“Luis, what the hell did you do?” Ollie shouted into the radio. “That wasn’t supposed to go off until I gave you the go-ahead.”
Luis didn’t respond and something told Ollie the engineer had been taken out by his own bomb. Ollie knew the plan was always the first casualty in combat. He had no intention of being the second.
•••
Kay was still on the ground when she heard Ollie yelling at Luis over the radio. Had the engineer waited until they were all in position, Kay and her team would have been far from the danger zone. Instead, metallic debris and cable ends were crashing down around them, cutting through the foliage like a deadly scythe. A tree nearby was cleaved clean in two, sending it hurtling no more than ten feet from where they were standing. Armoni was out in the open, clutching her computer bag, when Kay spotted a chunk of receiver hurtling toward her. There wasn’t enough time to get the girl’s attention. Without thinking, Kay leapt forward, tackling Armoni onto the ground and under the split end of a fallen tree right as the receiver casing landed next to them, kicking up a great swath of earth.
Armoni stood up, mud covering half of her face, her chest heaving violently. “Holy shit, that was close.”
Kay got up and brushed herself off. “So much for waiting until we were all in position.”
“I’ll bet you anything that idiot Luis went and blew himself up,” Patrick said, examining a long gash on his arm.
“We should get that taken care of,” Kay told him, eyeing the wound.
He waved her away. “Never mind, I’ve had a lot worse.”
The stillness in the air was shattered by the distant sound of gunfire.
Patrick moved into the clearing near the edge of the dish and looked up toward the facility.
“I see flashes from rifle muzzles,” he told them. “Looks like the guards are onto them.”
In the center of the dish below them, Kay could see the two-story structure Sentinel had erected to house their alien-inspired weapon. But strewn around it now was a mess of cables and the crumpled remnants of the receiver. Suddenly, a dazzling burst of blinding light streamed up from the structure. Kay shielded her eyes. Slowly, tiny spots of vision began trickling back.
“Oh, crap, they’re already firing it up,” Patrick said, scanning between the beam of light streaming into the sky and the gunfight going on near the control room.
“What should we do?” Armoni asked.
The fearful glint in the young hacker’s eyes mirrored the same emotion each of them was feeling. The plan had literally just blown up in their faces. Luis was likely dead. Ollie and the three others with him were engaged in a battle against overwhelming odds. They had only narrowly avoided being taken out by falling pieces of the world’s second-largest telescope.
“What we came here to do,” Kay answered, swinging the rifle off her shoulder and pushing past them.
The dish itself was smooth and dipped inward at about a twenty-degree angle. Every footfall lent the risk of losing one’s footing and rolling hundreds of feet to the bottom. The ride might not exactly kill you, but you’d wake up feeling like a sock that had been through the spin cycle.
As they continued making their way down, something pinged off one of the panels a few feet away. Kay eyed the spot where it hit and saw the hole. Then another ping fifteen feet to her right.
“What the hell is going on?” she wondered out loud.
“They’re shooting at us,” Patrick shouted, pointing to a nearby ridgeline. It was a spot where tourists normally stood to gaze out at the dish’s majestic size. Now it was being used as a firing platform. They increased their pace, bullets thudding around them in an ever greater volume. Kay had the unnerving mental image of standing out in the rain, trying to not get hit by a droplet.
“It’s right up ahead,” she told them, hopeful they might make it there in one piece.
Then from below she caught sight of movement. Two men in white lab coats exited the building, surveying the damage from the falling debris. It was only a second before they spotted Kay, Patrick and Armoni. But rather than retreat back inside, they reached beneath their white coasts and came up with tactical carbines.
“Oh, great,” Patrick yelled. “Just what we need, a crossfire.”
Rounds pinged at their feet, from two directions now. Patrick took the lead, clearly more proficient with guns. Kay did what she could, leveling the barrel and squeezing the trigger like she’d been shown. The AK kicked up in her hands and she fought to keep the sights on target. Standing still and shooting was hard enough. But rushing down a slippery decline while firing a semi-automatic rifle was a whole new kind of crazy.
At one point, Patrick dropped to one knee and fired three carefully aimed shots, killing one of the men in the white lab coats. The other, seeing he was outnumbered, ran back inside and slammed the door.
A minute later they arrived before the structure, an intense heat radiating from the beam streaming above them. Lucky for them, the building and the fallen receiver debris provided some cover from the shooters along the ridgeline.
Careful not to expose himself, Patrick positioned himself next to the metal door the second gunman had fled through. He motioned to Kay, whispering into his radio. “When I open the door, you spray the room inside.”
She swallowed hard, readying her rifle as Patrick reached his hand out and turned the knob. Straight away, a series of shots rang out from inside, peppering dime-sized holes into the door. Patrick flung his hand out of harm’s way.
Kay listened to the rhythmic popping sound of distant gunfire coming from the hill near the observatory’s control room. She knew if they didn’t neutralize the man inside and plant this bomb soon, the beam would complete its deadly business and the world would have a whole new set of problems to worry about.
Chapter 48
Battered and bloody, Ollie, Sven and Ramon were trapped in the control room. Longer than it was wide, the room very much resembled the bridge of a large oil tanker. A row of controls and computer equipment were seated beneath a large set of windows overlooking the dish. Down below, a blast of purple energy streamed up from the weapon and into the atmosphere. The sight filled Ollie with terror. Whoever had heard them coming must have triggered the process and prevented their ability to stop it. He had shot up the console and smashed part of it with the butt of his rifle, all to no avail. A five-minute timer on the wall showed the seconds remaining before the weapon reached full power.
Two entrances sat on the opposite wall, one to their right and the other on their left. Each was barricaded with chairs and anything else they could find. Slumped over the left barricade was Paco, killed by a bullet while stacking the last piece of furniture.
Luis’ premature detonation had been the equivalent of kicking a hornets’ nest and screwed any hopes they had of getting in and out unscathed. A trail of blood leaked from the tourniquet around Sven’s leg where a round had shattered his femur. More blood trickled down Ollie’s forehead from a shot that had nicked the top of his skull. Next to him, Ramon was covered in blood, but most of that had come from dressing Sven’s injury. They were in a sorry state with enemy forces readying to bust in at any moment. Positioned on the other side of both entry points, enemy soldiers probed every few seconds by kicking at the barricaded door and eliciting a flurry of gunshots in return.
“We can’t keep this up forever,” Ollie said, as he stuck the bomb to the console.
The barricade on the right wobbled and Sven swiveled his AK, riddling it.
“Never mind forever,” Sven said, biting back waves of excruciating pain. “They’ll be on us any second now.”
Ramon repositioned to a spot in the middle of the opposite wall. Although he couldn’t engage the enemy directly, it removed him from the immediate line of fire, but more than that, it gave them an opportunity to ambush anyone dumb enough to charge in.
“Once they bring the smoke grenades and flashbangs, it’ll be over,” Ramon told them and he was rig
ht. An enclosed space wasn’t so much a defensive position as it was a death trap.
Ollie got on the radio and called out to the other team. “Patrick, Kay, do you read me?”
“We read you,” Kay replied, breathless. “Glad to hear you’re still in one piece.”
Ollie let out a hollow laugh. “We won’t be for long. We’re pinned down in the control room. That beam has a timer with four minutes left and I can only assume it’s counting down until the black hole is up and running. How close are you to blowing it up?”
“Not close enough,” Kay said as another round of gunfire drowned out her voice. “There’s a guy in there who’s more stubborn than you are.”
“That’s hard to imagine,” Ollie replied.
“Wait a sec,” Kay said over the noise on the other end. “Armoni has an idea. She thinks she may be able to hack into the observatory’s mainframe.”
“Well, tell her to hurry up.”
Just then the left side door blew off its hinges, pelting them with chunks of wood and fragments of metal from the barricade. A Puerto Rican man in green cammies rushed in, spraying wildly. A line of bullets punched a series of holes in the window, knocking out the glass. Shards rained down on Ollie and Sven. From the opposite wall, Ramon opened fire, cutting the man down. He then shoved his weapon around the corner and emptied the magazine. Sven and Ollie joined in.
A grenade rolled in at Ramon’s feet. All at once, each of their eyes went wide with fear. Diving down, Ramon grabbed it and tossed it back. But in the second before it went off, his exposed head took a bullet and snapped back. His body fell to the floor and was flung a few feet by the concussion from the exploding grenade.
The clock was down to two minutes when an alarm began to sound. Then the sprinklers turned on, spraying the room with jets of water.
“Is that Armoni’s idea of a joke?” Ollie said. Saturated, the console began to belch sparks and smoke as one by one the computer components were overloaded. Ollie spun and was surprised to see the beam begin to waver. Even the countdown had slowed. Slowed was good, but it hadn’t stopped.
“Ollie,” Sven called out, weak with blood loss. “You and I both know I’m not gonna make it. Give me the bomb. I’ll detonate it manually.”
Ollie wanted to object, but with the seconds ticking away and a fresh assault coming any second, he knew there was no other option. He handed Sven the bomb and the two men embraced.
“Give Mia my best,” Sven said, his eyes wet with tears.
Ollie nodded before leaping through the broken window. He landed hard, rolling to avoid breaking both of his legs. Rising to his feet, he was limping down the side of the hill when the control room exploded, blasting off the roof and sending shrapnel flying out the broken windows like the barrels of a double-barreled shotgun.
A second later, the beam flickered and disappeared.
•••
But disabled didn’t mean destroyed. Kay realized this even as she watched the control room above go up in a ball of flame. Had any of them survived? she wondered in muted horror. She didn’t know. What was clear was that if they didn’t do the same here, Sentinel could always use it again.
Without any regard for her personal safety, Kay flung open the door, leveled her rifle and fired. Bullets ricocheted off the floor and passed through the wall at the other end. Coming close in behind her were Patrick and Armoni. Kay had hoped to see a crumpled body in a white lab coat near the entrance, but there was none. It seemed the shooter had retreated further inside. A doorway on their left was open, providing the only way into the rest of the structure.
“This guy’s got us in a damn bottleneck,” Patrick said, swearing.
Clearly, waiting for him to come out hadn’t worked so well. Kay pushed ahead, certain there was no other way. She passed over the threshold into the room with the weapon, feeling her pulse thumping in her neck, her vision blurring. The body sometimes had a strange way of getting in your way at the worst possible moments.
This new room was nothing more than a container for the weapon itself, much like the silos for nuclear missiles. Rising up from the center of the chamber was a cylindrical device punctuated with rows of glowing lights that flashed on and off in a rhythmic, almost hypnotic pattern. But far from being sleek and streamlined, it was clear where bits of human technology had been added so Sentinel could interface with the device.
A circular staircase hugged the round inner walls of the room, rising thirty feet to an open rooftop where sunlight streamed down at them from above.
Patrick knelt down at the base of the device and attached the bomb while Kay and Armoni covered him.
“Almost done…” Patrick began to say as a staccato of shots rang out from above.
Patrick slumped over, bleeding from a hole in his neck. Kay moved in, her rifle raised, circling around the bottom level to find the gunman.
“Kay, watch out,” Armoni said.
The man in the white coat jumped down, landing on the metal grate next to Kay, and fired his weapon. Most of the rounds missed, but two didn’t and they knocked Kay to the ground. Nearby, Armoni returned fire, killing him.
She ran over and knelt beside Kay. “Where are you hit?”
Kay looked over and saw Patrick lying a few feet away, his eyes open and vacant.
She tried to draw in a breath and felt a sharp pain in her chest. “I don’t know,” she said, clearly still in shock. “You need to set that bomb.”
Armoni got up and did so, checking on Patrick one last time and shaking her head in despair. She returned a moment later to help Kay to her feet.
One of her lungs must have collapsed, Kay realized as she struggled for breath. Blood soaked the front of her shirt. With Armoni’s help, they exited the structure and began heading up the side of the dish. They were halfway there when the bomb went off. With what little strength Kay had left, she swung Armoni away from the blast, shielding her. After that the world grew hazy and Kay wanted nothing more than to go to sleep.
Chapter 49
3 hours, 57 minutes, 29 seconds
“It’s a long shot,” Gabby said, casting a holographic image of the schematics before them. “But as I went over these, I couldn’t help thinking about the time we spent on the Atean ship in the gulf. The bridge had all sorts of computer stations. What if the same thing existed here and we could use something there to contact the incoming ship directly?”
Jack thought about it for a moment. “You know the Atean ship is vastly different from the one we’re on. I mean, they aren’t even built by the same civilization.”
“That is true,” Grant interjected. “Although theoretically, they are all variations on the blueprints coded into the Salzburg chromosome. Surely there must be similarities.”
“How about you ask Caretaker?” Dag said, looking around and noticing the being was gone.
“Anna’s missing too,” Jack said, worried. He called out to her over the radio and she didn’t respond. “Did anyone see where they went?”
Yuri shook his head. He was busy poring over the blueprints as well. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll find you that bridge.”
“Start at the top,” Dag suggested.
Jack shook his head. “That’s even less helpful. We need to find either a bridge or a communications room on this ship and there’s no time to go hunting around. We need to find Caretaker.”
•••
“What do you think of this world?” Caretaker asked. They had left the others in the altar room debating over how to prevent the impending disaster. The two of them were out in the open now, walking along a path in the jungle.
“I should be back with my friends,” Anna said, wishing to turn around, but also honored that Caretaker thought enough of her to speak just the two of them.
“Your friends need to figure this out on their own,” he reassured her. “You cannot solve all of their problems and expect them to be worthy.”
“That does seem logical.”
&
nbsp; Caretaker laughed. “Of course it does. But you are more than mere logic, Anna. The drive in you to create life goes beyond mere biology. It is the engine that has helped to populate this galaxy and many others as well.”
“Then why do you destroy?” she asked.
He paused. “Every creature planted by us or any other civilization has the same opportunities. Once a planet has been seeded, tampering with their development is strictly forbidden. Each species is imbued with the potential to evolve and dominate their surroundings. Do not forget, humanity’s distant ancestor was introduced many times in the past. It is always the same crop, only the environment and the choices made along the way determine a species’ success or failure.”
“Do humans generally do well on planets seeded by you and others?”
Caretaker stopped by the yellow trunk of a nearby tree and leaned against it. “You must not forget, humans are never sent, only their distant ancestors. The same is true of all the species we have selected, cultivated from many different worlds. As they evolve, the habitat in which they live directs the form they take. To my knowledge, this is the only time Homo sapiens has appeared on the hominid evolutionary tree in any meaningful way.” Caretaker rapped his knuckles against the trunk to emphasize the point.
“I am curious about your species,” she said. “You will have to forgive the question, but I am not completely clear on how much of you is machine.”
He grinned, his cheekbones becoming more prominent. “Do you recall my previous form?”
Anna pulled up a video of Caretaker she had recorded during their initial encounter.
“Please don’t be frightened by what happened,” he said, as though watching it himself.
“I don’t understand how you are able to perceive my thoughts.”
“You are different from the others,” Caretaker said, resting a hand on her. “That is what I have been trying to tell you. Now, if you look closely at my original form, you will see a loose approximation of what the organic version of my species once looked like.”
Extinction Series (The Complete Collection) Page 74