Basically, if someone had given the eleven-year-old version of Bernhard a pencil and paper, then instructed him to create a weapon called “The Badass Weapon of Pure Fricking Awesome,” his adolescent self probably would have drawn something that looked exactly like this. Based on the number of orderly rows of the machines that he could see, Bernhard did some rough numbers in his head and came up with a rough estimate of about one hundred and thirty of the machines.
While normally that number might have been impressive, the adult tactical part of his brain immediately registered a problem. “That’s not enough of these things.”
“I don’t know, Bernhard,” Hodges said. “It looks like enough firepower to cause some serious damage to me.”
“But it’s out of proportion to the number of Cortex drones that we’ve been seeing,” Bernhard said.
“I do not think the Cortex made these,” Li said.
“I think you’re right,” Bernhard said. “But again, that doesn’t make any sense. What would all these things be doing here if they were made or designed by a different civilization or alien race.” As soon as he said it, a thought occurred to him. “Wait, I think I’ve got an idea. Everyone, follow me.”
Bernhard led them away from the fenced-in area and to the nearest hill. The arrangement of the hills, with their squarish pattern around the peculiar base, brought to Bernhard’s mind what the world looked like when flying above the Heartland states, and how the divisions between developed land always looked like perfect squares from the sky. As they got to the top of the hill and looked down beyond, Bernhard felt like his suspicions were confirmed.
Down in the valley between the hills, there was a very similar setup to what they had just seen. There was a selection of buildings, these one mostly round domes in shape, and several lines of what looked like might happen if someone crossed a crab with a tank. Everything from the coloring to the design clearly implied a very different designer than what they had already seen.
“Those are pretty cool, too,” Houston said. “But I still don’t get what we’re seeing.”
“I do,” Bernhard said. “What do you want to bet somewhere in this room there’s a square of land that’s empty and waiting to be filled?”
“Filled with what?” Hodges asked.
Zersky answered before Bernhard could. “Us. There’s a patch of land with humanity’s name on it. And once the Cortex is finished with their complete extermination of us, our buildings and our weapons will go there.”
Bernhard nodded. “We’re in a trophy room. These are the alien cultures and civilizations that the Cortex have already wiped out.”
Further inspection not only showed them that there were plenty more vanquished races among the Cortex’s conquests, but that the air was full of them as well, far more than any of them suspected would have been possible. High up in various corners of the sky, there were floating buildings and vehicles that none of them could hope to reach at the moment, all of them bobbing in the air with no indication of how they had gotten there or what might be keeping them afloat.
The one thing they didn’t find among this graveyard of civilizations, though, was anything alive. Even a few cursory inspections of the buildings failed to give them more than a vague idea of what the aliens who had once lived there had looked like. All other sign of their existence was gone, leaving the humans to make guesses at what they may have been like in the same way that paleontologists had to guess the skin color of dinosaurs.
“This is all very creepy,” Johnson said. “I’m not sure if I want to stay in here for much longer.”
“Really?” Bernhard asked her. “With all the scientific knowledge you could gain from studying all this?”
“Scientific knowledge can be gained by digging up the bones in a cemetery,” Johnson said. “That doesn’t make it feel any less ghoulish when you’re going through it.”
“I must agree,” Teng said. “While the amount that could be learned here is staggering, wandering around dead alien worlds is not getting us any closer to shutting down the Nerve.”
Teng was right, although Bernhard wasn’t ready to admit it out loud yet. If this room showed them anything, it was that the Visitor was more vast than they had previously expected with surprising information that would take enormous teams of soldiers and scientists years to properly catalogue. Maybe the best course of action was, in fact, to head back to the Ambassador so they could get free of the jamming and report everything they’d seen and heard. And while the Nerve would surely be waiting for them there, they at least had an idea of what they were up against if they went back that direction. If they continued forward, however, they didn’t even have a guarantee that it would provide them with a way to shut down the jamming or stop the Nerve. Tactically, a temporary retreat from the Visitor was seeming more and more like the most intelligent option.
“Alright. Here’s what we’re going to do,” Bernhard said. “First, we need to find a defensible position where we’ll be able to fight off the Nerve when it comes for us again.”
“Don’t you mean ‘if’ it comes for us again?” Houston asked.
“No, I don’t. Maybe we can’t be one hundred percent sure that it was telling us the whole truth earlier, but I do believe this much: it’s going to do everything it can to get rid of us. Once we have this position, we need a solid rest. We’ll take shifts sleeping so that –”
“Wait,” Johnson said, holding up her hand and looking back over her shoulder. “Did anyone else hear that?”
Bernhard motioned for everyone to be quiet. For several seconds, he didn’t hear anything. When he did, though, he recognized the sound immediately.
“It’s Dufresne,” Bernhard said. “It sounds like she’s calling for help.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Where is it coming from?” Teng asked. “It is hard to tell the direction of sound in this place.”
Bernhard agreed. Although there was an enormous wall within easy walking distance of their current position, the room still felt like it was open air. There was even a slight breeze. The damned room was so large, it even had its own air currents. And yet there was a peculiar echoing quality to everything they said and heard.
“I think it’s coming from that direction,” McNeil said, motioning his rifle at a space further down the wall. It was difficult to judge how far they had already traveled, but if it wasn’t for the difference in the architecture of the trophy buildings up ahead, Bernhard would have thought that the archway he saw looming there was the same one they had come in. That was apparently their way out of here for now, but if they had to come back here, they would need to be conscious of how easy it was to get disoriented in here.
They all approached the archway ready for combat, but as they went through, they didn’t immediately see the source of any noise.
“Maybe we got the direction wrong,” Teng said.
“Or maybe we were just hearing things,” McNeil said.
“No, that was definitely Dufresne,” Houston said.
“If it was, then we’re probably about to walk into a trap,” Bernhard said. “There’s no reason why the Nerve wouldn’t take her over right away. There wouldn’t be a tactical advantage to leaving her uninfected.”
“Sure there would be,” Hodges said. “Leave her uninfected and she can be used as bait.”
“She can be used as bait even if she already has a worm in her,” Bernhard said. “As long as she hasn’t been revealed definitively to be taken over, then she could continue to deny it right up until the moment one of us lets our guard down and she spits worms in our face.”
“In that case, maybe the best plan of action would be to ignore any cries of help from her,” Zersky said. Houston immediately balked.
“We can’t do that! If there’s any chance at all that she’s uninfected, then we have to try saving her!”
“Houston, think about the stakes involved,” Johnson said. “The likelihood of her being uninfected is so low
that it practically doesn’t exist. But there are billions of people on Earth who are counting on us. We have to weigh the options.”
“Well, you know what?” Houston asked. He hefted the rifle he had picked up back in the room where they’d almost been executed. “Last I checked, I’m not military, so I don’t have to follow the military commands. And I’m going to look for her. If the rest of you want to go forward and save the world instead of her, then be my guest.”
Bernhard looked at Houston with renewed interest. He’d been so worried about his own concerns for the mission that he had completely missed it, but now it was painfully obvious. Houston was in love with Dufresne, or at least had some deeper level of feelings for her. Trying to convince him to ignore any further cries of help they might here wouldn’t work. Houston would go off on his own at some point if Bernhard wasn’t careful, and in the process, he himself would either get taken by the Nerve or else killed. As much as he’d rather not do it, it would save Bernhard a lot of headaches if they found Dufresne sooner rather than later and resolved this.
“Fine,” Bernhard said. “If we hear her again, we go looking for her. But if we don’t, we keep on going with our original plan of walking around aimlessly like a bunch of idiots.”
Johnson raised an eyebrow at that. “Losing a bit of hope, Bernhard?”
“No. Now come on, everyone. This hall doesn’t look quite the same as the ones we were in earlier.”
Indeed, unlike the ones they had previously seen, these walls seemed to be made of a darker material, and every so often, they pulsed irregularly with a faint glow. Li took out her instruments and did a few of the same tests she had earlier. “I think we may be getting closer to some kind of power source,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Bernhard asked. “To me, it just looks like we’re going back in the general direction from which we came.”
“No, I am not sure. Given the number of oddities about the ship, I would not be surprised at all if are in fact getting closer to whatever might be considered the heart of the Visitor.”
Houston shrugged. “We’ve already got the Nerve and the Cortex. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was in fact something on this ship actually called the Heart.”
From somewhere further down the halls, they finally heard Dufresne again. “Is someone there? Houston?”
Before Houston could respond, Bernhard gestured for him to stay quiet. The hall led them directly to another large room, although this one was closer in size to the hangar than the trophy room. In the center of the room was some kind of enormous pillar that glowed with the same unearthly light as the hall, except stronger. All around the pillar there were stairs and catwalks, and where they came in contact with the pillar, there were nodules that brought Bernhard to mind of some kind of computer workstations.
“Is this it?” Johnson whispered. Bernhard understood her sudden need to speak in hushed tones. There was something about the room that brought a certain reverence to him as well.
“Is this what?” Bernhard asked.
“The control room we’ve been looking for,” Johnson said.
“It certainly looks like it could be one,” Houston said. “But if it is, I wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to operate anything.”
“Hello? Bernhard? Johnson? I’m up here!”
Bernhard looked up, trying to find the source of Dufresne’s voice. “Dufresne? Where exactly are you?”
“Bernhard? Listen, I’m so sorry I was acting like an asshole to you. Please, you’ve got to get me out of here.”
“All’s forgiven, Dufresne,” Bernhard said, although that wasn’t even close to true. “Just give us some idea of where you are.”
“Uh, near the top, I think? The ceiling’s only like ten feet above me.”
Teng approached Bernhard and spoke quietly into his ear. “There is no way she has not been compromised.”
Bernhard nodded. “I agree, but if this is really the room we’re looking for, we’re going to need to secure it anyway before we start trying to play with any of the Visitor’s controls.” He spoke up again and directed his voice to the top of the pillar. “Dufresne, I know how hard it is for you, but I’m going to need you to be quiet while we do a sweep of the room.”
“Okay,” she said with a distinctly resigned and frightened tone. She sounded less like the obnoxious woman he’d been dealing with earlier and more like a scared child. That could simply be because of the experience she’d had, but Bernhard thought it far more likely that she wasn’t acting like Dufresne because, simply put, she wasn’t Dufresne anymore. She was part of the Nerve, and they were going to have to put her down.
A quick sweep of the lowest area of the room showed them two entrances and three sets of stairs that led up to various parts of the catwalk. Above them, the various catwalks and steps formed a maze upon which any of the Nerve’s worms or bodies could be hiding. This was a very bad place to try making a stand, but they had to secure it no matter what.
“Houston, Johnson, and Li,” Bernhard said. “You three are going to stay down here and stand in the most open, viewable spot possible, but try not to stand under any of the catwalks where a worm could drop on you from above. Zersky and Chow, you two are going to guard the doors. One of you at each, but maintain line of sight with the scientists at all times, both for their safety and for yours. If you see anything at all moving in the halls beyond, you obliterate it. Teng, take your people and split them into two groups of three. Each group takes one of the stairways going up while I’ll go up the third with Hodges and McNeil. Check every possible space you find that could be small enough for a worm to hide, and just like the scientists, watch above you for any place where one could drop on your head. I want this entire room completely and totally secured. Everyone got it?”
They all took their positions, and the three teams of three started up the stairs. They only got up to the first level of catwalks before Dufresne broke her promise to shut up. “Hey, Bernhard? I think the Nerve’s setting you up for a trap.”
Bernhard didn’t answer. He already knew this, of course, and already knew that she would be the point where the trap snapped shut. The only question was what he was going to do to neutralize her. The smartest thing would be to shoot her as soon as they reached her so that she couldn’t try that spitting trick on anyone. Houston, however, might have a problem with that, and they needed him to keep working with them. He might be a little hesitant to continue cooperating with them if he happened to witness Bernhard put two bullets in the skull of what used to be his girlfriend.
“Bernhard, can you hear me? The Nerve said something to me about still having bodies hidden in the group. Someone with you is still part of the Nerve but pretending to be human!”
Bernhard motioned for Hodges and McNeil to stop behind them as they were halfway up another set of stairs. He could see Teng’s group also stop at Dufresne’s words, while Taam’s kept going as though they hadn’t heard her.
“Captain, it’s got to be a trick,” McNeil whispered to Bernhard. “The Nerve knows that we’re onto it and is trying to make us paranoid against each other again.”
“Yeah, besides, you already know that none of us are with the Nerve,” Hodges said. “We’re all the ones that passed your test, remember?”
Bernhard nodded as though he believed them completely, but his mind was already working. What better way would there have been for one of the Nerve’s bodies to gain his trust than to show most of the people it controlled during the fake execution, but still leave one or two hidden within the group? Even if it had just been one left behind, that part of the Nerve could have infected more while everyone’s guard had been down again. It was an insidious plan that Bernhard could have easily swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
He tried to push that idea away. McNeil and Hodges were right. This could only be the Nerve trying to mess with them. There was no tactical reason why the Nerve wouldn’t have infected Dufresne. She had to be lying.
> Then again, he’d been saying exactly that to the group repeatedly ever since the fake execution. If there was indeed still a mole within their group, then the Nerve knew they wouldn’t trust Dufresne. It would be a brilliant mind game, then, to not infect her, but in fact let them shoot her. In the end, she would be off the board one way or the other and there would be one less human for the Nerve to exterminate while the mole continued to work undetected within the group.
Also, McNeil and Hodges were being very insistent that Dufresne still be killed. Possibly too insistent.
Bernhard looked up again to the top of the pillar. He thought he could see Dufresne sitting against the railing of one of the catwalks, possibly with her arms secured behind her back. Her position was actually the perfect position from which someone could attack them. It offered a clear line of sight of all three scientists on the floor, as well as Zersky. As the three military groups ascended, they too could be fired upon. Of course, the Nerve didn’t seem to have any weapons, and the weapons its bodies had once wielded were now in the hands of the scientists.
If Dufresne was telling the truth, then the higher they all went and the closer they got to her, the more chance a mole in their group would be able to kill most of them with just a handful of well-placed shots.
Bernhard stopped on the second level of the catwalks. “Everyone stop!” he called out. He saw the other two groups instantly stop progressing, although they were both at least a level higher than him by now. Both McNeil and Hodges, however, seemed less than pleased with his order.
Alpha Contact Page 9