Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
The kilometers disappeared beneath his feet, Earth’s surface now hidden by clouds. It would take a while to get to the orbital station. Carver tapped on the controls, urging the cabin to go faster, but they were already at max speed, and he couldn’t override it with his universal commands.
And every second that ticked by brought him closer to when he should reconnect with the grid.
Bracing his hands against the terminal, he hung his head and took a deep breath. His last minutes on that fucking planet kept playing through his head.
He’d been fighting a Calypson. After seeing the fucker’s eyes glow, after he’d come back to life twice, there was no doubt what he was.
Had he killed him for certain? The agitated sensation crawling up the back of Carver’s neck told him not to assume so.
There was more going on here than he understood. Usually, he didn’t care about that kind of shit. He’d get his orders, complete his task, and move on to the next one.
But for this job? All he had were questions.
What was a Calypson doing on Earth?
Why hadn’t they warned him? He would have come more prepared—with a pulse cannon and laser saw.
Why Wynn Lambdin? What did she have to do with anything? Why did the Calypson have an interest in her?
And what the fuck were those beasts? He’d seen reports of them, but up close? They shouldn’t exist. The mere sight of them made his skin crawl with wrongness.
And the fucking Calypson had controlled them somehow.
Carver shouldn’t be asking these sorts of questions. They would get him terminated, but there was far too much shit he didn’t know.
He turned slightly and stared at the doctor’s slumped form. She herself was an oddity—the fact that she’d been in the news recently, then apparently worked alone at that same outpost. Then she’d tried to defend the fucker.
And she shouldn’t be able to shake off a stun that fast. Not just once, but twice.
His eyes narrowed. There was one way to keep her down.
Turning, he knelt next to his go-bag, and opened it up with his bio-signature. There was a lot more space inside since he’d abandoned his big gun. Carver gritted his teeth. His favorite. That fucker had crushed it with his bare hands.
Carver pushed his smaller weapons aside to pull out a compact med kit. He popped the lid open, revealing rows of medical nodes and dermal syringes. He swiped the node at the back, clicked the case closed, and locked everything else inside.
Straightening, he strode toward his charge, then knelt beside her. With a touch to her UV-suit, he forced her helmet to disengage.
Her eyes fluttered, and he slapped the node onto her throat.
She twitched, then jerked forward, her fingers shaped like claws.
Carver tapped his PALM, dosing her. She slumped down, still as death except for the rise and fall of chest. He waited for a beat, then two, making sure the sedative kept hold.
When she didn’t move, he stood and accessed the massive amount of data his superiors had sent him. It was becoming clear that he should have read more of it before arriving—not that they’d given him enough time to do so.
Maybe that was the point.
File names materialized on his visor’s interface, and he had the urge to shake his head at the sheer volume of it. There was no way he could have gone through all of this before arriving, especially with the termination time limit they’d given him.
Maybe they had set him up to fail.
But there had to be something in there that shed light on what the fuck he’d encountered on the planet.
Where to start? Carver strode to the bench seating along the bulkhead and sat sideways, so his legs stretched over three of the butt-shaped impressions, and his back leaned against the bulkhead.
Still off grid, this was the first time he’d looked at these files where he didn’t feel like the CORE peered over his shoulder, watching what data he accessed.
He tapped his PALM, accessing the oldest files, the interactions the CORE government had with the Calypso during its journey. Routine updates, personal letters to friends and family, astrometric data—none of it would help with his current circumstance.
Carver skipped ahead to the files that correlated with the Calypso’s return to their solar system.
Again, there was so much data as to be debilitating in volume: every communication from Omega Station before it went dark, recordings of conversations between generals, and all the data from ships in the area during that time.
He’d learned most of this at school.
Carver jumped ahead again, scanning file names and searching for something he could use, or what parameters he should narrow down. A familiar name caught his eye. His chest squeezed tight: Captain Milo Archibald.
An image materialized in his mind’s eye of what that man looked like only days ago: bloody wrists, defeated expression, glazed eyes.
Shaking off the agitated feeling that ran up his arms, Carver clicked on the folder. The top file on the mountain of data consisted of compiled recordings. He selected the first one with a touch to his PALM, initiating playback.
The line of data scrolling across the bottom of the feed identified it as the ocular recording of Captain Archibald in Sector Five, aboard a civilian cargo vessel twenty-seven years in the past.
Carver was about to see what the captain had all those years ago and went oddly breathless.
It started with a view of an airlock, nothing unusual about it, its circular construction similar to any of the cargo vessels Carver had traveled on.
Archibald turned his head, revealing a man and a woman on the left.
The woman looked older, and the recording identified her as Miranda Archibald, then listed a bunch of useless data below her image: age, place of birth, permanent residence, known affiliations.
It did the same for the man, Toro Valcon.
Nothing in his information stood out either.
Then the view changed to show one more man on his right.
This guy was big, bulky in a way that most people weren’t able to achieve, and looked like he could crush a man’s skull with his bare hands.
The name below listed him as Brock Goodwater, a former defender, only serving his mandatory five years before cutting the CORE loose.
He would have made a terrible agent. Too big meant too noticeable.
This crew was typical of cargo runners. They moved things for a price, lived a nomadic lifestyle, and did their best to stay out of the cross-hairs of Tellusian pirates.
And they were all listed as deceased.
On the recording, they held weapons in front of them, uneasy expressions on their faces. Miranda in particular looked like she was about to vomit.
A loud kerclunk resounded. The recording jerked, then another softer clank followed. The airlock rolled open, revealing the interior of a second ship, but no people.
“Is there anyone on board?” the captain called out, his voice sliding directly into Carver’s ear, a younger version of the ravaged voice from days ago.
He gritted his teeth.
Silence met the question. The captain looked at his crew again, hesitation on their faces.
No one moved at first, then Goodwater ducked, stepping inside. The light on his weapon led the way. The captain followed.
Two more feeds popped up on either side of the captain’s. One was Goodwater’s, the other Valcon’s, who took up the rear behind Miranda.
The recordings showed sleeping pods on either side of the narrow corridor, and Carver frowned.
This was a long-distance transport, but a private one, the finishings too lush for a government ship.
Plus, the location tag on the recording said Sector Five.
There were no public transports in that area; it was too close to Tellusian space.
Why would a cargo crew fly that far out to begin with? Probably smuggling.
No civilian cargo carrier would pass up the opportunity to make extra creds with unsanctioned loads.
Carver paused the recording to access the initial assessment again.
It listed their cargo at the time as being cloned livestock.
That made him snort. “Livestock” was a great place to hide people.
And that close to Tellusian space? He would have bet his entire bank of creds that there were passengers on that ship who weren’t supposed to be there.
Shaking his head, he continued to watch the recording. The group moved past the closed doors of the sleeping pods, and into an empty living space. Each view swept the entire area, lighting every corner. There was no one there.
Carver focused on Goodwater’s feed as they approached the closed door of the cockpit. He looked back at his captain, got a head nod, then touched the control panel to open the door.
They all froze as they took in the sight of a small boy sitting on the floor between the two seats, his head bent and his palms facing forward. From his size, Carver would guess his age to be ten or so. There was no additional information under his image. No name, no nothing.
Archibald took point, advancing to kneel in front of the child. “Are you okay?” he asked, his hand reaching toward the boy’s shoulder.
It stopped mid-air when the boy lifted his head. His irises glinted silver in the low light.
Someone gasped. Someone else swore.
Carver swung his legs over the side of the bench and gripped the edge of the seat with both hands.
There was jostling among the team as they tried to back up all at once in the narrow space.
Archibald dropped his hand, but hadn’t moved otherwise. The moment stretched while they stared at the small boy who did nothing but stare back. He had short hair, and his clothes appeared odd, as if fabricated off center.
Finally, Archibald stood and said over his shoulder, “Get the government on the comm.”
The last thing on the recording was Valcon reaching over the pilot’s seat to turn off an active distress beacon.
Carver blinked at the dead feed, his mind racing with more questions than answers. How was it that Milo Archibald, the man who Carver had killed not even a week ago, was the captain who discovered a Calypson child on an abandoned ship?
Why had they sent him to torture and kill that man? His superiors had wanted a number. A number of what?
Archibald asked what had happened to the boy. He’d been asking about that boy.
What had happened to the kid? Could it be the same person he’d just fought?
No. Their facial features hadn’t been similar. And as soon as the CORE had gotten a hold of that boy, he would’ve never seen the light of day again.
Swallowing, Carver tapped his PALM, scanning for files related to the kid. They would have sent those too, right? They had to have if his superiors had known what they were throwing him into.
But every file after that one had nothing pertaining to the kid.
A sick sensation swirled in his stomach. Even without having access to those particular files, Carver knew what would’ve happened to that boy. Dissected and analyzed.
The doctor stirred, and he touched his PALM, dosing her. She slumped back into a heap. Carver shook his head. She shouldn’t have been able to wake from that either.
The doctor continued to be full of surprises.
He hated surprises.
With a touch of his PALM, he watched the recording again. And again. He didn’t know what he was searching for, but studied every second of that video like his life depended on it.
Maybe it did.
Watching it for the tenth time, he became breathless when he realized there was a discrepancy.
The time on the terminal when Archibald turned off the distress beacon didn’t line up with the time the CORE government received their call.
They should have contacted the CORE after turning it off, but it was the other way around, the contact time an hour before the creation of the recording.
The tether cabin’s terminal beeped, pulling his attention away from the paused recording. Carver pushed off the bench to stride toward the primary controls. The cabin had broken through the stratosphere, and the trip was now counted in minutes.
He sent a communication to the administrator of the tether station, a list of requirements for their arrival.
A moment later, a communique from the Corvus appeared on his ocular implant—the first since he’d breached the atmosphere of this fucking planet. It demanded an update on his retrieval and the status of Doctor Wynn Lambdin. General Cazin’s personal insignia marked the directive.
Carver’s fingers hovered over his PALM, ready to deliver the recordings of his time on Earth.
Not quite yet.
He wouldn’t debrief until he got more answers. And the doctor had them.