Vatican Abdicator Page 9

  “Maybe the question is whether we will become the Ancient Enemy or,” BC pauses for effect,

  “Whether we already are the Ancient Enemy. Whether we like it or not.”

  “So, now you’re saying the Eldred are right?!” Anita snaps back at him.

  “No!” BC gets defensive. “I’m saying they might be. But I don’t think they are. Just considering all possibilities.”

  “I was worried. Thought your brain might be turning to mush with all that exposure to bureaucrats,” she jokes.

  The lights around BC turn red as an alarm begins to sound.

  Uh-oh.

  “What’s going on there?” Anita asks.

  “Don’t know,” BC admits. “But I think I should go.”

  “Bu – ” Anita is cut off as the com switches over to an emergency channel.

  “Campion!” Wentworth calls over the com. “Come up to my station’s command center. Dolomay is attacking a nearby station! We’re scrambling ships.”

  Guess he’s not out anymore…

  “I’ll be right there!”

  BC finds his way to the command center with the help of one of Wentworth’s robot doubles.

  “Apogee Station,” Wentworth fills BC in as he arrives. “And Dolomay has two ships. With Transpace drives.”

  “Great.”

  “We’ve sent ships. But if he’s got two ships… Now they’ll start hitting two places at once!”

  “Not likely,” BC disagrees. “Dolomay needs to be near his crew members so he can keep them under his control.”

  “Again the mind control thing? You’re sure that’s real?” Wentworth is still skeptical.

  “I’m sure. You watch. Even if he adds ships, they’ll work together. Unless he’s more powerful than I think he is.”

  “Well, that’s good to know, I guess.”

  Two minutes later Wentworth gets reports back from Apogee Station.

  “They made short work of Apogee,” Wentworth says. “A supply raid. Oxygen, food. Cleaned the place out.”

  “Damn. Did any of our ships get a chance to engage his?”

  “Nah, he was in and out too quickly. But we’re picking up survivors, the ones left.”

  “What now?” BC asks.

  “We’re on red alert in case they come here next.”

  “Any sign of them nearby?”

  “No… It was Dolomay’s first attack in a while. Guess they ran out of some supplies. Where do you suppose they’re hiding out? Somewhere in the asteroids?”

  “They haven’t been ‘hiding out’,” BC tells him. “I just heard from Anita that the Domo and the Flaze have been in touch. Evidently, Dolomay’s been attacking them. He’s been keeping busy. Just away from us.”

  “And these are the other aliens, right?”

  “Right. Our galactic neighbors, kind of. They kept the Eldred away from us, way back when.”

  “That’s right, you’ve mentioned them before. Who are… What are they like?” Wentworth asks.

  “I still haven’t met them myself,” BC tells Wentworth. “According to the Project’s scientists, the Domo are like vampires and the Flaze are like your traditional UFO type aliens. Putting it in basic terms.”

  “I see… Should we care that Dolomay’s hitting them?” Wentworth asks, arching an eyebrow.

  “Maybe we should encourage Dolomay to go after them… keeps him away from us!”

  “You’re assuming the Flaze and the Domo won’t hit back?”

  “Even better,” Wentworth smiles a sly smile. “Let them take Dolomay out.”

  “Their aim might not be that narrowly focused,” BC warns Wentworth. “Don’t assume that when they hit back they’ll only hit Dolomay.”

  “What? All humans look alike?”

  “’Fraid so,” BC tells him. “Who knows? They are aliens, after all. There’s no telling how they think.”

  The alarms begin ringing out across the command center. Wentworth’s crew scrambles to their posts.

  “What’s going on?” Wentworth shouts out.

  “Are they here?” BC asks.

  “Another attack,” one of Wentworth’s techs tells them. “Down on Earth. They’re blitzing the Stinger shipyard!”

  “Do we have any visual feeds?” Wentworth asks. Several feeds appear on wall screens around the room.

  BC’s eyes are drawn from screen to screen. Dolomay’s two ships dart in and out of the picture. The ships are visibly altered, with added on armaments and engines. A strategic graphic feed shows Dolomay’s two ships as bright red dots darting around the screen.

  “Never seen ships move like that before,” one tech exclaims. “Crazy maneuverability!”

  “Dolomay,” BC says to Wentworth, “souping up the ships with stolen equipment from The Flaze and The Domo. Oh shit!”

  The screens with camera feeds all suddenly glow with an intense white light, and then blink out. The strategic feed blips off with them.

  “What the fuck was that?” Wentworth asks in a low voice.

  “Looks like a small nuke, sir,” a tech tells Wentworth. “A controlled burst. Never seen anything like it.”

  “Shit,” BC says. He looks for a place to sit down and finds an empty chair in front of a screen showing a plan of the Stinger shipyard.

  “Get me an overhead view on that right now!” Wentworth commands. BC sees a satellite view appear on his screen, zooming in and zipping across blurry land below as it’s repositions over the shipyard. He has to look away as a wave of nauseous vertigo comes over him. He looks back as the screen stops moving. Smoke and clouds fill the picture.

  “Switching to resonant imaging,” a tech says.

  The picture shifts from simple video to a graphic display as a topographic representation of the ground below appears. The crater below. There is no more shipyard. First time anyone’s used a nuke on Earth since Mecca was hit. Ruthless. BC realizes the room has been silent when Wentworth breaks the silence.

  “Goddamn! The man plays fucking hardball!”

  Wentworth shakes his head.

  Is that admiration in his voice?

  Wentworth looks over at BC.

  “Guess we’ll be building our ships in the asteroids from now on, eh, Campion?”

  “We should warn them out there that Dolomay’s back,” BC tells Wentworth.

  “Do it,” Wentworth tells the man in front of him. “And let’s look alert, people, he could be coming here next.”

  Chapter Eight

  For the next two months the resources of the UTZ and The Project are poured into two missions, one overt, one covert: vaccinations against the plague, and construction in the asteroids. UTZ and Project doctors travel across the Earth, Moon and Mars, through all human settlements and outposts, administering the vaccine for the plague.

  Clean up efforts at the demolished Stinger Shipyard on Earth are out in the open. Wentworth decided they should make it look like the UTZ was planning on building ships there again. Construction of the new base on Ceres and the building of the new Stinger Shipyard nearby are being kept off the public’s radar.

  Dolomay hasn’t hit an Earth target since he nuked the old shipyard two months ago. Though he’s not around, his whereabouts can be guessed. Anita has conveyed to BC more complaints from The Domo and the Flaze of further attacks by Dolomay on their worlds, and they from their neighbors, as Dolomay’s raiders strike far and wide away from the Solar System.

  Dolomay is evidently using his ancient navigational knowledge to pick other targets around the galactic “neighborhood”. He keeps his now reportedly three ships on the move. They strike together as BC predicted, and, as Wentworth had observed, it seems to be keeping them from attacking targets in the solar system.

  Much like the UTZ Council, Dolomay doesn’t seem to know about the new construction in the asteroids. He has left the Ceres site and the new shipyard nearby alone. The Project’s original asteroid base is well defended and he hasn’t returned there, either.

  Constr
uction has been going at a frenzied pace at the both the shipyard and on Ceres’ new operations base.

  BC travels on a Project transport to the Project’s old asteroid base to check in with Anita. She’s been overseeing the ongoing construction. He asked the ship’s pilot to fly by both projects before heading in to the old Project base so he could see the progress for himself. BC’s ship buzzes past the Ceres site. Massive banks of construction lights illuminate the half built facility. The main dome rivals the size of the main dome on Lunar Prime, and like Lunar Prime, six tubular corridors radiate out from the dome. Two of the corridors simply end, awaiting future construction. The other four end in smaller domes, also interconnected by corridors, creating a partial outer ring. Out beyond that ring lies a ring of defensive posts, armed batteries already fully built and functional, bristling with defensive weapons.

  After the Ceres flyby they cruise on past the new shipyard facilities. Thanks to Anita and her crew’s efforts, they’re already building ships, even as they build the shipyard around them. There are several ships scattered around the facilities in various stages of completion. The facilities look incomplete and temporary. There’s a slapped together quality to everything that reveals the haste of its construction. Then again, the place is less than two months old. Most of their efforts have gone into building new ships, not into fixing up the buildings around them. Stinger ships constantly patrol around the base and the shipyard. Ships come off the assembly line and go right into service, soon as they can be crewed up.

  BC’s transport is full of novice pilots, all coming out to finish their training and get their ships. He leans back from the viewport and looks back at his fellow passengers, all crowded against the viewports looking out at ships they might soon be flying.

  The passengers settle back into their seats as they pull away from the shipyard and head for the old Project asteroid base. The trip through the asteroids takes another two hours. After bobbing and weaving through the rocks they finally touch down at the old base. Anita meets BC at the base’s landing dock.

  “BC! Good to see you!” She says with a smile, and she gives him a quick hug.

  “Anita! How are you?” He says, hugging her back.

  She pulls away, quickly looks around and then answers.

  “Busy. Building a shipyard and building ships. That… and listening to aliens complain.”

  “At least they’re only complaining,” BC observes.

  “So far. At least, I think The Flaze are complaining,” she says, scrunching up her forehead in remembered frustration. “With them it’s hard to tell.”

  She realizes something she meant to tell BC right away. “Dolomay’s back! He just hit an Earth target. You were traveling so you probably didn’t hear. The media are still calling him a rogue UIN unit,”

  Anita tells him.

  Her expression shifts. She picks back up on her past thought. “And besides the aliens complaining, I’ve got to listen to Dell and Krish harping on the fact they can’t get their hands on Eldred technology. Thanks for planting that seed!”

  “Well, that’s one of the reasons I’m here. I still want to capture an Eldred ship so they can take it apart. You can bet Dolomay’s been acquiring tech well beyond ours in his raids – that nuke he used on the shipyard was Flaze, by the way, use that as leverage if you can – and we know the Eldred have more advanced gear.”

  “You too, huh? You sound just like them!” she says, shaking her head. “Well, that’s good. I thought you were coming here to check up on me. Make sure I wasn’t fucking up your ships,” Anita says with a little bit of an edge in her voice.

  So fucking defensive! Guy can’t get a break!

  “Damn! I’m hurt,” BC says with a touch of sarcasm to lighten the tone. He tries to reassure her.

  “I trust you to build the ships just fine. But I did want to see how things were going.”

  And maybe I want to see you, too, ever think of that? Not that I’m still so sure of that now…

  “Sorry,” she apologizes, “I’m just a little stressed.”

  “Sorry,” BC says for no reason.

  “The news media have been asking for you since Dolomay’s new attack,” Anita says, changing the subject. “You can have your own stress fest. They’re asking why the UTZ isn’t doing something to try to stop these UIN attacks, instead of hiding out like they are, holed up on Wentworth Station, guarded by what’s left of the UTZ fleet.”

  “Great. There are only forty ships there.”

  “How many more ships do we have right now?” Anita asks him.

  “Well, there are twenty on Mars. How many fully functional ships do you have here?”

  “Fully functional? At this point, today? Fifteen.”

  “Great. Our fleet is seventy-five ships,” BC says, depressing himself with the low number.

  “We’ll have five more ready by next week,” Anita says in encouragement.

  “On the line now?” he asks her.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do we have crews to man them?”

  “You rode in with them today.”

  “Those newbies? Jeesh. They hardly seem ready!”

  “What are we supposed to do, BC? The Project’s tapped out! We’ve pulled in all our pilots from Cat’s Eye and the other outposts. We’ve lost a lot of seasoned UTZ pilots already. Wentworth tells me these guys are it.”

  “We’re still training more,” he tells her.

  “I know. Just can’t do it fast enough,” she laments. She gets a distant look in her eyes as she receives a com message.

  “Why him?” she asks, and listens. BC can’t hear the other side of the conversation.

  “Shit,” she says as she focuses on BC again. “We’ve got a Flaze ship outside, asking for permission to dock. And there’s a joint Flaze and Domo delegation on board asking to meet with you.”

  “Me?” BC asks. “Why me?”

  “Yeah, BC, I asked them that, too. The Flaze say the Eldred have designated you the human representative.”

  “Great,” BC sighs. “But how did they know I was here? I just got here? What, did they follow me in?”

  “That I don’t know. Lucky guess?” Anita suggests mockingly. How they know I was here, arriving here, now?

  “Give them permission to land, I guess. Have an honor guard meet them at their ship and escort them to the conference room near the landing area.”

  “This will be your first time, won’t it?” Anita exclaims as the thought occurs to her.

  “It will. I’m a virgin!” he jokes.

  Anita darkens.

  “Don’t joke. I think you… well, I think you need to be very careful here, BC,” she cautions.

  “These are very dangerous aliens. You know about the Domo, we told you how vampiric they are. The Flaze are inscrutable. We still know so little about them…” she trails off, a little embarrassed by her show of concern.

  “Come with me, then,” BC asks her. “I need your help. Your knowledge.” A thought occurs to him, stark and brilliant.

  I know exactly what to do!

  “And I’ve got an idea,” he tells her.

  “Now that sounds dangerous!” she says with a laugh.

  “It may be. I want to get the Domo and the Flaze to reveal themselves to the public. We’ll introduce them!”

  “Are you insane?”

  “Maybe. Let’s open it all up! Blow it all wide open. Fuck the UTZ Council! Let’s introduce the public to the Domo and the Flaze. Show them the Eldred. Tell the public about Dolomay being an alien. He already tried to tell the public about the aliens, even if people thought he was crazy… I’m sick of the secrecy. I don’t think it’s doing us any good lying to the public about what’s really going on out here!”

  “What?” Anita can’t believe it.

  “Look,” BC says, getting serious. “This is all going to blow people’s minds at best – at best! At worst, they won’t believe it. I’m thinking if we make it all common knowledge with
two aliens standing there right next to us it might make us more believable. You did say the news media were clamoring to talk to me…”

  Anita smiles. “You’re crazy, but good-crazy. I like that! It just might work!”

  BC sees the Domo and the Flaze in person for the first time when he enters the conference room. The Domo look almost human, like fat bald men with oval, slightly pointed heads, although their mouths move the wrong way and look like they were put on wrong, sort of sideways. These two Domo each stand about five foot six, on the short side. They are rounded, rotund creatures. BC can see their pointed teeth gnash as they speak to each other, each sharp point moving independently in the vertical slash.

  Where the Domo are curved, the Flaze are all angles. They stand taller, too. The two Flaze in the delegation stand well over six and a half feet tall, but walk stooped over. They are thin and bony, if they have bones under their taught, leather-like, flaky gray skin.

  Bipedal, the Flaze could be called “humanoid”, but they’d never be mistaken for human beings. Their heads are too long and large, for one thing. They have what appear to be two eyes, a nose, and a mouth beneath, but their “eyes” are large, multifaceted silver jewels, their “nose” just two thin vertical slits in the middle of their “face”, and their “mouths” are horizontal slits rimmed by sharp spiky ridges instead of teeth.

  BC stands with Anita, Krish and Dell beside him on the opposite end of the long oval conference room table from the aliens. The two Domo finish speaking to each other and turn to face them. BC looks across the table at the four aliens, taking it all in.

  Meeting the Eldred kind of prepared me for… woah, what’s that? Kind of nausea, sort of a wave of exhaustion… is that the Domo? The ‘vampiric qualities’ Anita and the boys mentioned?

  One of the Flaze speaks first. Whispery, slithery sounds slip from the taller Flaze’s spiky mouth. An apparent translator, a device on the Flaze’s arm, begins speaking in English.

  “You. The Camp-ee-ahn. Human. Leader.”

  BC waits for more, but there is silence. He decides they’re waiting for an answer.

  “I am Bernard Campion,” he says.