by Shawn Jones
The two moons that orbited each other and the planet, filled his entire face shield. Threm was on the other side of the ship, hidden from his view. He considered ordering George to change the ship’s orbit so he could watch the planet, but thought the better of it. Nonetheless, his solitude was disturbed when his proximity sensor told him another CONDOR was approaching.
“Hey.”
Kim stopped beside him and said, “Hey, Baby.”
Neither spoke. Kim didn’t know what to say to comfort her husband, and Cort was content just having her beside him. They sat in a comfortable silence for nearly an hour before George commed them.
“It is time, Mother.”
“We’re on our way.”
She took Cort’s armored hand and led him back to the shuttle bay.
—
The HAWC stepped out of the shuttle bay and fell toward the planet. Cort didn’t have to worry about heat trails or being seen from the planet, so he engaged his drive immediately and raced into the Threm’s atmosphere.
From orbit, the Remington turned its point defense railguns on the planet below. Over each gas pocket, CONDOR-sized blocks of ice were fired into the planet, punching holes in the reservoirs of flammable gas that allowed them to ooze into the atmosphere.
Cort fired much smaller, traditional railgun slugs into the pockets of gas that were close to the underground cities. For every single round George fired from the ship, Cort fired a hundred, carefully aimed, smaller rounds to ensure the enough of the gas would escape into the atmosphere.
He fired the last round into site two, and activated the HAWC’s engine. While the drive energized, he looked at the chronometer on his HUD. Four hours. All the planning was for nothing. She dies in four hours.
—
Twenty thousand miles above him, Kim looked at the same numbers, and felt the same loss. Salana was beside her, watching Cort’s telemetry. Kim turned her head and said, “Dvok gave him a chance to save her. Why won’t the universe cooperate?”
Salana turned back to Cort’s vital signs. “Perhaps it is jealous of him. It can’t kill him, so it breaks his heart.”
“How is he, Salana?”
Salana turned her flexpad to Kim, and told her he was unexplainably perfect. “He has the literal weight of a world on his shoulder, yet he is as calm as if he was reading a book.”
“That’s the warrior. When he finds that place—that realm inside him—he changes. In the Ares War, when we gained independence from Earth, he held two land mines in his hands and detonated them, to kill the last enemy we faced. His friends and loved ones were dead around him, even his first wolf, and he calmly detonated two landmines with his bare hands, to save a colony that had once stood against him.”
Listening to Kim’s story, Salana thought she finally understood Cort. He cared about the planet’s animals. He was a protector, and he didn’t know how to be anything else. He was only at peace, when he was at war defending something or someone he cared about. He wasn’t a dictator. He was as much a victim of circumstance as the people he had rescued, or even as those he had killed.
Kim said, “He’s given up so much, and now he has to give up his daughter again.”
Salana remembered the little girl in the mine field. “Kim, can George lie?”
“What?”
—
At the third site, Cort punched forty-one holes into the planet.
“Ares to Remington, firing slug 3 dash 42. Check alignment.”
His HUD flashed green, and Cort fired the railgun.
Supercharged coils underneath the HAWC’s power pack sent their power through the barrel of the shoulder-mounted weapon, and a carbon slug left the railgun at a significant fraction of the speed of light. Like the thirty-one rounds he’d already fired into the ground at site 3, the slug perforated the gas pocket in the blink of an eye.
As natural gas raced to the surface, Cort walked to the next target, coil 1, just as the breech of the weapon overloaded. The gun ejected from the back of the suit, destroying Cort’s PSR drive. He had no way to get to the last gas pocket, and no way to pierce it if he did.
“Ares to Remington. I’ve got a problem. My railgun failed. My jumpdrive is compromised. I need evac and a new railgun. Send me a shuttle.”
George acknowledged Cort’s message and used his avatar to pilot the shuttle back to the planet. While Cort waited, he reviewed the mission status. Flammable gases were inundating the atmosphere, but at a slower rate than expected. It would take hours longer to reach a workable saturation level. Cort asked why.
“It’s possible the increased gravity or iron content of the planet is hindering our efforts. It might also be moisture content of the soil. The wells we are creating may be shrinking due to ground swell.”
Cort asked what that meant for the mission. A three-dimensional model of the planet appeared on his HUD. Yellow clouds slowly intensified and expanded over the planet’s surface, showing the methane levels of the atmosphere slowly increasing. George added weather patterns to the image and Cort asked how long the delay would be. Can I still save her? The nagging thoughts of his daughter were nearly consuming him now. He found it difficult to think of much else.
—
From the Remington, Kim listened to their conversation and watched Biyadiq’s flexpad. She hoped Cort wouldn’t take his own scans of the planet around him. If he did, they would all lose his trust. She turned her attention to the feed from his HUD. Everywhere his eyes looked, a small circle appeared on the HUD, and every time that circle got close to the icons for his scanners, her breath caught.
“George, if he activates his scanners…”
“I have control of them, Mother.”
—
Cort looked across his HUD at all the information George was sending him. His eyes kept finding the chronometer that indicated the present time on Earth. Unable to hold back any longer he asked, “Son… Can you get to Earth in time?”
“I don’t know. We can try.”
“Then let’s do it. I have to try. Do you have my CONDOR on the shuttle?”
Since there wasn’t a CONDOR aboard the shuttle, George turned back to the Remington to get one. Kim and the medical team boarded the shuttle as well, and they raced back to the planet’s surface to retrieve Cort.
Cort dropped from the HAWC, and as soon as he jumped into the shuttle, Kim put her hand around Cort’s neck and kissed him, tapping the inhibitor, to shield herself and her co-conspirators from Cort’s detection. He broke the kiss and ordered George to jump the shuttle.
Twelve
When the shuttle appeared in Earth orbit, the redshift from its bow wave destroyed an Iridium satellite and sent its pieces into the atmosphere as meteors.
George followed the pieces in, and as people all over the Northwest watched the unexpected light show above them, he landed the invisible shuttle in a city park. Cort sprung from its open bay, impatient and nervous, and broke into a dead run.
“George, how much time do I have?”
“You aren’t going to make it in time, Father. I’m sorry. We tried.”
“HOW MUCH TIME?”
“Seventeen seconds.”
Cort turned off the speed governors on his CONDOR. He knew it would damage his limbs to move that quickly, but he needed speed. He looked at the map on his HUD and realized he would have to jump through neighborhoods. George marked the height of houses in his path, and Cort took bounding leaps over the ones he could.
His legs burned, and his right knee ached as his limbs protested the inhuman speeds. Ceram monitored him from the shuttle, and advised him to administer a dose of emergency synthetics to help repair the ongoing damage to his body. Cort sent the order to his suit, and felt the injection in his leg. Before half of the dose made it into his system, the needle broke off in his thigh.
“Your heart is being taxed, General.”
“Too bad. I’m out of time.”
His hulking form jumped over another home and he
winced in pain as the leg with the broken needle came down on a small dog, killing the animal instantly. But he kept running. And the seconds ticked by. Nothing on Earth was going to keep him from saving Diane. His knee exploded in pain as the joint separated. The CONDOR, responding to his nervous system, did not stop running.
Two jumps and one ruined fence later, Cort’s other hip joint broke apart and dislocated from the intense heat of movement. An image of Angela’s Mustang appeared on his HUD. A traffic camera near the crash site showed her making a turn at an impossibly fast speed. The image disappeared as sparks flew from a rear wheel, then another view appeared, from the bridge Angela was going to drive off of in just seconds.
“Five seconds, Father.”
Cort jumped one last time, over a ten-foot chain link fence, ejected the stokes frame from his back, and went into a slide, like Hank Aaron headed for home plate. Above him, Angela’s car hit the rail and flipped over the edge. He heard Diane’s screams and watched as the car fell. His armored legs slid into the railroad tracks, twisting one of them, and breaking the other at a joint. The impact stopped his slide directly under the oncoming car. He stretched his aching arms into air as he struggled to stand, and caught the Mustang between his gauntlets. He would have been crushed inside the CONDOR had George not taken control of the suit and locked its joints.
The Mustang’s momentum caused the suit to roll to the side, and Cort was just able to drop the car on the driver’s door, then gently roll it to the ground. George released the suit locks, and Cort stood up. His legs ached, and he knew there would be hell to pay when he took the armor off, but he still heard Diane’s screams. She was alive.
—
The CONDOR’s active camouflage was malfunctioning. Part of Cort’s armor was visible and George worked to reset it, while Ceram monitored his vital signs. His heart rate was two hundred and twelve beats per minute. Only his synthetics kept the overworked muscle pumping blood through his damaged and stressed body. His blood pressure skyrocketed to the point that they were afraid, given his neurological status, that he might rupture a vessel. His respiration was forty breaths per minute, and his lungs were struggling to aerate his blood. Ceram increased the oxygen content of the suit’s air, and George got ready to take over the CONDOR’s movements if Cort was incapacitated.
Salana monitored the rest of Cort’s body, with Kim looking over her shoulder. More and more of his system was damaged, and Kim looked on in horror as she saw the broken bones and torn muscles of Cort’s body highlighted on Salana’s display. By all accounts, physiologically, Cort was a broken man.
—
Cort looked around for the stokes frame with its two inert bodies, and found it lying in some brush near the fence he had jumped. He fought the urge to check on Diane, and quickly retrieved the frame, placing it next to the car. Just as he turned to the wreck, he heard the railroads alarm klaxons erupt in sound, and knew Addison would appear soon. He drove armored fingers into the edge of the windshield and peeled back the roof of the car. Inside, Diane’s eyes filled with terror when he appeared and she began to scream even louder. He deactivated his helmet camouflage and looked at her.
“It’s okay, Dianosaur. I’m here. I’m gonna get you out.”
Seeing the confusion on Diane’s face, Ceram activated Cort’s inhibitor, to protect him from the child’s emotions.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, Honey. It’s me. I’m gonna help you get out of here okay?”
Diane nodded as Cort reached down and broke the seatbelt latch. He lifted her from the car, then gave her one of the two emergency doses of synthetics. She fell asleep immediately, and Cort swapped her sleeping form for the lifeless copy in the stokes frame. Once she was secure, he looked at the clone of Angela.
“Get her, Cort. You have to.”
The fuck I do. But it would be nice to watch a dinosaur eat her. She doesn’t fit into the plan, anyway. “I don’t really. Diane doesn’t need her. We don’t need her.”
“You have to get her, Baby.”
Cort sighed, took the copy from the stokes, and reluctantly walked back to the car.
“Father, your active camouflage has completely failed. I’m rebooting it now. You can still project imagery, so you should switch to black camouflage.”
“Perfect.”
In a calculated moment of bitterness and revenge, Cort projected a flaming skeleton from his entire suit. With her copy over his shoulder, he slapped Angela, waking her just long enough to see the image, scream, and faint. With none of the gentleness he used with Diane, he yanked her from the car, and put the second clone in the driver’s seat. He placed Angela in the stokes, moved the frame away from the car, then started to recreate the crash scene.
He bent the car’s roof back in place, then rolled it onto its top. He tried to pick the Mustang up, but the pain in his human joints was too much. Instead, he stepped away from the car and fired an incendiary round at it. The undercarriage ignited as sirens added to the sound of the alarm klaxons.
“What the fuck are you?”
Cort spun around to see his younger self standing over the stokes frame, with a large handgun pointed at his helmet. Though he had already seen Addison asleep, it was still shocking to see the younger man alert, much less facing him.
—
Addison stared at the helmet in disbelief. He had no idea what he was looking at. Was it man or machine? Beast or alien? The thing in front of him looked like a robot. He’d seen shit like that in video games, but this was real. Or was it? Was he dreaming? Static electricity and imagery flickered and danced across the surface of the suit, causing it to look like it was fading in and out of existence.
The thing was nearly nine feet tall, and from what he could see of it, it was covered by a dull black mesh. Occasionally, stars appeared on its shoulders, or color filled in the black space. Other times, Addison could see through the suit to Angela’s burning car. The hilt of a sword was visible over its shoulder, and a huge handgun of some sort was holstered on the outside of the suit’s right thigh. That’s gotta pack more punch than mine.
He was both sure and unsure that Ben Natsumo had to be behind this. Some way, somehow, that power hungry bastard must have found a way to manipulate him yet again. Trying to hold on to his own sanity, Addison thumbed the safety on his .45, raising it to the face of whatever it was. If that’s armor, it’s gotta be a face shot.
It was clear the being or robot or whatever it was, had pulled Diane and Angela from the wreck. Was there a human inside? But who was it putting back in the car? Diane’s okay. That’s all that matters. What the hell?
“You aren’t taking them. Not unless you kill me first.”
His adrenaline surged as he remembered a kidnapping in Colombia. He’d been on the other side of the standoff then, and he remembered how he had responded to the phrase “sobre mi cadaver”. Over my dead body. Fuck.
—
Cort watched as his younger reflection released the safety. He knew the weapon couldn’t harm him, but something about having a gun pointed at him—by himself—was still unsettling. Though he had imagined this scenario so many times, and in so many ways, he was still shaken. He fought to regain his composure and remain in control of the situation. Time depended on him doing that.
“Yes. I’m human.”
“Who are you?”
“You don’t recognize my voice?”
—
There was something familiar about the voice. He could almost swear it sounded like his own.
Addison felt like he should know the man in the armor, but for the life of him could not think of a single explanation for the vision standing in front of him.
“Take off the armor. Is that what it is? A power armor prototype or something?”
“We both know that would be foolish. And yes, it’s a kind of powered armor.”
—
In the shuttle above, George said, “He’s telling Addison too much. There is more risk of parad
ox.”
As they watched Cort’s vital signs, Ceram told Kim and Salana the situation was about to get worse. Cort’s inhibitor, his protection against telepathy, was about to shut down.
“His inhibitor is about to reach its time limit.”
“What will happen?” Salana asked.
Ceram clicked, “I think it likely he will be hit by… echoes of his own thoughts and emotions. He’ll be reading his own mind.”
—
On the Earth’s surface, two men, both the same man from different times, were trying to protect the same little girl, and faced off at exactly the wrong moment. As Cort and Addison continued to assess each other, a red light flashed in the corner of his HUD. The inhibitor shut down automatically, and Cort was hit with a barrage of his own thoughts. Anger, protectiveness, confusion, and resolve, all flooded over him. Though many of the emotions were similar to his own, the anger was difficult to reconcile. He felt as though he was waging a battle within himself. Addison was as determined to protect Diane as Cort was.