"I understand," Regar said. He set the container down on the bed beside Kiril and walked over to me.
"If you need me, call and I will come," he said, and extended his hand.
I went to shake his hand, but ended up gripping his forearm instead, while he gripped mine. Old school, but I liked it.
Minutes later I left the outpost and headed back to Pax to finish my preparations for departure.
Chapter Six: Return to Paradise Plains
THE STARGATE SNAPPED shut behind me, the whine of stressed power-delivery machinery fading. Even without any light, I could still see just fine in the darkness. I was in the small gate room my grandfather had built and then hidden in the basement of his modest North Dakota house. The gate machinery was mounted on the wall to my right, with the gate itself directly behind me. Directly in front of me was the hidden door, still closed. The hole I'd bashed through the wall to enter the room led into the rest of the basement.
Everything was still and quiet, the air cold with only a faint hint of mustiness. It felt strange to be back on Earth after the last few weeks spent fighting for my life on a distant space station and even an alien world.
Anyway, I didn't have time for lengthy introspection. I needed to get across the border into Canada and find my way to Grandpa's observation post that he had for some reason hidden in the wilds of North Saskatchewan. It had been years since he disappeared, but the message he'd left on the station had been clear—the Connahr field protecting the Sol system from the Ferals was shrinking, and maybe failing. I needed to see if he was right.
If he was right and it was failing, I had no idea what I'd do. Maybe I could call in the Union to repair it and I could just leave saving the world to someone else. That'd be nice.
The hidden door my grandfather installed opened easily, revealing the rest of the basement. I had been halfway through my drunken demolition project, and it showed. Some of the framed walls had been taken down, but many more were just mostly bashed in. More an expression of rage than a proper demolition, really.
I picked my way across the littered floor to the shelf where I'd left my phone plugged into the ghetto blaster, weeks ago. It was completely dead, of course. The house itself still had electricity, but I hadn't plugged in the phone. I shoved it in one of the pockets of my new parka. I'd have to deal with it later.
Clunking as I walked, I moved to the stairs. I put my foot on the first stair and paused. Excalibur swayed from my belt on my right, and it reminded me just how much weight I was carrying. I’d also brought back three bags from Pax, all heavy. It was probably far too much for these old wooden steps to support.
I stepped back and unhitched Excalibur and the bags one at a time. First, I dropped the duffel bag full of gold with a deep clunk. Then the bag full of tier 2 and 3 materials. It contained a mix of all four types—metals, organics, radioactives, and exotics.
The third bag I left where it was. That one held my Earth guns, all the ammunition, and my Union-standard repair and fabrication tools. Guns were always useful, and I had no idea what I was going to find at Grandpa's outpost. I didn't think there would be Ferals, but I might need to fix the outpost like I had the station. It didn't weigh that much, anyway. Plus, it had my container of Nanite Clusters. It wasn't leaving my sight if I could help it.
The stairs groaned alarmingly but held underneath me as I ascended out of the basement. Dim blue pre-dawn light filled the first floor of the house, showing me the covered shapes of Grandpa's furniture in the living room. All of the tools were still where I and my father had left them, crowding out the furnishings.
First things first. There was a pile of junk mail on the floor near the front door, pushed through the mail slot. I sifted through it and found what I was looking for—the fat black and silver key to my Civic hatchback. Out in my driveway I could see a tall snowdrift, vaguely in the shape of my car. I had some work to do before I was going anywhere. I reattached the Civic's key to my Link with the rest of my keys.
I opened the front door and kicked my way through the knee-deep snow to my car, the pristine whiteness crunching and squeaking underfoot. A lot of snow had fallen while I was gone.
The doors unlocked when I hit the button and with some effort I found the passenger door handle. The snow brush was where I had left it, in the footwell behind the passenger seat. I dug it out and got to work brushing off the car.
It didn't take long before the GN-75 and the bag full of guns and tools hanging off me became seriously annoying. They were bumping into my arms and just generally getting in the way. The needler got stuffed into the bag with the rest of the guns before I dropped it in the snow near the front of the car.
I was just about done cleaning the snow off the hood and windshield when I heard tires crunching on the empty street. I looked up to see a police cruiser slowly driving by. The man behind the wheel was familiar to me, and I could see confusion and recognition in his face as we made eye contact. The cruiser pulled into the driveway behind my Civic and the cherries on top lit up. Shit.
I
