by Greg Logan
He stepped out of the shower. Once he was toweled off, he pulled on a pair of sweat pants. He glanced at the digital readout on his wristband. 10:23. It was late. He should be getting to sleep. Morning would come all too early.
He thought about maybe wandering about the facility. Maybe grabbing a beer with Sammy, who didn’t really need sleep. At this time of night, the facility was usually quiet. Scott had the facility’s lighting system on a program so it would match the cycles of the sun. After dark, the lighting in the hallways and labs dimmed noticeably. If you were working in a lab after dark, you had to manually turn on additional lighting. Scott said it would make the place feel a little less artificial and sterile. Better for everyone psychologically. Jake thought he was probably right.
Scott and April were probably in their quarters. Chuck and Rick had probably beamed out, to go hit some bars in Boulder or Denver. Rick also seemed to be restless before a mission, and liked to indulge in some night life. And Chuck was just a man-whore and needed no provocation at all to indulge.
Jeff had returned to Boston to check in with the group he called the Society, meaning mostly Mother and Snake, to make sure all was well with them before he left with the away team the following morning. He had been raised by them, and even though he now lived mostly here at the facility, he still considered them to be family.
Jake stepped out from the bathroom and found Akila doing stretches on the floor. A sort of yoga she had learned on her Earth. She was crouching down with one leg and the other was stretched out before her. Her arms were raised over her head and her hands were pressed together. And she was wearing no clothing at all.
“So,” Jake said. “I like your outfit.”
She glanced at him with a grin. “Thought you would.”
He walked up behind her and let his hands trail down her elbows to her shoulders. She leaned her head back to him and his mouth found her neck.
She then rose to her feet and turned to face him, and his arms were around her and her arms were around the back of his neck, and one leg was wrapped around his lower back. The room was not very large so the bed was immediately behind him. He dropped backward onto it, pulling her down with him. Suddenly wandering about the facility was the last thing on his mind.
When they were finished, they were each covered with a fine sheen of sweat. Her head was on a pillow. He was lying on his side, his arm crooked and his head resting in his hand.
“Now I need another shower,” he said.
“Let me catch my breath first.”
He smiled. “You know, we’re lucky we don’t break any furniture.”
“There’s always a first for everything.”
She was a lot stronger than the average man, which was part of her meta abilities. As such, she was a lot stronger than Jake. In order to allow her to proceed in their lovemaking totally uninhibited, which she would not be able to do if she were trying to be careful and not hurt him, Jake always powered-up a little. Just enough to match her strength.
“You know,” she said, “I wanted to talk more about what you asked me this morning.”
“About getting married?”
She nodded. Jake noticed she was not entirely naked. She was wearing the engagement ring.
“It’s a sort of warrior thing,” she said. “I don’t know really how to explain it but I really think I should.”
Jake shook his head. “No need. I should have realized from the start. It’s a Klingon thing.”
“A...what?”
He smiled, and let a finger touch her cheekbone, and begin tracking its way down to her chin. “It means, I’ve done some thinking and I think I understand the warrior thing. And on top of that, your entire life was turned upside down four years ago. It might be a long time before you stop feeling unsettled.”
She liked it when he began with her cheekbone and started tracing downward. It usually meant he was not finished for the night.
“You know,” she said. “There is a mission tomorrow. We might need our sleep so we can be awake and fully functional. Even though you and I not going along, we will be here monitoring the equipment, and such.”
“True. But even then, we should be at our best. And to be at our best, I think we might need a little more training.”
She grinned. “I can never get enough training.”
Cosmo stood in front of a glass door. Above him was the sign Brannon’s Liquor. Hanging from a suction cup on the door was a sign that read, in bi red letters, CLOSED. He wasn’t surprised. Another sign beneath it gave the hours. The store normally closed at 9:00 PM. It was now just after midnight.
There was another sign in the doorway. EMPLOYEES CAN NOT OPEN SAFE. That’s all right, Cosmo thought. He could open the safe perfectly well.
He stepped back and raised one hand. There was a blast of flame from his hand, flame which he pushed to a white hot intensity. He shot it at the door like a flame thrower and the glass of the door exploded inwardly.
He stepped through. The heat of the melting glass had no effect on him. He took a cigarette stub from his mouth and dropped it to the floor without bothering to crush it out.
Alarms began to go off, but he ignored them. He wouldn’t be in the store long enough to worry. He glanced at walls to the left and right. He had been in the store earlier in the day, checking it out. Casing the joint, they used to call it in the old gangster movies. He knew where the security cameras were. Part of his ability was the throwing of fire, but another was the creation of it without actually having to touch the item he wished to burn. He was a firestarter as well as a flame thrower. With but a thought, he caused both cameras to burst into a flame that melted plastic and started wires burning.
He would need a distraction, too. Something to keep the attention of any witnesses who might be walking by outside away from the fact that he was inside and about to relieve the store of any cash in its safe. So, focusing his energy upward, he caused the roof to burst into flames.
This was an old building. A former apartment house from before World War II. The walls and floor were made of wood. The roof was peaked and had asphalt tiles. The second floor held an apartment, which Cosmo made sure was vacant before he even considered putting his plan into action.
An old wooden building and a firestarter, he thought with a smile. A beautiful combination.
He walked around behind the counter, to the small drop safe. Won’t take long, he thought. He touched the locking mechanism with one hand and began to generate heat. The combination lock turned red, then white. Then began to warp. He grabbed the lock with his bare hand. Heat didn’t affect him the way it would a normal human. He didn’t even get sunburns in the summer. The melting metal just felt squishy in his hand. He twisted the melting lock and he pulled it away, leaving a gaping hole where the lock had been. He pulled the safe door open.
There were batches of five’s and one’s inside, each bundled like they had been when they were obtained at the bank. One bundle was smoldering, but he quickly shook it out. Then he grabbed all of the bundles and shoved them into his jacket pocket. Time to get out of here.
As he approached the door, he passed a shelf of whiskey bottles and snagged himself a bottle of scotch.
The back door was wooden, so he just raised a hand and shot a blast of flame that caused the door to explode outward. He stepped out through the flaming door frame.
He could hear sirens in the distance. The cops and the fire department would be responding. But the alley was still empty. He pulled out the bundles of money and looked at them quickly. Three bundles of a hundred one’s each, and four bundles of a hundred five’s. Not a bad haul for his first job.
He lit a cigarette and walked along.
SEVEN
2034
It was late. Some of Jeff’s group of survivors were scattered about the floor. Some were in sleeping bags and some in loose blankets. They used whatever they could find. None complained about sleeping on a hard floor. The luxury of sleeping on a ma
ttress was something they had all but forgotten.
Mother, Quentin, Jeff, Sara and Sammy sat in what had been the waiting area of the old Delta gate. Jeff and Sara were in chairs facing a tall glass window that reached from ceiling to floor and was remarkably still intact. It overlooked the dark runway outside. Mother sat off to one side. Quentin paced by the window and Sammy was in a chair off to the right of Jeff and Sara. A small candle burned on a table in front of them.
Four guards were posted at outer doors, at various ends of the airport. Quentin was maintaining contact with them. Not full contact, as that would create a two-way communication and he wanted full privacy for whatever conversation might take place here. But if any of them saw something that wasn’t right, something that might be of concern, they needed to merely think the name, Quentin, and he would become fully linked with them.
While Mother was the spiritual leader of the group, Jeff and Quentin sort of shared tactical leadership. A role they inherited when Snake was killed, years ago. Sara was on hand as not only Jeff’s wife, but as an adviser to the group. And no group of leadership would want to exclude Sammy.
Not that Jeff and Sara were officially married. They were simply together. A unit. The true essence of what marriage was all about, anyway. They had made their vows to each other in private. There was no more opportunity for a legal ceremony, and there was no more government anymore, anyway. No more country.
Actually, Jeff knew, there were two more who were not asleep. They were out prowling the deserted Boston streets. One was Rick, whose battle suit was still intact, and as such, he could move faster than the human eye could follow. He was conducting reconnaissance in and around the city. The other was Mother’s son. The Darkness. He never seemed to sleep, though he did seem to go into some sort of hibernation by day. Jeff didn’t know the particulars of how the Darkness operated. He didn’t know if even Mother really knew. But he was out there. Somewhere.
The Darkness would show up sometime in the night and then Sondra would join him, apparently becoming darkness herself while they communed. The less Jeff knew about it, the better he liked it.
“So, it’s true,” Mother said. “The New York group is gone.”
Jeff nodded gravely. “The two groups of survivors there were rounded up. They’re gone.”
“Captured?” Sara said. “Or..?”
“Dead,” Quentin said. “I can no longer link to any of their minds.”
Sammy said, “It appears the Machine has a new policy. Rather than simply capturing metas and offering us the chance to work with them rather than be annihilated, they’re simply moving directly to annihilation as a first course of action.”
Jeff gave a cynical chuckle. “Maybe they decided we’re all just too hard to control. It’s a waste of their precious resources.”
Sammy matched the chuckle. “Not cost effective.”
“So, what now?” Sara said. “You know they’ll be coming for us, sooner or later.”
Sammy nodded. “Very likely. There’s a small pocket of survivors somewhere in the Philadelphia area, but we can’t get a fix on them. One of them is able to generate a sort of dampening field that makes it impossible even for Quentin to connect with them telepathically. It also apparently mucks with the Enemy’s sensors.”
“We’ve been lucky,” Mother said. “Traveling up and down the east coast. Evading them. Staying one step ahead of them. Avoiding capture for as long as we have. But I suppose, despite all the optimism I try to muster, it’s only a matter of time.”
“When they come for us,” Quentin said, “it won’t be with a single hover craft conducting routine, scheduled fly-overs.”
Jeff shook his head. “They’ll bring robot drones. A small army of them.”
“So,” Mother said. “Where do we go from here? We’ve been here four months now, hiding out in this airport. Where from here? It won’t be long before the few canned goods we’re appropriating from houses and old stores will be depleted.”
“There are a couple places,” Jeff said, a weariness in his voice. “But both of them are outside the city. One, an old warehouse in Chelsea. But the further we get from the city, the more limited our resources will be. Fewer homes and stores to loot. Just finding fresh water is getting more and more difficult.”
Quentin, who had ceased his pacing and was standing in front of the huge window and was staring off into the night, turned to face them. “Maybe it’s time we change tactics. Maybe it’s time we take the battle to them.”
“Attack?” Jeff said.
Quentin nodded.
Mother said, “Many of us don’t have abilities suited for combat.”
“True, but some of us do. Jeff, when powered-up, is one of the most unstoppable forces on the planet. And there’s always the Darkness. One of the most formidable forces probably on any planet.”
“But would that be enough?” Sara said.
“There’s a small POW camp, in what used to be Rhode Island.”
Jeff nodded. “I know of it.”
“Possibly a hundred metas living there, as well as some prisoners from off-world. If we could free them, I would think most of them would join us.”
Mother said, “Are you suggesting we form an army?”
“I am just so tired of ducking and running, which can only go on for so long. And if they come looking for us, if they really start expending their vast resources toward locating us, they will succeed.”
Jeff said, “You might be on to something. Let’s make it too difficult for them to hold our planet. After all, the Earth is only on the periphery of their territory. They use us for little more than a glorified POW camp and to grow food. If holding this planet drains too much of their precious resources, then maybe we can make it not worth their while to maintain a force on this world.”
“I’ve always been opposed to outright war,” Mother said, her voice a little hushed at the distaste of what they were talking about. “To engage in outright aggression.”
Quentin said, “Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.”
“You talk about killing so easily. I don’t want any of our group killed. I’ve devoted years--we’ve devoted years—to keeping them alive. If we begin building an army, many of us might be killed.”
“The hard reality is to do nothing will get us all killed, anyway.” Quentin looked at Jeff. They had talked about this before. “We have known all along it could come to this, eventually. We can run for only so long. We tried to avoid outright engaging the enemy, because none of us are trained soldiers. Many of us would be killed. But it’s starting to look like very soon our backs will be to the proverbial wall. I would rather not wait until that point.”
Sara said, “But they will just send in robot drones. They don’t even use live soldiers. They’ll just keep manufacturing drones and sending them against us. How long can we really hold out? Even with some of the power we have. Jeff. The Darkness. Rick, with his speed. Quentin. Even some of the prisoners we can free might have abilities that would be helpful. But how long can we hold out before we’re overwhelmed by sheer numbers?”
Sammy nodded. She had a good point. “Then, we have to take out the Machine. Maybe reprogram it to fight for us, not against us. That would be a major tactical advantage. ”
The Machine. The supreme computer that was, essentially, the operating system for the alien force that remained on this planet. The alien force retained order, but the Machine actually governed. It was so ironic, in the worst possible way, that the Machine had grown from a computer originally built by Scott Tempest and Sammy.
Years ago, when Scott had created a synthetic body for Sammy, he and Sammy had created a central computer to operate their former complex. It was this computer, expanded with alien technology, that was now the enemy.
“The problem,” Sammy said, “is none of us actually know where the Machine is. Where the actual hardware is. It was long ago removed from the mountain facility in Colorado.”
“I
know of someone who could probably find it,” Jeff said. He looked into Sara’s green eyes, then to Mother. “The last we knew, Chloe was with the group in Philadelphia.”
Sara nodded, with a smile. “If anyone could find the central computer core, it would be Chloe.”
“We have to get to Philadelphia. Rick and I can move the fastest.”
Sammy shook his head. “That amount of zeta energy power-up will alert the planet-wide sensors. So would just beaming in.”
The planet-wide sensors were a group of satellites continually monitoring for zeta energy, and for tachyon energy.
Quentin said, “I would hate to send Rick out there alone. That’s a lot of territory to cover, and if something went wrong..,”
Sara said, “We could send the Darkness along.”
Quentin smiled. “I intend no offense,” he looked at Mother, “but the Darkness is not who I would send if I wanted to persuade the Philadelphia group to join our war effort. His diplomatic skills are something akin to a hammer on a nail.”
Jeff chuckled. Quentin could be colorful. “All right. Then, we do it the old-fashioned way. We send a party to Philadelphia, on foot. Mile after mile.”
Sara said, “That’s a frigging long walk. From here to Philadelphia.”
“There might be no other way,” Mother said. “Who would make up the party?”
“I’ll go,” Jeff said.
“Wait,” Quentin said. “You’re one of our leaders. What makes you think we can spare you?”
“I probably know Chloe the best. I don’t know of anyone else who could persuade her to come back.”
Mother said, “I probably could, but I don’t know if I could make that trip. I’m really not as young as I used to be, you know.”
Sara said, “Jeff and I can both go. I have solid combat and survival skills. And I can see in the dark.”
“Then what?” Mother said. “You bring Chloe back, and then what? We launch an all-out assault on the central computer complex?”