Heritage (Under Revision)

Chapter 61: Dante

“Yes sir. I understand. It’ll be done immediately,”

I watch as Elena’s face becomes grimmer as her conversation comes to a close with an unknown sir on the other end of her TAPs device. She hangs up and breathes a heavy sigh before turning to me.

“I can’t stay, Dante,” She says to me.

“What do you mean? Elena, we’re practically on the council steps. How can you not stay?”

“Command has called me back to the front. Apparently, there’s a huge operation that suddenly came up that’s going to require all hands-on deck. If I want to keep up appearances I need to obey. Otherwise I’ll be the next one to end up in prison,”

“Have you heard anything on that, by the way?”

“What, Ethan? No. There were no public executions announced so I assume it went well. I’m not going to have time to find out though. I have to leave immediately for the fleet. Dante, I need you to be the one to present to the Federation,”

I shake my head and wave my hands in the air for side to side.

“No. No way Elena. We had an agreement. You promised to keep me out of this,” “And I would have Dante if this didn’t come up. I know what it is I’m asking of you Dante,”

“Do you really?”

“Yes. I’m not just asking you to say a few words. I’m asking you to put yourself out there at the mercy of the UEDF. I’m asking you to potentially put a target on your back,”

Elena walks closer and places a hand on my shoulder “I don’t want to have to ask that of you. But I am. Call it the last big favor I’ll ever ask of you. I’ll take the responsibility of everything that happens for better or worse. Please Dante,” Elena pleads with me.

Her eyes grow big and well with tears. I can see how much this means to her. It leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth to learn that everything you thought you could trust turned out to be the same as everything else.

I close my eyes and sigh heavily.

“Okay. I’ll do it. Give me the info you planned on showing,”

Elena gives me a wide smile and hands me the storage device with her chosen evidence.

“I suppose I should be leaving then. There’s only about an hour before your scheduled time,” I say, wrapping my arms around Elena and giving her a big hug.

The hug ends and we give each other a smile.

“Do me a favor and try not to die out there, yeah? I’d hate for you not to be able to see the fruits of our labor,”

Elena chuckles “You have my word, sir. If anything happens to you, I’ll buy you a steak dinner to pay you back,” She says giving a mock salute.

I laugh with her a moment before giving her another quick hug and leaving of the hotel, getting in to my car. I tap a few familiar buttons on my display, making a similar call as before.

“I swear you do this just to annoy me, Dante,”

“Maybe one day I’ll have it encrypted before I call. But you have to admit, it’s not as tempting to do when you know the person on the other line is just going to do it anyway,” I say giving a smile.

“You’re lucky that I consider you such a good friend, otherwise I may have to sign you up for every adult dating website in existence,” Katsumi says, giving a laugh.

“Anyway,” I say through a giggle of my own “I just wanted to let you know there’s been a change of plans. I’m going to be presenting the information now,”

“I know,”

“You...know?”

“What? You think the bad guys are the only ones I keep an eye on? I have to make sure the good guys are safe too. And don’t worry, if need be, I’ll make sure every colony in the galaxy knows exactly what’s been happening behind the closed doors of the UEDF,”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. I gotta get going. I’ll talk to you later. And thanks again for helping out with all of this,”

“It’s my pleasure, Dante,”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I’m going to need you to sign this form that states that you recognize that you will be recorded for the general public to see during your meeting with the council,” The legal liaison says as she hands me a clipboard with a lengthy consent form on it.

I take it from her and do a quick scan over the text before scribbling a hasty signature on it.

“When the light shines in your direction, that’ll be your cue to enter the council chambers. You’ll utilize the podium with a microphone attached to speak to the council. The council asks that you remain respectful and non-bias during your meeting with them as they do the same to those they allow to see them,”

I give a quick nod to the legal woman and she turns to leave. I stand in front of the large, cobalt blue curtain that hides the staging area of the council chambers. I feel the sweat on my brow as the nervousness starts to pass through me. A sick feeling starts to gurgle in my stomach. Before I have a chance to compose myself, my cue shines through the curtain and I enter the council chambers where a crowd of various levels of politicians populate two sections of arched seating rows.

I make my way for the raised platform in the center of the large chambers. A transparent podium with a microphone is placed on top of it. I wipe the sweat from my brow as I set down the storage device on the podium and clear my throat. I look up to see another arched row of seats. Sitting in them is one member from every race that is a part of the Federation of United Planets.

From Jinkor to humans and beyond, I see all of the faces staring at me, eagerly waiting to hear my presentation.

One of them leans forward “Please state your name for the record of this presentation. And begin whenever you are ready,” The voice says.

I pull at the collar of my dress shirt, fruitlessly trying to relieve the discomfort I feel at this moment. I look down and breathe a deep sigh.

I begin to speak “Ladies and gentlemen of the council. First of all, I would like to extend my gratitude on behalf of Commander Elena Blake for allowing us to set this appointment to speak with all of you. My name is Dante Hall. I was formerly a part of the UEDF when their air combat sector was known as the Air Corps. I was a pilot who flew countless missions on behalf of my planet and later transferred to security services on the XR-3 Zeus. I come before you today because Commander Blake and I have discovered information that is disturbing to say the least. This information spans back decades and is the sole cause of the incident on the Zeus. What I am about to reveal is something that was never intended to see the light of day,”

I can see brows furrowing and mouths twisting in intrigue as I press a button on the podium, causing an interaction between it and the storage device. A glowing ring appears around the device and a large hologram, big enough for every pair of eyes to see in the massive council chambers.

I swipe along the podium’s surface, moving through the various files until I reach the first one I had laid eyes on. Katie attacking a scientist after she speaks her last message anyone would ever hear.

“A word of caution to all of you: these files are violent in nature, but necessary to prove my case,”

I tap on the podium and the video plays, the voice of the woman’s screams as Katie leaps on her are even more ear shattering through the concert speakers set in the chambers. I look around the room to see expressions of absolute shock. Not a single word is spoken for some time. I allow the silence to go on for a while intentionally so as to let what they saw sink in.

The human councilman is the first to speak, as expected.

“Mr. Hall, explain to me what this is,” He says, clear anger and nervousness in his voice.

“This...councilman...is one in a very large series of documents and vlogs I discovered while investigating a decommissioned black site in what is now considered Pulvan territory. In order to explain this site, I must first explain to you what exactly they were experimenting on,”

“This is absolutely preposterous. I will not believe a single word of this,” The human councilman says as he slumps in his seat, arms folded.

The Jinkor councilwoman stares at him for a moment, eyebrow raised.

She turns back to me. “Mr. Hall, I am Councilwoman Nala Polar. I should like to hear what you have to say. I am sure I speak for most of us when I say that. As you were told before, you will be treated with respect and non-bias. Sometimes the councilman forgets himself in that aspect. Please, continue,”

“Thank you, councilwoman. Ladies and gentleman, the only thing I ask of you is that you bear with me through this. It will be difficult to understand all of this. To be quite honest I had trouble with it myself. To begin, I have to go back many years, centuries even,”

I swipe through the documents once more, stopping on a correspondence regarding the subject I wanted to address.

“What the UEDF has been experimenting on is the basis for the centuries long war that we have been privy to. This correspondence is a letter of intent from a one President Douglas to the then Commander in Chief of the entire military of that time to seize and transport an extremely large asset from Sekrid space to ours,”

“What exactly is a...Crinza?” the Taran councilman asks confused.

“I’m glad that you asked Councilman. Crinza is an individual, not a what; A being of legend, written about by Sekrid mystics and tied to one of their most well-known warriors in their history. It was a book that was, for a time, mass produced and sold on Earth. I myself owned one of the last translated copies in existence. This story tells of a creature so massive and devious that it traverses the galaxy and devours entire worlds. Thus, it was dubbed the World Eater. The scientist who translated these texts and was tasked with learning about the Sekrid people later became obsessed with the idea of Crinza. Upon extensive research he actually discovered a stunning fact...Crinza was real,”

The crowd bursts into conversation.

Their voices echo so loudly through the hall that Councilwoman Polar has to call silence more than once.

I continue my diatribe “Against the heeded wishes of the Sekrid people, Earth decided they would take the husk of this creature for themselves, seeing it as potentially a very powerful weapon against the enemies of Earth. Not too long after, the war began, and hasn’t stopped since. For years the UEDF experimented with various elements of Crinza’s corpse,”

I swipe to another document, a picture of Katie.

“Not much really came from these experiments, until an idea formed. And this girl, Katie, was at the center of it all. If you’re a human you should very fondly remember a nice little program called the Orphans for Science Foundation. For those that don’t know, this foundation was created so that children who have no parents and have very little at all can have an opportunity to follow their dreams. They were tasked with dedicating themselves to a specific science field and if they stuck with it, they would promise military service to the UEDF when they came of age. This was an incredible idea on paper. It was unfortunate that it was a front for the very experiments that UEDF were working on. The UEDF figured that children with no parents had no one and therefore were the perfect subject for their testing,”

There is no outrage to this statement, only gasps in disbelief.

This time I bring up two pieces of documentation and place them side by side on the hologram.

“On the left you will see a registry for the Orphans for Science Foundation. On the right, an intake sheet for the black site that I have been speaking of,”

The voices grow louder and louder as each person in the room read the full extent of the documents. Now there’s outrage.

Questions fly across the room, demands follow and I witness the councilman from Earth sink lower in his chair. I notice a good portion of the other members growing suspicious of their human colleague. I then expand the amounts of evidence to several documents on the hologram.

“These various pieces of evidence detail the processes in which they experimented on the children. According to them, they all ended in failure, resulting in this,”

I swipe through to a video of one of the children transforming to in a smaller version of what we faced on the Zeus. Lips peeled back to show razor teeth, eyes white and blood shot, armed twisted in to skewers made of bone, flesh torn away to reveal the muscle underneath.

A strong feeling of disgust and literal illness sweeps across the crowd of spectators. I switch to the video of Katie’s interview after infection.

“They were all failures, that is, until Katie came around. Something in her DNA was different from the other children. Now, let me change gears for a moment and explain to you exactly how this infection works. The infection is a parasitic bacterium. It’s one that spreads extremely fast and is incredibly aggressive. These traits were exacerbated by the scientists when altering the structure of the bacteria,”

I play Katie’s interview video and watch as the council’s faces turn to horror as Katie’s eyes turn black and she speaks in a demented tone towards the scientist interviewing her.

“As many of you know there is a very high-profile trial that has just passed in which a close, personal friend of mine has been accused of treason and hacking, among other things. The documentation he accessed were pieces regarding this very project. It was documentation that he was never supposed to see but was trying to investigate for himself why those terrible things played out on the Zeus. Knowing the implications of him accessing this information, the government did their best to make him disappear. But I wouldn’t let that happen without revealing the truth. I feel I’ve done that today. I have multiple copies of this drive, enough for all of you in the council to take with you and study for yourself. You’ll find more on the drive than what I showed you today, and it will only serve to fortify the truth I have told here. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the council,”

A dead silence falls over the chambers. Polar turns to earth’s councilman.

“Did you know of this?” She asks him bluntly.

He sits up tall at the inquiry.

“Not that I have to answer to you but...yes, I am well informed on all of this. And I’m not the only one. These experiments were a collaborative effort between Earth and numerous other races. All of which are in this room,” He states boldly with a smug smirk on his face.

The anger boils over at this and the numerous politicians start to yell wildly across the room, many of the council members included. The only one who remains calm in all of it is the Jinkor councilwoman. She stares off with such a look of disappointment on her face.

It’s not hard to understand her feelings on the matter. In the beginning of Earth’s rise back to stability, the Jinkor played a major part in it by being the first race to contact our starship and the first to offer aid to us on the condition that we pay them back. I decide it’s best for me to leave at this point, exiting the same way I entered.

“That was rather bold to reveal in such a way,” The woman who gave me instructions before says as I stroll by her.

“Just make sure they receive their drive copies,” I respond without turning back.

As I exit the building, I walk to my car to see the surprising face of a person sitting on top of it.

“K...Katsumi? What are you doing here?” I ask befuddled.

“Oh, I just thought I’d drop by to give you some moral support is all. And to just a little bit see the establishment crash and burn up close and personal,” She says smiling playfully.

I chuckle “Well I guess you came to the right place,”

I hop on to the back of the car next to her.

“I have a little surprise for you,” Katsumi says to me as she points towards a large screen across the street.

“What’s that?” I ask curiously.

“Well if I know you, and I do, you were most likely going to ask me to release the information anyway so that there would be no cover ups. Cover all your bases and all that, so...”

An emergency news report pops up on screen, flashing images of the videos in the evidence files with a large, bold headline reading ‘CHILD EXPERIMENTS?!’.

“Hm...I’m impressed. You do know me,”

“Just figured I’d do that in person. Enjoy!” Katsumi says excitedly before placing a peck on my cheek and hopping off the car, walking away.

“Where are you going?”

“Back in the shadows where I belong,” She responds giving a hand wave without turning around.

I can’t help but shake my head at the screen.

A smile forms on my lips as I feel the cold steel of the gun to my temple.

“Well that was quick,” I say without turning my face towards the unknown figure.

“You picked the wrong government to go after,” He responds.

I pull my TAPs device out of my pocket and show to the man who’s about to end my life. I stare at him with a question from the corner of my eyes. He smirks and gives a silent shrug in approval. I tap a few buttons and let it ring. Anika’s face appears on the other side.

“I see it went well...what the hell is that?”

“Don’t say anything, okay Anika?”

I see the tears start to form.

“We both knew the consequences of what would happen today. They’ve come to collect. I just want you to know that I love you Anika. No matter what. I’m sorry I wasn’t around for you for so long. I should’ve been. You know I’ll always be around in one way or another. Take care of them for me. They’ll need you,”

“Dante...” Anika says through a broken voice.

“I have to go now. I love you...”

Anika tries to reply but I hang up before she gets the word out. I breathe in the moist air as the heavy rain starts to fall, closing my eyes and letting the rain drops fall on to me one last time.

“Thank you for waiting,” I say as I slowly part the lids of my eyes.

The man scoffs “Well hey, it’s not every day you get to assassinate a national hero. What kind of a hitman would I be if I didn’t?”

“An even more impatient hitman than usual,” The man audibly laughs at my stupid joke and I can’t help but join him.

“I like you Mr. Hall. It’s a shame,”

He pulls the trigger.