Music of the Spheres (10 page)

George taps his holoslate. “On it.”

Michael pats the woman’s hand. “Thank you,” he says. “We
will do our best to bring your family back to you.”

∞

Inside the rented truck, George punches several commands
into his holoslate while Michael drives.

“Anything yet?” Michael asks.

George nods. “Talk about a needle in a haystack. There was a
geological satellite in this section of the departmental looking for mineral deposits.
They pick up all kinds of heat signatures. It looks like there were three
hundred vehicles traveling on the main road between Santa Rosa de Copán and the
Copán Ruinas that night—maybe even double that.”

“Double? What do you mean?”

George shakes his head. “The satellite tracked in a zigzag
pattern, so there are dozens of gaps in the record. The three times it passed
over the village, there was no thermal activity.”

“Damn.”

George taps a few more commands. “Maybe I can run a filter.
Eliminate any commercial vehicles or transports. Autotaxis. That kind of thing.
Maybe we’ll get luck—”

“You don’t have to search any further, George,” Michael
says. “I think they found us.”

George looks up. In the camera view is a large black van traveling
towards them at high speed, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it.

Michael edges to the side of the road. The truck veers to
cut them off, so Michael slows the vehicle to a stop.

“What are you doing?” George asks, his voice rising.

“Well,” Michael says. “It’s not like we can outrun them.
After all, this is what we want, isn’t it? If these guys are Cruzados, maybe
they’ll tell us where Yaxche and his grandson are. And the scroll.”

The black van skids to a stop a dozen meters away and four
men with rifles jump out, pointing the weapons at Michael and George. The men
have kerchiefs covering their mouths.

They yell in Spanish, and George translates: “Get out of the
truck with your hands in the air. Do not try to run.”

Michael says, “We’d better do as they say.”

The two of them open the doors and step out. They put their
hands up as Michael calls out, “We mean you no harm. My name is Michael
Sanderson from Quantum Resources in Canada.”

“We know who you are,” one of the men says in English. “Keep
your mouth shut.”

Another Cruzado walks purposefully toward George. He
commands, “Turn it off.”

George says, “Turn what off?”

The armed man reaches out and grabs the Virtual Tourist. He
pulls it from George’s head.

“The camera,” he says, as the image bounces around showing
the dirt road, a pair of booted feet, the sky, and then complete darkness.

16

Lunar Lines Vessel,
Diana
:

Unknown Transit :

Justine could
feel
the
Diana
pulling out of the Canada Station Three dock. The
massive ion pulse engines gave off severe vibrations when initially engaged,
and the first jarring motion of the ship as it uncoupled from the dock was
enough to knock someone off their feet if they weren’t safely fastened in their
seats.

Both Justine and Clive clung to each other for balance as
they quickly made their way to the canopy seats and strapped themselves in.

Lieutenant Jeffries’ men had taken up defensive positions
around the cargo, in case the hijackers decided to come down to the cargo bay. When
the engines shuddered, two of them grabbed on to the container’s handles to
stabilize themselves while the other two, who had dropped to one knee, lost
their balance and fell over.

Two of the men who had raced toward the elevators after the
announcement—ion rifles up at the ready as if expecting the hijackers to burst
into the cargo bay with guns blazing—were thrown from their feet into heavy
metal boxes when the liner jerked into motion. One of them got right back up,
but the other took a very long time to recover.

Once the liner stabilized, Lieutenant Jeffries and his
corporal hurried over to the man to check his condition. He looked back and
gave Justine a nod that told her, although battered and bruised, he was
otherwise fine.

Justine had been through an attempted hijacking before, though
the assailants had been successful in their main purpose: kidnapping Alex Manez.
But Alex wasn’t on the
Diana.
He had disembarked safely.

Fighting back the panic welling inside her, Justine clung to
Clive’s arm. His face was set in a stoic mask, but his eyes betrayed his fear.

“It’s the Kinemet.” Clive stated the obvious. “They want
it.”

“Why are they letting them take the ship?” Justine asked
through clenched teeth.

“CS3 isn’t really designed to stop a ship from
leaving,”
he said.

Justine shook her head. “I mean the flight crew. All liners
have protocols against this. The cabin is self-contained and sealed—in which
case they would never initiate takeoff procedures. And even if someone were to
manage to get in and hold the pilot at gunpoint, the system is designed to disengage
electrical if there are any other biometric readings in the cabin besides the
captain and navigator.”

Clive glanced at Justine. “Unless they are a part of it.”

A dark look settled on his face and he called out,
“Lieutenant Jeffries?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about them attacking us.”

The soldier turned his head to look back at Clive and
Justine. “Why not?”

“Check the elevator,” Clive said. “I’m sure it’s been
disabled. As are, I’m certain, all our communications. They have no intention
of fighting with us. Why would they? We are exactly where they want us, safely
tucked away in this little prison of our own making.”

Clive laughed, but it was a hollow, bitter sound. “You may
as well stand down until we arrive wherever it is they are taking us, or until
they initiate contact.”

∞

The forward velocity increased, and the liner’s vibrations
lessened to normal levels as the ship finished its launch from Canada Station
Three and started in on its trajectory.

What destination?
Justine asked herself. “They can’t
be heading for any of the other space stations. Everyone will be alerted to
them by then. The can’t be going to Luna Station or anywhere on the Moon for
that matter,” she said out loud to Clive.

After the abduction of Alex Manez had revealed the extent of
Chow Yin’s infiltration into the station, security measures had tripled not
only on every settlement on the Moon, but for all space traffic coming to and
from the planetoid. Non-commercial or non-military vessels were under the
highest scrutiny.

Whoever they were, the hijackers were obviously well
organized and funded. Another thought came to her: were they hostages? Or were
they incidental cargo? If all the hijackers wanted was the Kinemet, they didn’t
need her and the soldiers. It would be an easy enough task for them to shut
down the life support system in the cargo bay and just wait until any threat
was neutralized.

She clung tighter to Clive’s arm.

Justine still had her PERSuit harness on—she would be
completely lost without it—and watched as Lieutenant Jeffries and his men did a
full recon of the cargo area, checking the elevators to confirm Clive’s
supposition. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe him, but Justine knew from her
days in the military that redundant confirmation had proved itself time and
again.

Corporal Marks, the second-in-command, tested his
communications equipment, and tried to tap into the onboard computer. The
result was as Clive predicted. Dead air.

After stationing his soldiers at strategic locations around
the cargo area anyway, the lieutenant returned to report. “We’re completely
shut in and shut off. Grounded.”

As if reading Justine’s thoughts, he added, “Life support is
still fully functional.”

“So they want us alive,” Justine said in conclusion.

Ever pragmatic, the lieutenant said, “Maybe.”

“What do you mean?”

The officer shook his head. “There are a lot of scenarios
that could be played out. Holding us as hostages is only one of them.”

Justine let her thoughts follow some of the possibilities.
They could hold them for ransom. They could release them at a later time as a
gesture of goodwill. They could kill them later to serve as a warning, or a
distraction. They could sell them into slavery—human trafficking was uncommon,
but still an issue in the world.

Before her imagination took her down paths even more
frightening, she said, “What now?”

“Now,” Clive said in a drawl and glanced at Justine. “Now we
need to figure out where we’re going. Maybe that will give us a clue to the
hijackers’ intent.”

Lieutenant Jeffries turned as Corporal Marks reported. “I
tried to tap into the onboard computer, but it looks like they set up their own
firewall.”

“It’s too bad we didn’t have Alex here,” Justine said, and
then when Clive gave her a curious look, she quickly added, “Because of his
ability to see extraspacially. We’re all blind in here without instrumentation.”

Clive put his arm around her and growled. “There has to be
something we can do other than just wait for them to initiate contact.”

Corporal Marks had an odd look on his face as he fixed his
eyes on Justine’s harness. “Even if I had something more powerful than my holoslate,
it could take weeks to break the firewall. But…”

“What is it, Corporal?” the lieutenant prompted.

A hint of a smile played at the young man’s lips. “That’s a
PERSuit, isn’t it?” he asked Justine.

“Yes.”

He said, “I believe it has built-in gyroscopic sensors and
an inertial reference platform.”

For a moment, Justine had no idea what the corporal was
getting at, but then she clued in. “As well as an attitude indicator, vertical
and horizontal positioning. Along with visual and olfactory sensations, the
suit can also provide inertial sensations to viewers. If I were at sea, or on a
roller coaster, viewers who are susceptible would experience motion sickness,
it’s that real.” She sounded like a brochure.

The lieutenant, excited, asked the corporal, “Can you access
the suit and the data?”

Corporal Marks nodded. “I think so. With any luck, I should
be able to track our course from the moment we launched. I have astrogation
charts in my holoslate—maybe I can figure out where we’re going.”

He cocked his head to one side and said to Justine, “You’ll
have to remove the suit, though.”

∞

Though she had been blind for years, there was always a part
of Justine that hadn’t completely accepted the fact. There was that glimmer of
hope that one day she would wake up and be able to see. The universe had played
a cosmic joke on her, and at any moment, it would deliver the punch line,
everyone would have a good laugh, and then she would be normal again.

Sitting back in the webbed cargo seat without her PERSuit
sensors or her optilink, which the corporal needed to interface with his
holoslate, her world had completely plunged into darkness.

She experienced a few moments of all-too familiar despair.
It wasn’t a joke, it was a cruel prank and she was only fooling herself into
thinking it wasn’t permanent.

Then she felt a warm hand slip into hers. Clive. He gave her
hand a quick squeeze of reassurance.

She leaned into him. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Just being here.”

He laughed hollowly. “All things being equal…”

“Same here.” She smiled at him, though she had no idea if he
was looking at her or watching as Corporal Marks rigged a connection from the
PERSuit to his portable holoslate.

“Listen,” he said, “we’ll get through this. The hijackers
haven’t turned off our life support so they obviously need us alive. That gives
us an opportunity.”

“I know,” she said. “I just wish I could do more. I feel so
helpless.”

In answer, Clive put an arm around her shoulders while they
waited.

It was only a few minutes later that the corporal called out
that he’d made the connection.

Clive stood up from the seats to approach, and Justine went
with him.

“What have you got?” Lieutenant Jeffries said.

“It’s compiling the data at the moment. We should have a
readout in less than a minute.”

There was a hushed silence as everyone circled around the
corporal and his computer. Justine felt a deep frustration that she couldn’t
see the screen and had to wait for someone to feed her the information
secondhand.

“Here comes the trajectory now,” the corporal said.

A moment later, Lieutenant Jeffries spoke, and his voice
took on a caustic tone. “That can’t be right.”

“What?” Justine asked.

Jeffries said, “Are you sure you have the correct
information? Maybe the computer reversed the coordinates or something.”

“What coordinates?” Justine asked again.

Corporal Marks tapped repeatedly on his computer again. “No,
it’s right.”

Justine grew frustrated. “What’s right?”

She heard Lieutenant Jeffries take a deep breath and let it
out in a hiss. “Well, according to our current trajectory, the hijackers are
pointing the
Diana
directly at the Sun.”

17

Lunar Lines Vessel,
Diana
:

Solar Trajectory :

It had been
a
frightening and crazy week for Terry. At first, when he and Jose had
confiscated the alien scroll—along with Terry’s grandfather—he had felt
empowered.

He was finally taking control of things and able shape
future events. With like-minded people on his side, Terry had taken the first
steps toward returning the Mayan people to their rightful place in the world.
If he had anything to say about it, his people would not suffer and die
needlessly like Itzel.

As with any revolution, there were bound to be casualties.
Deep down, Terry knew this; he wasn’t so naïve as to think all they had to do
was brandish their weapons and people would simply give in. Though he steeled
himself for the possibility, he still wanted to avoid violence as much as
possible. Jose assured him he felt the same way. He assigned Terry and another
Cruzados, Carlos, to guard the shuttle’s cabin, in the unlikely event one of
the American soldiers managed to get out of the cargo hold and infiltrate the
upper decks.

Since joining the Cruzados, Terry had been surprised at the
size of their network of sympathizers in the USA, Inc. government and NASA.
There was an even larger number of people who they could bribe or blackmail
into doing what was needed for their principal mission.

One of those they had bribed was the ship’s navigator,
Lieutenant John Franks. Terry didn’t know the details, but from what he had
overheard, he guessed the navigator may have had a gambling problem and rising
debts.

Within an hour of successfully breaking away from the
station, Franks stepped out of the cabin and demanded to speak with Jose.

Pointing a meaty finger at the man, Carlos said, “He’s busy.
What do you want?”

Franks growled. “I want more money.”

“You’ll get what you agreed on.”

Franks shook his head. He looked very frazzled. His hair was
in disarray, his skin flushed and his pupils were dilated. Terry thought he
might be on drugs.

Franks growled. “I need more. And I want to settle this now.”

Carlos kept his voice even, but the lids of his eyes dropped,
and his irises unfocused. “It’s too late. The deed is done. When we get to our
destination, you’ll get paid. Now go back to the cabin and do your job.”

Either Lieutenant Franks didn’t recognize that he couldn’t
bully or cajole Carlos, or he was too far gone in his panic that he didn’t
care. The navigator held up his holoslate and showed them the screen.

Even from a bad angle, Terry was able to make out the
message someone had sent to Franks. He had obviously received it just before
the hijacking, but by then it was too late for him to do anything until they
were well under way.

The message was from Lunar Lines head office. Franks had been
suspended pending a criminal investigation for smuggling.

“See this?” he said. “It was just a couple lousy cases of
rum. People do it all the time. Why’d they have to pick on me?”

“Sorry to hear that,” Carlos said. “But it’s not my
problem.”

“Don’t you see? They’re already on to me. I need to
completely disappear, get a new identity. I need more money for that.”

Carlos was losing his patience. “You’re getting enough from
us to do that.”

“I need more!” Franks said.

His eyes flicking wildly back and forth, the lieutenant made
a motion as if to race past Carlos and Terry. Holding out one hefty arm, Carlos
clothes-lined the navigator, and the man fell back into the wall.

Carlos produced an ion pistol and pointed it at the
navigator. “I said: get back to the cabin.”

“You son of a bitch!” Franks screamed and rushed Carlos.

A crimson flower blossomed out of the middle of the
navigator’s forehead. Terry barely registered the whir of the ion pulse.

Franks’ eyes widened in sudden shock for a brief moment
before the life went out of him, and he sank to his knees and toppled over on
his side.

“What the hell did you do?” Terry yelled at Carlos.

“He was crazed. High or something. We couldn’t have him
creating a panic right now. Or sabotaging the flight computer. There’s no
telling what people like that will do.” Carlos was once again completely calm.
He showed no more concern than if he had slapped a bug with a flyswatter.

“But you killed him!”

Carlos turned his full attention to Terry. “Are
we
going to have a problem now?”

Terry stammered. “N-no. It’s just—”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Couldn’t we have just knocked him out? Tied
him up or something?”

Carlos scratched his hair behind his ear. “I thought you
were on board with this mission.”

“Yeah. I am.” Terry stared down at the blood pooling under
the navigator’s head. He could feel Carlos’s eyes watching him. “It just caught
me off guard, you know. Sorry.”

Anything else they might have said to each other went
unspoken as two men approached at a jog. It was Jose and one of the other
Cruzados, Alberto.

Jose surveyed the scene and asked, “What happened?”

With a shrug, Carlos said, “He got out of hand.”

Jose glanced at Terry for confirmation. Reluctantly, Terry
gave a quick nod.

The leader of the Cruzados took a breath. “All right. Clean
up the mess. We’ll have to find someone to take his place and help our pilot
fly the liner.” He pointed at Terry. “You up to it?”

Terry, still trying to come to terms with the killing,
blinked dimly at Jose. All three men were looking at him expectantly.

“Uh. Yeah,” he said finally.

The Cruzados leader nodded and left with Alberto. Carlos
tapped Terry on the shoulder.

“Take his legs. Help me get him into one of those freezers.”

∞

Terry remained somewhat withdrawn over the next two days as
he assisted the pilot—the first non-Mayan Terry had met in the Cruzado movement.

Captain Gruber was an older man who spoke English with a
heavy German accent. Terry’s English was not very good, so it made
communication difficult at first, until Gruber ran a translator program from
the ship’s haptic console.

At first, Terry had been overwhelmed with the myriad
controls and banks of computers, but that quickly settled into tedium.

Captain Gruber told him that, for the most part, he could
pilot the liner himself; all flight crew were trained to fly solo should the
need arise.

“Basically,” he said to Terry, “I just need you to babysit
the console when I sleep. Someone needs to be here at all times or the sensors
will shut the ship down. Don’t worry, it’s on autopilot, and if anything
happens, the alarm will sound. Your main duty is to call me or come and get me
if that happens.”

They rotated in twelve-hour shifts. It gave Terry a lot of
time to think about his role in hijacking the liner and whether he had made the
right decision.

He had spent most of his life believing everyone in his family
had made bad decisions. His parents lived in squalor, never trying to better
themselves or providing a higher standard of living for their family. His
grandfather had a precious artifact which he could have traded for great wealth
for his community. And now, he had to admit, Terry had followed in their
footsteps. In an attempt to make a difference, to better his family and
community, he had fallen in with a group whose ideals were aligned with his own,
but whose methods were extreme.

And Carlos! He had killed the navigator without batting an
eyelid. There was no remorse or doubt afterwards. With no more thought than stepping
on a bug, Carlos had ended a man’s life.

Terry was certain they could have restrained the man and
resolved the situation without resorting to murder.

There was a line Terry had vowed not to cross. Now, upon
reflection, he realized that the line had been breached the moment he agreed to
kidnap his grandfather and steal the ancient scroll.

How far was too far? It was all too far, Terry knew. But the
problem was that he was in too deep to back out now. They would certainly
eliminate him if he made too much trouble. The Cruzados had Terry’s grandfather
and they had the document. They did not need Terry any more.

If he was to survive this thing, he would have to continue
to play along and wait for an opportunity to escape.

Where they were going, however, there was no place to run.

∞

It was three days later that Captain Gruber, looking ruffled
from a broken sleep, came in while Terry was on shift. He offered up a token
smile of greeting, then motioned for Terry to move aside.

“What’s happening?” Terry asked.

In a gruff tone, the captain said, “We’re stopping.”

“Stopping? We won’t have enough fuel to build velocity again.”

Glancing up at Terry in annoyance, the captain said, “We
don’t have more than a day’s worth of fuel left anyway. What did you think,
that we were just going to coast the rest of the way?”

Terry hated to admit it, but that was exactly what he had
assumed.

The captain pressed his lips together. “We’re going to
rendezvous with another ship and unload the cargo.”

“And the hostages?”

Frowning, Captain Gruber did not reply.

A dark look settled over Terry’s face. “We can’t just
abandon them and let them drift in space. They’ll run out of food and water
before any rescue ship finds them.”

The captain either didn’t have a reply, or chose not to say
anything. Instead, he concentrated on bringing the liner to a dead stop.

Within an hour, a bright speck appeared in the distance, and
Terry pointed at it. “Is that the new ship?”

“Looks like,” the captain said and called up a display.
“Yup. It’s the
Ultio.”
He pressed the intercom button and announced the
new arrival.

Moments later, Jose and Carlos entered the cabin.

“He’s here?” the leader of the Cruzados asked. His face was
lit up with anticipation.

Terry wondered who, but didn’t ask out loud. He had the
realization that he had been kept in the dark about many things. Though he
hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it earlier, he knew now that he
wasn’t as trusted as he had originally thought back in Honduras when the
Cruzados had first brought him into their revolution.

When he looked up at Jose, he saw that the other man was
watching him ponderingly, and Terry flashed a smile to show that he was still
on board with the operation.

They all watched as the other ship grew larger until it
completely filled the display. The
Ultio
pulled alongside the liner and
an umbilical tube extended out and attached to the main door.

All four men exited the cabin and made their way back to
greet the new arrival.

It was with growing anticipation that Terry waited as the
cabin door unlocked with a hiss of escaping air, then slowly opened. Only one
man stepped out.

“Jose, I’m glad everything went well.” Tall and blond, with
piercing blue eyes, the man was in his late twenties or early thirties, though
he carried himself as if he were years older. He wore a black suit in a modern
cut without a tie. His white shirt did not have a fold at the collar, but
instead circled the man’s throat in a restrictive circle. His smile held no
humor.

It was at that moment that Terry detected a faint
resemblance between him and Captain Gruber. His notion was confirmed when the
two of them stood together and shook hands.

“Uncle,” the younger man said in English. “How was the
trip?”

“Uneventful.”

Jose, a wide grin on his face, stepped up and shook the
blond man’s hand as well.

“Your plan worked perfectly,” he said.

“I’m glad to hear it.” The man turned his steely gaze on
Terry. “And is this who we must thank for providing the opportunity?”

“Yes,” Jose said. “This is Te’irjiil, who goes by the name
Terry Fernandez. Terry, I would like you to meet our benefactor, Mr. Klaus
Vogelsberg. His uncle is Captain Gruber. Without their support, we would still
be meeting in deserted buildings and just
talking
about the movement.”

A corner of Klaus’s lip went up in a humorless smile, and he
extended his hand to Terry. “Very pleased to finally meet you. We’ve been
waiting years for the so-called geniuses at NASA to figure out the ancient
scroll, and in the end, the secret is unlocked by a simple villager. How
perfect is that?”

Terry felt very uncomfortable under the other man’s
penetrative gaze. He didn’t know if he was being complimented or insulted, but
didn’t want to say the wrong thing, so he nodded and offered up a smile of his
own.

Turning his attention back to Jose, Klaus asked, “I trust we
didn’t have any trouble with our guests down below?”

“No. They are completely secure. All entrances are
magnetically sealed. They already had enough food and water for the journey
down there, and aside from one of them attempting to blow open the elevator
door with some small explosive—which failed of course—we haven’t heard a peep.”

“That’s good.”

Terry found his voice. “They aren’t going to be harmed, are
they?”

Letting out a sudden barking laugh, Klaus said, “Going to be
harmed?” He shared an amused look with his uncle, then continued: “If we wanted
them harmed, we wouldn’t have taken them hostage.”

The relief Terry felt was quickly replaced by a measure of
embarrassment. These people must think him some kind of country rube. He vowed
not to open his mouth again until he had something intelligent to say.

Klaus turned to Jose. “Speaking of which, you may transfer them
and the cargo to my ship. Use knockout gas; filter it through their air
system.” He glanced at Terry and gave a wink. “No conflict, no fighting, no
harm. You see, we’ve thought of everything.”