by David Ryker
“The receiver satellites are in place.” Schuster paused for a moment, which Quinn assumed was to confab with the guy in his mental shotgun seat. “The computer will likely be on the bridge, where it can best tap into the power supply. Just like the amplifier was last time.”
“We’ll dock in the bay on the port side, then. It’s the quickest route to the bridge.”
“What do you think the odds are that the wormhole thingy works?” asked Ben, speaking for the first time since they had hopped across the space between Mars and Uranus. “By the way, I have to point out that this is the coolest thing ever, even if we do end up dead. Which reminds me, I need to start recording this.”
“You’re kind of all over the map there,” said Schuster. “But logic would dictate that if they could open the wormhole, they would have done so by now.”
“Again, remember what happens when you make an assumption,” warned Quinn.
“Yeah,” said Bishop. “You make an ass out of ‘you’ and ‘mption.’”
Quinn chuckled in spite of himself. Beside him, Ulysses seemed not to have gotten the joke.
“What the hell’s an umption?”
“Heads up!” said Quinn, catching movement on the sensors. “Their ships are leaving the docking ports! Get weapons online.”
“Roger that,” said Bishop.
“Roger that,” said Maggott.
“Oh shit,” said Schuster.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m picking up a sudden increase in temperature about a thousand clicks from the station. That’s the satellites Sloane was talking about.”
Quinn’s stomach dropped. “And temperature spike means—”
“Exactly,” said Schuster. “They’re firing it up. We might be fighting off a hell of a lot more than four ships if we don’t get this done fast.”
32
“This is harder than I thought it would be,” Kergan muttered.
“I can only imagine,” Toomey said drily as he input the algorithm calculations in the computer, making constant adjustments, each of which required vastly complicated mathematics in his head.
“Hey, I’m controlling everyone on this station, plus those pilots out there. You’re programming a computer.”
“My apologies. Perhaps your difficulties are a result of your unique situation.”
Kergan brightened visibly at that and sat back in his chair at the bridge terminal.
“I think you’re on to something, Doctor,” he said. “My connection with the Gestalt has been severely limited thanks to the merging of my two components. They can command entire legions because they’ve got the hive mind to draw on in a way that I don’t.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “That said, I can still smell Sloane on those fucking Jarhead ships, and I can’t wait to make sure he’s dead forever.”
Under ordinary circumstances, Toomey was an exceedingly confident man; he could count on one hand the number of times in his adult life that he’d actually felt fear. But the longer this situation went on, and the sheer enormity of it became clear to him, the more his anxiety grew. He was a scientist’s scientist, but he was also a human, and he was choosing to fight against his own species. What happened if, when the dust settled, it turned out he’d chosen the wrong side?
Now is not the time, he reminded himself. His fingers danced over the controls as his eyes scanned thousands of equations per second. He would have liked to think it was all him doing this, and to a considerable degree it was, but it was also the toomium unleashing part of his brain that until now had lain dormant. He was accessing abilities far beyond those of even the most capable human.
Kergan kept his eyes on the monitors. “Any time, Doctor.”
“I’m working as fast as I can,” said Toomey.
“I know you are.” The mock sympathy in Kergan’s voice was grating. “But you might want to see if you can work faster. They’re closing in on our ships. I don’t know how they got here so fast, but we have to assume they have technology as advanced or even more so than ours, courtesy of Kevin Fucking Sloane. They’ll be in striking distance in a few minutes.”
“What happens if they defeat your team?” asked Toomey. “What happens then?”
“Then we go to Plan B.” Kergan shook his head. “You won’t like Plan B, Doctor.”
Toomey felt his insides go cold. “Why not?”
“Because if you can’t get that Span open and keep it that way, I’ll have to stop those Jarheads any way I can, and the only way to do that is to use that keen amplifier you worked on for me.” He grinned. “Thanks for that, by the way.”
“What does it do? Obviously it amplifies, but what does it amplify?”
“The attenuation wave, stupid.” He said it playfully, but it was the latest in a string of insults. “Now that it has a vastly increased range, I don’t have to worry about them outrunning its effects the way they did last time.”
Toomey caught a degenerating pattern in the algorithm and quickly corrected it. The readouts on the unit were showing an increase in temperature on the satellites, which was the beginning phase of the process. Ultimately they would each create a magnetic field in four dimensions, using the toomium, which would create the door that would suck the ships into this point in space-time.
“How does the effect work, exactly?” he asked when the correction was finished.
“Like it sounds,” said Toomey. “It amplifies the attenuation wave that I generate, so that it overtakes the mind of any being it contacts. Some die as a result, a few go insane, but most will lose all conscious thought and become my drones.”
The doctor was in the middle of shoring up an equation when understanding hit him like a slap. He’d been so deeply under the toomium’s spell that he’d had no time for critical thinking outside of the projects that Kergan had kept piling on him.
“Wait,” he said, his mouth dry. “What will happen to me under those circumstances?”
Kergan approached him and dropped an arm over his narrow shoulders.
“The same thing that happens to everyone else, Doctor. Now you see why I’m asking you to get your skinny little old man ass in gear, don’t you? Because as much as I like you, and as much as I think we could make beautiful music together, I am not going to get taken out by Napoleon Quinn and his gang.” He rubbed Toomey’s bald head. “And if I have to break a few eggheads to make an omelet, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Toomey quickly turned his full attention back to his work. He had a wormhole to open, and he had to do it now.
33
Schuster watched as Oberon One’s rafts left their docking bays that were set up in an X formation at the upper ring of the station, below the command area where the bridge was located. They had waited until the last possible second to depart, which made him nervous.
“I can’t help thinking they’re trying to lure us in,” he said to Gloom.
“I can’t believe I’m about to be in a dogfight in outer space,” she said. “Sorry, just had to say that. Why would they want us to get close?”
“The last time we were close, Kergan tried to take over our minds. We’re not going to let that happen again. I know the distance we have to keep, and we’re going to keep it. The only ones getting close will be Quinn and Ulysses, but they have no choice.”
“So let’s draw some fire, Marine!”
Schuster marvelled at her for a moment. He’d never met anyone like her, and he promised himself that, if they survived this, he would let her know.
For now, though, he had aliens to fight.
“Go in low and fast,” he called over the radio. “Draw them away from the far side of the station and make it look like we’re headed for the satellites.”
“Oi,” said Maggot. “Why ent we just goin’ fer the satellites? If we blow ‘em, don’t we fuck up the whole wormhole thingy? Why bother goin’ after the part on the station?”
Schuster sighed. “I went over this when we were approaching M
ars. Sloane says those satellites are carrying the element that messed with our heads when we were here. If we get too close, we’ll suddenly be reliving our childhood or end up in some sort of nightmare scenario. That’ll end the mission PDQ.”
“Maggott was asleep during that conference call,” said Chelsea. “Sorry. I cut the mic so none of you would hear his snoring.”
“Stow it!” Quinn cut in. “We’re approaching the far side. So far we’re clear. Let’s keep it that way!”
“Yessir,” said Schuster. “Everyone follow my lead.”
He swooped low so that he was angled toward the surface of the Oberon moon, and Bishop and Maggott closed formation behind them. Three of the ships followed while a fourth headed in the opposite direction, obviously following Quinn.
“Heads up!” Schuster called.
“I see him,” said Quinn. “I guess we can’t fool him, so let’s go to Plan B.”
Schuster pulled up and banked to the left, closely followed by the others. Their pursuers took a full two seconds to respond, which, at the speed they were going, was too late. They were already being pulled down by the moon’s gravity, which would make it more difficult to recover and climb.
“You two pincer,” he said. “I’ll head topside.”
“Roger that.” Bishop and Maggott swooped in opposite directions, approaching the circular station from either side while Schuster headed toward the upper command area.
“Light it up!” he shouted. A second later, each ship was firing its plasma cannons at the external housing of the station, landing on three separate targets at once.
“Yes!” Gloom cried, pumping her fist.
“Don’t get too excited,” said Schuster. “It only struck the outer shell. It might have shook things up but it didn’t do any real damage. That’s why Quinn and Ulysses need to get inside.”
“You really know how to kill a moment, don’t you?”
Schuster saw the ship that had been tailing Quinn bank upward in his direction, which is what he’d hoped.
“I’ll draw his fire,” he said. “You two head back and engage those three.”
Bishop and Maggott did as they were ordered while Schuster pretended to be running from the ship on his tail. His pursuer let loose with his own plasma cannon, clipping Schuster’s ship in the tail. It hit from a slight angle and knocked them about a dozen degrees off course, but he quickly corrected.
“You’re a hell of a pilot,” said Gloom.
“It helps that we have reinforced armor on the tails of these ships,” he said. “I learned my lesson the last time we were here.”
With that, he tapped a control and the ship suddenly slowed.
“Uh, what are you doing?” Gloom asked, wide-eyed.
Schuster grinned. “Giving our friend a present.”
Their ship suddenly shot forward as their pursuer reached the spot where they’d been. A second later, a flash of orange and red filled the rear monitor for a moment and disappeared.
“What the hell was that?” asked Gloom.
“That’s a little something Sloane and I cooked up when the White Coats were asleep. It’s a fusion bomb.”
“I thought those were illegal.”
“They are,” said Schuster. “On Earth. We’re not on Earth.”
Quinn’s voice cut in over the radio. “Good work, Dev. We’re broadside with the docking bay, maglocks are pulling us in. Keep it up.”
Gloom smiled at him. “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”
“You’re damn right I am. Last time we were here, we barely made it out by the skin of our teeth. This time, we’re holding all the aces.”
An instant later, a blast hit their ship from the side and sent them careening through space, almost as if karma had been listening to them.
34
Quinn lowered the volume of their communal radio channel as he and Ulysses crept through the airlock of the docking bay. He hadn’t expected to encounter resistance this soon, but he knew it was coming, and soon.
“Dev!” Bishop’s voice crackled through the radio and Quinn immediately killed the volume and motioned for Ulysses to do the same. The speaker was attached to the collar of his environment suit, and without their helmets to absorb the sound, it would ring through the silent corridors like an alarm. They didn’t need anything calling even more attention to them than they were already going to get.
Each of them was carrying a meter-long cylinder strapped to their shoulders, containing enough hydrogen cell explosives to level a four-story building. They’d been “appropriated” by Schuster during his time at Toomey’s lair, along with a few other goodies.
“No greetin’ party,” said Ulysses. “That’s a good sign, right?”
“It’s not a bad one.” Quinn crept along the corridor, his back against the curving wall, and reached down to his belt. He pulled a small disc from it and tossed it into the air, where it began to whir into the distance. A second later, the display on his wrist unit lit up with an image of the corridor in front of them, leading toward the central zero-gravity conveyance tube.
“Clear,” he said quietly, motioning for them to move forward.
“Dunno why yer whisperin.’ There’s cameras everywhere in this place.”
“Yeah, I know, I used to live here, remember? I’m just hoping that Kergan can’t concentrate on everything inside the station and on the dogfight outside at the same time.”
They emerged into the corridor that led straight to the central tube and still didn’t see another soul.
“I got a bad feelin’ about this,” said Ulysses.
“Why do you say that?” asked Quinn. “Why do you just automatically go for the negative? There may be a clear path all the way to the bridge, you don’t know. Maybe we’ll be able to just place these charges and get the hell out of here. Isn’t it about time that we had some good luck for a change?”
Then the light above the hatch to the central tube went green, signalling that it was about to open. Ulysses looked at Quinn and shook his head.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Quinn sighed. “I knew it was bullshit while it was coming out of my mouth.”
A second later, the hatch opened and an army of drone inmates came rushing out, sprinting toward them with shock rifles and truncheons at the ready.
Quinn dropped to one knee and reached for the rear of his suit, releasing a mag-locked box and pointing at the gang of drones that was bearing down on them. Each of the dozen shock rifles and truncheons were beginning to glow blue as they charged up.
“Cross your fingers,” he said.
“Just do it,” Ulysses snapped. “I got asses t’kick.”
Quinn hit the control and a red light appeared on top of the box, followed by the signature expanding disk of scarlet that ran through the corridor in all directions. The drone they’d been using dropped from the air instantly, and the blue light of the shock weapons winked out.
The drones seemed oblivious to what was happening as the front row dropped to one knee and aimed their weapons. They continued trying to fire as Quinn and Ulysses rushed forward, each grabbing a truncheon. Quinn wished they been able to arm themselves better, but anything they tried to smuggle into Toomey’s hangar when they stole the ships would have been discovered and confiscated. Drake’s strike force was scheduled to load them up the day after the Jarheads stole the ships, but obviously they hadn’t gotten the chance.
“Batter up!” Ulysses swung his baton one-handed and cracked the skull of a guard that Quinn recognized from his days as an inmate. The name Brady came to mind, and he remembered him as being all right, as far as guards went.
Now he was a mindless drone that needed to be put down, and Quinn felt renewed fury at Kergan as he took on his own opponents. He faced three men, all of whom were sporting short hair and eyebrows, and he knew they had to be members of the Southern Saints, Ulysses’ old gang.
“I said do it!” Ulysses barked. “They ain’t my boys no more! They’s nothin�
� but robots, and we’re gonna shut ‘em off, just like machines!”
Quinn did so, knocking two of them in the side of the skull, one after the other, before raising his leg and stomping down on the inside of the third’s knee. The man dropped to the floor without a sound, which Quinn found jarring. Ulysses was right—they were just robots now.
That was when he looked up and found himself looking into a pair of faces that he recognized. Their hair was longer, and their faces had become gaunt, but there was no mistaking their oversized, surgically altered eyes and tiny mouths. It was Yukio and Hana, the duo who had taken over the Yandares after Senpai Sally died, and who fought so bravely in the final riot that resulted in the Jarheads escaping with Ulysses and Chelsea, and everyone else on the station being hit by the amplified attenuation wave.
“Shit,” he muttered, swinging the truncheon at Yukio’s midsection. He was shocked when she intercepted it in mid-swing and twisted her torso, lifting him off his feet and sending him sailing through the air. He landed on his back on the corridor’s unforgiving steel floor. He realized too late the the victims of attenuation must have retained their skills even after their minds were taken over, otherwise they would have been of no use to the Gestalt.
Yukio followed up by leaping a meter in the air and drawing both knees to her chest, intent on landing feet-first on Quinn’s chest. At the last second, a different leg appeared beside him, lashing out with a wicked kick straight into Yukio’s ribs. Quinn rolled to his side as she landed on the floor and collapsed. Quinn looked up to see Ulysses block two strikes from Hana before sidestepping behind her and wrapping his truncheon around her neck. He turned quick as a snake until they were back to back, his hand still holding the truncheon at her throat, and heaved her off the floor. She kicked for several seconds, clutching at the weapon, until she finally drooped and he let her go. She fell next to her fellow Yandare and didn’t move again.
“Be brutal!” Ulysses hollered. “This is life or death, not some kinda reunion!”