“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m going to set a charge,” he said.
I laughed and handed him a grenade launcher. He didn’t need my weapons, the truck had rockets and a chain gun mounted on its front fender.
Freeman ignored me. He placed charges beside both ends of the door, then came back to the truck. His charges produced tiny explosions, and the door tipped over and fell out of its track.
Using charges instead of rockets struck me as prissy, but it probably saved our lives.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Freeman’s charges exploded, and the remains of the metal shutter toppled backward in a drunken twist, revealing an altered world. The parking lot had not changed much, but the fleet of heavy equipment was no longer parked in neat rows. A steamroller had simply sunk into the street. Cranes lay on their sides, and a few of the trucks now lay upside down.
“What the hell?” I hissed as I surveyed the wreckage. Having seen the video feed, I should have known what to expect; but I still was not prepared for it. The feed showed me places I had never seen, but I had just driven through this parking lot a few hours earlier.
Stolid as ever, Freeman said nothing.
“Gentlemen, you will want to keep your helmets on,” Sweetwater said.
“If you mean it’s hot out there, I can see that,” I said. Sitting in the truck, eyeing the devastation, I felt overwhelmed.
I looked to my right and saw the remains of a Dumpster. The thin sheet metal of its walls had simply wilted in the heat.
“The temperature outside the tunnel is 126 degrees,” Sweetwater said. “That qualifies as toasty. But the reason you’ll want your helmets is to breathe. You’re in the middle of a fire zone, the oxygen is thin.”
“How thin?” I asked. I thought about lessons I had learned in science growing up in the orphanage. “Does oxygen burn at nine thousand degrees?”
“Oxygen doesn’t burn,” Sweetwater said.
As Sweetwater spoke, Freeman returned to the top of the ramp, where he attached some kind of panel to the wall. A large white light at the top of the panel winked sporadically, and smaller diodes flashed red, blue, yellow, green in no discernible order along the bottom.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Raymond, it is essential we get the meter up right away,” Sweetwater said.
“It’s up,” Freeman said.
“What is that?” I repeated.
“Harris, this little invention just may save your life. It detects tachyon activity. If the tachyons flood into your hidey-hole, we should be able to detect them.”
“I thought tachyons were too small and too fast to track,” I said.
“The meter tracks energy fluctuations along a defined plain,” Breeze explained.
“Does that answer your question?” Sweetwater asked, mostly because he knew that it had not. I decided to move on rather than risk more scientific gibberish.
As I watched the lights on the panel, Freeman walked around the truck and pulled out a black case that looked about the right size to carry a spare set of armor. It did not carry armor, however. When he opened it, I recognized the contents. I had seen him use one of these before.
The head of the robot was a radio-controlled drone with a propeller and wings. The body was a twelve-foot-long train made of a heat-resistant silver material. It reflected the ember-and-smoke sky like a mirror. He removed the “flying snake” from its case, stretched it out, then used his remote to launch it in the air behind the truck.
The snake took off from the ground and swirled through the air like a Chinese dragon. The last time I saw Freeman use one of these remote-controlled robots, he had deployed it like a lightning rod, sending it out to distract motion-tracking robots called “trackers.”
The drone’s terephthalate ruffles fluttered as it sped off, making a noise like a flag in a strong wind. The robot flew out of the underground power station and into the parking lot. It managed an aerobatic loop, then burst into flames. The spontaneous combustion lasted only a second and left nothing in its wake, not even smoke.
“Did you get that?” asked Freeman.
Damn straight I saw it, and I started to say so, then I realized he wasn’t speaking to me.
“Localized ignition,” Breeze said. “Of course, it happened so quickly I can only speculate.”
“Raymond, can you launch the second drone?” Sweetwater asked.
Freeman set off to prepare a second drone without responding.
I eavesdropped as Sweetwater and Breeze spoke privately between themselves, their voices carrying over an open mike as if they were real. They traded scientific jargon, but they could have been speaking some long-extinct language for all I understood of it.
Meanwhile, Freeman returned with another black case. A few moments later, a second silver dragon soared up the ramp, its reflective train wagging behind it. It flew over the top of the truck and into the parking lot, where it burst into flames.
“It appears the tachyons are drawn to movement,” Breeze said.
“Should I run the shield test? Freeman asked.
“Yes, we better move along. The tachyon level is dropping faster than we expected,” said Sweetwater.
Freeman’s next toy was a little robot car, which he placed on the ground beside the truck. He fiddled with a remote, and a bright yellow glow formed around the car. I knew that glow. I’d seen it around Unified Authority ships. It hung like an aura over the new U.A. combat armor. It stopped bullets and particle beams.
Using a remote to guide the car up the ramp, Freeman asked, “Are you ready?”
“Go ahead, Raymond,” said Sweetwater.
Those shields might have been able to stop bullets or absorb lasers, but they didn’t do shit against tachyons. As the car wound its way into the yard, it burst into flames.
Seeing this, I felt hollow inside. “Could they do the same thing to our ships?” I asked anyone who might answer.
Sweetwater fielded the question like a politician. “We don’t see any reason why they would bother attacking a ship.”
Breeze took a more honest approach. He simply said, “Yes.”
We were running out of time. When Freeman asked, “Should I try the weapons?” Sweetwater said, “By all means.”
Freeman pulled a sniper rifle from the back of the truck. He was the finest marksman I had ever known, but in this case it wouldn’t matter. All he had to do was fire a bullet through a thirty-foot-wide doorway at the top of the ramp. He pointed the gun in the right direction and pulled the trigger. A split second later, with the sound of the shot still echoing off the walls, a tiny flicker of flame ignited just outside the entrance to the tunnel. The bullet had combusted, just like the toy car, just like the drone dragon. It disappeared so quickly, I barely saw it.
“Six feet,” said Breeze.
“Six feet?” I asked.
“The bullet traveled six feet out of the station before it caught fire,” Sweetwater said.
Breezed corrected him. “It might have caught fire the moment it entered open air, but it traveled six feet before it disintegrated.”
Freeman removed a particle-beam cannon and started toward the top of the ramp.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked, knowing that if its ray superheated, the gun would explode.
He did not answer. As he moved up the ramp, I watched the light on the sensor. It stayed mostly white, with an occasional flick of yellow. As Freeman got closer, the light turned yellow. The tachyon activity had shot up; they might even have homed in on him.
“Ray, stop!” I yelled.
He saw it, too, and froze, but the light remained yellow.
“What do I do?” I asked Sweetwater and Breeze.
“Raymond, stay perfectly still,” Sweetwater ordered.
Sounding calm as ever, Freeman asked, “Should I run the test?”
Sweetwater did not even consider the question. “Stay still. According to our latest reading
s, the tachyon concentration will drop to a safe level in two minutes.”
Freeman chose that moment to do something that was absolutely insane. Instead of concentrating on standing as still as possible, he fired the cannon. The glittering green beam of the particle beam traveled in a perfectly straight line the rest of the way out of the power station and out, into the yard.
My eyes switched from the particle beam to the meter warning panel and back. I had already slipped into the driver’s seat of the truck and started the engine. If the meter turned orange or green or black or any color other than white, I would launch the truck up the ramp to try to distract the tachyons.
Unlike the bullet, the shielded robotic car, and the drones, the beam seemed not to interest the tachyons. The meter flashed orange for a millisecond, and I stomped down on the gas, stayed behind the wheel just long enough to guide the truck around Freeman, then jumped from the cab. Trying to run straight up a spiral path, the truck bumped one wall and skidded across the ramp, a shower of sparks trailing behind it. Armored or not, the truck burst into flames the moment it entered into the yard. The explosion that followed launched the truck fifteen feet in the air. It spun like a corkscrew as it flew ass first, then landed nose down, three-foot flames dancing on its engine and all four wheels.
Freeman said nothing. His silence was icy.
“Sweetwater,” I said. “How much longer?”
Nothing.
“Breeze?”
Nothing.
“They’re gone,” Freeman said. “We were linked to them through the two-way communicator.”
“The one in the truck?” I asked.
Freeman did not answer.
“Does that mean they’re dead?” I asked, wondering if I had somehow destroyed the computer world in which they existed.
Freeman responded with a rare show of humor. He said, “Not any deader than they were before.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Without Sweetwater and Breeze guiding our next steps, Freeman and I ended up sitting on the ramp for twenty minutes before deciding to take our chances on the street. I still had a go-pack filled with weapons, so I piped a grenade into the parking lot. When it lasted long enough to explode, I hurled the empty launcher after it. The six-inch chrome cylinder clanked when it hit the cement, rolled in a circle, and came to a stop.
“Looks safe,” I said. Freeman climbed to his feet and started hiking toward the entrance without responding.
As we stepped out, I took a temperature reading using the atmospheric thermometer built into my visor. The air temperature had dropped to a mere ninety-three degrees—about one percent of what it had been earlier that evening. I took a Geiger reading and found that the radiation levels were normal, possibly even low.
I looked at what had once been a brick-lined planting bed with large bushes. There was no sign of the bushes or the soil below them. Instead of dirt, the ground was covered with a combination of soot and coal-like crystals that sparkled like fool’s gold.
Wispy spirals of steam rose from the ground below our feet, but our boots did not sink into the ash-covered concrete. Ripples of heat rose from a crane lying on its side a few feet ahead of us.
My brain numbed by the devastation on every side of me, I followed Freeman around the administration building and out to the street. Newly formed air pockets in the sidewalk caved in under my feet as I walked along the road; crystalline glass and ash crunched under my boots when we walked on the soil.
Using my commandLink, I signaled for Nobles to come and get us. When he asked if he should come in a transport or the shuttle, I told him to bring the shuttle. Soft seats and a carpeted cabin sounded good at the moment.
A few minutes later, the sleek bird appeared in the sky, winding its way down to us so quickly it looked like it might crash. Nobles touched down on an empty stretch of highway, his wheels sinking two inches into the crumbling ground.
We flew to the ad-Din through almost vacant space. The barges had long since left. So had most of our ships. With Olympus Kri evacuated and burned, there was no reason to maintain a fleet in the area. What remained was a small coven of six E.M.N. cruisers, which included the Kamehameha. That meant that Warshaw had called yet another summit, which I hoped to avoid. Now that Warshaw was grooming Hollingsworth to replace me, I thought he would go as the token Marine.
My ship, the Salah ad-Din, hovered by itself several miles from the others. So did a Unified Authority cruiser. It looked so small beside our fighter carriers. Seeing the U.A. ship, I realized this might be more than an Enlisted Man’s summit. That cruiser had probably ferried some high-level U.A. negotiator.
As we approached the ad-Din, I received a message from Captain Villanueva directing me to the Kamehameha. I acknowledged the transmission and cursed under my breath.
“Do you have any interest in attending an Enlisted Man’s summit?” I asked Freeman.
He shook his head. He looked down on politicians and general officers every bit as much as they looked down on him. “I have a plane waiting on that cruiser,” he said.
“What are you going to do next?” I asked.
“Same as you, I’m getting ready for Terraneau,” he said.
I laughed, and said, “It sounds like you’re out to save humanity.”
He did not answer.
I went to the little stateroom at the back of the shuttle and changed out of my armor before meeting with Warshaw. I showered, shaved, and put on a fresh uniform. By the time I came out, Freeman was long gone.
No one came to greet me as I came off the shuttle. I left the landing bay and found my way to the fleet deck; only with Warshaw in charge, it was more than a fleet deck—it was the seat of an empire.
One of Warshaw’s lieutenants interrupted the summit to let him know that I had arrived. About thirty minutes later, having called a brief recess, Warshaw and his entourage came out to greet me.
“General Harris, the man of the hour,” Warshaw said, giving me a rare salute. “A lot of people are still alive because of you.”
He looked tired. His eyes were red, and dark blotches showed on his cheeks. His broad shoulders were tight and as straight across as a board.
I tried to despise Warshaw for the genocide of the Double Y clones, but in my heart I doubted myself. I had mixed feelings. He had disposed of them in a way that was heartless, logical, and efficient. I would not have disposed of them that way; and the Enlisted Man’s Empire would have paid the price for my inability to act. In this instance, Warshaw was not my moral inferior; he was simply more courageous than me.
He guided me into the meeting room. Admirals came and shook my hand. The greetings were cordial, but the smiles did not last long.
“We need to get back to the negotiations,” Warshaw said.
“What negotiations?” I asked.
“I would have thought that was obvious,” he said, a frigid edge in his voice. “You saw what happened down there.”
The tiny drops of sweat on his shaved head reflected light like a coat of wax. He tried to wipe them away, but the perspiration was too fine. He wore his dress whites, with all of its stars and medals and epaulets. Even tired and frustrated, he cut an impressive figure, his bodybuilder’s physique stressing every inch of his stiff white uniform.
“Life as we know it just ended,” he said. “The Unifieds are talking about resurrecting the old Cousteau undersea cities programs. They think we might be able to survive this storm if we go underwater.”
I vaguely remembered learning about the Cousteau program. When the United States and its allies began colonizing space, the old French government turned its eyes toward deep-sea exploration. The program lasted a couple of years before the French gave up and signed on with the Americans.
“Rebuilding those cities could take years, maybe decades,” I said.
“You got any better ideas?” Warshaw asked.
I wasn’t challenging him, but he crushed me just the same. I felt rage spreading through me
, then I realized it was embarrassment. I did not have any better ideas. I stood there wishing I could fade away.
“Looks like we’re rejoining the Unified Authority. Earth is the only planet that never got invaded. The aliens will go there last; hopefully, we can get everyone underwater by then.
“Welcome to the future, Harris; it’s just like the goddamned past.”
I stood there, silent and frustrated.
Warshaw studied my expression, and finally said, “This is a negotiation, not a war council. I can’t bring you in, I just wanted to thank you for what you did on Olympus Kri. You gave us a fighting chance, but it’s over now.”
The words stung because I knew he was right.
“I need to get to Terraneau,” I said.
“You’re going to warn them?” Warshaw asked.
“They’re next,” I said.
“I hear you had a girl on that rock,” Warshaw said. “Hollingsworth says you hooked up with Ava Gardner.”
“Yeah, something like that,” I said, already anxious to leave.
“How are you going to get there?” he asked. “I can’t give you the ad-Din if you’re traveling into neutral space. The Unifieds might see that as an act of bad faith.”
He was right, of course. None of the reactivated broadcast stations were programmed to send me out to Terraneau. I would need a self-broadcasting ship. “I’ll find a way,” I said.
Warshaw smiled and shook his head. “You’re on your own with Terraneau. It’s not part of our empire.” Then he signaled for an aide to join our conversation. “McGraw, the general needs a broadcast key.”
The aide was an old man. He gave me a surprised glance, then said, “Aye, aye, sir.”
“A broadcast key?” I asked.
“You’re going to need a key if you’re going to get that shuttle you’re flying to Terraneau,” Warshaw said. He started to leave, then turned back, and added, “You be careful with that key, Harris. I only issue them to fleet commanders . . . and now to you. God knows you’ve earned it.”
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