by N. W. Harris
Armor covered every part of his body from his head to his feet. Stifling a sigh, he was relieved to be masked and hidden from the view of the enemy. Most of the simulations he remembered from the neural upload were conducted from this point on, so he felt like he was practically home free for an instant. But then he began to worry that the suit would be monitoring his vitals and other data closely—it might be reporting to his new masters’ computers. They could be watching him even more closely than before.
A sudden burst of cool air puffed from the interior lining of the armor, like it sensed his sweating and was trying to cool him down. The suit and its onboard computer were capable of so much; they’d seen only half of what it could do in the simulations. Slowing his breathing, he tried to act as mesmerized as he had before. He followed the armored slave ahead of him as he moved toward the next chamber.
He worried about his friends. Some of them had to be in his line behind him, and he never heard any commotion that would’ve come from their discovery. But at least two teammates were in other lines, which had now been separated into individual tubes. They had to make it to the chamber where the slaves would receive their final neural upload, and then they’d be reunited.
The female voice that told them to strip before played softly from speakers near his ears. It relayed a story of people coming from the stars to influence man and explained it was the Anunnaki who brought humans out of the Stone Age. She claimed they’d fought off other alien species that tried to take the planet in the past, and said they were here to help humans defeat a new enemy. As if activating the slave gene wasn’t enough, the enemy was brainwashing their new recruits. If Shane didn’t know they planned to pit humans against each other for sport and then use the winners as slave mercenaries in wars throughout the galaxy, he might’ve believed they were here to help.
The next chamber would be where he and his friends could slip away into the passageway that would lead to the reactor. A soldier standing near the entrance gave him a rifle, but the charge gauge for it in his helmet read zero. Arriving at the large chamber, he met with hundreds of red-clad humans standing in ranks. They tilted their heads back, their rifles across their chests. They were receiving the neural upload that would teach them how to use their new armor and weapons and give them their mission plans.
Once the upload was complete, the slave soldiers relaxed. They removed their helmets and started talking, examining their weapons and armor.
They seemed free, mingling with each other, joking and laughing like they’d been together for years. But they were speaking Anunnaki. This was scarier than an army of glazed-eyed automatons. Via their neural upload, these teens had the education of a Navy Seal, and they were wearing the high-tech smart armor of a super soldier from the future. But what made them most formidable was that they would all be fully committed to fighting for the Anunnaki.
Taking off his helmet, he overheard the kid in front of him talking excitedly about the mission ahead, grateful for the opportunity to avenge his parents. These were the perfect slaves. The Anunnaki actually made these kids believe in what they were fighting for, convincing them that they were under attack by another group of aliens.
His team gathered together, and he glanced around and saw no Anunnaki watching their corner of the hangar.
“You got this?” he whispered to Tracy, nodding toward the chattering new recruits.
She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.
He hoped the communications between them weren’t being monitored. It seemed unlikely—there were too many people in this room to listen to every conversation. Once they placed the Shock Troop decals on, it would sever the suits from the ship’s computer, and they wouldn’t have to worry about being overheard.
He turned and walked toward the small access hatch that should be in the back left corner of the room. It was hidden between two metal beams that rose from the floor at an angle, part of the skeletal structure of the pyramid-shaped vessel. He tried to be casual, though he was holding his breath the entire way. The beams provided cover, and he sighed with relief once he stepped between them and saw the service hatch. Except for Tracy, the rest of his team slipped over to join him, Steve and Laura first.
“Holy crap,” Steve whispered. “I can’t believe this ship is for real.”
“Believe it,” Shane snapped. “Stay focused.”
Shane rested his fingers on the control panel to the right side of the hatch, his stomach doing somersaults because he worried some of the codes had slipped from his mind. Trying not to think about it, he entered the first sequence that came to him. All the information he needed was supposed to be in his brain, though he feared it was a jumble and would prove useless when he called upon it. His fingers danced across the screen, regurgitating information from his mind in an almost involuntary process. Nothing happened. He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus on letting the information flow from him.
Failing a second time, Shane glanced back at his friends, sick with concern. What if the enemy had somehow found out they were coming and changed all the access codes?
“Let me,” Laura whispered, gently pushing him aside and putting her hand over the controls. Her fingers danced confidently over the alien symbols, and the door made a whishing sound as it leapt aside.
“Thank God for you, Laura,” Maurice said. “I don’t think my mind retained any of that stuff.”
Shane made a sound of agreement, relief flooding his veins. Laura had always been the best at operating the Anunnaki computers in the simulations. He’d been thinking all along that he’d have to be the one to input the sequences into the reactor controls to destroy it, and had been stressing so much that he made himself forget the hatch access codes. He should have recognized this was probably Laura’s purpose, the reason she’d been selected to be on his team in the first place.
Beyond was a narrow, gray corridor, lit by a string of lights running along the ceiling. Shane imagined it wasn’t too different from what might be seen on a modern naval warship. Other than the control panels at the hatches, the overall appearance of the behemoth spacecraft was not as high tech-looking as he would’ve expected an alien vessel to be. The Anunnaki seemed to have gone out of their way to make the ship seem almost antique in some ways.
“The maintenance corridor,” Liam observed excitedly.
Hope surged through him. They’d made it this far, and Kelly’s team probably had too. He started to believe in the rebels’ impossible plan.
They climbed through the opening, and he looked out into the crowded chamber before closing it. He hated leaving Tracy all alone with the slave soldiers, but she was the best person for the job.
The hatch snuffed all sound coming from the holding chamber. They stood motionless. Cocked heads inspected the fresh silence, and wide eyes blinked in disbelief. The corridor sloped upward, curving deeper into the spacecraft. Not wasting any time, Shane took his armored glove off and retrieved the two small circles of material hidden between his cheek and upper gum.
“Put them on,” he ordered. They wouldn’t be invisible to the ship’s computer until they had the Shock Troop symbol unraveled across their armor.
He stuck one on his chest, and it spread like living paint across the glossy, red surface, forming the emblem of the Shock Troop as promised and covering the black slave stripe. He handed the other to Steve, who placed it on his back. Then Shane returned the favor. Once they were all disguised, there was another pause, like they expected something dramatic to happen.
Overcome with relief that they were essentially invisible now, Shane chuckled at the tension.
“It’s okay, people,” he said quietly, looking in each of their eyes. “We’re kicking butt. We just have to keep doing what we’re doing, and we got this.”
“Yeah,” Steve seconded enthusiastically. “It’s on!”
The others sighed and appeared to relax as well, their growing confidence showing on their faces.
Shane put his glove and helme
t back on, heading up the corridor with his friends in tow. They were over the halfway point—the hardest part might be behind them. They just had to play the Shock Troop card if they encountered the enemy along the way.
A couple of hundred yards up, Shane came upon a hatch on the right.
“We should find charged weapons in here,” he said, butterflies returning to his stomach as Laura placed her hand on the control pad. Each of these hatches had different access codes, and he wasn’t sure he remembered any of them. What if Laura didn’t retain them all either? This mission could go to hell in a hurry if they couldn’t open hatches.
Yet again, the first sequence that she tried worked. The opening revealed a small, empty chamber with glass sloping away from the floor, like the window of an air traffic control tower. There were three chairs and a computer terminal in front of the glass. Shane stepped into the room and looked out of the window. Below, he could see the Great Pyramid. Long poles reached away from the ship, down to rest on the massive stones. The dim light reflected off streams flowing up through the cracks in the ancient pyramid’s stones. They were all different colors—white, gold, silver, yellow, black, and transparent like water. They flowed through the pyramid and into the mouths of the poles, which were apparently pipes.
“Like a giant tick,” Jake said distantly. “Sucking Earth dry.”
“No use in staying here and watching the show,” Steve said, nodding toward the hatch. His red armor added so much bulk to his already-big frame. Holding the plasma rifle, he looked more formidable than ever. “This ain’t what we’re looking for.”
“He’s right.” Shane opened the cabinet with rifles in it, the reason they’d stopped in this chamber. “Swap your weapon with one of these.”
He retrieved a plasma rifle from the rack and replaced it with his empty one. As soon as he took hold of the new gun, a horizontal bar showed up on the charge gauge in his helmet.
“These babies are live,” Liam said after taking his weapon. “Now it’s time to get even.”
Holding the fully charged plasma gun in his hands brought to mind images of the holes it could sear through flesh and bone, the lives it could take. It was the deadliest weapon he’d ever held and, inevitably, he’d have to kill with it. He swallowed the metallic taste in his mouth and watched his team swap out their rifles. After glancing both ways to be sure it was clear, he slipped out of the chamber. He signaled for them to follow and continued climbing into the ship.
Looking down at the weapon as he walked, he came to terms with what had to be done. He desperately wanted revenge, but he couldn’t stand the idea of killing again. One moment of hesitation at the wrong time, and it would be his friends who’d be getting killed. A question struck him that made him feel even sicker. Was he more worried about taking the lives of those who’d destroyed his, or afraid he might enjoy it?
“Heads up,” Steve whispered.
Two Anunnaki, wearing the white jumpsuits of engineers, came down the passageway toward them. As he’d been taught in the simulations, Shane immediately adopted an air of confidence, pulling his shoulders back and walking as tall as he could. His friends fell in a line behind him so they could pass the aliens. Sweat beaded on his brow, and the armor blasted him with a puff of cool air. His breathing seemed to roar inside the helmet, though he tried to stay calm and have faith in his disguise. He marched toward the engineers, hoping they’d ignore his team.
When they drew close, the Anunnaki’s eyes widened. They stepped to the side and stopped, putting their right fists over their hearts and bowing their heads as Shane and his friends passed.
The disguise worked brilliantly. Cool relief flooding through him, Shane dared a glance over his shoulder and saw the engineers hurrying down the passageway, like they didn’t want to be under the scrutiny of the soldiers for any longer than necessary.
“That was easy,” Laura whispered.
“Yeah, but it’s gonna get a whole lot harder,” Shane warned, not wanting anyone to get cocky.
Another hatch appeared on the right.
“This should be the one,” Shane whispered, holding his breath and stepping aside so Laura could enter the access code.
The door leapt open, revealing a long passageway. It was narrower than the one they’d been climbing, with metal ribs spaced every twenty feet and the ceiling curving overhead.
“This looks like it,” Liam said eagerly, pushing his way past Shane into the passageway.
“Reminds me of the tunnel under Atlanta where I whooped that ass,” Steve teased, nudging him. When the pressure was on, he never failed to interject a dose of humor.
“Yeah, those were some good times,” he replied with a tense chuckle. “But I’m pretty sure I was the one doing the whooping.” Although Shane wasn’t keen on remembering the nightmare they’d been through in Atlanta at this time, he did respect what Steve was trying to do.
Glancing up and down the main corridor, Shane ushered his friends into the passageway. He worried their chances of being discovered doubled with each passing second and was amazed they’d come this far without problems. The hatch closed, and they headed toward the engineering compartment.
“I wonder how the other teams are doing?” Laura said, her voice pitched with anxiety.
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Shane replied promptly, unable to keep the concern out of his voice. “We just have to hope they’re on schedule.”
Thinking of the timing issue once again, he suddenly felt like the plan was too ridiculous to work. It seemed impossible for seven teams spread across the globe to hit seven targets at about the same time with no communication between them. There was no choice but to have faith. They passed the point of no return as soon as they mounted the ramp leading into this wretched ship.
The access tunnel rose upward. In spite of the armor assisting their movement, they were huffing by the time they came to the next hatch. They were all in peak physical condition, but he reckoned the stress caused them to breathe too shallow. This hatch carried the strange warning symbol he remembered, indicating it was a blast door into the reactor chamber. He exhaled some tension and rallied his courage.
“This is it,” he said, looking at his friends. “Once we get inside, we have to go straight to the reactor control panel. Laura, you stay with me. You guys distract any engineers near it. Don’t act aggressive. They may not suspect us until it’s too late.”
“Quarterback sneak,” Steve mused.
“Exactly.”
“Hey,” Laura said, laughing nervously. He couldn’t see her face, but it sounded like she was trembling. “I am not a ball.”
In the wake of a chuckle, he thought of Tracy. She’d fought alongside him in every conflict since the world went to shit. She was always cool in these situations and wolverine-vicious when it came to a fight. But she was also a born leader, which was what it would take to get the teens organized once they were released from Anunnaki control. Whether he liked it or not, she was right where she needed to be.
“Put it here,” Shane said, sticking his gloved hand out, palm down.
Steve put his hand on top, and the rest followed.
“We are one,” he said, channeling Coach Rice. “The individual can be crushed, but the team is indestructible.”
“Go team,” Steve added, a growl in his voice.
They broke, and Shane nodded for Laura to input the code into the screen next to the door. The thick hatch slid into the wall, and a low roar poured through the opening.
“Let’s do this,” Jake said with forced enthusiasm.
They stepped through the hatch into the massive chamber. It was shaped like a pill standing on its end, a cylinder with a curved top and bottom. The reactor core, a column of bright white light, stood before him. It operated at near-full capacity, providing power for the control of the slave soldiers and for the resource extraction processes happening through the Great Pyramid under the ship. The excess of power would send the core well beyond Earth’s
atmosphere before it exploded. Shane looked left and found the main control panel. About thirty engineers were scattered around the reactor compartment. It was less than he had to deal with in any of the simulations.
His confidence soared—this might be way easier than expected. He made a beeline for the control panel, Laura beside him. The engineers were preoccupied with their jobs, and no one seemed to notice the Shock Troops marching into their space. Stepping onto the elevated platform, he drew the attention of the engineer working at the control panel. Looking over his shoulder, his eyes grew wide at Shane’s approach. He leapt to his feet, put his fist over his chest, and bowed his head.
The alien would sound the alarm if they tried to touch the control panel. There was no other choice. Before the engineer could stand upright, he drove the butt of his plasma rifle down on his skull. A splatter of blood defacing the back of his white jumpsuit, the engineer was flattened onto the floor. Shane hadn’t intended to kill unless there was no other choice, but the adrenaline and the amplified strength the suit gave him caused him to strike too hard.
Stepping over the body, he knew he’d better get used to taking lives again. He was about to help execute everyone in this chamber.
Laura sat down at the controls and pulled off her gloves. She rested her hands over the backlit surface, and they immediately started dancing across the screen. Long and complex sequences of codes flowed through her fingers like she’d done this a thousand times.
Shane knew the gist of what she was doing but had lost some of the details provided in the neural upload. If she failed, he had to hope someone else on his team retained everything. Sweat ran down his face into his eyes, and he realized he was panting like he was running a marathon. He took a deep breath of the cool air the suit blew in his face and tried to relax. This was going to work. He’d get everyone out alive.
Glancing up, he saw the other engineers approaching, confused looks on their faces.
“Just finished the first stage,” Laura said, confidence growing in her voice.