James Glass - Sedona Conspiracy

In the tunnel area men and vehicles were hurrying everywhere. Heads didn’t even turn at the sight of two more helmeted soldiers carrying rifles. Davis led Eric to the door they’d used before to gain access to portal bay, a door from a dock formed by a cutout in the main tunnel. Eric suddenly remembered seeing the ambulance parked there when Leon had been taken away. Opposite the transparent wall of the machine shop was a set of elevator doors that had likely taken Leon up or down for treatment. But was he still alive?

They went through the card-key door, and two soldiers watched Davis slide his card at the second door and punch in his code. A few yards ahead Davis pushed open the door to the control room, and they stepped inside.

“Security. I’m placing a guard in this control area. Stay out of the way, private,” growled Davis.

Four young men were hunched over the control panel, and barely looked up when they entered. It was the same four Eric had seen before, including the one who had passed him a message. But there were no signs of recognition from a brief glance. The men seemed totally absorbed by their work, and with his helmet pulled low Eric had a faint hope he would not be recognized. Davis gave him a thumbs-up and exited the room, leaving Eric standing in a corner next to two thermoses of something and four empty cups. He unslung his rifle and moved it to port arms to assume his role. The other four men played hands over the control panel, jabbered something incoherent into throat mikes, and didn’t look at him.

The floor of the portal bay was relatively quiet, a few people walking here and there, and one wall shimmered red. The floor was empty of crates or other containers. Eric pressed himself back into his corner when he saw Alan Nutt come out a side door and walk over to the shimmering portal to talk to two military policemen stationed there. The conversation was short. Alan walked around the periphery of the bay, still talking. Suddenly he put a hand to his ear, and looked straight up at the control room. He scowled, shook his head and walked back to the door he’d entered by. He was still talking when he exited the bay.

Eric tensed. The young man who’d passed a message to him earlier now turned to look at him.

“You’re not supposed to be in here, sir. We have a bad situation coming up.”

“I know all about it, son, and I’m here to defend this base like you are. When the shooting starts I need to be down on the bay floor. How do I get there?”

“Right behind you, sir, but when the door closes you can’t get back inside.”

The seam ran near his left shoulder, so narrow he’d missed it, and there was a small finger latch for opening the door.

“Anything else I should know?”

“It’s a spiral staircase down to the floor. The commander knows you’re here, and says to stay close to a wall until the targets are identified. He’s not happy with you, sir.”

“Neither am I, son, but it’s my fight too.”

The kid gave him a faint smile and turned back to the console. Nothing unusual happened for the next few minutes except that four men set up a row of posts near the end of the bay and hung a light canvas between them. When they were finished, Alan Nutt came out again to inspect it, then exited. One part of the bay was now screened off from the other, and the reason was obvious a few minutes later. Dozens of armed marines came out of the door Alan had exited by. They pressed themselves back against the walls, two men deep, each holding stubby weapons with long magazines and wearing goggles making them look like two-legged insects.

The bay was still, and quiet. Nothing moved. The kid who had spoken to Eric now glanced at him, and Eric saw fear there. He’d seen the look before on a kid making his first combat jump, a kid who was dead before he hit the ground.

Eric counted just less than twenty minutes until a red light blinked on the control console, and there were soft murmurings by the operators there. Other lights flickered, and the bright overhead lights of the bay dimmed to near darkness. The shimmering red wall flashed to a rippling blue and was quickly an inky void on the other side of the bay. Streamers of deep blue remained, flickering in and out. The men who came out of the darkness appeared suddenly, men in khaki overalls and lowered faceplates, and they guided powered forklifts laden with crates. Supply delivery , thought Eric. What’s so dangerous about this?

The answer was not long in coming.

A steady stream of forklifts came out of the darkness without incident, deposited their cargo by a wall and turned to go back to the portal. At that moment three more forklifts appeared, and the bay was plunged into chaos. An alarm sounded with ear-splitting intensity and red lights strobed from the walls. The three forklifts moved left and right, mixing in with the earlier machines now trying to return to the portal. Behind them came three more, this time accompanied by dozens of armed men in marine uniforms. The men opened fire with automatic weapons and sprayed the entire area with bullets.

Eric gasped at the sight of gunfire being returned out of clear air from the walls around the bay, and then the marines behind the screen charged in, firing as they came.

Eric saw Alan Nutt come in behind them. He grabbed the latch of the door, slammed it open to the rattle of continuous gunfire, and hurried down a steep, metal staircase to the bay floor.

Deep in the bowels of the ministry building, the portal rippled in shades of blue. The assembly floor was packed solid with hydraulic lifters bearing crates, and Kroic’s heavily armed troops pressed in tightly behind them. Their faceplates were down, hiding the ridiculous masks they’d used to disguise their true faces from both friend and foe. The odors of their bodies remained mercifully close to the assembly floor.

On a balcony two meters above the portal floor Dario Watt stood with his four lieutenants and the two portal operators he had heavily bribed for the operation. According to Watt’s plan, the lifetimes of the bribed ones were now less than a day. There would be no witnesses to show ministry involvement in an operation to be seen as instigated by an unfriendly government and carried out by Kroic and his mercenary soldiers.

Three of Watt’s co-conspirators looked frightened to death, but Elias Trent seemed calm, even stoic, now that the hour had come. Perhaps Watt had underestimated the metal in the man. He had given all of them communicators, but only for listening. The power to command was his alone.

“One minute to initiation,” Watt said softly. A portal operator nodded, one hand reaching towards the console.

“We’re ready,” said the gravelly voice of Ustiss Kroic.

Watt looked, but didn’t find him in the crowd below. Dressed like the others, Kroic had the only detonation transmitter on his person, could set the timing in an instant, but only one time. This he would do when the American portal bay had been penetrated, and only then would he withdraw his forces.

The portal strobed red, and was blue again. Contact had been made, could not be interrupted at the receiving end. They were now committed.

“Go,” said Watt.

The lifters and their operators went in first, then the three devices and a platoon of support troops, Kroic himself somewhere among them. At the rear of the assembly, twenty soldiers activated cloaking and disappeared from view, their exit only shown by transient ripples in the portal’s surface. Communication was instantaneous. In high order n-space, the speed of light was astronomically high, and there were no time delays.

“Receiving fire! Cloaked defenders!” shouted Kroic.

“Press on, Commander,” said Watt encouragingly.