Echo of Tomorrow: Book Two (The Drake Chronicles) (23 page)

Within moments, a line had formed and they began filing out. Many of the girls stood against the wall, looking terrified, pleading with their parents to let them go as well. More than one received a quick backhanded cuff from their father. Scott was about to step forward and say something when Hardwick walked out into the center of the yard.

“
Listen up all of you!
” His parade ground voice echoed off the walls in a well-remembered bellow.

He got all their attention in the Naval Academy when he did that, and it was no different here. “
All, and I mean
all
the children go, girls as well as boys, so get that through your thick heads and start moving!
” He got his point across. Parents began rounding up the girls, or beckoning them over to join the line.

“Scott!” Kat said, walking up with the page beside her, holding her hand. “This young person wishes to go with us,” she explained.

“What about his parents?”

“I just got through explaining the situation to them on the videophone, and they agreed.”

“Well, I don’t see why not, are there any others?”

“Yes, fifteen in all.”

Scott knew Kat was a soft touch when it came to kids. “If you can get clearance from the parents, load them aboard.”

“See, I told you that he would agree,” Kat whispered loudly to the boy as they walked away.

“But you didn’t tell him!” the page said.

“Didn’t have to, he doesn’t care one way or the other.” Scott looked at the retreating pair, wondering what that was about. He didn’t get a chance to wonder long. Janet came running up.

“First shuttle away, loading number two.”

“Two!” he said, puzzled. “How many kids are there for Christ sake?”

“Two hundred and thirty.”

“Yea gods, I didn’t think there would be that many. Do we have enough shuttles standing by?”

“Yes, sir!” Janet answered. “We didn’t know how many there would be, so we had extra shuttles on standby. We can fill three shuttles, and any stragglers can be loaded onto ours.”

“All right, get to it. Be ready to lift off the moment I’ve finished with the council.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

An hour later the place was empty, the last footsteps echoing around the strangely silent courtyard, and Scott was glad to leave. The place depressed him, and the faint red veil of anger clouded his thoughts. The security team had rounded up the council members and herded them back up to the conference room for his final speech. Walking through the doorway, he was met with a barrage of questions, but he ignored them and stood looking at the collection of multicolored faces around him. They were from all over the world: black, brown, yellow, red, white, and every shade of color between. They supposedly represented the people of this world and were appointed rather than elected to the position of trust. One or more of them had betrayed that trust, yet he had little sympathy for those not involved in the conspiracy. Instead of letting their children take the same chance as the rest of the populous, as the president had done, they’d kept them hidden in a secret compound. He couldn’t blame them in a way; we all want to keep our offspring safe from harm. Yet it galled him that they hadn’t given their wholehearted support to the one organization that could protect all of the people, not just a few.

“Gentlemen, I’d just like to say a few words before I leave,” he said softly in the growing silence. Gradually the talk faded so they could all hear. Scott didn’t raise his voice, or he would have let his anger get the better of him.

“Now that your children are safe, I can tell you the rest of the information we have discovered.” Now the outrage would really start.

“It has come to our attention that one or more of you are in contact with the aliens.” Voices of outrage exploded around him, charges and countercharges flew back and forth as they yelled at him and each other. Scott stood unmoved, waiting for the clamor to die down. At last it did, and he continued.

“Over the past few months, we have gathered evidence of a conspiracy to not only kill me, but also give the aliens sufficient information to destroy our fleet.” Shock and outrage crossed many faces; some just stood in stunned disbelief.

“They have also given the aliens the location of all critical installations and much more.” He stopped, letting that sink in. “That flow of information will stop as of now, as will any further attempts on my life, or the lives of my people.” A slight smile crossed his face, but anyone thinking it was of pleasure was mistaken.

“To ensure this, your children are now hostage, and will remain hostage until we locate and identify which of you is responsible for these acts.” Protests exploded across the room.

“Your children will be cared for in every way possible, but, as of now, each of them will be placed on different ships of the fleet, and in critical locations throughout our facilities.” This time they really started screaming, surging forward toward him.

The ripping-cloth sound of a needle rifle discharging into the ceiling stopped them, and one look at the armed security people lined up again the wall held them in place.

“I would suggest you find out who the traitors are and turn them over to us, with the evidence, and the names or identities of the spies they planted. That is, if you ever wish to see your children alive again.” They were already looking at one another, and he could see the wheels turning.

“I should warn you, we do have methods of learning the truth, so please don’t think we will be fooled by manufactured evidence, or mere speculation.” That would have immediately occurred to several of them.

“Remember, where we came from, this sort of thing was an everyday occurrence, and although you are politicians and used to intrigue, you have no idea how forceful we can be at finding the truth.” He waited for the expected outburst.

The storm of insults and threats washed back and forth. “You can’t get away with this, we’ll tell the world what you are, and what you have done,” came from one of them. Another said, “You can’t fight eight billion people! If necessary, we will call jihad against you!”

“We don’t have to fight eight billion, just you,” Scott said, resolute. “If you call jihad, we would have to show them your little secret downstairs, and the fact that one or more of you has been selling
their
children to the aliens.” The councilman who’d threatened to start a holy war looked uncomfortable and stepped back.

“Remember, the health and safety of your children depends on you, and you alone. If we lose another ship, you lose one or more of your children. If the aliens raid a facility, the same thing.” With that he turned and walked out, the team following him. They quickly moved to the roof and the shuttle, finding it almost full, with the addition of fifteen terrified kids, all about fourteen to fifteen years of age.

* * * * * *

Arriving back at Alpha base he immediately dived back into work, reading up on the interrogation of the aliens. It wasn’t easy reading, and much of it he had to read between the lines. The alien race they were fighting, or so one prisoner claimed, was the most powerful one in the universe, and they had been raiding other planets for food for a long time to feed their growing population and their war machine. The only other race they had encountered that came close to them in technology and strength was known as the Chatar-Rey but they couldn’t, or wouldn’t tell the interrogator anything else about them. Scott had the impression that there was another race behind the lizards, who called themselves the rulers of the universe, or Oki, but there were only vague references to them and a lot of fear.

There was no name given for this other race, but a note by Doc Chase said that an acute fear response was produced in other prisoners at any mention of this shadow race, yet he could gain no more information. There were references to some of the other star systems the lizard aliens raided, but little description. An in-depth analysis and translation of the star charts from the alien navigational computer gave a clearer picture of the extent of the plundering, which included most of this arm of the Milky Way. Scott whistled to himself on reading that, trying to imagine the scope of the operation. Just how many aliens were they feeding? A lot, by the scope of the operation. Right now, it was impossible to guess how many. He read until late in the evening, when Kat came in to see him.

“We managed to get all the kids settled, but it was a battle. Some of those boys just wouldn’t listen to reason. One of them even mouthed off to Pam, and boy did he get a surprise.”

“What happened?”

“She hauled him over her knee and whaled the tar out of his backside with a hairbrush. He became very polite after that.”

“Ouch! I can just bet he did,” Scott said, wincing at the thought. “So what’s the story on the page you ended up attached to?”

“Hold on to your hat. It’s not a boy, it’s a girl.”

“Run that by me again?”

“He is a she pretending to be a he,” Kat explained.

“Right … I think?”

“His, excuse me, her parents are more liberal than the rest of society, but they soon learned that you couldn’t win. As a girl, she was condemned to spend the rest of her life as a virtual slave. They thought a job at the World Council headquarters was the perfect place to hide her, except for one thing they didn’t know.”

“I hate to ask, so tell me.”

“The pages are …”

“Used as boy toys,” he finished for her. Kat nodded.

“For the past year he, she had been living with the fear of discovery, and only by luck has she been able to stay out of anyone’s reach.”

“Well she, or he, whichever he wants to be, is safe here.”

“I placed her with Pam, and God help anyone who tries to come close, or try to hurt that kid.”

“Any other surprises?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“We’d better start a training campaign to try to reeducate those kids, or we’re going to be looking at a larger problem later on,” Scott said, thinking aloud.

“I’ve already talked to Doc Chase and the education center about it, and they’re working on it. Can we go to bed now, please?” she asked with an impish grin. Scott smiled, knowing she didn’t have sleep in mind.

* * * * * *

A week went by without any major problems with the new arrivals, but on the following Monday Pete came into Scott’s office with an intense expression on his face, and held up a vid chip.

“I want you to look at this and tell me what you think,” he said, feeding the data chip into the player. The end wall lit up, and Scott saw an amusement park of some kind. Some of the rides he recognized, some he didn’t, but apart from that it looked no different from any other carnival he’d been to.

“So?” he asked in puzzlement.

“Wait,” Pete said, holding his hand up. The camera panned around to show a roller coaster ride that looked like a DNA molecule, with cars screaming around the track at incredible speed. The camera locked onto one particular car as it corkscrewed through a series of turns, then vanished into a tunnel, then emerged and continued down the track. At that point, Pete paused the playback.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Did you see it?”

“Yes, a roller coaster car vanishing into a tunnel, so what?”

“Look again!” Pete said in exasperation, and punched the control to start the sequence again. Scott watched intently, but even so, he almost missed it.

“Run that one more time,” he said, and Pete did, this time in slow motion.

“Good god, how did they do that?” he asked, seeing a different car come out of the tunnel from the one going in.