Celestial Bodies

[CHAPTER 9] - BOÖTES : JACQUES ARBER

I awoke with a start, Natalie already sliding from my side and gripping the baseball bat she religiously keeps beside the bed. When we were hooking up, I thought that was unusual for my manager, but now I come to know it as classic Natalie.

I shot up straight, cold air hitting my naked chest as the doors to my office opened and security poured in. The five burly men, that I loved sharing an elevator with, had been reduced to four, and they gave off a very unprofessional panic.

"Guys, come on. Knock first. I could've been naked! If you were to be so lucky." I swung my legs around casually, watching my security divide across the room.

We were in my suite of the Matterhorn, connected to my office and only a short staircase away from the residential section, that housed my finest workers. Those were my two escapes, one hidden behind a particularly ravishing picture of myself and the other clear as day, though my office was a hard place to get to in the first place. Only I and my security knew the passcode to the sky lift up.

"Sir, we have a problem. We have another intrusion on our hands. A celestial, and four others, one with mixed signals, judging by the new scanners you implemented." I dug through the new information. Are the celestials coming for their tech? Again? Is this what the Wolfe Centre had to put up with? So tedious. Who even sent me this thing? Questions buzzed, yet no answers came. Just a new problem that presented more questions.

"You." I pointed to one of my firm security guards, his dark glasses adding to an emotionless face. "Go wake Hans and the engineers. Tell them we need a second celestial cage. Pronto." I pulled a book from my bedside stack, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, and with a few whirrs and clacks, the painting of myself in renaissance uniform atop a midnight stallion, creaked open. The key to my tricks is in someone's knowledge of me. Why would I have a book written by another astronomer? Let alone read it? I write my own books.

His tree trunk legs animated, leading him out to the corridor of small homes. Hans and my engineers would be awake and creating a new prison for this awfully rude intruder in less than five minutes.

I was left with three guards, and a wildly attractive manager who hefted a baseball bat over her shoulder like she was about to hit a homerun. I always did love Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"Fletcher, where is Donovan?" I asked the head guard, confused as to why one of my colossuses was not present. Fletcher, for such a callous fellow, wrinkled his crow's feet, as if wincing in pain. "Don't say..."

"I am afraid the evidence points to Donovan being complicit in the intruder's entrance." Shit. How could you let this happen, Fletcher?! I remained silent.

"Give me the status on their position and your estimations. Don't hold back." I did not move from beneath my duvet, closing my eyes and entering the trace-like state that had fostered so many of my astronomical breakthroughs.

"The intruders entered the atrium using some sort of software to bypass our locks. They are progressing up to your office as we speak. They will breach through that main door into this room." With a suited branch of an arm, he gestured towards the main entrance of my bed chamber, indicating impending doom. "Estimations wise... it would be likely that the celestial has recruited some comrades and is moving to free the one we captured just days ago. As for an overarching reason, well, all indicators gravitate to when you were delivered the new device, Sir." Fletcher recalled the information in concise, sensible, well-ordered, and strategic points. His estimations were in line with my own. It's why he was my favourite. That and the fact that armed with my new weaponry, harnessing the new tech, he single-handedly subdued the celestial known as Ursa Major.

"What do you recommend we do?" I asked, gesturing for Natalie to put the bat down. It was putting me on edge.

We both reached for our wardrobes, engaging the triggers I had added to our bedside tables. Panels of wall either side of us slid into nothingness as we reached in, layering on some proper clothes. The three remaining security guards pivoted outwards. Fletcher's hands twitched, fidgeting as his brain worked to formulate a response I'd be pleased with.

"We should hold out in your office. It puts the bargaining chip in our hands, plus only we and Hans have access to Ursa Major's cell." He shrugs. "We have to face off with them at some point, and they will just keep coming. Evidently." I agreed, though my brain snagged on Hans, my most loyal engineer and childhood friend bearing a thread of curiosity. I met Hans when we were just boys in Cologne, and then we left to study under our mentor. Why my mind followed through with that seemingly irrelevant link? I did not know. But it did plunge me into conspiratorial thinking.

"Let's move." Natalie, the usually reserved and balanced woman, courageously grabbed my hand, taking us into my dimly lit office. Pencils and pens and bits and bobs and tech and smashed glasses and broken chalk and ripped up paper littered the office that was suspended upon the Italian mountains. It had been a hectic couple of nights, tinkering and then reinventing everything I could from the new tech, whilst it was still in my possession. A whole range of prototypes were marked on reams of blue: weapons, scopes, lenses, portable and static, magnifying and focusing. My brain was in a state of complete outpouring, and I could not stop it. Nor did my sponsors want me to. I was on the cusp of a new era of astronomy, stuff that would change the world forever. Rumours were already circulating of what would be released at my next conference, and I couldn't wait to show them.

Still, I could not escape from an underlying panic that stuttered my genius, toying with my core. These things called celestials were truly, wholly, at the epicentre of my dreams, and nightmares. How did the Wolfe Centre get away from these pests? Were they using them? On the same page as them? I loved the mystery, but the lack of variables and basic foundational knowledge irritating me greatly. This was the first time since I reinvented the focused deep space radio wave-based telescope I had been so hung up over a mystery. And this made that look like child's play. It was quite unbelievable.

Stalking across the swamp of sketches and algebra, I unscrewed the device that I had been sent by yet still an unknown variable, cradling it close to my chest. As soon as Natalie picked it up, I had Fletcher take a team and investigate its return address. By the time they reached the Tuscan address, it was empty and long abandoned. Not one clue revealed itself.

Natalie drifted towards my desk, on call to her own personal security. You may think that security for just a manager was a bit much, but Natalie wasn't just a manager. I don't deal with just anyone. She was the daughter of Michael Starlorn, the lead researcher at the Starlorn Observatory. Obviously, that didn't end well, but she came to me with brilliance and a determination unparalleled.

"Hey, Starlorn, don't touch that." She looked up with wide eyes, retracting from playing with my things whilst she called her guard. "Fletcher. What is our status?"

"Natalie's security has just informed me they are on their way through the secret entrance to your room. Half of them have been diverted to bolster our reinforcements guarding the caged celestial. We will have support encircling the observatory in T-minus 30. Also, Hans has just begun the construction of a second cell and was reportedly not pleased to be awoken at such a time."

As he finished, the electric whirring of belts and the subtle clunk of gears spinning started up. I dropped my jaw. The lift was making its way up. Natalie froze.

"Fletcher, tell me that's them. Or at least an angry Hans." The bodyguard edged closer to me; tension strung in his tone.

"No, Sir. That is no friendly."