by P. T. Hylton
“Huh?” He looked up, his focus broken.
“I was just asking where you learned this hacking stuff.”
He shrugged. “I did some coding as a kid. One of my teachers thought it was important for the well-rounded scientific mind, or some such nonsense. I did okay at it, but I never came close to mastering the skills needed for this type of thing. I’m sort of figuring it out as I go.”
Jessica nodded. “I understand. Don’t feel bad if you can’t get us in there.”
Brian blinked hard. “Oh, I’m already in. Didn’t I tell you? Sorry, I thought I did.” He looked back at the tablet. “I’m just looking for that bit of footage you wanted, and we’ll be good to go.”
Jessica stifled a laugh. Brian McElroy was once again exceeding her expectations.
People sometimes called her a genius, and she supposed that was true. Brian couldn’t hold a conversation about engineering like George from Agartha—he wasn’t really the collaborative sort—but when left to his own devices, he operated at a whole different level.
“It shouldn’t be long,” he said absently as his fingers flew. “Just another… There! Got it.”
“Geez, already?”
Brian grinned. “Yep. I guess that means it’s the Jessica show now. Ready for your big debut?”
That made the director of engineering pause. She’d assumed this was going to take at least another hour, which would have given her another hour to mentally prepare. “I still don’t understand why it has to be me,” she grumbled.
Brian didn't even look up from his tablet. “You know why. People already know CB’s going against Fleming, and they need to see someone who’s not GMT so it doesn’t look like a straight up military coup. I can’t do it because… well, I’m me. I'd freeze up the second the camera came on. Besides, I technically work for the GMT too. You ready?”
“What? No, I need to—”
“Best to rip this thing off like a bandage.” He pulled a tiny camera out of his bag, attached it to the tablet, and pointed it at Jessica. “We’re going in five, four, three, two…”
Jessica took a deep breath to steady her nerves and forced the panicked look from her face. Brian pointed at her, indicating they were live. Though they couldn’t see it down here, she knew that her face was appearing on screens all throughout New Haven.
Brian had hacked her into the ship-wide broadcast system; now it was up to her to use this opportunity to its utmost.
“Hello, people,” she started lamely. She swallowed hard. This was much more difficult than Fleming made it look. “My name is Jessica Sundry, and I’m the director of engineering. As of today, I'm also a fugitive from Fleming and his badges.”
She paused. Brian gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up, indicating she was doing fine.
She continued, “Those of you who know me are aware that I am a careful person. I’m a scientist. I look at possible outcomes and likely scenarios before taking any important action. I would never have made the decision to go against our leaders if I had any other choice. In this case, I do not. Fleming is a murderer. He killed every other member of our city council so that he’d be the only one standing. Then he hoped you’d believe his implausible lie that it was an accident.
“I don’t have proof of his actions in killing the council, but I do have proof of another murder he tried to commit. Brian, if you would?”
Brian tapped the screen, and video footage from the Hub began to play throughout the city.
“This took place yesterday morning. Fleming told you Captain Brickman was injured while attempting to break General Craig out of jail. As you can see here, that was not the case.”
The footage showed Fleming, CB, and Kurtz walking down a hallway, CB clearly unarmed, then Kurtz pulling a gun and pointing it at CB. It showed CB defending himself and disarming Kurtz, then other badges running in and firing on CB.
“Fleming attempted to kill CB because he disagreed with his agenda,” Jessica said. “In Fleming’s world, disagreement is unacceptable. Alex Goddard took a similar position, and Fleming arranged to have her and the entire GMT stranded on the surface. They spent last night down there, and I’m sorry to say it seems almost impossible they survived. Fleming only cares about his own glory, not the lives of the people of New Haven.”
Brian tapped the screen as the footage of the Hub ended. He made a circular motion with his finger, which Jessica understood as him telling her to wrap it up. It wouldn’t take Fleming’s people too long to trace where the comm system had been hacked, and they needed to be gone before that happened. But before they left, there was one more thing Jessica needed to say.
“I’m counting on every man and woman on New Haven to take a stand. When the time comes, you’ll know. Help us take control of the ship from Fleming, and help us protect every life onboard.” She looked at Brian awkwardly. “That’s all. Shut it down.”
With that, screens around the ship went black.
5
The faceless GMT's first mission began as they landed the transport at Fort Stearns in the mid-morning. The cargo door opened and six figures stepped out, all clad in black. With the body armor, their black face masks, and their silent demeanor, it was difficult to even tell which of the team members were male and which were female.
They simply looked like cold, efficient warriors, nearly indistinguishable from each other, just as Fleming had designed it.
The leader of the newly formed team—known only to his team as One—surveyed the ruins of Fort Stearns with surprise. He’d expected to find a settlement of three hundred people, perhaps some of them nursing wounds from their first night on the surface. Maybe a little wiser from the eye-opening experience of being so close to vampires at night, but more prepared for the journey of Resettlement ahead of them. Instead, he found utter destruction.
It was clear no one had survived the night.
The realization was like a punch in the stomach to One. He was a true believer in Fleming’s cause, and to see that it had failed so completely was devastating. He couldn’t see the faces of his teammates, but from the way they silently stared at the yard around them, he felt sure they were having similar reactions.
“What the hell do we do now?” Three asked.
“We do our jobs,” One replied grimly. “We check for survivors.”
They made their way to the nearest building, following One’s lead. As they were approaching the entrance, Four called, “Wait. Check this out.”
One looked where his teammate was pointing and saw a five-foot-tall, seven-foot-wide hole in the building.
“My God,” Five said, staring at the hole. “What could have done this?”
No one answered, but they knew. They all knew. The same things that had done all of this.
Vampires.
They all stood in the light just outside the hole, peering inward. It took a moment for One’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when it did, he took an involuntary step backwards. Something was staring out at him.
The strange, severe lines of its face were unlike anything he’d ever seen. He felt dizzy just looking at the inhuman creature.
Then he realized the creature wasn’t alone. Slowly, his right hand went up to his helmet, and his finger found the switch. His headlamp turned on, bathing the interior of the building with light.
Dozens and dozens of pairs of eyes stared back at him. There may have been one hundred vampires jammed together body to body under just the narrow beam of his light. How many were there throughout the rest of the building? How many were there in this settlement?
Three turned toward him. “One, maybe you’re going in there to check for survivors, but I sure as hell—”
A hand snaked out of the darkness with inhuman speed. Long, smoking fingers coiled around Three’s ankle. He let out a soft yelp of surprise as a vampire pulled him into the building.
One watched in terrified horror as the vampires converged on Three. Ten vampires fell on him, tearing at his body wi
th claws and teeth, devouring the blood that seeped and sprayed from his wounds. All around them, vampires fought, jockeying for position, all desperate to get a taste of this fresh victim's blood.
The rest of the team jumped back, shouts and screams erupting from their mask-covered mouths as they watched their teammate being devoured.
If there was any consolation, it was that Three only struggled for a few moments before his body went still. Which one of the dozens of injuries had killed him was anybody’s guess, but at least he was dead.
Unlike One, who stood frozen, unable to turn his headlamp away from the carnage.
“What do we do?” Five asked, her voice panicked. So far, the team had been relatively calm, at least considering what they’d just witnessed, but One realized it was shock rather than bravery that kept them from screaming and running away. Three had been yanked into the building and killed so quickly that none of them even had a chance to consider what they might be able to do to save him.
One drew a deep breath. He needed to pull it together. Like so many great warriors before him, he was the field commander of the GMT. Like CB. Like Alex. Maybe it was his first day on the job, but he still needed to live up to that lofty legacy.
Even in the areas through the hole not illuminated by his headlamp, One could see ripples of movement in the darkness. The ground shook as vampires throughout the building began to howl.
One thought fast. “We need to bring this damn building down. Shine a little sunlight on these sons of bitches. Six, do it.”
Six swung the backpack containing the explosives off his back and began rifling through it. As One watched, Six fumbled with the explosives, clearly rattled. Finally, he brought out five high-powered grenades. “These oughta do the trick.”
He pulled the pins and tossed them into the darkness in quick succession.
One stared at the hole in the building. He hadn’t received the explosives training Six had. Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure exactly what explosives training his demolitions “expert” had received. He’d never even met the man until that morning. The faceless GMT had been prepared individually so as to protect their identities.
Still, tossing six high-powered grenades so close to the team seemed perhaps a bit foolish—
The first grenade exploded, tearing into the group of vampires closest to the hole. Vampiric screams filled the air, as did the clangs of the other, unexploded grenades knocking around in the building. Three vampires were blown out the hole in the wall by the explosion. They instantly burst into flames as the sunlight touched their skin. Pieces of other vampires shot out the hole, too. An arm whizzed by One, catching fire as it flew.
Then the rest of the grenades exploded, and chaos erupted with it. A powerful, concussive wave slammed into One’s chest, knocking him onto his ass.
For a moment, he just lay there, struggling to catch the wind that had been knocked out of him. Then he sat up and looked around, and he nearly lost his breath again.
Six had been the closest to the building, and he was clearly dead, the blast and the shrapnel having left him in a mangled heap.
Three was near Six and was equally dead. Half his right arm was missing, and the strange angles of his remaining limbs suggested his bones weren’t holding him together in the way they should be.
A scream to his left made One turn. He saw another team member—Two, he thought, though it was so hard to tell for sure with these damn masks—clutching her leg where a piece of rebar was sticking through both sides, having pierced clean through the thigh.
But at least Two was alive. One wasn’t so sure about the remaining teammates, Five and Four. He struggled to his feet and stumbled toward where they lay. Pulling off his glove, he felt their necks, first Five and then Four, but found neither had a pulse.
The weight of the moment almost crushed him. His first mission, and four of his five teammates were dead.
Then another thought struck him: Four was their pilot.
After a moment, he remembered the bit of pilot training he’d received. He was meant to be the backup pilot. It was up to him to get them back to New Haven.
As he struggled to his feet, something in the shadows of what remained of the building caught his eye. He slowly crept forward, his still-engaged headlamp illuminating the shadows in the rubble. He saw a crowd of vampires huddled together in the darkness, their flesh shredded from the shrapnel. But as he silently watched, they began to heal. Their hideous skin mended itself before his eyes.
A shudder passed through One, and he realized the rest of his life would be dedicated to forgetting this moment.
“Get that hangar door open,” Sarah growled to the tech sitting at the console.
He jammed the button, and the outer airlock door opened. Sarah turned and marched into the hangar, waiting for the ship.
They already knew it was bad. One had radioed in and told them to have medical staff ready. Beyond that, he hadn’t been coherent. She just hoped he could dock the ship safely so that she’d be able to appraise the situation fully before Fleming arrived.
She watched through the reinforced glass of the inner airlock door as the away ship approached. It was coming at New Haven at an odd angle, and it was tilted about twenty degrees toward starboard. The pilot over-corrected, and the ship approached tilting ten degrees port.
Sarah clenched her fists, not even daring to breathe as the ship entered the hangar. It set down with a thud, and Sarah flinched. Thank God Owl wasn’t here to see this shameful display.
As soon as the outer airlock doors closed, the inner doors opened and technicians raced toward the ship.
The cargo door opened, and One shambled down the ramp. He was carrying something in his arms. It took Sarah a moment to realize it was one of his teammates. The woman’s mask had been removed, and her face was pale. A long piece of rebar protruded from both sides of her thigh.
Sarah marched up the ramp, meeting One halfway as the medical staff took the injured teammate from his arms. “What happened?” she shouted.
“They’re dead,” he said absently. “They’re all dead.”
She looked past him and saw two bodies lying in the cargo hold, their features still covered by their black attire. “Holy hell, tell me you didn’t bring back your dead.”
The medical staff had already started the emergency protocol for GMT members who may have been compromised. Rather than taking them back to the locker room, they tore off One’s clothes right there so they could check for bites immediately. Two others had the injured woman on a gurney and were stripping off her clothes as well.
The rest of the medical staff surged into the cargo hold and went to work checking the bodies. Just because these team members were dead didn’t mean they’d necessarily stay that way. The techs needed to be sure the corpses hadn’t been bitten.
Just then, at the worst possible moment, Fleming arrived.
He ran to the ship, his eyes fixed on One.
“Sir,” Sarah said, trying to intercept him, “I was just about to determine—”
But Fleming blew past her and ran to One, grabbing him by his bare shoulders. “What the hell happened?”
“They’re all dead,” One repeated.
Fleming squeezed his shoulders and shook him hard. “What is the status of Fort Stearns?”
One looked up slowly, as if just realizing who was speaking to him. “I just told you. They’re all dead. The Resettlers are dead. My team is dead. Fort Stearns is destroyed, and there are hundreds of vampires living in the ruins.” His head tilted a little, his eyes invisible behind that eerie mask. “Did you know, sir? Did you know you were killing all those people?”
“Killing? What are you—”
“No one could have survived a night with those monsters. Did you know what would happen?”
Fleming turned to the nearest medical person, a young woman named Brook. “This man is delusional. Sedate him.”
“Sir,” Sarah tried, but that was
as far as she got before he whirled toward her.
“He has clearly lost his mind.” The usual control in Fleming’s demeanor was gone, and there was a wildness in his eyes. “The GMT didn’t do their jobs. There’s no way they searched the entire settlement already. They just got spooked when they saw some vampires and decided to come home.”
Sarah glanced at the mangled bodies in the cargo hold. Spooked wasn't the word she would have used to describe them.
Fleming’s eyes filled with anger and he looked up suddenly. “We were sabotaged. That’s the only explanation. CB wasn’t the only traitor. Maybe Firefly was in on it. Maybe he let the vampires in.”
Sarah was so surprised that she didn’t know how to respond. It seemed rather unlikely to her that Firefly would have willingly let vampires in to kill him and his Resettlers.
Fleming was losing his grip, Sarah realized. He’d believed in Resettlement so completely that he was unable to accept its failure.
“Firefly might have had accomplices among the Resettlers. There could be others.” He paused a moment. “No one is to leave the GMT facility until further notice. We need to make sure these people aren’t carrying a contaminant that could spread to the rest of the ship.”
It wasn’t clear if the containment he was referring to was vampirism or betrayal.
“Sarah, come with me to CB’s office.” With that, he stormed off, leaving the GMT support and medical staff staring at Sarah in confusion.
She clenched her fists, hoping it would stop her hands from shaking before anyone noticed. If Fleming lost it now, the entire city was in serious trouble. She had to calm him down and help him see reality, however terrible that reality might be. He’d done so much for her. Now it was time for her to repay the favor.
“Do as he says,” she told everyone. “No one leaves the facility until further notice.”
She hurried out of the hangar and to CB’s office.
When she arrived, she found Kurtz and Fleming both there, waiting.
“We need to call up the next six members of the GMT,” Fleming was saying. “Have them suit up and get ready for action.”