Taggart Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Taggart

  Heroes of the League Book 2

  By Frank Carey

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2015 by Frank Carey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This story appeared previously in the League Foundation Trilogy 1.

  League Tale #2

  CHAPTER ONE

  Fifteen years earlier in a secret lab on Earth, somewhere in the Mojave Desert...

  The meeting room was sealed off and only the highest rated, most senior members of the Biocybernetics staff were in attendance. John was sitting at the back of the room next to one of Gloria's storage spheres, which were scattered throughout the facility. Around him sat the biggest big shots at Lab Omega Six, and none of them looked happy.

  The door opened to admit the Director of the Lab Omega Six followed by someone unknown to John. The new person was a tall, thin Tralaskan male with the air of the Aristocracy that John so disliked. John had no problem working with anyone of any species, but he drew the line with bigots. The concept of inherent superiority made John want to retch.

  "Quiet!" the director said to the room in his typically tactless manner.

  Silence filled the room.

  "Let me introduce the new Head of the Biocybernetics Division, Dr. Narnn Falta from the Tralaskan Center for Biocybernetic Studies.

  The room filled with applause as Dr. Falta's reputation proceeded him.

  John looked at Falta, having read several dozen of his papers over the course of his career. Though John thought many of the papers to be a rehashing of published work, he had to admit that many of them were based on very important principles.

  "John, can you work with this guy as your boss?" Gloria whispered from her sphere.

  "I hope so. If not, would you come with me if I left?"

  "No, but I'd miss you a lot." she replied. "I've got a good thing going here, and I'd hate to give it up to live in an aquarium hooked up to a commlink."

  "Your love knows no bounds," he said. "I'm touched. I think you're telling me to get over myself and play nice with others."

  "You are a genius. Damn. I feel bad I doubted you."

  He let out a laugh.

  "Is there something you'd like to share with us, Dr. Taggart?"

  "Sorry. Gloria just advised me to get along with Dr. Falta."

  "I always knew Gloria was the smart one. Thank you, Gloria. Now, if there's no further levity, we need to get down to business. We have two projects that are going to the front burner as of this morning: Project Anima and Project Hell Spawn. Both projects will be under the auspice of the Biocybernetics Division. John, you'll head up Anima while Falta will run Hell Spawn. People, Space Command and the League Marine Corps are both extremely interested in this, so act accordingly."

  The Director spoke at length before dismissing everyone, except John. "John, I would like you to give Dr. Falta a tour of your lab and introduce him to Gloria when I finish with him in, say, an hour."

  "Yes, Director."

  "Good, then I'll let you get back to work," he said as he led Dr. Falta out of the room.

  John looked at the parting duo unable to shake the sense of unease he had from the moment Narnn Falta stepped into the room. Something was off with Falta and John couldn't put his finger on it.

  "John, you okay?" Gloria asked as her plasma fields went pink, a sign that she was worried about him.

  "Yeah, fine. How about we go see what miracles we can perform before Dr. Falta shows up?"

  "How about instilling humility in you?"

  "I said miracles, not impossibilities," he said with a chortle. He walked out as the plasma streamers dissipated, leaving an empty glass sphere.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Several months after the meeting...

  John leaned against the table and read the data analysis from the last run. He went from frown to surprise and back to frown as the graphs formed in the air above the datapad. Even though this was a new setup he expected more coherent results. None of the data made any sense and that made John cranky.

  "Taggart, where are we with the setup?" Dr. Falta demanded as he strode into the lab.

  "Preliminary tests on an empty chair are showing results consistent with a sentient standing nearby, but the room was empty. I'll need to recalibrate and rerun the test series."

  "We don't have time. I've got a subject out in the corridor and the military breathing down my neck. I also have three Hell Spawn craft, but no pilots. I need a pilot."

  "Are you mad? Without a calibration setting we would kill the subject while losing the anima. We would kill the prisoner and gain nothing."

  "What are his chances?"

  "Right now, less than ten percent. You might as well shoot him with a blaster for all the good it will do the project," John said.

  John hated working with live subjects, even if they were the most heinous criminals in the League. Yes, he needed to test on a live subject, but he would prefer to give the poor fool at least a chance. Falta, on the other hand, was a complete sociopath. The only person Falta considered sapient was Falta himself, the rest of the League be damned.

  "At this point, I don't care. Where's Gloria?" he said as he looked at the empty glass sphere at the end of the room.

  "Out at the Cube running tests on the Hell Spawn flight frames. She's playing test pilot.”

  "Good," Narnn said as he reached down and slammed the power control to full.

  "Stop," John said as he lunged for the controls.

  The two of them wrestled for control. Neither noticed that something was forming in the receiver chamber even though there was no one in the subject chair.

  "Why? What the hell is so urgent that you want to risk everything?" John yelled as he grabbed for the controls. Narnn overpowered John with his more powerful Tralaskan muscles. John could only stare in horror as something coalesced on the half-meter diameter armorglass sphere. It was angry, evil; it screamed death, filling the sphere with streamers of purple and green plasma.

  "Narnn, let me go, dammit. That isn't an anima," John yelled as she struggled to free himself. "We have to send it back to whatever hell it came from." With a herculean effort, he broke free, but tripped on a cable. He fell, landing briefly in the field surrounding the subject chair as the device tried to draw the anima from his body and place it in the receiver with the demon, but momentum carried him out of the chair and onto the floor next to it, unconscious, unmoving, bleeding from his ears, eyes, and nostrils.

  Seeing what he had done, Narnn hit the emergency stop button. Before he could reach John, sparks and flame poured out of the machine as warning sirens sounded. Panicking, Narnn wrenched the glass sphere from its platform and ran out the door just as the device exploded, blowing the room's doors off their hinges and the windows out of their frames. Moments later, the fire squad arrived and put the fires out before the lab was completely consumed. They found John under a pile of smoking debris as they searched for missed hotspots. He was barely alive.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Gloria paced outside the hospital room as she was fast running out of synthetic fingernails to chew. She was at a meeting when they were informed about the accident.

  "Gloria?" She turned around and saw the attending physician walking up carrying a chart.

  "How is he?"

  "By some miracle, he is out of the coma, and there doesn't seem to be any lasting physical damage."

  "Physical? What about mental?" she asked, fearing the worst.

  "You know him well, right? Is he an artist?"

  "Yes, with robots," she answered, confused. "What's going on?"

&nbsp
; "He came-to about an hour ago and requested pencils and blank paper. He drew these," the Doctor said as he handed her three sheets of paper. On one of them was a black and white photo of a woman, on the second was one of a young girl, and on the third was one of the most terrifying demons she had ever seen.

  "He drew these? Doc, a few days ago he tried to draw an apple. It wasn't pretty. Who are these people?"

  "These two are his wife and daughter, and he has no idea what this picture is of," he said showing her the picture of the demon.

  She nearly dropped the pictures as shock radiated through her mechanical systems. "Doc, John Taggart has no wife or children. He was sterilized in a lab accident while at University. How did he put it? He shoots blanks."

  "We confirmed that. Did you know that John has an eidetic memory? It's found only in Earth humans and only one in ten million retain it into adulthood. There is evidence of trauma to the part of his brain which retains memory which gave him partial short-term amnesia. Now this is pure conjecture, but we think his mind somehow filled in the blanks with these three individuals."

  "Great. What happens when they don't visit?"

  He hesitated.

  "What?"

  "These two are dead," he said, pointing to the two females.

  "Excuse me?"

  "They died years ago in a plane crash. We checked and it's a real plane crash. No names were ever released due to security concerns."

  Gloria was stunned silent, unable to process what she was hearing. Things like this were the stuff of science fiction, and she hated science fiction.

  "How is he otherwise?"

  "Preoccupied almost to the point of being forgetful. Jumpy. Afraid of noises, shadows. There are some changes to his personality which cannot be explained by the blow to the head he experienced. Then there's this," he said, holding up the picture of the demon. "When he finished it, he asked that I destroy it. He said that he couldn't look at it."

  "This is what it feels like to be powerless, isn't it, Doc?"

  "He's healing. Give him time. I think getting back to work will be his best therapy. Forgive me for being blunt, but he's going to need you more than ever. Can you handle this?"

  "You bet your organic ass I can. Where is he? I want to see him now."

  "This way," the Doctor said as he led her to John's room, now convinced that his patient would be in good hands.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  John wrote on the wall with the pencil having run out of paper. Designs and equations covered its surface as well as the wall next to it. If one stepped back, one could see the design for a snakebot, while next to it was a design for a centaur, and above them both flew a four-winged dragon. Each one meticulously drawn with the beginnings of parts lists for all three. The more John drew, the less afraid he was, as if these creatures would somehow protect him.

  "You haven't lost your touch, have you John?"

  John jerked around, almost losing his pencil as he stifled a scream. Then he saw who it was. "Gloria!" he said as he gave her a huge hug.

  She was now cognizant of how hurt he was. In the many years they knew each other, he had never once hugged her, ever.

  "Hey buddy, how are you feeling?" she asked tentatively, like he was a fragile china doll.

  "Good, good. Look at these designs. I can draw now. We must get back to the lab so that I can build them, and you can test them. We've never tried building winged bots. Flying ones, yes, but never one that flapped its wings. What do you think?"

  "They're beautiful. I think pencil is definitely your medium, but shouldn't you take it easy? You took a real hit to the head, you know."

  He turned by the shoulders. "If I stop, it'll get me," he said as his eyes went wide with fear.

  "What'll get you?" she asked quietly, calmly.

  "I don't know. I drew a picture of it, but I had to have it destroyed. It was too much. Gloria, I know there's something wrong, but as long as I can work I'm fine."

  "What can we do to help you?"

  "Remember that bot we built as a test bed? The one that kept breaking down, but we would just patch it up. You remember?"

  "Yeah, Charlie One. Poor thing, but it kept going. Why?"

  "We need to patch me up so that I can function. I can't keep this pace up," he said as he started to shake.

  The Doc leaned out the door and said something to the nurse. A minute later she came in with a hypospray and gave it to the doctor. "John, this is a drug that will calm you and cut back on your anxiety," he said as he pressed the spray against John's arm and pulled the trigger. "Now, get some sleep. I'm going to arrange for our top therapist to come in and see you. We'll fix this." He looked down, and John had already lain down and fallen asleep.

  "How long will he be out?" Gloria asked through clenched teeth.

  "At least twelve hours. His mind is on overload," he said as he looked at the wall. He turned and found that he was alone in the room.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Two ships hung in the darkness of space just outside the outer edge of the Earth system. One ship, the League Battlecruiser Colestah sat moored to the other as its crew finished preparations for launch. The other ship, painted dark gray and only marked with the letters "HS3," sat quiet, almost as if it were brooding, waiting.

  On the bridge of the Colestah, Dr. Falta gave Capt. Mansura his final briefing.

  "HS3 will launch in ten minutes and proceed to these coordinates," the Doctor said as he pointed to the map on the viewscreen, "where it will engage the Torsan invasion force. It will then return here for debriefing."

  Capt. Mansura didn't like this operation or the Doctor and made his feelings quite clear. "This is not the way to engage an invading force. A single ship going up against a thousand? I don't care how powerful that ship is, it will take damage and, without backup, it will fail. You talk about this thing as if it's alive. It's a computer for God's sake. It has no feelings. What if the Torsa surrender?"

  "HS3 is alive for all intents and purposes, Captain. Inside its positronic brain is a complete soul, a miracle made possible by the discoveries Dr. Taggart and I made before his untimely injury. And should you worry about it not following orders, we have put safeguards in place that will prevent it from going rogue. We control it; have no doubts about that, Captain."

  "I think they told the captain of the Titanic something similar, Doctor. I prefer a cup of precaution over a gallon of regret. Helm! Time to launch?"

  "One minute, sir,"

  "Ms. Sona, sound battle stations, no drill," he said as sat in his chair and strapped-in. Around him the bridge lights dimmed as klaxons sounded and strobes flashed to signal battle stations.

  "Is this absolutely necessary, Captain?"

  "Yes, now find a seat and strap in," the captain ordered.

  "Launch in three...two...one...HS3 away!" Sona said from her station.

  Umbilical lines and flex gangways disconnected from HS3 as its systems came to full power. It pulled away from the Colestah and moved to the front of the warship where it faced them.

  "Orders?" a voice asked from the bridge speakers as it waited there, watching the warship. Narnn was aware it saw the shields surrounding the Colestah and the energy signatures of the mighty warship's weapons. As Narnn watched, the AI ship moved slightly to the right and then the left, as if it was sizing-up the warship.

  "This is Falta. Orders are to continue with the mission. Do you copy?"

  "I copy, Falta. Continue the mission. Aye," it replied as it brought up shields and powered up its weapons systems. Suddenly, alarms went off as the Weapons Officer yelled, "Sir, HS3 is targeting the bridge."

  "Full reverse, weapons hot, safeties off, target HS3. Doctor, call that thing off or I open fire."

  "HS3! Command override! Falta-one-seven-eight. Stand-down. I repeat stand-down!”

  HS3 continued to hang there, its weapons glowing with power. From the speakers came a laugh, a horrible, humorless laugh. Then HS3 was gone, as if it were never there.

  "Report!" the captain yelled as he leapt from his seat to confront Narnn. "What the hell just happened? Why did your creation just target my ship?"

  Narnn, shaken, could only say, "I don't know. That went against every programmed behavior. That can't happen." He got out of his chair and ran over to an engineering console where he ran an analysis of the HS3 telemetry. "Sir, it’s normal. No malfunctions. No anomalies. Everything is normal."