Chapter Eighteen: Vulnerable

Kate sat cross-legged in the center of the room. Her long brown hair, braided down her back and, like her mother, not one hair was out of place.

Her wrists rested motionlessly on her knees. She was a statue, with her eyes closed and her focus on the future. All the doubts she had about her brother, all the fears she had about herself. She let them all breathe in her mind’s eye just long enough to snuff them out.

Kate could not afford to carry all that baggage with her to Mars. When the last drop of doubt fell away, she lifted her hands and reached forward for her staff, laying on the ground in front of her.

As soon as she laid her hands on it, she tumbled forward and rolled out onto her feet. She stretched forward with her left hand, holding the staff out and reached back with her right foot. Her body was elongated and moved smoothly across the floor.

This began an elaborate dance between her and her staff. She twirled it over her head and underneath her feet. She tumbled across the floor and in a balanced dance that looked more like a ballet than an exercise in hand-to-hand combat.

When she finished she knelt down on the floor and spent a few moments calming her breath and clearing her mind. Then she stood up and headed back to her quarters.

But she didn’t get far.

William was sitting on one of the benches in the atrium outside the council chamber. He stood up as she approached.

“I didn’t have the heart to interrupt you,” he told her. “You’re as graceful as your mother.”

Kate paused, swallowed her pride, and said, “thank you.”

“I wanted to speak to you about a couple of things.”

“What?”

“Well, first I think they’re listening in,” William said. “I don’t believe they have a mole, or Lucas has turned. And I’m certain that James is not with them.”

“How can you be sure?” Kate asked.

“For one,” he began, “they would know more. Just being aware of the Nekuia is nothing compared to the things James knows about this place and this family. Second, he would not have been so willing to surrender before if his treachery had been so deep. Besides – I’d still like to believe in him.”

Kate took a seat on the bench, and William sat down beside her.

“I must admit, I think Lucas sent that message.”

“Do you think they are getting to him?”

“No, I think they mentioned the Nekuia to him, and somehow he was able to send us word,” William continued, “although they might have planned on that. But, I’m certain he believed he was trying to warn us. Not trap us.”

“Do you think James is on Mars?”

“What better place to hide,” he said. “In all the galaxy, it’s the one spot where the people do not care who he is or who he was, the one place that the rest of the system does not care to look at or pay any mind. It is a place where he could hide.”

“Do think he’ll be waiting?” Kate wondered.

“Perhaps.”

“Do I want him to be?”

William laughed. “Perhaps.”

Then he stood up and reached out his hand to Kate. “The other thing I want to show you.”

She took his hand and the two headed off down the long corridor away from the main grounds of the compound.

“Where are we headed?”

“To the hanger,” he said. “The first prototype is complete.”

“The gunship is ready?”

“We test it this afternoon.” 

Chapter Seventeen: The Next Mission

Kate stood in the vestibule to the Alexander Library. The round room housed two glass walls within it, creating a small hallway from one doorway to the next.

Etched into the glass were two family trees. One tree depicted the first several generations of the family. It began with Paul, the one who was first given the box, and all his decedents to the day of the Massacre. The other tree began with the five survivors of the Massacre and their descendents to date, which amounted to only two generations.

Kate’s grandmother was one of those five survivors and her mother was the first born in that new world.

She stared at the tree and slid her finger up the trunk over her grandmother’s name, her mother’s name and her own.

James was next to hers, but her brother would never keep the line going. He was lost to the family. At worst he was a fugitive who would likely face execution if he was ever caught. At best he was a traitor who may spell the end of the Alexanders. Kate was still uncertain.

She wanted to believe he wasn’t working with the Machinists. She wanted to believe he wasn’t telling them about the Nekuia and didn’t help them kidnap Lucas. Even though her mother seemed to think he wasn’t, Kate just couldn’t be sure.

This meant it would be up to her. She’s the only one who could keep her branch of the Alexander family going.

For the first time in her life she felt an obligation to continue the line.

The only person she could think of having a child with was Eric, her bodyguard. She trusted him. And, she did love him.

The entrance doors to the vestibule opened and her bodyguard, Eric, approached. She let her hand drop away from the glass wall, and turned to face him.

“Preparations are underway,” he told her.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll be in the training room.”

Kate walked away and headed off to work out. She let the thoughts of the family tree fall away as she headed down the corridors toward the training room. She needed to turn her attention to the next mission. She needed to prepare for a different kind of battle.

In just two days, she and Eric would be en route to Mars, in search of James.

Chapter Sixteen: The Root of the Problem

“We can’t be sure if they know anything,” William said. “All of this is speculation until we’ve completed the trace.”

“When will that happen?” Sun asked.

“By tomorrow,” he responded.

“Very well,” she said. “Then we wait.”

“But what happens if they do know?” Maria asked.

“How could they?” Fernando added.

The room went quiet. Not a whisper could be heard across the chamber council. Everyone waited for a response from Sun when Maria suddenly spoke up.

“It’s true Lucas could have been turned,” she admitted. She had already considered that his inexperience could make him an easy target for the Machinists. But, everyone knew what Fernando meant.

The most obvious way the Machinists would know about the Nekuia was if someone told them, someone like James.

“We may think we know,” Sun began. “But it would unwise to make any assumptions. It could be the obvious choices, or it could be someone we’ve never considered.”

She was careful not to mention the name.

“They could also have some kind of technology that allows them to eavesdrop on our conversations,” William suggested. “Even if they told us it was someone specific, we can’t trust that.”

He was also careful not to mention any names. “If Trent is anything like his father, he’s deceitful and captivating,” he added.

“If he’s anything like his father, Lucas is already dead,” Fernando interjected.

Sun did not say a word, but immediately stood up and walked away. She left the council chamber without another word spoken.

No one ran after her either. She quickly crossed the main entrance hall outside the council chamber and headed into the library.

Walking quickly past the Alexander family trees in the vestibule, the shelves and shelves of ancient paper books, the displays of by-gone printers, and into the depths of the library where the office of the Librarian was located. She approached the large wooden door and placed her hand on the glass panel beside it. A small communicator window appeared just above the panel.

Kate looked at her mother, and the large door opened. The screen with Kate’s face in it disappeared, and Sun headed down the long hallway. Before she reached its end, another large wooden door opened.

Kate sat at her desk, surrounded by small screens and large, paper books. One of those screens still showed the inside of the council chamber.

“I take it the meeting is over,” she said.

“It is,” Sun responded. With that Kate switched off her communicator and the screen went black.

“Fernando is just as crass as usual,” Kate added.

“He’s socially inept, but good with numbers,” Sun responded. “I want to ask you a favor.”

Kate stopped working, and looked up at her mother. “You never ask for favors,” she said.

“No, I don’t. But this is different.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m asking because I know this is a task you don’t want, but you are the best and most reliable person for it,” Sun told her.

“For what?” Kate asked.

“I believe James is on Mars, and I want you to find him.”

Chapter Fifteen: Message in a Bottle

“We don’t know what they want,” Maria said.

“They’ve made no demands?”

“No,” she said. “They only said he is with them, and he is safe.”

The leaders of the Builder’s Guild sat on Maria’s communicator as if they were sitting in her office. She could see every wrinkle on their faces, every ounce of their fears, and every doubt in their minds.

“Is that exactly what they said?” one of the members asked.

“Why?” she wondered.

“Could he be with them?” he continued. “As in, on their side.”

“Absolutely not,” she responded. “We think that’s what they were trying to imply. Maybe they are simply trying to deceive us; maybe they just need to buy some time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time to prevent us from preparing for war,” she said. “The truth is we don’t know. But we need to be ready for anything. The one thing we know about the Machinists is that they are dangerous and they have no trouble murdering people.”

“We are only builders, Maria,” one of the members said to her. “We are not soldiers.”

“We don’t want you to be soldiers; we are only asking you to build. Build ships, great ships we can use to defend ourselves, ships we can use to defend the people. Even ships we can use to fight back.”

“We will help,” the leader said. He was a tall man with a thin face and sallow cheeks.

“We’re putting together a plan,” Maria told him.

“What kind of plan?” he asked.

“A rescue plan,” she said.

“Good,” one of the members barked out.

“What do you mean ‘good’? If we want to discover their plan of attack, we can’t send in a rescue team and hope for best,” another member shouted out in response. “We need to find out what weapons they have before we can take them on.”

“There is no action without planning,” the leader stated. “Let us start from the beginning and worry about the endgame if we get there.”

No one responded or shouted out.

“We will build your ships,” he told her. “Be well.”

“And you,” she said.

With that the communication ended. Maria sat back in her chair, placed her hand over her forehead, and tried to imagine what Lucas was going through.

He had been protected and sheltered his entire life. Not once did difficulty knock at his door. Until the day his father came home and said he had cancer.

With all the technology and advances humans had seen and discovered since the box arrived on Earth, cancer was still a something that had not been conquered. The box revealed secrets about the universe, secrets about physics, but it was not written by humans. It was not built by beings who knew the secrets of human anatomy.

That was still something humans needed to learn on their own. And cancer was something no one had learned enough about.

It was still something any person could die from. And Lucas’s father did. It was the first taste of real life Lucas ever experienced. Less than a year ago, he was suddenly sitting on the council with no real understanding of what that meant. He only understood it was a task he could not walk away from.

Maria wondered how someone so naïve would survive surrounded by some of the toughest men in the solar system, a world away from his own. She could only imagine him being swallowed whole by the Machinists.

That’s when the beep sounded. It echoed between her office walls like a siren, reminding her she had a message waiting. She finally opened the message. It was from Lucas, and it was only one sentence long.

“They know about the Nekuia.”

She was motionless, soundless, even thoughtless. What did that mean? Who knows about the Nekuia? The Machinists?

And was the message really from Lucas? Not just anyone could send her a message through that system, but it could still be accessed by a handful of people. And Lucas was kidnapped. He was naïve and weak enough in Maria’s mind to be taunted, to be tortured, to be turned.

The first thing she did was turn on her communicator and ask for William.

Chapter Fourteen: United We Stand

The family was coming together. Maybe it was the Nekuia, or maybe it was Lucas. Something inspired the Alexander clan to unite.

Most of them were too young to remember, but things hadn’t been this collaborative since the Massacre. A generation ago a small group raided the compound and killed most of the family. After that everyone worked together to rebuild, support each other and make the family great again.

This time they came together for different reasons. They knew someone was coming. They knew there was an enemy at the door. So, this time, they came together to defend. The point was to protect before anyone was lost, not to rebuild after they were already taken.

And Lucas was foremost on everyone’s mind.

The Machinists, who kidnapped Lucas, had taken him to their base on Mars. There was only one place on that planet where a group like the Machinists could grow and organize without so much as a rumor slipping out about their existence – the Prosperity Ghetto.

This was the area where the first colony was built. The first planet humans settled. When the Moon was still just a hub, people came to Mars. It soon lost its charm and began to erode until those looking for a place to hide called it home.

This was the one place in the solar system they could hide.

The Machinists believed the Alexanders lied about the box, lied about how they got it, and how it worked. They thought it should be something the world could access, not just one family.

But they were wrong. Only an Alexander could open the library stored within it. It was always meant to be limited. It was always meant to help humans ask the right questions, never to present them with the right answers.

The family knew this. They had been learning how to use the box for hundreds of years, and had just begun to understand its purpose – to help the human race survive.

But if the Alexanders were going to save anyone today, they wanted it to be Lucas.

The first step was to look for allies on the red planet. In order to mount a rescue, they were going to need friends. Maria, the Ambassador, worked her magic and a special team of soldiers was assembled for the task.

While they studied Mars, the ghetto and the history of the group, Hermes and the Engineering Panel continued their own projects.

These projects were the first steps in a war against an unseen enemy. An enemy the Alexanders could not see or hear or touch. The Nekuia only really existed inside the box. These mysterious beings from another world haunted them like ghosts. They knew the Nekuian system existed and, according to the box, there was a dangerous race of beings in that system, a race that only wanted to destroy everyone else in the galaxy.

The Alexander clan could not prove the Nekuia were real or even dangerous. All they could do was prepare for the worst, prepare to defend themselves.

The first blueprints for warships were complete. The factories to build these machines were already under construction. And the army grew larger everyday.

The family continued to prepare for battle, continued to work together. They had one enemy they could see and one they could not. Somehow seeing just one enemy, the Machinists, was enough to support both theaters. At least, for now.

Chapter Thirteen: To Know the Enemy

William pushed forward again. He swung high, but was blocked. He swung low, and was blocked again. Then he tried to stab forward, sending out a small bolt of electricity to shock his opponent.

But she knew all his tricks, and had already tumbled backwards gracefully and well out of reach.

Then Sun was on the attack. With William outstretched, she hit his staff hard to knock him off balance. She swung her glowing hot staff low, hoping to singe the tops of his shoes. But he had used the momentum she gave him from hitting his staff, and turned away just in time.

She continued to swing around, this time higher, and hit him square on the shoulder, but he blocked her. For a moment, that’s where they stood, facing each other. Her glowing staff only inches from his left shoulder. His staff starting to gain back electricity, glimmered as he held it straight up down his left side.

They were both breathing hard from the battle and glistening with sweat. Sun smiled, and William began to lean in for a kiss.

Suddenly the doors to the training room opened, and Kate walked in. William and Sun smiled at each other again, then backed away to face their guest.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have news that cannot wait,” she told them.

“Go ahead,” Sun told her.

“Hermes suggested we consult the box for designs for a gunship.”

“Yes, we know,” William said.

“His question was far simpler than you and I discussed.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he responded.

“He instructed Maria to ask for battleships, specifically to fight the Nekuia. He thought that if the beings who gave us the box intended to help us fight them, they might have had such designs. And they did.”

“What do mean specifically designed to fight the Nekuia?” Sun asked.

“The ones who gave us the box, they knew how to fight them. They just didn’t have the time to build an army,” Kate told them. “The Nekuia have a weakness, and now we know what it is.”

Chapter Twelve: Down the Rabbit Hole

Lucas woke up. Again, not knowing where he was. He remembered talking to the leader of Machinists. He remembered finding out who Trent was, and how he revived the group. Then they hit him with the sonic sleeper for the second time two days. And his ears were already starting to hurt.

He sat up and looked around. The room was small. One bed was up against the wall and a toilet sat in the opposite corner. It had no doors, no windows.

His heartbeat and his breath quickened. He’d seen plenty of rooms before that had no visible doors. But sitting there in an unknown place with no visible exit was almost too much for the young Alexander.

Lucas was just about to give in to his paranoia when a crack appeared in one of the walls. He started to calm the moment it did. Just knowing it existed was enough.

The crack grew vertically, then hit a corner and turned, creating a long rectangle. The door opened and Trent walked through.

“Hello, son,” he said.

Lucas looked up at him. “If you hit me again with the sleeper, you could damage my eardrums permanently,” he told him.

“As long as I have a choice, I won’t,” Trent said.

“And you didn’t have a choice the last time?”

“That’s a long story,” he said, taking a seat on the bed. “I’ve told your family we have you in custody.”

“In custody?”

“I am your custodian, and I will look after you.”

“You mean you have me held prisoner.”

“We only want to speak with you, Lucas.”

“About what?”

“The Nekuia,” Trent said bluntly.

“What?” Lucas asked. He was shocked that Trent even knew that word, that name. He tried to play off his surprise by acting like he did not know the word either. “The what?”

“We both know they exist,” Trent said. “But, unfortunately, not much more than that. That’s why you’re preparing for war.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s Ok. You don’t have to admit anything,” Trent told him. Then he reached out his hand. “Come with me. I’ll show you what I know. Then you will know we’re on the same team.”

“We’ll never be on the same team,” Lucas said coldly. “You’re murderers and we’re not.”

“Just come with me, son.” And he stretched out his hand a bit farther. Lucas hesitated at first, but then reached out and grabbed it.

The two exited the room together and Lucas found himself traveling down another long hallway. At the end was a sealed door. Trent opened it and the two walked through into a large room with windows, lots of windows.

Lucas could just see the light exploding on the other side of the door, but when he walked through he stopped dead in his tracks. He walked straight up to the wall of windows and just stood there, staring.

The vast red desert stretched out before him, and he knew. He finally knew exactly where he was. And which planet he was on.