Waiting for Roger

Arch/Eternal - Chapter Twenty-Three

First thing, real quick…

For the newcomers: Arch/Eternal is a sprawling novel-in-progress in the genre of philosophical sci-fi. Think Dune meets Harry Potter, and maybe channeling a little Dan Simmons. It’s also an experiment in long-form serialized fiction on Substack.

For the allcomers: If you haven’t read any of the previous chapters, please abandon any feeling of obligation to catch up, and instead just start HERE, with this chapter.

That’s what the short summary below is for.

By the end, you’ll know whether you want to keep following along or not. And I promise to always include an updated summary, so you’ll never have to worry about keeping track of important details.

Two other things (even quicker) —

If you really want to start at the beginning, here’s the Prologue.

I also recommend you check out A Terran’s Guide to the Galaxy at some point, for a good ten thousand foot perspective of the world building behind this story.

OK, now the summary:

Earth is a protected (read: ignorant) planet nested within a galactic community known as the Fellowship. In an effort to help Earth attain full citizenship, and to rescue its people from total self-destruction, historian/researcher and secret ambassador Rita Freeman is recruiting talented young people to build a better society, starting with a movement called Cubensia.

By some stroke of fate or fortune, three of them — Jackson, Esther, and Deek — are late to a Cubensian launch party that becomes ground zero of an attack that destroys an entire city block in Boston. Rita scoops them up into her spaceship, then travels through an interstellar gate buried on the dark side of the Moon to a planet called Priezh, where they will receive the Fellowship’s version of basic training.

On the way, Rita explains the galactic drama that has been playing out between the Fellowship and the Confederacy, and the Firstborn, a powerful race of beings at the head of each of them — respectively called archs and eternals. She is suspicious that the attack in Boston was the work of an eternal, and tasks her associate, Callan Tate, with trying to solve the mystery in her absence.

While visiting a dealer of exotic artifacts, he learns of a shady figure who might have known about the attack in advance. In an effort to track this person down, he decides to enlist the help of an old flame in New York named Margaret McEvoy, aka “Marvy,” who manages what is basically a secret hotel in New York for people affiliated with the Fellowship on Earth.

When we last saw Callan, he had left a ciphergram with Marvy, who agreed to do her best to get it into the hands of that shady figure. The ciphergram itself contained a simple message:

An invitation to meet with a Firstborn arch named Sky, at a certain time, in a certain place.

This is where Callan now waits, hoping the message was received…

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Waiting for Roger

The hardest thing about being prepared is the waiting that comes after. 

Callan has been pacing around the Himalayan node for hours. The place is underneath at least half a kilometer of solid granite on all sides, and completely empty, out of use for half a century, at least, and stripped of everything to the rock, including light sources. If not for the optic enhancements his armor provides, he would be totally blind. Not that there’s anything to see. It’s just empty stone hallways and empty stone rooms and no windows anywhere. There’s only one way in and one way out. Well, technically two, but the port bay is completely sealed off. 

He decides he might as well check everything again. He’s already done that six times, but what the hell. There is literally nothing else to do.

So Callan heads to the one point of egress, the entrance to the tunnel, which is still part of the whole node network. He felt safer to use it only he had talked to Marvy and become reasonably confident that the entire covert collective of Fellowshippers wasn’t compromised. And honestly the tunnels are just a way more comfortable means of transit than plastering yourself to the bottom of an airplane. Faster, too. 

After that little chat with Marvy, he’d allowed himself read-only access to the local network. That way, he’d be sure to get any updates from the ciphergram that had hopefully made it into the hands of the mystery man who Callan has decided to call Roger, until such time as he can meet him in person and ask him his real name.

At the tunnel entrance, Callan checks the array of sensors he set up there. Of all his preparations, this is the most important one, since they are calibrated to detect ninety nine percent of any armor type that comes within a quarter mile of them. Of course there’s always the outside chance that someone shows up wearing something outside the catalogue, but anyone who thinks you can actually prepare for everything is an idiot. You do the best you can. Anywhere the sensors are fine, just like the last six times he checked them. 

Next, Callan examines the sig-charges, set to trigger if a Firstborn eternal shows up and decides to kill him by summoning energy from its bonded star. In this scenario, Callan would die no matter what, and the eternal would be fine — if you could kill one of them by bringing a mountain down on it, then they wouldn’t be such a problem. But in the process of getting out from under the mountain, the eternal would need to summon way more energy, which glow like a neon arrow for anyone who’s watching. And at this point, everyone even tangentially associated with the Fellowship is watching. 

This was his logic, anyway. He couldn’t know for sure. He’d never gone up against an eternal. And he didn’t know anyone who had. 

Beyond the sensors and the sig charges, there wasn’t much else. A couple of weapons stashed in strategic spots. A getaway pod hidden just outside the tunnel entrance. 

But yeah, he checked it all, and it was all fine, and where the hell was Roger. 

The ciphergram had been very specific. Meet Sky in this place at 3pm, local. Come alone. 

Sure, it’s not quite 2pm yet, but you get an invitation to meet one of the Three Archs, you show up early. Come on.

Unless Roger somehow knew it was bullshit. But it would be even more of a risk to ignore the bullshit invitation than it was to bullshit the invitation to begin with.

Because, normally, Callan could get into a whole lot of trouble for falsely claiming to speak on behalf of a Firstborn. He could get kicked out of the PF, possibly even lose citizen privileges. 

Yes, the circumstances are dramatically extenuating, but there’s still some little boy part of him that’s scared to death of pissing off an authority figure. Like if “Roger” shows up and says hang on a second here, and then the curtains pull back and there’s his dad, and the pastor from his old church, and Rita, and all Three Archs, all with their arms folded and shaking their heads and frowning and saying you’ve been a naughty boy, Callan. You lied.

He knows this is ridiculous, but he also knows that this silly picture bubbling up from his subconscious is rooted in a profound truth: You don’t mess with gods. 

Which is why he’s preparing to die.

That’s what makes the waiting so hard. In any other circumstance, fine. He’d sit down and quietly go into wait mode. Enjoy the peace. No worries. He can handle whatever’s coming.

But for the past three days, he’s been haunted by the thought that he really, truly cannot handle what might be coming. 

And then it comes.

Callan is near the tunnel entrance, mindlessly examining his little escape bullet, when he hears the sound of engines in the distance. Big ones. And quiet, but not as quiet as they’d be if they belonged to the vehicles that were built for the tunnels. 

And then the big engines stop, maybe a quarter mile down the tunnel, and whoever it is starts making a bit more noise. Setting up a perimeter. There’s only so much he can gather from the sounds his armor helps him parse. But it’s enough to deduce a few things.

It’s obviously not an eternal. Or, if there’s an eternal with them, it’s not broadcasting its presence in any way. And if there’s one thing Callan understands about the Firstborn, it’s that they don’t show up to the party in disguise. 

But it’s also not Feds. Or anyway, it’s not any kind of formal Confederate military unit, which could look and sound like a whole lot of different things, none of which would look and sound like they came from Earth. 

Based on what his armor is picking up, these guys are some kind of state militia or well-funded mercs. They move with trained and wordless efficiency. 

Interesting. 

Another observation: the closest access point in that direction is roughly two hundred miles away, at the Nepal Node in Kathmandu, which hasn’t been in active use for a few hundred years. Back in the mid-20^th century, the Fellowship network was still using the Himalayan node as a space port, but there hadn’t been any need to make a pitstop in Nepal. 

So, either these guys came from a LOT further down the line (which would be basically impossible to do undetected), or they found a way in via Kathmandu. 

But the most important detail, by a wide margin, is that these people are here now, which more or less proves that they have some connection to Roger. 

Still so many things he doesn’t know. 

Uttering a vexed curse in his mind, he heads to the little cubby he chose earlier to be an observation nest. The cubby itself is nothing more than a small closet set off from a larger room down a long hallway, but he’s fixed a skin of armor-like material over the entrance to hide it from anyone who doesn’t know exactly where to look. 

Inside, he calls up a virtual control room, so that from Callan’s perspective within the invisible shell of his armor, the cubby becomes a network of interactive displays. Thanks to the grain-sized sensors he scattered earlier, he can watch everything that happens from the tunnel entrance all the way to the sealed ports. 

Roger’s mercs, or whoever they are, probably have night-vision goggles, but if they don’t have some kind of sonar sight, they’ll be bumping around like blind geese.

Callan squats in the middle of his virtual command center and waits some more.

They send drones first — little ones, no bigger than a housefly. A couple dozen of them. They flit around the whole space and then post up for maximum coverage. Callan guesses they’re using a mix of sonar and sub-infrared laser arrays.

OK, so they brought some toys. He’s not familiar enough with current Earth tech to know if this is beyond it. Probably not. Probably you could pick these things up at RadioShack. Were there still RadioShacks?

Next up, three guys come in from the tunnel. There are more behind them, but they hang back from the entrance at a safe distance from the vanguard. 

Who are they expecting to find? If they knew anything about archs, they would know that none of this precaution would mean anything. 

They’re looking for me, he thinks suddenly. And his gut tells him he’s right.

Well, let em keep looking.

Except…

The first three guys are heading straight for his cubby. They take it slow, checking each room they pass, but the trajectory is unmistakable. 

“Well, shit,” Callan says out loud. Guess those little flying bugs aren’t from RadioShack after all.

He’s not about to just sit here and wait for them to knock on the obviously-no-longer-hidden door. So he stands up, straightens the suit jacket and slacks he put on over the armor out of courtesy, and steps out of the cubby.

He still has access to full visual on the whole compound, so he knows those guys are just a couple of short hallways away when they stop. Because now they can see him, too, thanks to the little gadfly drones that are sprinkled everywhere. 

He would have cloaked, but then he would have had to take his clothes off, and why even bother, anyway? He’s who they’re looking for, and regardless of their intentions, they’re who he’s waiting for. 

“Hello!” he calls out. 

As he casually walks toward where Roger’s guys are stopped, he can see them share a quick glance. It’s possible they’re speaking to each other, but he can’t hear anything.

Pretty rude. Not a great sign.

“Hey,” he tries again, “might be good to talk for a minute.” He stops short of the next turn. He can see them watching that corner very intently, guns trained. 

Still no answer.

“Alright, listen,” he says. “I’m not armed, I’m not looking for a fight. I’m gonna put my hands up” — he puts his hands up — “and then I’m gonna step around this corner, and it would be really good if we can just talk to each other. Exchange some information. How about it?”

Nothing.

Dammit.

Callan shakes his head, takes a little breath, and steps around the corner. 

The bullets hit him like a hundred little fists. Very high-powered, fully automatic assault rifles. Despite his armor’s excellent kinetic distribution measures, it’s basically impossible to stand up straight under a full, close range barrage like that. 

Bullets are everywhere, chipping into the walls, spraying stone and dust into the air. Not technically a problem, per se, but a damn nuisance. 

They hold fire for a fraction of a beat, trying to see if Callan is down, and in that split moment, he rushes them. 

Callan is fast, but not fast enough to get to their guns before they open fire again. Still, now that he’s not presenting himself to them like some kind of target practice dummy, he can move through the firing trajectories a little more gracefully, and it’s not hard to grab the heated barrels and wrench the guns away from two of them, while the third beats a fast retreat to join backup that is almost certainly on its way. 

The two he disarmed switch tactics, one with a hatchet, the other with a knife in each hand. 

Close physical combat would be fun if these guys were wearing armor, too, but they aren’t, so there’s no sport in cracking just enough bones to calm them down. 

Now, though, he needs a weapon. Nothing fancy, just something to help him snipe the little bugs that are giving Roger’s guys eyes to see. 

He’s in too much of a rush to worry about how ridiculous he must look with the tatters hanging off of him. A beautifully tailored jacket, shredded to ribbons by bullets. He grimaces at the shame of it.

Thankfully, there’s one in the cubby, which he had diplomatically left behind. The weapon is basically an energy pistol. He fixes it to his shoulder, where it will respond to non-verbal gestures and somatic commands. It takes half a second to train it to automatically kill any of the fly-sized drones it sees. The first one, of course, is right outside the cubby. The pistol trains on it, then sends one high-energy pulse that fills the little bug with so much heat so quickly that it pops.

From now on, every room or hall he enters will go dark and stay dark in the eyes of his opponents. If they try to deploy more surveillance drones, they’ll suffer the same fate the moment they enter his weapon’s line of sight.

But they’re not sending drones, they’re sending more men. All of them outfitted like the first three — with full Earth-modern body armor all the way up to helmeted heads, and big assault rifles. 

Other weapons, too, Callan sees. It’s hard to make a full inventory as he stalks from room to room, trying to keep distance between himself and them until he can find a good angle.

Plan A is to identify whoever is in charge here, and try to get that person to talk to him. Plan A doesn’t seem hopeful, though, so he’s also workshopping Plan B, which is to leave. Preferably without maiming or killing anyone.

Roger’s guys aren’t stupid, though. The tunnel entrance is buttoned up with six bodies, while tightly knotted groups of thee work their way through the rest of the place, making it harder and harder to avoid contact. 

Callan doesn’t like this game. 

He realizes that if he waits too long, there will be no path to the tunnel entrance that isn’t blocked by at least one group of three men. Any direct encounter will cause a convergence on that location, and then he’d be totally surrounded, which would compound the number of limbs he’d need to break to get out.

As comfortable as Callan has become with combat situations as a PF soldier, he is extremely resistant to causing these people harm. They are not dressed for this fight. 

With the help of his armor’s built-in logistics module, he charts a path that will get him to the entrance without being seen, and commits to minimally harm the six on guard there.

There’s a close call in the last hallway when a fresh set of bugs flies in. It takes half a second for his weapon to turn them into a spray of molten metal and plastic, but his location is compromised, forcing him into a complicated detour.

It’s almost fun, like a game of hide-and-seek. If he tries to forget about how easy it would be for this to turn into a murder parade.

And then he’s at the entrance. At first, he thinks maybe the men won’t notice. He’s cloaked now, having gotten rid of the scraps of clothes, and there are no fresh houseflies buzzing around to help them see him.  

But it’s never the thing you’re worried about that gets you.

While Callan is carefully sneaking toward the big opening to the tunnel, he doesn’t notice the tangler until it’s too late. 

It was laid out on the floor, filaments splayed from wall to wall, waiting for him like one of those slap bracelets he played with as a kid. 

If he’d thought they might have a tangler on hand, Callan might have been able to detect it in advance, and neutralize the thing.

Instead, it wraps around him and gets to work. 

The armor Callan is wearing works by rapidly morphing its molecular structure to meet a wide variety of threats on contact. Tanglers are designed to overwhelm the armor’s capacity to meet those threats by deploying as many of them as possible across as much surface area as possible, all at the same time, via long filaments much finer than a human hair. 

The battle that rages across the skin of the armor and the tentacles is usually not immediately decisive. Callan’s armor is fairly fresh for the fight, so he has a few moments to find the tangler’s power source and kill it before those filaments can slip into his skin and cook him from the inside out.

Damn, damn, damn, he thinks as he twitches on the floor, struggling help his armor find the ledes, even as it focuses all its energy on the war with the wires. 

At the same time, three of the six men who were standing guard at the entrance come forward and line up their rifles point blank at Callan’s head. 

Before he can calculate how long it will take those guns to get a bullet through his weakened armor and inside his brittle skull, they start shooting. 

It’s a bad time. 

Recognizing this new kinetic threat, the armor does its level best to allocate the necessary resources to keep Callan’s head from exploding, while still resisting the advances of all the angry invisible tentacles. 

Meanwhile, Callan feels like his head is in a paint shaker. There will be no thinking until it stops. 

Then, mercifully, it does.

But now, instead of bullets, something else is streaming onto his face. In his thoroughly concussed state, it takes Callan a second to realize it’s blood.

Also there’s a lot of screaming. 

As his brain swells from the beating, and his consciousness begins to slip away, Callan’s armor loses its fight with the tangler, and he identifies a silver lining:

At least he won’t be awake for the next part. 

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