Lockdown (Fugitive Marines Book 3)

by David Ryker

  Finally, he gasped a breath, which helped to dampen his rising panic. In his head, he could hear the Gestalt screaming at him, demanding to know what was happening.

  “You did this to me,” he huffed as he staggered to his feet, ignoring the voices in his mind. “This was supposed to be my shining moment, Doctor, and you stole it from me.”

  “Kergan,” Toomey groaned, holding up a hand to try and fend him off. “You have to—”

  “You’re stupid!” Kergan screamed. “You think you’re so smart, but you’re really just stupid!”

  He looked over at the control panel Toomey had been manipulating. It appeared to have survived the blast, though parts of it had been dented by flying debris. He could fix it. He could reopen the wormhole and bring the rest of the fleet through. He just had to do one little thing first.

  “Come here, fuckface,” he growled, reaching down and grasping Toomey’s collar in his fist. He pulled the doctor to his feet with a single yank. “I don’t need an amplifier. I can do this myself. Who cares if Quinn gets away? He won’t get far. That ship out there will eat him and his friends and spit out their bones.”

  “Crazy,” Toomey croaked.

  “We’ll see,” said Kergan.

  He locked eyes on the doctor’s and his mind reached out with its attenuation wave. The process felt so natural to him, and it helped to calm his fevered thoughts. Attenuation was always such a pleasure, even though the rest of the Gestalt didn’t really understand that. To them, attenuation was like eating solely for survival. The Kergan, it was a feast.

  The wave matched the frequency of the doctor’s consciousness, until they were both vibrating in synch. Kergan’s mine reached out to touch his former friend’s, sliding its tendrils inside the others, until the two became one.

  And then something very strange happened.

  39

  Chelsea watched breathlessly as the monstrous ship that had emerged through the wormhole hung in space, motionless. The opening it had come through was slowly starting to shrink behind it just as Oberon One shook with a series of silent explosions that expanded in balls of orange and red and then winked out of existence.

  “Oh God,” she breathed. “Lee. No.”

  Maggott tried to keep a stern look on his wide face, but he couldn’t hide the tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

  “Goddamn fookin’ shite,” he growled.

  “What’s happening?” It was Ben. “What’s going on? Did they get off the station?”

  Chelsea heard Bishop clear his throat hard. “Their Raft never left the docking bay,” he croaked.

  “The wormhole is collapsing!” Schuster seemed oblivious to their conversation. “Only the one ship got through!”

  “Is this really the time?” Chelsea moaned bleakly. Then she saw the alien ship glide forward and face their direction, and suddenly it was very much the time.

  “Scatter!” Shuster barked. “Now!”

  Chelsea grasped the arms of her seat as the three ships separated just as a wide green beam sliced through space, missing them by only meters. They gunned their engines and reformed in a tight knot.

  “Take the fight to them!” Schuster ordered. “Go for that tail!”

  They banked to the left and stayed in formation, advancing on the ship’s stern. The monstrosity appeared to not be very maneuverable, and only managed to turn a handful of degrees before the Rafts were on its tail.

  “Give them one for Quinn,” Chelsea growled as the floating sights of the plasma cannons locked on the heat signature of the ship’s engines.

  “Aye, lass,” said Maggott. “That I will.”

  Maggott and Bishop fired in unison, while Schuster let loose with three more hydrogen cell bombs. The combination was enough to rock the massive ship and drive it forward, toward the station.

  “Okay, that didn’t do what I hoped it would do,” said Schuster.

  “We need to retreat,” said Bishop. “The wormhole is collapsing, and they can’t attack Earth with one ship. We just have to pray that we’re faster than it.”

  “Fook that,” said Maggott. “I say we unload everythin’ we got on it. If we don’t make it, at least we gave it all we had.”

  “Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it now,” said Schuster.

  Chelsea let out a long breath. “What would Quinn have done?”

  “He would have told you to get your asses to the docking bay and pick us up before this place blows!”

  She blinked and looked at Maggott. His eyes were as wide as hers. It was Quinn’s voice on the radio.

  “You bastard!” she yelled, relief washing through her. “We thought you were dead!”

  “We rode out the blasts inside the back channel. But we will be dead if you don’t get over here!”

  “Where are you?” asked Schuster.

  “Docking bay No. 3. We landed in No. 4, but the airlock is sealed tight on that one, so we can’t get back to our Raft.”

  “Roger that,” said Bishop. “Dev, you’re the best pilot. Maggott and I will try to keep that ship busy.”

  “I’m already on my way.”

  “Looks like we’re joinin’ ye,” said Maggott. “The alien ship’s headed fer the station, too!”

  Chelsea gripped the arms of her seat and ground her teeth together. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy?

  40

  Quinn and Ulysses stood by the hatch, trying to keep their footing as the floor shivered underneath them from the blasts.

  “Never knew this station was such a piece o’ junk,” said Ulysses, gripping the rail on the gangway. “Set off a couple o’ bombs and suddenly you got a chain reaction blowin’ up the whole goddamn place.”

  “I have a feeling SkyLode designed it to self-destruct in the event it was ever compromised,” said Quinn. “Can’t have SkyLode property falling into the wrong hands.”

  Ulysses’s eyes flashed with anger. “Goddammit! If it turns out that Oscar Bloom coulda just hit some self-destruct button on this place, I’m gonna whoop his ass when we get back!”

  “If we get back,” said Quinn. “Schuster is taking his sweet time.”

  As if on cue, he heard the unmistakeable sound of metal on metal as the mooring magnets drew a ship toward the side of the station, where its door would seal with the airlock and allow them to go through and get the hell out of there. The two men exchanged a grin.

  “Man, sometimes I think there’s somebody upstairs lookin’ out for us,” said Ulysses. “We’re ready for yuh, Dev.”

  The airlock hatch made a sucking noise as the pressure equalized. Quinn and Ulysses watched as the door slid open, but where he had expected to see the entrance to Raft was something else.

  Something very much else.

  “I’ll be there in 90 seconds,” said Schuster. “Be ready.”

  Quinn’s heart froze. There was no metal or plastic in this ship. Instead, they were looking into a space that was lined with a pulsing, glistening goo that looked like flesh. Bile rose in his throat as he saw the shadow of something moving through the space with stilted movements that made him think of a Praying Mantis.

  “I’m gonna be sick,” Ulysses groaned.

  “Move,” Quinn said quietly, grabbing his friend’s arm and yanking him toward the stairs to the mezzanine. “Before whatever’s in there sees us.”

  They reached the upper level just as Schuster’s Raft was pulling up alongside the station.

  “Uh, you have to change bays,” Quinn said in to his microphone.

  “I see that,” said Schuster, his voice cracking. “Good God…”

  “Gahhh!”

  Ulysses’ scream made Quinn’s heart jump and he looked down to see something looking up at them from the floor below. It had huge eyes with a dozen separate facets, set in an oblong above a hard thorax with long front limbs and a pair of back legs that made Quinn think of a grasshopper.

  Then it began to climb.

  The two men bolted down the other se
t of stairs that led to the next bay just as the airlock hatch hissed open. When they stepped inside, Quinn thought Schuster and Gloom’s faces were the most welcome sight he’d ever seen in his life.

  “Get us the fuck out of here!” he cried.

  “Roger that.” Shuster closed the door and released the moorings. “I don’t know what that alien ship is doing here.”

  “I think it might be doing the same thing as us,” said Gloom. “The station is going to blow, and they’re trying to get their people off.”

  “I don’t care, as long as we’re headed in the other direction,” said Quinn. “Punch it.”

  They rose over the top of the station and rejoined the other Rafts, then formed into a triangle and set a course for Uranus.

  “Hey, Lee.” It was Bishop on the radio.

  “Yeah?”

  “Next time you decide to die, you better stay dead.”

  “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Because,” said Chelsea, “if you don’t, I’m going to kill you myself.”

  41

  “Attenuation achieved.”

  “Wait, that’s my line.”

  “What happened?”

  The entity tried to examine itself, but it couldn’t. There were three faces, all part of one. Three names. And yet they were one. How was that possible?

  “Two have become three have become one.”

  “Like fuck.”

  Kergan concentrated with all his might and formed a glowing egg, separating himself from the other and facing it. He knew what he would see—another egg of light, only this was was narrower and looked older somehow.

  “Toomey,” he said, feeling a surge of delight run through him that translated into butterflies all around him. Black butterflies with claws. “You crazy son of a bitch.”

  “What is this place? Where am I” Silence for a beat. “Who am I?”

  “This is the astral plane. You resisted attenuation somehow, and now you’re part of me. I should have known.” He sighed. “Fucking Quinn again. If he hadn’t wrecked the amplifier, I could have just taken over your brain.”

  “But the wormhole—”

  “It’s closed. And now we’re stuck with each other.”

  “This is—strange. But intruguing.”

  “Yeah,” said Kergan. “Kind of like you.”

  The Toomey entity hung there in silence for a moment that was an eternity.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  “We’d best get back to the physical universe and get off Oberon One before it blows up.”

  “How?”

  Kergan sighed. “You really need to get a handle on this stuff, Doc. The ship that came through the wormhole. It’s waiting for us.”

  An image of the horrendous alien spacecraft appeared between them.

  Kergan felt a glow of pride at what Toomey had accomplished. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

  “But the invasion—”

  “Not happening. All because you and I couldn’t get along. And now we’re sharing a head. If that’s not irony, I don’t know what is.”

  “Irony. Yes.”

  Kergan chuckled. “Don’t worry, Doctor. You’ll get used to it. I think the two of us have a very interesting future ahead of us.”

  “As do I.”

  “All right, back to reality, as they say.”

  “Wait,” said Toomey. “Whose body are we in?”

  Kergan grinned. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  They awoke in the gelatinous hold of the lone ship to make it through the wormhole, surrounded by a dozen insect-like aliens standing at attention. The entity reached up and touched his face—a beard.

  “Yesss,” the Kergan part of it said with a little pump of his fist.

  The lead alien, whose mind identified itself as N’Yhillit, glared at them.

  You are no longer part of the Gestalt, it said in the thoughtspeak that their species used. You must be purged from the collective.

  The Kergan entity rolled his eyes. “Purge this.”

  He reached over and grasped N’Yhillit’s head in his hand, and suddenly they were back on the astral plane.

  “What is this?” the Gestalt demanded. “What are you doing?”

  The merged entity looked at the newcomer, a floating egg with no features.

  “What do you think?” asked the Kergan aspect.

  “I think it’s boring,” said the Toomey aspect.

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  He waved a hand at the egg and it began to dissolve. The entity’s panic was sudden and overwhelming, and Kergan sucked it in like mother’s milk.

  “What is happening?” it cried.

  “I’m killing you,” said Kergan.

  “That is impossible! Nothing truly dies!”

  “We’ll see.”

  Kergan and Toomey watched as the egg eventually became less and less opaque, and finally disappeared altogether.

  “Now what?” asked Toomey.

  The Kergan entity opened its eyes again, and the aliens were still at attention, except for N’Yhillit, who seemed confused. The entity touched his head and soon he was back to being a drone.

  “You’re under new management,” said the entity. “We haven’t chosen a name yet, but we will.”

  He looked at the screens that showed Oberon One receding in the distance. A series of explosions were slowly tearing it into pieces, one by one.

  “Where will we go?”

  The Kergan part of the entity smiled.

  “We have an entire solar system to explore, my friend. And when we’re finished doing that, I think it will be time to go home. To Earth.”

  42

  The trip home took slightly less than eleven days, just as Dev Schuster had predicted it would. This time, the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter offered no special slipstream, but none of them were disappointed. They spent most of the time dozing and recovering from the exhaustion of their adventures. When they were awake, they spoke of their future and the dreams that now seemed more possible than ever.

  “What do you think we should tell Drake?” asked Ben during a conversation between all four ships. “I sent Frank King the footage of the battle right after we left Oberon, so I assume he showed it to the government.”

  “Maybe not,” said Quinn. “He plays his cards close to the vest. I’m sure he’s got a plan.”

  “Besides,” said Ulysses. “We dunno what happened at the end ourselves. I mean, we figger that ship was there to get Kergan, but we cain’t say that fer sure.”

  “I can,” said Schuster. “I mean, the Sloane part of me can. He’d know if Kergan was dead.”

  “Maybe,” said Bishop. “But he doesn’t have an army of drones anymore, and as far as we know, all of that—what’d you call it, God Element?—went up with Oberon One. He’s neutered.”

  Chelsea sighed. “I think if we’ve leaned anything, it’s that we can never let our guard down. Those aliens know about us now, and they’re not going to forget. Earth still needs to prepare, especially if Kergan is still out there.”

  “But I think we can all take a breather fer a bit,” said Maggott. “I know I need to, so that Peg and I can figger things oot.”

  “Not just that,” said Gloom. “I think we all need to learn how to live normal lives now that this is over. I don’t think I could go back to what I used to do.”

  “Me either,” said Ben. “Especially now that everyone knows who Foster Kenya really is.”

  Quinn let out a yawn and put his hand to his microphone. “I’m gonna sign off and get some shut-eye,” he said. “Drake’s last message said that they’ll meet us in San Francisco when we land. We’ll be debriefed and then let out on our own recognizance.”

  “You’re all welcome to stay with me till you’re settled,” said Chelsea. “I’m getting a place of my own with my trust fund. First time I’ve ever used it.”

  “No disrespect, Doc,” said Ulysses, “but I think
I might be stayin’ with Tiffany.”

  Quinn grinned as he flipped off his radio and settled back in his seat, letting the pull of sleep draw him down into its warm depths. Chelsea had been right when she said there was no bed like a zero-gravity bed.

  We did it, he told himself. Against all odds, we pulled it off. There really is someone watching out for the Jarheads.

  With that, he drifted off to sleep.

  A small crowd had gathered at the airstrip where the Jarheads landed the Rafts they had stolen eleven days earlier. When Quinn stepped out onto the tarmac, he braced himself for the cheers, as he had warned the others to do. Ben might have been used to a degree of fame, but the rest of them were just regular people who had been thrust into extraordinary circumstances. As far as Quinn and his men, something as simple as a “job well done” was damn hard to come by in wartime, let alone accolades and fame.

  So he was surprised when they walked out into a silent group of people. And he quickly noticed that they weren’t in street clothes; there was a mixture of uniforms and suits.

  Morley Drake marched toward him, flanked by a pair of his omnipresent black-suited guards. Quinn almost saluted him, given how the habit was ingrained in him and he was still tired, but he managed to stop himself.

  “Mr. Tribune,” he said. “Good to see you. Mission accomplished.”

  “Where’s Ellie?” Bishop asked, scanning the tarmac.

  Drake sneered and waved a hand. At his command, a dozen men in uniforms swarmed the group and snapped restraint belts around their waists. Maggott managed to get a shot in against one of the men wrestling him before his hands were bound, but the rest of them were too much in shock to react.

  A group of people with raised wrist units swarmed round, recording them and yelling questions: Why did you do it? Are you still a criminal? How did you steal the ships? Will you plead guilty?

  “What the hell is this?” Quinn demanded.

  “Son of a bitch!” Ulysses shouted. “I knew it!”