25: Welcoming Gift
The room was surprisingly spacious and would have been more so had there not been two beds. Aithris moved into the centre of the bedroom, looking about the overall beige colour scheme, taking note of the placement of the windows and the few other pieces of furniture present. This was one of the guest rooms within the embassy, and there were more than a few of them seeing as how the main embassy building had started life as a wealthy Kelownan's mansion. At some point during the Ori occupation that wealthy Kelownan had been killed and the mansion had fallen into disrepair, only to be bought up by the makalvari and refurbished into something almost brand new.
Natalia looked about the room with wide, gleeful eyes. These accommodations were much better than any of them had expected. With the others out attending the Kelownan centre of government, they essentially had some time to themselves. Of course, it was hardly holiday time, and so far Aithris had been taken a personal survey of the embassy and the grounds within its walled perimeter. One of the resident makalvari officers had given him a brief tour, although the Lieutenant in question had seemed disinterested and outright distrusting of the two aliens he had found himself charged with. He had been quick to end the tour, leaving Aithris and Natalia to their own devices. He had showed them to their room before scurrying off, returning to what Aithris could only assume were much more important duties.
Natalia threw off her pack, dumping it at the foot of one bed. She then took off her boots and lay back upon the sheets, spreading her arms about her before carrying out a slow, languorous stretch. She looked to Aithris with a grin, cast in the waning afternoon light that filtered in through the nearby window. Aithris, sighting a guard milling about outside, moved over to that window and pulled the curtains closed.
"This is great," Natalia said aloud, and she watched the much more cautious Aithris as he closed the curtains. "If it was just us here, it would be perfect."
Aithris turned to her, narrowing his violet-hued eyes slowly.
"It's not just us here, unfortunately," he told her. From within his jacket he pulled a small, square object cast in a black plastic shell. It appeared innocuous, no larger than a smartphone but somewhat thicker. From one end of it, he pulled out a slim, retractable antenna. Natalia saw the device, her features adopting a curious look.
"What's that?" She asked him.
He smiled at her, and Natalia always found the way in which his pointed canines appeared when he did so an amusing and strangely endearing trait. Almost like a cat, she figured.
Aithris began to pace about the room with the device in front of him. Lights flashed around a small, simple display. Numbers blinked upon it, ticking over incrementally but otherwise hovering about the same, presumably nominal, value.
"I wouldn't get so comfortable just yet, Natalia," Aithris said. He moved towards a lamp upon the nightstand between the two beds, scanning the device over it. The furniture and limited décor in the room was all of Langaran make, for it appeared that these rooms were intended more for human use than makalvari. The actual makalvari soldiers stationed here lived in a separate barracks a short walk from the main building, leaving the actual embassy itself quiet, even empty. There was a main operations room here in which the serious business took place, but there were many walls between that and this guest room.
"This is hardly a vacation spot," Aithris added, although now it seemed he was talking more for the sake of it than to actually have a proper conversation. He appeared satisfied by what he found at the lamp, which was nothing out of the ordinary, before moving away from the beds and pointing the device's antenna up at the light fixture in the middle of the ceiling. The device let out a soft beeping noise then, and Aithris' expression of concentration morphed into something a little more serious. He put the device aside and reached up with one hand, grabbing hold of the bowl-shaped frosted glass cover that was over the light itself.
"There is a war going on, after all," he continued. With a twist, the bowl came loose, and he deposited it upon the nearby bed before setting his eyes upon the light bulb within. There was something else there, a small black nodule that appeared to be stuck in the ceiling right next to the light bulb itself. Aithris reached up and plucked it from its spot in the plaster. Natalia sat up on the bed then, her face showing some mild alarm.
"One thing the ruling Council back home perfected was the art of surveillance," Aithris said, and he crushed the small microphone between his thumb and forefinger with startling ease. "They made cameras and microphones that operated on a near microscopic level. How else could they gather all the information that they were able to? They could stick a camera on you and you wouldn't even know it, you couldn't even see it." He gave Natalia a wry look as he rubbed the remains of the microphone off of his fingers. "The makalvari aren't quite to that level, from the look of it. Still, they certainly don't trust their visitors."
"That was for us?" Natalia asked him.
Aithris picked up the frosted glass cover and fitted it back over the light bulb, once more encasing it within the stylised dome.
"Not necessarily. I suspect all these rooms are bugged, just on the off chance they have some foreign visitors. Be they Langaran, or something else." He proceeded to the other end of the room then, using the device to scan further. Nothing more came up, so he switched it off and stuffed it back into his pocket.
"Where did you get that, anyway?" Natalia asked him.
"The lab techs at stargate command thought it might be useful," Aithris answered. "The Colonel gave it to me, told me to use it to clear out our rooms. He trusts the makalvari about as much as I do. The device picks up on signals of all kinds and can even scan further into the subspace range."
"You think it's a mistake being here?"
Aithris shook his head.
"No, I don't. It is a mistake to trust the makalvari fully, obviously. They have their own agenda here, but then again so do we."
"So does everyone else." Natalia sighed. She sat down on the bed, and from what Aithris could see she was trying her best to relax. Why not enjoy the comforts the embassy provided while they were here? There was no harm in that, as long as one was wary of unwanted eyes and ears keeping track of them.
It was at that moment that the first of the bombs went off, somewhere across town. Straight away, Aithris snatched Natalia off of the bed and sent them both onto the floor. He placed himself over her, expecting more detonations. More did follow, yet none of them were close enough to the embassy to cause any damage. They were scattered, judging from what his sensitive ears could detect. The explosions were spread out across the city, with each one of varying intensity. An alarm did briefly sound within the embassy, but it was more of a general alert for the soldiers and personnel present.
"Stay away from the windows," he said, as he slowly eased off of her. Natalia rose to her feet once he had moved aside. Before either of them could say anything else, the door of the room flung open and the makalvari Lieutenant from earlier stuck his head in.
"Apologies for the intrusion, but it is best you both stay in here," the Lieutenant said. Aithris gave the young male a questioning frown, before he simply brushed by him in the doorway and headed out. The Lieutenant did his best to appear unfazed, but his annoyance at the Nomad and his attitude showed in the way the plume of red feathers on his head perked up and visibly ruffled. His annoyance only grew when Natalia charged past him, going after Aithris. Letting out a frustrated hiss, the Lieutenant headed the other way. Someone else could deal with those two.
Stepping into the afternoon sun, Aithris could hear the panicked cries and wailing sirens brought on by the emergency. Thick plumes of black smoke had risen over a neighbourhood to the east, and another to the north-west. The Nomad, standing just beyond the reach of the alfresco before the front entrance, looked about the compound and saw several makalvari soldiers running for their assigned alert positions. They were armed and outfitted in the standard-issue armour vests and assorted extensions. Some raced up steps that took them onto the inner walkway that was built close to the top of the compound walls, whilst others climbed ladders and staircases to reach the rooftops of the smaller subsidiary buildings within the compound. Overall, they took up defensive positions, expecting some kind of attack.
None came, not at that instant. Chaos no doubt filled parts of the city, but otherwise none of it found its way to the embassy. After several minutes, Aithris sensed that the alerted soldiers grew restless, even disappointed that nothing had come their way. Most probably treated their stationing here as some form of punishment, or just outright bad luck. To the makalvari, Langara was an alien backwater good only for the naquadria it provided. Actually being made to live here for months at a time was hardly an appealing prospect.
"Terrorist bombings," Natalia said. She had remained by Aithris' side, and now that things seemed to be calming down she was starting to relax herself. Aithris did not feel so at ease. Something did not feel right, although it was one of those feelings one could not properly discern. Instinct, really, something John had often spoke of when it came to being out in the field. Aithris' own instructors back home, during his years training to be a warrior, had also spoken of heeding one's instincts.
"There's more to come," he said. The main gate slid open then, revealing the two armoured cars that had taken John and the others into the city's government district. They had made good time, tearing through the mostly empty streets. They had passed by where one of the bombings had occurred, specifically a bank of some sort that had been reduced to a blackened shell of itself. The explosion had been enough to damage the surrounding buildings as well, shattering windows for some distance around.
Now the delegation returned. Aithris started for the main gate, looking to greet John and the others. At that moment, a call sounded from atop the compound wall. More specifically, one of the soldiers on duty by the gate was shouting, and his voice was laced with urgency and fear:
"Vehicle incoming!" He roared, and the soldier raced to where the walkway stopped at the start of the gate opening. He motioned for the guards at the gate, and they moved quickly. "North side, vehicle incoming, fast!"
Both cars sped into the grounds. As soon as they were clear, the gate started to slide closed. Aithris, driven by an insatiable curiosity, sprinted for the gate. He made his way for the set of metal stairs at the left that took him upon the walkway, and from there he could look upon the road ahead and the large patch of cleared ground that served as the property's northern face. Several makalvari soldiers had moved into position along the fire-step upon the wall, and they readied their weapons in the face of the single white car that raced towards them.
Natalia had shouted at him to stop. The Nomad, however, was far too engrossed in what was happening to pay her words of protest any heed. He was safe enough up here, and he was right in the thick of it when the soldiers opened fire around him. The makalvari utilised a mix of ballistic and conventional weapons, and most of the soldiers here each carried a standard-issue magnetic rail rifle capable of propelling solid metal slugs at high velocities, and it did so rapidly. The gunshots sounded more like rapid pulses, each one carrying the underlying shing of metal being slid against metal. A couple of the soldiers on the wall carried the more compact plasma carbines, and these fired fast moving bolts of yellow energy that zipped through the air at such speeds that one could blink and miss them entirely. These did not leave the tell-tale vapour trails many of the Calsharan plasma weapons created, and Aithris suspected the makalvari versions were of a lower yield or simply utilised a slightly different source of energy.
The oncoming white car, a stocky and beaten-up model that looked decades old, was skidding down the dirt road straight for the main gate. It kicked up a thick plume of dust behind it, and the wheels struggled to retain their grip on the makeshift road. The hail of tungsten slugs and energy bolts the makalvari detachment sent its way tore through the car with ease, the sheet metal of its outer body doing nothing to halt the powerful rounds. The car swerved and the windshield shattered, and Aithris sighted a small splash of red as the driver caught more than one of the incoming shots. Suddenly, the car disappeared, and was abruptly replaced with an eruption of fire and smoke and dust that sent forth a shockwave that buffeted the perimeter wall. Aithris stumbled, his ears ringing, the blast overtaking his senses all at once. The other soldiers stumbled or ducked, and a towering column of dirt had launched from where the car had been. Blackened pieces of metal and chunks of dirt and rock rained down all around, with some fragments reaching as far over the perimeter wall as the swimming pool. They sizzled as they hit the water, leaving wispy trails of smoke behind them.
"Secure the gate!" One of the makalvari shouted from nearby. The two guards at the gate were on their feet, and they were quick to ensure that the gate itself had not been damaged. Aithris rose from a crouch, looking once again over the top of the wall. A blackened crater had been left where the car had been, with only some smouldering lengths of twisted metal remaining to suggest there had even been a car there to begin with.
"Aithris!" He heard Natalia's voice then, and he turned his head to see her standing at the foot of the metal stairway nearby. Her face was clouded with worry. "What happened out there?"
"A car bomb," he replied, and he took the stairs to join her down below. By now, John and the others had emerged from the armoured cars by the front of the embassy building. While Ambassador Voro'tuk had raced inside, Kav'rak was stomping around shouting at the any of the soldiers he felt were doing too much standing around.
"What kind of messed up situation have we walked into?" Natalia asked him. "And do you have to run towards the danger all the time?"
Aithris gave her a small smile. Natalia sighed, but then she returned the smile, visibly relieved that he was all right. As for his occasional bouts of recklessness, they were part of his charm.
Aithris looked up at the wall again, seeing that the makalvari soldiers remained on alert. There was no knowing if any more attempted attacks would come. It certainly seemed likely, and Kav'rak appeared intent on keeping the soldiers on alert judging from his current demeanour, barking orders at the soldiers and pacing back and forth some distance before the main gate.
John and the others walked over to where the pair loitered, his brow creased into a frown.
"You two settle in well?" He asked them. His tone suggested that this was meant as a small joke.
"As best we can, given the circumstances," Aithris replied. He reached into his pocket and took out the scanner device he had used earlier. "You should take that, Colonel. You may want to search your rooms with it."
John nodded in understanding.
"It's like that around here, is it?" He had suspected as much. Before anyone else could speak further, a worried if slightly bemused Ambassador Voro'tuk emerged from the embassy building. He walked towards the group, yellow eyes narrowed with a deep uncertainty.
"Jonas Quinn?" He caught the Langaran's attention then, with the others following it. "We need you in the command centre."
"Why?" Jonas' features adopted a somewhat grimmer countenance.
"There's a call for you," Voro'tuk said, and this came as a surprise even to Jonas. "Someone asking for you by name."
Jonas did not reply, he simply strode past the Ambassador and headed for the embassy entrance. John and Daniel exchanged glances before they followed after him. Aithris had to admit, he was curious as to what this latest occurrence entailed, and so he went after the others.
The command centre was one of the larger rooms within the embassy and took up what had likely been the former mansion's living area. It was even furnished as such, although the makalvari had expanded the space and added an entirely new section at one end taken up with desks, computer terminals and even a large wall-mounted display upon which a map of the local region was currently being shown.
As per protocol, there were always at least two or three technical personnel here, working at the computers or the communications systems. Jonas was guided by the Ambassador across the spacious living area and towards the main communications terminal. A young makalvari in uniform was seated there, and he wore a headset that was designed for the more avian heads that his species possessed. John, Daniel and Aithris had followed Jonas in, no doubt looking to find out just what this call was about.
Jonas paused by the table. The technician handed him a headset. It was not quite the right shape for his head, so Jonas simply held one half of it to one ear, listening closely. He let the microphone dangle before him, while the actual call was relayed through the speakers at the terminal. Everyone in the room could hear it, and another makalvari technician at a neighbouring station was tapping away, gesturing to the Ambassador. It seemed he was working to trace the call. Jonas knew right away that this was no courtesy call, this was something else.
"This is Jonas Quinn," he said into the microphone. He could hear nothing on the other end as yet, but that changed almost the instant he opened his mouth.
"Jonas, Jonas my old friend." The voice carried a slight accent, that of someone who had grown up on the further reaches of Kelowna. There was a gravelly quality to the voice, one that had only intensified with age. Nonetheless, Jonas knew who was on the other end immediately. He felt his heart sink at the realisation, and a deep sense of unease began to seep into his very being. How long had it been since he had heard that voice? Not long enough, he reckoned.
"Gorum." The man had been locked away for years, but not anymore. Jonas had known that as soon as he had been told of the man's escape, it would be inevitable that they would meet again.
"Jonas, it's been too long. Far, far too long." Gorum Kavul sounded jovial. He no doubt relished the prospect of talking to Jonas, if only to rub in the fact that Kelowna's harshest prison had not been able to contain him. "All those years, and I'll bet you never expected to hear from me again, eh?"
"I knew I should have killed you," Jonas stated, his voice level, if only because of the effort he was putting into keeping his emotions in check.
"You're not like that, Jonas. I know you too well." Gorum was no doubt smiling on the other end of the line. "We fought together, don't you remember? We took on the Ori, threw them off of our world. Those were good times, weren't they?"
Everyone in the room was watching him, listening closely to what was being said. An uneasy quiet pervaded the command centre now, broken by the odd distant sound of soldiers roaming about outside or the tapping of the nearby technician's fingers upon the keypad of his terminal.
"That was shortly before you went crazy," Jonas said.
"Crazy? No, Jonas, I'm not crazy. I never went crazy." He paused briefly, before he added: "No, I simply embraced my eccentricities to their fullest. The world is so much more interesting with people like me in it."
"For all the wrong reasons…"
"So dour, so dull, so typical of you. Have a laugh, Jonas. Take a look around at what's happening now. As soon as I heard you were back, I knew I'd have to give you a call." Another pause, and Jonas could practically sense Gorum leaning in closer to the phone, his voice now filled with a layer of menace: "Hiding amongst the birds, eh? Some Kelownan you are. Any patriot worth a damn would have those aliens thrown off of our world. Storm the gates and butcher the lot of them, I say. Fry those birds over the old campfire. I'm sure they taste delicious." He followed this with a short chuckle. Jonas glanced to the Ambassador, who gave him a small but mistakable gesture with one hand: Keep him going. They were working on tracing the call, but Jonas knew Gorum too well. He would never let himself be traced, certainly not easily.
"They're listening right now, aren't they? Conniving bastards, they are. Trying to strong arm our corrupt government into handing over our sovereignty to them."
"What is this disease, Gorum?" Jonas' voice darkened. A layer of threat crept into his tone, and he realised that his free hand had suddenly clenched into a tight fist. It was shaking more so than he would have preferred.
"You think I'm responsible for the plague?" Gorum sounded shocked. "Oh, Jonas, you know my specialities. They're more in the realm of things that go 'boom'. Like take this afternoon's show, I did it just for you. As soon as my people on the streets told me that my old friend Jonas Quinn was in town, I thought it the perfect time to enact my latest piece of entertainment. Even the car that I sent your way. Consider it a taste of things to come."
"You talk of patriotism, but you never cared for Kelowna. You sold your skills to insurgents as soon as the Ori left."
"A man's got to feed himself. And I was making a lot more of a difference than you were, with your prancing about the government and debating nonsense for hours in the House of Assembly. Our system is rotten, corrupt to the core. I intend to see it all brought down, to wipe the slate clean. Kelowna, Tirania, the Andari Federation; all of them will be burned to the ground."
"You're murdering innocent people."
"A means to end. And don't give me that crap about 'innocence', Jonas. Nobody's innocent. The world is a mean and unforgiving place." Gorum's voice became even more animated now, and Jonas could envision him pacing about whatever room he was in, gesticulating as he did so. He had always enjoyed the sound of his own voice. Gorum would talk to anyone who might want to listen. And here was no different, continuing in this manner:
"I spent years in a cell to think it over, to ponder my mistakes in life and to determine a better way forward. What is happening now is that way forward. I have returned, Jonas, because I want to create a new country called 'Chaos' and a new government called 'Anarchy'. Consider it my gift to you, for all the years you robbed from me. Sometimes I do think that it might have been best if you had killed me. Now, however, I know I was allowed to live for a purpose. That your mercy was brought upon me for a reason beyond even your knowledge. Everything happens for a reason, Jonas. There is no such thing as coincidences."
"Gorum, you don't need to do this…"
"On the contrary, Jonas, it needs to be done. It must be done. The people of Langara will thank me, when they are elevated to something more than what they are now." With that, he disconnected the call. Jonas took the headset from his ear before he regarded the others standing nearby. The technician appeared satisfied, and the Ambassador stepped alongside him to peer at the results on his terminal.
"We have a location," Voro'tuk announced. "It looks like a warehouse some miles north of the city."
"He won't be there," Jonas said. He was confident of this, even if the Ambassador appeared doubtful. "He's smarter than that. He's probably bounced that call off a bunch of relays."
"Maybe, but it's worth a look." Voro'tuk paced away, speaking rapidly into his communicator as he did so. Daniel approached then, offering the Langaran a look of quiet support.
"You okay, Jonas?" He asked him.
"Yeah, I'll be fine." Jonas handed the headset back to the technician seated next to him. "But something he said at the end there, there's something about it."
"About 'elevating' the Langaran people?" Daniel nodded in agreement. "I think a man like that can't help but spill what he plans in some way. He has to rub it in, that much is obvious." He turned to John. "You think Gorum's behind this plague?"
"I can't say. It'd be too obvious if he was." John frowned, scratching at the stubble on his chin. "Could be something more happening here."
"Whatever his involvement, we need to find him."
At that moment, Kav'rak stormed into the command centre. All heads turned to him, and he walked up to where Voro'tuk stood. The Ambassador had just finished relaying instructions to the resident soldiers when Kav'rak approached.
"We need additional soldiers manning the perimeter," Kav'rak declared. "And we need to start working on proper defensive measures. We have some shield generators we could deploy…"
"Have it your way, Ambassador. But I will be putting in a call to get some orbital support in position." Kav'rak sounded annoyed, but as the makalvari military answered to the civilian government, his hands were tied in this instance. Nonetheless, he was keen to see to the embassy's overall defences. Leaving the Ambassador to his work, the makalvari Major spun on his heels and limped out of the operations centre, motioning two of the guards on duty by the door to follow after him.
Jonas had hardly heard the exchange. Rather, he had been mulling over the call with Gorum and the memories it had dredged up, many of which were not pleasant. Nonetheless, he knew some of Gorum's old associates from back during the occupation. There was a chance that a few of them might still be alive, and with the resources of the makalvari here the odds of locating them were good.
"I have a few ideas as to how we can find Gorum," Jonas said, catching the attention of John and Daniel. "Not solid leads, but they're our best chance right now. And the sooner we find that bastard, the better."