Stolen Flyght – Chapter 19

In years to come, I’m sure I’ll remember this conversation with Dr. Suniere as a pleasant one. Much to my surprise, Lia is fascinated with weather control and wants to study it at a university someday. She holds most of the conversation, charming an exhausted Dr. Suniere with witty remarks, factual data, and thoughts on the application of Dr. Suniere’s own scientific findings. Lia keeps me in the conversation by referring to farming methods I can comment on.

I smile over the lip of my coffee mug at Lia and her bright and happy face. This is why I brought her on board. Because she’s a treasure. She’s smart, capable, and strong. I’d trust her with my life. Technically, I’m doing that right now.

Skylar appears at the door to the canteen and waves in our direction.

“Looks like our coffee break is over.” I grab each of our cups to put them in the pulse washer. “Thank you for the conversation, Dr. Suniere. It was so nice meeting you.”

Lia jumps to her feet and shakes the doctor’s hand with both of hers. “Yes, thank you! It was such a pleasure.”

“Ladies, please,” the doctor says, her face heating with a blush. “It was my pleasure entirely. I think I’ll head back to my apartment and see if they’ve fixed the heater yet.”

“Great idea.” Yes, excellent idea. Please be far away from here, just in case. I don’t want to run into her again when we’re doing something clandestine. Besides, I like this woman, and I hope that she’s in a safe space if we have to execute our extreme emergency.

We leave her at the door, waving goodbye and watching her disappear around the far corner. Hopefully, she avoids her office and gets out of this area.

“We’re in business,” Skylar says, leaning into my ear. “Carlos got us all added to this sublevel six list. But…” She presses her hands together.

“But what?” I knew there’d be a but coming.

“Viv, the list, to begin with, was only ever ten people long. We’re going to be noticed. Easily.”

I swallow, my throat dry and scratchy. I don’t think the coffee did me any good.

I glance at Lia, and she shrugs.

“Okay, then we get in and get out quickly,” I say, charging forward.

My heart beats way up in my throat until we round the corner, and I see Jinzo again. I breathe out a held breath, and my heartbeat slows when he smiles at me. Jinzo, Ken, and Gus can set everything right with a smile or a nod. Even Mat is becoming a calming force in my life.

I am not happy about having my network at risk during this operation. The way this mission has gone leaves me no choice but to have a stern talk with Renata Dellis when I make it back to Athens Industries. This is far and away the worst job I’ve ever had, and I used to muck around in manure. Actual shit. There better be a bonus on the other side of this mess.

I reach out and squeeze Jinzo’s forearm as we fall into line behind Nina and her super-soldier crew. Far off down the corridor is another security door, so we only have a moment before things get crazy again.

“What do you think?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I think we have, at most, five minutes to see all we need to see and then get the hell out of there.” He disengages from my touch and rests his hand on my waist. “I need you to stick close to the exits. I have a feeling whatever Commander Correa is planning will be… explodey.”

“Like bomb boom?” My heart rate increases again.

“She asked me if I knew anything about overloading electrical systems and high-capacity batteries, so yes.”

I angle my head to look to the front of the queue. We’re almost there.

“Please…” I bite my lip to stop it from trembling. “Please be careful.”

“Me? I’m always careful.” He leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “That’s a promise of more to come later. I love you,” he whispers.

“I love you too. Just…” I sigh. “I would prefer not to blow the place up unless we have to.”

Maybe we can destroy whatever it is and leave the rest of the place intact? I’m not sure, but I’m making plans at the back of my head while we continue forward. I doubt anything they’re doing is worth destroying this entire base.

The process of getting into the corridor that leads to sublevel six is the same as the others. The two security doors act as an airlock and cycle people through with handprints, optical readings, and a spoken password. We all have these, so I’m not worried, but I am concerned that this is all automated. There are no androids here. No extra personnel. It’s a well-known fact that people cannot keep a secret, but if you don’t station guards, then you cut back on people who have to keep a secret.

This must mean that this is top-level, super-secret shit, as Gloria would say. She shoots me another killer look as she enters the gauntlet to get inside. Remember, Vivian. There is no sublevel six.

My mind turns over all the possibilities ahead of us as we descend a set of stairs one, two, three landings down. Is this our only way out? I hope not.

Through a heavily armored door, we finally emerge into a control room. Darkened windows line the far wall over a few terminals. There’s a door to the left and another to the right. A woman sits at the terminals, eating from a bowl and scanning lines of code in front of her. She turns around when the door opens, her spoon dangling from her mouth and her eyes wide.

“Mmm-mmm.” She pulls the spoon from her mouth and jumps up. “Commander Correa, I didn’t know you’d be…” Her voice trails off as she sees us behind Nina. “Who are these people? They’re not —”

“This is our new beta team. They’ll be going through on the next expedition, and I wanted to bring them here to familiarize them with the room and the protocols.”

The woman’s eyes shift back and forth between us.

Will she buy it? I’m sure my appearance doesn’t fit into any type of military job. I’m still wearing the contractor cover-alls that most people in the labs wear. Gloria and Lia are wearing kitchen clothes. Most of us look barely alive, much less fit for some kind of mission.

The woman shrugs and grabs her bowl. “You’re in charge, Commander. Though I gotta wonder about where we’re sending people next.” She looks me up and down. Well, excuse me. “Are we going undercover as peasants this time?”

She elbows Nina and chuckles. When Nina doesn’t return the sentiment, the woman clears her throat.

She waves to her console. “I have new data on our next destination. The data shows that this time, we should be able to make a clear landing into a spot outside of a city center. But our aim has only been eighty percent successful with the drones.”

I listen, and I say nothing. She’s talking freely in front of us because she believes we have the clearance to be here. From everything she’s saying, I guess they’re launching missions to some remote sites from here?

“Is there an away team on a mission now?” Nina asks.

Jinzo is circling the room to my right, his hands behind his back and his attention on everything he comes across. Skylar’s eyes are locked on the darkened windows. Lia and Carlos whisper to each other. Gloria’s face is cemented into place, unhappy with her lack of knowledge here.

“There is. It’s been on the same destination for the last five days.”

“This is a five-day mission?”

“Yes!” This woman is excited about her super-secret business. “It’s our first time returning to the same world.”

She glances at the men behind Nina.

“We… We’re on a different continent now, though. Same world, very different people.” She turns over her wristlet. “Okay, I’m off duty now. I have to run to the labs.”

Nina’s smile is predatory. “I’m on duty now, thank you.”

“You?” she asks with a giggle. She grabs her bag and an empty coffee mug. Her arms are full of stuff. “They must be running low on staff to have a commander working a shift.” She glances at us again. “Ah, but maybe you worked it out that way since you’re touring the beta team.”

Nina lays her hand on the woman’s shoulder and smiles like they’re long-time friends. “That’s exactly what happened.” She sees the woman to the door. “You have an enjoyable night, Karen.”

“You too!” She smiles and waves, heading down the corridor with a spring in her step.

Nina and I crowd at the door to watch Karen drop her bowl and mug in the galley and then leave the same way we came in.

“I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see she was on duty. The woman is lovely but clueless.” She turns away from the door to breathe a sigh of relief. “Anyone else would have been suspicious.”

Nina moves to the middle of the room and raises her arms. “Okay, everyone. Here we are. Here’s that big, secret project the military has been working on for the past five to seven years. We’re going to go in and look at everything, but everyone will wear a hazmat suit, just in case. You don’t need respirators.” Nina points to the right door, and Jinzo opens it to show a locker area with hazmat suits and respirator masks.

Skylar and I surge forward. We both want these secrets out in the open and to complete this mission as soon as possible. Carlos hangs back, sighs, and joins us.

“What’s in here that could be hazardous?” Jinzo asks Nina, warily grabbing a hazmat suit and handing it to me.

“Anything, everything, maybe?” She shrugs as she steps into the legs of a suit. “It’s hard to say. We’ve brought back items and” — she glances at the super-soldier man standing over her — “lots of other technology, but we know that not everything on the other side is as tame as it appears to be.”

My consciousness recedes, pulling blackness in at the edges of my vision. I have a really bad feeling about this.

“The other side?”

She nods but says nothing more.

Wait, wait, wait. I don’t trust Nina, and I certainly don’t trust the military. What if we walk out that door and walk into a trap? What if it’s monsters? Ugh. My imagination is running away from me.

Fuck this. I’m not going out there unless I know what I’m facing.

I charge back out into the main room with my hazmat suit half on.

“Are these windows always dark?” I call into the room, addressing Nina. “Why can’t I see into your experiment?”

“There are audible room controls,” she calls out, zipping up her hazmat suit. “Just be careful, Vivian. It’s really bright.”

Fine. Bright, I can handle.

“Room controls. Bring the window transparency up by twenty percent.” I brace myself.

I shield my eyes against the white-blue light that pours through the windows. I can’t even see what’s going on.

Lia gasps. Skylar swears. Jinzo’s mouth drops open.

“A circle of light,” he whispers.

What did he see in his prescient dreams?

I close my eyes and go back to that time in bed with him. “Ken and Gus fighting. The Lee home ship flying above me. Mat on his knees before you. Snow. A round circle of light.” He also said, “A lot of sex with you,” and now I really believe that, though I thought he was kidding about it all. Nope. I believe every word.

The control room juts out over a cavernous space with a five-meter wide circle of sparkling white and shimmering blue at the far end. Wait. Not just a circle of light.

“It’s a jump gate. Fuck me.” The sight steals my breath, and I cover my hand with my mouth. “What the hell are you guys doing here?”

Nina zips up her hazmat suit, and her smile is manic. “Come see for yourself.”