“The organization believes that living only on earth poses an existential risk to mankind. I don’t disagree with them that earth cannot be the only home for humans. The climate is fucked up, we’ve survived three world wars, pandemics rear their heads every occasionally regardless of what we do to stop it. Yes, they have a genuine reason to be concerned about the disappearance of humankind. I don’t argue with them, but what I must prevent is the infection of humankind with animal parts in a bid to set off a rabid survival of the fittest from which she will choose the best of the best for her space colonization.”
The revelation hit Luke like a blow to the head. He glanced sideways.
Conway sat with her mouth agape. “No one ever told me this.”
“Information is sometimes shared on a need-to basis.”
“Even to a senior officer, a Major?”
“Yes. It is for everybody’s good to know what you need to know, I’ve told you. But while we’re talking, remember that the children have been infected. I hope they are the only ones Maya has tainted yet. It would be torture to watch thousands of children endure what I did to myself.”
Luke cleared his throat. “So there’s this super-secret organization?”
“It’s called the SEAC, for the Society for the Extragalactic Advancement of Civilization. It has been alive underground for close to a century.”
“I thought after the first space colonies ended in disaster, people would be more inclined to stay at home and mind their business.”
“No, Luke. Some people assume responsibility for things as great as the destiny of the only known intelligent race. Get used to that, and get used to the fact that the resistance needs someone like you.”
“Why me in particular? There are hundreds of experiment subjects in Maya’s facility. If being infected is a requirement for working with you, you can go and get them.”
“I’m not sure that there was such a facility, or that there were many experiment subjects. The thing is that we were lucky to find you at the beginning of your change. I plan that we will let you grow to your best height and strength, and then we’ll find a way to freeze your growth.”
“This is exactly what Maya told me.” Luke looked at Sharpe from the corners of his eye. “Are you sure you have anything to do with her?”
“Use your brain, Private Luke. If you’ve studied history, have you ever wondered why many ancient cultures built pyramids without consulting each other?”
“What has extinct structures gotten to do with our discussions?”
“A lot, in the sense that the ubiquitous nature of pyramids in ancient cultures proves that human logic has a similar conclusion. Maya wants to freeze herself at her best size so she can use it to her advantage. We freeze you at your best size so we can use you for our advantage.”
“Use me? It makes me feel like a rag, something to clean a soiled surface and discard.”
“I understand that no one likes to feel that he’s expendable, but in our cause, no one is important. I’m not important, Conway isn’t important, and you are not important, son. We don’t know where Maya is right now, but I assure you, the resistance has ways of finding out where anyone is. The resistance existed too, especially to counter SEAC, but they got wiped off the face of the earth in one fell swoop. You’re our best chance of starting afresh, to help us maintain this delicate balance between good and evil. Will you work for us?”
Luke bowed his head and thought for a while. He didn’t agree with everything Sharp said, but he didn’t doubt that the children were abducted because of him. If he had any hope of reaching Maya and perhaps getting the children healed, he had to go along with the resistance. Cooperating with them would stop him from achieving his aim. He didn’t know what made him special but he raised his head and looked into Sharpe’s hypnotic eyes.
“General, I have hope that you will keep to your words, and that I must rely on your words. I’ll work for the resistance. What’s my first duty?”
Sharpe closed his eyes for a few seconds and opened them. “Private Luke, prove that you are a loyal member of the resistance. Your first mission is to destroy Maya and then annihilate the SEAC.”
Luke stood and stepped forward. “Get me to Maya.”
CHAPTER 28 APOTHEOSIS
Luke paused at the door of the glide car. He glances over his shoulder at Sharpe. “I guess I may ask, why aren’t you going after Maya by yourself?”
General Sharpe smiled. “I may as well be honest with you since you are now one of us. You must have heard that all resistance members historically refused to take the longevity treatment. That is true, so I’m old and fragile.” He spread his hands. “I’m broken into a thousand pieces and only held together by pieces of technology I invented. Yes, my reputation precedes me, but I’m in need of retirement. Soon the resistance will need a competent leader.”
Luke shook his head. “I don’t know if that was meant as bait but it doesn’t hook me in. My only purpose is to reach Maya and make her heal the kids. That’s all.”
“I hope it isn’t too late to help the children, but, on the other hand, you may find that every trouble has its use that you may well find yourself thankful for. But don’t bother yourself about my words now.” Sharpe stepped back. “Good luck, Luke.”
“I hope you can take care of the children and granny’s place?”
“Of course. The fate of humanity may very well depend on them, so I have no choice but to keep them alive, at whatever cost.”
Satisfied, Luke surveyed the craft again. A short ladder dropped from the entrance, making him wonder why the General had decided to leap down his craft earlier. He wrapped his fingers around the sun-warmed handhold and pulled himself into Sharpe’s glide car. Convinced that no one else but him was going to get Maya.
Inside the craft was different from the robot force glide car they had stolen. Sharpe’s craft was imposing but the interior had space for only two. Everything else about the craft was all propulsion engines or something to do with it. Conway sat in the pilot’s seat, the ghostly glow from the dashboard illuminating her now gaunt face. She kept still, not showing any sign she knew that Luke had entered. He put his hands on the backrest.
“Can you fly this thing?”
“It would be a shame if I can’t fly it after I’ve just read the manual.” She glanced up.
“The shadows that came under her eyes since your husband died have started to lift, but the sparkle in your eyes tells me no one in their right minds should mess up with you.”
“Maya’s not in her right mind.” Conway toggled a small switch and punched some glowing buttons.
Air whooshed in through the open door, knocking. He grabbed the edge of the doorway, his legs streaming outside the door as the craft surged into the clouds. He twisted hard to one side as Conway’s rifle speared past him.
“Sorry!” Conway said over her shoulder, frantically tapping the buttons. Luke didn’t wait for the craft to slow. He gritted his teeth and pulled himself back in. the door slide closed and the buffeting stopped. He stood on groggy feet and pressed himself to the walls of the narrow corridor, he inched his way forwards and stopped behind Conway. He tapped her on the shoulder and jerked a thumb at the door.
“What the hell was that?”
“I must have pressed the wrong button for automatic lift-off.”
“You said you can fly anything.”
“This is General Sharpe’s craft, and it’s brain-controlled…”
A harsh beep came repeatedly from the dashboard. “Watch out!” Luke pointed a still finger at the display screen. A vast black metal hulk hurtled closer. He swayed as Conway banked steeply to get out of the way of the supertanker. A long while later, she righted the craft and shot Luke a glance.
“The ore tanker didn’t even try to evade us or warn us.”
“Lucky for us we got out of its way!”
“Not so lucky.”
Conway glanced left at the three smaller display screens
on her left. They showed the left, right, and rear views. In the center screen piping in images from the back, four smaller crafts separated from the freight ship. They fell for a short time, kicked into life, and zoomed after them. Luke leaned over Conway and touched the rearview screen.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Don’t know. The tanker is too heavy to turn around quickly, so we can assume that these are pursuit crafts following us… Wait a minute.” She tapped a button, zooming the images. “Holy shit! Those are battle crafts. I can only guess one thing: SEAC. Only they can renovate the old battle crafts, and they are on us.”
“I don’t think so.”
“How?”
Luke peered at the approaching crafts for a while. “This isn’t the time to pet my height phobia. It’s a time to survive. As Sharpe had hinted, good things have useful functions; my reflexes were sharper than yours were. It had never occurred to me to fly a craft, but I suspect that our survival depends on my faster animal instincts. Let me fly this thing.”
“You can’t. You’ll kill us.”
Luke snapped open the buckles of her strap, pulled her off the seat, and placed the padded band around his forehead, causing a sharp sinking feeling as the craft fell before his brain activated the controls. Conway’s scream in his ears, her fingers dug into his neck.
“What are you doing, you damned fool?”
Her finger couldn’t penetrate the thick muscles on his neck, so he ignored her attack. His eyes danced from screen to screen. Luke leaned forward, his hands resting lightly on the armrests, his fingers on the missile buttons, his eyes on the fast-approaching crafts. “You know what, major? He said.
“Shut up, fool.”
“You’re welcome, Major. But if these are SEAC crafts and they want to kill us, surprise, I’ve got a little something for them!”
CHAPTER 29
Four sleek crafts flitted closer, leaving faint luminescent trails stretching far behind them. In a short time, he could distinguish the alien-like shapes. Luke still kept his eyes unwaveringly on their pursuers. Without looking at Conway, he said, “Major, do you know what?”
“Tell me.”
“I feel I was born to do this thing, but why are they chasing us?”
A surly silence came from Conway and she said, “Those are the best midrange Strato battlecruisers of the last civilization. They can blast us back into the basic elements in less than a second, so they must have a good reason for following us.”
“Which doesn’t answer why,” Luke shrugged, “but I’ll give them a reason to avoid us next time.”
With that, he willed the craft into its fastest speed by imagining himself as a beam of light traveling in the darkest night. When he focused his eye, the ominous crafts were gone. “Yeah!” He pumped the air with his fist. “We did it.” He whirled to see if Conway celebrated with him, rather her face was a mask of disappointment, and her round eyes stared past him. With a sinking feeling, he darted a look at the screens. Black dots appeared and the four crafts, flying in formation, soon filled the screen. “Shit! What do we do now?” Luke asked. “I'd banked on evading them in a chase but that seems not possible, and I don’t want to use the missiles if I don’t have to.”
“We can’t shake off the crafts.”
“That gives me no other option then.” Luke pressed the rear missile button. It vibrated four times under his finger. On the screen, four violet explosions blasted the noses of the enemy crafts. Luke squinted at the screen and then he sat back, surprised that the light vanished, leaving the four crafts in their tail.
Conway pounded the headrest. “I didn’t know they could do that!”
“Me too!”
“How many missiles do we have there?”
“Sharpe said ten rears and forty forward.”
“I say let them have it all from the rear.”
Luke grinned. “Good Idea.” He depressed the rear fire button. A steady stream of explosions marked the locations of their foes. When the fire button stopped vibrating, the crafts were still there, still in pursuit.
“Should have let me fly,” Conway said. “I know more about this stuff than you do. This isn’t about brute strength, you know?”
“First,” Luke said, “I don’t like the word brute. Second, I started this fight, and I will finish it…”
“Go on, even if we die together.”
Luke bit his answer as a white pink glow emanated from the noses of the four pursuing crafts. He pointed at the screen, “They’re going to blast us!”
“Your fault!”
“Thank you, but I can’t let them!” Luke flipped the craft like a leaf tumbling in a hurricane. When he steadied into a vertical flight, heading straight into the black sky, he glanced at the screen. The crafts were still there, their entire bodies glowing a brilliant pink. Huge sparks, pink lightning flew off them and eventually joined. Then a bolt of light blasted from them.
Without warning, the screens turned pink, blinding Luke.
“Put the car in auto defense. That’s our only hope.”
It was true because he couldn’t see where he was going. Luke did as he was told and slid off the brain controller. The craft flipped around in a startlingly unnatural way, the sort of thing only the machine can invent, weaving a nameless and indescribable tapestry high above the earth. Conway screamed as she hid her head twice on the headrest. Luke grabbed her as the car stabilized briefly. He put her on his lap and quickly secured the safety belt over them. “Sorry,” he said.
In a short while, the pink light fated, leaving the view as clear as it was before. He inhaled sharply at the sight of long metal cables reeling out of the four crafts at a terrific speed. The extending cables came closer; their tips glowing like some giant welding spark. In another second, Sharpe’s glide car vibrated dully with four heavy impacts.
Conway craned her head around and looked into his eyes. “I’ve never heard of such a thing as this, but, thanks to you, it appears we’re the first people in history to be spearfished in lower space. It’s a pity we don’t have a book of record these days.”
“I don’t think we’ve been captured yet,” Luke said, putting the brain controller back on. He turned off the auto defense and willed the craft to flip and speed. Nothing. He didn’t need to look at Conway.
“I’m disappointed it isn’t a tractor beam.” She chuckled. “Anyway, I guess even the autopilot has been knocked out, we just didn’t know it.”
Luke hurled the headband at the dashboard and covered his face with his hands.”
“You know what, Luke?”
“No.”
“I suggest that you enjoy the ride while it lasts. I suspect we’re about to be the guests of Maya’s employers.
A strange feeling came over Luke. He removed his hands from his face and met Conway’s stare without a flinch. Their faces were close but he ignored the smell of her hair. “Guess what, Conway?”
“What, private?”
“I might be willing to meet these enemies of humanity, you know?” Conway looked at him with something like new respect. Luke patted his pocket. The bottle of depilatory had somehow remained unbroken. He removed it and slathered the tingling liquid over his exposed hands. “I don’t want to make a bad first impression.”
CHAPTER 30
Her eyes on the screens, Conway opened the buckles and sat on the floor, her back against the wall. It was welcome that she had decided to move because the strange light that hit them had knocked out the air conditioning. The cabin gradually grew stuffy, making sweat trickle down the center of Luke’s back. Most of the little lights on the dashboard were dead, although the view screens remained active.
For a long time, he endured their unexpected situation, watching the screens too. He was so tired that he dozed off, only to awaken as their speed decelerated. They must have traveled at a high speed because the dark hulk of the ore ship appeared in the distance. Soon, they slowed along with the crafts tugging them into an open s
ide of the ore ship. The cables detached and disappeared into the respective crafts, but Sharpe’s craft remained suspended close to the ceiling of a cavernous loading bay. People scurried about like tiny ants. Then they descended slowly, passing several battle cruisers docked on the walls and projecting platforms. “You’ve got your tractor beam, Conway,” he said.
“I wonder what they want with us,” Conway said. “They have gone to great lengths to capture us.”
“I hope they’re not cannibals.”
“Cannibals eat humans, remember?”
Luke looked sharply at her.
She sprang to her feet and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean it. I was just angry that you got us into this mess. You should have let me fly.”
“That’s a very long apology. Has it occurred to you that we should be planning how to survive?”
“I’ve thought of nothing else.” Conway looked around swiftly. “We should have some weapons in this craft…”
A loud clank showed that they had settled on the floor. They both glanced at each other, and then Luke rushed to the drawers lining one side of the cabin. He yanked one open and grabbed a large pistol, although it felt tiny in his hands. He wheeled as the door that he had securely locked from the inside clicked and hissed open. The pistol flew out of his hand before he could send a bullet into the face of the robot that opened the door.
“Ensure you do not attack me again,” the robot said, picking the pistol from his metal chest. Without seeming to use any effort, the robot squeezed the muzzle of the pistol flat and tossed it aside. “The both of you please follow me. Commander wants to see you.”
Luke went first, putting himself between Conway and the robot. It was a type he’d never seen or heard about. It was part metal and part lifelike flesh. The telescopic eyes at the back of its head watching them, led the way past other staring humans and robots, into a small hovercar. Without belting them into the seat, it rose to the ceiling, through a large passage that slid open at their approach. Luke glanced down. Sharpe’s thumbnail-sized craft was the last thing he saw before the large door closed behind them.
MARK OF THE EARTHWALKER: Evolution Protocol Page 10