alexs_storybook (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexs_storybook) wrote2014-04-04 09:12 am
alexs_storybook) wrote2014-04-04 09:12 am
Entry tags:
FIC: Lingering Shadows, Chapters 0-6, Crusade, PG
Title: Lingering Shadows
Author: alexcat
Fandom: Crusade
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own nor profit from the use of these characters.
Notes: I'd like to thank Larry for beta reading this one for me. I have wanted to tell this tale for a long time and decided that this is the time. It is based on an old story I wrote and very loosely on the canon set forth by JMS as canon for the remainder of the series. I stuck to canon as much as possible as well. Those of you who are fan of the short lived series will see many references to the series itself in little ways, especially Alwyn's golden dragons!
Archive: OEAM< Alex's Story Book, Ao3
Spoilers: Yes
Summary: Did you ever wonder what happened in the series Crusade? Well, here are my answers to all the burning questions.
~~~
Prologue –
Galen knew more about what they all were doing and thinking than they would ever know. He even knew about the Box. The Apocalypse Box. He knew what it was, as much as anyone could know. And he knew that Gideon talked to it and even worse, listened to it.
He knew that they would never find what they sought as long as Gideon went where the Box sent him. He had already talked to Alwyn, who knew more lore and history than anyone he’d ever encountered. Alwyn was out there right now, trying to find out more about the Box and what it was. He both wanted to hear about it and dreaded it at the same time.
Galen wanted to tell Gideon that he knew but he was sure the Box was already aware of him and was slowly trying to poison Gideon against him. The crew had an agenda: finding the cure. Gideon had an agenda: finding out what happened to the Cerberus but what was the Box’s agenda?
That was the question.
Galen wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
~~~
Chapter One – Searching
The Ranger arrived at the hyperspace beacon as planned and he boarded the Excalibur. Captain Gideon saw that the young man had a decent meal and then met with him in the conference room.
“What have you got for me?”
“This is the latest list of planets from President Sheridan. Some of them are dead worlds that died from what we now suspect was the Drahk plague. Some are simply mysteries that could stand a closer look. They are in the order of importance as well.”
“I recognize some of these planets. We’ll get right on these.”
And the Ranger was gone as quickly as he arrived.
*
Gideon sat down with Eilerson, John and Dureena to talk about their next stops.
“This is the first planet on the list. The people disappeared at least a thousand years ago. Other than to document that fact, no one has been there in recorded memory.”
“Until now?” Max was warming up to the idea of more acquisitions for IPX, the reason he agreed to come on this mission. Or so he told himself. He’d actually been given no choice when Gideon had asked for him after they rescued him and his IPX crew from the Drakh.
“Max, we’re not going there with the intentions of raiding it for treasure.” Gideon was used to the scientist’s annoyingly selfish way of dealing with almost everything. He simply didn’t put up with any more than he had to.
“But if we find treasure, that’ll make it even sweeter, will it not?” Max put on his most charming smile, which was completely wasted on Gideon.
“Whatever, but you do know what our mission is and that is what we’ll worry about first.” Gideon was used to arguing with Eilerson about every new planet they checked out.
Matheson brought the 3D star map up and they were able to see the small planet in its surroundings. It was a tiny dot in an unremarkable solar system in an unremarkable part of the galaxy.
The perfect place for the Shadows to perfect their horribly efficient bioweapon before unleashing it on their enemies.
“Set a course,” Gideon instructed his bridge.
They were on their way.
*
Galen sat in his ship, following the Excalibur, and analyzed their new destination. He had no idea why they were being sent to so many worlds. They actually had most everything they needed to fashion a cure already, the knowledge that they were fighting a nanovirus. He was positive that Alwyn could figure out how the virus was programmed and fix it in hours.
But finding the cure was not why he was here.
His mission was Matthew Gideon. It was not just luck that had made him pick up Gideon after the Cerberus was destroyed. The Technomages had decided to leave the galaxy before anyone figured out that they might know the secrets of the Shadows or even how they knew such secrets. But Galen was one of the few who had not wanted to leave the galaxy to its fate, who felt a certain responsibility.
And he’d been banished for it.
Gideon was his -
His what?
Family?
Yes, that would do as well as any explanation.
He felt tied to this brash and foolish man. Gideon was all the things he was not. And some that he was.
Stubborn, loyal, driven.
Those he could well understand.
He knew they’d find the cure to the Drakh plague and they’d find it soon but there were other mysteries awaiting Matthew Gideon. Mysteries more dangerous than the plague. Mysteries that none but Gideon and perhaps himself would know they were trying to solve.
And then there was that damnable Box.
Why did Gideon get it? Who set him up to have it?
He wasn’t sure they’d ever know those answers.
He sighed and closed the distance between his ship and the larger one. For now, all he had were questions. He wasn’t sure that having answers would be any better.
*
Inside Gideon’s quarters, in his closet, sat the Apocalypse Box. Its outsides glowed as they did when it spoke to Gideon and if anyone had been near, they could have felt the almost imperceptible hum as it vibrated in the closet.
Though it was not a life form exactly, it did have a consciousness and it had an agenda. If it had had a face, it would have worn an evil smile.
*
Sarah Chambers was recording a message to Dr. Stephen Franklin. She had not told anyone yet but it looked as if she may be close to reprogramming the nanites that controlled the virus. She wanted Franklin to be the first to know, if for no other reason now, than she wanted to see him again, face to face. She had found him a profoundly brave man with an impossible task to perform.
She meant to help him all she could.
When she finished her message, she rang Dureena in her quarters and asked her to come to her own quarters. She had a question for the resident thief.
*
Far away, Galen’s friend Alwyn sat down in a tavern and ordered himself an ale. The man he was meeting soon joined him. Alwyn motioned the bartender for another.
The bartender brought two tankards to the table and left them.
“So, what do you have for me?” asked the Technomage.
His companion drank the ale in one long gulp and slammed his tankard on the table. “Another!” The bartender looked to Alwyn, who nodded, and brought another one. The humanoid, for that is all one could tell about him with his hood up, drank the second one more slowly.
“It is older than humans, older even than the Minbari. Perhaps it is as old as the Old Ones themselves.”
“What is it?” Alwyn leaned close and spoke in low voice.
“Death. It is death to all who are touched by it.”
“Is it a machine?”
“No one knows but there were, maybe still are, six of them. Whenever something horrible happens, you can be sure that there was one nearby.”
“Tell me more.”
“I need another drink.”
Alwyn motioned for the bartender once again.
~~~
Chapter Two – Missions and Mysteries
Galen docked aboard the Excalibur and headed for the bridge.
“Ah, I was wondering when you’d join us.” Matthew turned in the captain’s chair to speak to Galen.
“So where are we headed?”
“Planet from the Ranger’s list. Dead world, same old, same old.”
“Then why are we going there?”
“I go where they send me.”
Galen raised an eyebrow. “Do you really?”
Matthew didn’t answer him, didn’t even look at him.
Matheson broke the tension. “We should arrive in 47.9 hours, Captain.”
“Then I have time to get in a little B-Ball practice. Anyone care to join me?”
No one said anything but when he rose to go to the ship’s gymnasium, Galen followed, the tails of his long, black coat flapping behind him.
Galen knew about as much about basketball as Matthew knew about magic but when the ship’s captain threw him the ball, Galen caught it rather nicely.
“Now shoot,” Matthew ordered him.
Galen did and actually hit the shot.
“What’s got you so cranky?” Matthew asked him, rebounding and dribbling the ball before shooting it and missing. “Damn ball!”
“I am not cranky. I am curious.”
“You know way too much about everything that happens on this ship.”
“Perhaps I do. Maybe I should not ask such,” he lingered on the next bit, “unanswerable questions.”
“Maybe not. Do you think we will find the cure on one of these planets?”
“I think we already have the cure,” Galen said as he hit only net with his second shot.
“In that goop that Sara found? She said it only protects against the plague and only for 48 hours.” Gideon missed catching the ball as it bounced after Galen’s shot.
“No. The cure is in the programming. You know they are nanites, tiny computers. You must find a way to reprogram them so they turn themselves off permanently.”
Matthew grabbed the ball again and stopped moving, turning instead to look at Galen. “Are you saying that you are certain this is the answer?”
Galen nodded. “Ask the doctor. She will tell you. Now I must be going. I have someone to find. I’ll be back when I get back.”
And with that, Galen left, both the gym and the ship.
*
Matthew wasted little time after he got cleaned up getting down to Medlab to talk to Dr. Chambers.
“Tell me something, Doctor. Galen says we have the means to cure the plague in our hands already. Is that true?”
She nodded. “It is but since we don’t know yet how to program the virus, then we can’t cure it. Yet.”
“Are there people who know how to program this thing?”
“Maybe. It’s a little bit more advanced than our technology is. That is one reason we still search dead worlds or worlds that’ve had something similar. Maybe we can find someone out there who has programmed it away before.”
“Are there people on earth who can do this?” Matthew knew she was still in touch with Franklin from the ship’s communication logs.
“I’m sure if there are, Dr. Franklin has talked with them and enlisted any help they could provide,” Sarah said. She wasn’t ready to tell Gideon all she knew yet though she wasn’t sure why.
“This sounds like the best thing we’ve heard yet. Keep me posted and if you need anything, anything at all, Sarah, let me know.”
Sarah smiled. “I will, Captain. And thank you for coming down here to ask. Sometimes we get so busy with all this,” she said as she motioned around her, “that we let the mission slide to edges of our thoughts.”
“I have always counted on you to keep our perspective clear. You are the most practical and focused one of the crew.”
Sarah laughed. “No one is more focused than Max.”
“Ah but Max only focuses on how it will profit him.”
“You might be surprised sometimes at Max.”
Matthew laughed. “I hope so, Sarah. I surely hope so.”
*
John Matheson knew that Gideon had the Box. He just had no idea what it was. He’d caught the captain talking to it once. He even paused as if it were talking back to him. John found that very odd.
But not as odd as another thing he found when he went close to the captain’s chambers.
He could hear the Box talking inside his own head. Or was it in Gideon’s head that he was hearing? He couldn’t quite make out what it was saying, almost as if it were talking through a thick filter.
Very odd indeed.
*
Galen flew his tiny plane to a destination that had been decided upon at a previous time. All he had to do was wait.
He found a nice meadow and sat cross-legged in the middle of it, waiting for his contact.
He smiled when the tiny golden dragon landed on the grass in front of him and began to squeak loudly.
“I am here,” he said to no one he could see.
“So you are,” Alwyn said as he seemingly appeared out of thin air.
Galen rose to his feet and threw his arms around his old friend. “How are you, my friend?”
“I am well, my boy.”
“Did you find out anything?”
“Indeed I did. Let’s keep moving and I’ll tell you all about it.”
They walked down to the road, chatting amiably.
Alwyn smiled as if he were talking about his family. “The Box is one of the six Apocalypse Boxes that are known. It appears to be one owned by some very bad men. One Adolph Hitler had it until it drove him mad and he took his own life.”
“I remember reading of him. He tried to erase an entire population from Earth in the 20th century.”
“There are more. Many more. I have traced this particular box as far back as I can but I still can’t find who set your Gideon up to get it.”
“Are you sure that it doesn’t make its own decisions?”
“No. I’m not. There is some good news though. It can be destroyed but not easily. It tends to defend itself but the other five are gone. Or presumed gone. This is the only one we know of that is left.”
Galen stopped and turned to Alwyn. “Thank you for this. I am so happy to speak to someone from home, as it were, even one who was banished as I was.”
Alwyn smiled. “I am always glad to see you too, my boy. Do try not to get yourself killed.”
And he was gone. Galen knew only a little more than he did before but he was exceedingly glad to see one of his own.
~~~
Chapter Three – The Color Brown
The trip to their next destination was uneventful. Nothing broke. No one seriously threatened to kill Eilerson and Dureena did not stab or rob anyone so all was well.
It made Gideon as nervous as hell.
He also wondered if their Technomage would catch up with them. Sometimes he wanted to smack that smug smile off of Galen’s face, but more often than not, the wizard bailed them out of certain sticky situations. He was certainly good for that.
Soon, they were orbiting the planet. It looked like a dead planet, a plain brown orb beneath them. Gideon was ready to go down there to check it out and be done with it.
“Eilerson, Dureena, Sarah, you’re with me. John, ship’s all yours. We’ll call you if we need you.”
And with that, they flew down to the planet in a small shuttle with several Marines as guards.
It was as dead up close as it looked from space. Brown, brown, and more brown. They were all wearing protective suits just to be safe, even though scans indicated that it had breathable air.
Gideon radioed the ship. “We’re here. It’s beautiful if you like brown. Where should we go?”
“About 3 klicks to your south, there appears to be something underground. There are no life signs but there are some faint electrical signs there,” John answered. “And do be careful, Captain.” John was well aware of how reckless Gideon could be.
They used a couple of small all terrain vehicles to make their way to the target but when they got there, there was nothing but brown and more brown.
They scanned the surface and still had no idea how to get to the underground. They finally all took turns walking all over the ground, stomping to listen and feel for something hollow, something odd.
“Looking for something?” It was Galen, standing on a metal door. It was brown as well.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” Gideon said his usual sarcastic way.
“I live to serve, Matthew,” was Galen’s equally sarcastic answer as he helped the captain open the portal to whatever lay beneath them.
Before even looking into the unknown, both men stopped for a split second as if someone touched the back of their necks. Galen knew his was probably his tech warning him to be cautious while Gideon would have said someone walked on his grave, an old earth saying his grandmother had for an eerie feeling that reason can’t explain. John would have called it the heebie jeebies.
In any event, they both shook it off though Gideon unholstered his weapon as they began to climb down into the darkness.
Galen followed him, then Dureena, Max and Sarah. Part of the Marine contingent followed while the other part stayed topside to guard the entrance.
When the whole party was inside, they all switched on the flashlights on their helmets. Sarah and Max also turned on their monitoring devices. Her devices searched for life signed while his searched for other signs, signs of technology and minerals.
“Captain, we are the only life signs here. There weren’t any on the surface either,” Sarah reported. “But on a world this color, I didn’t expect to find any life.”
“How about you, Max? Anything?”
Max was trying not to seem as excited as he was when he answered. “I’m picking up some electrical signs as well as many mineral signatures.”
“What does that mean?” Gideon knew Max was trying to BS him but he wasn’t certain quite how.
“What he isn’t telling, my dear Matthew, is that this place is pulsating with energy and, as best I can tell, large amounts of it as well many unknown mineral compounds that have him salivating just thinking about how IPX will reward him. Is that about right, Max?” Galen said as he smiled benignly at the handsome scientist.
“I’m not sure I’d use those terms but yes, he’s right. There’s something down here and it’s not as dead as the planet seems to be.”
“So where is this ‘energy’?” Gideon asked.
“Everywhere. It’s all around us, surrounding us down here under the surface.”
Even Dureena looked shocked at his answer.
“Does that mean we are in a ship of some kind?” Gideon asked, not caring who answered him.
“I think not,” Galen said. “More like a laboratory or a—”
“Factory. It’s some sort of factory,” Max finished for him. He was looking down the long hall in front of them and was already beginning to move down it.
Gideon shrugged and followed him. The hall was several hundred yards long and it was not level. It sloped downward deeper into the planet as it lengthened. The walls were the same dull brown as the trap door had been, as the floor was as well as the ceiling. Gideon decided that this place had never had any decorators sent to spruce it up the way EarthGov had done them.
This place was not built for anyone but those who worked here to see. He wondered who they were. Or who they had been.
The hall ended in three doors: one in front of them, and one on either side. The doors had no signs of any kind on them.
“Which one?” He turned to his crew.
At one time, they all said, “Middle.”
“Middle it is.”
Everyone drew their weapons. Gideon opened the door. The room was completely dark until they stepped inside with their lights. They looked all around the room and the only thing they found were three large crates in the middle of the floor, sitting with two side by side on the bottom and one crosswise on top of them.
They all moved closer. Gideon walked over to the boxes and lifted the lid from the top box. The others rushed to see when he dropped it to the floor, completely forgotten.
Inside the crate were food bars, hundreds of food bars.
On the side of each one was a stamp. The stamp said Good Life.
Good Life was the name of the food bars that every soldier in EarthForce carried in his pack on away missions. Every outpost Gideon had been to stored boxes just like these, filled with food bars.
Just like these.
~~~
Chapter Four – The Bunker in Brown
“Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Sarah asked.
Gideon picked up one of the bars and looked it over. “Yes. This is an EarthForce base. Or was at one time.”
“Let’s see if the energy we picked up works.” Max stepped to the wall beside the door and touched a panel that lit the nearly empty room. There were no doors in the room and nothing but the three boxes. Galen and Dureena wordlessly moved the top box to the floor while Max and Sarah pried open the remaining boxes. The second was filled with food as well, packets that were designed as combat rations and could be eaten straight out of the self heating bags. The third box contained water bottles.
“Well, this is interesting and a little disturbing but not exactly a smoking gun of any kind.” Gideon said as he headed for the door. “Don’t forget to turn out the lights.”
They took the door that led to the left and this time, they were led to another long, brown hallway. At the end of this were barracks, a large room with at least fifty sets of stacked bunks. All the bunks were made with old fashioned green blankets and a pillow. At the foot of each set of bunks was a double decked footlocker, opening at the top for the first level and a pullout for the second one.
Dureena walked over and opened one of the trunks. They all joined her to see what was inside, curious to know who had lived here or if they’d left a trace.
They had.
The locker contained extras of the military gear but it also contained civilian clothing, and a small wooden box with a cheap ornamental lock on it. Dureena had it open before anyone saw how.
There were photos: A dark haired young man with a smiling girl by his side, an older couple, a small child in the smiling girl’s arms. His family. A data crystal and a small stack of handwritten letters. An old fashioned ID card.
Peter Wright. 2244 Elm St., Mintville, Maryland, Earth.
Gideon took one of the letters and opened it. The letter was dated April 24, 2258. He began to read.
Dearest Pete,
Daddy and Mother came to the base to help us move back to Mintville. I simply don’t feel welcome there without you and without being able to say where you are when I’m asked. No one believes me when I tell them I don’t know where you are.
PJ is growing so much and he looks just like you. He points to your pictures now and says Peep. I expect he’ll call you Pete instead of Daddy. Or maybe Peep will stick! Can’t you see him introducing you to his girlfriend someday saying, ‘This is my dad, Peep Wright.’?
I had a lot to write when I sat down but now I’m blank.
I’m getting ready to have dinner at your folks’ house tonight. Jenny is back on leave from Mars and wants to see PJ. I think Hank and Mona will be there too. I sure wish you were here as well.
I love you, Pete, and miss you so much.
Maria
It had an old fashioned lipstick kiss on it as well.
Gideon looked up from the letter. “Well, we know he’s from Earth and that it was a covert operation. And it was dated 2258. I’ll have John check him on the data base when we get back.”
He dropped the personal items into his pack and turned back to his crew. “Shall we check them all?”
“We probably should. We may find out more here than anywhere else.”
So they divided up and began to gather personal letters, data crystals and such from every footlocker. It wasn’t long before they realized that they couldn’t carry it all. Sarah had an idea though. “Let’s put the stuff in a few of these lockers or the boxes in the other room and let the Marines help carry them out.” They dumped everything out of two of the footlockers and began putting their finds in them. They didn’t take the time to read any more.
Attached to the barracks were vibro-showers and bathrooms, as well as a gymnasium with all sorts of exercise equipment.
“Maybe this was an op sort of the like Robert Black’s people,” Dureena said, eyeing all the high tech equipment.
“No way to know unless we find something more specific.”
*
On board the Excalibur, John Matheson was monitoring the planet and the life signs of the crew who were down there. He could see all the life signs and the energy signatures where they were. But those weren’t the only ones. Less than a klick from their location, another energy source surged to life and began building. Maybe it was the generator that powered everything in what had to be a massive underground bunker.
Maybe not. The delicate instruments aboard the Excalibur picked up something else. The ship was being scanned and the source of the scan was under the planet’s surface. They had woken someone or some thing that was curious about who was poking around in the skies above the planet.
John contacted the Marines on the surface.
“Tell them they’re not alone…”
*
Gideon’s comm. link buzzed to life.
“Captain Gideon, Lieutenant Matheson says you are not alone.”
“Life signs?”
“Just a massive power source and he says the ship is being scanned.”
“Thanks, Riley. We’ll take it under advisement.”
He turned to his companions. “You heard him. We’ve got company of some sort. Be alert and let’s move into that last door.”
They left their boxes for the Marines to carry topside and opened the third door. Like its counterpart, it had a long hallway with another door at its end. They walked slowly, listening for signs of… well, anything at all.
Max was ready when they arrived at the end. “I’ll do the honors this time.”
Gideon smiled to himself. Max must think there is a huge amount of something valuable inside or he’d be cowering behind someone else as usual.
Max ducked into the room, followed by Sarah and the others, one by one.
The room was not a regular room. It was an underground hangar and it was massive. It wasn’t empty, either. There were rows and rows of Earthforce Starfuries and small warships; there had to be as many as a hundred.
What had they stumbled into?
~~~
Chapter Five – Beneath the Surface
“My God! This is… what the hell is this?” Gideon said.
No one else said a word. They moved toward the ships and began to walk among them. Each of them separately touched a ship, just to make sure they were not a mirage or some sort of trick of light. They were real. Very real.
Over to one side were maintenance bays filled with equipment and tools. Sarah wandered into one of the bays and picked up a wrench. She stared at it and placed it back in the toolbox.
“Captain, do you have any idea what this base is?” She asked Gideon.
“Not yet but I think we may be staying here until we find out.”
*
Back on the ship, John was still monitoring the readings from the planet. One of the Marines had sent him scans of some of the documents belonging to Peter Wright. John had the ship’s computers checking data banks all over the ISA territories for information.
They had also sent some photos of the ships they’d found. John had already traced some of the tail numbers on the ships and found that every one he’d checked so far was listed as destroyed in battle or lost.
He’d feel better if they’d all come back. There was something that felt… off about this whole planet.
*
Dureena had slipped away as only Dureena could. She went to the far end of the hangar. There had to be a way to launch these things. She felt along the wall for a doorway but found nothing. Odd. How did they get the ships out if there wasn’t some kind of opening. She was about to give up when she saw a rivet on the wall that was a tiny bit larger than the others. She pressed it and to her surprise, the whole wall began to rise into the ceiling.
The others, who hadn’t noticed her missing, turned when they heard the doors. Gideon was by her side in seconds.
“Slipping off again?” He asked.
“Just curious about how they got the ships out of here.”
“Looks like you found your answer.”
The doors opened to another huge bay but this one was empty. The lights came on as soon as the doors opened all the way. It looked much like the landing bay inside a large starship though bigger. It was empty, all the ships being back in the hangar. It was too far to the other end to see just exactly how it opened up to allow the ships to leave.
“There should be a control center for an operation this big,” Gideon said, thinking of the Command and Control Center on Babylon 5. “Maybe there was a tower here at one time.”
“From the looks of this place, nothing has been disturbed so I’d think that there was no tower on the outside,” Dureena said. “Maybe it rises up out of the ground only when it’s needed.”
They explored the bay at length but found no way to open it.
“There is obviously more to this place than what we’ve found. We’ve found no offices, no officer’s quarters, no galley. Right now though, I think we might ought to go back up to the ship. We have research to do and tomorrow is another day.” Gideon couldn’t explain his need to be out of this bunker and to leave it now.
No one argued with him as they began to backtrack to the trapdoor they’d entered into.
*
The trip back up to the ship was quiet, everyone absorbed in his or her own thoughts. Galen was drawing computations in the air and Max was typing away on his datapad. Dureena stared out the window and Sarah watched Galen.
Gideon was thinking about the Cerberus. If there was one hidden base out here in the Middle of nowhere, who was to say there weren’t many more? Maybe one of those bases had the information he needed to find out who or what had destroyed his ship and all his shipmates right in front of his face.
*
Everyone felt relieved to be away from the planet though the things they’d found were intriguing, to say the least.
John had found a few interesting things as well.
Peter Wright, according to all Earth records that he could access, did not exist. Not only did he not exist now but he never had existed. Anywhere on Earth or any of the human colonies in space. He’d looked for Maria Wright and found a Maria Connor at the given address. According to records, she was not and had never been married to Peter Wright.
He was glad to have the away crew back onboard as well.
Everyone went their own quarters without saying much. There was no debriefing at all.
*
Galen boarded his ship and began doing some research of his own and found out that this planet was one that Technomages had avoided for many years, his lifetime at least. That meant there must be something about the planet that kept them away but not the base, since he was sure the base couldn’t be more than twenty years old at the outside.
He sent a message to Alwyn with the coordinates and a question mark. Alwyn would let him know if there was anything he needed to know.
*
Gideon sat for a long while and stared at his closet door without opening it. Could the Box tell him what he needed to know? Would it? Even though he found himself listening to it more and more, he had not forgotten the warning that it would lie to him if it suited its purposes.
His gut told him that this place would lead him to the information he needed to find out what happened to the Cerberus, but what would that knowledge cost? Was it that important that he know?
Yes, it was. It always had been. It was his real reason for being here. Finding the cure was his assignment and he had every intention of doing just that but his motivation for saying yes to the assignment was it gave him more resources to hunt for answers. He needed those answers as surely as he needed air to breathe.
He stood and went to the closet, opening the door and lifting the last remaining Apocalypse Box out onto the table in the middle of his quarters.
“Look deeper!” The Box whispered in a voice that was becoming more like his own every time he listened to it.
“Deeper where? On the planet? In the information we found?” Gideon leaned forward, hoping for something more concrete. “Where?”
“Look deeper,” it repeated and refused to say another word.
~~~
Chapter Six – Interesting Tidbits
Sarah looked to see Dureena strolling into her office in the Medbay.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been thinking about what we talked about the other day and I think when you have something workable, I’d like to go to Theta 49 and help distribute it to my people and to Black’s people.”
“Have you thought about staying with them after our mission is done?” Sarah knew that these were the only other members of Dureena’s race in the galaxy.
“I have and if they will have me, I do aim stay with them.” What she didn’t tell Sarah was the big human, Robert Black, was a bit intriguing as well.
“Dr. Franklin has people on Earth working on programs for the nanites as well as labs all over. I have sent the program I wrote and I am going to ask Galen if he can offer us any help as well. Since Technomages work with equations, I’m hoping he’ll come up with some suggestions, at least.”
“Have you told Gideon?” Dureena asked.
“Just the bare bones. I don’t want to jinx it by talking too soon.”
“And there’s something else… ”
“Yes there is but it’s something I can’t quite put my finger on,” Sarah answered after a moment of hesitation.
Their eyes met and they let the rest of the thought go by unspoken. There was something a bit off about Gideon sometimes, something almost imperceptible but it was definitely there.
*
Max was in his quarters going through records from IPX that no one else knew about, at least no one on this ship knew. He had records of IPX bases and facilities that carried out work for the dark underbelly of many governments, Earth’s chief among them.
He was searching for any mention of the base they’d found today. He knew that IPX had bases that appeared to be EarthForce bases on the face of them but were operations of a more secret nature all together. He also knew that IPX had worked with and for Psi Corps more than once. He was looking for any mention of them as well.
After what seemed an eternity, he found one tiny note. IPX had delivered some mining equipment to a base in this sector about twenty earth years ago. That would be about the time the underground airbase was built, according to Galen.
But what was the base here for?
None of his searches showed any more information though he was sure there was more there. It looked as if he’d hit the ceiling of his clearance level. He seldom looked too deeply into things because of two things. One was that if he snooped, he left virtual footprints and the other was that it was just safe sometimes not to know too much.
Funny, he’d thought he had one of the very top clearances in the company. He’d have to check into that as well.
*
Matheson was going through the cartons of personal items the landing party had brought back from the bunker. He was entering names and addresses into his datapad. As with Peter Wright and the Starfuries, hardly any of these men existed either. A few were dead, with dates that couldn’t possibly place them here. Some were listed as having lived and died before his grandparents were even born.
He found another box of letters. He opened one and began to read.
Jeff,
I wish you could tell me where you are, I get all antsy thinking of you out there in some unknown place. It might have been better to take the Sleepers than to join the Corps as old as you were when you went in. Some of those teeps have been there since they were infants.
We’ve been hearing some strange rumors back here… very strange rumors.
Take care PLEASE!
KK
Alarm bells clanged in his head now! He remembered some rumors of experiments on teeps when he was a young trainee before the wars, something about using telepaths to run some sort of technology that was different from the high tech ISA ships that Sheridan flew.
If only he could remember… but nothing else would come to him.
*
On Earth, Stephen Franklin was analyzing some slides of the nanites. They appeared to be dead, as if they’d finally been turned off. This was a first. Now if they’d stay that way, he might have the beginnings of a cure.
He knew that all they had to do was reprogram the virus to shut itself off. It sounded so simple but nothing had worked for very long so far. If it continued to reprogram itself as quickly as it had so far, Earth was just the first of many planets that it would destroy.
He was determined to stop it before things went much further. The program that Sarah Chambers had sent him was working so far.
He composed a message for Dr. Chambers, sent it and went to bed. His sleep was fitful at best. He dreamed of shadowy things moving low over the green fields and leaving complete darkness in their wake.
*
Deep inside the brown planet, an automated communications array lit up briefly. No one would have noticed even if there were anyone there to see it. They’d have thought it was a trick of the light.
But it wasn’t.
Its message went out to the party that it was meant for. Someone very far away read the message and a very pleased smile crossed his face.
*
Galen watched them all from inside his little ship. He could see them and hear them if they spoke but he couldn’t read their minds. That skill would be very handy about now.
Everyone seemed to be settling down to sleep for now. It was about time he did the same.
He turned out the little light and spoke to his little ship.
“Lights out. Goodnight.”
~~~
Author: alexcat
Fandom: Crusade
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own nor profit from the use of these characters.
Notes: I'd like to thank Larry for beta reading this one for me. I have wanted to tell this tale for a long time and decided that this is the time. It is based on an old story I wrote and very loosely on the canon set forth by JMS as canon for the remainder of the series. I stuck to canon as much as possible as well. Those of you who are fan of the short lived series will see many references to the series itself in little ways, especially Alwyn's golden dragons!
Archive: OEAM< Alex's Story Book, Ao3
Spoilers: Yes
Summary: Did you ever wonder what happened in the series Crusade? Well, here are my answers to all the burning questions.
~~~
Prologue –
Galen knew more about what they all were doing and thinking than they would ever know. He even knew about the Box. The Apocalypse Box. He knew what it was, as much as anyone could know. And he knew that Gideon talked to it and even worse, listened to it.
He knew that they would never find what they sought as long as Gideon went where the Box sent him. He had already talked to Alwyn, who knew more lore and history than anyone he’d ever encountered. Alwyn was out there right now, trying to find out more about the Box and what it was. He both wanted to hear about it and dreaded it at the same time.
Galen wanted to tell Gideon that he knew but he was sure the Box was already aware of him and was slowly trying to poison Gideon against him. The crew had an agenda: finding the cure. Gideon had an agenda: finding out what happened to the Cerberus but what was the Box’s agenda?
That was the question.
Galen wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
~~~
Chapter One – Searching
The Ranger arrived at the hyperspace beacon as planned and he boarded the Excalibur. Captain Gideon saw that the young man had a decent meal and then met with him in the conference room.
“What have you got for me?”
“This is the latest list of planets from President Sheridan. Some of them are dead worlds that died from what we now suspect was the Drahk plague. Some are simply mysteries that could stand a closer look. They are in the order of importance as well.”
“I recognize some of these planets. We’ll get right on these.”
And the Ranger was gone as quickly as he arrived.
*
Gideon sat down with Eilerson, John and Dureena to talk about their next stops.
“This is the first planet on the list. The people disappeared at least a thousand years ago. Other than to document that fact, no one has been there in recorded memory.”
“Until now?” Max was warming up to the idea of more acquisitions for IPX, the reason he agreed to come on this mission. Or so he told himself. He’d actually been given no choice when Gideon had asked for him after they rescued him and his IPX crew from the Drakh.
“Max, we’re not going there with the intentions of raiding it for treasure.” Gideon was used to the scientist’s annoyingly selfish way of dealing with almost everything. He simply didn’t put up with any more than he had to.
“But if we find treasure, that’ll make it even sweeter, will it not?” Max put on his most charming smile, which was completely wasted on Gideon.
“Whatever, but you do know what our mission is and that is what we’ll worry about first.” Gideon was used to arguing with Eilerson about every new planet they checked out.
Matheson brought the 3D star map up and they were able to see the small planet in its surroundings. It was a tiny dot in an unremarkable solar system in an unremarkable part of the galaxy.
The perfect place for the Shadows to perfect their horribly efficient bioweapon before unleashing it on their enemies.
“Set a course,” Gideon instructed his bridge.
They were on their way.
*
Galen sat in his ship, following the Excalibur, and analyzed their new destination. He had no idea why they were being sent to so many worlds. They actually had most everything they needed to fashion a cure already, the knowledge that they were fighting a nanovirus. He was positive that Alwyn could figure out how the virus was programmed and fix it in hours.
But finding the cure was not why he was here.
His mission was Matthew Gideon. It was not just luck that had made him pick up Gideon after the Cerberus was destroyed. The Technomages had decided to leave the galaxy before anyone figured out that they might know the secrets of the Shadows or even how they knew such secrets. But Galen was one of the few who had not wanted to leave the galaxy to its fate, who felt a certain responsibility.
And he’d been banished for it.
Gideon was his -
His what?
Family?
Yes, that would do as well as any explanation.
He felt tied to this brash and foolish man. Gideon was all the things he was not. And some that he was.
Stubborn, loyal, driven.
Those he could well understand.
He knew they’d find the cure to the Drakh plague and they’d find it soon but there were other mysteries awaiting Matthew Gideon. Mysteries more dangerous than the plague. Mysteries that none but Gideon and perhaps himself would know they were trying to solve.
And then there was that damnable Box.
Why did Gideon get it? Who set him up to have it?
He wasn’t sure they’d ever know those answers.
He sighed and closed the distance between his ship and the larger one. For now, all he had were questions. He wasn’t sure that having answers would be any better.
*
Inside Gideon’s quarters, in his closet, sat the Apocalypse Box. Its outsides glowed as they did when it spoke to Gideon and if anyone had been near, they could have felt the almost imperceptible hum as it vibrated in the closet.
Though it was not a life form exactly, it did have a consciousness and it had an agenda. If it had had a face, it would have worn an evil smile.
*
Sarah Chambers was recording a message to Dr. Stephen Franklin. She had not told anyone yet but it looked as if she may be close to reprogramming the nanites that controlled the virus. She wanted Franklin to be the first to know, if for no other reason now, than she wanted to see him again, face to face. She had found him a profoundly brave man with an impossible task to perform.
She meant to help him all she could.
When she finished her message, she rang Dureena in her quarters and asked her to come to her own quarters. She had a question for the resident thief.
*
Far away, Galen’s friend Alwyn sat down in a tavern and ordered himself an ale. The man he was meeting soon joined him. Alwyn motioned the bartender for another.
The bartender brought two tankards to the table and left them.
“So, what do you have for me?” asked the Technomage.
His companion drank the ale in one long gulp and slammed his tankard on the table. “Another!” The bartender looked to Alwyn, who nodded, and brought another one. The humanoid, for that is all one could tell about him with his hood up, drank the second one more slowly.
“It is older than humans, older even than the Minbari. Perhaps it is as old as the Old Ones themselves.”
“What is it?” Alwyn leaned close and spoke in low voice.
“Death. It is death to all who are touched by it.”
“Is it a machine?”
“No one knows but there were, maybe still are, six of them. Whenever something horrible happens, you can be sure that there was one nearby.”
“Tell me more.”
“I need another drink.”
Alwyn motioned for the bartender once again.
~~~
Chapter Two – Missions and Mysteries
Galen docked aboard the Excalibur and headed for the bridge.
“Ah, I was wondering when you’d join us.” Matthew turned in the captain’s chair to speak to Galen.
“So where are we headed?”
“Planet from the Ranger’s list. Dead world, same old, same old.”
“Then why are we going there?”
“I go where they send me.”
Galen raised an eyebrow. “Do you really?”
Matthew didn’t answer him, didn’t even look at him.
Matheson broke the tension. “We should arrive in 47.9 hours, Captain.”
“Then I have time to get in a little B-Ball practice. Anyone care to join me?”
No one said anything but when he rose to go to the ship’s gymnasium, Galen followed, the tails of his long, black coat flapping behind him.
Galen knew about as much about basketball as Matthew knew about magic but when the ship’s captain threw him the ball, Galen caught it rather nicely.
“Now shoot,” Matthew ordered him.
Galen did and actually hit the shot.
“What’s got you so cranky?” Matthew asked him, rebounding and dribbling the ball before shooting it and missing. “Damn ball!”
“I am not cranky. I am curious.”
“You know way too much about everything that happens on this ship.”
“Perhaps I do. Maybe I should not ask such,” he lingered on the next bit, “unanswerable questions.”
“Maybe not. Do you think we will find the cure on one of these planets?”
“I think we already have the cure,” Galen said as he hit only net with his second shot.
“In that goop that Sara found? She said it only protects against the plague and only for 48 hours.” Gideon missed catching the ball as it bounced after Galen’s shot.
“No. The cure is in the programming. You know they are nanites, tiny computers. You must find a way to reprogram them so they turn themselves off permanently.”
Matthew grabbed the ball again and stopped moving, turning instead to look at Galen. “Are you saying that you are certain this is the answer?”
Galen nodded. “Ask the doctor. She will tell you. Now I must be going. I have someone to find. I’ll be back when I get back.”
And with that, Galen left, both the gym and the ship.
*
Matthew wasted little time after he got cleaned up getting down to Medlab to talk to Dr. Chambers.
“Tell me something, Doctor. Galen says we have the means to cure the plague in our hands already. Is that true?”
She nodded. “It is but since we don’t know yet how to program the virus, then we can’t cure it. Yet.”
“Are there people who know how to program this thing?”
“Maybe. It’s a little bit more advanced than our technology is. That is one reason we still search dead worlds or worlds that’ve had something similar. Maybe we can find someone out there who has programmed it away before.”
“Are there people on earth who can do this?” Matthew knew she was still in touch with Franklin from the ship’s communication logs.
“I’m sure if there are, Dr. Franklin has talked with them and enlisted any help they could provide,” Sarah said. She wasn’t ready to tell Gideon all she knew yet though she wasn’t sure why.
“This sounds like the best thing we’ve heard yet. Keep me posted and if you need anything, anything at all, Sarah, let me know.”
Sarah smiled. “I will, Captain. And thank you for coming down here to ask. Sometimes we get so busy with all this,” she said as she motioned around her, “that we let the mission slide to edges of our thoughts.”
“I have always counted on you to keep our perspective clear. You are the most practical and focused one of the crew.”
Sarah laughed. “No one is more focused than Max.”
“Ah but Max only focuses on how it will profit him.”
“You might be surprised sometimes at Max.”
Matthew laughed. “I hope so, Sarah. I surely hope so.”
*
John Matheson knew that Gideon had the Box. He just had no idea what it was. He’d caught the captain talking to it once. He even paused as if it were talking back to him. John found that very odd.
But not as odd as another thing he found when he went close to the captain’s chambers.
He could hear the Box talking inside his own head. Or was it in Gideon’s head that he was hearing? He couldn’t quite make out what it was saying, almost as if it were talking through a thick filter.
Very odd indeed.
*
Galen flew his tiny plane to a destination that had been decided upon at a previous time. All he had to do was wait.
He found a nice meadow and sat cross-legged in the middle of it, waiting for his contact.
He smiled when the tiny golden dragon landed on the grass in front of him and began to squeak loudly.
“I am here,” he said to no one he could see.
“So you are,” Alwyn said as he seemingly appeared out of thin air.
Galen rose to his feet and threw his arms around his old friend. “How are you, my friend?”
“I am well, my boy.”
“Did you find out anything?”
“Indeed I did. Let’s keep moving and I’ll tell you all about it.”
They walked down to the road, chatting amiably.
Alwyn smiled as if he were talking about his family. “The Box is one of the six Apocalypse Boxes that are known. It appears to be one owned by some very bad men. One Adolph Hitler had it until it drove him mad and he took his own life.”
“I remember reading of him. He tried to erase an entire population from Earth in the 20th century.”
“There are more. Many more. I have traced this particular box as far back as I can but I still can’t find who set your Gideon up to get it.”
“Are you sure that it doesn’t make its own decisions?”
“No. I’m not. There is some good news though. It can be destroyed but not easily. It tends to defend itself but the other five are gone. Or presumed gone. This is the only one we know of that is left.”
Galen stopped and turned to Alwyn. “Thank you for this. I am so happy to speak to someone from home, as it were, even one who was banished as I was.”
Alwyn smiled. “I am always glad to see you too, my boy. Do try not to get yourself killed.”
And he was gone. Galen knew only a little more than he did before but he was exceedingly glad to see one of his own.
~~~
Chapter Three – The Color Brown
The trip to their next destination was uneventful. Nothing broke. No one seriously threatened to kill Eilerson and Dureena did not stab or rob anyone so all was well.
It made Gideon as nervous as hell.
He also wondered if their Technomage would catch up with them. Sometimes he wanted to smack that smug smile off of Galen’s face, but more often than not, the wizard bailed them out of certain sticky situations. He was certainly good for that.
Soon, they were orbiting the planet. It looked like a dead planet, a plain brown orb beneath them. Gideon was ready to go down there to check it out and be done with it.
“Eilerson, Dureena, Sarah, you’re with me. John, ship’s all yours. We’ll call you if we need you.”
And with that, they flew down to the planet in a small shuttle with several Marines as guards.
It was as dead up close as it looked from space. Brown, brown, and more brown. They were all wearing protective suits just to be safe, even though scans indicated that it had breathable air.
Gideon radioed the ship. “We’re here. It’s beautiful if you like brown. Where should we go?”
“About 3 klicks to your south, there appears to be something underground. There are no life signs but there are some faint electrical signs there,” John answered. “And do be careful, Captain.” John was well aware of how reckless Gideon could be.
They used a couple of small all terrain vehicles to make their way to the target but when they got there, there was nothing but brown and more brown.
They scanned the surface and still had no idea how to get to the underground. They finally all took turns walking all over the ground, stomping to listen and feel for something hollow, something odd.
“Looking for something?” It was Galen, standing on a metal door. It was brown as well.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” Gideon said his usual sarcastic way.
“I live to serve, Matthew,” was Galen’s equally sarcastic answer as he helped the captain open the portal to whatever lay beneath them.
Before even looking into the unknown, both men stopped for a split second as if someone touched the back of their necks. Galen knew his was probably his tech warning him to be cautious while Gideon would have said someone walked on his grave, an old earth saying his grandmother had for an eerie feeling that reason can’t explain. John would have called it the heebie jeebies.
In any event, they both shook it off though Gideon unholstered his weapon as they began to climb down into the darkness.
Galen followed him, then Dureena, Max and Sarah. Part of the Marine contingent followed while the other part stayed topside to guard the entrance.
When the whole party was inside, they all switched on the flashlights on their helmets. Sarah and Max also turned on their monitoring devices. Her devices searched for life signed while his searched for other signs, signs of technology and minerals.
“Captain, we are the only life signs here. There weren’t any on the surface either,” Sarah reported. “But on a world this color, I didn’t expect to find any life.”
“How about you, Max? Anything?”
Max was trying not to seem as excited as he was when he answered. “I’m picking up some electrical signs as well as many mineral signatures.”
“What does that mean?” Gideon knew Max was trying to BS him but he wasn’t certain quite how.
“What he isn’t telling, my dear Matthew, is that this place is pulsating with energy and, as best I can tell, large amounts of it as well many unknown mineral compounds that have him salivating just thinking about how IPX will reward him. Is that about right, Max?” Galen said as he smiled benignly at the handsome scientist.
“I’m not sure I’d use those terms but yes, he’s right. There’s something down here and it’s not as dead as the planet seems to be.”
“So where is this ‘energy’?” Gideon asked.
“Everywhere. It’s all around us, surrounding us down here under the surface.”
Even Dureena looked shocked at his answer.
“Does that mean we are in a ship of some kind?” Gideon asked, not caring who answered him.
“I think not,” Galen said. “More like a laboratory or a—”
“Factory. It’s some sort of factory,” Max finished for him. He was looking down the long hall in front of them and was already beginning to move down it.
Gideon shrugged and followed him. The hall was several hundred yards long and it was not level. It sloped downward deeper into the planet as it lengthened. The walls were the same dull brown as the trap door had been, as the floor was as well as the ceiling. Gideon decided that this place had never had any decorators sent to spruce it up the way EarthGov had done them.
This place was not built for anyone but those who worked here to see. He wondered who they were. Or who they had been.
The hall ended in three doors: one in front of them, and one on either side. The doors had no signs of any kind on them.
“Which one?” He turned to his crew.
At one time, they all said, “Middle.”
“Middle it is.”
Everyone drew their weapons. Gideon opened the door. The room was completely dark until they stepped inside with their lights. They looked all around the room and the only thing they found were three large crates in the middle of the floor, sitting with two side by side on the bottom and one crosswise on top of them.
They all moved closer. Gideon walked over to the boxes and lifted the lid from the top box. The others rushed to see when he dropped it to the floor, completely forgotten.
Inside the crate were food bars, hundreds of food bars.
On the side of each one was a stamp. The stamp said Good Life.
Good Life was the name of the food bars that every soldier in EarthForce carried in his pack on away missions. Every outpost Gideon had been to stored boxes just like these, filled with food bars.
Just like these.
~~~
Chapter Four – The Bunker in Brown
“Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Sarah asked.
Gideon picked up one of the bars and looked it over. “Yes. This is an EarthForce base. Or was at one time.”
“Let’s see if the energy we picked up works.” Max stepped to the wall beside the door and touched a panel that lit the nearly empty room. There were no doors in the room and nothing but the three boxes. Galen and Dureena wordlessly moved the top box to the floor while Max and Sarah pried open the remaining boxes. The second was filled with food as well, packets that were designed as combat rations and could be eaten straight out of the self heating bags. The third box contained water bottles.
“Well, this is interesting and a little disturbing but not exactly a smoking gun of any kind.” Gideon said as he headed for the door. “Don’t forget to turn out the lights.”
They took the door that led to the left and this time, they were led to another long, brown hallway. At the end of this were barracks, a large room with at least fifty sets of stacked bunks. All the bunks were made with old fashioned green blankets and a pillow. At the foot of each set of bunks was a double decked footlocker, opening at the top for the first level and a pullout for the second one.
Dureena walked over and opened one of the trunks. They all joined her to see what was inside, curious to know who had lived here or if they’d left a trace.
They had.
The locker contained extras of the military gear but it also contained civilian clothing, and a small wooden box with a cheap ornamental lock on it. Dureena had it open before anyone saw how.
There were photos: A dark haired young man with a smiling girl by his side, an older couple, a small child in the smiling girl’s arms. His family. A data crystal and a small stack of handwritten letters. An old fashioned ID card.
Peter Wright. 2244 Elm St., Mintville, Maryland, Earth.
Gideon took one of the letters and opened it. The letter was dated April 24, 2258. He began to read.
Dearest Pete,
Daddy and Mother came to the base to help us move back to Mintville. I simply don’t feel welcome there without you and without being able to say where you are when I’m asked. No one believes me when I tell them I don’t know where you are.
PJ is growing so much and he looks just like you. He points to your pictures now and says Peep. I expect he’ll call you Pete instead of Daddy. Or maybe Peep will stick! Can’t you see him introducing you to his girlfriend someday saying, ‘This is my dad, Peep Wright.’?
I had a lot to write when I sat down but now I’m blank.
I’m getting ready to have dinner at your folks’ house tonight. Jenny is back on leave from Mars and wants to see PJ. I think Hank and Mona will be there too. I sure wish you were here as well.
I love you, Pete, and miss you so much.
Maria
It had an old fashioned lipstick kiss on it as well.
Gideon looked up from the letter. “Well, we know he’s from Earth and that it was a covert operation. And it was dated 2258. I’ll have John check him on the data base when we get back.”
He dropped the personal items into his pack and turned back to his crew. “Shall we check them all?”
“We probably should. We may find out more here than anywhere else.”
So they divided up and began to gather personal letters, data crystals and such from every footlocker. It wasn’t long before they realized that they couldn’t carry it all. Sarah had an idea though. “Let’s put the stuff in a few of these lockers or the boxes in the other room and let the Marines help carry them out.” They dumped everything out of two of the footlockers and began putting their finds in them. They didn’t take the time to read any more.
Attached to the barracks were vibro-showers and bathrooms, as well as a gymnasium with all sorts of exercise equipment.
“Maybe this was an op sort of the like Robert Black’s people,” Dureena said, eyeing all the high tech equipment.
“No way to know unless we find something more specific.”
*
On board the Excalibur, John Matheson was monitoring the planet and the life signs of the crew who were down there. He could see all the life signs and the energy signatures where they were. But those weren’t the only ones. Less than a klick from their location, another energy source surged to life and began building. Maybe it was the generator that powered everything in what had to be a massive underground bunker.
Maybe not. The delicate instruments aboard the Excalibur picked up something else. The ship was being scanned and the source of the scan was under the planet’s surface. They had woken someone or some thing that was curious about who was poking around in the skies above the planet.
John contacted the Marines on the surface.
“Tell them they’re not alone…”
*
Gideon’s comm. link buzzed to life.
“Captain Gideon, Lieutenant Matheson says you are not alone.”
“Life signs?”
“Just a massive power source and he says the ship is being scanned.”
“Thanks, Riley. We’ll take it under advisement.”
He turned to his companions. “You heard him. We’ve got company of some sort. Be alert and let’s move into that last door.”
They left their boxes for the Marines to carry topside and opened the third door. Like its counterpart, it had a long hallway with another door at its end. They walked slowly, listening for signs of… well, anything at all.
Max was ready when they arrived at the end. “I’ll do the honors this time.”
Gideon smiled to himself. Max must think there is a huge amount of something valuable inside or he’d be cowering behind someone else as usual.
Max ducked into the room, followed by Sarah and the others, one by one.
The room was not a regular room. It was an underground hangar and it was massive. It wasn’t empty, either. There were rows and rows of Earthforce Starfuries and small warships; there had to be as many as a hundred.
What had they stumbled into?
~~~
Chapter Five – Beneath the Surface
“My God! This is… what the hell is this?” Gideon said.
No one else said a word. They moved toward the ships and began to walk among them. Each of them separately touched a ship, just to make sure they were not a mirage or some sort of trick of light. They were real. Very real.
Over to one side were maintenance bays filled with equipment and tools. Sarah wandered into one of the bays and picked up a wrench. She stared at it and placed it back in the toolbox.
“Captain, do you have any idea what this base is?” She asked Gideon.
“Not yet but I think we may be staying here until we find out.”
*
Back on the ship, John was still monitoring the readings from the planet. One of the Marines had sent him scans of some of the documents belonging to Peter Wright. John had the ship’s computers checking data banks all over the ISA territories for information.
They had also sent some photos of the ships they’d found. John had already traced some of the tail numbers on the ships and found that every one he’d checked so far was listed as destroyed in battle or lost.
He’d feel better if they’d all come back. There was something that felt… off about this whole planet.
*
Dureena had slipped away as only Dureena could. She went to the far end of the hangar. There had to be a way to launch these things. She felt along the wall for a doorway but found nothing. Odd. How did they get the ships out if there wasn’t some kind of opening. She was about to give up when she saw a rivet on the wall that was a tiny bit larger than the others. She pressed it and to her surprise, the whole wall began to rise into the ceiling.
The others, who hadn’t noticed her missing, turned when they heard the doors. Gideon was by her side in seconds.
“Slipping off again?” He asked.
“Just curious about how they got the ships out of here.”
“Looks like you found your answer.”
The doors opened to another huge bay but this one was empty. The lights came on as soon as the doors opened all the way. It looked much like the landing bay inside a large starship though bigger. It was empty, all the ships being back in the hangar. It was too far to the other end to see just exactly how it opened up to allow the ships to leave.
“There should be a control center for an operation this big,” Gideon said, thinking of the Command and Control Center on Babylon 5. “Maybe there was a tower here at one time.”
“From the looks of this place, nothing has been disturbed so I’d think that there was no tower on the outside,” Dureena said. “Maybe it rises up out of the ground only when it’s needed.”
They explored the bay at length but found no way to open it.
“There is obviously more to this place than what we’ve found. We’ve found no offices, no officer’s quarters, no galley. Right now though, I think we might ought to go back up to the ship. We have research to do and tomorrow is another day.” Gideon couldn’t explain his need to be out of this bunker and to leave it now.
No one argued with him as they began to backtrack to the trapdoor they’d entered into.
*
The trip back up to the ship was quiet, everyone absorbed in his or her own thoughts. Galen was drawing computations in the air and Max was typing away on his datapad. Dureena stared out the window and Sarah watched Galen.
Gideon was thinking about the Cerberus. If there was one hidden base out here in the Middle of nowhere, who was to say there weren’t many more? Maybe one of those bases had the information he needed to find out who or what had destroyed his ship and all his shipmates right in front of his face.
*
Everyone felt relieved to be away from the planet though the things they’d found were intriguing, to say the least.
John had found a few interesting things as well.
Peter Wright, according to all Earth records that he could access, did not exist. Not only did he not exist now but he never had existed. Anywhere on Earth or any of the human colonies in space. He’d looked for Maria Wright and found a Maria Connor at the given address. According to records, she was not and had never been married to Peter Wright.
He was glad to have the away crew back onboard as well.
Everyone went their own quarters without saying much. There was no debriefing at all.
*
Galen boarded his ship and began doing some research of his own and found out that this planet was one that Technomages had avoided for many years, his lifetime at least. That meant there must be something about the planet that kept them away but not the base, since he was sure the base couldn’t be more than twenty years old at the outside.
He sent a message to Alwyn with the coordinates and a question mark. Alwyn would let him know if there was anything he needed to know.
*
Gideon sat for a long while and stared at his closet door without opening it. Could the Box tell him what he needed to know? Would it? Even though he found himself listening to it more and more, he had not forgotten the warning that it would lie to him if it suited its purposes.
His gut told him that this place would lead him to the information he needed to find out what happened to the Cerberus, but what would that knowledge cost? Was it that important that he know?
Yes, it was. It always had been. It was his real reason for being here. Finding the cure was his assignment and he had every intention of doing just that but his motivation for saying yes to the assignment was it gave him more resources to hunt for answers. He needed those answers as surely as he needed air to breathe.
He stood and went to the closet, opening the door and lifting the last remaining Apocalypse Box out onto the table in the middle of his quarters.
“Look deeper!” The Box whispered in a voice that was becoming more like his own every time he listened to it.
“Deeper where? On the planet? In the information we found?” Gideon leaned forward, hoping for something more concrete. “Where?”
“Look deeper,” it repeated and refused to say another word.
~~~
Chapter Six – Interesting Tidbits
Sarah looked to see Dureena strolling into her office in the Medbay.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been thinking about what we talked about the other day and I think when you have something workable, I’d like to go to Theta 49 and help distribute it to my people and to Black’s people.”
“Have you thought about staying with them after our mission is done?” Sarah knew that these were the only other members of Dureena’s race in the galaxy.
“I have and if they will have me, I do aim stay with them.” What she didn’t tell Sarah was the big human, Robert Black, was a bit intriguing as well.
“Dr. Franklin has people on Earth working on programs for the nanites as well as labs all over. I have sent the program I wrote and I am going to ask Galen if he can offer us any help as well. Since Technomages work with equations, I’m hoping he’ll come up with some suggestions, at least.”
“Have you told Gideon?” Dureena asked.
“Just the bare bones. I don’t want to jinx it by talking too soon.”
“And there’s something else… ”
“Yes there is but it’s something I can’t quite put my finger on,” Sarah answered after a moment of hesitation.
Their eyes met and they let the rest of the thought go by unspoken. There was something a bit off about Gideon sometimes, something almost imperceptible but it was definitely there.
*
Max was in his quarters going through records from IPX that no one else knew about, at least no one on this ship knew. He had records of IPX bases and facilities that carried out work for the dark underbelly of many governments, Earth’s chief among them.
He was searching for any mention of the base they’d found today. He knew that IPX had bases that appeared to be EarthForce bases on the face of them but were operations of a more secret nature all together. He also knew that IPX had worked with and for Psi Corps more than once. He was looking for any mention of them as well.
After what seemed an eternity, he found one tiny note. IPX had delivered some mining equipment to a base in this sector about twenty earth years ago. That would be about the time the underground airbase was built, according to Galen.
But what was the base here for?
None of his searches showed any more information though he was sure there was more there. It looked as if he’d hit the ceiling of his clearance level. He seldom looked too deeply into things because of two things. One was that if he snooped, he left virtual footprints and the other was that it was just safe sometimes not to know too much.
Funny, he’d thought he had one of the very top clearances in the company. He’d have to check into that as well.
*
Matheson was going through the cartons of personal items the landing party had brought back from the bunker. He was entering names and addresses into his datapad. As with Peter Wright and the Starfuries, hardly any of these men existed either. A few were dead, with dates that couldn’t possibly place them here. Some were listed as having lived and died before his grandparents were even born.
He found another box of letters. He opened one and began to read.
Jeff,
I wish you could tell me where you are, I get all antsy thinking of you out there in some unknown place. It might have been better to take the Sleepers than to join the Corps as old as you were when you went in. Some of those teeps have been there since they were infants.
We’ve been hearing some strange rumors back here… very strange rumors.
Take care PLEASE!
KK
Alarm bells clanged in his head now! He remembered some rumors of experiments on teeps when he was a young trainee before the wars, something about using telepaths to run some sort of technology that was different from the high tech ISA ships that Sheridan flew.
If only he could remember… but nothing else would come to him.
*
On Earth, Stephen Franklin was analyzing some slides of the nanites. They appeared to be dead, as if they’d finally been turned off. This was a first. Now if they’d stay that way, he might have the beginnings of a cure.
He knew that all they had to do was reprogram the virus to shut itself off. It sounded so simple but nothing had worked for very long so far. If it continued to reprogram itself as quickly as it had so far, Earth was just the first of many planets that it would destroy.
He was determined to stop it before things went much further. The program that Sarah Chambers had sent him was working so far.
He composed a message for Dr. Chambers, sent it and went to bed. His sleep was fitful at best. He dreamed of shadowy things moving low over the green fields and leaving complete darkness in their wake.
*
Deep inside the brown planet, an automated communications array lit up briefly. No one would have noticed even if there were anyone there to see it. They’d have thought it was a trick of the light.
But it wasn’t.
Its message went out to the party that it was meant for. Someone very far away read the message and a very pleased smile crossed his face.
*
Galen watched them all from inside his little ship. He could see them and hear them if they spoke but he couldn’t read their minds. That skill would be very handy about now.
Everyone seemed to be settling down to sleep for now. It was about time he did the same.
He turned out the little light and spoke to his little ship.
“Lights out. Goodnight.”
~~~