CHAPTER 9
On Proxima b
“Wow. Vacuum tubes. I’m glad I brushed up on these babies before we agreed to help with this project. From the strong ozone smell, I imagine it gets pretty hot in here when these are operating,” Burbank said, formerly of the Samaritan and now a freelance consultant helping Fintidierian companies upgrade their infrastructure using his knowledge of twenty-first-century Earth technologies. Roy was with his Fintidierian colleagues in a large room filled with glass tubes and wires. It was the regional power company’s computer center that was responsible for keeping the lights on for just over a million Fintidierians in a city just a few hundred miles from where the Terrans had settled and now called home. He had to constantly remind himself that making comments about the primitive nature of their technologies, of which they were immensely proud, made him sound like an arrogant jerk. He did not want to be a jerk. He wanted to be helpful.
Roy had agreed to consult on the project, which would keep him from home for at least a week, perhaps longer. To Roy’s surprise, his wife, Chloe, had readily agreed. “You need the time away,” she’d urged. He was surprised because that would mean he would be unable to help with their two young children. Since their arrival, he had mostly been a homebody, taking care of the kids while his wife collaborated with the medical team to seek the cure for the fertility crisis. At first, it was a lot of fun. Spending time at home had allowed him to really get to know his daughter, who he had missed being with for the first few years of her life as she was traveling on the Emissary to join him at Proxima b. Unsurprisingly, it had taken her some time to warm up to this new person in her life, this “daddy,” but once she did, they became nearly inseparable. Lately, though, he had grown restless. He was an engineer and he wanted to get back in the game. There was only so much he could fix and improve at home.
When the opportunity to consult with the utility company came up, he went for it. And Chloe was incredibly supportive. She knew he needed mental engagement and prodded him into accepting the offer. So, here he was. The utility was not asking to design or fix anything specific, merely look over their new, not-yet-online computer center and its interface with the local power grid and provide recommendations as to how it might be made more reliable or increase its performance. As he looked at the room with its thousands of vacuum tubes, miles of wires, and complex water-cooling system, he could not help but think about how all this computing power could be performed by the handheld he had in his right pocket. It could have been performed by my father’s cell phone, he thought.
Roy had hoped to get to know his Fintidierian colleagues during the trip, but both men had been quite standoffish. At first, Roy thought it was the usual Terran/Fintidierian cultural divide coupled with the language barrier. And that could still be the root of the problem, though Roy didn’t think it explained their reticence. His Fintidierian was now passable and their proficiency in English equally so. In their conversations so far, though brief and largely transactional, there had not seemed to be a communications barrier. Then he thought it might be the age barrier. Though he was still in his forties, a comparatively youthful age back on Earth, both Zakri and Hoproman were in their midtwenties. From what he could tell, he was roughly the same age as both men’s fathers. But that didn’t explain it either. In Roy’s life experience, engineering was the language that crossed every cultural, social, racial, and political barrier. You could have two engineers from different countries, religions, ethnicities, or racial background and have them work together, joyfully, once they started talking about circuits, amperage, inductance, and induced emf. The language of engineering, the lure of the technical that appealed to those who chose to work in that field, superseded almost all other cultural programming and allowed people of radically different backgrounds to work together and break down barriers. But not with Zakri and Hoproman. When Roy had tried to engage them, they assiduously avoided him. And that was downright odd.
As Roy moved from the door and into the room to look more closely, he realized something. He smelled ozone in the air. Not just ozone, but that mix of ozone and dankness that only came from being in a room filled with hot electrical equipment that had been operating for years. It was normally a comforting smell, one of equipment working to perform its design goal and succeeding. But not in this case. He shouldn’t have smelled anything in this room except perhaps a slight odor that comes from a vacuum tube’s first use when the accumulated dust is burned off as it heats up. This was supposed to be the new control room. He was there to inspect it before it came online and had time to generate the level of residual ozone that Roy was now smelling.
“Guys, are you sure we are in the right place? I think this might be one that’s been in use. I’m here to see the new control room,” Roy said as he turned away from the glass-and-metal-filled room and back toward his Fintidierian colleagues who had been coming in behind him. Instead, he saw the massive metal door closing and heard it latch, leaving him alone.
“What’s going on?” Roy shouted as he moved back toward the door. The door, designed to contain a major electrical fire, was closed and locked. He knew immediately that there was no way he would be able to open it from the inside. Is this some sort of juvenile prank? What the hell is going on?
Standing there long enough to take stock of his situation, Roy turned around to examine the room in more detail to see if there might be another way out. Figuring out why they locked him in would have to wait until after he found an exit route.
He found himself in a man-made cavern, at least fifty feet long and thirty feet wide with a ceiling that towered twenty feet overhead. Everywhere he looked were vacuum tubes of assorted sizes and shapes, capacitors, and other antique electronics that he had only studied in history books before coming up to speed on modern Fintidierian technology. As he looked at the tubes more closely, he realized they were different from what was in the design manuals he had been studying. They were larger. More primitive (if that were possible!). Less efficient. And the wiring was just too hefty to match the power needs of the newer designs he had expected to encounter. He now understood why the room smelled old and used. It had been. This must have been the old control room that was decommissioned.
Zakri and Hoproman brought him here to trap him. But why? He knew the tensions between some Fintidierian factions and the Terrans were rising and that was why the government had provided additional security in areas where Terrans were living and working. If they had wanted to hurt him, or kill him, they could have done so long before now. The car ride to the power plant would have been ideal. They had driven on mostly empty country roads for quite some time, and they could have pulled over, killed him, and dumped his body any number of places and no one would have been the wiser. Why bring him out here? Was he being kidnapped? He and Chloe had no more money than anyone else, so if it were a kidnapping, then the motive had to be something other than money. He decided not to waste any more time thinking about motive and to remain focused on gaining his freedom. I can figure out why later.
He looked around the room and, for the moment, tried to ignore the siren call of the electrical equipment that filled it. There were windows, but they were nearly twenty feet overhead, near the roof, and each was covered with what looked like thick wire mesh. He didn’t see any ladders or tables that he could use to get to them without disassembling and moving a significant amount of hardware. Making it all the more difficult were the massive fans that filled each one. With all the heat generated in the room, air maintaining air flow was especially important. They would also be in the way should he attempt to exit through one of the overhead windows.
Concrete block walls. Concrete floors. And lots of pipes, all designed to carry cold water from the local river, snaking throughout the room and connected to the heat sinks designed into each bench of vacuum tubes. He walked over to the closest pipe, which measured nearly two feet in diameter, and listened. Silence. Whatever water used to flow through the system was not there now. He studied the room’s piping and saw that none were any larger. Two feet was simply not enough for him to get through even if he could get one of them open.
He paused. That’s it. No obvious way out. I’m stuck.
Okay. Think. If this were Earth, I could just get on the net and call for help. Chloe has the family’s emergency radio, so that won’t work. And no one will miss me for a week.
What could they possibly want?
* * *
Chloe Burbank was in a good mood. She was not happy because Roy was away, she was happy that he was away to do something he loved. She admired his commitment to his family and very much appreciated him taking on the role of primary caregiver after the birth of their second child, but she knew that he would never be satisfied with that role alone. He needed to work. He was an engineer and, well, engineers needed to engineer things. She planned to continue working in the med lab while he was gone and was fortunate that next door were two very responsible Fintidierian teenagers, both boys, who were very good with children and eagerly accepted the opportunity to watch the kids while she was away at work. They’d babysat before when she and Roy had been on dates and the kids loved them.
When she entered the lab, she noticed that the normal guards were there as were at least three additional local police officers. She knew the reason for the extra security and was thankful for it. She was also thankful for the police officers who kept watch on her house. If the kids or their teenage minders had an accident, help was only seconds away. It was reassuring, though she wished it weren’t necessary.
“Good morning,” she said as she entered the building and greeted the receptionist.
“Good morning, Dr. Burbank,” the male receptionist replied with a smile. For a Fintidierian, his English was surprisingly good. When she was concentrating on it, she tried to speak with the locals in their language instead of assuming they would use hers. In this case, stopping to reply would have taken too much time and effort, so she just smiled in return and nodded.
Chloe wished she could remember the receptionist’s name but could not. He was fairly new, having started working at the job only a couple of weeks ago and was nice enough, but she’d not had the opportunity to chat with him—and that’s what it would take for her to be able to commit his name to memory. Another item on my to-do list. He was also kind of cute, not that she was trying to notice.
She decided to take the stairs to the third-floor laboratory today. Exercise was not one of her scheduled time priorities, especially with Roy gone, so she thought she should take whatever fitness opportunity presented itself. She passed the elevators as the doors closed and noticed that two of her Fintidierian colleagues were inside, along with two men she did not recognize. She smiled as she passed them. She reached the stairway and decided she would bound up two steps at a time—just because.
When she arrived at the lab, her two colleagues, Drs. Guzma and Werma, and their three students were already there along with the two men from the elevator and three others she did not recognize.
“Good morning,” Chloe said, this time speaking Fintidierian. It was then that she noticed that no one was working, they were instead just standing on the far side of the room watching her come in. “What’s wrong?” she asked. And then she noticed the guns. Each of the men she did not recognize was armed and had their pistols drawn, pointing them at both her and the rest of her team.
The door behind her closed. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a woman, also armed, locking it.
“Good morning to you, Dr. Burbank.” One of the men stepped forward as he spoke (in Fintidierian). “Please join your colleagues and do not make any noise, please. On your way, please place your backpack on the table to your right.”
Chloe walked slowly toward the gathered scientists and carefully, and very slowly, removed her backpack. As she did so, she slipped her hand into the right side pocket on the backpack, quickly feeling each of the contents until she found her emergency radio and held the power button long enough, she hoped, to turn it on. She pressed the transmit button as she moved toward the table where everyone’s belongings were in a pile.
“May I ask why you are threatening us with guns? Are we being taken hostage?” she asked, hoping that whoever was crewing the communications room at the compound was listening and would not be too quick to reply and catch their captors’ attention. She stopped at the table and held on to her backpack, and the transmit button, pausing as if waiting for their answer before she would place it on the table.
“Best to be quiet for now, Dr. Burbank. Just place the bag on the table and step over there,” repeated the man who she now presumed to be their leader. He was definitely the oldest in the group, by a long shot. With his gray beard and mostly gray hair, she guessed that he was in his midfifties, trim, and did not seem at all nervous. The others were definitely younger, by a decade or two, and none of them spoke.
She carefully placed the bag on the table and released the transmit button. Please don’t call back, she silently prayed. Just send help.
As soon as she reached her colleagues, the man in charge told them to sit.
They sat.
What followed was some rapid-fire dialog among their captors, all spoken in Fintidierian, only half of which she was able to understand. If they had spoken more slowly, she might have understood more. What she picked up indicated that their being taken hostage was part of a broader activity and that their demands were now being made known to the government. All she could think of now was the safety of her children.
* * *
The two guards at the Burbank home began their shift chatting on the sidewalk just in front of the house. Both were experienced police officers, and neither was overly inclined to discuss the politics of the Terrans and what had recently been stirring up trouble in and around their activities. They were there to do their jobs and keep the peace. Besides, they’d gotten to know the Burbanks, particularly their oldest daughter who brought them cookies just every day.
The senior of the two, Officer Pak, noticed a man walking his dog coming down the street toward them and quickly assessed that he was not likely to be a threat. But when he saw two other men coming from the opposite direction with a pace that would have them all converge together at one time right where the two officers were standing, the hairs on the back of his neck began to rise. Officer Mnu didn’t appear to notice anything and kept talking about how he and his fishing buddies had found a great spot to cast and drink beer over the weekend. Pak estimated that they had twenty seconds to determine if there was a threat…or not.
“We’ve got company,” announced Pak, interrupting Mnu’s description of the cold beers they’d imbibed during the weekend. Pak nodded toward the coming two men and then the dogwalker. He slowly dropped his right hand, unsnapped his gun holster, and rested it there.
Mnu began walking toward the two men. “Good morning,” he said as he stepped toward them. Neither man replied as they kept walking. Mnu raised his left hand, palm outstretched in the universal “stop” gesture and added, “May we help you?”
The bullet caught Mnu in the chest. Fired from a perch on top of a house across the street, the sound of the gunshot arrived only a second after the bullet. Mnu collapsed.
Pak saw his fellow patrol officer get hit and fall to the ground at the same time that he saw the two men reach behind their backs and pull out handguns. The man walking the dog just stopped and stared—Pak quickly determined that dog man was not part of the attack that was unfolding and hoped he would get out of his state of shock and run away, and to call for help. Pak’s perception of time began to slow down as his reflexes allowed him to draw his gun and take aim at one of the two approaching men just as they had theirs fully drawn and pointed at him. He fired at the one on the left and then quickly shifted his position to the right, toward their patrol car, to avoid being a still target for the second man. Two additional shots rang out. The first came from the second man just as his friend fell from Pak’s round impacting him in the chest. Fortunately for Pak, it was a bad shot—the round hit a tree ten feet behind him. The second hit the ground just inches from where Pak had been standing before he shifted his position. It came from the sniper across the street who had already taken out Mnu. Pak knew he had to get some cover quickly or he would have only a few more seconds of life. He dropped behind the patrol car to shield himself from whoever was firing from across the street. Unfortunately, this gave the second, walking gunman a clear line of sight for taking another shot.
The approaching gunman and Officer Pak fired at roughly the same time, and both were hit. Pak felt an agonizing pain in his upper left shoulder as he saw his target fall. He groaned and only through sheer force of will was he able to keep his focus on the tactical situation and not his now useless left arm and the blood flowing from it. Another round from across the street hit the roof of his patrol car just a few inches above where he was crouched.
Dog man was now gone, and a large car was approaching rapidly from the same direction as the walkers. Pak suspected the car held more of the attackers and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. If he broke cover to run into the house and defend the kids, the man across the street would have an easy shot. If he sat still, the approaching car would be able to discharge its occupants and quickly take care of him. He opened the car door and, still crouching, reached in to grab the radio. Another shot rang out, this time shattering the car window just above his head—but missing him and the radio.
He just finished the distress call when the approaching car careened to a stop and three men jumped out, each armed and running toward Pak. He was able to take out one of the three before two bullets struck him.
Inside the house, the two teenagers, nicknamed “Bill” and “Ted” by Chloe, had just moments before been playing with the Burbank children when they heard the initial gunshots and saw Officer Pak take down the second gunman as they reached the window to see what was going on. Samari arrived just after them and peered through the lower part of the window as she stood between them.
“What’s going on?” Samari asked, looking up at Bill.
“Let’s get away from the window, it’s dangerous,” Bill said as he reached down and scooped up Jeremiah from the floor where he was crawling toward them. Though his heart was racing, Bill was not scared—just excited. He and his family had experienced the riots and civil unrest that were gripping their world before the Terrans arrived and had begun practicing survival drills for emergency situations, including those that involved armed gangs who intended them harm. They were the Fintidierian equivalent of “preppers.” Bill and Ted were no stranger to guns, and they knew that unless they fled immediately to someplace safe, they would either be taken hostage or killed. Bill didn’t hesitate.
“I’ve got Jeremiah, you take Samari. We’ll go out the back door and get to the house where we can hole up with Mom in the safe room until the police get here,” he said.
Ted took Samari’s hand, bent over toward her, and softly said, “We need to get out of here now. I know it’s scary, but we need you to be a big girl and not cry. You need to do exactly as we say, okay?”
Samari looked up at him with wide eyes and nodded her head. It was clear that she was valiantly trying to hold back tears, and her fear, and only barely succeeding.
The boys led the Burbank children to the back door and briefly stopped to see if it was safe to go out the door. If more people with guns were coming in from the back, their only other chance was to get out through the windows in the side bedroom. Bill cracked open the door and quickly surveyed the yard behind the house and had his hopes dashed. Another gunman was coming toward the door from the right and saw Bill just as Bill saw him. They briefly locked eyes and then Bill moved to close the door and lock it. He knew that would not stop the gunman, but it would at least slow him down.
“Another one is coming, and he’s armed,” Bill announced.
Samari, who had been heroically holding herself together until now, began crying.
Sensing the anxiety, Jeremiah joined in—wailing.
“Let’s get to the master bedroom. There is a window there we might be able to get out of,” Bill said.
Boom! The sound of a shotgun blast from just outside the back door jolted them to move. Bill was sure it was the sound of the gun being fired at the door to break the lock and allow the gunman to enter. It took him a few seconds to realize that the door was not damaged, which meant that the gunshot was for some other purpose.
They weren’t going to wait around and see what happened. They had to get away and the master bedroom was their only option. They were just about out of the room when they heard someone rattle the back door.
“Cabri? Drui? It’s Mom. Open the door and come with me. It’s safe now.” It was their mom.
Stopping mid-stride, Cabri (Bill) and Drui (Ted) returned to the kitchen. Cabri opened the door and was relieved to see their mother standing there—with her shotgun.
“Come, quickly,” she urged as she motioned for the foursome to follow her. Their mother was a tall, thin, black-haired woman who walked with vigor and carried the shotgun as if it were an extension of her hand and arm. They’d been target shooting with her and knew she was a good shot but that didn’t stop them from being surprised when they saw the bloodied body of the gunman lying on the ground just a few feet to the side of the door as they came out.
“He was so focused on you and getting in the house that he didn’t see or hear me come up behind him,” she said to them and then leaned toward the still-crying Samari. “Honey, don’t look at the bad man. Look at me and keep holding Cabri’s hand. We’re going to take you and your brother to someplace safe.”
Drui, still carrying Jeremiah, Cabri, and Samri followed the boys’ mother out the back door and toward her house two houses down on the right. They walked quickly, but not so quickly that Samari would trip and fall, which would have slowed them down.
After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the back of the house and quickly entered it.
After closing and locking the door, their mother said, “I heard the shots and knew something was wrong. Let’s get in the safe room and then you can tell me all about it.” She led them through the kitchen.
“Where are we going?” Samari asked through a sniffle.
“Just keep quiet for now and follow,” the woman replied as she turned and led them down the stairs into the basement. As they entered, she closed a heavy steel door behind them.
The room was small, but well equipped. There were four cots, shelves filled with canned food and water bottles, and a wall that had firearms of varying types hanging from it: another full-size shotgun and two with pistol grips; multiple handguns; two hunting rifles; and an assortment of knives. Drui took both children to one of the cots and engaged them, trying to get them to stop crying. Of the two, Drui was definitely the more empathetic and most able to sooth children of all ages.
Cabri walked over to the gun rack, without hesitation took down one of the pistol-grip shotguns, and made sure it was loaded. His mother nodded approvingly as he walked to join her at the door to listen and wait.
* * *
“Mr. Ambassador, we have a problem.” Captain Crosby was speaking on the secure, encrypted radio link to Ambassador Jesus from aboard the Samaritan. “Chloe Burbank used her satphone to let us overhear what sounds like a hostage situation at the bioresearch facility. From what we can tell, there are multiple bad guys with guns, and they’ve taken her entire research group hostage. So far, there’s been no alert from the local police.”
Jesus had answered Crosby’s emergency call as soon as it came in. Fortunately, he was not in any meeting and was just at his desk planning the day and taking care of the mountain of bureaucratic paperwork the Fintidierians seemed to love. He had studied how bad real “paperwork” had been in precomputer societies, now he was living it. There was a mountain of papers on his desk awaiting him to read, skim, or ignore. All of that would have to wait.
“Has she been injured?” asked Jesus.
“Not that we can tell. We recorded the conversation, and it sounds like she was able to activate the phone for only a few seconds before they forced her to put it down. The phone is still active, and we know exactly where it is. Unless they’ve separated her from it, she’s in the research lab.”
Damn! Rogers and his SEALs are on the Emissary bound for Luyten’s Star, leaving only Mike Rialto and his team. They’re capable, but they’re not SEALs. Jesus was running through the options available, and he did not like them. The local police were good, but they would not have the technical capabilities of the Terran team, even a ship’s security team like that led by Rialto.
“Captain Crosby, how quickly can Rialto and his team be at the facility to effect a rescue?” Jesus asked.
“I’ve already alerted them, and Rialto thinks they can be onsite within forty minutes. Fortunately, they are planetside in the compound doing some training. He’s to get back with me with options when they are en route to the lab. I know that you’ll want to alert Secretary General Arctinier and coordinate with the local police. It’s times like these that I don’t envy you and your job. Up here, I would just tell Rialto to come up with a plan and execute it. Down there, I know things are going to be a lot more complicated.”
“That depends,” Jesus said. “It depends upon how fast their captors make their intentions known to the locals or how quickly they are discovered. I have a lot more confidence in your team than I do in the local police. Given the political situation here, I wonder how many police might be sympathetic to the political opposition.”
“You don’t plan to alert Secretary General Arctinier?”
“Not yet. Get your people there as quickly and quietly as possible and let them do their job. I trust your judgment. I don’t need to sign off on whatever plan they come up with, but I do need to know what’s going on so I can knowledgeably deal with the fallout,” Jesus responded. The last thing I’m going to do is meddle in the planning of a life-or-death hostage rescue effort, something I know nothing of. Plus, it gives me some small measure of deniability.
“We will keep you informed,” Crosby said as he cut the connection.
Jesus rose from his chair and walked to the window overlooking the building’s beautiful courtyard. Every day he looked out the window and vowed he would take time to go out and enjoy the trees and flowers so carefully tended there, and every day he would somehow never find the time. When this crisis is over, I’m going put a walk in the courtyard on my schedule every day. He hoped he would actually follow through but knew that he probably would not. He sighed and began coming up with ideas of how to approach Madam Secretary General.
* * *
Thirty-five minutes later, Rialto and the three members of his security detail arrived at the research lab. From their vantage point across the street, all appeared to be quite normal. Whatever was going on inside had not yet made itself known to those outside or the serene scene of pedestrians walking this way and that would have been replaced with police cars and a sense of crisis. Surprise was still in their favor and, for that, Rialto was pleased.
Rialto had complete confidence in the capabilities of his team. First, there was his deputy, Christin Walker. She was a former police officer and the daughter of an astronomy professor who, because of her apparent lack of math skills, was unable to follow in her father’s academic footsteps. She had always wanted to study space but could not, so she had jumped at the chance to volunteer for the trip to Proxima Centauri those many years ago as part of the security detail. She was quite good at her job and was a real people person. If there was going to be any sort of negotiation, she would be the one doing all the talking. Next there was Jayden Abioye. Abioye was the son of African immigrants to America and had a drive to excel and be the best that amazed and inspired all who came to know him. When they left Earth, he was the one about whom Rialto knew the least. But at every step of the way, from the Gaines crisis on their way out to the incident at Misropos, he’d proven himself to be more than capable. He had earned Rialto’s trust and confidence. And then there was Keith Ruiz. Ruiz was quiet, capable, and what Rialto could only describe as “solid.” When assigned a task, Ruiz completed it—on time and to the exact specifications required. It was a good team.
They readied themselves outside the lab complex and behind the corner of a building across and just down the street to avoid being too obvious. There was no sign that anyone had noticed them or paid them any heed.
“We don’t know how many hostage takers are there and we can’t really do much until we know the tactical situation. Ruiz, is the drone ready to fly?” Rialto asked.
“Powered up and ready to go.” Ruiz nodded to him over the controller. He was holding a small quadcopter in the palm of his left hand and held up the controller with his right to emphasize the point. No larger than his thumbnail, the quadcopter could remain in the air for up to seven hours on a single charge thanks to its graphene capacitive battery, carried optics and onboard signal processing to give it ultra-high definition visuals and audio, and was covered in a thin layer of liquid crystals that automatically changed color to allow the craft to blend into whatever background it encountered. It was virtually undetectable unless you knew what to look for and where to look.
“Okay, let’s see what we are dealing with. You reviewed the building’s plans. If they are still in the main lab where the sat phone is pinging, then you should have an unobstructed view from outside the south window. Let’s get her airborne,” Rialto ordered.
Ruiz nodded and tossed the tiny drone into the air. Its rotors activated and immediately took it skyward. Ruiz had donned the control visor that allowed him to see what the drone was seeing as well as a heads-up display of all the tiny flyer’s systems. He forced the control transmitter on and snapped it to a molle strip in his vest. Once the control icons appeared in the virtual view, he stood stock-still and moved his hands in the air to direct the tiny craft to its intended target. Rialto and the team quickly lost sight of the drone, leaving its flight totally up to Ruiz. They didn’t have to wait long.
“I’m there and have a visual,” Ruiz said. “I’m sending it to your datapads.” Each of Rialto’s team looked at their unfolded data pads, each as thin as a sheet of paper and showing what the tiny camera on the drone was seeing in high definition.
Despite them all seeing the same thing, Rialto always liked to discuss the tactical situation verbally to make sure he wasn’t missing something. “I can see six people with guns and six scientists, including Dr. Burbank. They’ve barricaded the door and moved the furniture around to provide some cover in case someone makes a frontal attack. One of the terrorists is watching the window, but he doesn’t seem to see the drone—a good thing. No one seems to be injured.”
“What about elsewhere in the building?” asked Walker.
“That’s my next stop,” Ruiz uttered monotonically, not taking his focus from the controls. The view on the tiny screen changed as the quadcopter flew toward the top of the building.
“Air vents,” he said, anticipating the next question. “Once I’m in the ventilation system, I can see into every room from the air vents. There’s a huge opening on the roof with a fan. Getting past the blades will be a piece of cake.”
The team watched, almost mesmerized, as the tiny ship raced into the ductwork, not so much a pausing before it zipped past the relatively slow-moving fan blades and into the wide aluminum duct that then branched out to the many rooms within the building. Ruiz, who had studied the structure’s plans on the trip over, knew exactly where he was going. First, he would check the hallway outside the barricaded laboratory to make sure no one was out there keeping watch. Done. The hallway was empty.
His next stop was the lobby. It took another few minutes for the copter to reach the bottom of the building. It exited a vent on the back left of the atrium and hovered near the ceiling as the camera panned across the room, taking in the situation. There were two men sitting at a table, each with a larger backpack by their side on the floor. Ruiz flew closer and zoomed in on their open backpacks and saw the unmistakable butt of what looked like one of the automatic or semiautomatic battle rifles they had seen in use by the Fintidierian military. Each carried a detachable box magazine containing twenty rounds. They were clearly part of the opposition.
Next, the copter flew toward the receptionist desk and saw that the young and smiling (why was he smiling?) receptionist had a similar weapon just under his desk within easy reach. No one else was in the lobby.
The copter then flew down the hallway, past the elevators and to the stairwell. No one was visible.
“We need to act before the locals get wind of what’s going on,” Rialto said. “We have authority from the captain to move and that’s what I intend to do. Here’s the plan…”
* * *
Chloe was trying to understand what the Fintidierians were saying but caught only every other word. To find out what was being said, she tried to engage Dr. Werma, who was sitting just next to her. But as soon as she tried, one of the armed men turned his gun toward her and told her to be quiet.
Nothing much happened in the room. They were obviously waiting for something. That something was a call on the radio that the man she assumed was their leader answered as soon as the radio clicked to get his attention. She couldn’t hear what was said by the person on the other side of the conversation, but the leader didn’t appear to be pleased. In fact, his demeanor went rapidly from annoyed to angry. Then she heard words that she did understand, and they caused her heart to sink. “Find the children at all costs. Find them quickly.”
The children? Her children? She started to rise and was pushed harshly back to the ground by the man who had previously silenced her. “If you do anything to my children, so help me God, I will kill you,” she threatened, her worry becoming anger.
“If you do as we say, you and your children will be fine,” said the man. “Now, if you try that again, I won’t be nearly as polite. Sit down, don’t move, and be quiet.”
From what Chloe could tell, which wasn’t a whole lot, it sounded like someone was trying to find her children and they had not yet done so. She knew the police were at the house protecting them and that gave her some measure of relief, but not much. Something to do with her children was going down and she did not like that.
Her thoughts were racing, trying to figure out what, if anything, she could do. And then she realized she was suddenly very tired. At almost the same moment the thought entered her mind, she saw only blackness.
* * *
Unseen by anyone in the room, a quadcopter hovering just inside the room’s air vent had just released a burst of knockout gas, sufficient to put everyone in the room into a deep sleep. The gas, which had been brought from Earth by Rialto’s team as a nonlethal way to deal with any sort of possible crew problems while in space, did the job for which it was designed with ease. Everyone in the room, good guys and bad, would not wake up for at least two hours.
At the same time the gas was being released upstairs, Rialto walked into the building’s lobby and toward the front desk. The lobby was too small to use sleeping gas. Armed only with a pistol concealed under his light jacket and a knife in its sheath near his ankle, Rialto tried to look nonchalant as he approached the receptionist. He could sense the eyes of the two armed men at the table following him as he walked across the room.
Rialto was obviously a Terran, given his very European look among a Fintidierian population of common Asian descent and that undoubtedly put the people in the room on high alert. Using his best Fintidierian, he declared, “I’m here to see Dr. Burbank.” That was the action phrase and as he said it, he reached toward the small of his back to draw his handgun. Before anyone in the room could react, the sound of breaking glass was the only clue that two ten-millimeter rounds, each traveling at over three thousand feet per second, impacted the men at the table, splattering their brains across three feet of carpet.
The “receptionist” reacted quickly but was, as anticipated, momentarily distracted by the shattering glass, allowing Rialto to bring his gun up just a little bit faster. Rialto put a round in the man’s chest, knocking him backward and onto the ground. Rialto quickly rounded the desk and kicked the rifle far out of the man’s reach. The receptionist was not dead, but he might be shortly if he didn’t get medical attention. Rialto leaned over and searched him, making sure he had no additional concealed weapons. He didn’t.
The doors opened and the rest of Rialto’s team entered. Ruiz moved to make sure the two men were as dead as they looked while Walker and Abioye joined him at the desk.
“Ruiz, you watch our friend here and let Captain Crosby know we’re in the building and on our way up to retrieve Dr. Burbank. Let him know that I would prefer the locals not arrive until we’ve got her back safely at the compound,” Rialto said.
When the three members of the Samaritan’s security detail arrived upstairs, the sleeping gas had fully dissipated, leaving everyone in the room in a deep sleep. One by one, Rialto’s team searched, disarmed, and bound the gunmen so they could no longer pose a threat to anyone—even if they awakened earlier from the gas then they should. They then carried the sleeping medical team to the elevator for transport to the ground floor.
Once there, Rialto and Walker carried Dr. Burbank out the door and to the van that had carried the team to the laboratory.
“I’ll get her back to the compound. Captain Crosby alerted Ambassador Jesus that we were successful and he’s now alerting the police. You and the team wait here to debrief them once they arrive. I suggest you stand outside and try to look harmless. We don’t want the locals to think you are on the wrong team,” Rialto told his men.
“Sure thing, Mike. Just take care of the good doctor and let us know if anything else is going down. I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Walker said.
“I’m on it,” Abioye replied.
* * *
Lesson number one: Don’t kidnap and lock an engineer in a room filled with electrical equipment and expect him or her to complacently accept their fate. While the hardware in the room was old and long unused, that didn’t mean it was necessarily broken and not functional. Roy was easily able to pry open several of the casings to find vacuum tubes, Earth 1950s-era capacitors of various sizes, diodes, rectifiers, transformers, and as much copper wire as an engineer might use in a lifetime.
At first Roy thought about using the wires to trip his captors as they entered the room, but that alone wouldn’t likely get him out of his predicament. There were at least two of them and even if they were both momentarily distracted by tripping, they were armed and one of them would likely recover before he could disarm or disable the other. Transformers, with all their embedded copper wire, were very heavy and he was sure he could either knock out or even kill a person with a surprise strike to the head using one—but, again, there were at least two of them. Physical force was definitely not Plan A. Besides, they were both younger and likely much stronger than he. No, he would have to use his advantages—his brain and his experience.
As he surveyed the gold mine—more appropriately the copper and silver mine—that he had laid out on the tables in front of him, an idea began to germinate. To make it work, he needed to see if any of the electrical leads or outlets in the room still had power. He grabbed some old, hardened, and flaky electrical insulation from inside one of the casings that had housed the now dismantled circuits as well as some copper wire and then began looking for a source of power. After examining every wall, every light fixture, and every conduit he could find, there were none still hot. No juice.
But he did find batteries—lots and lots of good, old-fashioned lead/acid batteries, God bless them. Most were dead. Others maybe not completely, judging by the faint sparks he was able to get when touching some of them. He grinned. Now all he needed was a little water. He followed one of the many pipes in the room until he found what he was looking for—an access point that he might just be able to open. What do you get when you mix water, batteries, capacitors, rectifiers, and some diodes with an engineer? The bastards who locked him in the room would soon find out…
After a little over an hour, Roy was not anywhere near finished with what he planned when he heard the door being opened. His heart raced as he quickly abandoned the equipment piled on the workbench and made his way as far from it as possible when the door finally opened and Hoproman peered in.
“I have food and water for you,” Hoproman said as he sat a plate with a sandwich and a cup of water on the floor just inside the door.
Roy tried to look inconspicuous and resigned to his fate, hoping that the equipment he had moved would not be noticed. To keep Hoproman’s attention on him and not the room, he replied, “You know that I will eventually be missed. My wife knows where we were going and will inform the authorities.”
Hoproman said nothing as he simply stared at Burbank and then closed the door.
Roy walked toward the door and picked up the food.
“I might as well eat. It’ll help me think,” he muttered to himself as he took his first bite of what was a completely stale sandwich.
Then he got back to work.
* * *
Roy was pleased with what he had been able to kludge. In addition to the surprise that awaited his captors upon their return, he’d fashioned a weapon, what he now affectionately called “Thor’s Hammer,” out of a short piece of steel pipe and a medium-size electrical transformer attached to the end with multiple windings of copper wire. For good measure he had also secured the base plates of a few cathode ray tubes with their one-inch-long pins facing outward from the hammer. Better to make them bleed. He had no qualms about seriously injuring his captors—after all, they were the ones who pointed guns at him.
Now, all he had to do was wait.
He didn’t have to wait long. Shortly after he got himself into position, he heard the door being opened and then saw Zakri stick his head into the room. Roy was hidden from view, but not behind the door as they might expect. He wanted to be far enough away to not get caught in his own trap yet not so far as to not be able to take advantage of whatever injured or stunned shape the men might be in after he sprung it. He was hiding under a table ten feet behind the door. They would almost certainly not be able to see him until they were all the way into the room.
Zakri looked back and forth, trying unsuccessfully to pick out Roy from among all the junk in the room. He briefly looked over his shoulder and asked Hoproman to join him in searching for Burbank. They were not speaking softly, and Roy was easily able to follow what they were saying.
Moments later, both of his Fintidierian captors walked into the room as they slammed the door wide open with a loud clang.
“Mr. Burbank, hiding is of no use. We don’t have to make this difficult. If you come out now and follow our instructions without us having to come find you, and perhaps hurt you, then things will go much more smoothly for you and your family,” said Hoproman in his best English.
Hearing that his family was somehow involved in whatever was going on just inflamed Roy and strengthened his resolve. Don’t you dare bring my family into this…Roy remained crouched, motionless, with his hands on the wire that he would soon use to close the circuit on his primitive, but hopefully operative, step-up converter that he’d hastily assembled. If it worked, it would take the little remaining voltage remaining in the sixteen batteries he’d connected and step it up to a level that should give each man a quite painful jolt. He wasn’t sure how much current he’d get, or what would be needed to actually injure the men, but he might incapacitate them long enough to swing into action, as it were, with Thor’s Hammer.
The seconds seemed like minutes as Zakri and Hoproman slowly moved into the room. Roy became concerned when they abruptly changed direction and began walking the wrong way. If they went any way other than the path he envisioned, then his plan would simply not work. He had to do something to get them back on track, so he ever-so-slightly scuffed his shoe. That got their attention, putting them back on the correct path.
Hoproman noticed the puddle first, but not before both men were standing in the water that Roy had diverted from one of the cooling pipes, where it had pooled and become stale, to where it was needed. As he looked down to see what he’d stepped in, Roy closed the circuit.
Visually, there wasn’t much to see except for the reactions of the Fintidierians. When the circuit closed, the little remaining power in each of the mostly depleted batteries flowed through a circuit Roy had devised that used capacitors, rectifiers, and a transformer to step up the voltage as high as he could manage. Both men stood suddenly as straight as boards and dropped their guns as their bodies spasmed from the electrical shock. There may not have been much to see, but the sound and smell created by the electrical discharge was one any good electrician, or engineer, would recognize as a significant one. As the shock subsided, both men crumpled to the floor.
Roy opened the circuit out of habit before he rushed forward. He needn’t have bothered since the batteries were now fully discharged and not a risk to him or anyone else. Thor’s Hammer, however, was quite a different story.
Roy could not bring himself to bludgeon the slowly recovering men in the head as they struggled to sit up and began searching for their weapons, but he had no qualms about hitting other body parts. Both men had their hands turned to bloody pulp in a matter of seconds. For good measure, Roy didn’t wait to assess the damage he’d done to their hands before he similarly smashed their kneecaps, leaving both men writhing on the floor.
Roy scooped up both weapons and sprinted out the door. Though he was an engineer’s engineer, and had no formal military training, he was no stranger to guns and had gone shooting many times before and after their trip to Proxima Centauri. He slung one rifle over his shoulder and held the other at the ready should he encounter anyone else at the site in his bid for freedom.
When he exited the building, he saw no one else. It didn’t take long for him to retrace his steps to the vehicle that had brought him and his two captors to the site. Before he slid into the driver’s seat, he used the butt of the rifle to smash the cover over the ignition system in the car so he could reach the wires and start it without having to worry about using what the Fintidierians used for keys. They didn’t really look like the dongles that had been the norm on Earth for so long. The keys actually looked like cylinders with grooves and notches cut in them.
Roy pulled the wires free and found the one that would throw a spark against the chassis of the column. Then he took turns touching the hot wire to others until he heard the starter motor kick over. Once he found that one, he pulled it aside. He’d need that one. But first he had to figure out which wire needed to stay hot for the car’s electrical system to stay on. He touched wires to the hot one until the dash lit up. He was quite sure he had it figured out, but there was only one way to find out.
“Come on, baby. Start for me,” he muttered a bit between frantically and impatiently. “Come on.”
He held the two electrical system wires together between his thumb and forefinger and twisted them until the electrical system on the car stayed on. Then he grabbed the ignition wire and touched it to them. The starter motor whirred. He tapped the gas lightly.
“Hot damn!” he shouted. “I’m out of here.” He slipped the car into gear, and he was on the road back toward town—and his family.
As he drove, he replayed Hoproman’s comments concerning his family over and over in his head, making him both angry and anxious to get back. What the Hell is going on?
* * *
“I don’t know, sweetheart.” Roy lifted Samari’s hair and hugged his daughter to him tightly. “People who are desperate and feel like they have no salvation or are hopeless and helpless do very drastic and bad things sometimes.”
“It’s okay now, baby.” Chloe smiled and pulled Jeremiah to her tighter. “Mommy and Daddy are here. And we’re going to stay here at the compound until all this blows over. Here, you can run and play outside with nothing to worry about.”
“That right, Daddy?” Samari asked.
“That’s right, Samari. We’re safe here.”
“Can we do anything to help these people?” Samari asked.
“I’m sure we can.” Roy patted her head. “I’m sure.”
He looked at Chloe, who still appeared a bit hungover from the knockout gas. He gave her a confident sideways nod of the head and tried to smile. He figured her confidence in solving the fertility problem for the Fintidierians was a bit shaken too. He knew his was.
Roy, Chloe, and their children were all holding each other as they looked out the large living room window of the small quarters they had originally lived in when they had first arrived at Proxima. It was smaller than where they had been living for the past year, but it was safe. They were safe.
“I’ll take the kids upstairs and let them sleep in our bed with us, if that’s okay. I think I’ll go ahead and crash now too. I’m bushed,” said Chloe.
“I’ll be up shortly. Mike Rialto is on his way over with some news he seems eager to share. I’ll come up after he leaves,” said Roy.
“Should I stay down here to see him?” she asked.
“Chloe, you look like you could use at least two full days of sleep. Go on upstairs. I call fill you in tomorrow,” he offered.
She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek and whispered, “Good night.”
Roy smiled and replied, “I won’t be too long.”
Ten minutes after Roy heard the last of the nighttime routine noises from upstairs, he saw Mike Rialto coming up the stairs to the front door. Roy hurried to greet him, afraid Rialto might ring the doorbell or make some other noise to wake up his now-sleeping family.
“Mike, its good to see you. Come on in,” said Roy, motioning him inside. “Would you like some water?”
“No, thanks,” said Rialto as he came in the room and sat in a chair near the window.
Roy sat back down in his chair, directly across from the security chief.
“What’s the news?” asked Roy.
“We found where the kidnappers lived and searched their houses. In one of their houses, we hit pay dirt and found their manifesto,” Rialto replied. “Before I fill you in, I need to get Captain Crosby on the line. He wants to be part of the discussion.” Rialto took out his radio and put it on the table. “Connect to Captain Crosby,” he said, speaking toward the radio.
“I’m here.” Crosby’s voice came from the radio almost immediately. “Thanks for tying me in.”
“Sam, it’s good to hear your voice,” said Roy as he leaned back in his chair. Maybe I am getting tired after all, he thought.
“I was going to tell Roy about the manifesto,” interjected Rialto.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Crosby replied.
“Alright. We found what looks like a letter that was going to be delivered to the media after they had you and your family hidden in a safe house outside of town. We sent a team there also, but it was empty. It was well stocked with food and supplies, but no one was there,” Rialto said.
“Because they were alerted somehow? Or because all the people were busy trying to kidnap us?” asked Roy.
“We think it was the latter, but we’re not sure,” Rialto responded.
“What did the letter say?” asked Roy.
“That they were holding you hostage and would kill members of your family one at a time, starting with you, by the way, unless we agreed to immediately leave the planet, return to our ships, and go back to Earth. They weren’t going to release anyone in your family until Emissary was outside of the star system and Samaritan was ready to go,” stated Rialto.
“These people were extreme xenophobes. They thought we were responsible for the fertility problem and used it as an excuse to come here and colonize or annex the planet,” chimed in Crosby.
“Did they seriously expect us to do that?” asked Roy. “Most of the people here signed up for a one-way trip. I didn’t, and six months or so ago, I might have considered going back, but not now. This is our new home. We came here to help them!”
“This is a new home for all of us,” said Crosby. “We left our lives on Earth behind and most everyone is at peace with that. If we did agree to leave, then by the time we arrived back home, any life we might want to resume there would have been interrupted by decades. And given the unknown nature of the fertility problem, Earth would never let us leave our ships and return to the surface for fear of contamination.”
“Is that all? Did you find out more about their organization? Most importantly, are there any more of them out there?” asked Roy.
“Unfortunately, its likely, very likely, that they were not acting alone. We’ve got some leads. We’ll keep you posted,” said Rialto.
Rialto stood and picked up the radio. “Roy, that’s all we’ve got tonight. You look beat. We’ll leave you alone so you can join your family and get some rest.”
“Listen to Mike and get some rest. Tomorrow is another day,” urged Captain Crosby as he signed off.
Roy walked Rialto to the door and shook his hand. “Thank you again for all you did to save my family today.”
“I just did my job,” he replied as he opened the door and exited.
“Good night,” Roy said as Rialto walked down the path toward the sidewalk.
We’re safe for now, Roy thought. Well, safer than we were, anyway.
This particular plot had been foiled, but what would follow it? If the Terrans didn’t find an answer to the fertility problem soon…