James Axler – Parallax Red Parallax Red

“Yes,” Lakesh admitted.

Grant gusted out a skeptical breath. “Putting together what you and Brigid have said, do you believe Parallax Red is an operable station on the dark side of the Moon, full of monkey-pawed midgets?”

Lakesh inclined his head toward the schematic on the screen. “The diagram for Parallax Red was in the database, and it appears to be the only likely destination of the carrier beam from Redoubt Papa. AH the evidence points to the existence of the station.”

He wheeled his chair around to look at Brigid. “And your postulation regarding the. ..troll living in a low-gravity environment lends more credence to the undeniable reality of Parallax Red .”

“We don’t know for sure where he comes from,” Brigid stated. “DeFore is reluctant to agree with me.”

“Sounds like her,” remarked Grant sourly. “Tell me this, thoughis there any tactical reason why we should be concerned about this? If the trolls are visiting redoubts through a space-based gateway, I can’t see what difference it makes to us. They can’t lock on to our unit and jump in here, right?”

Lakesh’s seamed face showed a sudden discomfit.

“Right?” Grant repeated, sharper this time.

Lakesh lifted his hands, palm upward. “I wish I could provide you with a take-it-to-the-bank assurance, but at this juncture, facing a wholly unknown and unexpected random element, I won’t pin myself down.”

“They’ve got their handsall four of ’emon some pretty nasty tech,” Kane declared.

“Like what?” demanded Grant.

Lakesh spoke briefly about the remains of the Mag-istrates found in the redoubt and his conjecture that a molecular destabjlizer was responsible.

Grant’s face displayed his difficulty in visualizing such a weapon. He didn’t quite believe it, not even comparing it with the commonplace scientific miracles he had witnessed in the past half year.

Kane’s lips quirked in a thoughtful smile. “If we could get our own hands on a piece of ordnance like that…”

He didn’t complete his sentence, but he didn’t need to. Everyone in the room easily pictured what he did. An MD gun could make Cerberus itself not just impregnable to assault, but they could take their war directly to the baronies, even to the Directorate itself.

Lakesh waved the attractive notion away. “It’s too soon to make such plans. Let’s wait for the good doctor’s final report before we embark on a course of action.”

Chapter 13

When DeFore announced the autopsy was complete, Lakesh convened a briefing in the dining hall. Although the third level held a formal briefing room, it was depressingly sterile and disturbingly cavernous, with seats for at least a hundred people.

The dining hall was more intimate. Grant, Brigid, Kane, DeFore and Lakesh sat at a table in a corner, sharing a pot of one of the few perks of living in Cerberus. Real coffee was one of the casualties of skydark, almost completely disappearing from the face of the continental United States. A bitter, synthetic gruel known as coffee sub had replaced it. Whether the name derived from substitute or substandard , no one knew. The Cerberus redoubt had tons of freeze-dried caches of the genuine article, stockpiled for the original residents of Cerberus.

DeFore’s report had little to recommend it as the basis for a course of action. The examination of the troll proved that though he possessed more organs than a normal human, and a few that were modified, he was essentially Homo sapiens .

“I found signs of decreased blood circulation,” she said, “and a reduction of oxygen and nutrients in certain organs, particularly the liver. He also had a small secondary lung connected with the primary two, with very muscular walls to control expansion and collapse.

If the dwarf did not come from a low-gravity environment, he certainly lived in one with a rarefied atmosphere that did not provide the proper electromagnetic fields to ensure healthy cellular growth.”

“Do you have an alternative theory?” Brigid asked.

DeFore folded her arms over her ample chest and eyed both Brigid and Lakesh with an attitude akin to defiance. “I know speculation is almost a religion in this place, but I don’t feel comfortable in engaging in it as to the subject’s point of origin.”