Red to Fade (15 page)

Gragon says to everyone, “We need a vehicle.”

Connor, Gabrielle, Gragon and Dylan run onto the main road. Gragon points his gun at a flashy sports car. Once the driver sees Gragon pointing his gun at him, he slams his feet on the brake and clutch, making his car skid and come to a complete halt.

Gragon goes to the driver side of the car. He opens the driver door and hauls the driver out of the car. Gragon gets inside the driver side of the car. Connor gets in the passenger side and Dylan and Gabrielle get into the back. Gragon drives off very fast.

Connor speaks to Dylan in a loud and shocked voice. “Did you see anybody following you?”

Dylan says, “Nah, man, I didn't see anybody.”

Connor says, “I think they might be tracking you. Do you have any electronic equipment?”

Dylan says, “Yeah, my planet communicator, but nobody knows I have it except you. I don't think that they could be tracking my planet communicator.”

Connor says, “Well, they're tracking you somehow; they were either following you or tracking that planet communicator.”

Dylan says, “How do you know they were tracking me and not any of you guys?”

Connor responds, “We've been waiting in that mall for hours and all of a sudden they show up when you show up, so like I said they're either following you or tracking you.”

Dylan says, “Fine, I'll get rid of this communicator.” He winds down the window beside him and throws the planet communicator out of the car.

Gabrielle says, “Hi Dylan.”

Dylan says, “Hi Gabrielle.”

Gabrielle says, “Dylan, this is Gragon. Gragon, meet Dylan.”

Dylan says, “Hey man.”

Gragon responds, “Hello. We need to get off the road immediately.”

Minutes later, Gragon has now driven the car miles away from the Fragma Plaza Mall. Gragon sees a motel. He turns right and parks the car in the car park of the motel. There are a few other cars in the car park, which are owned by guests staying at the motel. The name of the motel is Blydon's Domes. Gragon tells everyone to leave their machine guns in the car before getting out. Everyone does so. The machine guns that are left in the car aren't much use to anybody because they have hardly any ammo left. Dylan, Connor, Gabrielle and Gragon are now armed with just handguns. They exit the car.

The motel has a reception area. Dylan, Connor, Gabrielle and Gragon walk over to the motel and enter the reception. There is a male Balaxian called Antrend at the reception desk. Antrend hasn't seen the news on the TV about Connor. Gragon tells Antrend that he needs two rooms with two single beds each for the night. Antrend tells Gragon that he has rooms available, and how much they'll cost.

Dylan pays for the two rooms with cash. He doesn't want anybody to pay for the rooms with a bank card because the records could be traced by Joel and his posse and tell them where they're staying. Antrend tells Gragon that he has car garages for rental as well. In Blydon's Domes they have garages for rent so that guests' cars can have extra security.

The garages are around the back of the motel. Gragon wants to hire a garage for the night because he doesn't want anybody to see the car he's been driving. He thinks that the car might be reported stolen, and that the authorities will be looking for it. Gragon tells Dylan to pay for a garage rental for the night as well.

Dylan pays Antrend for the garage for the night. Antrend tells Gragon the room numbers and how to get to the rooms. He also tells Gragon the garage door number and where the garage is. Antrend hands Gragon three sets of keys and tells him to have a nice day. Two of the sets of keys are for the rooms and the other is for the garage.

Gragon picks up a flyer from the reception desk and puts it into his pocket. The flyer is for the motel. There is an address for the motel on the flyer. Gragon exits the reception area and goes to the rooms. Dylan, Connor and Gabrielle follow Gragon. Just before Dylan leaves the reception area he walks over to Antrend, hands him some cash and says, “If anybody looks for us, you haven't seen us, OK?”

Antrend takes the money from Dylan's hands and says, “No problem.”

Gragon opens the door of one of the rooms with a set of keys and goes inside.

Dylan, Connor and Gabrielle also go inside the room. Connor closes the door behind him.

Dylan says, “What do we do now?”

Gragon says, “We wait for now. When we get a contact number and location for the CSB-R1 base, we will contact the base and let them know what's happening and we'll try to arrange a meeting with someone there.”

Connor says to Gragon, “If your guy can't get a contact number and the location of the CSB-R1 base by ten o'clock tonight we're going to have to try to find the base by ourselves.”

Connor is setting himself a specific time because he wants to find the CSB-R1 base as quickly as possible.

Gragon tells everyone he's going to park the car in the garage. He exits the room and walks over to the sports car he's recently stolen, parks the car in the garage and locks the garage door. He then walks back into the motel room.

*

Several hours later, its 9pm and it's night time in the First Dome. It's a hot night. The Big Rock looks beautiful when the lights of all of the skyscrapers and other buildings are turned on. Passengers in cruise spaceships flying above Mars have often said that at night time, when you watch the buildings with lights on inside the glacitone domes on Mars, from a distance the glacitone domes and the buildings inside them look like giant fireflies inside massive glass boxes.

Gabrielle and Dylan are lying down in separate beds in one room and Gragon and Connor are on separate beds in the other room. Gragon's cell phone starts to ring. He answers. It's Sytron. Sytron gives Gragon a contact number for a Commander Lanken who works at the CSB-R1 base, and he also gives Gragon an address for the base. Gragon tells Connor the information. Connor stores them in his planet communicator. Gragon thanks Sytron for getting the information he needed and hangs up the call.

Gragon says, “Well, there you go, you have a contact number for the CSB-R1 base. Are you going to call them now?”

Connor says, “I think that you should call and speak to them in a morphian language; I think they'd listen to you quicker than they would listen to me. Tell them everything you know. If they don't listen and they hang up the call we'll drive to the CSB-R1 base and try to make them listen to us in person.”

Gragon does what Connor says. He dials the number for Commander Lanken and speaks to him in a morphian language. Gragon introduces himself to Lanken and tells him everything about what's going on. He tells Lanken about Connor, the R-1 file, Joel's mission, DD-12, the DC file, file hive, Space Drill, the CSB-R1 base and the explanations of the shootouts that have recently happened in the Glass Tomb.

Lanken can't believe that Gragon knows about DD-12, the file hive and the DC file because they are all top-secret information. Lanken tells Gragon that he wants to meet up with him and his crew at the CSB-R1 base. He wants to know what other top-secret information Gragon knows about the base, but he doesn't want this conversation to go any further over the phone.

Lanken tells Gragon that he'll send a soldier called Tizer to pick up him and his crew in an RBM to go to the CSB-R1 base. Lanken wants to pick up Gragon and his crew in an RBM because he wants them to have extra protection when they're travelling to the base. After hearing Gragon's stories of the recent shootouts that have happened in the First Dome, Lanken wants Gragon and his crew to have extra protection.

Lanken feels the need to send only one RBM to protect Gragon and his crew because he thinks that nobody will attack them while they're in the RBM. He thinks that nobody will attack the RBM because the RBM he's sending has dark-tinted windows. He thinks that Gragon and his crew will only be under attack when they're recognised by Joel and his men, and while they're in an RBM with dark-tinted windows, they won't be recognised by anybody. You can't see the inside of an RBM with dark-tinted windows from the outside. Lanken asks for the location of where Gragon's staying, and Gragon pulls out the motel flyer and gives Lanken the location. Lanken also asks Gragon for his contact number, and Gragon gives it to him. Lanken tells Gragon that the RBM should arrive shortly to pick him up. Gragon thanks Lanken and hangs up the call.

Gragon tells Connor that Commander Lanken is sending an RBM to pick all of them up to go to the CSB-R1 base. Connor and Gragon go into the room where Dylan and Gabrielle are staying and explain that they got a contact number and a location for the CSB-R1 base.

Connor also tells them that Gragon was speaking to a guy called Commander Lanken, and that Lanken is sending an RBM to pick all of them up to go to the base. Connor, Dylan, Gabrielle and Gragon wait in Connor and Gragon's room for the RBM to arrive.

Connor looks at Gragon and says, “Oh shit! I've just realised something: at the time when Joel tried to kill us at the shopping mall, he might have tracked us down by tracking your phone, or maybe the guy you contacted, Sytron, is helping them.”

Gragon says, “A number of hours have passed since the shootout at the mall. If they were tracking my phone, why wait until now to kill us? It doesn't make any sense. I believe that if they were tracking my phone, we would have been in another shootout in this motel hours ago.”

Connor responds, “I dunno, maybe Joel needs time to gather more soldiers and weapons. It's possible we could be walking into a trap.”

Gragon says, “Like you said before, we were waiting inside that mall for hours and Joel and his men turned up when Dylan did.”

Connor says, “Maybe it took them a long time to find the mall.”

Gragon says, “That is a possibility.”

Minutes later the RBM arrives in the car park of the motel. Gragon peeps through the window of his room and sees the RBM.

Gragon says to everyone, “I see the RBM. Wait here; I'll be back.”

Gragon wants to walk over to the RBM by himself to make sure that the soldier who he's supposed to meet is called Tizer. Gragon exits the room and walks over to the RBM. Connor peeps through the window and sees Gragon in front of the RBM. A morphian soldier gets out of the RBM.

The morphian soldier says, “I'm Tizer. I was sent here by Commander Lanken to pick you up.”

Gragon responds, “I'll gather the rest of the group.” Gragon sees Connor peeping through the window. Gragon signals with his hand to Connor to come out of the room.

Connor turns around to Dylan and Gabrielle and says, “I want everyone to stay alert and be prepared to draw your guns as quickly as possible. This could be a setup. Okay, let's go.”

For a brief moment Dylan and Gabrielle look at each other with worried expressions. Connor, Dylan and Gabrielle exit the room and walk over to the RBM. Dylan, Connor and Gabrielle get in the back, while Gragon and Tizer get in the front. Tizer starts the RBM, drives out of the motel car park and heads for the CSB-R1 base. The CSB-R1 base is in the First Dome, thirty miles away from the city. There is a thirty-mile road between the base and the city.

*

There is a red desert on both sides of the thirty-mile road that leads to the CSB-R1 base. At the end of the road you take a left onto another road that leads to the entrance doors of the CSB-R1 base. Joel has an agent stationed in an apartment in a building called Glace View, which is close to the road that leads to the CSB-R1 base. The apartment building was named Glace View because you get a great view of the glacitone window panels of the glacitone dome.

The name of the agent stationed in the apartment is Ted Baker. Joel has Ted watching the CSB-R1 base 24/7 with a pair of hi-tech binoculars. Ted is able to communicate with Joel at all times using a Sound Comm. Minutes later after leaving the motel in the RBM, Tizer is now getting close to the CSB-R1 base. Ted sees an RBM approaching the base with his binoculars.

Ted says, “Joel, I see an RBM approaching the CSB-R1 base.”

*

Tizer slows the RBM down, getting ready to stop at the entrance of the CSB-R1 base. Now that Connor is at the entrance of the CSB-R1 base his paranoid thinking has stopped. Throughout the journey from the motel to the base Connor has had his hand placed on his stomach, getting ready to draw out his gun from his holster to shoot the first person that tries to kill him. The CSB-R1 base has a glacitone wall surrounding the entire compound, just like in the R-1 file. The glacitone wall surrounding the compound is the height of a skyscraper building. The CSB-R1 base has entrance doors that allow vehicles and soldiers to travel in and out of the base.

There is a glacitone wall above the entrance doors. The RBM stops in front of the doors. There are guards behind the entrance doors in a small security booth with electronic equipment. There is a camera in the corner of a glacitone wall on the right-hand side of the entrance doors; the camera can see footage of the outside of the base. Tizer contacts the guards with a radio communicator that is installed in the dashboard of the RBM.

A CSB-R1 soldier always has to give an ID number and password in order for the guards to open the entrance doors. Tizer tells the guards his ID number and password. Tizer's ID and password are verified. The guards open the entrance doors and allow the RBM to go inside the base. As soon as the RBM is inside the base the guard closes the doors.

*

Ted says, “The RBM is now inside the CSB-R1 base.”

Meanwhile, back in the Hilton Hotel, Joel, Charles, Johnson and Edmund are in the room that looks like a workplace of a Federal Bureau Investigation division.

All of a sudden Edmund stands up and speaks with excitement. “I did it! I'm in the CSB-R1 base network. I can officially fuck the CSB-R1 base in the anal region.”

Joel asks, “Can you disable their communication systems?”

Edmund says, “I sure can.”

Joel says, “OK, do it.”

Edmund disables the communication systems of the CSB-R1 base by using the Clojan Beast software on his computer. Now nobody from the base can contact anybody.

Joel enquires, “Ted, are the doors of the CSB-R1 base open?”

Ted replies, “No, sir, they're closed.”

Joel orders, “Edmund, I need you to lock the entrance doors of the CSB-R1 base and prevent anyone from opening them.”

Edmund says, “Yes, sir.”

Edmund uses Clojan Beast and locks the entrance doors of the CSB-R1 base, and installs encryption and programming codes into the base network, preventing anyone from opening the doors.

Charles questions Joel, “Do you think they know what's about to happen?”

Joel answers, “Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I don't give a fuck, I just want to download the DC file and get the hell out of here, go back home and get my reward.”

Charles says, “What are you going to do with your reward money?”

Joel says, “I'm going to move to the Philippines, to build a brothel. I'm going to call my brothel the Fuck Bunker.”

Charles says, “Sounds cool.”

Charles doesn't know what to think after hearing what Joel just said. He isn't sure whether Joel is actually serious or if he's just taking the piss.

Joel enquires, “Edmund, are you definitely sure that the DC file can't be downloaded remotely?”

Edmund responds, “The DC file that's inside the glacitone file hive can only be downloaded manually.”

*

The RBM is driving on a road inside the base; to the left of the road are CSB-R1 buildings and steel watchtowers that have huge lights attached that add light to the base. There are armed guards in every watchtower. To the right of the road are more steel watchtowers and a road that leads to a huge car park filled with cars that are owned by Clandarian soldiers. Beside the car park is an outdoor training ground for Clandarian soldiers to do physical and vehicle training. There are currently some soldiers suited up in grey-green uniforms doing some physical training in the training ground.