Ghost picked up speed as he approached. Slotting his rifle, he threw a titanium-fisted right hook into Dr. Cross’s face, the crunch echoing through the room.
The doctor fell back a few steps but remained on his feet.
“I deserved that,” he said.
Ghost raised his fist again as Dr. Cross reached up and took off the breathing apparatus to reveal a shiny metal jaw forming a grin of sharp, glistening metal teeth. He huffed through nostril slits where his nose had been removed.
“God damn, you’re an ugly motherfucker,” Tadhg said.
Perez climbed up and put energy bands on Dr. Cross, binding his hands.
“Target secured,” Akira said. “We need evac now. Frost, get ready to move with Okami.”
“Evac is on the way,” Apeiron said.
“Captain,” Ghost said. “You better see this.”
Akira bumped past Dr. Cross to find another horrific scene. Four men and three women, all wearing lab coats, lay sprawled on the floor, their throats cut and skulls cracked open. Crushed brains splattered over the floor, and bloody footprints marked where someone had stomped them.
A glance to the doctor’s gore-covered boots confirmed he was responsible.
“They were part of his executive science team,” Apeiron said.
“He doesn’t want us to have his secrets, but he’s too egotistical to kill himself,” Akira said. He directed the squad back to the stairs. Halfway up, they heard a gunshot echo outside.
“Jigs up, I’ve been made,” Frost said over the channel.
“Stay low, we’re coming,” Akira said. He turned to Tadhg. “Pick that asshole up. We need to move faster.”
“With pleasure,” Tadhg said. He grabbed Dr. Cross and threw him over a shoulder.
The squad ran up the rest of the stairs. At the top landing they could hear the pop of gunfire and growl-barking.
“Dumb little ankle biter,” Tadhg said.
“Apeiron, activate rockets on the MOTH and push that mob back,” Akira ordered.
“Copy that,” she said.
Explosions thumped outside as the squad reached the top of the dam. Craters burned where rockets had pounded the hillside. The firepower had pushed the mob into cover, but some still peeked to fire from behind trees and rocks. They were going to need a bit more convincing.
“Frost, grab Okami and head our way!” Akira said. “Suppressing fire, now!”
The Engines on the dam aimed at the trees and fired. Bolts streaked over Frost as she got up and ran with the droid. Tracer rounds chased them across the snow from machine guns. Akira focused his fire on those positions, taking down both of the shooters with shots to the chest.
Frost ran up the slope to the dam with Okami, bounding toward the MOTH that had landed under cover. Akira stayed at the ledge to watch the forest as the squad secured Dr. Cross inside.
Blue Jay zipped from the sky, and Akira caught the drone, holstering it. He ran up the ramp and stayed at the open troop hold, watching the people who had remained behind the trees on the hillside.
“Let me have a look at that,” Perez said. He reached out gingerly to Akira, but Akira pulled his severed wrist back.
“I’ll be fine,” he said through clenched teeth.
When they were clear of the dam, Akira took off his helmet to scrutinize Dr. Cross. The doctor was on his knees, eyes downward.
“Hey, little dick Napoleon,” Tadhg said.
Dr. Cross looked up, snapping his jaw.
“Tadhg was right, you are one ugly asshole,” Frost said.
Dr. Cross cracked a cocky metal grin as they threw him inside a cage.
“You can’t keep a wolf locked up forever!” Dr. Cross screamed. “My pack will come for me!”
“Not where you’re going,” Ghost said.
Akira activated the electric field around the cage and then took a seat in a rack facing it. He thought that capturing Dr. Cross would allow him to relax, but Akira had a feeling there was some truth to Dr. Cross’s threat, and he didn’t believe that the Coalition would just go away, even with their leader locked up off planet and an asteroid barreling toward Earth.
“Captain Hayashi,” Dr. Cross said from the cage. “Did you get the gifts I left for you?”
Akira ignored him, looking away.
“The gas was the first one of course,” Dr. Cross explained. “Your exceedingly stupid horse did a phenomenal job spreading it. Think about that, Captain. The horse you trusted helped kill so many innocents. Sad, isn’t it?”
Akira rotated back to the doctor who smiled wider than before.
“Your horse wasn’t supposed to live after that,” Dr. Cross said. “But since he did, it gave me an opportunity to provide you another gift. If all went as planned, you’ll be hearing about that very, very soon.”
“Apeiron, what’s he talking about?” Akira asked.
“We have a briefing prepared for you once we return to Gold Base.”
“A briefing about what? Tell me now, Apeiron.”
There was a pause.
“Tell me now!” Akira said louder.
“Very well.”
Akira steeled himself as he stared at the doctor.
“Kichiro was severely injured in an attack outside a hospital in Megacity Paris,” Apeiron said. “Be assured that I am doing everything in my power to save him.”
Akira would have balled his fists and beat Dr. Cross with them if he still had both. The man had taken so many good Pistons and Engines, even from the Nova Alliance Strike Force. He’d killed countless innocent people, and this time he had gone to great lengths to strike at Kichiro, for no other reason than to hurt Akira.
This man deserved death more than anyone Akira had ever met. Pushing up the rack bars, he burst over to the cage, only to be grabbed by Tadhg and Ghost before he could unlock it.
“Easy, Cap!” Ghost said.
“Let me go!” Akira shouted. “Get your hands off me!”
“Bosu!” Tadhg growled, wrestling him back.
“Stand down, Captain,” Apeiron said. “That is an order from Command.”
Tadhg pulled back on Akira and Ghost locked his left arm. Akira squirmed and pushed up, his strained muscles burning. Everything that had happened came crashing over him, all the death, carnage, losses over the years, and now this—a personal attack on his horse.
It was all too much for Akira.
He broke free of their grip and charged the cage until Tadhg tackled him to the deck. Akira cried out in pain as his severed wrist tore back open, blood gushing out of the bandages. Frost bent down to help stop the flow while Perez joined Ghost and Tadhg.
It took all three men to keep Akira down. In front of them, the doctor cackled like a hyena in the cage, enjoying every second.
***
Dr. Cross was on his way to spending the rest of his days in isolation in a vault, but Jason feared this wasn’t the end of the Coalition threat, especially after hearing about so many new attacks. The war against the Coalition as they’d known it might be over, but he feared the scattered insurgents would not soon forget their hatred of the Nova Alliance and AI.
He sat in the back seat of a hover-truck with Betsy and Darnel. They all stared out the windows at the thousands of people holding signs and screaming.
“This is getting worse by the day,” Betsy said.
“People are scared,” Darnel said.
“They should not be,” Apeiron replied. “The chances of the cannons not destroying Hros-1 are extremely remote, but I do understand human nature often leads to violence in the face of fear.”
“That’s exactly why the Nova Alliance Council wanted to keep the asteroid a secret,” Jason said.
Apeiron tilted her head. “I thought the shared threat of the asteroid would bring humanity together, but Captain Hayashi was right about the Coalition. They are a tribe and are indoctrinated, which means the only way to change their mind about
me is to destroy Hros-1.”
The convoy pulled into a parking garage under AAS’s Mid-Town headquarters. Twenty guards surrounded Jason and Betsy as they made their way down to an old subway platform, where an ancient subway train waited for them.
As he boarded, Jason imagined the millions of passengers who had taken this very train. He reached for Betsy’s hand, and she accepted it. Two months ago, she might have pulled away, but their relationship was on the mend. Having the L-S88 chip allowed him to do so much more than he had ever imagined, and she didn’t seem to mind now that he was home more.
In some ways, he had become like an OS, accessing, analyzing, and responding to data through millions of Hummer Droids and employees throughout the world. But access to so much also allowed him to see just how bad things were getting in the megacities. Riots over SANDs treatments, food shortages, poor air quality, and the threat from Hros-1 had the Nova Alliance teetering on the edge of chaos.
The train finally stopped and opened to a white-walled platform and a sign that read, Life Ark 12. Jason guided Betsy out of the train and down a long flight of concrete stairs. Two Canebrakes stood sentry in front of rectangular blast doors at the bottom landing. Their antennas rattled and clicked, and they stepped aside.
“Please, after you,” Apeiron said.
“I’m going to stay topside,” Darnel said.
Jason knew his friend was giving him some extra time alone with Betsy. But they weren’t exactly alone. Apeiron stepped inside the elevator with them. One minute and two seconds into the descent, the elevator finally reached its destination.
“We are now a half mile beneath the surface,” Apeiron said.
A white-tiled passage connected to an arched ceiling over one hundred feet high, carved out of the rock under Megacity New York. A second pair of blast doors slowly opened to a space ten times the size of a Droid Raider stadium, almost a thousand yards long and another thousand yards wide.
Hummer Droids in mech-suits stopped their work and stood idly. Balconies with glass windows framed the massive room. On the bottom floors, storefronts, eateries, and medical wards waited for future inhabitants.
Apeiron explained that eventually a park here would support hundreds of plant species. A concrete creek twisted through and emptied into a pond.
“Life Ark 12 will support a population of approximately twenty thousand people,” Apeiron said. “This is slightly above the minimum needed to sustain the human race if all other life is wiped out across the globe.”
“That’s not going to happen, even if the asteroid does hit, right?” Betsy asked.
“It depends,” Apeiron replied. “If Hros-1 were to impact, it could cause a domino effect that would escalate the danger to already fragile and damaged ecosystems. The worse-case scenario is complete collapse.”
The tour continued through future gardens to a block of outdoor patios and communal spaces. Jason gestured toward the ceiling, where cranes were installing a holo-screen that would run the entire length of the ceiling.
“Every morning the sun will rise, and every night it will set,” he said. “The irrigation system runs off algorithms that consider an extensive data set ranging from crop-growth rates and plant health to the mental health of the human population.”
“That’s remarkable,” Betsy said.
“This Life Ark is modeled after the mining colonies on the Moon,” Apeiron said.
They passed Hummer Droids and a few human supervisors who nodded at Jason. Another set of blast doors opened to an underground water treatment center and a vast hydroponic garden.
“Fifty percent of the food will come from this sector,” Apeiron said. “Diets will be mostly meatless, but we do have livestock.”
She crossed through warehouses that would support pigs, cows, and chickens, then on to another silo designed to look like a honeycomb.
“This is an E-Vault,” she explained. “Very similar to the one at the Titan Space Elevator.”
“The specimens contained inside these individual capsules were discovered on some of the trips we went on over the past few years,” Jason added.
Betsy walked around, looking into glass vaults at the creatures inside. “So, this is what you two were doing…” She faced Jason and raised a skeptical brow. “Globetrotting on some sort of safari.”
Jason laughed. “Kind of.”
“All Life Arks are completely self-sustainable for up to fifty-years with only routine maintenance,” Apeiron said. “This is the maximum amount of time needed for the world to heal after an impact from Hros-1.”
“That’s great for the twenty thousand people who will live here,” Betsy said.
“Everyone selected has a specific trait that will ensure if the worst-case scenario happens, life will go on,” Jason replied gingerly. He understood how that sounded, but this wasn’t about fairness. It was about survival.
An hour later, they returned to the surface and climbed into the convoy. Betsy remained glued to the view outside, citizens begging for food or sleeping in alleys and on park benches.
They drove down a ramp and into a tunnel under the bay. Jason reached out to Betsy again, but he stopped shy of grabbing her hand and decided against saying anything more. He knew his wife. Sometimes she needed to process things by herself.
The quiet gave way to the loud whine of hover cycles with high-powered electric engines. Darnel shifted in his seat as the first bike shot past them, leaving a streak of neon light. A second, third, and fourth bike passed.
“Asshole,” Darnel said.
Jason looked over to Betsy. “I thought maybe we could take the girls out for pizza tonight.”
“Autumn said she—”
A distant blast cut her off and Jason reached out instinctively to shield her as the hover truck jolted to a stop. The vehicle at the front of the convoy exploded, peppering the windshield with shrapnel that sent spiderwebs cracking outward.
“Get down!” Darnel yelled.
Jason held Betsy and covered her the best he could.
Gunfire cracked outside, pinging into the truck. The guards in the front seats cried out as armor piercing rounds punched through their flesh.
Darnel grabbed a rifle and grabbed the door handle. His eyes met Jason’s.
“Stay down,” he said in calm voice.
More hover bikes shot past, spraying the convoy with bullets and plasma bolts. After they passed, Darnel opened the door and hopped out, firing a burst at the riders.
Jason rose slightly to see Darnel run to the next vehicle and hunch behind a door where two guards were returning fire. Apeiron crouched in front of Jason and Betsy, blocking them with her titanium frame.
“It’s going to be okay,” Jason said to his wife.
But he knew it wasn’t the truth. His fear about Dr. Cross had been confirmed. This had to be the work of the Coalition, perhaps payback for capturing the doctor. Jason watched the sleek hover bikes turning for another pass. Their headlights flitted across the walls.
The riders stopped behind the burning vehicles, their engines revving like a growling pack of droid dogs. Another noise rose above the grumbling, and a new pair of lights entered the tunnel.
A black truck skidded to a stop and in the glow of the lights, eight fully armored figures hopped out. The men moved with calculated precision, fanning out and firing into the stalled convoy.
One of the guards with Jason cried out in pain and went limp on the ground while Darnel and the final guard ran back to Jason’s vehicle.
“Keep low. I will handle this,” Apeiron said. She jumped out, attracting a flurry of plasma bolts that slammed against her armor.
Jason snuck a glance as she charged the soldiers, grabbing the first shooter by the head with both hands. She twisted his skull, cracking his neck. Then she lunged for the next hostile and caught him by the arm, ripping it clean from its socket before using his body as a shield.
Apeiron tossed the body
away and darted into the shadows. Using a segmented arm, she wrapped it around the neck of one of the fighters, tossing him against a wall. Bolts pounded her armor, disabling her left arm, but she was already moving again.
Darnel and the other AAS guard stood to fire as hover cycles raced down the tunnel. Bolts lanced from the truck and the bikes, cutting through the guards. The men went down, screaming in pain and writhing from the injuries.
Jason ducked, unable to see what was happening, but his ears helped paint a picture in his mind. Two of the bikes slammed into the wall, and a third screeched over the pavement.
A familiar voice yelped in pain.
“Darnel!” Jason shouted.
He got up to look for his friend, spotting Apeiron. Across the passage, she engaged the remaining soldiers, commandeering one of their pulse rifles. Raking it back and forth, she fired a burst of shots, dropping all but one where they stood.
The last man hopped onto a hover bike and sped away. The machine was fast, but Apeiron was faster. She fired a single shot that knocked the soldier off the bike. The vehicle flipped, scraping against the ground in a shower of sparks, and the soldier’s body tumbled away.
Jason finally pulled away from Betsy, who sat up, coughing from the smoke.
“We’re okay, but don’t move, I’m going to check on Darnel,” Jason said.
She managed a nod and Jason climbed out of the vehicle. He found Darnel sitting with his back to the front passenger door. The other guard was dead, his face pocked by still smoking bolt holes.
“Get back in the truck,” Darnel said, wincing.
Jason reached down. “Let me help you inside.”
“No,” Darnel said, pulling out of his grip. “I can’t feel my legs.”
“All threats have been neutralized,” Apeiron called out. She strode across the passage, smoke drifting away from smoldering holes in her armor.
She bent down next to Darnel and Jason went back to help Betsy out of the vehicle.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s over.”
Betsy took his hand, still coughing.
“Who… who were they?” she asked.
Apeiron checked Darnel who groaned in pain.
E-Day Page 31