Raddocks Horizon (Godyssey Legacy Book 1)
Page 43
“Not yet.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, I have absolutely no idea, but we’re not separating again. I’ll probably shit the bed at some stage, but I’ll never leave you,” he says forcing a smirk.
“Jesus, what an offer…”
He doesn’t know how to really transfer his brutally primal urge to protect her into eloquent words so he goes with something simple. “Just stay close, alright?”
General Faraday bursts out of the cabin, making a beeline for the operations tent. Rennin can’t help but follow as if he is a dog chasing a car. Faraday may be old but at the moment he’s moving like an Olympic sprinter.
He shoves the tent curtain out of the way, storming headlong into the chaos within. The military nerve centre for this outpost is filled with people scrambling to and between instrument panels like hyperactive ants. Faraday bursts in. “Is it confirmed?”
“Yes, sir. The ship has lost control,” says a technician.
Rennin catches the part about a ship out of control. “What’s happening?”
Faraday ignores him. “What is its altitude?”
“Receiving a signal,” says the technician patching it over the speakers.
There’s a scratchy voice over the airways. “I…toya. Iyat..a. Thi…s Res..ue One, th…verest. We … going down!”
Rennin backs out of the tent and looks up to the sky, knowing what he’s about to see. Falling from the sky is a re-entry fuelled fireball that can only be the Everest, shuttle of the Alpha HolinMech strike team.
It is hurtling towards the surface with no sign of slowing, like a flaming meteor. Rennin feels a cold stab of resignation as he watches it come down.
Epilogue
Two weeks after the fall of Raddocks Horizon, William Caufmann is still holed up in the remains of the Godyssey Laboratory. Contact with the Outbound camp has been lost. There has been no word from anyone. Any attempts at communication with the outside world have failed. As far as he can tell he’s alone, again.
He has done his best to track Del’s movements around the dead city but his creation has proven to be quite elusive. Regaining some surveillance around the city by filtering the lab’s emergency power to certain sections should have helped.
It took him a day to find the HolinMech crash site via his rudimentary camera control. By the time he had located it, the ship was empty, with no indication of where they may be headed, or where they are now. Except for one. But it’s no HolinMech.
En route towards him is a warped CryoZaiyon transponder signal. There are significant changes to the system but the transponder is giving off a clear enough signature for him to know what it is. It can only be the repurposed shell of Forgal Lauros.
It is unclear what the intentions of this HolinMech husk might be.
Despite wanting to ask a great many questions of his former Commander, Caufmann knows that, if Lauros is hostile, he cannot hope to subdue him. If he has the element of surprise, he can deal with him in a way that doesn’t require strength.
The night of the Gorai Aurelia Rally, Rennin shot Prototype with an accelerated corroder to slow it down. In Caufmann’s hand, he holds the updated version. Specifically designed to dissolve Thermosteel, its effects will be thorough and final.
In any other circumstance, it is not a weapon he would use. It can just as easily destroy his body if he so much as touches Lauros.
As the distance between him and the distorted reading steadily reduces, he draws the corroding agent into a syringe.
Who are you now?
Before him, he sets out a dozen hollow point bullets. There’s no guarantee they will get past an android’s kinetic barrier, but it’s still the most reliable way to deploy the chemical.
Caufmann holds the tip of the needle over the first of the bullets, squeezing very gently until he can see a bead form at the tip. The doctor knows this simple drop itself is enough to destroy all of them. It will devour the Thermosteel within android and contaminant alike, with no regard, no mercy. This tiny morsel could end it.
The drop falls.
Everything.