One of the medical Klin address the Pleabaen, “He will be well in a few minutes; there doesn’t appear to be any brain damage.”
“Very good!” Linuso exclaimed, appearing truly excited with the prognosis. He looked over at Limmore.
“Almost ready,” the younger Klin said to Linuso, cryptically.
“Good. Now I will have Ludl escort the three of you to a room where you may rest and receive nourishment if need be. The events I spoke of before are coming to fruition. I will soon have you join me in the command center for the grand finale — oh I just love the way you Humans speak, with all your embellishments and colloquialisms. It shouldn’t be more than an hour now. Ludl, please show them to their quarters.”
“What about the others?” Adam said as he stood up, more sure of his footing than before. “We are a team.”
Linuso was silent for a moment before answering. “Very well, take them with you, too, including your two mule-driver friends. I’m sure you will all enjoy the show.”
Once in the anteroom, Adam was reunited with the other five from his group, looking tired yet anxious. Tobias took a closer look at Adam. “What the fuck did they do to you in there?”
“It wasn’t them — it was another Human, an SAS commando named McCarthy. He’s working with the Klin.”
“Follow me,” Ludl said from near the door.
The three SEALs turned toward him; Adam could sense them tensing up for a strike.
“Stand down,” he ordered. “It looks like we’ve all been invited to a special viewing of the latest interstellar blockbuster. Until then, they want us to wait in a room for about an hour — and that means all of us.” He made eye contact with Kaylor and winked his good right eye. He felt almost giddy from whatever the Klin had given him. Considering how shitty he had felt only minutes before, he was grateful for any relief. And if he ever saw that son-of-bitch McCarthy again….
Chapter 45
They were taken to a room only a few doors down the carpeted hallway from Linuso’s office. It was large and comfortable, with two beds, a couch and two chairs. Adam entered the room’s grooming station and cleaned up some before returning to the main room and falling onto one of the beds. Sherri nuzzled in next to him.
Riyad did the courtesy of filling in the others as to what had gone on inside Linuso’s office, while Adam rested his head in Sherri’s lap. The drugs were good, but damn, this was getting ridiculous.
“So what do you think this grand finale is,” Tobias asked Riyad.
“It’s obviously some major battle between us and the Juireans. The Klin appear to have an absolute hard-on for the event.”
“Do you think they’re going to interfere, to manipulate the outcome somehow?” Sherri asked.
“Undoubtedly, but to what end I don’t know. I can’t imagine them helping the Juireans to defeat us, and they still need our manpower to continue the war.”
“It sounds like they expect the war to end quickly…anytime now,” Master Chief Rutledge said.
“That doesn’t make sense,” offered Lt. Tobias. “The war’s only been going on for a few months. There’s still a lot of galaxy to cover.”
“Give it as rest, guys,” Adam said from the bed, his eyes closed, soothed by Sherri’s stroking of his hair. “All will be revealed soon, the head honcho told us. Right now, we’ll just drive ourselves crazy trying to second guess these crazy, backstabbing bastards.”
Everyone in the room was quite — for about a minute — before John Tindal broke the silence. “I say they’ll try to help the Juireans, just so the war will go on longer-”
“But I said it’s like they expect the war to end now,” Rutledge countered.
Jesus Christ! Adam thought. And the debate resumed unabated.
Chapter 46
The Klin war room, located six stories below ground level in the sprawling estate, was a masterpiece of technology and efficiency. It was almost forty-meters square, with every imaginable monitoring device, computer terminal and graphic display that the considerable scientific talents of the Klin could muster. And on top of all this, their communication relays were faster than anything else in the galaxy, allowing for near-instantaneous links from halfway across the galaxy. This was technology the Klin had never revealed to anyone, not in the time of the Alliance, and not now in a time of war. Only the Klin could boast of such technology — and the Klin never boasted.
And the fact that Pleabaen Linuso Summlin could receive real-time updates from anywhere in the galaxy allowed him to be one of the first Klin to receive the communique from the Fringe….
“This can’t be accurate,” he said to High Commander Senior Fellow Olin Puennel.
“Three separate monitoring stations have confirmed it. There is a new Human fleet moving into the Sector.”
Linuso looked once more at the datapad in his hand. “This speaks of five-hundred thirty-five new ships. What does Senior Fellow Lumonsee say about this from Earth?”
“We have not been able to make link with the Senior Fellow since receiving the report. We have only been attempting to contact him for about ten minutes. We are continuing to link.”
Limmore was standing next to the Pleabaen, looking up at the graphic of the Falor-Kapel system and at the forces moving into position there. “That new fleet is too far out to assist. The battle will be over weeks before it can be in the vicinity of Falor-Kapel.”
“Yes, I know,” said Linuso. “What troubles me is that we have had no reports of a fleet leaving Earth and heading for the Expansion. Surely Lumonsee would have known of it.”
“That would be expected. And yet here is this new fleet.”
Linuso smiled slightly and nodded his head. “Could the Humans have built this fleet unbeknownst to the Senior Fellow and all our spies and surrogates? If so, then maybe we have underestimated the Humans — or Lumonsee.”
“We have thousands of 2G’s and hundreds of surrogates who have infiltrated the entire structure of Human society. I can’t imagine them being able to accomplish this without our knowledge.”
“And that is why I am the Pleabaen, Limmore, because I can imagine it.”
He turned to the High Commander. “You must make contact with Lumonsee. I have to know what is happening on Earth.”
Linuso walked away, with Limmore flowing closely behind. He entered a large viewing room, lined with chairs like those in a movie theater. On one side of the room was a large plate-glass window looking out on the command center. On the opposite wall was a large screen, currently displaying the graphic of the Falor-Kapel system and the relative position of the warring parties. The differently-colored contacts were growing ever closer to each other. Linuso turned to Limmore. “Please have our guests escorted here now. It is about to begin.”
“What of McCarthy and Thomas?”
“Not them. When the truth comes out, I want them under close guard.”
“Understood, Pleabaen.”
Chapter 47
It was simply called The List, and it had taken over eight months to gather. Now the President of the United States, Daniel ‘Danny’ Ryan, was finally ready to make use of it.
The document sat on his desk — seventy-five pages wrapped in a dark blue vellum-bristol cover and spotting no title, simply a gold-embossed Seal of the United States of America. And the desk it rested upon was not the original Resolute Desk, the one that so many presidents before him had used. Rather it was a new desk, a plain and simple desk, moved here several months before from his underground bunker in the mountains of West Virginia. It also resided in a new White House, one hastily constructed on the grounds of the old one, but looking nothing like the original.