Chapter 28
I realize most of you wish you were at lunch, but can anyone tell me what this is?” Agent Rhane held up a metal object about the size of a Rubik’s Cube. He was standing in the middle of Hologram Room 3 with members of Phantom, Jackal, and Blizzard Squads, and he didn’t look happy.
“Come on now,” he said, his one good eye scanning the crowd. “McAlister? Romero?”
Agent O’Keefe shook his head as he watched them through the glass wall of the command center overhead. “Will one of you numbskulls answer the man?” he said through the loudspeaker. “You’re not only embarrassing yourselves, you’re embarrassing the entire academy.”
Jonas raised his hand sheepishly.
“Now how did I know you’d be the one to answer,” Rhane said. “All right, Cadet Hickman. Go ahead.”
“I believe it’s called a portal cube, sir.”
“You sure about that?” Rhane glared at Jonas, who turned his attention to a spot on the floor near his shoes.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, because you’re right,” Rhane said, breaking into a rare smile. “This little doohickey is indeed called a portal cube, and it happens to be one of the most powerful bits of technology this world has ever seen. All you have to do is enter the coordinates of the place you’d like to end up and it’ll open a sixty-second portal.”
“Does that include the girls’ dorms?” Pierce asked, earning laughter from the guys and eye rolling from the girls.
“That’s about enough of you, Bowen,” O’Keefe said. “One more wisecrack and you’re on toilet detail.”
“Shutting up now, sir,” Pierce said with a melodramatic salute.
“I swear, if the Thule don’t get me first, that boy will be the death of me,” O’Keefe said, not realizing his microphone was still on.
“Each squad assigned to Project Betrayal will have one of these, so I want squad leaders thinking about who you would trust with your lives—because if you lose it, there’s a good chance you’ll be stuck on Gathmara forever. And let me tell you, it’s not exactly a vacation destination—especially for humans.”
“You’re in charge of ours,” Colt said, leaning over and whispering in Danielle’s ear.
“Why me?”
“Because I trust you with my life,” Colt said. “And because if I gave it to Oz, he’d either lose it or break it.”
“I heard that,” Oz said, nudging Colt with his elbow.
“I know.”
“Show map,” Rhane said, and a holomap of Dresh, the Thule capital, appeared. “This is the reactor facility,” he said, tapping a domed building that sat next to the shore of a massive body of water. “And it’s where we’re going to spend most of our time training today.”
He went on and explained how drones and soldiers from the Defense Corps, Vril, and the Dagon Alliance patrolled the facility.
“Why don’t we just open up a portal and drop a nuke on ’em?” Pierce said without bothering to raise his hand.
“Because this mission is about stealth, not might,” Rhane said. “Besides, a nuclear bomb wouldn’t so much as crack the exterior wall of the facility. This mission has to be handled from the inside out.”