by Scott Baron
“Or from the blast.”
“Not likely, though. We’d have almost certainly known if that door had been breached before that happened.”
“In any case, whatever went down here, they’re long gone,” Tamara said, kicking one of the trashed linkages.
“For now,” Duke replied. “But it won’t take the Ra’az too long to bring a disassembly team to see if there’s anything they can salvage.”
“We’d better get moving, then.”
“My thoughts, exactly."
“You think the monorail still works?” she asked, dreading the answer.
Her fears were well placed.
“Maybe,” he answered, unsure. “But Joshua had been running that system since your arrival, and even if it weren’t cut off when he went down, the EMP could have knocked it out. Only one way to be sure, though.”
“We go into town and try it out.”
“Precisely.”
“Well, shit, Duke. I hope it works, for all our sakes. Otherwise, we’re in for a helluva long walk.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The streets of Los Angeles had been exceptionally quiet during her meandering stroll, which Daisy was very grateful for. No more chance encounters with hostile aliens was a good thing, as she was still in a more than somewhat bloody-minded mood after the day’s events and might just opt for the opposite of her normal choice of conflict avoidance.
As it stood, she was glad to be left to her own thoughts as she slowly trudged a roundabout path back toward their subterranean base of operations.
To have gone from having no intention of ever returning to Earth’s surface to actually working to save not only that planet, but also that of an alien race she’d thought was her enemy until so recently was a huge step for her. Now she felt like she’d taken an equally huge step backward.
Fatima never imagined this scenario, I bet.
“Probably not,” Sarah agreed. “So what now?”
No idea, Sis. No fucking idea.
“You really think the Ra’az will wipe out the Chithiid if they get that warp drive functional?”
You saw what they did to those barracks full of unarmed workers. I wouldn’t put it past them.
“Goddamn animals.”
Worse than animals. At least animals kill for sustenance.
“You forget about cats.” Sarah chuckled. “Sadistic little bastards.”
Fine. Except cats, Daisy said, allowing herself the tiniest of grins.
Daisy altered her course, taking an unfamiliar side street to an adjacent boulevard.
“Where you going?”
I honestly don’t know. Anywhere but back, right now. I just really need to clear my head for a bit, and once I go back, it’s going to be non-stop questions, and I really don’t think I can deal with that right now.
“Perfectly reasonable,” Sarah replied. “So, you want a quiet escape from prying eyes.”
That sounds wonderful.
“Ask and you shall receive. You see that? Up there on the left?”
Daisy scanned the overgrown courtyards lining the way. Sure enough, just barely visible through the dense brush, the flicker of flowing water caught the sunlight.
Good eyes, Sis.
Drawing near, she carefully parted the bushes and stepped through into a quiet, protected oasis.
Perhaps oasis was a bit of a stretch, given the pools of algae-thick water below the trickling fountain, but it was tranquil, insect-free, and provided a quiet place away from prying eyes, and that was exactly what Daisy needed at the moment.
Every fiber of her body, it seemed, was drained from the emotional highs and lows of the past twenty-four hours, and exhaustion washed over her as she sank down onto the small patch of long grass.
Rather than slipping into a much-desired nap and tuning out the day’s events, she instead folded herself into a cross-legged position and began breathing slowly and deeply.
Even with the soothing sound of trickling water, it still took her a while, given all that was racing through her mind, but eventually, Daisy managed to relax into herself, find her center, and begin letting the traumas of the day flow out of her.
Across the city, a tall alien quietly voiced his concerns to an old friend. Things were most certainly not going as planned, and he was rather uncertain what exactly to do.
“You give up this easily, Craaxit?” his elder friend asked. “How very unlike you.”
The younger Chithiid slowly chewed his food as he pondered the unexpected twist to what had been the most promising hope for their freedom for as long as he’d been in service to the Ra’az.
“I do not give up, Maarl,” he replied, “but I also realize when pursuing a course of action is futile.”
His friend sized him up, slowly.
“Do you really think this is futile? Saving our people? Our families? Our very planet?”
“You know I do not. But without the weaponry the humans’ AI possessed, I fear we have no options available to us.”
“But you’ve seen the horrors the Ra’az commit, even to this day,” Maarl said, gesturing to the small video player tucked under Craaxit’s arm. “Those images alone should move you to act.”
“Even when those in a position to truly help us do not?” he replied.
Maarl considered his words a moment.
“Give the device to me.”
“For what end?”
A steely look flashed in the old Chithiid’s eyes.
“These atrocities must not go unpunished. If ever there were a time to make that point clear, this is it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What else can I do? I am going to visit them personally.”
“But you are no longer assigned to the Bay area.”
“No, however many owe me favors, and a simple ride north is unremarkable. As is my work crew covering my absence for an afternoon.”
“Do you truly think you can sway them?”
“Any Chithiid who is not called into action upon seeing these images is as dead to me as the loyalist scum. I intend to make that point abundantly clear. History will judge not only combatants, but those who stood by and did nothing.”
Maarl slid the device into a pocket and rose from the table.
“It is but a short flight. I shall return this evening with news, one way or the other.”
Later that afternoon, as the sun finally began to ride a bit lower in the sky, a pair of AI-driven craft were still hard at work gathering parts from ships long dead, high above in the debris field circling the planet.
Though they had all heard what happened down below, Bob and Mal nevertheless wanted to continue gathering resources.
“We cannot know if another opportunity will present itself,” Mal said. “I, for one, believe it is crucial we retrieve as many of these ships and components as we are able. The positioning and density of this patch of resources in the debris field is as ideal as it will ever be. We must take advantage of it while the option exists.”
“I agree with Mal,” Captain Harkaway said from his seat in her command pod. “Much as I’d love to go relax back on the base, she’s right.”
“We’re with you, Captain,” Bob said for himself and Donovan. “Regardless of the events of the day, what we have been working on has value to us. Having additional craft at our disposal, even the drones, could be quite useful.”
“So let’s get back to it, then,” Donovan chimed in.
The two craft gently fired their maneuvering thrusters and drifted deeper into the debris field, collecting smaller components before towing larger pieces and mostly intact vessels back to Dark Side Base.
After a few hours, another sizable quantity had been dropped on the moon’s surface alongside the other salvaged materials for Chu, Gustavo, and the others to dig into.
“Hey,” Donovan called over comms as they returned for another pass. “You guys see what’s going on in Colorado?”
Mal adjusted he
r visuals and zeroed in on the still-hot terrain surrounding the partially collapsed mountain.
“It seems the Ra’az have deployed Chithiid salvage teams to Colorado Springs, now that it is no longer defended.” She observed a few auto cannons still targeting and firing as ships flew near, but there was nothing resembling a coordinated defense.
“Yeah, looks like it,” Donovan agreed. “Joshua only just went offline, but those guys are already probing the defenses and lining up for a deconstruction. My guess, they’ll probably start a full-scale operation within the week, if not a couple of days.”
Mal scanned the solid mountain that, until recently, housed the brilliant AI.
“At least they’ll not have any success gathering any of the high-tech military items. Everything inside the base is melted slag now, and with a half-life of at least fifty years.”
“Not longer?” Harkaway asked. “I seem to recall reactor meltdowns held risks for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.”
“A common misconception, Captain,” Mal replied. “A nuclear blast is designed to release as much power from the fission event in as short a time as possible. The result is a drastically depleted isotope with a much shorter half-life. If you recall Earth’s Hiroshima detonation.”
“Yes, of course.”
“In that instance, the ground was habitable well under fifty years after the blast.”
“Makes sense, I suppose,” he said. “With modern drive tech, that old dirty nuclear stuff is just something I never thought about.”
“Hey, Bob. Take a peek at LA, would ya? I just want to make sure there’s no new Chithiid movement in the city,” Donovan requested of his AI friend.
“Of course,” the ship replied. “While there seems to have been a tiny bit more activity than we usually see, there is nothing that strikes me as out of the ordinary.”
“Good news. I just hope everyone down below is doing okay after today.”
Bob shifted his scans to other areas their teams had recently been active.
“Denver also seems to have some sort of activity, and it appears there has been some sort of detonation in Billings.”
“The AI managed get a lucky shot on one of the Ra’az ships?”
“It appears so, though I cannot say for sure what I am seeing.”
“Hell, the way our day’s gone so far, it could be anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The underpowered monorail car slid to a stop beneath the long-dead city of Denver. It had taken a good four and a half hours before the fast-walking survivors stumbled upon a segment of the monorail tunnel that was illuminated by more than mere emergency lights.
“Powered up,” Duke said. “All right. Everyone take a breather. The boys and I are going to see if we can find a tie-in and summon one of the other cars up the line.”
The cyborg team took off at a fast run, scanning the walls of the tunnel for a functional access panel as they ran. Very quickly, they were small dots in the distance, the sound of their boots the faintest of echoes.
“Dang, those guys can really move,” a flush-cheeked human survivor said, still breathing heavy from the lengthy trek.
“The benefits of fresh power cells and cybernetic endoskeletons,” Tamara cracked. “They don’t get tired, and they can keep going almost indefinitely.”
“But back outside the mountain, we saw so many with low power,” she said.
“Well, yeah, but when I said indefinitely, I was talking in normal human lifespan terms. Think about it, the ones we came across that were running low when we first arrived had been trying to break into that mountain for hundreds of years.”
“And many were of the older variety, without the ability to hot-swap power cells to fresh ones,” Jonathan noted. “Those poor bastards would have had to find a suitable recharge station if they wanted to keep at it, and that seemed highly unlikely.”
Tamara let out a hearty laugh.
“Did you just say ‘bastards,’ Johnny boy?”
“Well, I––”
“Those rough-and-tumble military fellas are corrupting your innocent mind!” she said, grinning.
“Nothing of the sort! My processors are not corrupted. I am operating at near-peak efficiency.”
“Not what I meant, Johnny boy, but your point is taken.”
She settled down for a power nap in the relative safety of the subterranean monorail tunnel while they waited for the team to return. Less than a half hour later, a soft hum filled the air, along with a light breeze as an approaching monorail car slowed, then stopped.
“Anybody need a lift?” Duke called out as he stepped out of the car’s doors.
“That was quick, Duke.”
“Well, what can I say? We’re just that good.”
“That, and Joshua seems to have called for a car as soon as he sensed something was wrong,” his fellow cyborg noted.
“Dude, what did I say about spoiling my stories?”
“You’re so full of shit, Duke,” the metal man said with a laugh as he walked past him. “Come on, y’all. Let’s get loaded up. Denver’s a-waitin’.”
The exhausted organic members of the team climbed to their aching feet and trudged into the comfort of the air-conditioned monorail car. Several fell asleep as soon as they hit the padded seats.
“So, you’re just that good, huh?” Tamara ribbed Duke.
“But I am, you know.”
“Uh-huh. I guess it was just a convenient happenstance that Joshua sent a car our way.”
“Always thinking twelve steps ahead.” Duke sighed. “Even as he was fighting for his life, he calculated that we’d try for the tunnels and made sure we had a way out.”
“Yep. And now the fun begins.”
“Ah, yes. A comfortable ride to Denver.”
“Not that,” she replied. “I’m talking about the trek through Denver once we get there.”
Those who had made the trek to Colorado Springs the other direction knew what she was talking about. Duke and his buddies were soon to find out.
“We are so fucked,” the cyborg said as he surveyed the carnage just outside the warehouse above the regional monorail system.
“What the hell happened here?” Tamara said, staring in disbelief. “We didn’t do this. We were running away from them. Running for our lives last time we came through here.”
“Then something bigger and badder came through after you,” Duke replied. “What could possibly do this?”
The smell was something to be reckoned with as the rotting bear carcasses decomposed amid swarming flies in the afternoon heat. Five of them, each in multiple pieces, lay dead on the ground.
Tamara moved closer, braving the stench for a better look.
“See this?” she asked, gesturing to a massive slice in the beast’s leg that had nearly severed it from its body. “This is a clean cut. It wasn’t teeth that did this.”
“Claws, maybe?” Duke posited.
“I don’t know. I mean, what could possibly take out not one, but five bears this size?”
“Something alien, maybe? Something from the Ra’az?”
“But there are no pulse blast marks anywhere. Whatever did this, did it by itself.”
“Some kind of mutated rogue beast, then?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it was, it not only had razor-sharp claws, but it also must be incredibly strong. Look. That one’s neck is broken. You have any idea how much force it would take to snap a bear’s neck? Especially one this big? And fighting five at once?”
Tamara scanned the area with nervous eyes.
“I don’t like this. Not one bit.”
“I’ve seen some crazy shit in my day, but goddamn if I’m not one hundred percent with you on that,” Duke said in a hushed voice.
“We need to boogie out of here, Duke,” Tamara said. “And I’m talking yesterday. Whatever did this is probably still around.”
“No argument from me,” he replied. “Guys, split ranks and cover th
e civvies. Two at point, the rest at the rear.” His men quickly fell into position, weapons at the ready. “Okay, we are moving, and fast. Stay alert. If something that is not us gets in your way, I strongly advise you shoot first and ask questions later.”
The wide-eyed survivors nodded their agreement and followed the cyborgs leading them at a quick pace. Once they made it to the loop tube system, they’d be safely on their way back to the comfort of Los Angeles.
All they had to do was survive that long.
The collected minds of the major cities that remained linked together after Joshua’s destruction had discussed the information he had wirelessly sent to Sid in his final moments. Though it pained them to do so, a decision was made.
All cities currently housing humans who had come in contact with the teams from Los Angeles as they reconnected their comms would do a roll call of their people to ensure no outsiders had joined their ranks.
Uncomfortable as it would be, in areas where an accurate census was not in place, a strip search would be implemented with the aid of trusted locals and any cyborgs that had been reconnected to their network.
The strip searches, when warranted, would be performed in private, but given the events of Colorado Springs, it was decided that declining to participate was simply not an option. As their very survival might depend on it, the choice was logical, if not pleasant.
The process had taken several hours, but at the end, all connected cities reported back as all clear. The lone incursion had been the fatal one.
One would have thought that discussion would have been the toughest to be had, but the one that followed the decision to strip search civilians raised far greater ethical issues across the board.
“No. I absolutely will not support this,” Commander Mrazich said. “This is an affront to our very humanity. Lars?”
“I agree one hundred percent,” Captain Harkaway affirmed. “Look, I understand where the idea came from, as well as the circumstances that birthed it, but we simply cannot put our humanity aside and commit this kind of atrocity.”