by Cam Daly
Clearly, Connor was inconsequential to everyone except Kery. If she wanted to save him, she would have to do it herself. Here and now. After this moment, assuming he survived, he would be moved somewhere else. The Admiralty wouldn’t expend any resources to recover him.
Resources. Effort. The real question again. Why? Why were the Molu going to such lengths to deceive the Craven? Why did they need her body to stage an attack on their own device, if both races already had access to the technology? The Craven couldn’t possibly hate her or the Fleet any more than they already did.
She needed more time. “Shadow. I need to know how to open a familycraft without killing the occupants. If I directly threaten the Molu in it, can you use the graser to take out Farley and the Thinker before they-?”
NO. The advisor responded long before Shadow could. Its data storage was in her body, but she was surprised that it could have analyzed her past actions and come to a decision that quickly.
There were too many variables and possibilities. If she didn’t understand the situation, she couldn’t possibly explain it to Shadow in the few seconds left before she reached Farley and Connor. She just knew that the Admiralty had made the wrong decision.
“Shadow, disregard that. I need you to look at this from a different perspective. The decoherence field is only part of what is going on here. There's something more to Ormlan’s plan and this is our only chance to figure out what. We can always build a new Observatory. Trust me. Trust your instincts.”
She cleared the last of the cars in the parking lot. Now there was nothing but flat, open asphalt between her and Connor. She slowed her run as the Molu holding him started shouting again.
#
It had taken Connor a few seconds to figure out why the flying Deep Thinker wasn’t just shooting Kery directly. The thing she was carrying around like a rag doll was the Molu duplicate of him, presumably still full of its crew of aliens. Its arms seemed…floppy, and Kery held them clutched like they were a scarf about to be blown off by a strong wind. Its body was draped over her right shoulder.
Somewhere between San Francisco and now she had lost her coat and boots, leaving her barefoot in her charcoal combat suit. Her unarmored face looked fierce and beautiful above it.
Hope gave Connor confidence. “That thing is your parents’ bodyguard? Does that mean that you’re just a bunch of little kids in there?”
“We may be young, but we still have the upper hand against your girlfriend.” Farley’s voice suddenly amplified. “Keryapt Zess, stop!”
At the same moment, the Deep Thinker blew up a car in her path. She didn’t seem to have heard Farley.
Connor almost laughed out loud. “Holy shit. You’re basically a mobile nursery.”
“We are not!”
“The other Actives are going to kick your ass, you know.”
“A valiant bluff, but the next closest Active is weeks away. After tomorrow, it won’t matter where they are.” Keryapt was closer now, and the Deep Thinker hadn’t blown anything up for a few seconds. “Keryapt Zess! That’s far enough!”
She skidded to a stop twenty meters away. The Deep Thinker slowed at exactly the same rate and maintained its positioning out over the water to her right.
She glanced at it, then switched her grip to wrap her right arm around the waist of the Other-Connor. Still holding him like a shield against the Thinker, she aimed her left Gunsleeve directly at her captive’s chest.
Farley continued. “If you so much as-“ Something made a popping sound and his gun fell to the tarmac. Connor flinched, looked down and realized Farley’s hand was still attached to the gun. The familycraft’s right arm had exploded at the elbow. Kery must have fired with the hand around Other-Connor’s waist, but he didn’t even see it happen.
Her voice boomed through the night air. “Any further hostilities and I start shooting into your parents’ crew chamber. Is that clear?”
Farley hesitated, and she moved her arm closer to his father. He nodded.
She continued. “Connor. Turn around and run towards the fence. Your cab should be about to get there, with the backpack. Ormlan, tell your pet to open a door in the fence for him.”
Farley glared at Connor but didn’t otherwise acknowledge the missing limb. There was a brief golden flash from the Deep Thinker and a wide section of fence was sliced into metallic confetti, spilling on to the road behind. Connor turned and ran.
He glanced back as he crossed the short distance. She was still standing there, one gun certainly trained on Farley and the other on Ormlan. Protecting him again. Or waiting for something? From the street, he heard the screech of tires as the cab stopped before the spiky remains of the fence. She had timed it perfectly.
Connor came out the breach in the fence and shouted at the driver. He turned back again to see if Keryapt was following him but she was still in the same position, her face indecipherable. How far away would he have to get before she could safely extricate herself from the standoff?
Suddenly the Other-Connor moved. The thing’s legs contorted and wrapped around Keryapt’s. A rippling, popping sound emanated from his body and Connor could just make out a cluster of small dark shapes flying away towards the water. She tried to grab at one, but missed. Ormlan’s body had tangled her legs and twisted her off balance.
An instant later, multiple lines of golden light connected the Deep Thinker’s shoulders to her head. No - somehow she had brought up her arms to cover her face and they seemed to protect her. She had mentioned the Gunsleeves were armoring as well as weapons. She thrashed about, trying to keep the beams off of her.
It lasted less than a second but first one and then all the beams were passing through her and continuing all the way to the tarmac.
Keryapt fell like a toppling statue. Her left arm, now cut free from her body, fell in one piece but the right came apart in glowing chunks. As she hit the ground, her severed head bounced free and rolled a few steps in his direction.
He was directly in the path of the cab now as it tried to navigate the fence pieces. It honked at him but he didn’t even look at it, just put a hand on the hood to steady himself.
Farley stepped on his own severed right arm and used his left to wrench his gun free. He turned towards Connor. The two Knight mechs which had been waiting nearby ran towards Kery’s body.
From the heavens, a thin line of white vapor suddenly intersected with the hovering Deep Thinker. Then another and another. A loud crack followed after each line appeared, then more rained down. The Deep Thinker turned into a golden ball of fire with a thunderous boom. The helicopter was cut in half, then quarters. Farley started running towards Connor but was knocked down as one of the Knights detonated.
A boat in the nearby harbor was sliced in half, then cars and trucks in the parking lot were hit as well. Some burst into flames, adding to the chaos. Connor stumbled around to the side of the cab, stunned by the devastation he was witnessing. The driver shouted something at him. Every other nearby vehicle was being destroyed.
Amidst the smoke and burning wreckage, Keryapt’s body somehow regained its feet. Slowly, awkwardly, the decapitated and armless thing turned in his direction. At the same time, a host of armed men emerged from the Coast Guard building. They stumbled about near the door, covering their faces from the heat and light coming from the burning hellscape.
The headless body took a halting step towards Connor.
An unknown female voice from inside the cab was suddenly audible. “Connor! Get in the car. Now! You have to get away.” The door was missing, making it easy to lean over and lurch inside without taking his eyes off the scene. The armed men were aiming guns at Kery’s body. Before any of them fired, it took a few surprisingly fluid steps forward and kicked.
Keryapt’s head ricocheted off the far door of the cab and landed at Connor’s feet. The driver screamed, forgot about the cut wire in his path and stomped on the gas.
As the car raced forward, the Sneaker phone on his pack c
ontinued its frantic message. “This is Shadow. By the time you hear this, our Observatory will have been destroyed. I saved Keryapt instead of it. But now you’re cut off from us. I ordered Keryapt’s Interloper to get her head and then itself to you at any cost."
Kery’s body was lost in the smoke again. There wasn’t any chance he could get to it.
“If her cranial pod is undamaged then she is still alive. You have a comm harness she made. I’m sending instructions. Use it on her head, then she’ll figure out how to connect it to her body.“
Connor looked down at the battered and burned head at his feet. A deep scorch mark showed where her right ear had been. Most of the hair on that side had been cut off as well. Her neck was a smoldering tangle of fused cables and other unidentifiable bits. He was afraid to turn it over and see what had happened to her face.
Shadow’s recording had one last order. ”Keep her safe.”
There was a brief pause, then a softer final plea. “Please. I can’t lose her again.”
INTERLUDE
On the muddy floor of San Francisco Bay, nine grey-black fish huddled in a tight school. If any human observer had somehow spotted them, they would be astounded to see flexible tubes connecting some of them to each other. It would be even more astounding to learn that these were not fish at all, but tiny encounter suits designed to protect the Molu inside when they were forced out of their familycraft body.
“Two of your mothers were injured when we ejected, but they will recover. The rest of us are unhurt. How are you?”
Their children’s familycraft was a hundred meters away, hiding in a dark corner of the Coast Guard station. “We lost containment on decks 5 and 6 of Farley, but everyone managed to evacuate to the upper levels. The damage is bad enough that we won’t pass for human at close range. As soon as the ESWAT aircraft arrive, they’ll take over from the heavy weapons team.”
“Then we will know just how much of Keryapt’s Interloper is left. They traded their Observatory to try to save it, but we ended up winning both engagements.”
The younger Molu swam about Farley’s communication room in agitation, getting in the way of their elder siblings. “This doesn’t feel like winning, parents. We lost your combat body. And a Thinker! It was a miracle none of you fell into the Great Abyss.”
“Children, don’t dwell on the negative! Look at the big picture. We have Mezerello’s brain and Keryapt’s body. Together they will let us destroy the device before Broaalg realizes its full potential. Our ships are ready for anything he might try.”
The youngest child chimed in with another protest. “But that other human got away, and knows who we are!”
“He will doubtlessly go to ground in the city. Eldest child - have Homeland Security look for Connor. No human would believe him, but we don’t want him to be converted by Broaalg’s forces and reveal that we were trying to capture Keryapt.”
A cry of dismay went through Farley’s young crew. “We should have thought of that. We were so distracted though. When she had you…”
“We understand! If Keryapt hadn’t stood still for so long, we wouldn’t have been able to plan our escape into the bay. She was very unpredictable. It is almost a shame that she was killed.”
The youngest Molu piped up again. “Won’t her friend Mezerello be angry when she finds out?”
“She would be, child. That is why we keep Mezerello unpowered except when we need her. She is only useful to us as long as she believes that nothing that happens is real.”
“Oh. What would happen if she did find out?”
“She would be very angry about being fooled. Wouldn’t you? Now, enough talking. Our Knights are arriving. Help your elder siblings get the Interloper back to our hangar. We will meet you there. It is almost time for the final phase.”
CHAPTER 10
“What is it that you’re trying to cut, boy?” The salesman’s drawl was clearly Texan, but Connor thought the man might be exaggerating it a bit.
“I’m not really sure.”
That elicited a raised eyebrow. “You’re not sure? Can you show it to me?”
No, I can’t show you a severed alien head. “It feels like cloth, but a knife wouldn’t cut it. It might have metal fibers in it or something.”
He had watched Shadow’s instructional video a half dozen times on the plane, but the half melted stump of Keryapt’s neck hadn’t matched what he had seen. It was almost dinner time here in Dallas and he was desperate to get tools before stores closed for the evening.
“Hmm. A Dremel tool with the right head would work, if you had one of those.” The salesman looked over his glasses at Connor as a question. “But I reckon you don’t. If the edges have to look really smooth, you might need a See Oh Too laser. If you just want to get the job done, a pair of aviation snips should work.” He pointed up another aisle of the small hardware store. A sign outside proudly proclaimed that this was the last family-owned hardware store in the area, which is why Connor had picked it.
“Okay. Thanks. What do they look like?”
Another needlessly dramatic pause. Connor started wondering if pulling Kery’s head out of the pack might actually speed things up.
“Sorta like scissors combined with a pair of vice grips. Do you know what vice grips are?”
“Do I look like the kind of guy who would know what vice grips are?” He realized that, with his fake beard and mustache on, he might actually look like the kind of guy who would. The sleek black backpack might look a little out of place in a quiet store like this, but he wouldn’t leave Keryapt's head in his rental car.
“I reckon not. They are like…oh hold on, I’ll just get them for you if you can wait a minute.”
Connor wanted to tell the salesman that an alien vehicle that looked like a man, but wasn’t, had happened to mention just a few hours ago that he and his alien friends needed Connor’s friend’s body in order to get out of a burning bed, except Connor suspected that by “bed” the alien really meant “Earth,” and by “burning” he meant “completely, totally, 100% on fire.”
And that whatever they were planning would happen within the next 24 hours. And that the Tumorish were going to come for him. And that…
He started to feel dizzy. He put down his empty shopping basket, collapsed into a sample lawn chair and put his face in his hands. He wouldn’t want Kery to see him this way. A few deep breaths helped him regain his composure.
“Do you want the good ones or the cheap ones?”
He raised his head and smiled. He had always wanted to say this. “Money is no object.”
The salesman stopped halfway down the aisle. “What does that mean?”
Connor’s head dropped back into his hands. He had escaped the Molu attack, survived the cab ride of near-death, beaten the wave of other passengers trying to book flights out of the other nearby airports and the nerve wracking trip through security with a burned and battered alien head in his carry-on luggage. Now he was about to be defeated by a nearly retired hardware store clerk. He was fairly sure that this wasn’t a dream he could wake up from, as no dream of his had ever held elements like this. Just then a hand patted him on the shoulder.
“Just joshing with you, son.” He handed Connor what looked like a large pair of complicated scissors. “You seem like you’re under some serious pressure. What else can I help you find?”
Twenty minutes and two hundred dollars later, Connor had the tools he needed. The salesman threw in a free pair of work goggles. “These should help keep you safe.”
Connor looked at them and then started laughing hysterically. He couldn’t stop until tears were flowing down his cheeks.
“Oh. Oh, man. Sorry. Yeah! I should get a pair of those for my girlfriend.”
The clerk reached for another pair, but Connor burst into laughter again and left without explaining himself.
#
“Ahh. Damn that hurts.” He applied pressure to his latest cut. The cheap motel towel was covered with red
splotches, and he was certain that he couldn’t get his money back on the blood-stained tools. He had succeeded in cutting through or gouging out most of the unknown materials that covered the release rings on Keryapt’s head. Luckily, the Deep Thinker’s beams had cut just below the connection point. He would be able to access something called the Primary Interface Junction once the release rings were exposed.
Unfortunately, he was not an experienced handyman and had managed to pinch or slice himself on every step of the process. The closer he seemed to get, the more he tried to just force his way through. He had been too stressed to eat much of the snack food offered on the flights, then in too much of a hurry when getting the rental car and motel room.
One more try, then he would stop and have dinner. He picked up the vise grips and file that he was using to scrape away the last burned bits of plastic or ceramic or whatever alien material it was that Actives were made out of. He held the head under one arm, pulled sideways with the grips and sawed the file back and forth. A moment later the last piece tore free, the release rings opened and he was finally looking at the Junction. He couldn’t believe it for a moment.
He knew the next few steps form watching the video over and over again. He slid the small silver ring from the communications harness onto the perfectly smooth and clean stump of the Junction and clicked it into place. A flip of the power transfer switch on the charged battery pack sent enough energy into her head to get her brain working. There wouldn’t be enough for her features or senses to work, but the harness had a wireless link for communication.
The phone Keryapt had given him buzzed. He was so startled that he dropped her head then shrieked as the wires to the harness stretched and tangled, almost pulling the whole assembly off the table. Gingerly he picked it back up and laid it sideways on the cheap wood. Everything looked intact.
He reached for the phone, noticing the visible tremor in his hands, and answered it.
“Connor! You’re okay. What happened? Where are we? Where's my body?” Her head was motionless as she said all that, but he could hear a rising sense of terror.