Gaea

Chapter 13

by Baybelletrist

BETA Mountain

8/4/2098, 0207

Goose mumbled in his sleep. On the screen beside the bed, Elma opened her eye.

In Niko's quarters, the comm system pinged.

"Niko, he's dreaming again," the AI murmured. She sounded worried.

Niko hauled herself out of bed and dropped her head in hands. "This is the third time tonight, Elma," she said, voice slurred with exhaustion. "They're going to break her at this rate." She pulled on a loose jumpsuit and slid her feet into slippers.

Elma was silent, bobbing slightly onscreen as the door slid shut behind Niko.

Goose thrashed, unable to wake.

Gaea, Mira's voice whispered softly. You're Mama's precious girl.

A wail swelled in her throat. The stench of oil and fuel mingled horribly with the faint metallic smell of blood, Mira's blood, her mother's blood, and the sudden emptiness where her mother's familiar presence had always been was a raw wound in her mind.

He picked her up out of the wreckage of the car, cuddling her close with tender hands.

Poor little Gaea, he crooned in his deep voice. Mama wanted you to do such bad things... I won't let anyone hurt you, Gaea.

You're my precious girl.

As the door to Goose's bedroom slid open, Niko heard the sound of his breathing, harsh and ragged as if he had been running hard. She flinched at the sound that tore itself out of his throat.

"Goose," she said, and crossed to the bed. In the dim light from the window his face was twisted in pain and fury, and even as she watched he bared his teeth.

"No..." he ground out. She closed her eyes in helpless sorrow.

"Goose," she called, opening her eyes again. "Shane, wake up." Wary now, she did not reach down to shake him awake. "Shane!"

His eyes opened, unseeing at first. She bent slightly, still keeping out of reach.

"Shane," she murmured—and caught herself at the tenderness in her voice.

No, she told herself. You can't.

He blinked a few times, finally focused on her.

"Elma woke me," she told him quietly. "It's the third time in twenty-four hours, Shane."

He turned his face away from her. "I know," he answered in a hoarse voice. "They're getting desperate. She hasn't broken, Niko... but I think she's close."

Elsewhere, Earth

8/3, 1311 local date/time

"Sir, we seem to be making progress."

"I can see that for myself. Step up the dosage by five cc's next time."

"Yes, sir."

Series Five Rangers' office

8/4, 0742

Zach slid a report across the table to Niko, tapping a notation with his forefinger. "Niko, what did you mean here by 'Not acc.'?"

As Niko examined the page, Zachary kept a surreptitious eye on Gooseman. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen the young ST so grim.

Goose shot him a glance from under his brows. "What?"

"We'll help her, Goose," Zachary said, setting his jaw. "Count on it."

"She may not even be alive to help by the time we get there, Captain," Goose replied. Zach winced inwardly at the bitterness in Goose's voice and saw from the corner of his eye that Niko bit her lip.

"I won't sugarcoat it," Zach said reluctantly. "It doesn't look good. But it's not hopeless yet."

"Even if she's alive, Zach... what are we going to do? They kidnapped her right out from under our noses. What's to stop them from doing it again? We can't protect her."

Zachary shook his head. "I don't know, Gooseman," he said quietly. "But we'll stand with you, whatever happens."

Goose stared across the room, but his eyes were distant.

"What are we going to do now, then?" Niko asked. "It's not an option to leave her where she is. But even if we manage to get her back, we know we can't protect her here."

There was a long silence.

"I've got an idea."

Everyone turned to look at Doc.

Commander Walsh's office

8/4, 0903

"You wanted to see me, Doctor?"

Doc made his normal sloppy salute—Call a spade a spade, Joe, Walsh told himself, it's execrable—and held out a datachip. "I've got our suspect pool narrowed down to about twenty people," he explained. "I know it's still a lot of folks to keep an eye on, but it's better than the number we started with—more than 250. I've encrypted it with a key that Belva generated for me just this morning."

"Well done, Doc," Walsh replied, taking the chip and slotting it into the reader. "I'll have her monitor their activities from now on."

"Thanks, Commander."

Walsh eyed the dark circles under his eyes. "In the meantime, Doctor, take the rest of the morning off. That's an order. Now get out of my office and get a few hours of sleep."

"Yes, sir!" Hartford said cheerfully, saluted, and turned on his heel.

Watching the door slide shut behind him, Walsh said, "Belva."

"Yes, sir?"

"Begin monitoring the names on that list. —As for Hartford, lock his home and work terminals off the net, and tell those programs of his that I'll erase them myself if they hack him a back door before noon."

"Yes, sir," Belva said, a ripple of amusement running through her voice.

"And lock out that fake ID of his. Who does he think he's fooling?"

"Yes, sir," she repeated, her icon shaking with contained mirth.

"And put me down for ten credits in the betting pool."

"What time, sir?"

He snorted and eyed the clock. "He'll be back on the net by 0945, and only because he'll stop to make coffee first. And you can tell Dorian that if he 'accidentally' leaves an opening for Doc again to try winning the pool, I'll bust him back down to maintenance AI down in the auxiliary vehicle bay and give Alberta his job."

And anyone who still thinks AIs don't have a sense of humor, he thought, watching Belva's silent laughter, needs his head examined!

BETA Mountain

8/4, 1219

"Sir, I have news," the caller said softly.

"You'd better, considering where you are." The man at the other end tapped his fingers on the table. The hiss of a breather filled the momentary pause.

"Walsh has pulled Gooseman off the case, said he's too close to it. He's being sent off-planet sometime this afternoon or possibly tomorrow morning, looks like to Ozark." The caller tensed as footsteps went by the storage locker door.

"I see. Interesting. And?"

"That's all, sir."

"Don't call here again from there. You know the procedure."

"Yes, s—" The screen went dark.

The caller wiped down the terminal and silently left the room.

Doc's quarters

8/4/2098, 1413

"This just keeps getting better."

Niko lifted her head from Doc's sofa, where she'd curled up in exhaustion after the words refused to stop swimming in front of her eyes. "Mm?"

"I'm finding hints of OPS fingers in all kinds of pies. Building the better esper, but we knew that, and it looks like they might be involved in biowarfare research to boot."

She groaned.

"Oh... Niko... Have you ever heard the word 'Skoll' or 'Skollii' before?"

She frowned, sitting up. "It sounds vaguely familiar. Why?"

"I keep running into it, but I can't seem to pin down what it is. These documents are all just vague enough to be really annoying at times. I try looking it up and I get hits on everything from people's names to Norse mythology."

"Norse—of course." Niko unclipped her handheld and entered the term. "Idiot," she muttered to herself, and sent a beam to Doc.

Doc raised his eyebrows and gave his teammate a meaningful look, focusing on the dark circles under her eyes. "You're only looking dead tired, girl," he chided her. "I'm kind of surprised you still remembered how to find my apartment. What is it?" He accepted her beam and scanned the screen of his terminal.

"Skoll is a figure from Norse myth," Niko explained, "a wolf who chases the sun. The myth says that at Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods—the end of the world, basically—Skoll will finally catch up with the sun and swallow it."

Doc studied the text on the miniscreen. "What's with the i's stuck on the end?"

"It's a Latin suffix that denotes people. I guess you could translate the whole word as 'People of Skoll.'"

"Why stick a Latin ending on a name out of Norse myth?"

Niko's mouth quirked. "Arrogance?"

"That's our boy Latham to a T." Doc snickered, then frowned. "But what's Norse mythology about the end of the world got to do with OPS?"

Niko stared down at the handheld. At her expression, a jittery tightness started up in the pit of Doc's stomach.

"I don't know," she answered slowly, "but I feel strongly that it's not good for us."

Elsewhere

8/4/2098, 0933 local time

"Good morning, Gaea. You're doing very well, you know."

"Yes, sir."

"Would you like to help me? It's a little thing, I promise."

"...Yes, sir."

He leaned forward and pressed a button on the console before him. The monitor on the wall came to life to reveal a man sitting at a desk. He was middle-aged, with fading blond hair and a ruddy face.

"Gaea, my dear, I'm very concerned about Mr. Dimar here. When he came to work with us he signed a contract of nondisclosure. Standard procedure for people in our line of work. I signed one myself."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, we think he's broken his contract. In fact, we think he's selling information, classified information, to agents of the Queen of the Crown. She's the greatest threat Earth faces, you know. She'd depopulate the planet, enslave the entire race, to feed her need for psychocrystals."

"Yes, sir."

"I need your help, Gaea. I'm sure you can see that if our suspicions are correct, Mr. Dimar poses a grave threat to every man, woman, and child on our planet. You can see that, can't you, my dear?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's such a little thing, Gaea. I just need you to scan him in a moment. Mr. Burke will be entering his office—ah, good, there he is." On the monitor a brown-haired main knocked on the open door, entered, and struck up a conversation with the man at the desk. "Mr. Burke will direct the conversation to make your job easier, child. Please begin."

They watched in silence as the two men chatted.

"He's not selling information to the Queen, sir. He's selling it to BETA."

"Very good, Gaea. It's always good to know one's people, isn't it? Well, you see, we'll simply have to terminate his employment and initiate a lawsuit instead of having him arrested. This is much easier for all of us. Thank you, my dear, for saving everyone a great deal of trouble."

"Yes, sir."

"Ah, Mr. Dimar. Please, sit down."

"Thank you, sir. May I ask what this is about?"

"Ever to the point, our Mr. Dimar. All right. I'm sorry to tell you that we no longer have need of your services, effective immediately. You'll receive our usual generous severance package, of course."

"...I see. I don't suppose I can change your mind, sir? I've enjoyed working here, you know. It's not every day a man gets the chance to work under the best mind in his field."

"Thank you, Mr. Dimar. No, I'm afraid my decision is final. I've already had my secretary prepare all the necessary paperwork. Please leave your badge and your keycard on the table—thank you. If you'll just sign here?" With a flick of his fingers he indicated the pen that lay on the desk before Dimar.

Dimar's face reddened further with suppressed anger. "I don't mind saying I'm very disappointed, Dr. Latham. I don't think I deserve this. But it's your decision, I guess. You're the head of the project, not me." He took up the pen and signed his name.

"Very good, Mr. Dimar. Thank you. Would you be so good as to take the second copy of that? Excellent. Mr. Burke here will escort you out."

Dimar rose.

"Ah, one more thing..." The hum of the motorized chair seemed very loud in the bare meeting room. Latham rounded the end of the conference table as Dimar turned back toward him.

"Yes, sir?"

"I'm really very disappointed in you, Mr. Dimar. You signed the NDA just the same as the rest of us."

Dimar's ruddy skin paled slightly. A sweat broke out on his forehead. "I... don't know what you mean, sir." He swayed where he stood but caught himself.

"Ah, taking effect already, is it?" Latham smiled thinly as Dimar's eyes rolled up in his head and he fell heavily to the floor. He watched dispassionately as Dimar's limbs trembled. "Be sure my secretary sends a letter of condolence to his wife. Obviously the news of his dismissal was too much for him. It appears that he's had a stroke." He touched a button on the arm of his wheelchair and spoke. "Dr. Ngumi, you may come to take your readings now. The experiment is concluded."

The brown-haired man standing by the door took a step forward, but Latham shook his head.

"No, Mr. Burke, give the nanites time to break down first. I can't have my loyal troops dropping dead on me, can I?"

At Latham's feet Dimar twitched a few more times and was still.

"Careful with that. It's going back to the wife."

The medical tech snorted. "Yeah, whatever." She grabbed the sheet and began to pull it over the dead man's face.

Her hand never completed the motion.

Burke jumped as Gaea seemingly appeared from nowhere, grabbed the tech's wrist in her hand, and stared down at the corpse's face. "Now just wait a—" he began.

"Hey, let go of me," the tech said in annoyance. Gaea's head snapped around, and she gazed unblinkingly into the other woman's face.

The tech's eyes rolled back and she dropped bonelessly. Her head made a solid thud as it hit the floor.

Burke swore and went for his gun. Gaea's head jerked around again. Her eyes pinned him where he stood.

"Why is he dead?" she demanded, her voice hoarse and cracked.

He made no answer aloud, only twitched in her mind's grasp, but slowly she bowed her head.

"I should have known," she whispered. Her face crumpled.

Burke slammed against the wall and slid limply to the floor. His gun skittered away.

"I'm sorry," Gaea whispered to the dead man, and gently she covered his face. Legs unsteady, she set off down the corridor.

From her hiding place in a doorway, the little brown-haired girl smiled.

The building shook faintly. Latham looked up from his desk, annoyance spreading across his face. His eyes flicked to a monitor on the wall, and his lips thinned in irritation. He pressed a button on his commlink. His secretary's face appeared on the screen.

"Selma, what is that?" he snapped. "We're not having an earthquake, so what is causing these tremors?"

"Sir, I don't know, sir," she answered, looking nervously about her as another tremor, stronger this time, shook the ground beneath them.

"Well, find out, please. At once." He closed the connection.

Moments later his commlink lit up with a priority message.

"Yes?" he barked.

"Sir!" A frantic voice emerged from the speaker. "It's Gaea, sir! She's gone berserk! Seven of us are down already!"

"Use gas, fool. But take her down—and without injuring her!"

"Sir—"

"She is worth more than you are! Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir!"

Latham stared through the one-way glass at the unconscious form on the table. His head turned to the other man in the room.

"She saw Dimar's body, did she? Careless of Burke."

The other man shrugged. "Burke has a problem with that," he answered coolly. "He'll learn. Maybe the skull fracture will help remind him."

"I have half a mind to terminate him for this. He's undone days of work. How's Menda?"

"Fine. She'll have a nasty headache from her head hitting the floor, but no permanent damage."

"Good," Latham said, his gaze never leaving Gaea.

"Sir?" A child's high voice sounded from just behind Latham.

He spun his chair to face the diminutive girl who stood there, dark eyes grave and calm.

"Minako," he said coolly. "You shouldn't be here."

"I had to tell you, sir," she said softly. "It wasn't Mr. Burke's fault, sir. She hid from him. We were trying to get to her when she found them, Mr. Burke and Dr. Menda, in the hallway."

Latham studied his third oldest child and then smiled thinly.

"Good girl, Minako," he told her. "You've probably saved Mr. Burke's life, you know."

"He is always kind to us," she answered, and turned to go.

Latham watched her leave, eyes calculating. He had almost forgotten the other man's presence when a chuckle recalled it to him.

"Now that was interesting. —What are you going to do about her, sir?" Hunter asked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in Gaea's direction. "You know the probabilities. The Rangers' hacker is almost certainly getting close to identifying our location; with this setback it's going to take weeks of training to get her back to where she was this morning. And Walsh is starting to turn eyes on us we'd rather not have looking our way. You know what our best option is, sir, much as I hate to say it."

Latham was silent for a long time as he gazed at Gaea's face through the glass.

"She was the first, you know," he said, regret clear in his voice. "Damn Mira!"

"Sir?"

"Go ahead, Mr. Hunter. Just be sure you have the remains disposed of. There are to be no traces, none whatsoever. The fusion reactor should take care of it."

"Yes, sir."

Hunter kept his eyes on Gaea's still form as two technicians in biohazard suits hooked the gas canisters to the ventilation system of the little room where she lay.

"Sir?" One of them approached him. "We're ready."

"Fine, you can start whenever you like. You've got the injection handy?"

"Yes, Mr. Hunter. We'll administer it once the Compound 29 clears, just to be sure."

"Good. Go ahead." The technician who'd spoken signaled, and his teammate twisted the nozzles to open them. No sound came through the wall, but Hunter imagined he could hear the hissing of the nerve gas as it filtered slowly into the room. Moments passed as he and the two technicians stood watching.

Gaea's eyes snapped open.

Hunter's hand was already heading for his pocket as Gaea rolled off the exam table and onto her feet. She steadied herself with one hand on the edge of the table and stared at the glass. His heart seemed to jump in his chest, and he thought uneasily, It feels as if she's staring right at me... through one-way glass.

His hand emerged from his pocket. The glass began to bulge toward him.

Hunter felt as though time had slowed; he let his knees bend to drop him below the level of the table before him. As his knees hit the floor the glass shattered and he engaged his experimental personal force field with the control unit he held.

He knelt there, sheltered by the table and by his force field from the effects of the blast, as the technicians fell to the floor, their hazard suits shredded, bleeding from hundreds of cuts. And then the Compound 29 reached them, and he crouched unmoving and watched them die.

He had his eyes on Avani, the closer of the two, when Gaea appeared beside him. As he stumbled to his feet, he met her eyes—and she had him.

He carried the vision of her maddened green eyes down with him into darkness.

Gaea - Chapter 13

From Betamountain.org

Gaea

Chapter 13

by Baybelletrist