James Axler - Oblivion Stone

Mariah nodded as she replaced the white pumps on her feet, feeling the water in them squelch against her toes. Whatever else you might say about Clem, she thought, he was certainly a man who didn’t ruffle easily.

THE MAT-TRANS UNIT at the end of the Cerberus ops center was just winding down, clouds of mist being sucked away by hidden filters beneath the hexagonal chamber. The door hissed back on its hinges, and three familiar figures stepped out into the antechamber only to find themselves facing a veritable wall of armed guards.

“Hey, guys,” Kane said, dropping the sword and raising his empty hands as he saw the wall of firepower arrayed before him. “It’s us.”

Beside Kane, Grant and Brigid were also raising their empty hands to shoulder level where they could be seen, and all three of the Cerberus field team were wondering just what was going on.

A mellifluous voice called to Kane from somewhere behind the wall of armed guards and, a moment later, Lakesh came brushing past the guards to greet the three of them. “I’m frightfully sorry about all this,” Lakesh began as he grasped Kane’s hand in a solid two-handed shake. “We’ve had a major glitch with the communications relay, causing us to lose contact with everyone out in the field. Precautions will remain in place until we can track who’s entering via the mat-trans, I’m afraid.”

Kane nodded as Lakesh made a path through the wall of armed guards toward the main area of the control room. He saw Edwards sitting with his own field team in one corner of the room. The military man’s face was red with anger and he was complaining in loud terms to his teammates about having his own people pointing guns at him on his arrival at the redoubt.

“Some welcome this is,” Edwards snorted. “If I’d wanted this kinda aggravation every time I walk in the door, I’d’ve got married.”

Edwards’s teammates agreed with the man, used to his bluster.

Kane and his crew strode beside Lakesh toward the Cerberus leader’s own desk.

“Our Commtacts ceased working about an hour ago,” Grant explained. “I was talking with Kane at the time and suddenly—nada—the line was dead.”

Lakesh looked from Grant to Kane to Brigid, concern marring his features. “Did everything go okay?” he asked.

Kane nodded. “Got a little hairy for a while, but you know us—managed to play things by ear.”

“And what about the artifact?” Lakesh quizzed. “An alien chair, wasn’t it?”

“It’s Annunaki, all right,” Brigid confirmed as she removed her dark hat and tossed her lustrous hair back over her shoulders. “I think it’s an astrogator’s chair, used for navigation in starship travel.”

Lakesh stroked at his chin in fascination. “You tested it?” he asked.

Brigid made a sour face. “It kind of tested me,” she admitted, still conscious of the tingling feeling on her skin where the tendrils had tried to consume her just an hour before.

“That doesn’t sound so good,” Lakesh mused. “Would you care to elaborate?”

Brigid began to explain about the strange chair that had held her in its unshakable clutches, but Kane interrupted. “That can wait,” he said. “What’s going on with the Commtacts?”

“And the transponders?” Grant added. “My tracker’s still operating but it couldn’t even locate my own frequency blip while I was out in the field.”

Lakesh indicated the satellite monitoring and communication desks where Brewster Philboyd, Donald Bry and several others were working in unison on what was evidently a fraught and urgent project. “The satellite feeds went down fifty-three minutes ago,” Lakesh explained. “We’ve lost all external comms, including Commtacts, monitoring and general analysis and prediction software.”

“You ‘lost’?” Kane asked.

“It’s still down,” Lakesh told him. “Our best guess is that something has taken out the Comsat and Vela satellites, and Donald and his team are trying to backtrack over the unmonitored feeds to see if we can find any evidence as to what.”

Tucking a lock of her red-gold hair behind her ear, Brigid asked hesitantly, “Do you think this was a deliberate sabotage?”

“We haven’t ruled out that possibility yet,” Lakesh said ominously, “but at the same time it may just as easily be a natural phenomenon or a massive internal failure of the satellites themselves.”

“Affecting both of them at once?” Brigid asked, clearly dubious.

“Freak weather conditions, such as a magnetic storm, could result in a block to all our signals,” Lakesh suggested. “Until we can locate the specific data, we’ll be hard-pressed to give any definitive answers.”

“And in the meantime,” Kane observed, “you don’t know who’s coming through the mat-trans, be they friend or foe.”

“Hence the security detail,” Lakesh said. “Though some people seem less understanding of the need for it than others.” He inclined his head toward Edwards, who continued to rant about having a blaster pointed in his face when his team had arrived home.

Kane shrugged. “You know as well as I do that Edwards will be on his feet and covering your back at the first sign of trouble,” he said quietly. “Leave the man to let off steam for a while—he’ll be there when we need him.”

Lakesh looked at Kane and smiled, reminded of the natural leadership qualities that the ex-Mag possessed.

While the men explained how Kane had come into possession of the ceremonial blade and outlined what had happened with Ohio Blue out in Louisiana, Brigid took it upon herself to assist Donald Bry and his brain trust in sifting through the data to verify the nature of the satellite disruption itself. Brigid had been a crucial player in many of the Cerberus team’s technical advances, including the understanding and development of the interphaser, a portable teleportational device that exploited naturally occurring geomagnetic energy. With her uncanny memory and natural intelligence, Brigid’s contribution of both facts and intuitive leaps had served the operatives of the redoubt well in their continued defence of the people of Earth.

When she joined them, copper-haired Bry was flicking through screen after screen of raw data along with two other computer operators, analyzing each page as quickly as they could, looking for possible errors or glitches. While it was true that Cerberus monitored much of the activities on Earth at any given moment through a variety of data streams, it would be impossible to assign an individual to continuously monitor each of those feeds, particularly given the redoubt’s personnel limitations. Instead, the vast majority of the system was automated, requiring staff only to engage in the more time-responsive feeds, such as the real-time communications that the Commtacts offered.

Brigid rested against the side of the desk next to Bry, sitting on its very edge. “What do you have, Donald?” she asked brightly, gazing at the scrolling data on his terminal screen.

“A headache,” Bry growled, shaking his head. “Something like this should be obvious, but I just can’t pinpoint what it is.”

“Looking too hard, maybe?” Brigid suggested as she peered at the data screen for a few more seconds, feeling Bry’s frustration. “What time did this happen?” she asked.

“We have it as 15.37 and eight seconds,” Bry responded. “But I’ve looked through all the satellite footage and data leading immediately up to that point and nothing is showing up.”

“Both satellites went down at the same time?” Brigid asked.

Bry shook his head. “There’s three seconds in it,” he explained. “The Keyhole sat went first.”

Brigid considered this for a moment. “What if you flip the search?” she asked. “Look outwards instead of in?”