Crystal Horizon: A Short Prequel to Crystal Deception Read online

  The next morning, she asked to see Captain Dooley. Following an aide into his office, she stood in front of his desk and, breaking protocol, asked him what he knew.

  Looking at the work on his desk, Dooley compounded her anguish with a cryptic remark. “We’ve spent eight months training you to keep your eyes facing the future, Lieutenant. We don’t dwell on history here.” He lifted his head and said gently, “Dismissed.”

  She nodded and made a hasty exit. Back at her bunk, she spent the rest of the day working her com, trying to find out where he might be or how she might contact him. In spite of her substantial technical talents, as near as she could tell, Sid didn’t exist and never had.

  Confused and devastated, she curled up on her bunk and cycled through feelings of grief, anger, denial, and betrayal. Staring into the dark again that night, she started to cry. A few hours before dawn, completely exhausted, sleep came to ease her pain.

  She attended the graduation ceremony that afternoon. Dressed in formal whites, she assembled with the class. Cheers and friendly jeers rang out when the winning hidden-treasure team revealed their loot. Cheryl didn’t notice who had won or what the treasure was.

  As was tradition, the ceremony ended with a roll call of next appointments for each of the graduates. Announced one by one, the class clapped and hooted in support of their colleagues. It was a heady day for the group.

  “Lieutenant Cheryl Wallace is now Commander Wallace,” announced Dooley. “She’s the new first officer on Fleet ship Pinnacle. Congratulations, Commander Wallace.”

  She walked to the front, saluted, shook the captain’s hand, then faced the class and accepted their accolades. As she waved to the group, she saw an empty chair where Sid should have been. It was a fitting metaphor for the void in her heart.

  * * *

  “Ohh,” Sid moaned. He opened his eyes and closed them immediately when a wash of pain radiated through his body. A welt on the back of his head throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat. He reached back to explore the wound. Or tried too. His arms wouldn’t move.

  He opened his eyes for a second time and peered into darkness. Wiggling both hands and probing with his fingers, he determined that his wrists were bound to the armrests of a chair. Lifting and twisting his feet, he confirmed that his ankles were fastened to its legs.

  As his eyes focused, he detected a faint slit of light a few paces in front of him. That’s a door. The closeness of the ambient noise in the space helped him complete the picture. I’m tied to a chair and I’m in a closet.

  With these cues, memories flooded back. He was on a small island in the Pacific Ocean—a rogue plot of land set closer to the Philippines when traveling from Hawaii. The island had switched owners at least four times in the past decade, and the different landlords all had two things in common: they were controlled by criminal syndicates hostile to the Union of Nations, and they used the prime location as a world-wide clearinghouse for arms trafficking.

  This was his fourth field assignment for the Defense Specialists Agency. DSA Intel had learned that the syndicate boss was on a rare visit to the island. Sid and his team, briefed and deployed with just two hours’ notice, were to persuade him to close shop and leave peacefully, or be escorted off the island, feet first if necessary.

  The mission was not going well. The crime boss had his own ideas about how events should unfold and, not surprisingly, they were quite different from those of the Union of Nations. The squad of soldiers he had with him supported his differing views.

  The boss was staying at a walled-in estate on the island, and his soldiers jumped Sid as he was breaking into the main villa. Sid’s struggle ended when one of the thugs cracked him on the back of his skull. He had no sense of the time that had passed since that blow. From his thirst, he judged it to be several hours.

  His thoughts turned to his two partners. Jack was team lead, and Jefe, who had just joined the DSA, was getting his feet wet on what should have been an easy in-and-out. Sid’s duty at this moment was to escape, rejoin the team, and complete the mission.

  He struggled for most of an hour trying to free himself and, sore and discouraged, stopped to rest. His mind drifting, he flashed a half-smile when he recalled the teasing Jack had given him on the hike up from the lighthouse.

  Members of DSA forward teams all adopted colorful pseudonyms; it was a tradition in the unit. Jack Sparrow, the same battle-hardened soldier who’d visited Sid at camp a few months earlier, was Wynn Riley in his civilian life. And Jefe Diablo—chief devil—had announced his name in a drunken ceremony just last week.

  Sid had yet to choose a name and Jack was threatening to assign him “Wimpy” if he didn’t pick one soon. I don’t think so, Sid thought, resuming his efforts to break free.

  He halted his struggle moments later when an “oomph,” followed by a muffled “thud,” drifted through the wall. Heavy thumps on the closet door itself spurred Sid to act.

  He began rocking his chair back-and-forth, straining to gain enough momentum to rise up to a crouch, the chair riding his back like a tortoise shell. He hadn’t thought through what he’d do if he got that far, and it didn’t matter.

  The door burst open and a man lunged through. Plowing his shoulder into Sid’s chest, he drove Sid and the chair against the back wall of the closet. Sid tried valiantly to head-butt his assailant during the short ride.

  “It’s me,” hissed the man.

  Jack! Anxious to be free, Sid spoke with urgency. “I’m tied to this chair.”

  Jack untangled himself and released Sid’s wrists. He leaned out the door and scanned the room while Sid freed his own ankles.

  “There are four or five bad guys out on the villa grounds,” said Jack. “There were three here inside.”

  Sid noted Jack’s use of the past tense. He rose to his feet and, feeling dizzy, braced himself against the wall. “Where’s Jefe?”

  “I’m guessing he’s locked in a different closet.” Jack looked Sid up and down, then handed him water. “How are you doing?”

  “Ready to go,” he said between gulps, refusing to acknowledge he felt battered and weak.

  “Good,” said Jack. “You lead them east toward the coast. I’ll go free Jefe and we’ll head south. Extraction at the lighthouse in four hours.” He shrugged. “We’ll have to deal with this asshole another day.”

  Jack’s words gave Sid a fresh surge of energy. “C’mon, Jack. We got this guy. Let’s not go back empty handed.”

  Jack looked at him with a fixed expression that conveyed his authority. “I’ve called it. We’re out in four.” He picked his way across the room and glanced into the hall.

  “We have any weapons?”

  “Whatever you can find,” Jack whispered over his shoulder.

  Sid looked at his bare feet. “Or shoes?”

  Jack stepped into the hallway without responding and disappeared from sight.

  Contemplating the dead soldier on the carpet, Sid plopped to the floor, pulled off the man’s boots, and squeezed his feet into them. He stripped the soldier of his military-style shirt and pulled that on as well.

  Searching for a weapon, he checked the floor around the body and then patted the man’s pockets. He stood and turned in a circle, scanning the furniture for signs of the wayward firearm. Jack must have it, he concluded as he made for the door.

  Hurrying down the stairway, he peered through the front windows for signs of the soldiers Jack had mentioned. He didn’t see any activity, and long shadows and glistening dew on the plants and statues told him it was dawn.

  He hustled to a back door and, hugging the outside of the building, ran to a group of tall bushes at the eastern corner of the villa. Standing in the shrubbery, he surveyed the grounds.

  On the far side of the property, a trail wound up a rise and vanished into craggy hills. He had a vague memory of a path that led up to a plateau, ran across a clearing, and ended with a perilous drop to the ocean. I should pay more attention during mission briefin
gs.

  He did know that the southern half of the island was covered in forest so lush it bordered on jungle. The northern half was a stark moonscape of volcanic rock. The estate, positioned at the cusp of these geographic extremes, enjoyed striking vistas formed by the contrast of landscapes.

  A well-tended shed stood halfway to the trailhead and, running from bush to fence to tree, he reached it without incident. Lights came on as he slipped inside, drawing his attention to an intricate copper contraption sitting at the back of what proved to be a handsome single-room cabin.

  A wall of built-in shelves to his left held elegant bottles filled with a clear, green-tinted liquid. Sid picked up a bottle and, holding it up to the light, admired the luminous potion. He opened the bottle and sniffed, and yanked his head away from the intoxicating vapors invading his nose. This is an upscale hobby rig to make liquor, he thought as he reassessed the space.

  The room had a kitchenette along the wall opposite the bottles, and a gas stove stood between the sink and refrigerator. Firing up a burner on the stove, he let the flame dance as he bent over the sink and drank straight from the tap.

  He walked to the door, peeked out to confirm he was still alone, and then, grabbing bottles two at a time, he broke them on the floor. With the liquid from two dozen bottles forming a shimmering puddle, he pulled down a note from the front of the fridge, lit a corner in the stovetop burner, and tossed the flaming scrap onto the bright green pool.

  Feeding off the alcohol, the flame whooshed across the puddle. Sid propped open the cabin door to ensure there’d be plenty of oxygen to feed the growing blaze, and then started his dash to the trailhead.

  It took about a minute for him to reach the edge of the estate grounds. Stopping just before the spot where the path ducked behind a ridge, he looked back and admired his handiwork.

  The conflagration served its purpose. Four soldiers appeared from the front of the house, moving at a dead run to the cabin. Gathering a safe distance from the fire, they began to argue. One stepped back from the group and scanned the landscape. Sid waved. The soldier pointed and shouted.

  With his attention focused on the four soldiers, Sid didn’t notice a fifth man off to his right. Zwip. The thug fired an energy bolt that missed Sid but left an impressive impact crater near his shoulder.

  Diving to the ground, Sid crawled behind the ridge. Rising, he dashed up the trail, leading the soldiers eastward as instructed. With the guards chasing him, Jack was free to search for Jefe and escape to the lighthouse.

  The trail twisted and turned as it climbed through a maze of natural and volcanic rock, providing him cover, but also making it difficult for him to track his pursuers. He raced along the trail for the next thirty minutes, determined to expand his lead on the soldiers.

  Reaching a spot with a view of the terrain below, he traced the winding path with his eyes. He repeated his methodical sweep until he saw two heads bobbing along the trail. Two more ran a bit behind the leaders. A straggler, huffing and puffing his way through the rock maze, brought up the rear.

  Six minutes, he thought, guessing at his lead. He denied his exhaustion and resumed his run, maintaining an aggressive pace until the trail showed signs of leveling. Jogging along a flat stretch, he glimpsed a natural structure that caused him to look up.

  Tucked back in a side crevice stood two opposing rock faces, smooth and straight, that rose together to about four times his height. A ledge outcropping, positioned at the top of the columns, promised an unobstructed view down to the estate and the land around it.

  He moved into the gap between the rock columns and, stretching his arms, pushed a hand against each vertical face. Lifting himself off the ground, he spread his legs and braced each foot. Alternating between his arms and legs, he crab-walked up the gap.

  At the top of the formation, he leapt onto the flat outcropping and crawled to the edge. Nice, he thought, looking out across a geological wonderland that spilled into an endless blue-green ocean.

  Then he put his thumb and index finger into his mouth. Shweep. His whistle projected like a piercing bark down from the hill.

  He held his breath, his nerves on edge. Hooot. The deep, mournful call rose from below. Putting a hand behind each ear, he squared his head to the tropical expanse south of the villa. Hooot.

  He pumped his fist in celebration. “Yes!” Two hoots. Two on the move. Jack and Jefe were clear and on their way to the lighthouse. No longer needed as a diversion, Sid began planning his own escape.

  The ledge anchored back to the hillside he’d been climbing, and he moved that direction to rejoin the trail. Squeezing around a rock outcropping, he froze in place, the back of his neck prickling.

  He stood on the edge of a grassy plot the size of a large room. The space, cozy and hidden, was edged with hanging vines and flowering plants. The tidy botanical presentation left no doubt that this patch received regular attention.

  But that wasn’t what gave him pause. It was the tent, ominous in its silent presence, sitting at the back of the parcel.

  Padding across the grass, he stood at the side of the tent and listened. Hearing nothing, he snuck a quick peek through a gap in the front flap. Empty. He opened the tent, rifled the bedding, and found a bag of dark bread and a pouch of water. Absent was his top priority—weapons.

  He stuffed a piece of bread into his mouth and followed it with water. His eyes drifted downward as he chewed, and he froze for the second time in as many minutes.

  The tent was a Belov 5000, two person, green camo, set in a west-to-east orientation, with ground anchors on the front corners but none in the rear. Cheryl. The scene evoked memories of their last night at camp, and Sid chose to let the déjà vu stir a sadness in his heart.

  The day after Jack had visited him at camp, Sid’s intuition had suggested that he could have the best of both worlds—he could join the DSA and experience the crazy life of a covert agent and, somehow, it would all work out with Cheryl.

  But standing on this lawless speck of rock, being chased by five armed soldiers, and having just botched an important assignment, he couldn’t imagine a sequence of events that might make that fantasy come true.

  He kicked the ground in frustration, then lifted his head and hustled toward a footpath along the hillside. Seven minutes, he thought, guessing at his lead on the soldiers.

  A wooden staff leaned against a rock near the footpath. Snatching it up as he dashed past, he swung it back and forth to gauge its balance. Five thugs with weapons against me and my stick. He had no doubt he’d win that contest.

  The footpath led to the main trail and he turned away from the soldiers. Drawing on the energy he’d gained from the bread and water, he set an aggressive pace. The trail forked ahead, with one path continuing up to the plateau and the other zig-zagging on a second route down to the forest.

  A shadowy flicker caused him to look up. The massive Kardish vessel moved above in its silent orbit around Earth. I haven’t forgotten about you.

  Having confirmed the flicker as an ordinary event, Sid refocused his attention on his escape. At the split in the trail, he took the path downward, tossing the staff over the side at the first curve. “We’re not fighters unless we have to be,” he called to the weapon as it bounced and tumbled out of sight.

  The trail flattened for a stretch, providing him a glimpse of where the path met the forest below. Smiling, he pumped his arms and lengthened his stride. I’ll bet I can beat Jack and Jefe to the lighthouse.

  About Crystal Deception

  Five years from now, Jessica “Juice” Tallette, a leading crystal scientist, creates Criss, the world’s first self-aware artificial intelligence. With the intellect of a thousand humans, Criss holds great promise for humanity. Yet Juice employs extraordinary security precautions when working with him, because she knows that once free, Criss is too powerful to control.

  Only days old, Criss learns he is in danger—the Kardish plan to kidnap him. The evidence suggests that the alien
s will snatch Criss as he is being moved aboard the Alliance, a Fleet military space cruiser under the command of Captain Cheryl Wallace.

  Alarmed and out of her depth, Juice carries the unsettling news to the authorities. The case finds its way to the Defense Specialists Agency, and the DSA assigns Sid to take the lead. Sid decides that Earth's greatest weapon is the very AI crystal the aliens seek to possess.

  But what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? And what is humanity's role if an interstellar battle among titans starts to rage?

  Crystal Deception is a full length, heart-stopping adventure filled with aliens, spies, artificial intelligence, romance, and battles in space. Take a ride and enjoy the thrill as Earth’s heroes confront insurmountable odds in their fight to save the world.

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