V_The 2nd Generation

by Kenneth Johnson

  "Moreso in understanding how the great Commandants think." Emma gave her a flattering look.

  "Well, this Commandant thinks a great deal of you." Diana leaned even closer to Emma. "You have an eyelash . . . may I?"

  "Of course, thank you." The singer tilted her face up inviting Diana's fingertips to touch her cheek gently.

  IN THE OUTER CHAMBER OF THE MAINFRAME, MIKE HELPED RUBY pull the unconscious Kayta out of the supercooled inner area. The blond Zedti was covered with a layer of frost that Mike brushed away as he rubbed her hands and face, trying to revive her. Ruby climbed back onto the movable plate and slid back inside. Mike looked up, shouting furiously, "Ruby! Dammit!"

  The girl shouted back, "Piece of cake, Mike!" Then she involuntarily shook from the outrageously low temperature and muttered to herself, "Ooo. Ice cream cake, maybe."

  Ruby glided the movable pallet down to where Kayta had dropped the keys into a narrow slit alongside the pallet's track. The girl stretched her scaly fingers down toward them. "Come on . . . Come on . . ."

  With each breath, the freezing air stabbed like icicles deeper into her lungs. Ruby suddenly had the sobering thought that she might not survive within the icy mainframe. Yet she also knew the high stakes she was fighting for. Even as her fingers grew increasingly numb Ruby stretched them down toward the fallen keys, but she could just barely brush the frost on top of them.

  THE HATCH TO THE AUTOPSY ROOM HISSED OPEN AND MARGARITA saw the real Nathan restrained in the interrogation chair. His head was slumped to one side and he looked very much the worse for his ordeal. He blinked heavily as he saw Margarita entering, "Hey, girl, thanks for dropping by . . ."

  He noticed two Visitor guards lying unconscious in the corridor outside, having obviously been dispatched by Margarita. "Get him out of there. Now!" She shoved the bogus Nathan into the cell toward the real one.

  For the first time Nathan got a good look at his double. "Whoa, what a handsome guy!"

  The phony Nathan freed Nathan, then abruptly jumped him. They rolled onto the floor, struggling. Margarita lost track of who was who. One of them shouted, "Shoot him! Quick!"

  "Not me!" yelled the other. "Him! Him!"

  Margarita aimed her pistol, looking for the unscraped wrist but couldn't make it out in the dim light and the tussle.

  Finally one Nathan yelled, "Red! I am the hotshot!"

  Margarita grinned and immediately fired a pulse burst right into the face of the other. The counterfeit was spun backward by the impact and fell dead. His facial skin had peeled back revealing the reptile beneath.

  Nathan rolled onto his side, breathing hard, as he looked up at her. "So . . . was he any good in bed?" She reached down and pulled his arm to help him up but he yelped loudly, "Ow ow ow! Watch it! Geez!"

  She looked closer and saw blood leaking from his torn sleeve. She also saw something else that made her blanch, "Is that bone?"

  Nathan was pale and sweating from pain, but he sloughed it off. "No biggie . . . Let's boogie."

  SHAWN WALKED ACROSS THE LEVEL-FOUR PLATFORM OF HANGAR BAY Thirty-seven toward the shuttle that had just landed. It was offloading passengers, but he didn't see the man he was looking for. He did, however, spot the Visitor press secretary and walked to him. "Paul, was the mayor on there with you?"

  "No"—Paul shrugged—"I haven't seen him since the rally." Then, recognizing an opportunity to trumpet his worth, Paul warmed to the subject. "We certainly knocked them out at Candlestick, didn't we? My office has been swamped with congratulations from all over."

  "Mmmm." Shawn's suspicious mind was definitely elsewhere. "Can I borrow your vid phone?"

  "Of course"—he handed it to Shawn—"drop it off in my office." As Paul started walking away he mentioned, "Oh, it's not in the Flagship zone, it's a 415 area code."

  "That's all right"—Shawn clicked it on—"I just need to—" He was startled by what he saw and heard on the vid phone. It was Diana's face, very close to Emma's. He heard them speaking.

  Diana's face showed mild concern. "Emma, are you trembling?"

  "I'm frightened," Emma was speaking more truth than Diana realized, "about the future. About you. You have so much power here—"

  "Which can protect you, my dear, in the days to come." She toyed with Emma's ear and the image flashed instantaneously around the world to screens everywhere. They were being watched with rapt attention by Teammates and other humans, all of whom were reacting with deepening curiosity. The Visitors among them were growing increasingly edgy.

  Emma spoke with concern, "I'll need protection?"

  "I'm afraid it will soon get very unpleasant here. Only the humans who are very closest to our High Command will be guaranteed their safety . . . and our companionship."

  "I hope I'll be among them," Emma said with as much lightness as she could muster.

  "I'd certainly like for you to be . . ." Diana leaned even closer to Emma and thus unwittingly toward the tiny lens of the spy camera, creating a huge close-up of herself for all of the world to see. Emma coaxed her toward the key question.

  "But when you say Earth will become 'unpleasant,' why exactly, Diana?"

  The Commandant merely smiled coyly.

  So Emma pressed, ". . . Is it the water?" Diana's lips touched Emma's cheek. ". . . Is it not coming back?"

  Diana gently shook her head and said proudly, ". . . No."

  Several billion people, all around the planet Earth, stared at their screens, stunned to finally hear the truth.

  Shawn was already on the run from the hangar bay toward Diana's chamber. He shouted to a pair of Patrollers, "Come with me! Hurry!"

  RUBY'S SHAKY FINGERS HAD TURNED BLUE AS SHE STRETCHED HER arm nearly out of its socket and at last reached the three fallen code keys. She lifted them out and rolled painfully over onto her back in the freezing mainframe tube. The frigid air showed each of the very tiny breaths she was taking. She had realized that it didn't sting quite so terribly that way. The stinging she felt was the hyper-cold attacking the bronchioles and the tiny alveoli within her lungs that, like her blue eyes, were much more human than Visitor. In spite of Ruby's shallow breathing, the delicate tissues of the minuscule, grapelike alveoli in her lungs that were vital for oxygenating her blood were slowly being frozen solid. Ruby was pleased that at least her feet and legs no longer hurt. She took that as a good sign. She thought she must be getting used to the extreme cold. As she searched out the next socket to insert a key into, she began to sing very softly to help her keep focused. Of course she knew the appropriate song, "Dai-sy . . . Dai-sy . . . "

  AT THE CHEMICAL FACTORY THREE VISITOR FIGHTERS FLEW IN OVERhead to act as cover for the tankers. It had been designated as such a critical mission that the Wing Commander herself was in the lead. Gina hovered her fighter overhead like a master horsewoman keeping a tight rein on an energetic thoroughbred. She keyed her communicator. "This is Red leader, we'll hang here until they're airborne."

  From their individual hiding places on either side of the facility both Ted and Ayden saw the fighters hovering in the air like menacing birds of prey and they both knew that their mission had just gotten a great deal more difficult.

  JON SAW A THIRD STATUS LIGHT GO FROM RED TO GREEN ON THE control panel in the Capsule Operations Control. He knew that only two keys were left to be inserted and the communications circuits would all be unlocked. His young heart was beating so loudly he was afraid one of the technicians would hear it.

  In the vaporous mainframe tube Ruby's face had become as blue as her hands. She was quaking uncontrollably with the cold. Her frost-covered, quivering hands barely worked as she reached out toward the fourth socket. She was having great difficulty breathing. Had she been able to see the inside of her lungs she would have understood why. They were as frost-covered as her hands. Her fragile, critical lung tissue was almost entirely frozen and thus unable to absorb the oxygen that her young body was urgently crying out for. She was suffocating. Her straining body had already shut down
her feet and legs. Her arms and hands were now failing. The extreme stress being placed on her entire little system would have long since stopped someone with less heart than Ruby.

  She was still singing low to herself, now needing one shallow breath for each syllable, ". . . I'm . . . half . . . cra . . . zy . . ."

  Her eardrums had frozen so Mike's hoarse, frantic shouts came to her as though through thick layers of cotton. "Ruby! You've got to come out now!" When she ignored him Mike gulped in what he knew might well be his final breath and began crawling toward her, unmindful that his own hands were being burned by the hyper-cold surfaces. But Ruby was at least thirty yards away from him, deep within the narrow glacial chamber.

  Ruby pushed the fourth key into place. The ongoing effort was a desperate, mighty struggle for the brave little girl. Several tears had spilled from her eyes and instantly frozen on her scaly cheeks. She wasn't sure she had the strength or could even remain conscious long enough to insert the final one, but she reached the key toward its slot. Ruby knew she had to do it. She knew the only way for her dear Julie and all the millions of others to ever have a chance was if her fiery little spirit could somehow be a match for the nearly absolute-zero cold. Her song was barely audible now, even to her, but with grit that far exceeded her years, she persisted, ". . . All . . . for . . . the . . . love . . . of . . ."

  The fifth code key clicked into place as Ruby gasped, ". . . Mom ."

  Then she slumped, unconscious.

  IN THE CAPSULE OPERATIONS CONTROL, JON SAW THE RESULTS OF Ruby's magnificent effort. Five green status lights were now burning. The circuits were unlocked. Jon turned away from the technicians on duty and spoke quietly into his radio, "Go, Willy! Go! Go!"

  Willy was sitting beside Lee in the Flagship's Centcom, appearing to be casually getting some information from her. When he heard Jon's voice in his earpiece, he nodded to Lee. She surreptitiously began transmitting Emma's recorded instructions into the neurological units that were fitted on the heads of the millions of entombed prisoners across the entire Visitor Armada.

  Within every stasis capsule of every Mothership around the world, each prisoner, whether Asian, African, Latin-American, European, or North-American, suddenly heard Emma speaking in his or her own language, from Swedish to Swahili, Italian to Indonesian, Uzbek to English, they heard her saying, "This is the voice of the Resistance. You will disregard all previous indoctrination you have received. You will all soon be freed from your capsules. Be prepared to fight. We are taking over all the Motherships . . ."

  Throughout the vast storage chambers of 250 Motherships, the multitudes of entombed humans all heard Emma's call to arms. Danny's father Sidney heard it. And Stella's coworker Connie. And Martin, Street-C, Ysabel, Julie. Though still deep within their comatose state, their eyes flashed with courage for the battle that was about to begin.

  MARGARITA AND NATHAN MOVED QUICKLY THROUGH A LARGE MAchinery chamber within the murky bowels of the Flagship. Heavy chains hung from the darkness overhead. When they heard two technicians passing, they skittered into hiding amid the bulbous equipment. Moisture dripped down onto them as Margarita took advantage of their momentary pause to check Nathan's bloody arm more closely. "We've got to get the bone back in to stop the bleeding."

  He held his injured arm out to her. "Give it a yank. On three. One—"

  She jerked it hard. He gasped as he saw stars and went white from the agony. She wiped his fevered brow and murmured "Sorry, sorry," to comfort him.

  The room was swimming sickeningly around him. "Not big on arithmetic, are we?"

  Her face was very near his. "I thought it'd be easier . . . Can you keep going?"

  He glanced at her sideways with a painfully crazed expression. "Can I yank your arm later?" She laughed at his wherewithal and kissed his bruised cheek. Then she helped him to his feet.

  MIKE'S SKIN WAS FROSTBITTEN, PATCHES OF IT TURNING BLACK, BUT Kayta had regained consciousness and with her help he pulled the nearly frozen twelve-year-old out of the mainframe. Mike saw the icy tears on Ruby's scaly cheeks.

  "She's not breathing!" He was panting hard. "Help me!"

  Kayta motioned Mike aside and then the Zedti bent toward Ruby. The wiry, defensive quills emerged from the back of Kayta's slender neck. She turned herself so that one of them pierced Ruby's neck. The child shuddered violently as though receiving an electrical jolt. She gasped in a breath. But her respiration was extremely shallow. Mike looked at Kayta who knew what his question would be. She shook her head. "Only once. Another would kill her."

  They both looked back at the girl as Ruby's eyes lolled open. She struggled to focus and was barely able to ask, ". . . Did . . . we . . . do it?"

  Mike clasped her hand, trying to transfer some of his strength into her, "You did it, kid. You saved us all, Ruby."

  She managed a very faint smile. ". . . Give Nathan . . . a . . . kiss for me."

  Kayta placed her comforting hand on the child. "You will give him one yourself."

  Ruby smiled into Kayta's kind, violet eyes with a wisdom that belied her young age. Then she looked at Mike, whispering, ". . . Tell Momma . . . I . . ."

  Her voice was barely audible. Mike had to lean his ear to her lips to hear the heroic girl's murmurs. Then he saw her small, frostbitten fingers form a V.

  And with a proud, wistful smile at Mike, little Ruby grew still. Her courageous soul had slipped away.

  IN THE UPPER PASSAGEWAY NEAR DIANA'S CHAMBER MARK WAS ANXiously standing by when he saw Shawn round a corner leading several Patrollers. Mark stepped in the way to block them. "Diana said she was not to be disturbed, so—"

  The Patrollers paid him no mind and shoved him brutally aside. Mark then realized that Jeremy and the angry Visitor Leader were following immediately behind.

  Shawn opened the hatch.

  All of the billions of people around the world who were riveted to the images from Diana's chamber saw the Commandant kissing Emma with deep passion as Shawn and the Patrollers burst in, followed by Jeremy. Visitors, Teammates, and civilians everywhere saw Shawn take the stage grandly as he seized his moment and pointed at Diana in a posture of J'accuse, as he bellowed, "There!"

  Jeremy stormed in toward Diana. "You fool! Don't you realize what she is doing!"

  Two of the Patrollers grabbed Diana and Emma. Others had been searching for the hidden camera, which they found and smashed. Vid screens everywhere suddenly went black.

  But the damage had been done. In the Parnassas Police Station and millions of other locations worldwide, human cops, Teammates, and others, having finally seen and heard The Truth, turned slowly to stare at nearby Visitors.

  In Diana's chamber the Leader entered seething and pulled Diana up close to her face. "You will learn the true meaning of pain." Her fiery eyes snapped to the Patrollers. "Imprison her."

  As Diana was taken roughly away, Shawn, relishing his status as the hero of the moment, gestured toward Emma and Mark. "And these, Excellency?"

  The Leader glared at the two. "Throw them overboard."

  NEAR THE CHEMICAL FACTORY AYDEN HAD BEEN OBSERVING THE newly arrived fighter escort and devising his strategy. He keyed his communicator and said to Ted, "I will hit the first tanker, then distract the fighters. You must destroy the other two tankers. None of that chemical must be allowed to reach the Motherships for duplication."

  On the opposite perimeter, still hidden in the abandoned junkyard, the teenage half-breed responded nervously, "Yes, sir. I understand." Ted was so focused forward that he did not realize a patrolling Visitor guard was easing up behind him, quietly drawing a pulse weapon.

  32

  OTHER ARMED PATROLLERS SWEPT ONTO THE LOWER LEVEL OF THE Flagship Centcom, searching for the source of the Diana-Emma transmission. Lee had anticipated such an investigation and had carefully patched the system in an intricate fashion that allowed her to control all of the switching remotely. She had also been monitoring the transmission to the entombed people and she whispered to Wil
ly, "The instructions just finished. They've been received by all the prisoners."

  "Good," Willy said urgently, "switch over, quickly!" Then he spoke into his radio, "Jon . . . you have a go!"

  At the same moment that Lee lit up vid screens internationally with a view of the Flagship's vast Capsule Storage Chamber, Jon jumped bravely past a startled technician to the control console. The teenager grabbed and pulled the large handle to engage the Master Encapsulation Override.

  A blaring alarm sounded. Throughout the vaulted reaches of the Flagship's cubic-mile-sized storage chamber—and simultaneously in all 250 other Motherships—the entombment capsules surged open.

  The millions of liberated people let out a mighty roar. They ripped off their neuro headsets as they shouted enthusiastically in many languages, "Vive la Revolution! Erin go bragh! Up the Rebels! Allah akbar! Bonzai! Hoo-ahh!"

  It was a cacophonous, earsplitting yell of pure joy, elation, and determination such as had never before been heard on the planet Earth.

  Margarita and Nathan were in a nearby hallway when the mighty cheer echoed down the dark corridors to them. They glanced exuberantly at each other and dashed toward the sound, entering the storage chamber at a mid-level. Their jaws dropped as they saw the amazing spectacle before them: tens of thousands of prisoners were clambering quickly out of their captivity, climbing from the capsules that stretched a mile above, below, and away from where the two of them stood.

  "Whoa!" Nathan was beaming. "Hey, Red, you got a date for the Revolution?"

  Margarita's eyes flashed brightly back at him as the scene they were witnessing was transmitted by Lee to vid screens around the world.

  People at Parnassas and hundreds of thousands of other police stations and city streets across the world also saw the multitude of prisoners excitedly exiting the capsules and helping each other spill out onto the innumerable catwalks. The chambers were so enormous and the swarming, liberated, elated individuals so plentiful as to stagger the imagination. People around the Earth viewing the scenes realized that the dark rumors about the stasis capsule storage chambers were true. They also knew that the tide had turned against their captors.