of the planet. Angrily he took another sip of his drink and wondered how to proceed. Should they send another spy? Should they wait longer? Perhaps they should proceed with their other plan to start a campaign on Earth against the Annunaki so that when they showed up in Earth’s space they would already be hated. The decision was a huge one and proving to be hard to sort out. The people of Earth would be best kept in the dark to the fact of other life out in the universe. He couldn’t gauge how they would react if they found out they weren’t alone in the universe. It could easily backfire on him and his plans, and besides, they liked to live with their heads in the sand and Leskal preferred to keep them that way as long as he could. As he was about to take a third sip of his drink the communicator on his desk sounded off. His heart skipped a beat, was this it? Did Zhengil manage to send out the signal? He sprinted over to his desk and pressed the receive button on his communicator “What is it?”
“Sir, this is Captain Nelvar. There has been a development” was the answer
“What sort of development?” Leskal questioned, his throat tight, the pounding of his heart ringing in his ears.
“A ship has appeared.”
This puzzled Leskal for a moment before asking “A ship? What’s it doing?”
“It came out of a wormhole and it’s just sitting there. There is a life form on board but there has been no response to our communications. It’s one of ours by the looks of it”
“I want to see it” Leskal demanded.
“Uploading visual now sir” Nelvar responded
Leskal sat down in his desk chair and waited for the incoming picture to visualize.
“Just one ship?”
As he tried to decipher exactly what it could mean, the picture materialized and he recognized it at once as the ship they had used to send Nick back to Nibiru.
“I want you to secure the ship using the tractor beam and bring it into the hangar. I don’t want anyone but me to go inside. Is that clear? And keep the ships ready for an attack”
“Yes sir.” Nelvar replied “I will let you know when the ship is secured in the dock” and the communicator went silent with an audible click.
Leskal turned off his communicator and sat back in disbelief. What had happened to Zhengil? How did Nick’s ship reappear? Whoever was on board had better have some answers for him.
Nick awoke to a pair of gruff hands shaking him. Opening his eyes there was Leskal kneeling on one knee beside him still shaking him. “OK, OK, I’m awake” said Nick groggily and the shaking stopped.
“What are you doing here?” Leskal questioned in a menacing tone “How did you get here? Was the mission a success? Answer me!” he finished angrily.
Confused and disoriented, Nick didn’t know what he was talking about. Looking around he could see that he was back in the ship he had used to go to Nibiru. Was this all just a dream? He wondered.
Leskal grabbed his head and forced Nick to stare into his eyes. Leskal was probing his mind, looking for memories of what had happened. Nick’s brain began to ache with Leskal’s probing. He was starting to black out when Leskal broke off the probe.
Leskal leaned back against the wall of the ship touched the communicator on his wrist and spoke “Captain Nelvar, the objective has been completed. Please commence the attack as planned”
“Very well sir” was the response.
“You have done very well Nick” Leskal said, relief displayed in the smile slowly spreading across his face.
Nick remained conscious long enough to hear the words of praise and then blacked out.
When he awoke, Nick found himself in a cell. It was nondescript, bleak and dark with no windows, the dim overhead light revealing the solitary bed he was now occupying along the one side and a toilet on the other. No bars to hold him in, rather a force field of some sort, that quietly hissed and crackled with menacing power. Normally, he would found this unnerving if he hadn’t experienced the things that he had in the past while. Now that he thought of it, Nick didn’t know how much time had passed since this adventure began. He lay on the bed pondering that very question, remembering all that he'd been through and the unbelievable things he had seen.
“You have done well Nick” he remembered Leskal saying but for some reason he didn’t feel right about what Leskal had seen inside his memories. He could envision himself in them performing the actions and tasks that they reported but it didn’t’ feel right. It was almost like he was watching a movie with himself in the starring role. He shook his head and sat up on the side of the bed. Looking through the force field he could see other cells but they appeared unoccupied. Nick was standing up and stretching out his aching muscles when a gray appeared. Silent as a predator, it came from the corridor that ended somewhere out of site to his right. It came to a stop in front of his cell and the force field shut down. Entering the cell it approached Nick bearing a note which Nick took and quickly read. It was from Leskal, requesting Nick's presence in his office. Nick was used to this routine now and knew that he was supposed to follow the gray to Leskal's office. For a fleeting moment Nick thought of making a break for it, but where would he go? He was on the moon after all and escape would be all but impossible. He also didn’t know what the gray would do. He had to assume that it had some powers or a weapon to thwart any attempt of escape. No, it would be best to meet up with Leskal and assess the situation at that point, but he vowed to himself to keep his eyes and ears open just in case an opportunity presented itself. He handed the note back to the gray and it turned and made its way out of the cell, down the hallway. Obligingly Nick followed. As he walked down the hall he peered in the cells that lined it. They were all empty and in varying degrees of cleanliness. Some were messy as if they had been recently occupied and others were dark and barren, unused for a long period of time. Nick wasn’t sure, but he thought that he could see bloodstains in more than one cell and it made him involuntarily shiver as his imagination filled his thoughts with nasty and terrible images of what could have transpired to make those bloodstains. The hallway ended sharply at an elevator door which slid open with a low grating noise, like rock sliding on rock. Nick found this odd as every other door in the facility that he had encountered operated with much more quiet precision. It cemented his thoughts that this area was used as more than a detention area for unwanted guests. They entered the elevator and the door grated closed and then Nick could feel the upward motion of the lift and knew they were moving. It came to a stop in a short time and this time when the door opened, it was smooth and silent as Nick had come to expect. Nick supposed that the nearby personnel didn’t want to be bothered with the grating sound of the door and it was reserved to add to the fear and intimidation of the guests far below. The gray exited with Nick trailing behind him and took him on a route through a maze of corridors that left him confused and having no idea which direction was which. At last they came to a stop outside of a door and the gray motioned for Nick to enter. The door opened as he stepped up to it and with a quick glance at the gray sentinel, he entered a small antechamber, the door shutting quickly behind him.
The antechamber was no bigger than a few telephone booths and there were no comforts
like chairs or windows. All Nick could do was stand and wait. He didn’t have to wait long as the doors opened and Leskal was standing immediately on the other side beckoning Nick to come in. Nick walked in and noticed that he was now on the other side of the room from when he had last entered it. Glancing around he noticed that the room seemed untidy, as though its occupant was more focused on attending to other matters and didn’t put any effort into maintaining the area. Papers were scattered all over Leskal’s desk as well as the table by the window that faced out into space. Leskal himself looked agitated and disheveled as he asked Nick to take a seat on the opposite side of the desk. Sitting down, Leskal didn’t waste any time in getting to what was on his mind.
“So here we are again Nick” he started “From your memories it would seem that your mission was a success” and he paused here and surveyed Nick warily.
“From what I remember it went off like you wanted it to. I delivered the nanobots to their target. Things get a little fuzzy after that though, and I still can’t remember how I got here” Nick said plainly with a shrug of his shoulders, even though he was unsure of any of his memories at the moment.
“Your memories seem to corroborate that Nick. So much so that when we recovered your ship and I was able to read your memories I ordered the final phase of the plan into action.”
“You sent your attack force to Nibiru then?” Nick questioned, his curiosity piqued.
“Yes I did” Leskal responded
“Did it all work out then?” Nick said, unsure if he should feel happy or sad
“Well Nick. It’s that, fuzziness as you put it, in your memory that has me concerned at the moment. I ordered the strike five days ago and we have not had any contact from the fleet and we can’t try to contact them as we don’t want any of our messages to be intercepted” Leskal said and then stared at Nick searchingly “So as you can see, I am in a bit of a quandary here. The takeover should have only taken a day, two at the most. Nick struggled for something to say, anything to buy himself some time but he really didn’t have anything to offer except what his memories had already revealed.
“You have looked into my memories and you know everything I know” he said.
Leskal’s face was like stone, hard and impassive at first then his eyes flooded and revealed his anger. He stood up and leaned forward on his desk toward Nick and said “Let’s just see if we can clear up that fuzziness then Nick” his voice quivering with pent up rage. Nick made to get up but it was if he was glued to his chair. Nothing was binding him but he could not move no matter how much he struggled. Leskal was storming around his desk towards him, all pretenses now dropped, his rage fueling his actions and Nick was the target of that anger. Leskal grabbed his chair and spun him around, his face inches from Nick’s and red with anger. When he spoke it was if he was spitting the words at him, each one filled with venom and hate. “As you can see there are a few tricks I have picked up.” he gloated, relishing the domination he had over Nick.
“So how about it Nick, let’s have a look at those memories and see what’s really going on” he continued sarcastically. Grabbing a handful of Nick’s hair he turned and pulled Nick and the chair along with him to an open area in front of the long window that ran the length of his office. Turning his back on the window to face Nick again he leaned down and with his face close to Nick’s again, squinting with determination as he forced his way into Nick’s mind, his hands on either side of Nick’s head so he couldn’t look away. Nick wanted to scream in agony but his voice wasn’t working at the moment and he had to sit and take the pain building in his skull. Sweat started rolling down Nick's forehead, his breath coming in haggard gasps as he tried to look away; lash out with his foot. Anything to make the pain stop.
In moments his memories started surfacing one after another, like bubbles in a madly boiling pot. He could see himself on the ship going through the wormhole. Now he could see the planet and he was landing in a depot. Now Zhengil was there taking him back to his house to complete Nick’s training. Nick was almost blacking out now, the pain so intense, but the memories kept coming.
They were in the air purification facility. He was standing there, his arm outstretched, and then suddenly everything was blurry. It was as if someone was jamming the signal in his brain. The image of him with his arm outstretched, his blood dripping into the pool below fizzled and distorted and then changed altogether. It was the same scene again, only this time he pulled his arm away and turned to see Zhengil ready to fire on him, then they were wrestled to the ground and surrounded and Zhengil was struggling to reach his arm and then blasted from existence.
Nick was sure his head was going to explode. It felt like there were a thousand hot knives piercing his skull and brain. In a way he wished it would explode so he wouldn’t have to feel any more pain. Everything would just go away and he wouldn’t be involved in all this.
Then the rest of his real memories rushed back into his head in a torrent, like water rushing into a canyon when the dam that was holding it back had burst. All his meetings with Maknil, right up to Maknil attacking him back in his office. Everything he had seen and heard was all there, laid bare for Leskal to see. Leskal’s hands started to tremble, his eyes narrow and filled with malice. He let go of Nick’s head and the connection between them was broken. Nick’s head slumped down to his chest, the pain in his skull slowly receding. Lifting his head slightly he could see Leskal kneeling in front of him, himself exhausted from the effort it took to extract Nick’s memories. Slowly Leskal rose and after a few dizzy moments began pacing up and down in front of the long window, the rage gone from his face and replaced with a hard, determined look. He came to a stop right in front of Nick and pulled out his weapon. He pointed it right at Nick’s heart and said “Sorry Nick but this story ends for you here.”
Nick’s head was still swimming. The pain was fading but he was having trouble holding his head up and focusing, it felt like all the muscles in his neck had lost their strength and his head was lolling around like a boat being tossed around in heavy waves. He was trying hard to look at Leskal and meet his fate head on but the best he could manage was a vacant, sidelong stare out the window behind him. Nick was looking at the star field out the window thinking that his dying moments would be spent beholding the beauty of the universe. There were worse ways to die he supposed. As he stared and waited for the end to come the stars started to get blurry and distorted, like someone was stretching space and he closed his eyes thinking they were playing tricks on him. When he opened them again he could see the distortion get bigger and bigger and then, as if someone flicked a switch, a ship appeared. Leskal must have sensed something was awry because he turned to look and his eyes shot open wide in shock and dismay. At that same moment the room filled with a brilliant magenta colored light and then faded, revealing Maknil standing there with an armed escort. Leskal took a step back in obvious disbelief, his eyes wide and popping.
“You” he whispered, hatred permeating the single word like a cloud. And he snarled as he aimed his weapon at Maknil but Maknil’s guards were too quick, firing on him first and he crashed to floor in an unconscious heap. With a word from Maknil they stood him up and the magenta light filled the room once more and they were gone.
Chapter 16