Gabriel: Zero Point (Evan Gabriel Trilogy) (3 page)

The central hub was reconfigured and extended by over a thousand feet in each direction, giving Cielo the ability to dock up to sixteen ships concurrently, from tiny shuttles up to Navy frigates. The planned luxury suites had been stripped and converted to research bays, most of which were accessible to any personnel allowed to dock. However, some bays were off-limits to all but the highest security clearance levels. Including an innocuous, unmarked gray door in Section Six.

Gabriel followed Biermann’s retreating figure as they stepped from the transfer hub into the main corridor, and he gratefully felt the .7G pull his body to the decking. The brief elevator ride had given him a chance to steady his muscles, which still quivered from the heavy G shuttle ride. Now, as he walked along the brightly lit hall, his body relaxed. He checked his neuretics: eighteen-thirty on Cielo’s time system. His stomach growled. The nutrition bar and water bulb during the twelve-minute zero-G flipover on the flight wasn’t cutting it for a full day’s meal.

“Captain,” he said, only to be stopped short by Biermann’s raised hand.

“Dinner can wait,” he said over his shoulder. “Trust me when I say you don’t want a full stomach right now.”

Gabriel was about to question what Biermann meant by that statement when the captain stopped at a gray door with a palmscan pad mounted on the wall beside it. He looked back at Gabriel, then gestured to the pad with a dip of his head.

“They’re expecting you, not me,” he said.
 

Gabriel approached the pad and glanced back at Biermann. “But they don’t have my scan information on…”

“Sure they do,” Biermann interrupted. “You wouldn’t have gotten this far if we didn’t have everything on you we needed.”

Gabriel looked back at the pad. The excitement he felt back on the
Coral Sea
gave way to more apprehension. Being recruited by Special Warfare was one thing. Feeling like his future was already laid out before him by someone else was quite another.

He reached out and pressed his palm against the pad. It was warm to the touch, and lit up green behind his hand. He felt a slight electrical tingle in his arm. After a few seconds, the green light disappeared and the door slid aside, revealing a red-tinged room beyond. With a quick glance at Biermann, Gabriel stepped through the door.

His eyes quickly adjusted to the dim red light, and he saw a dark-shirted woman on the far side of the room. She looked up from the table she stood in front of.
 

“Ah, Lieutenant Gabriel,” she said. “You’re here.”

The lights suddenly switched to bright white and Gabriel blinked several times. The woman walked up to him and extended a hand. Now that the lights were on fully, he saw her shirt was actually a light blue pullover, and was not the typical white lab coat he always assumed scientists and doctors wore. He couldn’t be sure if she was either, or neither.

“Doctor Moira Knowles. A pleasure, Lieutenant.”

Gabriel set his gear bag down and shook her hand. “Ma’am.”
Doctor it was.

She smiled. “Ma’am. How formal. You Navy types are all alike. Call me Moira. Or Doc, whatever you prefer. Just not ma’am. That’s for my grandmother.”

Gabriel pursed his lips. “You’re not Navy?”

Her smile turned into a laugh. “Oh, hell no. I get paid far better as a private researcher. I moonlight here because this project is my baby. And for better or worse, it can’t be worked on anywhere else.”

“Captain Biermann said…” Gabriel started to say as he looked over his shoulder, but stopped short when he saw Biermann had not entered the room. The door was already closed.

Knowles released his hand. “Captain Biermann will meet us when the procedures are complete, Evan.”

Gabriel turned back around to face Knowles. “Procedures?” His apprehension returned, and he missed the fact she used his first name.

Knowles scrunched up her brow. “Yes. Didn’t Biermann explain them?” She frowned when Gabriel didn’t answer. “Of course he didn’t. Damned spooks are always too busy. Dumps it on me. I get it.”

She turned and walked back to the table where she had been working. Gabriel looked left and right, scanning the lab, as he thought of it. His neuretics showed it was forty-two feet wide, the width of all of the bays along Cielo’s wheel, and just under two hundred feet long with a slight upward curve to the floor in each direction. One end of the lab was taken up by a wallscreen; the opposite end, closest to where Gabriel stood, held a bank of smaller screens, all blank. In the approximate center of the lab was a massive state-of-the-art holotable, also switched off. The only active equipment, it appeared, was on Knowles’s work table: several open flexscreens, a large device that resembled a 3-D medical nanoscope Gabriel had seen years ago in his boot camp clinic, and dozens of electronically sealed specimen containers.

But the most prominent item in the lab, and the one that gave Gabriel the most apprehension, was the large plastic structure he had walked past to join Knowles. It was a rectangular box with rounded corners, around eight feet long and three feet across; the same three feet in height. White in color except for a glass lid, it sat horizontally on four thick steel pedestals, one at each corner, and reminded Gabriel of a coffin.
 

The lid was open, swung vertically on a hinge at one end, and Gabriel glanced inside as he walked past. The inside was also smooth plastic, though unlike the bright white exterior, it was matte black with several small holes on the bottom and dozens of studs along each side.
A claustrophobic spa therapy tub
, a part of his mind said, but the more rational side of his mind overrode that.
Stasis capsule.

Gabriel pulled his gaze from the capsule and walked up next to Knowles. She was peering into the top of the nanoscope, apparently unconcerned with her guest.

He cleared his throat. “Procedures?” he asked again.

She glanced up from the scope. “Sorry,” she said, turning from the table to face Gabriel. “Just making sure my machines are synced and ready to go.”

He watched as Knowles picked up one of the specimen containers and carried it to the capsule. She tapped the container against the surface, the soft click echoing in the quiet room. “This is the heart of the augmentation program. And no, it’s not a coffin.” She smiled. “I can see it in your eyes, and the others that have come through here thought the same thing. No, Lieutenant, this is not your final resting place. On the contrary, this is your zero point.”

Chapter 3

Gabriel stared at the capsule, Knowles’s last two words resonating in his head.
Zero point.
Before he had a chance to ask the doctor what she meant, she continued.
 

“Zero point doesn’t refer to the mythical energy source, or the grade point average of some of the grunts I’ve met. It’s a term referred to by the Pakistani philosopher Aban Gurmani about a decade ago in his book. He used the term to signify a rebirth, but not like being born again. More of a…” Her voice trailed off as she looked up at the ceiling. “A new beginning. A starting point. Nowhere to go but up. When I was involved in the planning stages of the augmentation program a few years ago, I was reading Gurmani’s book, and I thought it was an apt description of what we do.”

She walked back to the table and picked up another container. She turned back to Gabriel, holding them both out in front of her. “These are my machines. These will give you a new beginning, Lieutenant Gabriel.”

Gabriel looked at Knowles, then at the capsule, then back to Knowles. He still wasn’t completely sure what was happening.
Machines. New beginning. Augmentation.
He glanced back at the door, but Biermann wasn’t suddenly standing there with answers. Not that Gabriel trusted him for answer. He had a growing suspicion that Biermann concealed much more than he gave up. But at least Biermann knew what the hell this woman, this program, were all about.

“The rumors that you’ve heard, I’m sure, are probably pretty accurate,” she said, pulling his attention back to her. “Although to be quite honest, I really hate the acronym. Hammers. Sounds like stupid, blunt tools used as overkill. You, like the others before you, are neither stupid nor blunt. Are you?”

Gabriel still stared at the two containers Knowles held. He looked up at her face, where her eyes bored into his. “No ma’am. Er, doc.”

“The augmentation project was created to give the NAF better soldiers,” Knowles continued. “Not blunt tools but surgical, powerful, intelligent instruments. I’m proud to be associated with the project. And you,” she said as she pointed to Gabriel with one of the containers, “should be proud to have been selected. Very few make it through the preliminaries from what I understand.”

“Doc,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m still quite a bit in the dark. Not to be too blunt, no pun intended, but I’d appreciate some specifics.”

Knowles walked up to him and handed him one of the containers. He accepted it, then peered inside the clear plastic…and saw nothing.

“What level mil rets are you running, Lieutenant?”

He looked up from the container. “Level Four. Four point two actually.”

She nodded as if she expected the answer. Gabriel realized her question was just a formality to get him comfortable; he knew she must have his full personnel jacket. And probably more.

“Part of the augmentation process will be a complete software upgrade on your existing neuretics gear. Nothing surgical, strictly wireless updates, but it’s quite a jump. You’ll come out of this with enhanced Level Seven rets, a power very few people in the military possess. Actually very few in the private sector have such a level, just a handful of the richest. But even those privileged ones don’t have the military capabilities you will. Enhanced combat routines, more powerful passive and active scans, automatic defensive subroutines. That’s the mental part. But the more exciting part are these,” she said, indicating the container he held.
 

He turned the small box over in his hand, still peering inside.

“You won’t see anything, Lieutenant. These are nano-level machines. Far below even standard microscopic view. They are self-replicating nanites which will be placed inside your body and will go to work on the physical parts of you, replacing some of your cells and tissues, augmenting and enhancing your body’s natural structure.”

Gabriel suppressed a shudder as a childhood memory came to him out of a deep recess. He was very young, maybe five or six, walking on a beach in Jamaica with his parents and older brother. He saw a uniquely shaped piece of driftwood at the edge of the tree line, and ran over to pick it up. It was heavier than he expected, so he pulled harder. He was surprised to find that it wasn’t driftwood, but a rotting stump of a palm tree, and underneath was a huge colony of fire ants. Within seconds the ants had swarmed over his body, nipping and biting at his skin. He spent the rest of the day crying, wrapped in cold, wet towels as his brother played in the ocean.
 

What Knowles described to him sounded an awful lot like fire ants.

“Lieutenant, I assure you this procedure is completely safe.” She must have noticed the look on his face, so he cleared his throat and handed the container back to her. “It’s based on long established muscle regeneration therapies the medical community has employed for almost a century,” she said as she accepted the container.

“To what end, ma’am?” he asked, glancing back at the capsule.

Knowles returned to the table and set the two containers down. She turned back to face him and leaned against the edge of the table, crossing her arms. “Augmentation. Making your body stronger than it can be on its own, faster, quicker to respond. These nano machines will replicate and spread, and use your body’s natural proteins to create muscle fiber overlays that are six times stronger than your natural fibers, yet be even more flexible. They will create links to your neurological system, reducing signal time and degradation. They will interface with your neuretics systems in ways far deeper than what you have now. Your body will become an instrument for your mind to wield.”

Gabriel took a step towards the capsule and ran his hand along the open edge. “So this is part of Captain Biermann’s Special Warfare program.”

“Yes.”

He looked at the studs along the inside of the capsule. “This is done without surgery?”

“If you mean peeling back your skin with knives, there is none of that,” Knowles replied. “The neuretics upgrade is done via wireless interface, and the nanites are introduced to your system by multiple auto-injectors. Those nodules you’re looking at. The only surgical procedure is the medpack, but that’s after this process is complete and integrated.”

He turned back to face her. “Medpack?”

“A small device is implanted near the base of your spine above your gluteus maximus muscle, on the right side. This device contains refillable pharmaceutical microsyringes, controlled by your autonomic neuretic systems. Somnatin as a sedative, adreno when you need a burst of energy, and so on.” She waved her hand. “We can get to that later. We can only implant that device when the augmentation is fully completed. So with all that being said, it’s time for you to get in the tank.”

“Hold on,” he said. His head was swimming. Less than twelve hours ago, he was aboard the
Coral Sea
, having just finished dinner in the mess with his squad, and was preparing for a scout mission into the Belt to root out a suspected pirate hole. Now he was here, about to be invaded by machines he couldn’t even see, for a man he barely knew, to support a program he didn’t fully understand.
 

“Lieutenant Gabriel,” she said, taking a step towards him. “I talked to Captain Biermann at length about you. I’ve read your file. Twice. You’ve expressed a strong desire to join the Special Warfare unit. Your test marks are off the charts. Your leadership skills, whether you believe this or not after the Canary Islands incident, are top notch. Your life is the Navy, and I don’t think I overemphasize that.”

He looked back at Knowles and her unblinking gaze. She was right, on every account, and he knew it. Everything he’d done from the moment he enlisted, through Basic, through OCS, through the Canary Islands, and into his current mission aboard the
Coral Sea
, led to this moment. Deep down, he knew she was right. He was having a hard time admitting that the Navy was truly all he had.