The Legend of Things Past (Beyond Pluto SciFi Futuristic Aventures Book 1) (3 page)

The phone rang in his ear piece. Donovan imagined Nona at
home, sitting at the desk with her computer, getting down her last thought
before picking up.

The skycar rose from the ground and floated out of the
parking garage. The driver, whom Donovan couldn’t see due to a dark partition,
kept to the speed limit of ninety-five miles per hour while they were within
the city. They were on a private military channel. Donovan could tell because
there was no one flying at the same altitude as they were for miles around. The
driver kept at a steady speed without once having to slow down for other
skycars.

Finally, Nona’s voice came through his earpiece, sweet and
friendly but a little raspy.

Donovan explained the situation to her.

“Okay,” she said, keeping the same upbeat tone.’ “Be
careful. Please.” Donovan knew the cadences of her voice too well. She was
trying to sound calm, unworried, but he could hear the stress behind the
façade. She knew that this was big. Who knew what danger he was flying toward?

“I will,” Donovan assured her. “I don’t know how long I’ll
be gone yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as I find out. Within…”

“Within limits.” Nona finished the sentence for him. “Call
me as soon as you can.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“Me, too.”

He was about to hang up when he remembered what else he’d
wanted to say. “Take some more of those immunity boosters!”

The call disconnected. He wasn’t sure she had heard. He
decided not to call her back—she needed to concentrate on her work. The sooner
she finished, the sooner she could focus on getting better. Besides, Nona knew
how to take care of herself. She had grown up in the slums of Bakersfield where
advanced technology was scarce. In that city she had been exposed to all kinds
of things—the least of which were bacteria and viruses. Her family couldn’t
afford Liao Inserts with iMed, so they often got sick. It was a dangerous life,
but it made her immune system strong.

Donovan released a long breath. Nona would be fine. He was
more concerned about the fact that she was beginning to hate his job more and
more. When the kids were still in the house it wasn’t so bad. She was always
busy with them while he was away. Now he frequently left her to an empty,
lonely home.

Nona tried to hide it, but Donovan knew. She wanted him to
work a desk job, but he was too young—only sixty-five. He had at least another
eighty years ahead of him. He couldn’t spend all that time shuffling papers. He
needed air. He needed action. It put Nona in a state of almost constant worry,
but Donovan knew he would be okay. He was the best at what he did. He had yet
to let a target escape. Donovan had hoped that the Santa Monica terrorist case
would last long enough to really patch things up. Then this.

On an impulse, he called his oldest son.

“Hey, Dad. What’s going on?” Jason asked.

“I’m getting pulled from Santa Monica for an assignment. I
don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Your mother’s sick. Can you check up on her
while I’m gone?”

“Yeah, I can do that. You sure everything is okay?”

Jason must have heard something in his voice. “Yeah,
everything is fine.”

“When are you going to get an Insert old man? You know how
it looks, working for Liao and my own father won’t even buy my designs?”

It was the same thing Jason said every time they talked.

“You’ll get over it,” Donovan said. “I already told you I’m
not getting one. I can’t be that accessible.”

“Honestly, Dad. They’re harmless.”

“You talk to your brother lately?”

“Not since last week.”

“Get in contact with him while I’m gone, too,” Donovan said.
“I need you to make sure everyone is taken care of.”

“All right, Dad. Is that all?”

“That’s all. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay, ‘bye.”

Donovan hung up the phone and breathed a sigh of relief. He
couldn’t leave so suddenly without knowing that someone would take care of Nona
if she needed it. She would be too prideful to call one of the boys for help.

Once the skycar got beyond the city limits, the driver
slowly increased speed until they were going as fast as the car could take them.
Donovan tried getting more information from the two soldiers, but they wouldn’t
say anything more.

I apologize, sir. You’ll just have to wait until we get
to the base.

I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more, sir.

Always so respectful and polite but never spilling a single
word of what they knew, which was probably nothing, anyway. They were only Corporals.

Donovan settled for looking out of the window at the vast
forest below. There were always lush natural environments between the human
cities. He thought he spotted a group of bears somewhere down there, but they
were too high up for him to be sure.

When he tired of the scenery Donovan swiped his finger over
the screen on his watch, occupying himself with science articles online. He
expanded the screen so that the tiny projector turned on and gave him a bigger,
vertical version of the site. The articles floated just above the watch, measuring
about two-by -our inches.

He was just beginning to read a piece titled
Commercial
Human Teleportation: The Technology Exists, so Why Doesn’t the Product?
when
they reached their destination. The trip had taken only fifteen minutes. They
were one hundred miles outside Santa Monica. At first, they couldn’t see the
military airport, though the skycar’s scanners could sense its presence.

The driver hovered over empty space for a moment as the
security team on the ground deactivated the Mirage Builder technology. The
perfect image of a patch of forest in the middle of nowhere gave way to a large
clearing. The airport was utilitarian to say the least. There was one wide
strip of cement to mark the runway and a couple of brick buildings for the
military personnel to complete their work.

There was a jet positioned at one end of the runway, engine
humming quietly. Donovan was ushered up its steps. His escorts departed then
and he was left alone with the pilot. Donovan left the woman to fly the jet in
peace. He didn’t feel like talking. He was too busy wondering what could be
going on. Thankfully, she offered him no conversation.

General McGregor had pulled him away from home for missions with
little to no notice before but never without reason. He was almost tempted to
call him and demand an answer, but he knew that would get him nowhere. It may even
get him killed, or, at a minimum, fired. He had to be calm and rational, as his
job always demanded. He took a deep breath and forcibly relaxed his muscles one
by one.

Could it have something to do with the case he was already
working? Was Giovanni’s cell larger than they had thought? Had they unwittingly
discovered a link to the nationwide underground network of x5 terrorist they’d
been hunting for so long?

The thought of it filled him with excitement. It was the
rush he always felt when he discovered a clue that would lead him to his
target. It was like the euphoria one felt, after working on it for so long,
when a puzzle or enigma is solved through a sudden stroke of genius.

Yes, maybe that was it. It would certainly warrant the
immediate summons. After thinking about it for several long minutes, Donovan
concluded that the terrorists had to be the answer. There was no reason for
General McGregor to call him away from his current case. Donovan was the best
Brigadier General in the Army, but there were plenty of other qualified
soldiers of the same rank.

Donovan found himself relaxing a little. He let his mind
wander over the events of the night before. He couldn’t think of any details
about the boy he had captured that gave any clues as to who specifically he
worked with. The x5 terrorists never carried I.D.—no technology whatsoever unless
it was a homemade weapon—and they never showed up in the databases either.

The Organizers—those that kidnapped children and handled the
bureaucratic side of x5—raised the Attackers—those that were sent to blow up
buildings and assassinate important government officials—in secret from the
government. The organizers led ordinary lives on the surface, but in their
basements and attics they brought up little terrors who, if they survived their
missions, would grow up to be menaces to their fellow citizens.

What had Giovanni said to the interrogators to get the
General so riled up? Donovan knew he’d made the right decision about him—you
couldn’t give criminals second chances.

But still he wondered, who was the boy’s family? Had he been
born into x5 or had he been snatched? Was there a couple out there somewhere
still grieving for the disappearance of their child, wondering how they could
have let him out of their sight, even for a moment?

Donovan knew the condition they kept the child Attackers in.
He had raided enough of the places—they had rags for clothes, leftovers for
meals, and drugs to make them docile or angry as needed. In less than a few years
the Organizers could make a child’s brainwashing absolute, but underneath the
numbing confusion of drugs, their spirits were utterly tortured.

Donovan had to admit that he felt deeply sorry for those
kids. He had advocated for treatment over punishment harder than anyone. The
military had tried rehabilitation for terrorists under the age of thirty, but
it had never worked. When he was out in the field, Donovan had to harden his
heart.

Bitterly, he remembered what had come of his old acts of kindness,
of sympathy. The first time was twenty years ago, when he was a Sergeant Major.
He had worked x5 cases then, too. In the room temperature atmosphere of the jet’s
cabin, he could recall the cold night so clearly that it gave him goose bumps.

The fog had been thick in the city of Bakersfield that night.

He could barely see three yards ahead of him. It was late,
but there were still people on the streets, hanging out, drinking, gambling, or
selling their bodies for housing and food. From the sidewalk the cars on the
street were mere shadows unless they drove past in the right hand lane. Streetlamps
were almost useless.

Donovan walked the avenues of the giant slum city, pulling
his hoodie tight around his cold ears. His brand new, army-issued sneakers
squeaked with every step. It made him feel exposed, not only because of the
noise, but because they were so uncomfortable. Would he be able to fight in
these if he needed to? He couldn’t believe that people spent money on these in
real life.

He scanned the streets for his target, doing his best not to
look too hard at any one person. He was after a young girl—an attacker. She was
only a baby, really—the person who had filed the report with the army described
her as nine years old. That anyone could hold this girl hostage and load her
with drugs was sickening.

Donovan had convinced his superiors that he should capture
her alive and take her to a psychiatric ward. They had agreed. For the first
time he was eager to find his target because he wanted to help, not harm, the
person. As far as the army knew, she hadn’t committed any crimes yet—had not
been set on innocent people like a trained dog.

The informant had given the army an address. Donovan
navigated his way to it using his watch, which was strapped higher up his arm,
hidden beneath the sleeves of the hoodie, and his usual tiny speakers. People
around here couldn’t afford skycars, let alone watches, or even the older
technology of cellphones.

Though the United States outlawed groundcars in all fifty
states, they had to make some exceptions for those who couldn’t do better—the
city of Bakersfield was littered with them. The few skycars Donovan had seen
belonged to the Bakersfield Police Department. The houses, too, reflected the
general squalor—they were all one or two stories, no more than five or six at
maximum. These people took up a lot more space than they needed. The whole
place was a boiling pot of pollution and inefficiency.

Donovan closely observed the groups that walked past him,
just in case the little girl was out tonight. He could easily miss her. There
were tons of kids drifting around despite the late hour.

Finally, Donovan arrived at the rundown house where the girl
supposedly lived. The structure looked as if it were on its last splinter—most
of the houses did. It might tumble to the ground at the slightest breath.
Someone had boarded up the windows. If he hadn’t been informed beforehand,
Donovan would have thought that no one lived there at all.

The informant had said that she was the only child here. These
Organizers were recently initiated and weren’t fully trusted with the care of
attackers just yet. Donovan glanced quickly around himself. No one seemed to be
paying him any particular attention. He seized the moment and darted into the
shadows on the side of the house. Luckily there was no gate and no dog.

He tried to find an opening in one of the windows so that he
could see inside the house. The boarder had done a perfect job—he could glean
nothing of the interior.

Donovan shrugged to himself.

Well, guess I’ll have to go it blind.

He wished he had some kind of backup. Even an inexperienced
Private would have done fine. But, along with the rest of the military, the
Army and Space Force had done nothing but shrink in size since the peace
treaties of 2085. War was obsolete and by extension, so was the military as it
existed at that time. The U.S. Army had now adopted the Space Force—the part of
the military that dealt with threats via satellite hacks and space ship
attackers. Soldiers were few and far between. And they had the hardest job—finding
terrorists, anarchists, and developers of biological weapons who didn’t work
under the authority of the government.

Donovan was often forced to work alone. It wouldn’t be so
bad to go in first if there were people waiting to back you from the trenches. When
you were the first and last person to enter enemy territory, anything could
happen. Donovan had to rely primarily on stealth. He had to get in and out
quickly. Any delays could see him killed.