Curious Sols (The Sol Principle Book 1) Read online

  “Short of pulling the plug here, John, I've tried everything. I was really hoping Ashley could help out,” she replied, sounding more concerned than before.

  Before he could say more Dominic's voice came through on Ashley's Ksync, still attached to her belt. “That's good. I see you caught the lift. Now head down a level and find yourself that pod.”

  John double-checked his eyeballs, Ashley was still there alright. Stroking her hand, he felt the warmth of her body.

  Again her Ksync sounded with Dominic's voice. “Good, strap yourself in and get ready for a bit of a bumpy ride. We're just going to play a game of catch here. Your pod will toss you in the Argo's direction, and before you fall away my ship will catch you with its magnetic shields. I've run the simulations almost a thousand times now, only thirty of them resulted in less than desirable outcomes.”

  “Alright John, she's fine. She's not on a pod. She's right here,” John told himself.

  Looking from Ashley, to her workstation, to the vidcomm the situation began to coalesce together.

  “You’re not,” he whispered in a hollow tone. “Are you really trying to pull that off?”

  Chapter 11 Beauty is in the Mind of the Beholder

  Dominic watched as Ashley settled into the escape pod. He gave her one last reassurance over the Ksync before shifting his attention to the next hurdle.

  “It would have been nice to save the children,” he muttered to himself.

  Dominic argued in his mind. “Still, she will forgive me over time. When she sees all that we can accomplish, she'll understand. Then we can return to the way things should have been.”

  Pulling up a separate screen on his workstation, Dominic hailed the bridge. “Captain Dranius...”

  An older man dressed in an olive green uniform came into view on the vidcomm.

  “Dr. Andreou, how can I be of service?” the captain inquired.

  “The engines are online and ready to fire, I presume?” Dominic asked in a commanding tone.

  “Upon your word, Dr. Andreou,” the officer replied.

  Swiping several screens on his workstation Dominic activated several programs.

  Refocusing on the captain, Dominic continued. “You will notice a drop in your shields momentarily as we discussed. I will personally overseeing their use to bring our honored guest aboard. Once the lab's exterior bay is re-sealed you should see a return to normal energize levels. I will give the command to fire the engines shortly thereafter.”

  “We stand ready,” the captain acknowledged.

  Pausing for a moment, Dominic held his fingertip over the launch button. Zooming in his external video of the U.S.S. Columbus, he checked his projections one more time. Pressing the button on his screen, he confirmed the launch of an escape pod.

  A targeting window was aimed squarely over the pod now as it shot away from its mother-ship. For a moment, the pod veered off quickly from the fleet as its speed dropped. Almost in the same moment, though, it turned and was yanked back in the fleet's direction.

  Slowly it inched its way toward the Argo until resting on the exterior of the ship. Dominic turned away from the video as he could instead view the escape pod through the opaque lab bay doors. The ship's exterior doors jerked slightly before continuing to open smoothly. With the bay doors open, the pod slowly entered the ship. It gracefully glided inside, guided by an invisible magnetic force. The pod rested gently as if landing on a pillow.

  “Captain, you should have full control of your energizers again,” Dominic indicated to the vidcomm.

  “Acknowledged,” replied Captain Dranius.

  Standing up straight, Dominic adjusted his clothing and quickly brushed through his hair with his fingers. Taking a deep breath, he walked to the door leading into the lab bay and opened it. He crossed the doorway and proceeded down a shallow ramp. Dominic quickly shuffled across the bay to the pod. Moving to the pod's hatch, he hurriedly pressed the release button.

  The hatch opened slowly from both sides. Within the small confines of the pod sat Ashley. Dominic couldn’t help but compare her to the young woman he had fallen in love with at the academy. Pulling her hair back she revealed a few lines of experience on her face, but in his eyes she remained a vision to behold.

  “I designed the ship’s exterior doors to safely load my sensitive lab equipment. I never dreamed it would be used for an even greater purpose, to bring you here.” He greeted her.

  “Dom, you promised that I could talk with Jessica and Stephanie. Please, let me speak with them,” Ashley pleaded as she stepped out of the pod.

  “I understand, of course,” he agreed. “Allow me to welcome you first.”

  Pulling a single red rose from under his cuff, Dominic stepped close to her. He placed the flower through her hair and then gently pulled her hand to his lips. Seemingly unnoticed by his eyes, the rose floated down to the ground landing softly at his feet.

  “I shall alert the captain to put you through to your daughters immediately,” Dominic asserted.

  Drawing a personal comm unit from his belt, he activated it. “Captain Dranius, please activate our systems as discussed. I have a lovely lady here who would like to speak to the Columbus.” Dominic smiled as he turned back to Ashley. “Please come with me to my lab. We can talk with them there.”

  Taking her by the hand, Dominic led her up the ramp.

  “My dear, you are dreadfully cold,” Dominic commented.

  “Oh, it was freezing in the pod. I need to warm-up,” Ashley replied quickly.

  Entering his lab, Dominic let go of Ashley's hand and continued slowly down the main isle of his lab. Just as he had started, the entire ship was jarred by a massive force causing him to wobble slightly before grabbing a nearby table.

  “I'm sorry Ashley, but that jolt was the result of our plasma engine firing,” he began. “Unlike the outdated propulsion of the MARC program, the Argo has a fully functional reactor capable of sending us to Mars in less than half the time. I'm afraid that I have very pressing matters to attend to there, once your fleet is inoperable.”

  “What do you mean inoperable?” Ashley questioned forcefully.

  Dominic turned to face her.

  “Simply, they won't be a bother to me anymore. The last thing I need is a bunch of space-faring farmers, hoping to find some sort of new democratic paradise, breeding across my planet.”

  “What are you doing?” she pleaded, her face now grave with concern.

  “Ashley, you are where you belong now. I've risked quite a bit in pausing our plans, but I could think of no one else more worthy of joining me.” He started to explain.

  Ashley began to shimmer a bit and fade. Without warning, she vanished.

  Instinctively taking several steps forward, Dominic drew his hand through the space she once stood. His nostrils flared and his face contorted as he realized the ruse he had fallen victim to.

  “Her hand felt ice cold, her hand felt ice cold,” he repeated with more volume. “Her hand felt ice cold!” Grabbing a chair next to him he flung it across the room toward the vidcomm. It bounced harmlessly off the glass panel and tumbled several times before coming to a stop.

  Dominic strode to the vidcomm as if to do battle. “You harlot of emotions, you fool! I gambled with my station for weeks, all for this!”

  Dominic swiped the workstation screen bringing up a full screen video of Mars.

  “You see this!” he screamed. “You see this, you witch!” Dominic's fist rose toward the planet.

  “I will find the remains of your pathetic ship after you smash into the arctic, and I will spit upon your bones... You could have had it all! I could have had it all...” His voice trailed off as he weakly spiraled down to the floor, his fury mixed with tears.

  #

  Ashley sprung up from the bench as though she had just awakened from a nightmare. Her hair was moist from visible streams of perspiration streaming down her cheeks.

  “No!” she screamed, “tell me what you're goin
g to do!”

  John grabbed onto her, wrapping his arms around her.

  “It's OK Ashley. You're here!” He tried to comfort her.

  Pushing away from him and shaking her head, she clarified, “No, he was about to tell me what’s going on. He's going to disable the fleet somehow, John.”

  Piecing together the events of the evening John proposed a connection to Ashley.

  “Well, I'm not sure how, but I'm pretty sure I know where,” he stated. “Glennay is mid-ship trying to override the workstation access codes, but she's locked out.”

  Ashley moved to her main workstation. The vidcomm was filled with static now on the left side, only her message for John remained clear on the right. The Argo must have moved out of range for a neuro-connection. Swiping her fingers across the panel, she replaced those images with one of Glennay standing by the mid-ship workstation and another one of the bridge.

  Tapping into the comm she relayed to both locations. “This is Dr. Quinn, I'm working on breaking the override from my lab. Please keep me updated with any changes.”

  “Ashley, you OK?” Glennay asked. “John said you were out cold.”

  “I'm fine, really, thanks,” she smiled. “I'm just hoping that someone is as predictable as he is arrogant.”

  Bringing up an identical likeness of the mid-ship workstation on her screen, she zoomed in on the keypad. Ashley punched in a sequence of numbers: Five – One – Five – Zero. As she pressed each number on her screen, they were entered into the mid-ship workstation simultaneously.

  “And enter,” she confirmed aloud.

  The “Access Denied” screen disappeared from the mid-ship workstation and was replaced by several command lines.

  “So maybe arrogant and overconfident?” Ashley chided in a low tone. “Let's hear it for stereotypical geniuses.”

  As Ashley remotely disengaged the emergency protocols, she could hear chatter from the bridge through the vidcomm.

  Captain Sterling was heatedly giving out orders to her command staff. Straining to discern the topic, John and Ashley focused on the exchange.

  “It sounds like the other ships are entering some sort of final countdown,” John relayed to Ashley. The disjointed conversation was difficult to piece together.

  Without a word, Ashley sprung back to motion, her hands moving along the screen like a master pianist. The workstation brought up several overlays, including command authorizations for the remaining ten ships. One by one, she disengaged the emergency protocols of each ship, but with only three ships down Ashley began to pound her fists against the screen.

  “No, No, NO!” she yelled at the vidcomm. “There's no more command override. I can't stop it!”

  Watching the bridge's main screen through the vidcomm, they stood transfixed. The video showed seven of the eleven remaining ships simultaneously deploying their sails. Once extended, the sails formed a three hundred sixty degree ring around the ship. Moments after they had locked in position, the sails detached from their couplings. Like an expanding ripple in the water, the sails were propelled away from the central cores of each ship.

  “He meant for that to happen to all of us,” Ashley managed to get out. Her were emotions trapped by the situation’s gravity. In a semi-state of shock both of them watched in disbelief.

  “There has to be something we can think of," John tried to shake himself out of the moment.

  “Without a sail, there's no way for them to slow down,” Ashley mulled over. “Even with maneuvering thrusters, I don't see how they could even try to orbit.”

  “Can they adjust their trajectory enough to slingshot back to Earth, or even go onward to another planet?” John haphazardly threw out ideas.

  “I don't know, there's a couple on the team who specialize in that,” Ashley replied. “We should probably get up to the bridge and help coordinate ideas.”

  Turning and then jogging toward the lab exit, Ashley abruptly stopped.

  “The kids! Are the kids are OK?” She grabbed John's arm as she asked.

  “They're fine, Vin and Ana have them.” John assured her.

  Letting out half a sigh of relief, she continued to the exit. Right behind her, John began issuing commands through his Ksync to the Sentinel team.

  Chapter 12 Little Boy Blue and the Man in the Moon

  Calls were pouring in to the bridge of the U.S.S. Columbus. As the flagship of the fleet, it was the natural focal point for emergency planning. Captain Sterling, along with the remaining fleet captains, put together a team to brainstorm contingencies for the current situation. At the same time, back on Earth, scientists from the MARC program were developing contingency plans of their own.

  There was so much focus on the current emergency, that the amazing departure of the H.S. Argo was put aside. At least it was put aside by many, but not Jonathon Quinn. Officially, the ships of the fleet had suffered a technical malfunction in protocols that had led to the emergency jettison of sails. Unofficially, Captain Sterling had put Commander Quinn in charge of an investigation. As officer in charge of the Sentinel's security force, he was to use resources on board and as possible on Earth to uncover the meaning behind the known plot.

  “I just received a message back from MARC control in D.C,” John relayed to Ashley. “It seems the Greek embassy is unilaterally denying any involvement with the Argo's actions. It's not a likely possibility anyways, there's no way Greece has leapfrogged the world scientific community and perfected a plasma drive on their own. I have no idea how the Argo managed to become outfitted with one either without someone in MARC catching on. There're a lot of real fishy circumstances here to sort through.”

  Ashley closed out a screen on her vidcomm and sat down next to John on the lab bench. Massaging his back slightly she suggested. “You know it might be time to open up a line of communication with your own sources.”

  “Opening up those lines means opening up old wounds...” John trailed off.

  “Well we have plenty of fresh wounds here now,” she replied delicately. “You might have to risk a re-injury if we're going to find out anything useful before reaching Mars.”

  “I hate it when you make too much sense,” he joked half-heartily. “I'll put the call in, just don't bet the farm on him returning it.”

  Ashley finished rubbing his shoulders for a moment before he stood up. He walked out of the lab and headed toward his office, managing the slowest pace his feet would allow him.

  #

  Senator Joseph Quinn Jr. looked out the window of the Russell Senate Office Building. His vision crossed Constitution Avenue before resting upon the U.S. Capitol Building. He still remembered the day that his father had famously walked down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol in support of the MARC legislation. Although he wouldn't admit it, as a young boy during such a historic moment, the ice cream truck that sold the delicious waffle cones outside was equally memorable. For the last forty years the MARC program had carved a notch in American history. It now rested in scope with programs such as the New Deal and the space program before it.

  His father though, wouldn't get to see the legacy of his hard work. It would seem an inescapable destiny for any leader that carried the torch of the common man. Unlike past tragedies, the whiz of an assassin's bullet this time was recorded in XD stereo sound. The technology of the day captured the killer, but could not prevent the death of his father. In circumstances mirroring the passing of great leaders before him, his death created deep feelings of loss in a country that was ripping itself apart. The spirit of brotherhood emerged, however, was not squandered on blame and persecution. History files on the I-Know devices of school children across the land were filled with pages on the subject. Lessons teaching how the country was sewn together from threads of compassion rather than ripped apart with accusations of hate seeded inspiration in generations to come.

  Returning to his desk, the senator keyed his personal I-Know to resume recording his memoirs.

  “My father tried to tak
e the center lane of life,” the senator told the recording. “Even if the middle of the road is often crossed. Should the MARC program work in every way possible, it still might not be enough to keep everything together. With so many polarizing viewpoints on both berms of the road, I'm not sure how we can get the nation driving down the center lane again. We're running over the warning grooves without hearing them at all and headed straight for a ditch.”

  Slowly he sat down in his chair, sinking into its leather cushions, and paused the recording once again. Switching to another screen on his I-Know, he took a long stare at the contents of the page. The heading of the text on the screen read S.J. Res twenty-three. He started the recording.

  “Such a short title for such on ominous bill,” he continued. “S.J. Res twenty-three, a constitutional amendment that if passed would essentially rewrite the Articles of the Constitution. The checks and balances that have held the country together for nearly four hundred years will fade away as memories if this passes. The executive branch would have the kind of power not seen on North American soil since the times of King John of England.”

  “Senator Quinn,” a voice broke the silence of the room from the desk's vidcomm. “You have a message coming through to your I-Know. It’s from Jonathon Quinn.”

  Joe leaned back in his chair. He stared at the screen of his portable computer. Something in his brain wanted him to read the message, but his hands weren't getting a signal to use the device. Finally he skipped the I-Know like a rock across his desk, knocking assorted pictures and knickknacks aside.

  He rubbed his forehead with his hand, dragging his fingers across his skin. Almost as abruptly as he had tossed the reading pad, Joe Quinn leaned forward and snatched the I-Know back off of his desk. Closing the senate bill, he brought up the message from his son.

  “Dad... I told myself that I wouldn't be sending a message. I'm fairly sure you had decided not to read any from me,” the text began. “We couldn't see eye to eye when I was on Earth, and I know I can't change that through a time-delayed chat from space. I need your help. If you know one thing, it's that I’d never have sent this message if I didn't need your help.”