Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller by Brandon Ellis (best novels to read in english .txt) 📗

lock and knocking on their heads. They couldn’t be that dense, but why weren’t they thinking the obvious? “You mentioned that a change would set off pictures from TECS IV.”

“Yes, and it has.”

“Well, whoever it is that is already there, must have gotten there via a ship. That ship would have set off TECS IV to take pictures of the ship’s movement, where it landed, and so on and so forth.” He bit his cheek. “Am I thinking too much into this? Would it not detect that type of change?”

“It’s designed to detect changes and movement and snap a picture of the change and/or movement. I should know. I helped design and build the satellite. But, if a person was walking or running on that moon, that would be too small to detect.”

“God, do I need to spell it out?”

Fortunately, he didn’t. Another scientist was on the same wavelength. “Shaughnessy, how many images were sent today. Just this one?”

Shaughnessy tapped on his keyboard, looking it up. He squinted. “This is unreal. How did I not see this? It sent twenty-two pictures.”

Slade slammed through the doors and marched to the hologram. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Shaughnessy complied. They huddled around the holoscreen, watching images of the starfighter lifting into the air. Each successive picture showed it rising higher and higher off the ground. Shaughnessy tapped on his screen, then went to the hologram, pushing scientists out of the way, waiving his arm over the new image he just transferred from his computer to the holoscreen. “Look at the time. It hovered for eleven minutes. It then left so fast that TECS IV was unable to take another picture.”

Slade loomed over the image. “That’s not our propulsion technology.”

“It’s the technology Shaughnessy and I deciphered yesterday,” added Jaxx. “The Atlantean propulsion system.” He stepped forward, shaking his hands in a futile effort to relax. What he was about to say was not going to be popular. “If this is what we think it is, then we’re not dealing with any ships coming from Earth, or ships coming from any other system for that matter. If a ship entered Callisto’s atmosphere and landed there, the satellite would have taken pictures of that ship. Instead, all we have are pictures of a starfighter taking off from Callisto’s surface. Since TECS IV can’t pick up small movement, like people walking from place to place, then I think I know what’s going on.” He paused, surprised to see everyone actually paying attention to him. “I think we’re dealing with people or Beings still living on Callisto.”

Slade looked down for a second. “Very perceptive, Mr. Jaxx.”

“Did you know about this?” Jaxx asked.

“It was always a possibility.”

“Then we can’t go there.”

Slade crossed his arms and widened his stance. “Why is that?”

“It’s no longer an archaeological site. It’s someone’s home.”

“We don’t know who flew that starfighter off that moon,” Slade replied. “Let’s not speculate. We need to find out for a fact who it was.”

“And when you do, how do we approach them?” Shaughnessy inquired.

Slade eyes were cold and hard. “Peacefully.”

9 May 26thUnderfoot Black, Grenada

Again, Jaxx couldn’t sleep. He tossed in his bed only to throw the sheets off and head to the bathroom. He turned on the light, then splashed water on his face.

This project had been gifted to him by the archaeological gods, but Slade was anything but a gift. More of a demon. Intuition or not, Jaxx could tell Slade held back more information than he gave. Why? Why not tell your Atlantean expert everything you knew about Atlantean artifacts on a far-off moon? Did they think he was a security risk? A liability? Jaxx sagged. Possible, especially after the stunt he pulled with the glossies. Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with him. Maybe holding information close was par for the course with government heads and jerk-ish lower-level government employees.

He looked in the mirror and froze. Someone stared back. His face, his eyes, but not his outfit. He wore a military uniform, more like a jumpsuit, with a star insignia on the pocket, the letters SSP just below.

He splashed his face a second time. It was past midnight, Doctor Donny was nowhere on site, and he did not need some auto-suggestion nonsense playing out in the mirror. Those assholes were not going to control him. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed the image of himself away. When he had regulated his breathing and was confident he was fully awake, he opened his eyes and looked back into the mirror.

“Oh, shit.” He started, then grabbed the side of the sink to steady himself.

A beautiful woman, light-brown skin, black curly hair in braids draping over both of her shoulders, glared.

Her mouth moved, “Help me.”

Jaxx jerked back again, this time more violently. “Rivkah Ravenwood.”

It was her. The woman who’d been part of his hypnotherapy session. Perhaps the mirror was a screen. Perhaps Slade or Donny projected images onto the back of his mirror, just to mess with him. Then again, how would they know the “she” he’d spoken of was Rivkah?

Her face faded. Jaxx stepped back and tripped over the lip of the bathtub and crashed into it, taking the shower curtain and the rod with him. Wading through the curtain, he pushed up and out of the bathtub to look into the mirror.

He saw himself in his boxers, disheveled hair, and shadows under his eyes. It was him, now. His mind back to normal, or as normal as possible in a time like this.

“I gotta find a way to get those assholes out of my head.”

Jaxx turned the bathroom light off and went to bed. He covered himself in the sheets and closed his eyes.

“Help me.” Rivkah’s voice rang in his ears.

He turned, covering his ears.

“Help me.”

He sat up. “Leave me alone.”

He heard her voice’s echo, like a creeping mist, blanketing his brain. He had to walk this off. It didn’t matter if Captain Richard Bloody Fox stood out there or not. In