Covenant

by Jim Miesner

  The man rolled his tongue in his cheek as he considered this. “Very well. Please proceed to landing pad 14-B. Congratulations on your apprehension of the terrorists.”

  “Thank you,” said Reynolds.

  He even got out a smile before the hologram disappeared. He swallowed and his shoulders and head sunk as he hacked over the console. Bracing his hands on it, his feet slid out from under him and Sam grabbed hold of him until he regained his balance.

  “Reynolds?”

  He sucked in his lips and nodded.

  “I’m okay.”

  On the main monitor, they passed through the white Shell that shrouded the city. It shimmered around them and created a rainbow ripple that stretched away from them in all directions.

  On a second screen, Sam watched as the group sat in a circle with their holo-glasses on and controllers in hand. On a third she watched the drones exit the ship. They were wasting no time now.

  That was when she noticed the blue specks on the screen. She wiped her fingers over it and it smeared across the glass. Turning to Reynolds, his body folded in on itself and he fell to the floor. The blue juice rolling over his lips and down his chin. Sam tried to lift him up as his head rolled backward.

  “Not now,” she said. “Reynolds, not now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Reynolds,” Sam said and shook him.

  She felt his forehead. It was a million degrees. He looked up at her and sneezed blue onto her arm.

  “Sorry. I’m okay,” he said. He put his hand on the console, it slipped off and he fell back into her arms.

  “Can you walk me through this?”

  Reynolds nodded, rested his back against the wall and pointed up. Sam looked up at the screens in front of her. On one of them, the drones split into three separate groups and spread out toward the different power stations.

  In actuality, it wasn’t so much a power station as an enormous battery. A battery that collected all the energy provided by the myriad of solar windows covering every inch of the city. This whole shining, glittering city was one huge solar power plant. The batteries soaked it all in. There was enough energy stored to last a week if the sun went out tomorrow. Destroy one or two buildings and you wouldn’t even notice a flicker in the lights for a couple of days. Destroy all three in the middle of the day and the city would just keep on running straight from the solar cells. Now though with the sun near setting on the horizon, there wasn’t enough juice to keep it all going. That was where the magic happened.

  She pressed the button to hear the team.

  “We’re coming up on it now,” Marlena said.

  “Obstacle avoidance sensors off,” a man’s voice said. “Target acquired.”

  Sam flicked through the screens. Each one a viewpoint from a different drone. She stopped on one as it raced toward a grate on the side of the building. It came closer and closer until it was almost there and she flicked to a viewpoint from another drone to watch its last couple of seconds of life. It wasn’t that dramatic. No explosion. Just a crunch and then the drone disappeared, leaving in its place a hole, if you could call it that. They had hoped to tear it off but somehow it had defied the laws of physics, and ended up looking like one of those old historical cartoons where the characters made a hole the same exact shape as their body.

  “Can we fit through that?” Marlena asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” said another man’s voice.

  “Move,” Reynolds said with a rattle.

  As if they heard him, a drone highlighted yellow, raced toward the opening. It approached it and then bounced back as if touched by some unseen force.

  “Whoops. Forgot to turn off obstacle avoidance,” he said then moved forward even slower. It was a tight fit. He was too close to one side; maybe less than half a centimeter and Sam was sure he would clip his propellers on the edge. She imagined him spiraling to the ground, but then he slipped through.

  “Made it.”

  “Move,” said Reynolds again.

  “I’ll go next,” said Marlena and then the viewpoint on the screen flew toward the opening.

  Sam looked through Marlena’s viewpoint. Just before she got to the opening she moved left then right, up then down, right then left, and down and up all over again. She aligned herself perfectly before the darkness swallowed everything. A half second later the night vision kicked in and everything in the shaft glowed neon green.

  A little farther down the shaft the first drone waited, and along the bottom of the corridor was a faint highlighted line that showed the direction they had to go.

  “I’m right behind you guys,” said another voice.

  “Sam, move,” said Reynolds and smacked the console.

  She hadn’t realized he was talking to her. She looked at the main screen. They were just floating there. They hadn’t moved since he had collapsed. She grabbed the controls and pushed forward at the same time that the dash of the console blinked red again. Someone had noticed and wanted to talk.

  Reynolds pulled himself up on the console and waved Sam to move away.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “They want to talk. Let me explain the situation.”

  Sam felt the vibration before she heard it or saw it on the screen. They were like a plague of locusts. Thousands and thousands of drones spewed from every building in sight.

  “It’s too late,” she said. Sam held down the comm button. “We have company.”

  She looked back to the viewpoint from Marlena’s drone as her third teammate entered the shaft and Marlena turned and raced after the other drone.

  “You need to climb,” Reynolds said.

  Sam shook her head and pulled Reynolds’ body up off the floor. He leaned against her with his full weight. He was much heavier than he looked and Sam strained to get him up into the pilot’s chair until he fell backward into it. Then she put the harness around his shoulders and clicked the belt closed around his waist.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Preparing a Plan B. Any evasive maneuvers we make will affect their piloting and we can’t afford any mistakes now.”

  She looked back to the main monitor as the swarm raced toward her from all directions. At its thickest parts, it blocked out the sky.

  The cheers of the men went up and one of the three power stations on the map blinked bright red before it turned to a solid deep maroon. They had done it. They had taken out one of the stations.

  “What are they doing?” someone said. “They were supposed to wait till we all were in position.”

  “Stay focused,” said Marlena. “We only have a minute, tops.”

  On screen two drones dropped down a long shaft. They sped up their pace. Marlena pushed forward after them until she caught up to where the first drone was waiting.

  “Good luck,” said the man’s voice, and the yellow highlighted drone sped forward into the darkness. Then came the familiar grinding of metal before they saw the light pour in from the hole ahead. This time the whole grate had torn away.

  “You’re in,” said the voice of the suicidal drone over the comm. “Now take those suckers out.”

  She sped down the corridor toward the hole and came out into a white lit hallway. It was the familiar clinical white hallway, lit by blue strips along the corners. A trash-bot wheeled by underneath them. It hesitated at the dented grate and crumpled drone, before steering around them and continuing on going down the hallway.

  “This way,” said Marlena as she followed the green highlighted line on the floor. “It’s at the end of this hallway.”

  Another cheer went up. Sam could hear Emmanuel’s triumphant shout mixed with congratulations by some men, and Kelly’s laughter interspersed among them. For one brief shining moment, all of their differences disappeared. She looked down at her screen to see the second building was blinking red, and turning to a solid maroon as Marlena raced down the hall toward the last target in sight.

  She unlocked th
e fire controls as she sped down the hallway. It was only a hundred feet away. A handful of seconds until victory, and then a tidal wave of drones rushed toward the screen. Marlena and her teammate pulled their drones back, trying to escape them but it was too late. They flooded over them and the screens went dark before the signal lost message blinked on and off. She heard Marlena slam her fist into the arm of her chair.

  “Dammit,” she yelled.

  “Hold on. We’re on our way,” a man’s voice said.

  Sam clicked on all twelve screens. Only four drones were still operable. They raced back out of their buildings but again it was too late. One by one the swarm appeared on each of their screens then flooded over them as each went dark in a matter of seconds. Everyone was silent. Had it really happened? Had they come so close only to fail like this, again? Two stations blinked maroon and the last one seemed to taunt them as it shone a bright neon green.

  “What happened?” someone asked.

  “I told you,” Kelly said. “I told you we should have taken out the building. Now we’re screwed.”

  “Kelly’s right,” Sam said. “We need to take out the building.”

  Reynolds turned to her, horrified. “What are you saying?”

  Sam looked at the blinking light on the monitor and then changed the viewpoint to see everyone strapped into their chairs. They had strapped themselves into an ejection pod to remain stable, and Sam hit a button as the doors slid down around them.

  “What are you doing, Sam?” Emmanuel asked as he struggled to unbuckle his chair and looked up at the camera.

  “I need to make sure that last station goes down.”

  “What? No, Sam. Don’t do this,” he said.

  “It’s the only way.”

  “What’s she doing?” Kelly asked.

  The drones drew nearer to the ship, most of the sky now blocked out now as they approached. The red light on the comm still blinking at her.

  “You can’t do this, Sam,” Reynolds said through groggy eyes as the blue fluid dripped down his chin and neck. He fumbled with the belt and Sam slapped his hands away.

  “I will not let you die here.”

  “Sam!” Emmanuel yelled.

  There was no time for talk. She couldn’t fight with both. She had to do this fast, like a band-aid. One clean rip before she thought about it. She turned around and ejected the pod with a whoosh before she turned back to Reynolds.

  “Wait. You can’t-”

  "I'll see you down there," she said, then pulled a fire extinguisher off a wall.

  She didn’t know what would happen, but she didn’t feel like it was a good idea to have her hand in the way of an eight hundred mile an hour seat. She jammed the extinguisher into the button instead. The seat tore a hole in the ceiling and the extinguisher flew backward and bounced off the wall. Sam had to duck out of the way as it came flying back.

  The buzz of the drones roared through the new skylight Reynolds had created as Sam raced to the console and pulled back on the controls. Gravity tried to rip her away from them as the ship climbed higher into the sky. It wasn't built for these kinds of maneuvers but if this was going to work, she needed to get high, and fast.

  It felt like she was roasting, and then she realized why as she looked at the screens and saw the flames spewing out of each drone. A wall of fire surrounded her. Flames licked the hull of the ship and flickered through Reynolds’ skylight. They were trying to cook her but more importantly blind her.

  She pulled back as far as she could, hanging at a ninety-degree angle, squeezing the controls tighter with her sweaty palms until she crashed through the line of drones and the sky appeared again. She climbed higher and higher, all the way to the brink of the Shell before she let up and her feet returned to the floor. Down below she watched as some drones raced toward her again and others scrambled to form a blanket that would blind her. Larger ships were coming out of the tops of buildings too, but none would make it to her in time. She took a breath. The red comm light still blinked on and off.

  “This is for Jenny and all the rest,” she said.

  Then she pushed the controls forward as the blanket of drones rushed up towards her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  She smashed through the line with no hesitation. She couldn't fail Jenny, Daniel, and all the others. With only one shot to crash the ship into the last station, she lined it up and then let go of the controls. It rushed up toward her as the wind screamed past the hole in the ceiling. In a few seconds it would all be over and it would be up to Emmanuel, Marlena and the rest to free the kids and destroy the virus. She shut her eyes and found herself praying a quick prayer that it would all work out for them. When she opened them again, she saw the reflection of the giant drone in the monitor hovering just behind her shoulder and she jerked around toward it.

  She hadn't heard it come in. How had it gotten in? Maybe in that brief pause before she pressed the controls forward. If it wanted to burn her or tranq her now, it had an easy shot, but none of that happened. Instead, the drone shot out a hologram that read, GRAB ME.

  The ground continued to race up toward her on the monitor. She considered it could be a trick, but they were on a direct path for the building and whether Sam grabbed it or not, they were still on the same course. She wrapped her fingers around one rotor arm and then the other before the drone’s motors buzzed like a chainsaw in her ear and she felt her feet leave the floor of the ship.

  Soaked in sweat, the heat only grew even more intense as it lifted her up through the flaming hole in the ceiling. She felt her skin sizzle and the hairs on her head curl back in on themselves. Her eyebrows twisted like they were a hundred little worms wriggling on her face and then the intense heat disappeared and she opened them again to see the ship falling away beneath her. An entire side of it was in flames from the fire barrier and she laughed. Was this happening or was she dead? Was she really flying? No, she wasn’t. The windows of the buildings still raced by. She was still falling just not as fast.

  The drone shot at a diagonal toward a huge building not a hundred feet from her. Window upon window streamed past, silhouettes of people looking out on the scene. She couldn't see their faces but she could see their rigid posture, their stillness. It was a posture of disbelief, like mannequins in an old department store window.

  She thrust her feet out and they slammed into the building. The drone jerked sideways to compensate, bringing her away and then back again. Her feet dragged along the building as sparks flew off the metal that lined her shoes. She screamed along the edge, surfing sideways on the stream of sparks until she heard the ship slam into the building below her. It sounded like some horrible monster dying. Everything seemed to rumble as an intense heat blew past her and the buzz of the drone stopped. Suddenly it was lifeless in her hands and she picked up speed again, sliding faster and faster down the incline of the building. Finding the end of the slope her body shot sideways and she landed on her back. Pain shot through her side again but there was no time to pause as she rolled out of the way of a drone that crashed into the ground where her head had been. Another landed a few feet away, and another, and another.

  She got to her feet and raced for cover down the elevated walkway she found herself on. Drones raining down all around her as she dodged them and dove under an awning at the end. Sam looked out on the scene that surrounded her. Drones covered everything like an ancient plague while a thin haze of smoke and ash floated in the air. The biggest change of all though was the sky. It had turned into the brightest shade of blue. The Shell was down. They had done it.

  "Hello Sam," said a voice.

  As she turned, her jaw dropped. Only a few feet away stood Dr. Tesla with a drone controller in his hands.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The thin haze of smoke and dust still hovered in the air as Dr. Tesla stood motionless. He didn’t say a word. He was like a ghost. His eyes were red with bags under them, his hair standing out at odd angles and his wrinkled clot
hes suggested he hadn’t slept in days. She wanted to run to him and wrap her arms around his shoulders, but her feet stayed planted to the ground as a million questions swam through her head.

  He looked down at the controller in his hands and then back up at Sam as he tried to answer one of them before she asked it.

  "A prototype for older children," he said and shook the controller. "Gave me just enough power to get inside and pull you out."

  He looked down at it again, shook his head and tossed it aside.

  “It’s been so long since I used one of those… It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

  Finally, a single question found its way to the surface of Sam’s mind.

  “You’re alive?”

  He looked up at the blue sky. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “How is this possible? You were dead. I found your body.”

  He took a step toward her and then stopped when she retreated. A tear rolled down his cheek. She didn’t know if it was happiness, sadness, the smoke or maybe some combination of all three.

  He looked down and shook his head. “When I found out about Jenny, that she had a gift that could reverse the Sacrament. I knew she would be in danger. I knew we all would.”

  “But they found out anyway because of me.”

  He shook his head. “I was careless. I should have told you but I didn’t want to involve you. It’s my fault.”

  "How are you alive?" Sam repeated. "How?"

  “The same way you are. I took precautions.”

  “What precautions?”

  He took another step toward her and Sam noticed a stiffness in his gate.

  "It was a low chance of probability but it worked." He rubbed his shoulder. "To some extent anyway. Enough at least to survive the poison they injected into us."

  “You used Jenny? Created a cure? That’s how you survived and I woke up?”