Chapter Fifteen: Beneath Notice


Farouk led the group out of the airport to a small building just outside of the city. From the outside, it looked to be just a shack, but once they went inside, they found that was pretty much exactly what it was. "At least we've got AC in here," noted Luke, looking at the busted-up unit in the corner, shaking like it was ready to fall apart.

"What, were you expecting a five-star hotel?" asked Farouk. "BAINE only stocked this place with your bare essentials, so that means you're on your own when it comes to toiletries and refreshments." He pushed aside a wooden pallet to reveal a wall stocked to the brim with guns. "Weapons, on the other hand…"

At the very least, they wouldn't be going in with nothing but sharpened sticks and cobbled-together slings. Not that it made their situation much better, unfortunately. "Well, that's covered, but that still leaves us with about two dozen possible locations to investigate, with practically no intel on any of them," said Rook. "Weapons will only help us so much if we go in blind."

"Unfortunately, going in blind is what we have to do," replied Bridge. At his beckoning, the team congregated around a small wooden table, on which he spread out a paper map of the surrounding area. The locations in question were marked. "Now, our team has been assigned to handle these, so this would be the ideal route." Using a pencil, he traced a line through a handful of the dots.

Vargas raised his hand. "Uh, quick question: are we supposed to go all that way on foot? Because that doesn't seem feasible. I mean, we may be soldiers, but this seems a bit above our pay grade."

Bridge tried not to scowl. True, asking them to lug heavy equipment across several countries was a bit beyond what was humanly possible, but he didn't have to phrase it like that. "I was told that transportation had been taken care of. Farouk?"

"Got you covered." Farouk went over to the far side of the room, where something was covered by a big tarp. Everyone had just assumed it was more junk, considering the state of the rest of the shack. But once he removed it, they saw that, while indeed junk, it was somewhat more important junk. Specifically, an old jeep that seemed to have been partially disassembled.

"Man, they weren't kidding when they said we'd be roughing it for this one," said Ichigo. "Are you sure this thing can even run? It looks like something you'd find covered in grass in an old yard."

"At least it works," said Hester. "I assume it does, anyway. Wouldn't make much sense for BAINE to give us nonfunctional equipment, would it?"

Rook stepped over to the jeep to examine it. "I wouldn't put it past them. At least it has all four of its tires this time."

"I've noticed we've had a lot of 'at leasts' today," Luke pointed out. "I guess that's just the situation we're in."

Farouk clapped his hands together. "Well, now that you're all informed, I'd say it's time we hit the road." He climbed into the driver's seat of the jeep. "Not that we'll be driving across many roads on our way. It's a pretty isolated route." He started it up, which took several tries, during which everyone just stared at him. "There it is! Alright, suit up, we're ready!"

Fireteam Victor loaded the jeep with weaponry, and they were off, rolling down into the wilderness beyond the city. An uneasy silence fell over the crew, as all of them knew they had no idea what to expect.


Nobody was sure how much time had passed. It seemed like hours, but it might have only been a few minutes, seeing as the sun was still high in the sky. For all they knew, they might have been following it westward. But Farouk insisted they were going the right direction, and Bridge trusted him, so the others had no choice but to take their words for it.

Hester had been fortunate enough to find a pair of binoculars in the glove compartment, which she was using to scan the horizon for any signs of their enemy's stronghold. "I don't suppose the map tells us anything to look out for?" she said.

"Only that the first spot is near some mountains," said Ichigo, reading the map. That didn't really help them, as they had passed by several mountains along the way, with multiple more ahead of them. "Are we on some sorta loop? I swear I saw this spot a few miles back."

"Most of the areas of interest will be underground anyway," said Bridge. "The only reason we even know where they are is because of Valdain's fancy algorithms. I don't think we'll be able to spot them from here."

"Guess we'll just have to rely on landmarks then," said Ichigo. As the jeep continued down the expanse of rocky terrain, they sat in silence, having nothing to add. "So…what do y'all think is Echo's endgame here?"

Rook was the only one who decided to respond. "He hates Gems with a passion, and he has a nuke. Do the math."

"Maybe, but if that was all there was to it, why go to all this trouble?" Hester replied. She was still looking through her binoculars at everything they passed. "Wouldn't it make more sense to just send his bomb to the Crystal Temple? What does he have to gain by sending these Rhinestones all over the place?"

"Probably to keep us occupied," suggested Vargas. "He didn't have a bomb, he just had Plutonium. He needed time to make it. So, to buy him the time he needed, he's using those things to draw our attention away from him."

Hester turned to face the others. "But that's just it: all he's done is draw more attention to himself. If he had just laid low and built his bomb in secrecy, we'd have been none the wiser."

"Simple: he needed materials to build the bomb out of," Rook replied. "Why else would the Rhinestones be raiding Polaris bases?"

While that was a perfectly fine answer, something about it all was bothering Luke. "Now, I'm no nuclear technician or bomb expert, but I don't think you need all that stuff to make a nuke. We sure didn't."

"Yeah, but we had an alien on our side," Ichigo pointed out. "Still, you have a point. He's clearly using them for something…but what?"

Farouk shrugged. "Guess we'll find out sooner or later. We should be coming up on the first spot in…lemme see that map." Hester held it up for him. "Ah, I'd say about an hour and a half here."

Vargas groaned in frustration. It had already been a long ride, and it was going to be longer still.


After an hour and a half or so, the group arrived at the spot indicated by the map. Most of them wouldn't have even known it apart from all the other places they had driven by, and it was only obvious because this is where Farouk stopped. "Stay frosty, everyone–this is the place."

"Are you positive?" asked Rook. "It all looks the same around here. How can you tell one rock from the next?"

"No, this is definitely it," said Daniel, referring to the criss-crossing lines of longitude and latitude on the map. "Team, get ready to move in, on my signal. We have no idea what kind of traps, if any, Echo has prepared."

As the group filed out of the vehicle, Vargas was unsurprisingly the first to begin approaching. "That sunburned relic won't know what hit him!" he said, charging his weapon.

Daniel pulled him back before he could get far. "Vargas! The entire point of this assignment is staying inconspicuous! We want to infiltrate as many of these old ships as we can without tipping Echo off! Now hang back, and for all of our sake, don't run off alone!"

"You got it, Cap'n," said Vargas, saluting.

"Now, on me." Everyone followed Daniel away from the jeep and across a short stretch of craggy landscape. There was indeed no sign that a Gem ship had crashed here, and indeed nothing to indicate that it was still here. And yet, Valdain had yet to lead them astray. "Luke, you know what to do."

"Got it." Producing a small device akin to a Geiger counter, Luke began to scan the area ahead of them. It produced a series of clicks, but nothing that would decisively indicate the presence of Gem technology. "Man, those satellites must be some next-level stuff to get something out of this. I'd have written this place off as a lost cause!" Still, he continued to search for what they were looking for.

After a little while, they reached what seemed to be the height of what the scanner could detect, which was still far below what they were used to. "Well, I guess we'll dig here," said Farouk. "Lucky for us, I thought ahead."

He retrieved some shovels from the jeep's trunk, and the group began to unearth the ancient vessel. Oddly enough, it was only about three feet deep that the tips hit something solid. "Already? I thought it would be way deeper than that," Hester said.

"Yeah, how has a ship this close to the surface never been found before?" wondered Vargas. He stepped down into the hole to brush aside some of the grains of sand, revealing what was undoubtedly the hull of a Gem ship. "I doubt that's just an oversight on our part."

Scanning a bit more with the device, Luke located a point of entry. "Whatever's going on, we can get in through here." The group dug out more of the earth around the hatch, which Bridge then pried open. Strangely, or perhaps expectedly, it was much easier than it should have been.

Standing before the opening, Daniel readied his weapon. "Move in. Remember, there could be anything down there, so stay alert."

"No need to tell me twice." Vargas went down first, leaping into the hole and landing on the floor about nine feet down. Aiming his gun's light into the darkness, he scanned the room until he was certain he was alone. "Clear." One by one, the rest of the team lowered themselves in after him.

Everyone flipped on their flashlights, looking around the small vessel. "I think it's safe to say this place has been empty for years," said James, looking closer at the walls. They were covered in a thick layer of dust. "Decades, most likely."

The ship consisted entirely of a small room, with only a hatch on the ceiling for entrance and exit. A control console lay at one end, along with a large blank screen. Aside from that, it was almost entirely empty, safe for some piles of sand that had fallen in over the years.

Ichigo bent down to look at the floor, searching for any hidden panels that might lead to more of the ship. "So, is this it? Just an empty room?"

"It's entirely likely," Daniel pointed out. "We knew going in that each of these locations were only possibly linked to Mr. Echo. It's only natural we'd come up empty more times than not."

"Better than stumbling right into a trap of his," Farouk pointed out. "So, you wanna look around a bit more, or should we head out? We have a lot of ground to cover, after all."

Rook made his way over to the console before they could leave. "Hold on. Something doesn't feel right here." He pried off another panel, which took similarly little effort. "This entire ship has been stripped for parts."

Indeed, all of the electronics within were gone. All that was left was essentially a metal casing with buttons, which could presumably apply to the ship itself as well. "Calling it 'the entire ship' makes it sound bigger than it is, but yeah, looks like someone got here before us," said Ichigo. "Most likely Echo."

"I'm guessing most of the ships we find will have been similarly scoured," said Luke. "But yeah, better to come up with nothing than to have it be a whole lotta something. So, is it time to go?"

Despite his best efforts, Daniel couldn't think of a reason for them to stay. Not to mention, they did indeed have a lot of ground to cover. "Looks like this one was a dead end. Alright then–move out."

He stood watch as the rest of his team made their way back outside–it wasn't easy, seeing as the ship had no ladder, but they made it work. All except one, that is. "Uh, Captain? There's something I wanted to ask you about this ship," said Hester.

"What is it?" he asked. "I probably know about as much as you do."

"But doesn't it seem odd?" she continued, looking at the walls. "Out of all the Homeworld ships we've seen over the years, this one is just…different. I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but then it hit me. I think this ship is from Era-2."

Bridge hadn't even considered what Era it was from. "Does that really matter?" he asked.

"Of course it matters," said Hester, turning back to him. "We know that, after the War ended, Homeworld left Earth to let the Cluster do its job. They only recently returned. So what would a ship from Era-2, especially one as old as this, be doing here?"

"Hmm…and Rook did say it's likely been here for less than the estimated six thousand years since the War," said Bridge. "You're right, this warrants further investigation. But with the Echo crisis at hand, there's no time for looking into when these ships arrived. For now, all we can do is focus on the mission.

"Understood, sir." As everyone climbed back up to the surface, Hester gave the empty vessel one last look. Even though they had bigger things to worry about now, she couldn't help but think this ship was somehow more closely connected to their current situation than they realized. Whatever the case, it would have to wait for later. Daniel reinserted the panel, once again filling the ship with darkness.