Violet Odyssey - Chapter 3

 

The rest of the ride was eerily quiet. For my part, I couldn't put any useful thought into words. Colonel Killough had retreated to his enviable stoicism, wearing a glower that would've made Plato nervous. The Staff Sergeant and Crew Cut had disappeared behind their professional masks again.

I pressed my cheek against the cool window glass and let my mind wander out of the jeep and into the sky, following ribbons of teal aurora over not-quite-solid stone battlements and into clandestine towers of gleaming brass. I imagined what it would be like to sit on the edge of those hard-light walls and watch the sunrise race toward me, or see the moon skim over the Sierra Nevadas.

Normally, thoughts like that would've lulled me to sleep.

Not tonight.

Not after the bone-chilling revelation Chuckles—the comedian Colonel—had just dropped in my lap.

Two weeks after graduating high school, I'd watched the Aeris kick the laws of matter and energy squarely in the teeth before disappearing so completely it nearly gaslit ROSCOSMOS into believing we'd fabricated the whole thing.

And now the truant shuttle was broad-beaming my dad's nickname for me—"Richie"—over the military distress frequency?

It was going to take a lot of Mtn. Dew and sour gummy bears to fuel the sleepless weeks of study I had ahead.

So much for getting to the base gym like I promised Clair.

I pinched my love handles with quiet despair.

Before long, the gravel road leveled onto pristine concrete—the kind of highway only obscene government contracts could buy. The dark southern Utah wilderness gave way beneath the metal-halide lamps I'd been looking down on half an hour earlier. Their corrosive light bleached the color from everything. Spruce faded from deep forest green to pale sage. The canyon walls softened from rich red to washed-out pink.

I hated every part of it.

My heart briefly ached for the screech owls no one had seen between Orem and St. George since the construction of BAF1—Brigham Astronomica Facility One—and its nearly empty highway plastered with artificial light.

As I ruminated on the uneasy relationship between scientific discovery, spiritual discovery, and nature, the roadway itself stole my attention.

The lane we were traveling in flashed yellow. Arrows swept left, directing us toward the center lane for entry into BAF1. Crew Cut complied with the insistent LEDcrete just before our lane dissolved into a faded red hash-marked shoulder. One-foot bollards rose from the pavement on either side with a dull mechanical whir, hemming us in as we approached a trio of imposing steel arches. Their flat tops bristled with cameras and electronic signs barking instructions at incoming traffic.

It all might have seemed almost welcoming...

...if not for the soldiers standing in guard towers on either side of the road, M16s at the ready, their deep-red night-vision lenses reflecting the light of the Brass City hanging overhead.

Once we'd passed beneath all three arches—the third making the hair on my arms stand straight up as the EM veil went about its homicidal duty of frying any electronics not tucked safely inside a very exclusive VICA-issued case—the atmosphere of the facility changed dramatically.

I sat up straight and blinked several times, my mouth falling open despite myself.

I'd never seen an Astronomicon's inner gates beneath the light of the Violet Incursion before. Few people had. And no one had seen BAF1's. It had only been built eight years earlier.

The placid military architecture, born of necessity and function, gave way beneath the torrential influence of artists, spiritualists, savants, and intellectual creatives.

BAF1's inner wall stood eighteen feet tall, carved from solid white limestone and stretching around the heart of the facility. It was crowned with pale red brick quarried from the same canyon country that had made Utah famous long before the Odyssey. Gleaming brass spikes rose every twelve feet along the top, becoming an endless chain of golden lights disappearing into the darkness on either side.

The gates themselves were metal.

At least...

I assumed they were.

They didn't resemble any metal I'd ever seen on Earth.

Twisting emerald-green posts framed great slabs of polished black granite. Between them, towering sheets of stained glass depicted a triumphant procession of white-robed pioneers standing before the open gates of the Brass City, golden light spilling over their outstretched arms and awestruck faces.

On the right side of the mural stood another line of figures.

Their heads were bowed.

Everyone knew their names.

Jean Belouvem, the seventeenth-century French explorer who ascended in a balloon during an Odyssey Year and later painted, entirely from memory, some of history's most famous depictions of the Brass City.

Sherry Rincon, the Australian politician whose diplomacy between the Middle East and Western Europe forged the alliances that still kept VICA's pockets full.

Gino Miconi, the SR-71 pilot.

Chastity Palmer, flying before women were officially allowed to.

Ethan Indross, the biologist whose inoculant made working with fission materials dramatically safer.

Hisui Fei, the chemist who developed the solid fuel that launched Aeris—and the satellite fleet a decade later.

And Richard Ryan Sr.

Captain of Aeris.

My father.

They all stood eternal vigil over the facility beyond, immortalized for what VICA believed were indisputable contributions to the Odyssey.

The gate stood open when we arrived, and Crew Cut swung the jeep into a parking garage just inside the facility.

I glanced past Staff Sergeant Rivers' window as BAF1 slipped from view, its great cupola glowing with teal and violet light, glittering in defiance of the deepening night.

We descended into the underground garage reserved for military personnel and foreign delegations before parking beside an elevator flanked by yet another stern-looking man in a crisp green jumpsuit. An MP sash crossed his chest, and an M249 rested against his waist.

The echo in here would probably kill you before the bullets did if that thing ever went off, I thought as we passed him.

His razor-sharp salute was returned by the Colonel with little more than a distracted flick of the hand.

The elevator hummed thoughtfully as we stepped inside, a black lens in the upper corner silently reading our biometrics. Colonel Killough pressed his palm against the scanner, keyed in a short code, and the cab climbed for several seconds before shuddering gently to a stop.

The doors slid open.

Immediately, a soldier in blue-black camouflage ACUs stumbled backward into the elevator, shoving us all a step inside.

Then the noise hit.

Questions.

Shouting.

Camera shutters.

Microphones.

The harried MP was trying desperately to hold back a wall of reporters while two more military police fought to keep the crowd from spilling into the elevator. Staff Sergeant Rivers sighed, stepped around me, and joined the effort without being asked.

"Colonel! Any comment on the transmission?"

"LEAF-SEA demands accountability! I have my permit!"

"Who is this with you? Has he been requested by the Seers of the Sky? We—"

"Colonel! Just a moment of your—"

Colonel Killough never broke stride.

He walked straight through the mob as though it simply wasn't there.

Rivers caught my shoulder and steered me after him.

A clipboard jabbed into my ribs. Rivers slapped it aside without even looking, fixing its owner with a stare that could've frozen lava.

The woman clutching it wore a green kurta and the well-practiced expression of someone professionally offended.

We crossed the lobby toward the main stairwell, where cordons and another line of MPs prevented the press—and every imaginable special-interest group—from venturing any farther.

I glanced up.

The stained-glass cupola stole the breath from my lungs.

Beautiful beyond words.

The Brass City shone through the colored glass, scattering ribbons of crimson, violet, sapphire, and emerald across the white stone below. They danced over the great mosaic set into the center of the lobby: VICA's three concentric rings crowned by three brass triangles.

The symbol stared upward at the City beyond.

In twenty-three short hours...

...the tiles would win the staring contest.

A seating area to the right of the stairwell was packed with men and women in matching suits. Each wore a broad brass-gold stripe running from the collar down the right sleeve and, jarringly out of place against the otherwise immaculate tailoring, a boysenberry-purple armband embroidered with a cross flanked by stylized clouds.

Two dozen of them occupied every available chair, with several more sitting cross-legged on the floor. An elderly man dressed the same—save for a white scarf draped loosely over his shoulders, bearing the same cross-and-cloud emblem at either end—stood at the center of the gathering. He turned slowly as he spoke, meeting each member of his flock with an almost unsettling intensity.

"...the gifts of the Seers. It is important to remain ever watchful for the manifestation of your own, for each is chosen for a different purpose beneath the watchful eye of His projected kingdom. For while we linger..."

We climbed the stairs and out of earshot.

I rubbed my eyes. My earlier mirth and razor wit now lay face-down beneath a mounting headache and a weariness that had settled into my bones.

"We're meeting in the NSA conference room," Colonel Killough said. "Back in Gravitic Applications."

"I know where it is," I replied, more crankily than I'd intended.

I hated going into Gravitic Applications.

Bunch of arrogant math whizzes with a hard-on for entangled space-time vectors and less than divide-by-zero respect for nearly every other department—especially Acoustic-Harmonics.

Not much math in ACH.

They loved reminding us of that.

Colonel Killough simply stared at me, waiting patiently beside the security door.

Oh.

Right.

I dug through my jeans for my security badge. My stomach dropped for a split second before I found it wedged behind my wallet.

Military personnel couldn't enter the science wings of BAF1 without an escort from Administration or one of the research divisions.

Something about separation of government branches.

Or something like that.

I scanned my badge.

The lock clicked.

The door swung inward.

A sea of faces stared back at me.

For a heartbeat, nobody spoke.

Then one voice sliced clean through the silence, freezing my blood all over again.

"What's he doing in here?"

I didn't even need to look.

That voice belonged to my least favorite Senior Researcher.