Mother Ship

by Scott Bartlett

  He knew the man his rifle’s targeting reticle hovered over. He was Corporal Jim Pate, and the one Ted would kill after him was Sergeant Raj Ganesh.

  Both were dutiful men who did their jobs well. Just like everyone in Ethan’s unit. A couple weeks ago, they’d been Ted’s colleagues. Now, they enabled Janet’s tyranny, and would have to die.

  He doubted his conscience would let go of what he was about to do anytime soon, if ever. But it needed to be done. This was bigger than all of them.

  He squeezed the trigger, and the weapon jumped back, its barrel scraping across the rock Ted had placed it on. In addition to quietening his shot, the Win Mag’s suppressor also minimized kickback, which improved accuracy even more.

  Pate fell, but that was the easier shot. For it, Ted had had time to properly dial in his dope. Now he pulled back the handle, ejecting the spent casing and feeding a new round into the chamber from the magazine, then pushed it forward again.

  Ganesh was already reaching for his radio when Ted’s round entered the top of his skull. He went limp and fell to the ground, a meter from Pate.

  Ted let out a long, ragged breath, then abandoned the rifle and left his hide to sprint toward the heavy installation doors. He knew the facility’s layout well, and a sniper wouldn’t be of much use once they were inside. In there, it would come down to assault rifles and sidearms. Possibly some hand-to-hand.

  To his left, Benson and his men were already making their way across the open area. They met at the doors, and the big man gave Ted a respectful nod. “Good shooting.” He passed over an AR-15 and said nothing more. Benson clearly knew how difficult killing the sentries had been for Ted.

  He accepted the assault rifle and fished his ID card from his pocket, then went to the recess near the entrance. “It’ll get harder, inside. A lot harder.” He presented his card to the computer, then held his eyes in position for the retinal scanner. “A lot of Janet’s men are special ops. The rest are the best the infantry had to offer.” He was speaking to Benson’s men more than he was to Benson, now. “Stick to what we told you, and don’t get fancy. Remember the signals. Watch each other’s backs. Only advance when you have someone covering you. When clearing a room with an inward-opening door, the first man moves away from the hinges. The opposite for an outward-opening door. Move fast, and clear the fatal funnel.”

  The fatal funnel was the area immediately around a door’s threshold. Ted knew what he’d just rattled off was a lot to remember, and it was just a sliver of what they’d gone over on the radios during the drive here. Hopefully Benson’s people had retained most of it.

  A thumb pressed to the fingerprint reader was the final step. He confirmed he wanted to open the installation’s doors, and the heavy barrier parted behind him.

  Benson’s people were already arrayed to either side with weapons raised. But no fire came from within. Apparently, the element of surprise was intact. For now.

  “Stay frosty,” he told the men. With that, he took point, stalking into the installation with his AR-15 raised.

  48

  3 days to extinction

  Everything was getting under Jimmy’s skin.

  Having to stop while Tara plucked the hovering drones from the air, waiting while she swapped out the batteries and sent them on their way once more—that annoyed the shit out of him.

  Being sober when he wanted to smoke a bowl. Even just a puff to level him out.

  That was driving him crazy.

  Then there was Tara’s earnest silence as she piloted both drones at once, scouring the mountainous landscape for any sign of Max, savior of humanity. The chosen one.

  What happened to me? If this had been a couple years ago, during his high school heyday, he would have acted nothing like this around a pretty girl. He would have teased and complimented her, pushed and pulled, with her laughing and rolling her eyes at him in turns.

  That was normally how it worked, anyway. But in the year after graduation, he’d let himself get rusty. He’d only had a couple dates, both which crashed and burned, one of them in the first ten minutes.

  Other than that, he’d let himself languish on his father’s acreage, smoking pot and taking care of the horses.

  Was that all this was? Lack of practice?

  He didn’t think so. A chance to talk to Tara alone was a big reason he’d come on this wild goose chase, but he didn’t find himself capitalizing on the opportunity. Instead, he brooded in stony silence, awash in memories from the battle around Fort Benson. The particular way the Ravagers had jerked and fallen under his rifle fire.

  He’d never considered himself a sadistic person, but now he found himself reveling in the memories of violence. How powerful he’d felt, taking down scores of people within minutes.

  Ravagers, he reminded himself. Not people. But as Max had kept pointing out, they’d been people recently, and there was a chance, however small, that they might be again.

  Would he be able to handle that, knowing he’d cut so many futures short?

  Right now, the question seemed distant, unimportant. A big part of him wanted them to stumble on the secret government installation, if only for the bloodbath that any attempt to extract Max would produce.

  “Seeing anything?”

  Tara made an indistinct sound, like someone coming out of a deep sleep. “No. Nothing.”

  “Where are we right now?”

  She took a break from staring at the dual displays to scrutinize the map, eyes narrowed. “Fifty-five miles west of Denver, as the eagle flies.”

  “Why an eagle?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I’ve always heard crow. As the crow flies.”

  “It can be a mosquito, if you like, Jimmy. Be quiet. I need to concentrate.”

  He lapsed back into his dark reverie. On their right, the land fell away in a steep drop-off—a fall of several hundred meters.

  A sharp urge struck him to jerk the wheel to the right. Images flashed through his mind of exploded electronics adorning their twisted bodies. Expressions of shock frozen on their faces. Or maybe one of satisfaction on his.

  He shook his head and gripped the wheel harder.

  Shit. How much longer can I keep this up?

  He was getting worse. He recognized that. Tara needed to know it—what was going on with him. But he didn’t tell her.

  They rounded a turn, and up ahead he spotted the barest suggestion of a dirt road leading from the highway, partially concealed by foliage. Except, the plants there were bent and broken, as though a vehicle had turned down there recently. Or several vehicles.

  TURN LEFT.

  The command blared inside his head, drowning out all other thought. He’d been able to resist the impulse to drive them over the cliff, but he was powerless to disobey this.

  He turned left.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I…don’t know,” he managed, the words coming out choked. “I just…I think Max might be down this road.” Branches smacked against the truck’s windshield, and the uneven terrain jostled them hard. One of the drone controllers flew from Tara’s lap to land on the floor.

  “Jimmy! Are you insane? How could you possibly know that?” She reached for the wheel. “Turn us around!”

  “Cut it out.”

  Blinking, she withdrew her hand.

  “Listen. I just heard a voice that definitely didn’t come from me. It told me to take this road.”

  “You realize that’s the definition of crazy, right?”

  “So is driving through the Colorado Rockies with two drones, thinking we’ll find some sign of Max. The government wouldn’t hide a secret facility right next to the highway, Tara. They’d put it deep in the mountains, so deep the chances of stumbling on it are next to nothing.”

  TURN RIGHT.

  This time, he didn’t even see the road. He just rotated the wheel sharply right. Thicker branches hammered on the windshield, so hard he worried it would shatter.

  “Jimmy!”<
br />
  He gritted his teeth and didn’t answer. The barrage of branches continued, but the windshield didn’t break, and they didn’t run into any actual trunks. This was a road. It just looked nothing like one.

  And then, after several long minutes, they broke out of the foliage. A cleared dirt road stretched ahead of them. It was perfectly level.

  He brought the Silverado to a stop, put it in park, and looked at Tara. “Doesn’t this look like the sort of place their facility’s access road would be hidden?”

  She frowned through the windshield, which was covered in leaves and twigs. “Yes.”

  “Good. So, do you want to go back to flying a couple Walmart drones along the main highway, or will we follow the suspicious-looking road that the voice in my head told me to take?’

  She sighed. “Let’s check it out.”

  Jimmy nodded, shifted the truck into drive, and pressed his foot down, accelerating to forty, then fifty. Along such a level road, they could make good time.

  49

  3 days to extinction

  The iterations had changed.

  After his failure to find a path out of the base, Max had fallen back on the white bed for a time, staring at the ceiling, fighting against despair.

  If he stayed in this installation, then Janet would hurt his parents until he gave her what she wanted. But if even the iterations couldn’t get him out, then what hope was there?

  So he’d tried again. And this time, something was different.

  There were no longer so many soldiers stationed in the corridors that crisscrossed the section surrounding his room. He was able to disable the pair guarding the end of the corridor where his room was located, and when he pushed on, the numbers guarding the hallways just beyond were few enough that he was able to access parts of the facility he couldn’t before. In the distance, he heard the staccato reports of weapons fire.

  Someone was attacking the base.

  Each iteration took a fraction of a fraction of a second to run. He had no idea how he was able to think that fast—as if the organic computer that was his brain had had its frame rate jacked way up.

  But he could, and it allowed him to lay out a plan of action that, if executed perfectly, would lead to almost any outcome he wanted.

  Almost any outcome—except for the one he actually wanted: to escape this place with Cynthia and Peter Edwards in tow.

  Within the safety of his own mental simulations, he searched the entire base, room by room. He encountered Janet’s soldiers fighting Benson’s makeshift militia. He came across Janet herself, who, to her credit, battled right alongside her men.

  But no matter how many iterations he ran, no matter how long he searched, he failed to locate the people he’d once called his parents.

  Had they been moved? Or even disposed of?

  Surely not. From their last conversation, Janet considered them to be the most important leverage she had over him.

  Could they have escaped on their own, without him?

  That seemed unlikely too, yet more believable than Janet removing them from the base altogether.

  Either way, they weren’t here. Or at least, the iterations weren’t showing them to him. And though each took a sliver of a second, those slivers added up, while outside his room the battle raged.

  Max already knew the only possible outcome of that battle. To know it, he didn’t need advanced mental faculties conferred by aliens, or his artificial breeding, or whatever else might be allowing his mind to run at the speed of light.

  The fight would end with Benson and his men dead. Against Janet’s highly trained, hand-picked men, they simply didn’t stand a chance.

  But that only made their sacrifice all the more inspiring, and for Max, it underscored the need to get out of this place.

  Chambers must have told Benson and his people the truth about the GDA, its mission, and Max’s role in fighting the invaders. Benson and the others had obviously made the choice to fight for him, even though they had to know they would lose.

  It was odd that none of the iterations showed him Chambers—hadn’t he come with them? Surely he wouldn’t have expected Benson’s people to take on the GDA on their own. Nonetheless, he was also missing from the mental simulations.

  It’s time to go.

  With great reluctance, Max switched his focus from finding Cynthia and Peter to escaping the installation. Using the iterations, he began working on a plan.

  An eternity later, he had one. One that got him to Hangar A and inside a Lark X-1, all without killing anyone—at least, not directly. He knew from his actions back at the GDA camp that this could easily lead to deaths after he was gone, but he had no choice. He had to go through with it.

  In the successful iteration, he flew from the installation and into the sky. It still wasn’t the real thing, but it sure felt like it. The iteration offered an experience that felt much more authentic than the simulations he’d run through with his pilots.

  It sent electricity racing down his spine. It wasn’t just the authenticity that excited him, but the knowledge that the real thing was in his grasp.

  When Max tried his room’s door, he found it unlocked, just as it had been in the iterations. He opened it a crack, then stopped.

  Clearly, whoever or whatever was helping him had someone inside the GDA. At the very least, it was able to influence their behavior enough to unlock his door, freeing him.

  Max knew the most likely source of these new powers he’d been granted: the aliens who’d attacked humanity. Who’d already slaughtered millions of people, if not billions.

  And yet, the voice had spoken of victory. That had to mean victory for humanity, over the invaders—didn’t it?

  The strange force had helped him extract Cynthia and Peter from the GDA camp, and it had seemed ready to help him survive the gas station. Now, it was apparently helping him escape this installation.

  He’d already spent a lot of time weighing the probability of whether accepting that help could possibly lead to a good outcome. Maybe there was a faction inside the invading force that was working against the ones trying to destroy humanity. Maybe that was why it, or they, were willing to help him act against them.

  Or, he was being manipulated. Tricked into thinking he was helping his species, when his actions would really ensure humanity’s downfall.

  It was a gamble he had to take. A gamble Janet’s lust for control had forced him to.

  He opened the door the rest of the way and sprinted down the hall.

  As he ran, he made just enough sound to alert one of the guards—the one on the left—at just the right time. He turned, opening himself to Max’s blow, which landed on his trachea.

  The soldier staggered back, hand rising to his throat, and Max pivoted around him, snatching the tranq gun from his grasp.

  The other guard reacted quickly, firing a dart toward Max. The first shot missed him by a few centimeters. He grabbed the gasping man by the back of his uniform and jerked him sideways to intercept the second dart. Then Max raised the gun he’d recovered and fired, putting a dart into the other guard’s throat.

  The anesthetic worked quickly, and the soldier’s fingers loosened, the tranq gun tumbling from his grasp. Max seized it, reloaded it, and draped its strap over his shoulder. With that, he jogged away, one tranq gun in hand with the other ready at his side.

  From the iterations, he knew to raise his weapon as he rounded the next corner. He fired a dart at the first man, the feathered end protruding from the base of his neck. As the target fell, Max dropped the first tranq gun and grabbed the other. The muzzle rose in time to put a dart in the next man’s carotid artery.

  He stocked up on fresh darts from the unconscious soldiers, as one of them mumbled to himself, drifting into anesthesia-induced sleep. Then, Max pressed on.

  At the next intersection of corridors, his plan fell apart as reality diverged from the iterations completely.

  He rounded the corner to find several armed
men, all with weapons raised and pointing straight at him.

  50

  3 days to extinction

  “Hold your fire!”

  Almost in slow motion, Ted watched Vick’s finger squeeze the trigger of his assault rifle. He reached out to bat the muzzle away from its target, knowing he’d be too late.

  But Vick’s finger relaxed, and disaster was averted. All around him, Benson and his militia lowered their weapons as they gaped at the young man standing at the end of the hall, who held one tranq gun across his chest, with a second dangling at his waist.

  “Max.” Ted motioned to the others to move up and secure the intersection of corridors against attack.

  The group sprinted forward. Ted went straight for Max, shaking his head in bewilderment. “How…how are you here?”

  The boy blinked, looking almost as confused as Ted felt. “Janet took me here. You knew that, didn’t you? Why else would you have come here?”

  “No, I mean, how are you roaming this facility freely?”

  “Oh. The door to my room was unlocked.”

  “And there weren’t any guards posted outside?”

  “There were. I took them out.”

  Ted felt himself go very still as he studied Max’s face, eyes narrowed. “You…killed them?”

  He shook his head. “I took their tranq guns. Turned them on them.”

  “Right. Uh…that still doesn’t seem likely. You don’t have that kind of training. Most of these men were special ops at some point.”

  The boy nodded, his shoulders rising as he inhaled. “Something’s changed, Ted.”

  He paused. That was the first time Max had called him by his first name. “Changed?”

  “Yeah. The documents I found in Cynthia and Peter’s locked office mentioned my ‘vital qualities,’ which I figured were the ones the GDA’s program bred into me. Well, it looks like I have a ‘quality’ that maybe no one expected.”

  “Which is?” Ted checked over his shoulder, down the corridor behind him. There wasn’t a lot of time for them to have this conversation. Janet’s people would almost certainly be here any minute.