Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller Page 7

  It neared the damaged craft and Jaxx readjusted the object’s direction, aiming it toward the slit. Sweat dripped out of his pores, dripping down his cheeks. Jaxx had no time to watch the impact. His backward-facing eye alerted him to the fact that he was being targeted by the oncoming starfighter. For the first time in his life, he was wise to the fact that death for him was not an option. He needed to survive. He needed to come out of this a winner.

  The enemy starfighter came out of its loop. Jaxx spun his starfighter around. He’d executed an impossible maneuver. He had willed himself to twist on a dime, and his starfighter had complied.

  Weapon’s lock beeped on the starfighter heading right for him. Jaxx aimed and shot everything he had.

  “What the...” Jaxx bolted up from the bed, blinking rapidly. He touched his forehead. His fingers wet with perspiration, his heart about thumped out of his chest.

  “You came out of it, Kaden,” said Donny.

  Jaxx took a few breaths. “I know the woman who helped me.”

  Donny’s lips curled downward. “What do you mean?”

  Slade leaned against the wall, one foot resting on the other. Jaxx’s focus expanded, much like it did when in the starfighter. It felt good. It felt powerful. It allowed him to draw the energy of the room to him. He sensed an impulsive thought from Slade. He needs pilots.

  “What is it, Jaxx?” asked Slade.

  “You need her. You’ve been looking for someone like her.”

  Slade stepped forward. “How do you know what I need?”

  “It came to me. You are searching for pilots.”

  Slade bit his lips, pressing them together in a straight line. He gathered himself and stood like the military man he was. “What can you tell me about this woman I’ve allegedly been looking for? Is she in SSP? Is she still enlisted? If so, what’s her name? If not, where is she now?”

  Jaxx didn’t know if it was a good idea to talk about her. Would Slade hunt her down, bring her here, make her do things against her will? Did he really know what Slade was up to? Shouldn’t he wait until his nephew came through with a report, so he’d know what he was up against? A new thought bubbled to the surface; a tactical thought; a political thought; not the kind of thought Jaxx was at all used to. Not naming her meant the power remained firmly in his court. He lied with a smile on his lips. “She perished.”

  Slade deflated, his shoulders drooping. “I thought you were going to put on a good show for us, Jaxx. Good guess with what I was needing. You almost had me.”

  “So,” said Donny. “Can you hear thoughts now?”

  Jaxx’s power waned. He wasn’t the size of the room any more. He couldn’t feel Slade’s thoughts. He was Jaxx, archaeologist, Atlantean expert, widely regarded as a flake and a loser. He shrugged.

  “No, he cannot,” Slade chimed in.

  Donny nodded, emphatically. “Slade, you may find you’re mistaken. Many times after a hypnotherapy session, a patient can come away with extrasensory gifts.” He turned back to Jaxx. “What is it that you’re feeling, Kaden?”

  Jaxx looked at the pen in Donny’s ear. The rage he felt for all his colleagues, peers, and skeptics who shunned his life’s work boiled in his veins. The name-calling, the labels they put him in and thrust in his face earthquaked to the surface. He shifted on the cot, allowing the emotion to travel, in a single bolt, from his blood to his heart. He asked the pen if he could partner with it. The pen agreed, a shifting taking place in his body, a jerk in his hands, a flinch in from his knees.

  Fly from his ear, thought Jaxx. It wasn’t a request, it was an order.

  The pen ejected from Donny’s ear and zipped across the cell, slamming into the wall, demolishing the plaster, leaving only the tip poking into the room. Donny lifted his hand to his ear and turned to see where the pen landed.

  Jaxx grinned.

  Donny’s mouth went wide; his eyes like saucers. If he wasn’t careful, his tongue would fall out of his mouth and he’d drool down his shirt. “Telekinesis,” he whispered.

  Slade snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  Donny whipped around and faced Slade, unusually agitated and direct. “How do you explain the pen flying across the room?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. But if you think it moved because Jaxx made it move with his mind, then we may be needing a new doctor, Doctor.” Slade lowered his eyes, making sure Donny understood the threat.

  Donny huffed. The guy probably had kids in college or a condo in Florida or some bills snapping at his heels, forcing him to keep his trap well and truly shut. Nothing of which Jaxx had. And the world didn’t reward blurty-mouth truth tellers. Instead, the world punished them. It rewarded yes-men and line-toers and mealy-mouthed worms who didn’t say what they should, when they should. Donny knew damned well Jaxx had made the pen embed itself in the wall. He was a coward not to admit it.

  “Well, then nothing more from me today,” Donny mumbled. “If you two will excuse me.” He walked out of the room and disappeared around the corner.

  “Get up, Jaxx. We have work to do.”

  Jaxx moved to his feet. “What’s happening to me, Slade? Are you planting these memories in my head? What does the pen have to do with anything?”

  “I’m not your damn psychologist, Jaxx.”

  “What’s the Secret Space Program?”

  “I suggest you keep your mouth shut about that. Not another word. Now, follow me.”

  Jaxx screwed his intention all the way to the core and willed the door to fly off its hinges and slam Slade into the concrete floor. But, nothing. The moment passed. He was Jaxx again and had to do things the old-fashioned way. He plodded after his newest Master, determined to find out what he needed to find out in order to bend the world to his will.

  8

  May 25th

  Underfoot Black, Grenada

  Jaxx was in the RIOUT room, his thoughts everywhere but there. He stood behind Jon Shaughnessy, watching the man do his best to translate glyph after glyph. If Donny was correct about hypnotherapy making one more intuitive, well, it wore off quickly. Jaxx could barely read his own mind right now.

  Jaxx yawned. He should help Shaughnessy out, seeing he was the expert and Shaughnessy wasn’t. Shaughnessy didn’t ask for assistance though and Jaxx didn’t know if he should butt in or not. Maybe he wanted to figure it out himself. To learn as much as he could on his own.

  Jaxx glanced around the room. Everyone worked diligently, all eyes on their computers.

  An image materialized on the desk in the middle of the room. It caught Jaxx’s attention. Nobody noticed. He walked to it and watched the holographic image slowly spin. “Is this on Callisto?” he whispered to himself.

  Before him stood rows and rows of jet-like craft much wider than any jet he’d witnessed before. They appeared to be on rock-like ground or upon hard soil. The image was black and white, so he couldn’t tell.

  He hit the controls on the console and pivoted the image through ninety degrees. A domed structure set far off in the background, an obelisk stood even farther in the distance behind the dome.

  He wanted to gape at the scene for hours, amazed that such elaborate creations so near, but so far away. Who could have built these? The symbol said Atlantis, and he trusted his translation, but if Atlanteans colonized Callisto, then how exactly had they made the atmosphere breathable?

  Jaxx had his theories, but they were just that, theories. He had never been able to activate a pyramid to see if his hypothesis was correct; that pyramids were indeed terraforming devices.

  He paced to Shaughnessy, touching his back. Jaxx thumbed over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

  Shaughnessy swiveled in his chair. “That’s just an image taken several weeks ago from TECS IV.”

  “TECS IV?”

  Shaughnessy went back to studying his screen. “Just a government satellite. That’s what’s been taking the pictures for us and sending them back here.”

  “Do—”

  “Wait
a minute,” Shaughnessy spun around in his seat. “New images pop up on that holoscreen, not old ones.”

  Shaughnessy stood and made his way to the hologram. He rested his elbows on the table, dissecting every facet of the image. “Something in the terrain must have changed for TECS IV to send this picture to us. If everything on the ground had remained the same, the on-board computer would have no reason to record new images. Do you see anything?”

  Jaxx yawned. Hypnotherapy took it out of him. “I’ve never seen this image before in my life.”

  “When was this taken?” Shaughnessy pressed buttons on the desk. May 23rd displayed above the picture. “Yeah, this is new. It takes a couple days for TECS IV’s data to reach us.” He rested his chin on his palm, pouring over the photo like a mechanic over an engine. “This would be easier if...” Shaughnessy pressed a button on the desk and Jaxx jumped back as a keyboard extended. Shaughnessy nudged Jaxx out of the way and typed on the keyboard.

  Another image sprang; two images of the same terrain side by side. One dated a few days ago and the other dated weeks back.

  “What are the changes here?” said Shaughnessy, more to himself than to Jaxx.

  Jaxx shrugged, nonchalantly. He wasn’t running on all cylinders. He felt as if he was in two worlds simultaneously. He yawned again, pointing to the image that dated back a few weeks, then snapped to attention. “I think that image has one more starfighter than the new one. There’s a starfighter missing from the newest shot.”

  Shaughnessy smiled. “Yeah, right.” He started counting, then grabbed the edge of the desk to steady himself. “Uh…well…” He ran over to his computer, checking the images there, just in case the holoscreen was malfunctioning. It wasn’t.

  Shaughnessy picked up his phone. “I’m calling Slade.”

  Jaxx grasped Shaughnessy’s forearm. “Are you thinking someone actually flew off with a starfighter?”

  Shaughnessy nodded, then put his finger up. “Slade, Shaughnessy here. We have a problem.” Shaughnessy bobbed his head up and down. “A code four-one-three, and I think it’s the real deal. Someone must have detected the structures on Callisto. And they are already there now. One of the starfighters is missing...yes, gone.”

  Jaxx could hear Slade swearing up a blue streak on the other end of the phone. Slade rang off and Shaughnessy pocketed his phone.

  “Who could already be on Callisto?”

  Shaughnessy thought for a moment, most likely doing his best to figure out a way to answer. “We don’t know, but whoever it is must have discovered the structures before us. And they must be on Callisto right now.”

  “If someone was there, wouldn’t that send a barrage of pictures from TECS IV to this facility?” Jaxx asked.

  Shaughnessy touched the base of his neck. “Why would it do that?”

  Jaxx felt like putting Shaughnessy and the rest of the scientists in a head lock and knocking on their heads. They couldn’t be that dense, but why weren’t they thinking the obvious? “You mentioned that a change would set off pictures from TECS IV.”

  “Yes, and it has.”

  “Well, whoever it is that is already there, must have gotten there via a ship. That ship would have set off TECS IV to take pictures of the ship’s movement, where it landed, and so on and so forth.” He bit his cheek. “Am I thinking too much into this? Would it not detect that type of change?”

  “It’s designed to detect changes and movement and snap a picture of the change and/or movement. I should know. I helped design and build the satellite. But, if a person was walking or running on that moon, that would be too small to detect.”

  “God, do I need to spell it out?”

  Fortunately, he didn’t. Another scientist was on the same wavelength. “Shaughnessy, how many images were sent today. Just this one?”

  Shaughnessy tapped on his keyboard, looking it up. He squinted. “This is unreal. How did I not see this? It sent twenty-two pictures.”

  Slade slammed through the doors and marched to the hologram. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  Shaughnessy complied. They huddled around the holoscreen, watching images of the starfighter lifting into the air. Each successive picture showed it rising higher and higher off the ground. Shaughnessy tapped on his screen, then went to the hologram, pushing scientists out of the way, waiving his arm over the new image he just transferred from his computer to the holoscreen. “Look at the time. It hovered for eleven minutes. It then left so fast that TECS IV was unable to take another picture.”

  Slade loomed over the image. “That’s not our propulsion technology.”

  “It’s the technology Shaughnessy and I deciphered yesterday,” added Jaxx. “The Atlantean propulsion system.” He stepped forward, shaking his hands in a futile effort to relax. What he was about to say was not going to be popular. “If this is what we think it is, then we’re not dealing with any ships coming from Earth, or ships coming from any other system for that matter. If a ship entered Callisto’s atmosphere and landed there, the satellite would have taken pictures of that ship. Instead, all we have are pictures of a starfighter taking off from Callisto’s surface. Since TECS IV can’t pick up small movement, like people walking from place to place, then I think I know what’s going on.” He paused, surprised to see everyone actually paying attention to him. “I think we’re dealing with people or Beings still living on Callisto.”

  Slade looked down for a second. “Very perceptive, Mr. Jaxx.”

  “Did you know about this?” Jaxx asked.

  “It was always a possibility.”

  “Then we can’t go there.”

  Slade crossed his arms and widened his stance. “Why is that?”

  “It’s no longer an archaeological site. It’s someone’s home.”

  “We don’t know who flew that starfighter off that moon,” Slade replied. “Let’s not speculate. We need to find out for a fact who it was.”

  “And when you do, how do we approach them?” Shaughnessy inquired.

  Slade eyes were cold and hard. “Peacefully.”

  9

  May 26th

  Underfoot Black, Grenada

  Again, Jaxx couldn’t sleep. He tossed in his bed only to throw the sheets off and head to the bathroom. He turned on the light, then splashed water on his face.

  This project had been gifted to him by the archaeological gods, but Slade was anything but a gift. More of a demon. Intuition or not, Jaxx could tell Slade held back more information than he gave. Why? Why not tell your Atlantean expert everything you knew about Atlantean artifacts on a far-off moon? Did they think he was a security risk? A liability? Jaxx sagged. Possible, especially after the stunt he pulled with the glossies. Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with him. Maybe holding information close was par for the course with government heads and jerk-ish lower-level government employees.

  He looked in the mirror and froze. Someone stared back. His face, his eyes, but not his outfit. He wore a military uniform, more like a jumpsuit, with a star insignia on the pocket, the letters SSP just below.

  He splashed his face a second time. It was past midnight, Doctor Donny was nowhere on site, and he did not need some auto-suggestion nonsense playing out in the mirror. Those assholes were not going to control him. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed the image of himself away. When he had regulated his breathing and was confident he was fully awake, he opened his eyes and looked back into the mirror.

  “Oh, shit.” He started, then grabbed the side of the sink to steady himself.

  A beautiful woman, light-brown skin, black curly hair in braids draping over both of her shoulders, glared.

  Her mouth moved, “Help me.”

  Jaxx jerked back again, this time more violently. “Rivkah Ravenwood.”

  It was her. The woman who’d been part of his hypnotherapy session. Perhaps the mirror was a screen. Perhaps Slade or Donny projected images onto the back of his mirror, just to mess with him. Then again, how would they know the “she�
� he’d spoken of was Rivkah?

  Her face faded. Jaxx stepped back and tripped over the lip of the bathtub and crashed into it, taking the shower curtain and the rod with him. Wading through the curtain, he pushed up and out of the bathtub to look into the mirror.

  He saw himself in his boxers, disheveled hair, and shadows under his eyes. It was him, now. His mind back to normal, or as normal as possible in a time like this.

  “I gotta find a way to get those assholes out of my head.”

  Jaxx turned the bathroom light off and went to bed. He covered himself in the sheets and closed his eyes.

  “Help me.” Rivkah’s voice rang in his ears.

  He turned, covering his ears.

  “Help me.”

  He sat up. “Leave me alone.”

  He heard her voice’s echo, like a creeping mist, blanketing his brain. He had to walk this off. It didn’t matter if Captain Richard Bloody Fox stood out there or not. In fact, he probably was, especially if Slade said Richard had his eyes on him at all times.

  He put his clothes on and sauntered out into the hall.

  “What the hell are you doing, Jaxx? Get your ass back in that room.” Fox butted against the wall across from Jaxx’s door.

  “I can’t sleep. Care to walk with me?”

  He knew the answer before Fox spoke.

  Fox gave a sly grin. “You walk. I’ll follow.”

  “You don’t want to be extra close? Hold hands, perhaps?”

  “Screw off.” He shoved off the wall and prodded Jaxx to start walking.

  Jaxx rolled his eyes and walked down the hall, down other hallways, up stairs, down stairs, waving at guards. This was all fine and dandy, but he wasn’t getting lethargic and Fox continued to follow him occasionally speaking gibberish codes in his communication’s device.