Charm a Relic

Chapter Fourteen: A Leech Mine

It was Sergeant Holland, and he was leading his uncle Andrew and cousin Kenneth through the hallway. Sam could see that his uncle was very much alert, drinking a coffee while Kenneth was very tired nearly dragging his feet. Sam had a few hours of rest but it looked as though Kenneth had none.

"Are you sure you want to bring your son in to the meeting? He looks like he is about to pass out!" Sergeant Holland asked Andrew.

"Just get him a coffee and get me another while you are at it!" Andrew commanded as they entered a room at the end of the hallway. Sam followed them inside what appeared to be a command center because it was a round room with computers everywhere and what appeared to be a tactical display in the center of the room with a table surrounding it. Sam saw leather chairs that looked much more comfortable than his cot.

He could not tell how late it was because there was light coming in from windows on the other side of the room. Sam walked over and looked outside and it looked like everything was lit by what appeared to be sunlight.

"Where am I?" He asked Reegan and Toido.

"Deep underground," Reegan explained to Sam.

"How can I be underground? I'm looking out a window and it looks like daytime. There is farmland outside I can see a city and tall buildings. There are buildings built into the side of the rocks and It looks like day outside!" Sam described to Toido what he was seeing from the window. He decided to look up half expecting to see the sky.

"Oh wow!" Sam exclaimed.

"There's a ceiling! A rock ceiling! I see towers with giant balls of fire lighting the cavern! This is a very large underground cavern!" Sam described. "Those are plasma towers! Sam I think you should be near the main computer. If you can fly next to it Toido can hack into the system and get the mother lode of data about this base!" Reegan stated. Sam looked around the room and wondered if Reegan meant the large tactical screen in the center of the room in the middle of the round meeting table. He examined the tactical screen which showed a holographic view of a planet that appeared very much like Earth. It did not look entirely accurate he thought. Some islands were present that should not and no large deserts where Sam knew from geography class there should be. There were land mass features that looked oddly different and lakes and rivers where some should not be and some lakes and rivers not where there should have been. Sam dismissed this and thought that these people had been living underground for too long which caused them to forget what Earth really looked like above them. Sam hovered his nanobot over to the computer when Sergeant Holland, Andrew and Kenneth sat down at the table.

"This is a high clearance room we can speak here. I have some questions for you Admiral Gusterson." Sergeant Holland said. 

"For starters maybe you can explain to me why there has been no word from Earth Stellar command in twelve years? What's been going on out there?" He tried to question politely but his tone was obviously annoyed and accusatory.

Andrew appeared a bit flustered and annoyed that he was going to have to explain everything to Sergeant Holland and in front of his son. He did realize however that both he and his son could be stuck there a while so he decided to enlighten Sergeant Holland. He began to think of where to begin.

"Well for starters!" Andrew said mockingly of Sergeant Holland.

"Officially, Stellar Overseer is no more! As it was a Secret Star Fleet and there are no more secrets. As for my absence I had only just recently found the code for this jump gate's address. It was hidden in a badly corrupted file inside of a destroyed computer. Which I was only recently able to smuggle out of the command center with my security clearance as Admiral," Andrew explained.