The Menagerie 2 (Eden) (12 page)

She hesitated, causing concern with Whitaker.

“Ms. Moore?”

She stared at the symbols. The way through the gate was deciphering this cryptogram. “Give me a second, for chrissakes!”

She typed in the symbols she knew to be in context of their syntax. But the screens didn’t react. So she tried different symbols in different configurations. None of the tiles slid into place like they did on the laptop’s model.

“Ms. Moore, I thought you found the key.”

She shook her head.
So did I
.

Whitaker motioned to Goliath. “Grab Mr. O’Connell and place him in front of Ms. Moore.”

She stopped typing. “I’m trying my best!” she hollered.

“You’re best is not good enough. I warned you about taking unnecessary time.” He turned back to Goliath. “Do it.”

Goliath grabbed O’Connell by a thatch of hair on the crown of his head and began to drag the man across the floor.

“I’ll get it, Whitaker! Give me a chance to figure this out, will you?”

“We’re running out of time, Ms. Moore; therefore, you’re running out of chances. But it all comes down to this,” he told her firmly. “I find that by placing the balance of someone’s life into the hands of another is a sure motivator for those who have a sense of morality such as you, to dig deeper in order to find an answer. Should you find the key in time, then Mr. O’Connell will live. If not, then he will die at your feet as we’ve discussed. Did you think I was bluffing?”

“I’m
not
putting off matters, Whitaker!”

“If you wish to prolong the life of Mr. O’Connell, then I strongly suggest that you find the key. It’s that simple.”

She returned to the holographic keyboard and referred to the models on her laptop. The models worked stupendously, the symbols lining up. But the holographic keyboard and the archaic symbols on the large monitor weren’t cooperating.

She continued typing, praying, with every moment of failure bringing O’Connell closer to execution because she could not decipher an intergalactic puzzle.

Please, God! Why isn’t this working?

Her fingers moved with incredible quickness and dexterity, her programming meeting with one failure after another.

Whitaker walked over to the console where O’Connell sat on the floor grimacing with a bloodied hand closed over the wound in his shoulder. Whitaker’s face remained neutral when he spoke. “Now, Ms. Moore, the choice is yours to make. We’re running out of time—you, me, and Mr. O’Connell here.”

“You keep saying that we’re running out of time! Why are we run—”

Whitaker cut her off by placing the point of his weapon against the back of O’Connell’s skull. O’Connell, understanding Whitaker’s play, froze with his hands held upward and outward as if holding back a wall of air.

“I’ll give you to the count of five, Ms. Moore. Not a moment more.”

“Whitaker—”

“One.”

“—please, I’m doing what I can! Don’t—”

“Two.”

“—do this!”

O’Connell began to shake uncontrollably.

“Three.” Whitaker’s voice remained even and controlled. “Two.”

Alyssa began to cry, her fingers typing.

More failures.

Whitaker wrapped his finger around the trigger.

 “STOP!” Savage’s voice was strong and loud. “Just . . . stop.”

Alyssa looked at him with eyes that were red and raw from the sting of tears.

“This looks to be a ciphertext,” he said.

Whitaker never lowered his weapon. “A ciphertext?”

Savage nodded. “A secret message within the code,” he said, walking to the large screen and pointing at the symbols. “These designs are somewhat recognizable and correlate with lettering and script found inside this ship and elsewhere. They also seem to follow a certain pattern, that of singular syntax. However, within this blueprint of symbols I see a very particular design—one that seems obvious to those who know what to look for.”

“Really.” Whitaker lowered his weapon, causing O’Connell to completely take to the floor, his wounded shoulder pressing downward, which allowed his blood to pool beneath him in the form of a halo. “Apparently Ms. Moore does not see as you do,” he stated.

“That’s because you’re forcing her under duress.”

“I’m motivating her.”

“You’re breaking her thought process,” he told him angrily. And then he leaned forward against the holographic console, though he could not feel anything solid beneath his palms as he did so. He was being held up by the image of the tabletop, action versus reaction, the energy reacting to the resistance of his weight settling. “Honey,” he said softly. “Do you see it? Do you see the design within the design?”

She looked at the configurations on the large screen.

“Look carefully,” he told her. “It’s hiding in plain sight.”

And then she saw it, a design within a design, a prominent pattern.

“I see it,” she whispered. And then louder: “I see it!” With her fingertip she tapped three figures on the holographic tablet, the symbols zooming large against her touch and becoming a pattern of their own.

“Of course,” she whispered. They were the symbols of
their
origin,
their
gateway. The designs were the stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka—the symbols on the screen correlating to the exact positions and sizes of these stars in the Orion Belt.  

Suddenly the screen winked off.

“What happened?” asked Whitaker.

As the last word left his mouth the screen winked on. Innumerable files and data began to scroll along the holographic monitor.

“We’re in!” Alyssa cried.

Whitaker looked down at O’Connell. “You, my friend, are a very . . . lucky . . . man.” He then stepped over O’Connell who continued to lie on the floor bleeding and grimacing. With a tormented expression, the wounded man agonizingly labored into the sit-up position.  

“You have once again saved the day,” Whitaker told Alyssa. And then to Savage: “It seems that Mr. O’Connell owes you a debt of gratitude.” He faced O’Connell and gave him a smile of malicious amusement, and then he turned back to Savage bearing the same smile, the same Cheshire grin. “It appears that you’re not just a pretty face in the crowd, Mr. Savage. You apparently have an eye for detail.”

Whitaker was correct. When they were inside Eden, it was John and his keen eye for abstract things that saved their lives. Puzzles and riddles, equations and ancient ciphers marked the temple walls, requiring them to solve challenges while traps and ambushes weighed down on them, killing team members and mercenaries alike. Eden was not the place of religious texts—a Paradise. What they found instead was a place of unimaginable horror. But it was Savage who saw the elements that led to the answers that saved their lives, just as it was he who had seen the configuration within the pattern that saved O’Connell’s.

He looked at O’Connell who sat on the floor, their eyes locking.

O’Connell nodded in appreciation.
Thank you for giving me more time
.

Savage answered with a vaguely perceptible nod of his own.
You’re welcome
.

Schematic files to alien data scrolled along the monitor, denoting the minutiae of science well beyond the current boundaries of known physics. Formulas and equations ran vertically on the screen as well, answers to mysteries. Everyone watching held an appreciative eye of wonderment.

“Are we catching this?” yelled Whitaker.

“The flash drives are picking everything up,” said Maestro. “We’ll be able to take stills of each file and document them.”

The files started to scroll along the screen in blinding revolutions, the images becoming a blur.

“They’re moving too fast,” noted Goliath. “The Unit can’t record that quickly.”

“Slow it down, Ms. Moore,” ordered Whitaker.

Alyssa began to type in orders. The images continued to move vertically along the screen at a blinding rate of speed.

“Now, Ms. Moore!”

She touched down on the image she recognized in Eden and at Göbekli Tepe, the sign meaning stop, usually more of a warning rather than a command on a keyboard.

The images on the monitor froze. They appeared to be mathematical formulas, intricate expressions to an archaic science that was nevertheless light years beyond current understanding.

“How many files scrolled passed?” asked Whitaker.

Alyssa shrugged. “It could have been thousands,” she informed him. “Perhaps tens of thousands. There’s no way of knowing.”

Whitaker sighed. “Can you bring up a specific file?”

She looked at the keyboard, at the strange symbols. “I don’t know.”

“I need just one.”

“I said, I don’t know.”

“Ms. Moore, the file I’m looking for is in regards to the harnessing and manipulation of energy. That’s all I want. I’m not interested in anything else. I don’t care about the scientific gems this databank has to offer, other than what I’m looking for. Is that clear?”

“I don’t know the system,” she told him. “You asked me to tap into it . . . And I did.”

Whitaker leveled his gun at Alyssa, prompting Savage to take a step forward. Goliath, however, placed the tip of his weapon against Savage’s skull, reminding the ex-SEAL that if he took another step forward, it would be his last.

“You know those symbols, Ms. Moore. You know the codes and the syntax layout of the language. Find the file regarding this ship’s energy source. And say nothing more.” He lowered his weapon. “Just do it.”

She looked at John, who gave her an assuring wink.

And then she began to type.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When Alyssa Moore discovered
the
file, she did so by taking the most logical path. And since genius was in simplicity, she started with the obvious.

The first key she hit was the symbol of Mintaka, the sign
۝
, which represented the brightest star in the Orion Belt, having the luminosity 90,000 times greater than the Earth’s sun and producing the greatest source of energy. From there she used the formulaic route of putting the proper sequence of known symbols and characters by the design of their syntax. In less than ten minutes she discovered the data reservoir regarding all things energy, including corresponding formulas and equations, schematics and designs, mathematical configurations and geometric blueprints—
everything
was a prodigious mosaic of facts.

She also learned that she could track files by dragging the page along the holographic tablet with her fingertip like flipping the page of an electronic book, the file showing up on the large screen as well.

Cuneiform symbols and archaic characters filled the screens along with schematics presumed to be machinery, their operations unknown.

On the fifth screen, after flipping through the files, was an overview floor plan of the Menagerie. From the vantage point of the diagram, she could see that the containment cells were patterned in a symbolic way to represent the configuration of stars within the Orion Belt. Each cell had been positioned on the floor to mark to the creature’s precise location within the Belt, its point of origin, with their placement serving as a structural map of the universe.

Those predators on the outskirts, those whose containment cells had been distanced from the main arena, were those beyond Orion’s Belt.

She flipped to the next page.

It was a facsimile of the previous page, that of the Menagerie. But this time there was a large Grid Sphere rotating in the center of the floor plan. The image glowed and pulsated in steady rhythm as it hovered above the floor.

Whitaker moved closer to the large screen. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the source.”

“I don’t recall seeing an orb of any kind in the Menagerie,” said Goliath.

Whitaker concurred. That particular space within the Menagerie had always been, at least to memory, vacant. He turned to Alyssa. “Ms. Moore?”

“From what I can tell,” she started, “the enclosures are patterned to represent the placement of stars within Orion’s Belt. This particular orb, however, represents Orion’s major star, Mintaka. It’s the highest producing source of energy within the constellation.”