Mother Ship

by Scott Bartlett

  Chambers himself had set up a 240 Bravo machine gun atop a barricade that jutted into the middle of the intersection. Its booming staccato filled the area, audible above every other weapon. With it, Chambers managed to make an entire corridor his sector of fire, stopping every centipede in its tracks.

  The engagement seemed to stretch on forever, but when the last alien fell, Max realized it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. With that, everyone scooped up what ammo remained to them, stowing it in pouches and packs.

  They pressed on.

  Max wondered more than once whether they’d gotten turned around, and were doomed to wander the enormous craft for weeks, if not for the rest of their lives. But Chambers always seemed to know where he was going.

  Chambers the navigator. It was just as it had been when they were on the run through Oklahoma. The man’s internal compass was impeccable.

  But even Max knew they had to be nearing the center. He found himself squinting toward the end of the passageway they jogged along. The rest of the ship hadn’t seemed particularly dim before, but this new light made it seem like they’d been trudging through gloom.

  The soldiers exchanged looks as they emerged, blinking, into what gave every appearance of being sunlight.

  Near Max, Cox shifted his stance. “Sir, am I losing it, or are we in a desert right now?”

  Chambers didn’t answer, and no one else spoke. But Max could see nothing to contradict what the soldier had said. Above, a blue-white haze served as sky, hanging over a city filled with boxy, angular buildings. All around it, tracts of white sand stretched toward the surrounding bulkheads.

  Max knelt, lowering his weapon to rub the stuff between his fingers. It had the texture and consistency of flour.

  “Look.” It was Cox again.

  Max raised his gaze toward the city. Its streets now crawled with the centipedes, though moments before they had been empty.

  68

  2 days to extinction

  Everyone stared in silence at the city, which sat in the bottom of the shallow bowl-shaped desert. The swarming mass of centipedes hadn’t attacked yet, though they’d seemed to emerge in response to the soldiers’ arrival.

  “Is this our destination?” Chambers had made his way to Max’s side, and he spoke just above a whisper. “Will we find the primary access control system here?”

  Max jostled the block under his left arm. “Aegis?” he hissed. She didn’t answer, and the Receptacle remained inert.

  Why is she being so unhelpful?

  A sigh escaped him, and he whispered back. “That feels right. But I’m not sure. If I had to guess, I’d say the mother ship’s core is at the center of the city.”

  Nodding, Chambers swept his gaze across the buildings. “This…compartment, I guess you’d call it, looks to be about eight kilometers in diameter. The city’s probably five. Meaning we’ll have to fight through those giant bugs for two and a half kilometers.”

  “Yeah.” The aliens were starting to remind Max of scorpions, now that he saw how they were thriving in this dry heat.

  They both looked up to see Santos, who was looking at them with his flat, open face. He’d obviously heard their entire exchange.

  “What is it, Santos?” the agent snapped.

  Santos gestured toward the city. “The rooftops, sir.”

  “What about them?”

  “It’s the only way to get past those things. We can use the breach ladder. Go from roof to roof, for as far as we can.”

  Chambers swung his gaze from Santos to the city and back again. “That’s actually not a bad idea.” He motioned to the others. “Let’s move. Stay frosty, and don’t be shy about using whatever’s needed to take them down.”

  Only Max was close enough to hear what he added in a mutter under his breath: “Let’s hope the things can’t climb walls.”

  That made Max blink. Chambers was right to worry, he realized. Earth centipedes could climb walls, so why wouldn’t their giant alien counterparts be able to? Maybe their greater weight will prevent it. They would have to pray it would.

  Casting his gaze around their force, Max saw that at least they were well-armed. Four 240s, the CL-20 grenade launchers, four snipers, plenty of M4s to go around, and five Mossberg 500 shotguns. Sure, they’d used some ammo on the way here, but they’d brought plenty.

  The centipedes took notice of them as they reached the first building. A group broke off to slither toward the soldiers like greased lightning across the desert floor.

  By that time, Santos and Cox already had the breach ladder set up against the structure’s side. The first soldiers ascended as the rest of the unit lined up to hammer the oncoming aliens with everything they had. The M4s gave the aliens trouble, but it was the four 240s that truly decimated, ripping the aliens to shreds.

  Luckily, getting everyone up on the roof didn’t require any heavier artillery. Using explosives at this range would have been just as dangerous for them as for the aliens.

  After they made it up, it was slow going. Laying the breach ladder across gaps of four or five feet, tossing over gear first, then carefully treading the rungs—it all took time.

  Progress was slow, but they could have crossed the city this way in relative safety. Yes, the giant centipedes sometimes found their way up, but never more than one or two. Their avenues of ingress were limited, small, and easily defended by Chambers’ men, who stayed vigilant against the threat. They couldn’t climb walls after all, it seemed, though Max wasn’t sure why. Maybe their large frames prevented it. Possibly, the walls were treated somehow, to prevent them from gaining any traction. But if that were so, he couldn’t imagine why it might be.

  The streets were all that prevented the soldiers from remaining on the rooftops till they reached the city’s core. Yes, they could traverse entire neighborhoods with the breach ladder, but not the broad walkways between those neighborhoods.

  The first one they came to was crawling with bugs.

  “Drive them back with grenades—traditional grenades, not the ones packed with CL-20,” Chambers yelled. “As soon as they start to withdraw, lower the ladder. Walter, Young, Diaz, and Pohl—get to the building opposite this one and set up on the roof. Cover us as we cross.”

  All around Max, soldiers started tearing the tape off of grenades, unbending the metal pins, and arming them by pulling the pins out. The explosives arced out from the roof—Diaz’s arm was good enough to reach the opposite side of the pathway, which meant the launcher wasn’t needed.

  As soon as the way was clear, the four men Chambers had named lowered the ladder and scrambled down to the ground. They crossed to the opposite building at a run, heads swinging from side to side, scanning for attackers.

  But the bugs were cowed, for now. The four disappeared inside a broad house. There was some shooting, and a piercing sound that was half-hiss, half-shriek. Then the four soldiers appeared on the roof, Walter flashing the okay sign.

  Chambers pointed at the men in turn, and as he did they hustled across the gap. Men on both roofs covered them as they crossed, shooting any centipede that dared approach.

  A scream rose up behind Max, and he whirled, dropping the gray cube to the rooftop almost without thought.

  The cube made no noise as it landed—that, or it was drowned out by Lindeman, or by the chittering alien that was emerging onto the rooftop little more than a meter away from her. It lunged.

  Without warning, Max’s mind flashed through countless iterations. He watched Lindeman die a hundred different ways. More. The alien’s claws pierced her torso, and she bled out. They lacerated her face, and pierced her brain casing. Max managed to kill the thing, but it still barreled into her, throwing her from the roof to be swarmed by its kin.

  Each time, Max failed to save her. In several iterations, he tried to stop her going over the side, only to be pulled down with her.

  “Chambers, help!” he yelled at last—in the successful iteration, in which he fired a burst fr
om his Colt into the very middle of the centipede’s body. That was where its brain was located, or at least the dense bundle of nerves that served as its brain.

  The still alien crashed into Lindeman, but Max seized her hand, clasping it as she went over the side. Chambers reacted in time to grab Max’s other hand, and together they pulled her back, preventing her fall.

  It took a lot of trust to let go of the iterations and allow the last one to play out in real life. But it was the only way Max had found for Lindeman to live. So he decided to trust that Chambers would follow through—and he trusted that Aegis was accurately simulating Chambers’ reaction time.

  Reality resumed, and Max fired almost from the hip, blowing apart the alien’s unusual brain casing. Without hesitation, he leapt to seize Lindeman’s hand, yelling for Chambers’ help.

  His hand closed around hers, and then—

  —nothing. He continued to fall forward.

  At thew last second, Chambers grabbed the back of Max’s shirt and yanked him backward with Lindeman’s hand firmly in his. All three of them stumbled back onto the rooftop, Lindeman landing hard on her tail bone.

  She didn’t wince, or cry out. Instead, she gave Max a strange look. “Thank you,” she said slowly.

  He nodded.

  “You all right?” Chambers asked him.

  Max squeezed his eyes shut, then shook his head in an attempt to clear it. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “That was some quick thinking you did there.”

  You have no idea. “Thanks.”

  He’d told Chambers he was all right, but in truth, he was spooked. The iteration hadn’t played out exactly like it should have. What did that mean? Was the mother ship messing with Aegis’ ability to project the future? Or had it always been at least a little unreliable?

  There was no time to dwell on it. He collected the Receptacle from where it had fallen, and they pressed on.

  69

  2 days to extinction

  As they continued to traverse the city, Max watched the aliens more closely. The fact they carried their brains center-mass fascinated him, and he began to notice that each of their “ends” was functionally the same. The aliens could see out of either one, and they also had serrated pincers on both ends.

  No matter which way they were facing, they were always facing forward, it seemed.

  At last, Max and the others reached the city’s center, which consisted of a broad, low dome that reared up from the desert. The blue-tinged material it was made from looked more like the mother ship’s deck and bulkheads than it resembled the buildings around it.

  The soldiers trudged across the plaza separating the central building from the surrounding city, with Max at their center, the light-gray block tucked under one arm and the Colt semi-automatic dangling from the other.

  They were tired, but they did not flag. M4s popped up, and rounds ripped from their muzzles, tearing through alien carapaces to the meat below. There were dozens of centipedes wandering this area aimlessly, but not the crowds Max would have expected.

  They would come, he was certain.

  Sure enough, just as they reached what Max to be the entrance—a darker rectangle, bordered by a black outline—centipedes began to pour out of the surrounding streets, clearly unified in their purpose.

  Chambers stepped forward to slap and prod at the door while his soldiers moved past Max, raised their weapons, and sprayed them into the approaching alien horde.

  “Grenades,” the special agent called, waving for the grenadiers to move up. “CL-20, this time.”

  The explosives arced out, and fire bathed the plaza, killing centipedes by the dozens.

  It didn’t seem to matter. More rushed in to replace them.

  Grenades arced out again. Explosions blossomed. Alien body parts flew.

  Still, they drew ever closer.

  Was this how it ended? The soldiers’ fire barely served to stem the black tide that slithered toward the dome. And they were running low on ammo.

  “Max.” Chambers was facing him, 240 slung across his chest, hands dangling uselessly. “Can you do anything, here?”

  Shaking his head, Max approached the door.

  Place me against it. It was Aegis’ voice, speaking for the first time since he’d boarded the mother ship.

  He lowered his Colt to the plaza and lifted the block to the barrier.

  Instantly, the darkened section of wall dissolved into nothingness. Chambers and Max exchanged wide-eyed glances.

  “Uh…can you put that wall back again once we’re through?”

  “I don’t know.” Max tried asking Aegis as he picked up his weapon, but she’d fallen silent again. He slung the Colt over his shoulder by its strap.

  Chambers turned toward the others. “Fall back. Use this door to funnel them.”

  The soldiers hustled through, with Max and Chambers at their head. They found themselves in what appeared to be a cross between a foyer and a hallway, which curved around the building’s exterior.

  There was enough room for the soldiers and pilots to form a wide arc in two ranks, all centered around the door. They angled their weapons toward the entrance and waited.

  On the far side of the foyer, progress was obstructed by another barrier.

  This time, Max didn’t hesitate. He placed the block against, it and it dissolved.

  He and Chambers pushed farther in to find a large, circular room with a pedestal rising from the center like a sleek, metallic arm. Above it, the dome reached its highest peak.

  Place me on the console, Aegis said into his mind. Behind them, weapons fire roared, and aliens shrieked as they died.

  Max jogged across the room, gray block held fast against his chest. Once he reached the center, he lowered the block to the pedestal almost reverently.

  It clicked into place, as though a powerful magnet had seized it.

  This will take some time, Aegis said.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked, not bothering to attempt communicating with thought. She didn’t seem to respond to that anymore.

  The choice is yours. I can either work on gaining control of this vessel and stopping your attackers. Or I can begin freeing your species from the neural dust’s influence.

  “Why not both?”

  Both are possible. But not simultaneously. If I first restore sanity to your species, it is likely you will be overrun while I am doing so.

  “Can you close the doors to this place?”

  No. It will take days for those hatches to regenerate.

  From the other side of the pedestal, Chambers studied his face intently. “What’s going on?”

  Max slowly shook his head. “She says she can work on stopping the killing on Earth, or she can stop our attackers. But she can’t do both. Not at once.”

  At that, Chambers’ mouth opened, then closed again.

  Max grimaced. “I don’t know what rate people are dying down on Earth. I don’t know how many we would lose if we told Aegis to save us first. But my guess is that it would be a lot. Half the invasion fleet stayed there, to attack everyone still alive. We’d be buying our lives with countless other lives. Millions, probably. Maybe hundreds of millions.”

  His old principal’s mouth was a firm line. “This one’s on you, Max. You’re the one we bred to save the world, after all. Make your choice, and live with the consequences.”

  “Thanks.”

  Chambers nodded.

  The choice was simple, really. How could he do what he’d done to get here—violate the free will of others, and sacrifice them willingly, without giving them any say in it—and then choose to save himself first?

  “Save humanity first,” he told Aegis.

  Very well.

  The pedestal’s top began to glow with a soft, white light. Max’s eyes locked with Chambers’.

  “We’d better go help the others,” the agent said, his expression grim.

  Out in the foyer, everyone had stopped firing. Torn centipede
bodies littered the area around the door, and they clogged the portal as well. A grisly barricade had been made from their corpses as the attackers on the other side pressed against it, compacting it.

  A brief reprieve. Within seconds, the aliens would push through again, and this building would be overrun.

  Chambers put a hand on Max’s shoulder. He turned and gripped the agent’s shoulder in turn. He was shocked to find tears in the man’s eyes.

  “Thank you, Max. For what you’ve done. Everything you’ve sacrificed. We thrust you into this, but you became the hero we needed to you be. So on behalf of humanity…thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Max said, his voice hoarse. He hated what the GDA had done. How they’d stolen his life from him, lying to him for two decades.

  But now, in these final moments, he realized he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  They raised their weapons and turned to face the portal together as the aliens broke through.

  Epilogue

  Birdsong drifted to them from the oaks that dotted the field.

  The trees were rich with green leaves, but the finches that had colonized their branches added a bright red to the mix. It reminded Max of Christmas.

  He and Chambers sat on folding chairs on the front lawn of the enormous abode the agent had taken for himself. They shared a quiet moment staring out over the immaculate field that stretched between the house and the highway nearby.

  Lately, neither of them were much for wasted words.

  Chambers exhaled in a slow whoosh. “Talk to Jimmy or Tara lately?”

  “No. I….” Max frowned, and didn’t finish the thought.

  The agent nodded, a faint smile playing over his lips. There wasn’t much mirth in that smile. He adjusted his posture, winced, and returned to his original sitting position. The injury he’d suffered during the final battle on the mother ship still limited him. “Jimmy was here last night. Told me Tara thinks you’re pushing both of them away. He didn’t have an opinion on the matter, of course. Jimmy’s above having opinions on such things.