Another brief section today, nothing fancy, nothing too startling. Music? The Who’s Bargain.

5.17

Deborah Sorensen walked around the stateroom of her new home, an almost 50 year old Feadship – that had seen better days, probably 20 years ago – with a sense of foreboding. The upper decks aft of the bridge had been gutted, at least on the inside of the superstructure, so while outwardly the yacht looked unchanged, this was in fact far from the truth. The main salon and galley were gone, but so too was the sun deck with it’s hot tub on the deck above; it it’s place she saw heavy Cor-ten steel plate on the decks and walls that had been freshly installed and crudely painted with gray primer, leaving only the barest framework of a ceiling in the main salon. Two container-sized launching tubes would be placed in this new open space once the yacht arrived in Rio de Janeiro, and only then could their real mission begin.

Her father had made his case and in a way she had agreed with him, agreed with his reasoning for this action – but also his reasons behind the formation of the Eagle Group. The group was, he’d told her, nothing more than a collection of concerned businessmen working in concert to manage a vitally necessary contraction of population pressure, resource depletion, and environmental degradation. All of these things were now self evident, but they had been for decades and nothing had been done. And she’d had to agree – because even to her conditions were already terrifying – and growing worse by the day. So, what was the best apolitical anodyne? 

Instead of a protracted period of decline and collapse, a period that could, literally, play out over a hundred years – or even longer, the founding premise of the group was to accelerate this collapse. Do it now, quickly, so that there would remain a nucleus of humanity left to start over again. To get it right the second time around.

Looking back on her father’s life from her current place in time she was stunned by his prescience. Her father had, almost by himself, foreseen the consequences of explosive population growth and calamitous resource extraction back in the 1970s, and instead of sitting idly by and doing nothing he had acted. He’d created the Eagle Network to prepare the way ahead, to desensitize select groups of people, to help prepare them for the difficult choices ahead.

She had been blown away by the scope of what she heard from him. The Eagle Network had morphed into a sprawling effort to accumulate political power to further the ends of the group, to manage the contractions ahead, but along the way the group had accumulated enemies, too. And now these enemies were gathering, about to act, but the group had developed a new, very bold way forward.

Her father had carefully watched the way, as a child, she’d developed her own unique abilities. She could not only ‘see’ other places and other times, she had also left the current timeline and repeatedly journeyed back to 1912. But where else had she gone? And when else had she gone? He soon understood that these first journeys had been involuntary, that she’d had no control over when or where she went, or even the timing of these events – until she’d met that orca, in Tahiti. An old male orca, and he’d shown her how to harness her abilities, to direct her energy. 

And Ted Sorensen had been terrified of her ever since.

She’d thought herself special – for a while, anyway – until she realized that there were a handful of other people with this ability, and then she’d learned that this pool of people was constantly growing. Slowly, at least in the beginning. But when would this ability reach a kind of critical mass? When would it go from fringe to mainstream? And what would be the consequences of at first hundreds of people jumping around through time, altering timelines, to eventually more and more people jumping?

Absolute chaos would result. Time itself would become meaningless. 

And then her father had told her one last self-evident truth, the one truth that had rocked her conception of reality to her core.

This incipient chaos held growing implications not just for life on Earth. Conceivably, life everywhere in the solar system would be impacted. And then members of the Eagle Group, her father among them, had been contacted by an off-world civilization, and the final implications of this growing ability had taken on alarming new dimensions.

Not only was life on Earth at stake, but now members of the Eagle Group understood that these growing abilities threatened life through not only the galaxy, but conceivably even the entire universe.

And now the universe was reacting. Much like antibodies swarm to attack an infecting micro-organism, a vanguard of off-world, spacefaring civilizations had been monitoring developments here on Earth, and perhaps for thousands of years. Once humanity’s incipient abilities became apparent to them, one by one they started to watch us more closely – and to then draw up their contingencies.

But this period of monitoring was rapidly coming to an end.

And now, Ted told his daughter, at least one of these off world civilizations was preparing to act.

But members of the Eagle Group had convinced this group to delay taking any action – for now. Because the Eagle Group had a plan, a new plan. The Group was going to act decisively to rewrite recent history, to put an end to not only explosive population growth but to put an end to the ability of some people to bend the laws of time.

But this was proving to be the most difficult part of her father’s plan, yet now Sorensen thought he had the solution.

He was going to bait a trap. Get everyone with this ability into one place, and then destroy them all.

And if the Group failed, the Grays would act. Quickly, and decisively. 

“How?” she’d asked her father.

“They will use the Earth to destroy the Earth. That’s all we know, Deb. If we fail, they will act.”

“So, if I understand what you’re saying, you want me to use my abilities to change our history? Is that about the size of it?”

“Yes.”

“Have you thought about what might happen to us? I mean, all of us?”

And when she looked at her father he’d started crying, crying as deeply as she’d ever seen anyone cry in all her life, and yet the true depths of his love had shone through this despair. 

And in that moment she could finally see the way ahead, her destiny, what she’d been born to do, and the journey she was doomed to fulfill. 

Perhaps, she said to herself, this path led to oblivion. She could feel that in her bones now. Perhaps there was no other way to change the world, but thanks to her father she could see that now. People would never act on their own. People had to be led.

By men like her father.

+++++

Baris Metin watched as America Eagle pulled away from the wharf, Captain Mendelssohn still steaming for Marseille to take on fuel, and this had left him nominally as the new captain of the Disco Volante. His contract with the Eagle Network had been amended to take account of his new rank – and he was more than pleased with this new salary – but this woman – a woman! – was officially in charge of the vessel. Peter Weyland himself had made that much clear to him.

She’d come onboard and gone directly to her stateroom, the last untouched space on the yacht that still retained all of her former glory, right down to the solid gold bathroom fixtures and mirrors on the ceiling over the king-sized bed. The yacht’s large engineering and deck staff was still onboard, but only a lone cook and two stewards remained, though they were here to look after the woman. 

Yet she’d not left her stateroom once since boarding.

The inter-phone chirped and he picked it up.

“Bridge here,” Baris said.

“Captain Metin?” the woman said.

“Yes, speaking?” He noted her voice carried the weight of someone in charge.

“Please set a course for Gibraltar that takes us north of Corsica and just south of Minorca, and get underway at once. Please maintain radio silence for now, so shut down the AIS for now, and all personal cellphones are to be switched off.”

“Yes Ma’am,” he’d just managed to say before the line went dead, so without thinking he dialed up the engine room. “Prepare to get underway,” he told the Chief Engineer before he rang off. He pulled up Corsica on the huge, though quite old, Raytheon chartplotter and studied the coastlines of Corsica and Minorca; there were few obstructions on the north coastline of Corsica aside from a few charted rocks off the northwest point, off the tiny island of Giraglia, and he’d keep those well to port when he passed Corsica. Then there was nothing but 320 miles of blue water to the island of Minorca, off the southern coast of Spain. Assuming there were no mechanical issues or need to refuel there, the last leg to Gibraltar was another 610 miles, so call the entire trip roughly 1200 miles, and the Disco Volante’s range, according to her logbooks, was 33-to-3,500 nautical miles, so refueling wouldn’t be necessary.

The Disco Volante’s ‘X-O’, or executive officer, was an eager kid from Buenos Aires whose great claim to fame was taking some kind of seamanship courses when he was still in preparatory school. Still, Baris saw that Diego Gardel was bright and eager to learn, but more importantly he understood that the kid was what he had to work with right here, right now. In a way, he told himself, the kid was probably a test, and as such he knew that Peter Weyland would judge him by how well he handled the kid. 

‘Tough, but fair,’ he reminded himself, the same way his best mentors in the navy had handled him.

Gardel had been on American Eagle for a long time. If the kid had a problem it was conceit, because with his blond hair and blue eyed good looks women considered him irresistible, and Baris thought the kid was vainglorious in the extreme. The scuttlebutt was that the kid was banging Britney and one of the other female stewards onboard, and Baris assumed that was why the kid had been transferred with him. With no female crew members onboard the Disco Volante…the kid would cause no more problems for Britney, and therefore Dr. Weyland.

The inter-phone chirped again and he picked up: “Bridge?”

“Ready to get underway down here,” the engineer said.

Baris chafed. The engineer should have addressed him as Captain, so the man was testing him, staking out his turf. “Who are you addressing?” Captain Metin snarled.

But then the line went dead.

He turned to Diego. “Please go to the engine room, Mr. Gardel. Have the engineering crew report to the bridge.”

“Aye, Captain.” The kid grinned and scampered off down the stairs.

Then he did as he’d been told; he called the chief steward and reported the transgression.

And now the chief steward was on the bridge as the chief engineer slouched his way up the stairs and onto the bridge, obviously taking his time, pushing the limit for all it was worth. His underlings appeared equally unenthusiastic

And before Baris could say a word the steward took out a silenced pistol and shot the engineer in the head. The man dropped like a sack of rocks and the other crewmen jumped to attention. But not Diego, Baris noted; no, Diego simply pulled the fallen engineer out of the way, making room for the steward to address the silent men from the engine room after he told them to come all the way up the stairs.

“Insolence on this ship will not be tolerated,” the steward said. “This man is the captain, and this is the executive officer, and when you address them, you will address them as such, by rank. It is Captain Metin, and X-O Gardel, and I understand this is something the former chief engineer decided not to do. So just a word of warning; we have an important mission to complete and we will maintain proper discipline for the duration. You will be paid handsomely, of course, as per your contracts; but break ranks and you will meet the same fate as Mr. Bartok. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Now, who among you feels ready to assume the chief’s duties?”

One man raised a hand.

The steward nodded at the man. “Miller, isn’t it?”

“Aye, sir.”

“You are now the chief engineer.”

“Aye, sir. Thanks you, sir.”

“Captain?” the steward said, turning to his ashen-faced ‘captain’. “Any further orders for your crew?”

“Prepare to get underway, Chief Miller,” Baris Metin said to the man, though he felt ill and that his world suddenly made no sense. “And everyone is to switch off their cellphones.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Dismissed,” Baris added, though he was not at all sure what the hell was happening on this vessel, but sure he wanted nothing more to do with these people. He watched as the steward and Diego pulled Bartok down the stairs, then he turned to the helm, doing his best to ignore the spreading pool of blood on the teak and holly floor underfoot. “Cast off all lines,” he said to the deckhands over the intercom; the three deck hands sprang into action, and a few minutes after American Eagle cleared port the Disco Volante followed in her wake. An hour later Baris changed course, making for their first waypoint.

When the kid returned to the bridge he sat silently, though he was looking at Baris with a strange grin in his eyes. “You want me to get that stuff off the floor?” the kid asked.

“Sure. Why not.”

“No problemo,” the kid said, still smiling. “This your first time?” he added.

“First time for what?”

“Company discipline. It can be a little harsh.”

“Harsh?” Baris said sarcastically as he pointed to the spreading stain. “Is that what you call this?”

“Yeah,” the kid said as he got a mop and some disinfectant from the cupboard opposite the stairwell, “my grandfather’s been with the group since the early days. He said it’s always been like this.”

“A television network? Really?”

“No, no, not the networks, the group. You know, the Eagle Group?”

“Oh,” Baris said, but he’d been in intel long enough to know when and how to play along. “How long have you been in – the group?”

“Oh, all my life, really. I grew up on the main campus.”

“Oh, that must’ve been interesting. Have you always been interested in boats?”

“Yeah. I belonged to the Youth Corps, and we had a big boating program. I learned navigation and stuff like that when I was ten years old…”

“At the main campus? Really?”

“Yeah. When did you do your initiation?”

“I haven’t been yet.”

The kid stopped what he was doing and looked at Metin suspiciously for a moment, then finished cleaning the floor before he disappeared down the stairs.

Baris usually felt good when he returned to the sea, but not today. After setting the autopilot when the ship reached its starting waypoint, he cycled through all the CCTV screens, looking at the crewmen in the engine room for the longest time. None of them had seemed particularly surprised when their chief was gunned-down right in front of them, and he wondered why. A few minutes later he watched the kid and the chief steward dump the engineer’s body overboard, then he watched the kid mopping up more blood on the aft deck and swim platform, and with that same vacuous smile on his face.

‘A campus? Something called the Eagle Group, with a campus.’ His mind was racing, chasing shadows while thinking about all the things he just didn’t know, yet one thing was certain. These weren’t good people; in fact, when he looked around this ship he felt nothing but evil and suddenly something like cold dread gripped his heart. ‘Why gut the ship aft of the bridge? Why had he been instructed to make this journey with the AIS switched off? And who the devil was that woman in the main stateroom?’

He cycled through pages on the chartplotter and stopped at the main radar screen. He saw a contact dead ahead and about ten miles ahead so picked up the binoculars and took a look.

It was American Eagle. And a large helicopter was landing on her helipad.

He put the binoculars down and looked around the bridge; suddenly he felt small, and very alone. 

And he wished he could talk to his brother, but radio silence meant no phone calls allowed and he didn’t want to end up like the chief engineer – in a spreading puddle of blood on his way to a watery grave.

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | this is fiction plain and simple, and nothing but. And no, no…We Won’t Get Fooled Again.