Elizabeth was unwilling to let go of her daughter again. She turned to look at Matthew who also despaired at saying goodbye.
“We can’t leave her again,” she cried. “Not like this! I can’t leave her again. Not again!” Tears streamed down her face onto Evangeline’s environmental suit. Matthew had also shed tears as he held on to his little family. In the end, Evangeline pulled away from her parents’ grip.
“No,” she said. She stood upright, resolved to fight back her own tears. “If things are going to get as bad as you say they are, then there’s no choice. You have to finish what you’ve started. You have to get out of here and keep your research going until you find a cure. Otherwise, what’s the point of all we’ve been through?”
She held out her arms and placed each hand on one of her parents’ faces. “You left me once to save my life,” she said no louder than a whisper. “Now, it’s my turn.” With a final embrace, not knowing if she would survive the battle and reunite with her parents again, she turned and walked away from them toward Jack.
She hugged him with all the remaining strength she had, pulling his head down to hers and pressing her faceplate against his.
“I love you,” she said with breathless intensity. “More than you can possibly know!”
His eyes were wet. When he was able to respond, he tried to be as optimistic as possible. “Hey,” he said with a sad smile. “This is not goodbye. I’ll be out there with you.” He was thumping his hand against his hip, indicating the interface tucked away in his pocket.
The alarms overhead began to blare and a voice announced the approaching threat. “All available pilots and combat personnel, assemble in the motor pool. This is not a drill! All other personnel bring vital equipment and technical personnel to the South hangar bay for loading onto freighters.”
Men and women in environmental suits spilled into the lab and began carrying out the larger pieces of equipment. A young woman dangling a keycard from a thin chain approached the Chapels. Matthew raised his arm and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. He turned her to face Evangeline and Jack.
“This is Emma. She’ll guide you up to the hangar.”
Emma gave them a scared smile. “I’m pleased to meet you, but we have to hurry.” She put her hand around Evangeline’s arm and began tugging her toward the airlock.
The other suited men and women surrounded the stasis tanks and began disconnecting the monitoring equipment. Evangeline gave her parents one last look, waved goodbye, and ran out the door with Jack and Emma. She left hand-in-hand with her husband, heading for the motor pool to join Kevin and Felicia.
Jack and Evangeline did not notice the four armed men in environmental suits who had entered through the airlock behind Emma before forming a circle around the restrained agent. They did not hear the squeals of the metal chair as one of them dragged it across the floor and shoved into a corner. They did not feel the gunshots press against the ears of the technicians behind the sealed airlock door. They did not smell the acrid smoke of gunpowder wafting like a cloud over the impromptu execution squad, nor did they see the slumped body of the agent, blood dripping from the gaping wound in his head down onto the floor.
The plan was for Jack to go as far as the motor pool and find a safe room where he could put on his neural interface and coordinate the Dissident defenses with Gideon on the Leviathan.
In a way, Jack felt like he was back at home, designing new gaming scenarios for the arena. With a connection established on board the Leviathan, Jack would be able to see both sides of the battle in real time and adjust the Dissident defensive strategy based on the Reynolds’ attack patterns. This was not a game, however; real lives would be at stake. Not just his and Evangeline’s, nor the Dissident forces protecting the facility. Not even Reynolds’ soldiers aboard the Leviathan or the hundreds of people residing in the immediate area. Giving Matthew and Elizabeth the chance to escape and preserve all their research would impact everyone who lived in Olympus and well as the LTZ. Not to mention the future generations that could fall victim to the mysterious disease. Indeed, the stakes of this game were weightier than any ever played in recent history.
Emma, wearing a medic’s uniform under her environmental suit, escorted Jack and Evangeline to the nearest working lift that carried them up to the top level and the motor pool. As the lift slowly ascended, they changed out of their environmental suits and back into their regular clothing, which they had snatched as they exited the lab airlock. While they changed, Kevin briefed Evangeline over her communicator with updates about the oncoming threat and their defense plan. All the while, she could not help but think about the lift carrying her further and further away from half of her family.
Once the lift arrived at the uppermost level, Emma directed Jack to an old security bunker fortified to withstand the impact of a nuclear missile. It was the safest room for him to be in during the assault.
He and Evangeline shared one final, lingering kiss before she said goodbye in the bunker. Her own destination was the locker room to change into a flight suit. When she stepped into the only available suit, she groaned as she realized it was several sizes too big.
As she tightened each strap and harness, she wondered if she was embarking on her final mission. She viewed her decision to join the Dissidents fight against the Olympic conquest as her only real contribution to the Human race. Once fully dressed in her flight suit, she left the locker room and walked toward the TRTVs standing in a row on the far side of the hangar.
Evangeline found Kevin waiting for her next to his TRTV, the very same one from his days when he was her instructor. His disappearance, along with the loss of his TRTV, was still a mystery around the base on Olympus. She grinned to herself now that she knew all the answers the puzzle.
Evangeline approached Kevin’s machine and saw the familiar “Big Brother” decal stenciled on the side in faded, white paint. The moniker was a genuine representation of how he treated every trainee and most of the other pilots. He had a tendency to take every one of them under his wing. Kevin did not just teach them how to pilot a TRTV, but he became a friend and surrogate family until they graduated and received their assignment to a carrier for their first active duty. Evangeline remembered the uphill battle she faced in the early days of her training, all the ostracism she endured over her parents’ disgrace. Kevin’s firm but kind hand had gotten her through it.
“Okay, B.B,” she called out. “Where do you want me?”
Kevin gave her a mischievous grin, which made her rethink her decision to join the counter-attack for a moment.
“Well,” he said with a slight chuckle, “I think we’ll let you try out the Seraphim!” He walked around his TRTV and disappeared behind the legs. Evangeline followed, intrigued by his use of humor in their situation.
“What’s the joke?” she asked as she made her way to the other side of his vehicle. She stopped short at the site before her.
It was a TRTV all right, but it was different from the three standard classes she had trained on: Single Pilot, Dual Pilot for initial training, and Dual Pilot Heavy Assault Types, also known as HATs. Kevin appreciated her shock with another low chuckle.
“This beauty was designed by a Dissident sympathizer when he used to work for an Olympic defense contractor. He came to us with the designs when he understood what the Quorum planned to use it for.”
Evangeline walked around the Seraphim in a slow circle, touching its armor plating everywhere she could reach. It was in perfect condition, not a single scratch anywhere on its surface. She examined its armaments and battle components, mentally tallying the similarities between it and her old TRTV.
“What was it intended for?” she asked, though in her gut she felt she already knew the answer.
“To hunt down and exterminate us!” Kevin said with a tone that was more severe than Evangeline had ever heard speak before.
“Where is he now? The designer, I mean?” she asked, wondering if he was still alive.
“He’s off-world,” Kevin answered. “He had the project put on hold while he smuggled out the parts, piece by piece, and reassembled them here. He’s now trying to make another one with the limited resources we have.” She listened to his brief answers as she continued her evaluation of the new vehicle.
It was shorter than a standard TRTV by a couple of feet. Its weapons pods and engines were larger, but the most notable difference was the tiny walnut-sized bumps scattered across the hull plating.
“What are these for?” she asked, running her hand across the bumpy surface.
“Those are the SINS,” a voice echoed throughout the hanger from behind Evangeline. She would have recognized that voice anywhere, and she spun around to find Colonel Mark Jacobs approaching them. He had stepped out of a transport dressed in his own environmental flight suit. Evangeline stared with wide, disbelieving eyes and gaped at her commanding officer while Kevin gave him a casual salute. Catching his raised hand in the corner of her eye, she snapped to attention.
“Commander?” Evangeline asked in surprise. “You’re one of them, too?”
Jacobs returned her salute with a quick touch to his forehead. “That’s not important right now,” he said, brushing her question aside. “There’s little time, so let’s get back to the task at hand.”
Evangeline, baffled by another surprise twist to her concept of the world around her, took a deep breath. Her mentor and friend was a Dissident, had been a Dissident for who knows how long. She did not know how to process the new information, so she returned to drilling Kevin with all her questions about the Seraphim’s systems.
“What are SINs, sir?” she asked, pointing to one of the nodules on the hull.
Kevin stepped forward and placed his hand next to one of the bumps.
“SIN is short for Sonic Interference Nodes,” he began. “Each one generates a hypersonic sound wave. The sound waves overlap, creating a dense layer of atmosphere, like a bubble, around the craft. They turn any atmosphere around you into a shield. The denser the atmosphere, the stronger the shield will be. We have a little joke around here when it comes to Seraphim; the more sins, the better!” He gave her a nod with his head as if it were her cue to laugh at the joke.
Jacobs gave a low rumbling laugh, but Evangeline did not. Although impressed by the concept, she still did not understand how it worked. However, she appreciated any addition to her defensive arsenal.
She looked around the motor pool to assess the situation. “How many other Seraphim do you have?” she asked. Kevin and Jacobs looked at each other, but Jacobs was the one who answered her query.
“This is the only one said. It’s the prototype. And quite frankly,” he said, giving Kevin another significant glance, “we’ve been unsuccessful at linking a pilot to its advanced systems. No one has been able to interface and get it to function beyond starting the onboard network.” He shook his head sadly as his eyes surveyed the magnificent structure.
Evangeline stared between the two of them, thinking they both must have lost their minds. Her eyes widened as the image of small, white mouse receiving an injection of an unknown substance flashed into her mind. With widening eyes, an understanding of their intent dawned on her.
“So what makes you think I’ll be able to do any better?” she fired at them. The idea that they wanted her to join a fight with an untested prototype was insane. She imagined the vehicle exploding in mid-air as she fired the weapons for the first time.
Jacobs stepped forward until he and Evangeline were toe to toe. He looked down at her just as he had in his office after the accident in the landing zone.
“Because you have the highest aptitude scores toward telemetric control I’ve ever seen. It was because of these scores and my involvement with your parents that I made sure you stayed in the corps.” He softened his gaze, and spoke with pleading eyes. “I have nothing but the fullest confidence in your capabilities. Will you please, at least, try?” he asked.
“Besides,” Kevin teased, “this is a once in a lifetime opportunity! Do you know how many other pilots would sell their mothers for a chance to fly a top-secret machine of this caliber?”
Evangeline looked over at Kevin, who also had caught her in his playful yet pleading gaze. She considered for a moment as her eyes swept back and forth between the two of them.
She let out an exasperated sigh and let her shoulders slump in defeat. “Okay! Okay!” she said, throwing her hands in the air. “I’ll give it a try.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Jacobs said, saluting her in gratitude.
Kevin just winked down at her and whispered, “Atta, girl.”
Evangeline pulled on her flight helmet and sealed the collar. She took a moment to gaze upon the prototype. She had no experience as a test pilot. She wondered that in all the history of men and women piloting a vehicle for the first time, if any of them had been half as nervous as she was at that moment.
She had never thought about it before, but she considered what it might have been like for the first pilots that underwent the procedure, accepting a permanent alteration to their bodies for an untested technology that, in theory, linked them to their vehicle. The technology had been standard in Olympus her entire life. She had never considered what life must have been like before the days of telemetrically-operated vehicles.
She felt a wave of newfound appreciation for the men and women, her brother and sister pilots, who fearlessly ventured beyond what had been the established limits of their time. Her legs trembled with mixed exhilaration and trepidation, feeling anything but fearless.
Taking a step toward the pod, she found the external seat control override and activated it. There was a hiss of pneumatics and electrical servos as the pilot seat descended from the cockpit above. She looked over the seat, expecting to find a new harness interface, but the chair appeared to be identical to the standard TRTV configuration she knew.
Wrapped around the headrest Evangeline noticed a U-shaped object. “What’s this?” she asked, picking it up.
“That’s the flight helmet,” Kevin called from outside the safety border surrounding the Seraphim.
Picking up the modified helmet, Evangeline rolled it around in her hands. “Why is it disconnected from the rest of the harness?” she asked looking over in Kevin and Jacobs’ direction.
“The helmet it designed to allow remote access to the Seraphim’s sensors while outside the cockpit,” Jacobs answered. “But, just like most of the Seraphim’s systems, it remains unproven.”
Evangline’s shoulders slumped slightly as she felt the weight of added expectations. The modified helmet looked like a pair of oversized carbon-fiber earmuffs. It was grey, matching the rest of the Seraphim’s exterior coloring, with an array of micro-displays embedded along the ridge connecting to two sides.
With a hand on each bulbous end, Evangeline raised the Seraphim’s helmet above her head with slow resignation. Sliding the U back across her hair, she rested the rounded ends onto her ears. She heard a beep in each ear, and then a hiss erupted behind her ears. She did not see the cranial plugs emerge from the lobes, sliding along the bottom edge of the bridge connecting the two ends.
The plugs tracked toward the center of her neck until they located the ports at the base of her skull, and inserting with a soft click. At the moment of insertion, the top edge of the bridge expanded like a translucent sheet across the top of her skull until it covered her eyes and cheekbones. At the same time, the lobes protruded forward, meeting to cover her mouth and nose.
Evangeline startled at how quickly her head became enveloped in a shell. She gave the top of her helmet a soft rap with her knuckles, and then tapped on the faceplate with a finger. The hollow sound of her rapping resonated in her ears. “I guess this new helmet wasn’t designed for combat.”
With a sigh, Evangeline reclined into the seat and the weight of her body activated the rest of the connection process. She felt the familiar rush of air along her spine as the ports in her
suit opened, allowing the interface to enter her body. The tingle of micro-voltage zinged up her spine as the internal network scanned her nervous system, searching for the interface points installed along her backbone.
Evangeline felt a rush flood across her body as the Seraphim hummed to life
Off to the side, Kevin and Jacobs were both smiling broadly and exchanging a knowing look with each other. They both adjusted their weight with nervous anticipation, shifting on their feet as if they were standing on plates of hot steel sitting out in the scorching desert sun.
Evangeline felt the full weight of their expectations collapse on her shoulders. If she proved unable to interface with the Seraphim, their defense force would not only be one pilot smaller, but it was probable that the prototype would fall back in the hands of Olympus. She took a deep breath before moving on to the next step.
Skipping the manual interface, she attempted to utilize the full extent of the neural interface for her maiden voyage. She visualized her seat ascending into the cockpit and in less time than it took to finish the thought, she felt herself rising away from the ground and locking into place. The darkness in the cockpit dissipated as the soft glow of instruments and displays illuminated as the machine knew her eyes demanded more light.
She glanced across the inactive monitors for the standard flight instruments. One by one, as her eyes passed over the blank displays, they flickered to life and showed her the precise data she sought; fuel cell levels, ammunition capacity, engine status, and on and on. Everything about the Seraphim felt as familiar as her old patrol TRTV back in Olympus. The visceral familiarity to the cabin around her felt just like coming home.
She was curious about the exterior display interface. In an instant, the panoramic vista of the motor pool appeared in her HUD. She looked left and right and found the clarity of the images to be more brilliant than her own vision. The HUD zoomed into minute details from across the room just by her resting her eyes on them. Satisfied that the visual interface worked better than she expected it to, she proceeded to test some of the other systems.
Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 41