Chapter 5 #3
For humanity, there was nowhere left on Earth to hide by that point.
The enemy had infected the surface, from shore to shore and sea to sea.
Humanity needed a place to run, beyond the limits of the planet…
even the Solar system. So they poured over the data they had from exo-planet searches and found a few that checked the boxes.
Proxima Centauri B was checked first, being the closest known exoplanet they could predict the coordinates of.
While technically Earth-like, it was something of a hellworld that nearly killed the team dispatched to survey it before they could flee back into the inventory space.
Kepler 452b was a rich world, incredibly so, but with over 5 times Earth’s gravity it wasn’t suitable for colonization.
Gliese 667Cc was essentially another Venus, unfortunately.
While technically within the goldilocks zone of its star, it was undergoing extreme runaway greenhouse effect and despite receiving roughly the same energy from its star as Earth, the planet was lethally hot and choking on atmospheric gasses and pressures that would make colony survival an impossibility.
Kepler 186f was the planet of choice for the Gate project.
Not a garden world, but one that could be built on.
No free roaming oxygen, but enough of an atmosphere that some extremophile plants and organisms could survive there.
It was cold, but not tidally locked with its primary, and the plan was to thicken up the atmosphere with some heavy industry over a few centuries.
Kepler had been the destination of choice for the Gate, and building facilities there had taken months of working under pressure, all leading up to the last teams sent out during the attack that took Seb’s life.
He supposed that the world was now empty again, but had no intention of heading out that far anytime in the near future so it didn’t really matter. Traveling over five hundred lightyears to a frozen hellworld really had no attraction to him.
What he did need was the notes on how to link different parts of his inventory space to different coordinates in sidereal space.
Finding them was a relief, but also an issue.
Lovely. The equipment needed to make links at range is… non-existent at the moment. Seb frowned as he looked over that.
The supercomputer was easy enough, that was just a brute force system. He could build one with enough money easily enough, but it would be decades before systems got powerful enough to really crunch those numbers in a reasonable amount of time.
Thankfully the process of creating a stable link in and of itself wasn’t that hard to do. He could probably build the gear he needed for that from stuff he ordered off the…
Seb paused, pinching at his nose.
Right. Not ordering off the web anytime soon. I need to get some catalogs and start making a wish list. Still, no interstellar gates for me, I guess. Good thing I don’t really want that, nor could I leverage it into anything useful if I did to be honest.
He could probably link to a location on the moon, or even mars, with a little effort, Seb supposed but honestly doubted that either would be of much value.
No, he had another plan for it.
*****
1st Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg
Jack Burke sighed as he closed the file and pushed it away from him.
“No one.”
Evelyn shook her head, “Not that will admit to it at least.”
“Someone knows who this Bastion is,” Jack declared with a growl. “Someone with this capability doesn’t just… pop into existence out of nowhere!”
“I agree,” She held her hands up, gesturing for him to calm himself, “but every contact I speak with says the same thing. Not one of theirs. The Company seems to be riled up, but they’re looking for him too as best I can tell, NSA just flat out said that he’s not theirs and if we find him they want a chat. ”
“And the NRO?”
“Interested, but considers Bastion to be outside their area of responsibility,” She shrugged.
Jack Burke shook his head, “Well it’s a dead end then.”
“Until he shows up again,” Evelyn nodded.
“You think he will?”
“You think he won’t?” She countered with an arched brow.
Jack sighed, “No. He’ll show up again. He didn’t have to get involved this time, but he broke cover to get that team out of a trap. This is not a man who can stand by and watch.”
Evelyn nodded in full agreement, “It’s just a matter of time. The question becomes whether or not we’ll be able to track him. He’s clearly skilled in tradecraft, and has access to knowledge that… frankly, shouldn’t exist as best I can determine.”
Jack nodded, “I know. If he limits himself to the same trick again, we’ll get him sooner or later, but…”
“Yes. But.” Evelyn said, stressing both words. “We just don’t have any way of knowing what other tricks he might pull out.”
“Well, I hesitate to say I hope he’s used his one clever trick,” Jack admitted, “if only because if my men wander into another trap, I want anyone and anything to pull out all the stops to get them out as needed. Bringing this guy in for a chat would be satisfying, but I prefer my men alive and well over my own satisfaction.”
“I understand, but we need to know what he knows,” Evelyn said firmly. “Whatever these Numbers stations are connected to… it’s bigger than we thought.”
****