Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows

by Tom DeLonge

  He didn’t see Morat’s ship emerge from behind the satellite where it had been hidden until it was out and shooting.

  The disk shot to the right, entering an upward, diagonal spiral followed by a deep dive and a slanting, lateral slide. It was barely conscious. The saucer was reacting to Alan’s instincts rather than his thoughts, as if man and ship had fused together. The movement was all speed and evasion without caution, and it was only by chance that it didn’t hit any of the space trash floating about. It was the spatial effect of panic, and when Alan drew the disk back into conscious control, he realized he had no idea how far he’d moved.

  Morat was gone again. The residual energy signature of his Locust indicated he’d shot back down toward the lower atmosphere.

  “What’s his trajectory?” Alan said aloud, fighting with his flagging concentration. “Where is he headed?”

  The ship’s computer—not entirely separate from Alan’s own overworked brain—sorted through the data and projected a flight path in front of him

  Alan blinked. That couldn’t be right.

  “He’s returning to Dreamland?” he said. “Why would he do that?”

  He paused.

  “Are there other ships with him? Other arrowheads, bogeys?”

  The invisible screen in front of him became a radar map, and on it glowed the little sparks representing hostile craft. Dozens of them, converging on Nevada.

  “Major?” came Riordan’s voice. He sounded brighter, but confused. “The enemy’s broken off their attack. They’re leaving the silos. Not sure what you guys did up there, but I guess we won.”

  Alan did not relax. He stared at the pattern of markers streaking across his viewer.

  No, he thought. We haven’t won. We’ve been duped. Again.

  They didn’t want the silos. They never wanted to set off the missiles. They needed something to draw us into the air, to engage us, pick us off one by one.

  Because what they really want, what they always wanted …

  The thought froze him cold.

  “Riordan!” he shouted, taking one hand off the console to wipe the sweat from his face and eyebrows, then slamming it down and heading for earth as fast as the ship would go. “Riordan! You have incoming. The hostiles are targeting Dreamland. They want the goddamned base!”

  69

  TIMIKA

  Indian Springs Auxiliary field number 1 (closed), Nevada

  IT WAS ABSURD. SHE WAS GOING TO GET HERSELF KILLED. But then, she was going to be killed anyway, so it didn’t matter.

  Timika had her hands raised. Cook took a step toward her, pistol at chest height, and she smiled. It was a playful, flirty smile, the smile you shoot to someone over the rim of your mojito at a party, before you lead them to the bedroom. Cook’s eyes narrowed with confusion, and in that infinitesimal moment of hesitation, she clapped her hands together on either side of the gun, pushing it up and away.

  It went off with a blast like a cannon, but the muzzle was well clear by then, and her knee was already in his groin. Cook doubled over, and Timika stamped one heel hard on his foot. In the same moment she gripped the warm barrel of the gun and twisted it up, tugging until it rotated clean out of his grip.

  She was dimly aware of Regis’ forehead rocketing hard into the face of the other fake cop, but she heard the man’s nose break before he fell. The man Jennifer had called Saltzburg fell back in alarm as Timika came around with the gun. Cook, who’d not gone down entirely, gave her a look of pure hatred and came at her.

  She fired once.

  But she heard two shots, not one. For a moment, the night was full of bitter smoke. Cook crumpled, bleeding from his chest, and then Timika saw the other gun, in the hand of Saltzburg, the old guy who looked like the Grim Reaper. As if in a dream, she processed the fact that it was still pointed at her.

  And then she felt the pain.

  70

  JENNIFER

  Indian Springs Auxiliary field number 1 (closed), Nevada

  JENNIFER SWOOPED AT TIMIKA WHO WAS FOLDING AT the knees, blood spilling from the bullet hole in her chest. She caught her before she hit the ground, staring desperately into Timika’s vacant, rolling eyes. She heard a scramble at her back, a flurry of movement that ended with another snap of gunfire. Three, maybe four shots in rapid succession, like peels of thunder.

  She held Timika to her, tense, braced for the stab of agony that would mean she’d been hit, but nothing came, and she finally turned.

  Regis was on one knee, sighting down the pistol he’d taken from the cop he’d head-butted, and Manning was motionless on the ground. Saltzburg, who’d been at her back only moments before, had loped away in the confusion, shooting as he made for the gray car.

  “Stop him!” yelled Jennifer.

  Regis fired twice, but if he hit the banker, it did not slow him down. They heard the car engine turn over and the squeal of tires as Saltzburg pulled away.

  Regis stooped to Timika, snatching up a flashlight and shining it on her wound. It was higher than Jennifer had feared, closer to the shoulder.

  “Simmons!” he said. “Get the med kit out of Humvee. Can you look after her?” he added to Jennifer.

  “Me?” she answered. “I have no medical training.”

  Regis frowned, but didn’t hesitate, sweeping the flashlight over the other bodies. Manning and the man they had called Cook were both dead, so was the army corporal. The fake cop with the broken nose was unconscious and bloody, but breathing. Regis rolled him onto his belly and used cuffs to secure the man’s hands behind his back.

  “Stay with her,” he said to the soldier with a nod at Timika. “Clean and dress the wound, then keep pressure on it until the bleeding stops. Give her painkillers and keep her awake until help arrives.”

  “What about me?” asked Jennifer.

  “You’re driving,” said Regis, throwing her the keys to the Humvee and picking up the corporal’s fallen rifle. He didn’t wait for her response, instead barking into his radio, calling for back up, for a medical team, and for eyes on the road to the disused airfield.

  “And put me in touch with Major Young,” he roared. “Now.”

  71

  ALAN

  Nevada airspace

  ALAN DIDN’T KNOW HOW FAST HE WAS GOING. HE WAS driving the disk to its limit, hurtling through the sky, his vision briefly a fiery red as he re-entered the lower atmosphere, fighting to order his thoughts and prepare for the onslaught that would come. He still had no clear sense of the ship’s defensive capacity, whether it had some form of shield or cloaking technology, and though he’d fired its weapons several times now, each one had been subtly different, and he didn’t known why, as if the ship were making choices for him, choices he did not understand and could not process in the split second it took to select a target, prime, and fire. His nerves were ragged, the sweat on his face might have been mixed with tears if only because he dare not blink for fear of what he might miss, his heart and lungs working at maximum load.

  But this was minimal, compared to the strain on his mind. It was collapsing under the weight of that constant, calculating focus, the mental sifting and arrangement of countless streams of information. He was at the limits of functionality. He had only moments before he would collapse, black out.

  But there was no one else. Jackson was dead. Rodriguez had gone hunting at the other silos and wouldn’t be back until it was too late.

  It was on him.

  And suddenly he was there, high above the pale crater of Groom Lake, and before he had had time to think, he was in combat range. His viewer was a swarm of arrowheads and—buried in their midst—a single Locust. Morat. Once more, the peeling, shrieking peregrine dive, and once more, the enemy ships scattering like minnows evading a pike, and once more, the flash of laser fire and other, stranger weapons. The disk shuddered as it was hit again and again, and suddenly Alan was no longer a chair in space, but a man sealed inside a metal saucer. Whatever allowed him to see through the hull
of the ship had shut down or been destroyed, and he was, momentarily blinded.

  He instinctively pulled the disk into a complex evasive climb, zigzagging up and out of the swarm, rotating as he went and scattering weapons fire in his wake. He was back to the screen viewer now, limiting what he could see in his periphery, but he saw the glare and puff of at least two arrowheads exploding.

  Triumph, defiance and blood lust swam red through his mind as he wheeled the ship, pinioning, ratcheting, leaping back into the fray, targeting one ship, then another, firing as fast as he could think, and with each desperate shot, he felt himself grow weaker, less in control, as if he were firing bolts of his own life force.

  But then he saw Morat’s Locust and swept into pursuit, firing half blind with rage and exhaustion. Whether he was traitor or imposter didn’t matter any more. Morat was a killer, an enemy combatant. Alan strained to hold on, angling, adjusting, jinking the saucer left and right as Morat tried to shake him. Alan could feel the other ships tearing toward him at the edge of consciousness but his anger gave him focus till he could see nothing but Morat’s ship. He twisted, dove, rotated …

  And fired.

  The moment he got the shot away Alan gasped with relief, but now the rest were on him, pummeling the disk so that it shuddered and slid first one way and then another, and he could feel the lasers carving into the metal. His craft slewed into a ragged climb and he lost sight of Morat’s Locust, all of his attention scanning for the other ships. He must have hit Morat. Surely …

  Then there was something else, two pale streaks, like missiles but not clearly solid, coming right at him. He dropped the disk a thousand feet in under a second, and one of the streaks shot over head. The other, somehow, adjusted, dipped, swerved, and hit him.

  The disk did not come apart, but it began to roll in the air, such that Alan turned over and over, systems failing, and he was holding on by the edges of his mind as he lost sense of what was happening.

  Dimly he remembered the weapon he’d used before when he’d saved Rodriguez—his one achievement for the day—the thing which had sought out the center of their attack and then burst like a firework, tumbling the enemy to nothing. Perhaps if he could find that, or something like it, something bigger.

  The thought was dreamy and unspecific. Alan felt himself sliding into something like sleep, and for a second, he thought he was hallucinating the new ship.

  It was not an arrowhead, and not a Locust, and not a silver disk like the craft he was flying. It was something different, spherical and glowing with a steady orange glow that reminded him of the craft he had seen over the Afghan mountains so very long ago. He didn’t know where it had come from or what it was going to do, but he saw the light at its heart focus, and knew some kind of terrible weapon was coming.

  With the last of his strength, he muttered, “Fire.”

  And as the blast radius spread towards the tumbling arrowheads, coursing through them, and blowing many of them away like leaves, he careened at full speed into the sphere.

  72

  TIMIKA

  Indian Springs Auxiliary field number 1 (closed), Nevada

  TIMIKA OPENED HER EYES AND TRIED TO SIT UP.

  “Keep still.” It was the soldier who had been in the back of the Humvee with them. Simmons.

  “How long was I out?” she asked as memory rushed in.

  “Couple of minutes. Maybe five,” said Simmons.

  “Which is it?”

  “Which is what?”

  “A couple—which is two,” said Timika, “or five, which is—you know—longer.”

  “Five,” said Simmons, irritated. “How do you feel?”

  “Well, I seem to have this fucking hole in my shoulder. So, you know, been better.”

  “Apart from the pain?” said Simmons, his patience peeling away like sunburned skin.

  “Apart from the pain, I feel like I could run a marathon. I couldn’t, of course, because I’d die,” said Timika. “On account of the pain.”

  “Right,” said Simmons. “But your breathing’s okay? You don’t feel nauseated or like you might pass out again?”

  “No,” said Timika, taking pity on the boy. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

  She looked around. “Where’s Jennifer and the officer?”

  “Took the Humvee to go after that … guy.”

  “Skeletor?”

  “That’s the one,” said Simmons, grinning in spite of himself. “There’s a medical team en route. There’s a lot going on at the base, but they’ll be here soon.”

  “Good,” said Timika. “Wait. No. Not good. There’s something I have to do.”

  She tried to get to her feet.

  “I told you to keep still,” said Simmons.

  “You gonna shoot me?” she asked.

  “No ma’am,” said Simmons, chastened.

  “Then help me up,” she said.

  Simmons sighed but knew that there was no point arguing. He let her use him to get upright and then escorted her to the manhole.

  “You can’t manage that ladder,” he said.

  “I won’t use my right hand,” said Timika. It was a concession, but one she knew she had to make. Her shoulder throbbed, and she couldn’t raise her arm without excruciating pain.

  “I gotta stay here with him,” said Simmons, nodding at the cuffed and unconscious man in the police uniform.

  “It’s okay. If I need you, I’ll holler.”

  She maneuvered herself awkwardly into the shaft and descended, one rung at a time, relying on her left hand, until she reached the bottom. She reached around with her good arm and plucked the flashlight from her right pocket, then approached the open door with the drawer and the box.

  She considered the metal lid, molded with the square wings of a German eagle. She fumbled with her left hand until the clasps popped and she opened it to reveal the treasure she’d been chasing for so very long, even now wondering what Jerzy Stern could have thought was so important.

  She gasped.

  Inside the box was a slab of stone, covered with deeply scored carvings in some language she did not know. It reeked of antiquity. It was, she thought, Old Testament old.

  Around the rim was set a band of bluish metal, which pulsed and glowed as she moved her hands over it. It was the same material Katarina Lundergrass had shown her, though her piece had been a mere fragment of something her father had picked up long ago at the world’s most famous crash site.

  “You got something?” called Simmons.

  “Yeah,” she breathed. “I got something.”

  73

  JENNIFER

  Nevada

  IT WAS LIKE DRIVING ON THE RUTTED BACK ROADS OF Africa, as if they were rushing to glimpse some nocturnal lion kill or to outrun a territorial hippo. The four-wheel-drive Humvee sped along the road and handled those moments when, as they tried to stay close to the gray car, they sometimes left the road entirely. Saltzburg, by contrast, was weaving erratically.

  “You think he’s hit?” Jennifer shouted, shifting down a gear.

  “Not sure,” said Regis. He had braced himself into a precarious kneeling crouch in the rooftop gun port, his head and shoulder exposed, the rifle aimed forward as he tried to get a shot. When she asked if he thought that was safe, he shrugged. “So long as you don’t flip the vehicle and cut my damn head off,” he said.

  “Where the hell is he going?” Jennifer muttered.

  The car’s taillights showed where Saltzburg left the road, pulling hard up a ridge not unlike those she’d hiked on Hapsel’s land earlier in the evening. It would be hard going for a low, two-wheel drive vehicle, and she wasn’t surprised when the car stopped to redirect, pulling hard up the ridge. In the delay, the Humvee closed the distance between them until they were almost alongside him. It was in that instant that Saltzburg risked a shot from the driving seat.

  Jennifer saw the flash of the pistol but didn’t hear it over the Humvee’s engine, and then Regis was returning fire above he
r, shell casings raining down into the cab and spinning under her feet. Saltzburg smashed his way through the desert brush of the ridgeline, but he was on level ground, whereas the Humvee canted dangerously as they ran beside him. One false move and they really might roll. She risked a glance at Regis as he fired again, and this time he hit.

  The flank of the gray sedan, already scuffed and buckled from the drive, was punctured in several places close to the front wheels. Then the tire blew and the car slewed dangerously, first down their side, then back up and over the ridge, where it bucked against a boulder, careened on two wheels, and finally flipped, rolling down the slope on the other side.

  Jennifer slowed the Humvee and angled its nose over the ridgeline and down again, until its lights fell on the mangled wreckage of the other car. She was out and running before Regis could stop her, before she even knew what she would do when she reached the man who’d killed her father, if he had survived the accident.

  He hadn’t. That was instantly apparent. She felt a savage triumph, chased by more complex feelings that she could not put into words. At last, conscious that those strange emotions had settled into a kind of profound relief, and closure, she trudged back up to the Humvee where Regis was shouting into the radio, one hand pressed hard against his ear as if to wring whatever sound there was from the headset.

  “I can barely hear you,” he was saying. “What? Yes. We’re on the ground. I think we can get there. Hold on, Alan.”

  And then they were driving again.

  74

  ALAN

  Nevada airspace

  THE DISK WAS GOING DOWN. HARD. SO WAS THE sphere. He’d hurtled into it, all weapons blazing, and now his barely conscious mind was telling him that that had been a mistake.

  He’d targeted the craft because he’d assumed it was part of the hostile fleet, but its weapons had not been locked onto him. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he had felt it at the moment of impact, the shrill cry of alarm and surprise that he’d sensed through the metal of the battered disk, until a single awful thought registered, even as he slammed into the sphere’s hull.