Citadel: First Colony (33 page)

He saw that the light had now bloomed into a flame, and he knew that his message was being received. He knew that this boy would be the spark and that he would set the rest of the Blue Collars ablaze as well. Taggart knew that it only took one, and that youth was often the catalyst for change in any group.

“Go back to your good friends. Tell them that I respect and admire them,” Taggart said with genuine feeling. Just because he was working from a plan didn’t mean he was devoid of emotion for these people. After all, he really did work with them and among them. He had risen to power under his own initiative, just as he’d described. He was not lying. He was merely controlling which truths the boy heard. This young Blue Collar need never hear that Taggart left his tank scrubbing job each day and returned to his private estate. He need never know that Taggart’s leisure time was filled with high society banquets, the grandest adventures money could buy, and expensive wines and gourmet foods. Life away from the drudgery was much different for Taggart than what the Blue Collars had to endure. But those were details best left unsaid. It only mattered that Taggart was, in at least some small way, one of them. He had worked hard, just as they did. And he understood their plight.

It only mattered that Taggart was their leader.

Thomas was having a very hard time with it.

Alan, the quiet but friendly young man who had been part of the group that had rescued Thomas and Lissa after the crash, was somehow responsible for
all
of this? Alan Angelou ... the smart, quirky kid who seemed to be just as clueless about the world around them as Thomas was. If it weren’t for the boy’s amazing engineering abilities, Thomas would have thought Alan was as out of place in this time as Thomas himself. He’d been a Blue Collar all his life though. He had been born and raised among these people, in this culture. So why had he betrayed them?

Thomas was once again going over the footage from the sabotage when he paused. The frame onscreen showed a figure reaching into one of the panels that housed relays and ports for accessing the ship’s navigational systems. Thomas was new here, but he knew enough about the lightrail system to realize how dangerous this move was. Any miscalculation might have thrown the ship out of light speed and into the surface of a planet or the heart of a star. And yet Alan had risked it. Why?

He thought back on their conversations. Alan had said that his parents had died when a colony ship was destroyed. Thomas had made a brief study of the history of the colonies since First Colony had blown up on launch. He had obsessed, for a bit, over every major problem with a colony launch. In all of the confusion and chaos of the past week or so, it had never occurred to him to question Alan’s story closely.

In his research, he had certainly uncovered several colony ships that had been destroyed. A few had burned the way First Colony had. Terrible explosions. But those had been in the early days of the colonization effort. In the past fifty years, only a few colony ships had been destroyed, and all of them had been due to problems such as collisions or other more “mundane” causes. The war with the Esool had destroyed many ships, but none were colony vessels, and all of that had ended over fifty years ago.

Thomas had felt the truth of Alan’s story, when the young man had explained how his parents had died. He’d seen the care with which Alan had dressed his burned hands. He’d sensed the reverence in the actions. Alan wasn’t lying about how his parents died.

He was lying about
when
.

Thomas left the terminal he’d been using and went to the tent that was now being referred to as Command Central. Somar and Billy Sans were alone in the tent. Sans was showing something onscreen, the progress of the shelters, which had been given to him as a responsibility by the Captain. Billy was clearly honored by the task and took it very seriously, organizing the workers and allocating the materials as they became available. It was something of a losing battle for now, at least until Mitch and Reilly returned with a load of pod materials and colonists.

“Captain Somar,” Thomas said as he turned to close the flap of the tent behind him. It would be useless as a sound barrier, really, but it felt more secure. “I think there’s more going on here than we realized.”

Somar, for the first time since Thomas had known him, had an expression of rueful surprise. “It is almost certain that there is, Mr. Thomas. If I’ve learned anything in our brief time here, it’s that there is much more below the surface than we can determine with the facts at hand.”

Thomas nodded. “Well, I don’t know what good this information will do, but I think I just uncovered another fact about Alan Angelou. I think he’s from my time.”

Somar had no visible reaction, but Billy Sans quickly looked around to make sure no one was in the tent with them. It was good to see the boy being discrete. It made Thomas feel better about his secret being in the young man’s hands. He was starting to like the kid a lot.

“What do you mean, from your time?” Billy asked. “Aren’t you like a hundred years old or something?”

“Thanks, Billy. I think I’m ready for my walker and hip replacement now.”

Billy shook his head. “Sorry. I mean, you had to have gone into stasis a hundred years ago or something, right?”

“And I think Alan did the same. I don’t know how or why. But I think ...” Thomas stopped in mid-sentence, a sudden connection burning in his brain. All of  a sudden, it seemed so obvious. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? But that wasn’t quite fair, was it? So much had changed. So many things were different. There was so much weirdness in the world now. Aliens and lightrails and throwback technology and a million, million other things that Thomas had been forced to adjust to. Why
wouldn’t
he have missed it?

“You’ve thought of something?” Somar asked.

“I just put it together. I’m an idiot.”

“Far from that,” Somar replied. “You have obviously solved something that has eluded us all until now.”

“Yeah, but I should have seen it before. Maybe. Damn it.”

Billy was practically vibrating as he spoke up. “What? What is it? What do you know?”

Thomas looked from one to the other. “His name. Alan Angelou. He’s been telling me who he is all this time, and I completely missed it.

“When I was an engineer on First Colony, I had a husband and wife team working with me. They were brilliant, wonderful people. My best friends, actually. And they had a son. We were so close, such good friends, that they named him after me. I was honored.”

“Wait ... I thought your real name was John?”

“John Thomas Paris. But the boy’s name was John Thomas
Alan
. Son of Angela and Louis Alan. We all called him Johnny.”

It was Somar who put it together. “Alan Angelou. He chose a name that honored his parents.”

Billy Sans whistled. “Wow. This whole thing ... it’s like one of those mystery vids.”

Somar moved to the end of the table, staring outward into the fluttering tent wall. The greenish tint of his skin was slightly amplified by the diffused light issuing from the undulating white cloth. He had his hands clasped behind him and was obviously deep in thought. “His parents died in the destruction of First Colony?” he finally asked.

“Yeah. It was one of the things that hurt me most. I lost my two best friends that day. Losing my freedom ... losing my name and my past since then ... that’s been hard to deal with. But when I saw them die, that was what really destroyed me. We were ... we were family.” He choked out these last words, struggling to control a flood of emotion that he’d managed to suppress for years. Despite himself, Thomas felt the tightness in his throat, the burning in his eyes. He felt the warmth of tears welling, and fell into a bitter silence.

“You were close to Alan ... to Johnny ... as well?”

Thomas could only nod.

“I believe,” Somar said, “that we have some of Mr. Angelou’s motive. What was his age, at the time of the colony’s destruction?”

Thomas swallowed and breathed, calming himself. He thought for a moment. “He was young. Maybe twelve or thirteen. I don’t remember exactly. For the next couple of years, I was locked in a cell. Until they offered me the stasis deal.”

Somar seemed alert. “You’ve never told me of how you entered into stasis. You received some sort of offer? On the part of your government?”

“Yeah. Earth First was going to try to break me out and kill me as a martyr to their cause. The government couldn’t afford that. It could potentially rally people to Earth First and slow down colonization even further. Earth’s resources were getting stretched pretty thin at that point, and any more delays could have been lethal. And frankly, the government couldn’t afford the embarrassment of Earth First getting one over on them in full view of the public.”

Somar nodded. “It is unfortunate, then, that they did.”

Thomas blinked. “Wait, what?”

Somar turned to face him. “Mr. Thomas, I’m sure you were relieved at your good fortune. Your release from imprisonment. Your new beginning, even at the expense of your old life. But did it not occur to you that despite your government’s attempts to hide you from Earth First, your identity was known by its leader?”

Thomas felt his face flush and go warm. “No,” he admitted. “It hadn’t occurred to me until now. Taggart knew about me all along.”

“Maybe he found out about you at some point,” Billy said.

“No,” Somar responded. “Taggart has made it clear that his great-grandfather had plans for Mr. Thomas. That would imply that the secret has been known for some time. Certainly from the beginning. It implies that Earth First was responsible for placing Mr. Thomas in stasis.”

Thomas was shaking his head. “That can’t be. The agent who put me under ... he said that Earth First had an agent on the inside, but they knew who it was. He said that the order to put me under was from somewhere high in the chain of command. A security clearance so high that he had to ...” Thomas paused. Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

“Had to what?” Billy Sans asked.

“He had to destroy his computer. The computer he had read the message on.”

“So?” Billy blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Thomas replied, “that there was no evidence. There was nothing that could have indicated who sent the message or that the message even existed. If it came from a high enough security level, it would be completely untraceable. And these agents, they were trained not to ask questions. They wouldn’t have bothered following up on this. They would have followed orders and put me under without a second thought.”

“So, what does that mean?” Billy asked.

It was Somar who answered. “It means that there was a vulnerability in the chain of command. There was a gap in which someone could insert their own agenda, without the fear of it being traced.”

“Earth First did it!” Billy exclaimed. “Wow. They could do that? They could fake a security clearance like that?”

“No,” Thomas said.

The two men both looked at him, uncertain.

“No, it wasn’t Earth First. They may have wanted to get their hands on me, and they may have nabbed me from stasis. But they didn’t have the clout or the power to pull this off, not at that time. But Johnny ...
Alan
... did.”

“I ... don’t follow,” Billy said.

“He was smart.
Very
smart. His parents were both child prodigies, and he was following in their footsteps. He was already at MIT when First Colony exploded.”

“MIT?” Billy asked.

“A school. A university for technology. People who got in were very, very smart. Kids who got in were beyond brilliant. And some ended up working on government projects. John Thomas ... Alan ... was about to graduate when I was sent to prison.”

“He infiltrated your government’s computer systems?” Somar asked.

“Yeah. I think he did. And he arranged for me to be put in stasis and cared for by Earth First. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe he thought it would give me a fair chance to start over. Maybe he felt he owed it to his parents. I just don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. I know now that it was him. It had to be. I’m certain.”

“As am I,” Somar replied.

“But why?” Billy asked. “I know you said it doesn’t matter, but I think it does. He put you in stasis, and then he went under himself. Why would he do it? He had to know something, right? He wouldn’t just go under for no good reason. Maybe he was trying to give you another chance, but why did he go with you?”

Thomas had no answer for that. It was true ... there was no reason for Alan to go into stasis. Had he been caught tinkering with the government computers? Was he in trouble? Or did he just want to leave behind the world in which his parents had died?

There would be no way of knowing until they confronted him. And until Mitch arrived with the shuttle, there was no way to reach Alan. Which meant there was no way to learn of or stop whatever he was planning.

“Mitch is picking up supplies from Alan’s camp before coming back here, right?”

“Yes,” Somar said. “We felt it best to keep the schedule as planned. We did not want to alert Alan to what we know. He may be aware already, however. He knew that Mr. Garrison and Ms. Reilly were going to the orbital platform. He would certainly assume that they would discover something.”

“It’s like he doesn’t care,” Thomas said. “And maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s so sure of his plan that he doesn’t think we can stop him.”

“That could very well be.”

“Which means that finding the pods is part of his plan,” Thomas said. “He’s after something in the pods.”

They all stared at each other for a moment. “And there ain’t a damned thing we can do about it,” Billy Sans said.

Thomas suddenly felt every minute of the hundred years he’d been in stasis. He suddenly wished he could take a long nap.

A
lan wasn’t surprised.

In fact, throughout most of his life there were only a handful of things that had ever truly surprised him. The first had been when he was six years old, and he realized that not every child could read physics books with 100 percent comprehension. The next big surprise had come when he discovered that his parents wanted to go to a colony world, leaving him behind to finish college. But the biggest surprise of his life came when First Colony had exploded.