V_The 2nd Generation

by Kenneth Johnson

  She keyed her transmitter, and spoke with calm command, "Six one niner, you will form with us and follow to the Flagship."

  In the rogue craft, Sarah was tapping the arm of her seat with growing anxiety. "We should've come in farther north."

  "Nah, too far to walk"—Nathan looked out to check below them—"hang on, Sare."

  Sarah felt her stomach go light as Nathan suddenly did a sharp wing-over to the left, diving the fighter toward the desert floor. Sarah's body went from near weightless to very heavy as he pulled out of the steep dive at the last second and flew level not more than ten feet over the parched dried mud. Sarah saw the Golden Gate Bridge flash past high overhead as they skimmed across the deep dry valley into what had once been San Francisco Bay. A few sun-baked hulks of rusting ships sunk long ago littered the cracked floor of the bay along with various pieces of flotsam, jetsam, and a lot of carelessly discarded junk. The only water remaining in the formerly broad estuary was a narrow, ankle-deep rivulet no more than ten yards wide that snaked down from the much-diminished Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers far inland to the north.

  In her Class Four, Gina reacted to his maneuver and transmitted, "Flagship, he's hostile. We're engaging. Break break." Then she spoke to her companion fighter, "Twenty-two, I'm going in. Drop back two klicks and try to stay with me."

  "Roger that, Fourteen," came the response from the Patroller pilot in fighter 3122 just behind and off her left wing. Then Gina glanced at one of the ghostly controls that hung transparently in the air before her cockpit window. The instrument sensed her glance and reacted immediately. Gina felt the fighter's internal workings responding. Slim panels opened underneath each of the arched wings and the tubular pulse cannons lowered. A tone in Gina's cockpit indicated that they had locked into firing position. She pushed her hand control forward and to the right, diving her fighter in pursuit of Nathan.

  In the Sierra Mountain cabin Bryke was dusting off her hands after disposing of the three men's bodies. "You say he stole the fighter?" She walked to where Kayta stood beside the old wooden table, looking down at its surface. Kayta's blue orb was projecting a high-altitude view of the fighters pursuing Nathan over San Francisco harbor.

  Kayta nodded. "From the Mothership near Hawaii."

  Bryke leaned closer over the table, assessing Nathan's ability as a pilot. "Very skillful. A real possibility."

  "If he's legitimate," Kayta cautioned.

  Nathan increased his speed as he banked his fighter around the rocky pinnacle in the center of San Francisco's dry harbor. The abandoned prison of Alcatraz still rested on top of the rock. Gina squeezed off the first blast from her pulse cannon. The baseball-sized charge of fiery electrical energy rocketed toward Nathan's fighter trailing a tight corkscrew of smoke like a thin filament. The projectile of pure energy missed Nathan but blew a hefty chunk of concrete from the north wall of Alcatraz.

  Nathan heard the explosion behind him and banked his fighter steeper yet, forcing it into a tighter curve. His face quickly grew flushed and his arms heavy as lead. He strained against the extreme G-force as he rounded the pinnacle and looked for his quarry. As he'd hoped, the second fighter was holding a reasonable distance aft of Gina's. Nathan's extremely tight curve had brought him out directly behind it.

  Nathan activated his pulse cannons and even before they were locked in to position beneath his wing, he opened fire. He saw the ball of energy flash from under his wing and score a hit on the underside of his adversary. The injured fighter immediately began to side-wind out of control downward toward what had been the shoreline of the city, but was now just a dusty hillside that sloped down into the dry harbor valley below. Nathan could see that the pilot was trying to pull up, but was unsuccessful. The fighter crashed into a long-unused pier, plowing inland 150 yards through the wooden structure before exploding.

  In the cabin, Kayta and Bryke exchanged a look. They were both impressed with Nathan's skill. But they were not the only ones watching the combat.

  In the back of a shadowy truck that had been rigged as a makeshift communications center, a battered TV was also showing the action. A Peruvian woman, who looked sensational for her seventy years, was at a small control console switching from one camera angle to another. The images came from various clandestine and stolen sources atop high buildings in San Francisco. The woman was Ysabel Encalada. Her thick black hair, a legacy from her Incan ancestors, had only begun getting sprinkles of gray a few years earlier. She kept it cut short in a no-nonsense style that perfectly complemented her feisty personality. She had spoken out strongly against the Visitors twenty years earlier. When three of her fellow workers at Microsoft had disappeared after voicing similar complaints, Ysabel realized the danger and slipped away into the Underground so she could continue her fight against Visitor tyranny. Her computer science and communications skills served the Resistance well.

  Her compatriots were also cheered by her colorful blouses that echoed her South American heritage. A half-dozen thin bracelets were always clicking together on her wrist. She frequently peeled one off with a smile and gave it as a gift to lift the spirits of a disoriented child whose family had just come into hiding.

  She was now peering at a monitor over the half-glasses attached to a beaded string around her neck, watching Nathan's dogfight very carefully. "Wow, Margarita, this guy is something."

  A slender hand came to rest on Ysabel's shoulder, then the young woman to whom it belonged leaned down for a closer look at the monitor. Margarita Perry had the sort of face that always inspired both men and women to take a second look. She was in her twenty-seventh year but her eyes had a depth beyond that age. Her rich auburn hair was pulled back in a tight, utilitarian ponytail, but ringlet wisps of it always escaped to soften the edges around her face. Her eyebrows were the same rusty hue as her hair and a sprinkling of freckles saddled her nose. She was a curious blend: she had a tomboyish quality but her features also suggested royalty in her Scottish-Canadian heritage. When she was focused sharply, as she was now, her face took on a severity that could make people who didn't know her feel unsettled. She was aware of this effect and like any smart leader she utilized it to maximum effect whenever necessary. But as soon as a corner of her full lips turned upward or the twinkle reappeared in her hazel eyes those same people were calmed and reassured.

  Ysabel glanced up at the younger woman. "He's very good . . . or very loco."

  "Or both." Margarita was watching Nathan's skillful evasive maneuvers in the aerial dogfight with a practiced, analytical eye. "Put out the word to watch for him."

  Ysabel nodded and rolled her stool over to a nearby radio console within the truck. Margarita continued to study the screen with a slight frown, unconsciously rubbing the back of her forefinger across the tip of her nose as she always seemed to do when considering something carefully.

  In Nathan's fighter, Sarah was clutching the armrests tightly as the G-forces pressed her first one way and then another. Nathan was flying in above the city streets of San Francisco. As he banked sharply over Montgomery Street around the Transamerica pyramid he saw in his aft-facing vid screen that Gina had also dropped lower and was gaining on him. Gina fired again, the burst from her pulse cannon splashing off of an edge of the Transamerica skyscraper, shattering the windows of a corner office.

  People on the street below heard the explosion overhead and ducked for cover as shards of glass came raining down. Nathan banked southwest and flew over broad Market Street, almost skimming the lampposts, swerving from side to side over the median to avoid Gina's continuing air-to-air cannon fire. He knew he was in trouble and was looking for an escape route or a place where he could set down and quickly flee with Sarah. But Gina curved in behind him, closing rapidly now. Pedestrians looked up fearfully as the two fighters flashed past overhead. A truck driver, momentarily distracted by them, smashed his ten-ton into the back of a trolley car.

  Then Gina got a solid bead on Nathan and fired both of her pulse cannons. Nat
han's fighter took the hit on its rear control surfaces. Inside his cockpit, alarms began sounding and Nathan felt a sudden sluggishness in his control stick. He grabbed it with both hands and struggled to get the nose of the fighter to respond upward, but there had been too much damage.

  Nathan barely had time to shout, "Hang on, Sarah," before his right wingtip tagged a traffic light and he lost control completely. Fortunately for most of the people on the street below him, Gina's cannon fire had already attracted their attention. They were scattering frantically as Nathan's fighter dropped down. It snapped the electrical bus and trolley wires, sending them whipping and arcing like high-voltage snakes. Then the fighter skidded in on its belly along Market Street at nearly a hundred miles an hour. The landing gear was up so the bottom of the craft sent up a cascading flurry of sparks behind it. Inside the fighter the buffeting was so bone-jarring Nathan couldn't see the direction they were headed and couldn't have controlled it even if he had.

  His fighter plowed through and across a dozen parked cars before it finally came to rest near the corner of Fifth Street as Gina's fighter whipped past overhead. The Asian-looking beauty glanced down at her handiwork with a tight smile.

  Inside the ruined fighter, electrical panels were arcing and smoking with the acrid smell of ozone and burning insulation. But Nathan's only thought was of Sarah. He turned immediately back to her, disengaging her seat straps. "Sarah?" He saw that she had been shaken badly by the crash; he took her face in his hands and looked urgently into her eyes. "Sarah, we've gotta go. We've gotta go now. Come on." She nodded weakly. Disoriented from the trauma of the crash, she needed his help to extricate herself from the disarranged bucket seat.

  Panicked people were still scattering on Market Street as Nathan kicked out the emergency panel on the fighter's roof and pulled Sarah from the smoking wreckage. A car lodged beneath the fighter was on fire. Above Nathan and Sarah, on the walls of a nearby building, a billboard-sized video presented cheery information from a doctor about the latest Visitor medical breakthrough that would finally put an end to all the deadly strains of the Ebola virus.

  On another building opposite an equally large screen was showing the latest music vid of a sassy, sexy, cocoa-skinned singer named Emma. She was in her mid-twenties and at the top of her game as a popular music star. Emma was an eye-catching beauty who had been blessed with all the best genes from her fine-featured, athletic white mother and her lean, handsome black father. The lyrics of her song were extremely clever and the pounding rock beat was infectious. Her green eyes flashed and her long black hair tossed in rhythm with her tightly choreographed dance steps. To many of both sexes in her audience, Emma embodied perfection; she was totally appealing.

  But Nathan's attention was fully on Sarah who slumped to the sidewalk, dizzy and very weak. She looked up at Nathan, her breathing labored. "Leave me. You have to leave me and go on."

  He blew out a puff at that ridiculous suggestion. "Yeah, right." He scooped her up in his strong arms and quickly glanced around to find the best route. Several people nearby, who had taken shelter in doorways from the crashing fighter, saw his plight but avoided his eyes and hurried away. Nathan wasn't surprised. He knew the social climate very well. As a Teammate, he had helped to create it. Now he was reaping the whirlwind.

  He was about to head south on Market when he saw an SFPD car speeding in to block escape in that direction. Nathan spun back around and saw a squad of Teammates in denim uniforms like his own rushing around the corner toward him from the north on Fifth Street, as they drew their pulse weapons.

  Nathan ran south on Fifth toward Stevenson Street, passing beneath a large vid sign displaying two huge eyes looking back and forth with the flashing words: See something suspicious? Report it! Bullet-sized pulse bursts of electricity from the Teammates' hand weapons struck the building chipping off pieces of stone beside Nathan as he ran. Several sharp shards caught him on the cheek and neck. As he dashed toward a startled black businesswoman he saw one of the pulses meant for him burst against her right shoulder. She screamed in pain as the flaming impact of it spun her down to the sidewalk in agony. Nathan kept running but he had a flash of memory of innocent people whom he himself had wounded while pursuing Resistance fighters in years past.

  As Bryke and Kayta watched an overhead view of his travails, Kayta was using a small needlelike instrument to follow Nathan's image on the tabletop while he ran along Stevenson Street. Bryke urged her impatiently, "Tag him. Hurry."

  Kayta was calm and intent. "I'm endeavoring to."

  Nathan was in excellent physical condition, but carrying Sarah as he ran was beginning to tell on him. He was breathing hard as he emerged from the other end of Stevenson onto Sixth Street. For a brief moment he thought himself in the clear, but then he saw Gina's fighter sweep around a corner two blocks away and arc sharply northward directly toward him. Gina's high-caliber cannons fired a half-dozen pulses. The balls of energy impacted in rapid succession along the street wounding several people who hadn't seen them coming. The final burst hit the back of a city bus only a few yards from Nathan and Sarah. It triggered the bus's hydrogen fuel cell into a furious explosion that engulfed the vehicle and its passengers in a broiling ball of flame. Its metal and glass became deadly shrapnel that flew in all directions cutting down many men, women, and children nearby.

  Nathan was also blown down by the concussion. For a moment he could hear nothing as he lay dazed with his cheek on the cold rough sidewalk. When he raised his head the smoke-filled street with people dead or dying looked like a war zone. Many had their bones and bowels exposed. Some of the victims were in flames. Then Nathan realized Sarah was no longer in his arms. He saw her lying facedown against a brick wall. He crawled quickly to her and gently turned her over.

  Some sharp piece of flying debris had slashed the side of Sarah's face and peeled back the false human skin on her cheek. It revealed her true reptilian face beneath and had cut deeply into that scaly tissue as well. Her green blood was flowing. Nathan was heartsick. He muttered, "Oh, God damn it," as he looked about frantically for something to stanch her bleeding.

  Her weak hand caught his and grasped it tightly. She knew she was failing. She gazed up affectionately at him. He saw that the contact lens had been blown from her left eye revealing her yellow vertical reptilian iris. Her eyes were growing dim, but Nathan wasn't about to give up. "Sarah, now you listen—"

  She squeezed his hand tighter to hush him, then she spoke with a hoarse whisper, "I love you, Nathan," and with her final breath she said, ". . . Make me proud . . ."

  She died in his arms. Nathan stared at her, then clutched her limp body tightly to him, angry tears rising. A pulse burst flashed against a drainpipe beside him. He looked up and through the smoke he saw three Airborne Visitor Patrollers in their orange uniforms and dark-visored helmets flying down toward him from a rooftop. The Air-Pats used personal propulsion packs on their backs to take flight.

  Nathan took a last look at Sarah, his jaw tightening as he engraved her final words in his mind. He kissed her forehead, then took off running past the flaming bus and across the smoky street. It was littered with debris, body parts, and bloody flesh, as well as many moaning, injured people. The incoming Air-Pats continued to shoot at him but being in flight their accuracy was poor. Several of their stray shots hit innocent people, including two already downed by the bus explosion. The Patrollers were within a block of him when he heard a loud whistle and saw a scruffy kid beckoning urgently to him from the nearby corner of Jessie Street. Then the youth ducked back around the corner. With his other options seemingly cut off Nathan ran around onto Jessie Street. He was stunned to see that it was a dead end and that the kid had vanished.

  He realized that he was out of escape routes and stood there breathing hard, thoroughly infuriated with himself, when he felt something grasp his ankle. He looked down and saw the leathery hand of the kid, a scaly-faced, human-Visitor half-breed. The scrappy girl was about twelve years
old. She had human blue eyes and Irish coloring with short, tousled, chestnut-colored hair, but the reptilian scales inherited from one of her parents radiated upward from her neck and onto her cheeks. Her right hand that grasped him was reptilian, but her left hand bore a predominance of human skin with only splotches of scales. She was dressed in piecemeal castoffs and a small crush cap with no brim. She was clearly a seasoned street kid with an Artful Dodger twinkle in her blue eyes. She had reached up to him out of a wide storm drain. She wiggled her eyebrows cheerily, inviting him down.

  Nathan dropped quickly into the shadowy, steamy storm sewer. He turned to see the scaly-faced girl reaching out to shake his hand as her bright eyes grinned at him. "Hey, sailor. Welcome to San Francisco."

  She jerked her thumb for him to follow, then turned and darted down the slimy, dark tunnel, nimbly dodging big rats as she ran. Nathan took a breath. He weighed his options, the kid's bravado, and decided to follow her.

  In the mountain cabin, fair-skinned Kayta turned off the orb and its projected image faded. Bryke was eyeing her sternly. "Well? Did you manage it?" Kayta smiled and held up the needle instrument, which was blinking steadily.

  Bryke nodded with stoic satisfaction. "Good. We should hasten."

  3

  IN PATRICK HENRY MIDDLE SCHOOL ON ORTEGA STREET AT FORTY-first, the second bell had already rung so the students were in their homerooms and the hallways were empty. But the hurried footsteps of two eighth-graders echoed softly off the shiny concrete floor and gray metal lockers. The taller of the two boys, Danny Stein, had aquiline features, thick brown curly hair, and a reputation among his peers for always pushing the envelope, which was exactly what he was doing this morning. That made his companion more nervous than usual.