Progression

CHAPTER ONE

What the ...?" My head smacked the cabin wall hard. I touched the side of my head just above my ear. I could feel a knot forming.

Please remain seated with your safety harnesses securely fastened. We’ve encountered some unexpected turbulence. Everything is fine. If you were injured, please push your attendant call button, and someone will come to your seat to assist you, the flight attendant said.

Damn supernovas, Calvin said.

Supernovas? What are you talking about? I asked.

Just another thing going wrong lately. A supernova is causing more disturbances.

I heard something about that on the news. There have been more reports of incidents like this with people being injured on flights. With everything else going wrong lately I guess I didn’t think much about it.

Yeah. I was more worried about all those flights that have gone missing lately. I still find it hard to believe that with today’s technology we can lose a large spacecraft and never find a trace. What did you think of the conference? Calvin asked.

My sessions were good. There was a lot of talk about needing to have multi-discipline teams working together to solve problems rather than continuing to use the old-school approach with silos by specialty. It seemed kind of funny to me since the conference tracks were divided along the usual specialty lines...

Sir, are you injured? the flight attendant asked.

Just a bump on the head. Do you have an ice pack and maybe something for a headache?

Right away, sir. You’ll need to fill out this form before we land. Let me know if you have any questions.

Never ending bureaucracy. That’s what will doom civilization, Calvin said.

I filled out the incident report. It was standard stuff. Since they hadn’t asked if there was a doctor on board, I figured all the injuries were minor like mine. Everyone settled down again, and it seemed we were back to normal.

This is the captain speaking. I apologize for the rough ride. All of the injuries were minor, and we are continuing to our destination on schedule.

I put the icepack on my head and hoped I could doze off and let the medication work on the headache that was starting a Sokuhl drum circle behind my eyes.

I woke up when I felt a bump, the kind of bump you feel when the ship is coming to a stop. I rubbed my tired eyes and looked at my universal chronometer. Something was definitely wrong. Calvin, wake up. We’ve landed, but the time is wrong. There’s no way we can be on Ventos Prime this soon, I said. No matter how advanced we get, physics is physics.

Calvin rubbed his eyes and leaned across me to get a better look out the viewport. All we could see was black. No stars, nothing except black. This was beyond odd. This flight was supposed to be non-stop to Ventos Prime. Did I miss an announcement about an emergency aboard? And where the hell are the stars?

I didn’t hear anything. Maybe the turbulence injured someone more seriously than we thought, I said.

Everyone was waking up and looking around. Several people had pushed their call buttons.

I wish they’d tell us what’s going...

As if in answer to my request, the captain came over the intercom again. This is the captain speaking. Please direct your attention to the vid screen in the front of the cabin.

Great. This just keeps getting better, Calvin said.

When I looked up, there was a line of armed men across the front of the cabin and similarly dressed men stationed down each aisle of the ship.

Oh crap. We’re being hijacked, Calvin said.

CHAPTER TWO

Sir, the ship is docked. The vid is streaming now, Evan reported.

Is everything ready for our guests? Daniel Turley asked.

Yes, sir.

I want to see dossiers on any passenger with military or law enforcement background before I meet with the teams.

Yes, sir.

When the door closed behind Evan, Turley sat down behind his desk, fingers steepled under his chin. The plan they had begun implementing years ago, was coming to fruition. He glanced around his office noting that it looked like any office anywhere. You couldn’t see the eighteen-inch thick walls with built in cyber security. From inside the office you wouldn’t know you were inside an asteroid. There was even a large window overlooking the park at the center of Progression’s community area. The time had come to fulfill his destiny. His comm unit bleeped.

Hello, General Pearce. How are things in the old world?

Things are still going to shit. Today’s news is rife with stories of more R’noc6 cases on Ventos Prime and Cora. I still can’t understand how they didn’t see this coming. Even considering how slow governments move, they should have been better prepared, Pearce said. Is our plan progressing on schedule?

It is. I agree. The ineffectiveness is disheartening. It’s sad to continually be reminded of our accelerating slide into mediocrity, Turley said.

What’s the status of the passengers? the General asked.

Flight 1366 is on station, and we are proceeding according to plan. I’ll send updates as scheduled. He ended the call.

Daniel walked to the bar and poured himself a glass of fresh porchiss berry juice. He did some business and waited for the final report on the passengers. He already knew the names of most of those on the flight. They had manipulated the travel reservation system to ensure that a large percentage of the scientists returning from the Science Fusion Conference on Halcyon were on flight 1366. The remaining seats were filled by regular passengers. They needed enough people to accomplish their goal, but wanted a broad spectrum of backgrounds in addition to the scientists and engineers they needed. If they were lacking any specific skillset, they could address that with targeted retrievals later. For now, they had what was needed to set their plan in motion.

Daniel thought about the uptick in alien abduction stories in the fringe press. His people were convinced this was directly due to the diversions of the commercial flights. Though originally a myth long disproved by archaeologists, there were many people who were willing, hell, who wanted desperately to believe that people were being abducted my any number of the alien—read non-human—citizens of the league.

CHAPTER THREE

The cabin lights dimmed and the vid screen came to life. Scenes of recent disasters around the League were interspersed with pics of the ravaged bodies of R’noc6 victims. As the screen played its depressing montage, a voice over began.

Passengers of flight 1366, I am your host, Daniel Turley. I doubt you know who I am, but we’ll get better acquainted over the coming months. As the vid you’re watching so clearly portrays, our civilization has been in a state of decline for some years. It seems we reached the peak of man’s evolution and have begun a downward spiral. In spite of our considerable advancements in technology, the humanoid races have been unable to control diseases such as R’noc6 that are finding their way to the major planets in the League. The League economy we worked so hard to build has been so successful that it now adversely affects the economies of all the major humanoid planets. We need to arrest this devolution and get our world back on track before we reach a tipping point that we humanoids cannot survive.

When the voice-over paused, we all looked to our fellow passengers. Everyone was glued to the screen, and there was a lot of muttering. The words xenophobe and hijacked bounced around the cabin like billiard balls on a pool table after the break.

Since the day the League first invited Earth into its organization of planets, there had been a rise in the number of people who believed that non-humanoid races were a danger to Earth and the others of their kind. The fact that thousands of humans had benefited from League membership seems to have escaped the neoxenophobes. Another overlooked fact was the involvement of the Halcyons and the Tralaskans, both humanoid species, in the attempt at drawing the League into a war with the Martok. Then there was the destruction of Tennosh through the stupidity of the Tralaskans. They seem to forget the number of people saved through surgery by the Alturans or the peace philosophy of the Sokuhl. Most humanoid citizens of the League viewed the whole xenophobe movement as just sour grapes by a group of whiners with a superiority complex.

"I assure you that you are safe and will be well treated. As some of you may have realized, flight 1366 carries many of the top young scientists in the fields of biomedical research, computer engineering, physics, biology, and many other disciplines. I, along with some high-ranking officials of the League, organized the Science Fusion Conference many of you attended. You are here to put your considerable talents to work on projects focused on stopping man’s devolution and getting the humanoid races back on a progressive track.

More details will be given to you in the coming days. For now, you are safe and quarters have been prepared for you. Please follow the instructions of your guards. I’ll be meeting with all of you later to explain in more detail. Please remain in your seats until your name is called. Your belongings will be delivered to your quarters. Welcome to Progression.

With that, the screens went blank and the lights were raised. Everyone sat in relative silence wondering what in the hell was going on.

WTF? It sounds like we’re prisoners of some megalomaniac xenophobe. I thought the conference was sponsored by a group of League corporations, Calvin said.

That’s what was on the literature. Maybe Turley is part of that, I said. With all the firepower those guards are carrying, I don’t think we have any choice but to cooperate for now and get more info on what this is all about.

CHAPTER FOUR

One of the guards stepped into the center aisle and read a list of names that were to follow him. There was no one I recognized in the group, so I had no idea what the grouping meant, if anything. I made a mental list of things we needed to find out.

Where are we?

How many people are being held captive?

How many guards are there?

What cover story is being given to the public regarding the disappearance of flight 1366?

Sharon, an old college friend of ours who is now a noted virologist, bent down and whispered something in Calvin’s ear as she made her way up the aisle when her name was called. This group is all infectious disease people, Calvin passed along what she told him.

Calvin’s name was called and, before he stood up, he let me know his group was all astronomers and astrophysicists. As each group was called, they were checked off a list and led out the main cabin hatch by one of the armed men with another guard following at the rear of the group.

When my group was called, it was most of the people I’d been in sessions with at the conference. We were all computer scientists and network geeks. We went down the ramp and were directed into a vehicle. One of the guards got in the front passenger seat, and we moved forward following a tunnel away from the docking bay. I could see no remarkable landmarks or signage, only a smooth well-lit tunnel.

Where are we? one of my colleagues asked. There was no response from the guard or the driver. We started conversing in low tones. I was afraid the guards wouldn’t want us to talk to each other, but they seemed to pay no attention to our conversations. Everyone wanted to know where we were, but all anyone could say for sure was that we were underground. One of the guys in the first row of seats tapped the guard on the shoulder, how long will we be driving? he asked.

As long as it takes, the guard responded.

I noticed Turley said he’d have time to get to know us better in the coming months. Doesn’t sound to me like this is a kidnapping for ransom scheme, I said.

Yeah. I wonder how he thinks he can keep this many people hostage. Why would he go to all this trouble? one of the others asked.

The speculation continued as the vehicle lumbered along.

We discussed where we might be. I could use the readings from my universal chronometer to figure out how long we were flying, but so far, we had no way to know what direction we traveled.

Some of my fellow passengers nodded off to sleep in the stuffy vehicle. I watched out the window hoping to spot something that would give me a clue about our location, but I could only see the lights of the vehicle following us through the tunnel.

Radio chatter picked up and the voices became more urgent. Shit. That’s not good, one of the guards said. I figured anything that the guards didn’t like might be good for us. Someone had escaped from one of the vehicles behind us. I wondered how they’d managed that and tried to come up with a plan of my own, but it seemed foolhardy with all the well-armed guards around.

Should we stop? our driver asked.

No. Keep going. They’ll send a team out to search for him. He can’t get far. They’ll find him.

The guards kept a closer eye on us after that, stopping any more conversation among my fellow captives.

CHAPTER FIVE

Wake up. When we stop, we’ll be met by another guard that will take you to your quarters, the guard said.

Everyone woke up and looked around more intently. I expected to see some sign of civilization. Buildings. Something. There was nothing. I estimated we’d been traveling through the tunnel for at least thirty minutes, but I’d seen no intersecting tunnels.

At a wide spot, the vehicle we were in pulled over.

Under each of your seats, you’ll find a hood. Please put them on now and stay seated, the guard said from the front passenger seat.

Everyone looked around more intently. I glanced out the window trying to see anything that would help me figure out where we were. The tunnel was signage free as was the other vehicle we had pulled in behind.

I caught a glimpse of the group from the vehicle in front of ours as they disappeared through a hatch in the tunnel wall. A guard stood beside the hatch and quickly sealed it before I could see anything inside. 

Some people balked at putting the black fabric bags over their heads, but the guard quickly squelched their complaints. Once everyone had their hoods in place, we were helped from the vehicle and placed in a line. A guard walked down the line putting our right hands on the shoulder of the person in front of us. The line moved slowly forward. For all I knew, I could be walking off a cliff, but I had no choice.

After going a few feet, the line stopped moving, and we were bunched together. I felt the sensation of the floor falling out from beneath my feet. We were in an elevator going down. I counted off the seconds knowing we could estimate our rate of descent to calculate the distance the elevator traveled. Once we stopped, the guards herded us out of the elevator and pushed us back into line. We walked a few more minutes, and I sensed more light outside my hood.

Stop. Everyone, remove your hoods, a voice commanded.

When I pulled the black hood off, the bright light caused me to close my eyes. I opened them again slowly letting them adjust to the light. We were in what looked like an upscale hotel with numbered doors on either side of the hallway. Beneath each number was an LED screen that displayed the current date, time, and a name.

We were each shown to our quarters. A door was opened and the guard moved aside to allow me inside. Everything you need is here. Your luggage will be delivered. There’s a notebook of information on the desk. Read it as quickly as possible. Someone will come to escort you to a briefing, the guard said. He closed the door behind him. I tried the handle, but it was locked from the outside.

I was in a nicely furnished one-bedroom apartment. The pantry and fridge were stocked. There was a view screen and a tablet computer on the desk, a closet full of clothing in my sizes, and a nice bathroom. I fired up the coffee maker and sat at the counter reading through the binder that had been provided. The floor plan of the facility was extensive. There was a community area with a theater, restaurants, and shops. Inside the front pocket of