Mother Ship

by Scott Bartlett

  At least they’re taking me seriously.

  He walked with them down a series of blue-carpeted corridors, with blown-up photos of a lot of people he didn’t recognize lining the walls. Since they didn’t bother to blindfold him, he committed the path they took to memory. Who knew when it might come in handy?

  Their destination turned out to be a hangar built into the mountain, containing half the squadron of spacefaring fighters which the government had developed by reverse engineering alien tech.

  They emerged onto a raised platform overlooking the war birds, which were parked below. Max crossed the platform to its end, where he gripped the gray railing there and stood very still as he drank in the machines.

  “Quite something, aren’t they?” Wick said from beside him.

  They were smaller than Max had expected. He was used to modern spacecraft, whose massive fuel requirements made them multistage rockets by necessity. As far as he could tell, these fighters were complete unto themselves.

  I guess the fuel they recovered from the crashed ship really is that efficient. Moscovium, wasn’t it?

  Still, these ships had muscle, their bulky fuselages protruding forward, as if ready to strike. Their surfaces shone like steely mirrors, reflecting their surroundings.

  “What’s up with their wings?” he asked Wick.

  “Ah. That’s actually our design. The Lark X-1’s wings are collapsible and fully articulated, made from stiff polymers and aerogel, though they’re mostly hollow. They’ll automatically assume the optimal shape for whatever stage of flight the craft is in. And once the Lark achieves orbit, the wings fold around it, so that it presents the smallest target possible.”

  “Are they armored?”

  Wick nodded. “They have some titanium plating, but mostly you’ll be relying on the Lark’s speed and maneuverability to dodge enemy fire.”

  “What about weapons?”

  At that, the scientist smiled. “Like nothing you’ve ever seen or heard of, young Max. Two of the three weapons you’ll be familiar with. The Lark X-1 has four Gatling guns, positioned to cover all four quadrants, and a complement of six Sidewinder missiles—with greatly enhanced range, of course. But the third weapon is something new under the sun. It’s enabled by the fuel we obtained from the vessel that crashed in Roswell, which I’m sure you’ve heard all about by now.”

  “Yeah. The fuel is called Moscovium, right? Cynthia said you haven’t been able to stabilize it.”

  Wick’s mouth quirked. “No, but we were able to extract a significant quantity of the stable element from their craft. Element-115, or Moscovium, is what allows the Lark to generate gravity fields, and not just for incredible propulsion and maneuverability. Its gravity cannon is omnidirectional, and it can punch a gaping hole through damn near anything.”

  Max raised his eyebrows. “But surely the aliens must be able to defend against that with gravity fields of their own.”

  “Yes, but it’s most useful to think of it as a sword fight—except, the sword you’ll wield is unstoppable. Based on our study of their downed ship, they aren’t able to, say, generate anything like a gravity-based forcefield to repel attacks. It wasn’t hard to infer that their supply of Moscovium is too limited for that, given how difficult it is to synthesize and stabilize—even for them, apparently. It would seem that Moscovium-based combat has more finesse than simply erecting some sort of shield and bashing away at each other. Instead, it’s a skillful dance. Whoever can exploit his opponent’s weaknesses, and use his tactics against him, wins.”

  Wick had clearly been given a lot of time to think about this. For his part, Max stared out over the long hangar and tried to wrap his mind around the idea that, in a matter of days, he would be flying one of the Lark X-1 fighters through space to fight aliens.

  They likely would launch directly from this hangar, he realized. It was almost long enough to serve as a runway for conventional fighter jets, and he was sure the Moscovium-powered craft could achieve lift in that distance. After that, a combination of their unique wing design and gravity-field generation would no doubt see them directly into orbit.

  Next, Wick and the twelve tranq-bearing soldiers he’d brought with him escorted Max through another series of corridors. This facility was clearly extensive, though Max reckoned they were now fairly close to where they’d started. In addition to memorizing the route they took, he’d also been counting his own footsteps, and he felt confident he had a decent grasp of the distances involved.

  They entered a broad, circular chamber with curved walls, segmented by vertical black lines. It took Max a moment to realize that each segment was a display, and that each one centered on a cockpit-shaped simulator unit.

  Janet awaited them atop a raised, circular dais in the center of the room, which Max assumed was for observing what was happening on the various displays. A swivel chair was mounted in the center of the platform, and Janet stood in front of it, her hands folded behind her back. Arranged around the dais was yet another squad’s worth of soldiers, all with tranq guns.

  In front of each sim unit, a man or woman stood wearing an Air Force Service Dress uniform, complete with its signature three-button dark blue coat, matching trousers, and light blue shirt.

  Max resisted the urge to look down at his own clothing—his jeans and t-shirt, which had been put through the ringer these last few days. He’d had the opportunity to shower since arriving at this facility, but he hadn’t been given new clothes. No uniform of any kind.

  That had probably been a calculated decision by Janet, and it was working. The people before him were all Air Force officers and commissioned pilots, each having undergone the extensive training and earned the qualifications necessary to fly a fighter jet. Probably, they’d undergone additional, secret training in order to pilot the Lark X-1s he’d just been shown.

  And I’m expected to lead them? Max, who’d completed only a single year at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Who, other than that, had just a few hundred hours of flying private aircraft under his belt. Yes, he’d played plenty of combat flight simulators. But how much would that count, here?

  The only advantage he had was his brain, the product of the GDA’s breeding program, which was supposed to grant him the ability to resist the aliens’ influence. Whether it had fully succeeded was another question.

  It struck him yet again how unprepared humanity was for this invasion. How unprepared he was.

  But why does Janet want to emphasize that?

  It was the beginning of what Chambers had warned about, he realized. The beginning of her attempt to get inside his head, to control him.

  “We begin drilling likely combat scenarios today.” Janet’s smile widened as her cold eyes bored into him. “You’ll undergo an hour-long tutorial on the Lark’s controls, and then we’ll run the first simulation. The idea is to fail fast and fail hard. That’s the best way to ascertain our weak points, and fix them.”

  Max gave a curt nod and said nothing. He had to admit, he hadn’t expected to be thrown into this so quickly. But it made sense. They needed to deploy a functional squadron against the aliens, yesterday. As it stood, it would likely be days before they were ready. Possibly weeks.

  “Show the asset to his simulator unit.”

  He raised his eyebrows at that, as Wick gestured toward a unit to the left, and two soldiers escorted him to it. So she’s still going to call me that. The asset. Apparently dehumanizing him was part of her strategy for handling him.

  He ducked into the imitation cockpit and settled back into the seat. To his relief, the controls were quite similar to what he was used to from all the combat flight sims. His parents—guardians—had bought him a state-of-the-art dual-throttle flight sim controller for Christmas a few years back, and it looked suspiciously similar to what he was looking at now. What had seemed then like an extremely generous gift was now revealed as an attempt to prepare him for exactly this.

  “Put these on.” Wick handed him a VR headset no
t much bulkier than a large pair of sunglasses. Max slipped them over his head and was thrown into the first sim.

  Looking down, he saw a lifelike reproduction of his hands, which were currently resting on the throttle and sidestick. Just above that were the myriad dials, meters, knobs, and buttons characteristic of such cockpits. And above the controls was a continuous curved display that formed a half-dome over his head. Currently, it showed what looked like the inside of the physical hangar they’d just visited. Seven other Larks were parked nearby.

  “The sensor suite is quite sophisticated,” Wick said softly, from his right. “You can switch the display to view any full quadrant around you. The sensors will warn you about anything the system interprets as a potential threat, at which point you have a number of options for assessing it yourself—radar, infrared, and even visual, if it’s close enough. Computer projections will supplement whatever the sensors confirm, and the system will assign probabilities to each projection.”

  “Got it.”

  Without warning, the display switched to a view of Earth from orbit, with the moon hanging just overhead. Max nearly gasped at the curved screen’s sheer fidelity. Other than the gravity, it actually felt like he was sitting in space, gazing down at humanity’s blue birth world.

  Wick ran him through the controls, slowly getting him used to operating in three-dimensional space. It wasn’t so different from flying a simulated fighter jet. Not from the perspective of situational awareness, anyway. In both scenarios, you had to worry about threats emanating from all three axes.

  The handling of the craft, of course, was totally different in space. There was no air resistance—no banked turns. Maneuvering came down to thrust: how much, and at what angle.

  “The Lark has no thrusters, as such.” Wick sounded almost reverent as he discussed each of the fighter’s features. “Propulsion is achieved through manipulation of the gravity field. There’s no need to maneuver into position to travel along a given vector. You simply choose one and go.”

  The other major difference was the speed the Lark X-1 was capable of, thanks to its gravity-manipulating Moscovium fuel. At Wick’s suggestion, Max accelerated toward the moon, the massive body growing rapidly on his visual display, revealing greater and greater detail.

  “We’ve reduced the trip to the moon from over two days to just over an hour, with no need to worry about g-forces pulping the body of the pilot. The same gravity envelope that provides propulsion also protects you from the negative effects of extreme acceleration.”

  “Is that where I’m going? The moon?”

  There was a pause, and Max imagined Wick exchanging silent glances with Janet.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “We’ve identified what we hope is a single point of failure currently located on the far side of the moon. We’re calling it the mother ship, which is fitting, since every one of the enemy saucers deployed from inside it.”

  “So that’s the plan? Slip past their massive fleet somehow, hope we can manage to blow up their mega-ship with sixteen fighters, and pray it makes them call it a day?’

  There was another pause.

  “Essentially, yes.”

  43

  4 days to extinction

  To move everyone in Fort Benson, along with everything they owned, vehicles were needed. Mostly SUVs, which Benson’s people collected from the surrounding countryside. Quads and horses wouldn’t cut it, for this trip.

  Once they’d assembled a fleet of twelve vehicles—seven for taking passengers, five with the seats folded down to make room for weapons, ammo, supplies, and extra gas—the supplies were loaded and the humans piled in.

  With that, they were off.

  Similar to the sleeping accommodations he’d been given, Jimmy’s seat in the back of the only sedan wasn’t much better. On his left was a squirming seven-year-old, and on his right sat a lanky man of about seventy, who slept for most of the trip. As he snoozed, the man’s torso inched toward Jimmy with each right turn, until finally his head came to rest on Jimmy’s shoulder, where he snored loudly and drooled.

  Jimmy shrugged, trying to wake him. “Hey.” Nothing.

  He flicked his knee. No reaction.

  Finally, he pushed the man, whose name was Tom he was pretty sure, until he was sitting upright again.

  Ten minutes later, Tom’s head was back on Jimmy’s shoulder.

  I guess he likes it there.

  Their destination was the City of Pueblo, which was a forty-five minute drive south of Colorado Springs and probably within two or three hours of wherever in the Rockies they were keeping Max. The road trip would take under seven hours, provided the way stayed clear.

  Chambers had already informed Jimmy that he wasn’t coming on the “mission” to rescue Max. He’d been leaning against the sedan when the agent came over to give him that news.

  “Good,” Jimmy had said. “I don’t want to come.”

  The agent had nodded. “Well, this might be the last time we talk. I’m going to see you guys into the Pueblo shelter, but there won’t be much time to chat.”

  Jimmy had blinked at him, unsure about the point of the conversation.

  “Take care of yourself as you can. There’s a chance none of us will come back, and you’ll be one of the last able-bodied men these people have. You can shoot, which will mean a lot. Especially if the supplies run out and you need other food sources.”

  “Don’t get all sentimental on me, Mr. Chambers.”

  The agent had chuckled. “You know, as Max’s friend, we kept a careful eye on you too, along with pretty detailed records.”

  “And?”

  “And I happen to know that somewhere under all the layers of bullshit, there’s a good kid. For what it’s worth.”

  “Not much.”

  With that, Chambers had nodded again, and left to help with the last of the preparations.

  Tara’s voice had cut through the general tumult, then. She’d been arguing with her father, and her father’s girlfriend, Maisie. At least, Jimmy was pretty sure Benson and Maisie were involved. They sure bickered like an old married couple.

  “I’m coming with you,” Tara had said. Tilly the beagle sat at her feet, staring up at her owner with her head cocked. Somehow, the old dog has survived the Ravager attack, and seemed none the worse for wear.

  Benson crossed his arms. “No, you’re not. You’ll be safer in Pueblo with the others.”

  “It’s not about being safe anymore, Dad. No one is safe, not in the long run. Not unless we can figure out a way to defeat the aliens. I can help.”

  “You’ve never even fired a weapon, girl,” Maisie said.

  “It’s not just about shooting people. I know other things. And I know Max.” Tara’s face reddened a little at that, but she held firm.

  Benson shook his head. “There’s zero chance you’re coming with us, sweetheart. I’d suggest you save your energy for something else.”

  So. Benson was exerting his authority as leader of his little commune, or whatever it was he’d put together here. Apparently he thought that authority extended beyond Fort Benson, even when he intended to leave most of his people in Pueblo.

  Whatever.

  It didn’t matter to Jimmy. What mattered most right now was the old guy snoozing on his shoulder, and his fervent wish he’d wake up and sit straight like a normal person. Beyond that, it would be nice to be high. He wondered if anyone else in their group had their own stash secreted somewhere in the belongings they’d taken, and whether they were willing to share. Or whether he’d be able to slip out of the Pueblo shelter at any point, to scour the surrounding neighborhoods.

  Probably not. From the sounds of it, the shelter would be pretty secure, both against Ravagers coming in and people leaving.

  But who would hold the keys, and would they be open to negotiating? Or was Jimmy better to ditch this group before the shelter was locked up, to try his luck on his own in the middle of Colorado?

  Tom managed to sl
eep through the entire trip, which lasted a full seven hours because of a detour they were forced to take to avoid a mass Ravager migration across Route 50.

  They parked along one of the streets outside Pueblo’s Federal Building. Jimmy went to the back of the Ford F250 from which Chambers was handing out weapons. The agent nodded at Jimmy when he approached, then passed him his father’s hunting rifle, along with a pouch filled with cartridges.

  That done, the ones remaining in the vehicles were instructed to keep the doors locked while those with weapons stormed the Federal Building.

  They found some Berserkers wandering the halls inside, and they took them down efficiently, with barely any ammo wasted. Jimmy would have expected to find more, but he guessed most of the crazies who’d been inside the building when the aliens scrambled the world’s brains had found their way out.

  With the building cleared, Chambers divided the group into teams, with instructions to scour the place for a key to the fallout shelter in the basement. “Check under desks, behind paintings, and on the bottoms of filing cabinet drawers. Plus anywhere else you think they might have hidden it. They always keep at least one key on-site, in case they can’t make contact with the key holders during an emergency.”

  The search lasted less than a half hour. Unsurprisingly, Chambers was the one to find the key, under a potted tree in a corner office on the top floor. Jimmy had expected a pass card, but it was a physical key. That was probably a safeguard against the power going out, though surely any emergency shelter worth its salt had access to plenty of backup electricity.

  Before they brought in the others waiting outside, Chambers led them down a stairwell to the basement, to make sure the shelter was safe and clear. He unlocked the heavy steel entrance, which creaked when he opened it.

  Inside, the overhead lights flickered on at the door’s opening. Chambers motioned to them, then took point as they surged into the shelter.