Harbinger

by Ken Lozito

  Connor's ship dipped to the side, and Connor grabbed onto Cerot to keep them in the seat. He flew among the buildings, using them for cover, but the craft was sluggish to respond to his commands. The Krake fired on his ship again and took out his engine. They began to spin, and it took everything he had to hold on. The ship struck one of the buildings and crashed. Somehow, they landed right-side up, and Connor scrambled out of the seat, helping Cerot to his feet.

  “Come on! We have to run!” Connor yelled over the din.

  He engaged the comlink system of his MPS, but there was no reply and no acknowledgment of the message.

  “They’re going to catch us,” Cerot said. “You should’ve left me behind.”

  Connor half dragged the Ovarrow down the street, hearing Krake ships flying overhead. They continued running close to the buildings, trying to stay out of sight. Cerot stumbled and nearly fell.

  “Don’t quit on me now,” Connor said, helping him back to his feet.

  Cerot held something out toward him, and he was stunned to see that it was his own personal recon drone. Connor didn’t know how Cerot had gotten it, but it was the only thing that held the data they needed about the Krake.

  “Hold onto it for me,” Connor said. It wasn’t as if he had a place to put it. The MPS didn’t come with additional storage. It was his emergency protection, and he didn’t have any weapons. All he had was a protective suit made of nanorobotic materials designed to protect the wearer from extreme harm.

  Connor glanced at the sky, expecting more Krake ships to come flying over, but they didn’t. He heard more ships nearby, and they sounded like they were hovering close, but then their engines went off. They were going to hunt them.

  “Come on, we’ve got to move,” Connor said.

  Cerot clutched the recon drone to his middle and used his other hand to grab Connor’s shoulder to help him stay upright. Connor glanced behind them as they made their way toward another row of buildings and saw bloody footsteps. Cerot was badly wounded. He'd have to stop soon or the Ovarrow would die.

  He heard a Krake shout something in their language, and the translation appeared on Connor’s internal heads-up display.

  “. . . trail to follow,” came the partial translation.

  Connor tried to hurry Cerot along and then lifted the Ovarrow over his shoulder. The MPS helped Connor bear the heavy load, but it wasn’t as strong as his combat suit, and he felt the weight. Running forward, he stepped carefully so he didn't lose his balance. The dull ache in his back and legs flared intensely. Krake soldiers were closing in behind him. He reached the end of the street and hesitated for a moment, glancing back the way they’d come. Two soldiers were running toward them with their weapons, ready to shoot. Connor scrambled to the side and kept going.

  Cerot’s blood was dripping down his chest, and Connor realized that he was bleeding too much. Connor had to place a field dressing, but if he stopped, the Krake were going to find them. Granted, they were going to find them whether he stopped or not.

  Connor saw a flash of something metallic moving among the buildings in front of him and muttered a curse. The Krake were already ahead of him. They were tightening the noose around them. Connor peered ahead and saw something out of place on top of the building. There were several shapes along the roof. Connor narrowed his gaze, seeing one of the shapes detach itself from the others. A CDF soldier waved to him and then readied his weapon. Gritting his teeth, Connor lunged forward, running as fast as he could. The Krake soldiers attempted to close in behind him, but the 7th fired their weapons, taking the Krake soldiers by surprise.

  Connor ran for cover. Two CDF soldiers took Cerot from his shoulder and carried him away. He heard the CDF laying down suppressing fire, and then Samson stood in front of him.

  “Your timing is almost impeccable, General,” Samson said. “Come on, we only have a few minutes to reach the gateway.”

  Connor’s breath was coming in gasps, so he didn’t reply; he just followed his friend. They ran a short distance to an open part of the city. It must’ve been a park at some point, or perhaps a courtyard between buildings. Connor saw the semi-translucent shimmer in the air, denoting a gateway. The soldiers in front of him who were carrying Cerot ran right for it.

  “Go! Don’t stop!” Samson shouted.

  Connor ran through the gateway and emerged into a forest glade surrounded by silence. One moment there'd been the sound of a battle being fought, and the next it was gone. Connor doubled over and rested his hands on his knees while he caught his breath. He was pulled to the side by a soldier who spoke a quick apology, but they had to keep the way clear for the rest of the 7th to come through. Samson was the last to emerge, and he ordered the gateway to shut down. The arch immediately went dead, and the platforms maintaining the alignment quickly separated.

  Connor was still catching his breath when Samson walked over to him. “You crazy son of a—Did you intend to fight the Krake all by yourself? That was our final sweep. We almost left you.”

  Connor inhaled deeply, finally catching his breath. “I’m glad you didn’t. Did you find Dash, Bradley, and Marsters?”

  “Yeah, we found them. We need to talk about our secondary protocols for when our egress point is no longer a viable option,” Samson said.

  Connor couldn’t argue with that. This whole thing had turned into something way too fast and loose for his liking. He saw Esteban and Felix kneeling by Cerot while a CDF medic tended to his wounds.

  Samson glanced at all the blood covering Connor’s chest. “What the hell happened over there?”

  Connor looked at his friend. “We met the enemy.”

  The Krake sector chief had hunted the human. He knew what species it was, but he hadn’t anticipated a connection to the Ovarrow. Some of his soldiers had been slain by this human. They weren’t entirely predictable, at least not in all things. He retraced the human's path and found the Ovarrow's blood drying on the ground. Leaning down, he extracted a sample of it. It would help him identify the universe that the humans came from. It wasn’t an exact measure, but it would help narrow the search. Once he reported this encounter to the overseers, things would change. The Krake had to change. The sector chief had a new project to propose to the overseers, one they couldn’t afford to ignore.

  A Krake soldier reported in that several hundred Ovarrow had breached the arch gateway before they'd been able to bring it down.

  “Let them go. They’re not important,” the sector chief said.

  The Krake soldier didn’t question the orders he'd been given. He simply obeyed.

  27

  Connor had sustained significant impact trauma to his back from his fight with the Krake. He hadn’t realized the extent of his injuries because his system had been flooded with pain-numbing agents so he could keep moving. The Nexstar combat suit would report the injuries detected, but he’d been fighting, and the self-destruct sequence he’d used to stop the Krake soldiers from killing him had also destroyed the report of his injuries. There was no link between his combat suit and the MPS he wore, which had a limited medical interface.

  The injuries did register with his biochip, however, and when the medics checked it, they discovered that he had suffered a lot more than a few bumps and bruises. He’d sustained internal bleeding that could have happened either when he was fighting multiple Krake soldiers or when he'd crashed the ship during his escape. Connor had pushed the limits of what a Nexstar combat suit was even capable of, and now he was paying the price.

  He lay in the bed at the hospital on base at Sanctuary and glanced at the time on his internal heads-up display, frowning. He’d been asleep for over ten hours.

  Ten hours!

  He quickly brought up the status of his ZX-64c implants, which were an upgraded version of what the NA Alliance military had given him all those years ago, but the controls for the implants were grayed out. He frowned, thinking that perhaps they'd been damaged, but a quick diagnostic showed they were working fine
. He’d been locked out of his own implants! He hit the call button on the panel next to the bed and attempted to sit up but winced and gasped at the sharp pain from his back and quickly lay back down.

  The door to his room opened and a short, young woman with dark hair walked in. Her name and rank appeared on his internal heads-up display. At least that was still working.

  Dr. Monica Torres smiled as she walked over to him. “General Gates, you’re awake right on schedule. I’ll raise the bed for you so you can sit up.”

  “What’s going on here? Did you lock me out of my implant control systems?”

  “Yes, I did. We had to, but I had permission.”

  Connor knitted his eyebrows together and shook his head. “I didn’t give permission—”

  “Your wife, General. Your wife did,” Dr. Torres said, coming over to his bedside. “You broke your back. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Connor’s mouth opened, but the words wouldn’t come. He glanced down at his feet for a second. “That’s crazy. I know I got hurt, but if I'd broken my back, I wouldn’t have been able to walk.”

  “That’s right, you wouldn’t have been able to, but you had an MPS on. It helped you keep moving and stay alive. Had you not had the MPS on, as soon as you stepped out of your combat suit, you would’ve collapsed to the floor,” Dr. Torres said.

  Connor looked away for a moment and then back down at his feet. He wiggled his toes, relieved that he could still do so. Swallowing hard, he looked up at her, and she waited for him with a knowing look.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  “Not nearly as bad as it could have been. We’ve been applying treatments to you all night, and now you’ll just have to take it easy for a little while. You’ll also have to wear a back brace while the nanites continue to heal your spine.”

  Connor nodded, feeling relieved. “Why are you inhibiting my implants?”

  “Because you need to slow down a little bit. The medical journals all indicate that you can function with a mere two hours of sleep, and you’ve been doing it longer than anybody else, but such little downtime does take its toll on certain cognitive functions,” Dr. Torres said, leaning toward him. “Signs of this include irritation and a certain level of anxiety. In your case,” she said, smiling a little in understanding, “it’s to be expected, given the extreme amount of stress, but it’s been ongoing for a while. You need longer blocks of rest. This will help you heal.”

  “I know you’re looking out for me, Dr. Torres, but I’ve been at this for a very long time. Irritation and anxiety are part of what I do. I want full access to my implants returned to me right now. I promise to get as much rest as I can and—” Connor said, suddenly stopping when Lenora walked in the room. Lauren stood next to her with her little hand held in her mother’s. She looked up and saw Connor lying there, and her eyes widened. Lauren smiled and squealed, and everything Connor had been about to say vanished as his daughter hastened over to him.

  Lenora picked Lauren up and deposited her onto Connor’s lap. He hugged his daughter, feeling his throat become thick, and saw Lenora share a look with Dr. Torres. Lauren wrapped her arms around Connor’s neck and snuggled into him. The tension drained out of him as if the floodgates had been opened, and he squeezed his eyes shut, holding his daughter in his arms and breathing in her scent. Her silky, soft hair smelled like lavender, and he loved the feel of it against his cheek.

  After a few precious moments, Lauren sat back and scrutinized Connor with a look of childlike wonder and intensity. Her gaze went to the bruise on his neck. “Ouchy,” she said.

  Connor smiled. “That’s right. I have an ouchy, but I’ll be fine.”

  Lenora looked at him for a moment, and Connor could tell she was reining in her emotions. Then she glanced at Dr. Torres. “Would you please give us a few minutes?”

  “Take all the time you need,” Dr. Torres said and left the room.

  Lenora inhaled deeply and sighed. Walking over to his bed, she grasped his hand. “You know, we first met in a hospital room.”

  Connor chuckled a little, remembering when he’d first woken up aboard the Ark.

  “I spoke to Samson and Dash. They told me what happened,” she said.

  Connor had no doubt that Lenora had pulled every ounce of information from both men. She had a way of getting what she wanted. Connor tried to think of a response that didn’t make him sound foolish, but he couldn’t. He’d almost died, and they both knew it.

  “Connor, I know you. You did what you had to do. And I’m just so glad you’re home. But we need to make some changes,” Lenora said.

  “All right,” Connor answered.

  “I just . . .” Lenora began to say and stopped. “First, the problem with the implants and . . . I’ve had those concerns since before you left.”

  “I’ve had them for years and have never had an issue.”

  “Yes, but you had check-ins, and even . . . They’re not meant for long-term use.”

  “So what are you going to do? Lock me out of them?”

  Lenora shook her head. “You know better than that. Do I need to lock you out of them? No, that’s not who we are. All I’m saying is that we need more of a balance, and you need more of a balance. You can’t be on the go for twenty-two hours a day every day for years and years and expect not to have any repercussions.”

  Connor was quiet for a few moments while he considered his thoughts. If there was one thing he’d learned over the years it was that there were times to think things through and then there were times to do what needed to be done. This was the latter. “All right, I’ll talk to Dr. Torres and Ashley. We’ll see if we can work something out.”

  Lenora seemed satisfied with that response. Over the years, they had learned to trust each other, but he knew she'd be watching him. He'd certainly given her enough cause to be worried about him.

  They spent a few hours together, and the pain in his back lessened. He was able to sit up comfortably. Later, he received another treatment for his back, and they fitted him with a back brace to continue monitoring and administering healing nanites.

  A few days later, Connor was in his office. Dash had come to see him.

  “Cerot is asking for you,” Dash said.

  The Ovarrow were staying in a barracks that had been designated for them. Colonial doctors had done what they could for Cerot, but his recovery would take much longer than Connor’s.

  They left his office and headed over to the barracks.

  “About what you did,” Dash said once they were outside. Connor looked at him. “I never got a chance to thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Dash eyes widened for a moment. “You make it seem like there’s nothing else to say.”

  “What else is there to say?”

  “It mattered to me.”

  “It mattered to me too. That’s why I did it. And it was important to get the data we recovered.”

  “Do you compartmentalize everything?”

  “If saving your life is going to lead to a lot of questions, I may have to rethink it in the future,” Connor replied.

  Dash shook his head and grinned a little.

  “Look at it this way: At the rate we’re going, you’ll be able to return the favor by this time next week,” Connor said.

  “I hope not,” Dash said, his voice becoming serious.

  Connor nodded. “Me too.”

  They entered the room where Cerot was being cared for. He looked much better than the last time Connor had seen him, which was when he’d almost bled out in the middle of a battle.

  Cerot spoke. “Alone,” he said.

  The Ovarrow soldiers left the room and Dash joined them.

  “Better translator now,” Cerot said.

  “It’s better than typing everything we want to say to each other,” Connor said in agreement.

  “I have to return and report to Warlord Vitory and High Commissioner Senleon.”

  “I understand,”
Connor said. He was more than a little bit curious as to what Cerot would report to his superiors.

  “It may take some time, but I will gather as many Ovarrow as I can and persuade them to help you,” Cerot said.

  “We’ll appreciate any help you have to offer,” Connor said.

  “My words might not be correct. What I mean to say is that I will help you in your fight against the Krake.”

  Connor regarded the warlord’s First for a moment. He'd begun to suspect what Cerot was implying, but he wanted no misunderstandings. “You mean you'll help the colony? All of us?”

  “Your colony is important to you like our city is important to us, but they are not one and the same. I meant what I said, and I will help you fight the Krake. You are beginning to understand what it means to battle them. And if our leaders are too foolish to understand that, I will help you anyway with as many soldiers as I can bring,” Cerot said.

  Connor inhaled deeply. “Then I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Divisions among the colonists and among the Ovarrow were a danger to them all. They didn’t need to agree on everything, but they did need to focus on the Krake, together.

  Connor and Dash went with the Ovarrow to the hangar where a troop carrier waited to take them home. Cerot was carried onto the troop carrier first. The rest of the soldiers that they'd named Esteban, Joe, Felix, Luca, and Wesley stood before the loading ramp and faced Connor. They each placed their hand on their own shoulder and pulled it across to their other shoulder, giving Connor the Ovarrow sign for gratitude.

  Connor returned their salute, and the Ovarrow soldiers walked up the loading ramp. The troop carrier doors closed, and the ship left.

  “I think you made a few friends,” Dash said.

  “I guess I did.”

  “I don’t know what this means for an official alliance, but the Ovarrow seem to hold actions in higher esteem than they do intentions. This is something I’ve noticed with them,” Dash said.