Frontier's Reach: A Space Opera Adventure (Frontiers Book 1) by Robert James (beach read TXT) 📗

for us.” He chuckled. “You’re now wondering why we didn’t attack immediately after we found you?”

“It’s because you needed more than the sphere.” He pointed to the container. “You needed that as well.”

“You aren’t known as the foremost human mind for nothing, are you, Professor?” Nash moved on to Captain Marquez. “I am sorry we had to destroy your ship in the process.”

Marquez’s hands clenched together. “Did you have to kill so many people for this?”

Nash shook his head. “Understand when I tell you we didn’t want it to be this way. To the Seekers, humans are very much inferior. We have no gripe with your species. The bombardment of the facility was to ensure the safest extraction of the sphere. Your ship, well, once it fired upon us, they gave us little choice.”

Jason couldn’t believe what was coming out of his friend’s mouth. It wasn’t the same Christian Nash he knew. What had these so-called Seekers done to him? He wondered whether it might be Stockholm Syndrome.

“Now it’s time that we come to the final act.” Nash walked over to the other side of the container and peered inside it.

 ”And you’ve begun the thawing process already. That should speed things along nicely.”

He pressed at what appeared to be a small terminal. The container opened fully, and everyone stepped back as a cold mist escaped from it.

A cryogenic chamber?

“The genetic key?” Jason overheard Marquez say to Petit.

A hand rose out first and took hold of the side of the container. The skin was almost golden brown, with slight scaling. But it was the hand with six fingers that got Jason’s attention.

Nash helped the body from the chamber while it finished waking from its long sleep. He was hairless. His eyes were slightly bigger, his ears slightly smaller, and his limbs slightly longer. He stood at nearly seven feet tall dressed in nondescript black coveralls. His eyes opened, and he stared around in shock.

Nash gazed upon him with wonder. “Hello, Kione.”

The being’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?” he said in perfect English.

He wasn’t a little green man, a tall gray, or any of the other aliens Jason had seen in all the movies he’d watched as a kid. But nonetheless, there he stood. An extraterrestrial.

Jason began to piece together the puzzle. Doctor Tyrell worked with this being, and for whatever reason wanted to release the information to the public, which any government of their day would be wary to do. So, when the war ended, they simply put him on the taskforce’s kill list to keep him quiet.

“I believe I asked a question?” Kione reiterated.

“Remarkable. You have no idea how important you are to us.” Nash nodded to a pair of his soldiers. “Take him.”

The soldiers clutched the alien by each shoulder and dragged him toward the sphere while Nash instructed some of his other cronies to coral Jason and the others to the far side of the antechamber.

Once they were herded over to one of the large rock formations, Marquez stared across at Jason. “How do you know that man? Nash, did you call him?”

“Out of all the questions you could ask, you ask that one?”

“We have to start somewhere.”

Jason guessed it was as good an answer as any. “He’s Lieutenant Christian Nash. Or at least he was.”

“Nash?” The captain furrowed his brow. “Of the Raptor? The Nebula TPA-338 incident?”

Jason nodded.

“That’s where I know your name from. You were on board the Raptor.”

“That’s right.”

“I recall hearing about your departure from the service after the war.”

“Yes, well, that’s not really pertinent at the moment.”

“You’re right,” Marquez said. “What is pertinent is that Lieutenant Nash should be dead. And he’s not.”

The soldiers held Kione before the sphere and after a few moments, he fell to his knees and clutched his head in agony. He let out a scream and raised his hands in the air, his twelve fingers spreading outward.

The sphere made a loud thumping sound and the pictographs glowed bright orange. A square section of metal liquified, and a long horizontal aperture appeared.

“It seems you were correct, Professor,” Marquez said to Petit.

The professor frowned. “I wish I hadn’t been.”

Nash stood by the opening and peered inside in a focused astonishment. He instructed his soldiers to pick Kione up. They did as they were told and followed his old friend inside.

Jason could only imagine what lay on the other side.

Twenty-Four

The mysterious soldiers stood there as if statues watching over the group with their weapons trained on them.

“What do you think they look like under those helmets?” Tai thought out loud.

“Well, we can rule out three heads and tentacles,” Jason assumed.

“Three heads and tentacles?” Tyler eyed Jason crookedly. “Invasion of the Octopus Men?”

“I loved that movie.”

“Do you really think this is the time?” Tai said to them.

“You don’t want to talk about favorite films? Fine,” Jason said. “You didn’t bring Hungry Hungry Hippo with you by any chance?”

Marquez steered the discussion toward something not so childish. “How long has our government known about the existence of extraterrestrials, Susan?”

The doctor struggled to look away from the opening of the sphere. “A little over thirty years. He was discovered as an infant in orbit of a moon in the Galilei System.”

Jason wondered how subsequent governments could cover up something of such magnitude for so long. Humans had looked into the sky for millennia pondering whether they were alone in the universe. If it weren’t for their predicament, he’d obviously appreciate the significance a little more.

“And you left the service to oversee the study of this being?” Marquez almost appeared betrayed. “What did you know about Doctor Tyrell?”

“Only that he was my predecessor. He was attempting to release all the information on Kione to the public. Or so I’d been told.”

Many assumed Tyrell was the one responsible for Nash’s death. Jason wanted nothing more than to dole out the justice he deserved. But now everything had been turned on its head. He was glad the man had got away. While all these questions about Kione