Joshua (Heroes of the League Book 14) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  About the Author

  Joshua

  Heroes of the League Book 14

  By Frank Carey

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 by Frank Carey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This story appeared previously as Arrival.

  League Tale #25

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bio-Organic Rapid Response System

  B.O.R.R.S (BORIS)

  Area 51, Year 2025

  Dr. Joshua Gray sat in the waiting room and sipped coffee while he waited for his escort. Looking around the room, he was amused by the normality of the furniture, even the flat screen TV showing the local news. He expected some place a little less normal.

  A pert, young woman with flaming red hair and electric green eyes walked up and addressed him. "Dr. Gray, my name is Gretchen Morris, and I will be your escort. Welcome to Area 51."

  He shook her hand. The look he gave her caused her to chuckle. "Expecting someone a little shorter?" she asked.

  "Yes, and a little more green. Forgive me, but this is all new to me."

  "Don't worry. You'll soon get your fill of strange. Please, follow me," she said as she led him through a pair of security doors.

  They continued down the corridor until coming to a stop in front of an elevator. Ms. Morris placed her palm against the center of the door and waited. Moments later, the door opened to reveal a normal, everyday lift. Once inside, Gretchen pressed the down button--there was only an up and a down button--then stepped back as the lift dropped downward.

  Joshua looked up at the floor annunciator. It was moving too fast to follow. "How deep are we going?" he asked.

  "Two miles. The labs are contained inside a natural cavern surrounded by impervious rock. There are six fusion warheads placed above, below, and around the space."

  "What the hell do you have down there?"

  "Bad things. Really, really bad things." The lift quickly slowed, too quickly.

  "Assuming a floor-to-floor distance of three meters..." he said as he analyzed the elevator's drop.

  "Inertia absorption field generators. We can decelerate at thirty gravities and not spill a drop of your coffee."

  "How?"

  "We borrowed some technology. Director Curtis will explain everything when you meet with him."

  They walked out of the elevator and into a brightly lit corridor resembling any number of corridors Josh had walked down during his career as an engineer, only those corridors weren't buried under two miles of rock.

  Gretchen stopped at a pair of pressure-sealed sliding doors. She knocked. An embedded flat screen lit up with the image of Director Conrad Curtis. "Ah, Gretchen, I see you found our guest. Please, come in," he said as the door opened.

  She gestured for Joshua to enter the room ahead of her. "Dr. Joshua Gray, this is Conrad Curtis, Director of the complex."

  Joshua walked in and shook hands with the director while Gretchen left to attend to other matters. "Glad you made it, Doctor. Drink?" Conrad asked.

  "No, thank you."

  "Have a seat, then."

  Joshua sat down across from Conrad and watched the director lean back and take a sip from his drink. "I'll keep this short. Welcome to Area 51. You will be briefed on how things work over the course of the next week. The one thing you must always remember: shelter in place. If an alarm goes off, lock your door and find a corner. Security will take care of things."

  "What kind of things?"

  "Things that hide under the bed, hide in the closet, and go bump in the night. We've been dealing with these things for a very long time, so we've developed some expertise. We haven't lost a civilian since the Vietnam War and plan to keep it that way. Any questions?"

  "Where do I start?"

  ###

  Conrad smiled, then reached over and pressed a button on the table next to him. "Gretchen, please come in here. Dr. Gray needs a guide to his lab."

  "Yes, sir," his assistant acknowledged.

  The office doors opened followed by Gretchen stepping through. She was carrying a stack of documents.

  "For me?" Joshua asked as he took the stack from her.

  "Just a little light reading concerning both lab operations and your first project," Conrad explained. "Have fun."

  Joshua nodded, then fell in behind Gretchen as she walked out of the room.

  ###

  After several corridors and three security checkpoints, Gretchen stopped in front of another set of pressure doors, only these were big enough to drive a semi-tractor-trailer through. Gretchen placed her palm on the center section of the right door. There was a beep as a green light on the wall illuminated. "Doctor, please place your palm here," she said as she removed her hand.

  He did as he was told and the light went out. "Your biometrics are now registered with the system. Your clearance gives you full access to the bioengineering and computer engineering labs. Other areas can be accessed as needed."

  A personnel hatch opened in the right door and even it was big. Gretchen saw his look and explained, "Not all our employees are human."

  "Excuse me?" Joshua asked, but Gretchen was already through the opening and into the lab. Joshua quickly followed and found himself in an engineer's dream.

  The lab was big by any standard. From what he could see, a dozen main battle tanks could have been parked around the room with room to spare. The walls were lined with racks of equipment of every description. At the center of the room was a state-of-the-art testing platform complete with fiber optic feeds and video cameras.

  "Wow," was all Joshua could say as ran his hand over a terminal.

  "Due to the nature of your project--yes, I know you haven't read the briefing yet--you have been assigned an assistant from one of our specialist pools. "Falan!"

  Joshua gaped as a seven-foot-tall white-haired woman with piercing blue eyes walked in wearing a lab coat, her reading glasses were slung around her neck with a cut-silver chain. "Yes, mistress?"

  "Falan Corta, let me introduce our latest addition to the research staff, Dr. Joshua Gray. Joshua, meet Falan, a member of the Nordican race from the Erra star system."

  Falan held out her h
and, then seeing no motion from Joshua, she reached down, took his and shook it. "Nice to meet you, Doctor."

  "You're not from around here, are you?" he stammered.

  "Nope. We were passing by and thought we would drop in, maybe have some tea and sample your baked goods."

  Joshua shook his head. "Forgive me, Falan. You're the first non-terrestrial sapient I've ever met. What's your specialty?"

  "Consciousness transfer and storage as it pertains to biosynthetic constructs."

  Joshua was ploonharped.

  "Which brings us to your first project, Doctor. The pink folder contains your briefing. Falan is well versed in both the project and the technology you will be using, aren't you, Falan?"

  "Yep," Falan said with a smile. "Doctor, I can give you an overview if you like."

  "Yes, I would like that very much," he said as he pulled out the folder.

  "I will leave you to it, then," Gretchen said as she headed to the door. "Call me if you need anything." She looked over her shoulder and saw the Doctor and Falan already deep in discussion. She smiled as she walked out of the lab.

  ###

  Joshua squinted at the quartz tube while he turned it over. Inside was a bundle of multicolored stands. "This is a synthetic muscle?" he asked.

  "Yes," Falan replied. "Immerse it in a nutrient bath and add the appropriate control inputs, and it will contract with a great deal of force. You can increase the force by adding more bundles."

  "And your people developed this tech?"

  She scratched her ear and smiled. "Sort of. We hit a roadblock with developing the control systems which is why we brought this to your people. My people's engineering expertise doesn't include biological systems."

  "So, we're to create a biological robot and I'm responsible for design of both the structure and the movement algorithms. What about the actual control? We'll need something to direct the beast."

  "Another team is working on that problem. They are developing a biocybernetic control device which will interface with our beast, as you call it."

  "Do we have the interface specs to write against?"

  "Yes, the templates are already in the computer and the written specs are in the pink folder. We took the liberty of downloading your routine library from your lab at the university into the lab's computer system.”

  He got up and walked over to the lab's massive, nine-screen terminal and logged in. On the virtual desktop sat a folder with his university username--Balthazar--sitting on it. "Perfect. How do you want to divide-up the tasks?"

  "Your programs are key to the success of this project, so that should be your priority. I'll start mass producing the bundles. We also have a tech starting tomorrow who specializes in cyberorganic interfacing. His name is Trent."

  "Excellent. Once he arrives, we can sit down and map out the basic structure of the beast. I would think using a basic bipedal human form would be a good starting point since I'm most familiar with it. We'll begin with a torso and build our way outward using standard design protocols. Once it's working, we can add augments per the spec sheet." He looked over and saw her watching him intently. "What?"

  "None of this bothers you, does it?"

  "Bothers me? Why would it bother me?"

  "This morning, you were a normal college professor. This afternoon, you're sitting next to a space alien in a cave two miles below the surface of the desert, surrounded by nuclear warheads while designing something no one has ever seen before."

  He shrugged. "You're a biped whose every step could lead to disaster or worse, yet you think nothing about it. Coming here and meeting you is the accomplishment of a lifetime. Anything after that is just pure frosting on a fantastic cake."

  She blushed. "I should get to work." She got up and headed to the back of the lab while Joshua got to work setting up his programming environment. She turned for a moment and looked at him, a slight frown forming before walking through the door.

  ###

  One year later...

  "Trent, motion systems on standby, activate primary systems," Joshua ordered as he watched the system readouts.

  "Motion systems on standby," Trent replied. "Activating primary systems on my mark... Mark!"

  Joshua looked up from his displays and watched Boris light up. The Bio-Organic Rapid Response System, B.O.R.R.S. or Boris for short, was a two-meter-tall humanoid-shaped cyberorganic robot covered in translucent synthetic "skin." Underneath, he could see status indicators come on as the various subsystems activated"

  "Falan, status, please?"

  "All systems nominal. Nutrient pumps are go. Control systems are go. Repair systems are on standby."

  "Activating motor control systems on my mark... Mark!"

  Boris stood up straight as more internal status indicators came on.

  "Everything is in the green, five by five," Falan said as she watched her status displays.

  "All interconnects are go," Trent called out.

  "Activating treadmill on my mark," Joshua said. "Releasing support ring."

  The surface of the platform Boris was standing on began to move while the donut-shaped waistband retracted leaving only the communications bundle connecting it to the lab. Starting slowly, it ran to keep up with the treadmill. "Increasing speed," Joshua announced as Boris approached impossible speed.

  The sound of clapping filled the lab. Joshua looked over at the source and saw Conrad and Gretchen standing off to the side, him with a mile-wide smile across his face while Gretchen was her usual stoic self. "My God, you did it!" he said. "And it only took a year."

  "And twelve failures and two trips back to the drawing board, but, yeah, we did it," Joshua added, "and we have Falan to thank for that. The transtator module she supplied is what did the trick. Without it, we would still be at the crawling stage."

  Falan smiled.

  "What's next?" Conrad asked.

  "Add a brain, and for that, we need the biocybernetic device whose specs we've been working against. Until that comes, we need to put Boris through its paces while tethered to the lab system."

  "And how long will that take?"

  "A month, barring catastrophes. I've uploaded all the build logs to the server for the biocybernetics group."

  "Excellent. I can tell you that they are looking forward to working with Boris. I want to congratulate the three of you on a job well done. This marks a milestone in human development," he said as he made a point to shake their hands before he and Gretchen walked out of the lab, leaving them to their work.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Having finished the testing and certification, Boris was ready for the next step in testing. With Conrad's enthusiastic approval, Joshua ordered the team to take a few days off to recharge their mental batteries in preparation for the next stage of testing. After checking the lab one final time, Joshua drove to Boulder City and spent the time away fishing from a deck boat in Las Vegas bay on Lake Mead. When he returned, he found his lab in an uproar.

  "Niga ptralla Zirconat!" he heard Falan yell when he arrived at the lab entrance. "What do you mean they took it?"

  "I can't believe this!" Trent added. "Boss, they took Boris and the control system."

  "Who took Boris?" Joshua said as he stepped in to find the B.O.R.R.S unit, the control computer, and even the test platform missing from the spot he had left them in before leaving a few days ago.

  "The Biocybernetics Unit took it," Conrad said as he and Gretchen walked in. "They made an urgent request to borrow it for testing. Due to the nature of the project, I granted the request."

  "We tried to contact you," Gretchen added, "but all of you were incommunicado."

  "Right. I left my phone in my hotel room," Joshua said with chagrin. "I didn't want to disturb the fish."

  "Boss, we might have a problem," Falan said as she walked out of a side room with a small box in her hand. It was open and empty.

  "Shit!" Joshua exclaimed.

  "What's wrong," Conrad asked, frowning.

>   "Boris is powered through the tether even though it is capable of using any number of internal and external power packs. That box contained a power pack found aboard the Roswell saucer. We tested it, but it's too unstable, so we were going to send it back, which is why it was locked in that box and stored in a safe with a dozen warning stickers covering the door."

  "Someone cut through the stickers," Trent said while holding up half of one. "This was on the floor in front of the safe."

  "How unstable is the supply?" Gretchen asked.

  The room shook as if to answer her question.

  Joshua ran over to a terminal and typed in commands. He frowned at the results. "Thank God they didn't turn off the diagnostics. They activated the BORIS unit under internal power. The damn power unit is now emitting energy waves as it builds to an overload. Conrad, evacuate the complex, now."

  "Security can..."

  "Security can die along with the rest of us if you don't evacuate the complex. I think I can override the power initialization routines, but I have to go there, now."

  "And if you can't override?"

  "Then our six nuclear warheads will look like firecrackers. We're talking about vaporizing Nevada."

  Conrad ran to the wall and smashed the cover protecting a red mushroom button. Hesitating for only a moment, he slammed his fist into the button, activating the all-complex evacuation system. Alarms sounded. "Everyone, out. Joshua, I..."

  "Don't say it. I knew catching that trophy bass was too good to be true." He looked over at Trent and Falan. "It has been an honor working with both of you." He was gone before they could reply.

  Joshua ran past throngs of people trying to escape the impending destruction. He made it to the lab and used his emergency access code to enter. He found bodies, lots of them, their nervous systems fried by the first series of energy pulses. He hurried over to his control system and typed in commands, but nothing happened. It, too, had been fried. He looked around and saw an active terminal. It had a body draped over it and one in a bed behind it, the one in the bed had some device standing over it. The device looked like those lamps you saw in operating rooms. "What the hell were they doing in here?" he asked while reaching down and disconnecting the control tether from the back of the dead control system. Dragging the cable over to the active terminal, he inserted it into a mating jack. "Thank the heavens for standardized interfaces," he muttered as he entered commands. In his haste to disarm Boris, he didn't notice that the device behind him was still activated.