Again, Sophie said nothing. Emanuel couldn’t commit either. He merely held Sophie’s hand, relishing the warmth of her touch. Relishing this human connection.
But at the rear of the ship, someone did speak.
“Two hours is all it takes?” Diego asked. “I’ll join.”
— 21 —
The inside of the Organic cruiser was larger than the zoo ship Noble had spent the past however long in. He stood next to Roots as the drone that had dropped them off zipped away.
A pair of spiders clambered over, screeching and swiping at the air.
“Guess they want us to start moving,” Noble said to Roots.
The alien followed him away from the landing zone. The hangar doors clanked shut behind them. Noble figured there was a force field here like the ones he’d seen before, to trap in the atmosphere. The gravity here felt stronger than on the Moon. The ship must have some way of creating artificial gravity.
Just ahead, the alien prisoners brought by other drones were being rolled in orbs. Other alien prisoners that could survive the atmosphere were herded by spiders past the dozens of docked Organic ships. There was a row of them that looked like fighter jets. He had seen these before—they had wings like the NTC X-90s, but a dorsal fin on the back like that of a shark. Laser cannons were attached under both wings, and a third was mounted on the back dorsal.
Noble scanned the room as he and Roots were directed around the craft. Recessed lights shed a bright glow over hundreds of prisoners. New aliens Noble had never seen before were among the ranks of Organics.
Once they rounded the aircraft, he saw what seemed to be their destination—a curved area in the floor that looked like a bowl. Rows of glowing chambers surrounded the lip of the oval opening. Each chamber held an alien floating in a crimson liquid. Clouds of particles shifted around the aliens. Their bodies twisted and shook as the clouds of particles drilled into them. Noble wasn’t familiar with all these species, but the way in which they writhed and whipped inside those chambers made it appear as if they were in extreme pain.
At one end, spiders pulled out aliens one by one. Those aliens that were pulled out of their chambers gave off a slight glow and, despite their varied anatomies, they shared one feature in common—obsidian armor plates adorned their features, allowing them to blend in with the spiders and Sentinels and all the other Organic abominations that had brought havoc to Earth. Whatever these chambers were, they took in free aliens on one end and produced some kind of strange Organic monstrosities at the other.
No way in hell did Noble want to become an Organic.
A roar from a furry creature being led toward the chambers echoed through the space. The beast making the ruckus fought the two spiders trying to push it toward the oval bowl. A beak that looked like a nose was centered on the top of the alien’s forehead, and a row of eyeballs were right below. It stood on two legs and fought with three arms, all of the limbs covered in yellow fur.
The spiders swiped at the beast and it grabbed one of the claws, yanking the limb right off the spider’s body. Using the limb, it beat the creature to blue pulp while the other spider retreated.
Apparently the aliens’ force fields weren’t activated on this ship. Maybe those fields couldn’t be powered with the intense energy that seemed to be pumping into those chambers, turning other aliens into Organics. It didn’t particularly matter what the reason was. Seeing their force fields down gave him an idea. He wasn’t about to let his brain get fried so the Organics could control him like a slave soldier.
He reached over and touched Roots on its slimy head, hoping the alien would be able to feel his thoughts and the plan in his mind. One of the spiders flanking them gave him a warning swipe. The other spider scampered toward the furry alien.
Roots touched Noble with the spongy tip of an arm. Apparently it had a plan of its own. His alien friend couldn’t fight, but Roots believed it could control one of the aircraft. According to Roots, the craft, as Noble had wondered, seemed to be a mix of biological and mechanical technology. Roots had connected briefly with the craft on their ride here, and it had been able to mesh with the vehicle just as it did with Noble now. If they could get to one of them, then they would have a shot of getting out of here.
Noble knew it was unlikely, but they had to try.
Roots pointed at one of the spacecraft with a wormy appendage.
I’ll grab you and run to that fighter. Okay? Noble told him with a thought.
The other alien prisoners on their way to the chambers had all stopped to screech, croak, and wail. Several of them joined the furry beast in fighting the spiders. Hatches opened beyond the parked aircraft, disgorging dozens of Sentinels and hundreds of spiders. The rebellious aliens would be no match for the Organic reinforcements.
The other spider flanking Noble and Roots joined the small army, giving Noble his opportunity. He reached over, picked Roots up, and made a run for the closest fighter.
High-pitched shrieks followed them, sending a chill across Noble’s naked body. But he was no longer afraid of death from the talons that could tear him to shreds—he was afraid of dying without putting up a fight.
He risked a glance over his shoulder. Five spiders were slashing at the furry alien. Deep gashes opened on its back and legs, gushing green. Other alien prisoners had joined the fight, thrashing out at the spiders.
The beast let out a long, deep roar. It grabbed a spider’s head and plucked it off with ease. Then it tossed the skull at another spider, smashing its mandibles. Picking up a severed spider limb, it continued to beat back the spiders.
But hundreds more of the aliens were closing in.
Noble ran harder. He was almost to a row of the alien fighter jets.
Scratch, scrape, scratch, scrape.
The sound made Noble whirl.
Right into the path of a spider. The beast had leapt off the top of one of the other fighters, landing directly between Noble and Roots.
A claw slashed through the air in front of Noble’s chest, close enough he could feel the whoosh over his naked flesh. He jumped back, and then ducked as another arm speared toward him. He felt that too as it ripped through the air right above his skull.
Dropping to the ground, Noble rolled away, narrowly escaping a third arm that punched the floor with a claw. The scratch on metal sent a chill across his body. He pushed himself up and darted away.
He searched for Roots, but the alien was no longer in sight.
Noble looked over his shoulder to see the spider pursuing him. It scrambled over the floor, screeching through open mandibles.
“Roots!” Noble shouted. He scanned the line of fighters for his friend, but still didn’t see any sign of the creature. Had his friend really abandoned him in his time of need?
Noble skidded to a halt when three more spiders came fanning out after him. Heart pounding, he slowly turned to look for a way out.
Forming a circle, the aliens closed in around him, talons slashing the air, mandibles clicking.
His eyes fixated on the blue claws that were about to tear into his flesh. In a few seconds his blood would stream out of his body and the horror would be over. Noble held up his balled fists. He had no other weapon, but he’d be damned if he didn’t go out without at least trying to fight these monsters.
A clicking noise sounded over the din. But this wasn’t from a claw scratching over metal. Noble focused on the cockpit of one of the fighters, where movement sloshed inside. The cannons on the wings erupted with blue flashes, and plasma bolts slashed through the chamber.
Warm liquid sprayed across Noble’s flesh as he hit the ground. Despite being soaked in alien blood, he couldn’t help but think Roots was looking out for him after all.
The gun barrels went silent, and Noble looked up. Splatter marks showed where the four spiders had been seconds earlier. His eyes flitted to the cockpit of the closest fighter.
“Roots, you son of a bitch!” Noble said, unable to help the grin spreading
across his face. He didn’t waste any more time. He jumped to his feet and sprinted for the alien fighter jet Roots had commandeered. When he got to the hatch, he looked over his shoulder at the furry alien beast that had created the diversion. It was on both knees now, still swinging the spider limb.
The first of the pack arrived, their claws impaling the alien over and over. All around the beast, the other prisoners crashed to the ground, hacked and diced to pieces by the spiders. Those that hadn’t fought remained on the sidelines, silent.
The furry beast let out one final roar that filled the entire hangar.
Noble climbed inside the cockpit next to Roots. The alien had all four limbs extended, the sponge tips going to work. The engines rumbled, and Noble shut the hatch to seal them inside. Reaching over, he touched his alien friend and asked, “How did you fire the cannons?”
Roots reached out with one of the sponges. Through that connection, Roots showed him a tutorial of how the cannons worked.
“Hell yeah,” Noble said. He punched the glowing buttons on the dashboard. Using a touch pad, he moved the cannon into position as the ship lifted off the ground.
Lining up the sights on the other spiders, Noble pushed the fire button, releasing blue plasma fire into the hangar. The bolts obliterated dozens of the spiders in a volley that sent a geyser of limbs and gore into the air. He raked the weapons back and forth, destroying other fighters and pulverizing a pair of Sentinels.
“Good riddance, assholes,” Noble muttered.
Spiders sneaking up on their six vanished in a spray of blue mist as Noble opened up with the rear dorsal gun.
“Let’s go, Roots!” he yelled.
The ship slowly turned, and Noble directed his fire at the idle fighters still docked, blowing gaping holes in their sides. Flames rushed over the platform, engulfing the Organics darting toward them.
Alien prisoners ran, slithered, and moved in all directions. Wails and screeches filled the hangar.
“Come on, Roots!” he yelled.
The ship jolted forward, pushing Noble backward. He managed to fight his way back to the dashboard as Roots veered toward the closed hangar doors. He pushed the firing button. Lasers pierced the metal and blew a doorway out to the darkness of space beyond.
They slipped through the force field holding the atmosphere in. He hoped some of the other rebelling creatures would have a chance to escape like Roots and he had. Otherwise, he figured, it was better to die in the struggle than become slaves. At least that’s what he would’ve wanted.
Roots circled the cruiser, and Noble opened fire with the lasers, hitting the hull with a stream of fire. Explosions peppered the side of the massive ship. The bow dipped like a sinking ship in a sea of black.
As Roots veered away from the downed vessel, Noble saw the Organic ships’ former destination.
“It… It can’t be,” Noble whispered.
Roots touched his arm with a sponge, and cackled when it tapped into Noble’s thoughts. The alien had given Noble a glimpse into what had happened to its home planet, and now Roots had a front row seat to what had happened to Earth.
The once gorgeous blue planet was brown and red, the oceans gone, and the forests burned.
Noble was too late to save his home, but maybe there were people down there he could still help. For that matter, maybe his crew was still down there. He owed it to them to at least find out if there were people surviving on that hellhole. He touched Roots and asked the alien to tap into the Organic network to see if there were any human survivors still on the planet.
A few minutes later, Roots informed him of the locations where the Organics were currently facing human resistance. One caught his attention.
“Cheyenne Mountain,” Noble said. “Take us there. If anyone can help me find my crew, it’s Alexia.”
***
“That’s Sophie!” David said, pointing wildly. “She’s alive!”
Jeff had never thought she’d wake from her coma in the cryostat fluid, even as Emanuel had reassured them many times that he’d do everything he could to bring her back. “I can’t believe it!”
A squad of humanoid Organics filed out of the recesses of the space, surging to meet Sophie and the others. The crew still wore their NTC-issued EVA suits, but Jeff used his rifle’s scope to gaze through their visors. He held his breath as he identified them.
“There’s Emanuel and Holly and Diego. Oh, and there’s Bouma!” He swept the group, his heart fluttering now. More humanoids were filing out of the craft. “I see Owen and Jamie, and Diego, and…”
The hatch to the craft shut.
“Where’s Ort?” David asked. “Do you see him?”
Surely Jeff couldn’t miss the big man, even among the strange humanoids. But no one else came out of the ship.
“Maybe we missed him,” David offered lamely. “Or maybe he’s already here.”
Jeff’s stomach churned. He had survived on this planet long enough to know that wasn’t likely. It was probably best to let his brother hang on to his optimism for now. “We’ve got to get closer. Maybe we can help them.”
When their transport ship landed, they’d followed the Organics out just like they had when they’d entered the ship. They had found themselves in a bustling shipyard of Organic ships. Some of them were more massive than the Sunspot, while others looked like they could only hold a few of the humanoids at most. Jeff had known they couldn’t stay in that shipyard forever. They’d skirted between the crafts until they’d escaped from the shipyard and made it to the rolling hills surrounding the place.
There they’d found grass. Actual grass. It was a little crunchy under their feet, but it was grass nonetheless. A river even flowed through the hills, and they had followed it to this strange alien city.
They’d seen Organics and even humans walking around the place. Jeff was confused that the humans seemed to be walking around outside of orbs, and the spiders didn’t even bother them.
But, during the time they’d been there, Jeff had noticed that the humans were walking into the massive building at the center of the colony. No normal humans came out. Only the weird humanoids and blue orbs, just like the ones they’d seen on Earth, exited the building. The orbs were all carted off to a massive pyramid constructed of blue blocks. Occasionally blasts of azure light lanced from the top of that pyramid. Jeff had noticed that no orbs ever came out.
And now, Sophie and the crew were being led straight into the building where all the other humans seemed to be going, the one where they came out as either orbs or humanoids.
“Do you think they’ll come out as humanoids or orbs?” David asked, worry tingeing his voice.
“I don’t know,” Jeff said. He was glad they’d finally found Sophie and the others after making it this far. Now was the chance to make that trek worth the risks they’d taken. He grabbed all the rifles they’d lugged along with them since their escape from the Sunspot. “Whatever’s going on in there, maybe we can stop it.”
***
A shock of crimson light blasted from the center of the room. Diego’s eyes took a few seconds to adjust. When they did, a scene unfolded before him that sent a pang of nausea stabbing through his stomach. Spiders and integrated humans—Hybrids—like Hoffman directed a line of normal people toward the center of the vast chamber. Tubes snaked from the ceiling toward the cylinders in the middle. Each cylinder was filled with a red light that glowed like the eyes of an angry beast.
Within those chambers, humans were suspended in some kind of fluid. Dark clouds of particulates swarmed around them, seeming to chisel at their bodies like so many tiny sculptors. The people inside writhed. Their eyes were stuck open nearly as wide as their mouths. Bubbles streamed from them as if they were screaming. The way they moved, it looked like they were on fire.
Hoffman gestured to the cylinders. “These are the integration chambers.”
“That looks awful,” Holly said. She narrowed her eyes. “They’re conscious, aren’t they?�
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“They are,” Hoffman said. “The nanobots fundamentally alter the physical and genetic structure of each person. It’s impossible to put them in a stable unconscious state during the process.”
“You went through that,” Sophie said.
“I did,” Hoffman said. “It’s worth the agony.”
Diego said nothing, but he certainly hoped Hoffman was right. Spiders and integrated humans helped load a new batch of humans into a row of the integration chambers.
“You’re tearing these people apart and rebuilding them,” Emanuel said. “You’re altering them gene by gene, cell by cell. They’re not even the same person afterward.”
“Aren’t they?” Hoffman asked. “You seemed to recognize me when you first saw me. I’ll ask you the age-old question: if you replace the sails on an old sailing ship, is it still the same ship? What if, then, every mast broke, and you replaced those, too? What if you replace the tiller and the portholes, too? What about the deck, then the berths? What if you have to replace the wheelhouse and the keel? And then you replace the boards on the deck and the hull? When does it go from being the original ship to a new one? Does it ever really change?”
Diego clenched his fingers into a fist. He wondered when those fingers would be those of an alien and no longer his. Would his consciousness still remain the same—or would his perception of the world change? Would he gladly serve the Organics like Hoffman did?
“Being a human is not being a ship,” Emanuel said. “Humans are more than just physical vessels. They’re—”
“Exactly,” Hoffman said, tapping his temple with a claw. “I’m still the same person I was before. We have souls or consciousness, or whatever you want to call it. We can carry on humanity, even if the physical vessel looks different. Lieutenant Diego, are you ready?”
A knot formed in Diego’s gut. He didn’t think he’d ever be truly ready for what was about to happen. But if he wanted to ensure humanity had a future, like Hoffman said, he had no choice.
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