by Toby Minton
Michael unhooked his harness and pushed himself out of his jump seat, fighting against the added Gs as the transport went from dive to climb. He made his way to the steps using the lockers along either side to pull himself forward. When he reached the steps, the transport leveled out, nearly making him bang his head on the sloped ceiling when he overcompensated for the suddenly lighter resistance. He steadied himself and took the last two steps as carefully as he could, bracing on both sides.
He reached the cockpit in time to see Corso reach under the console, rip an access panel open and start pulling down wires. He could have stopped him. He could have hauled the thief out of there like Elias wanted, but that gut feeling, the one he was really starting to hate, once again told him to trust the thief.
“What the hell are you—” Coop started to shout. “Shit, he’s gaining on us!”
“Surprise, surprise,” Corso replied. Michael watched him lean down and strip two wires with his teeth then twist them together. When he leaned back up, he spit the casing out, keyed in a sequence on the panel between him and Coop, and then grabbed the steering controls in front of him.
“I’m not dying on this heap today.” He pushed the handles forward and right, and the transport canted down and banked right hard.
“What the hell!?” Coop yelled. “You just dead-sticked me! How the hell did you even do that?”
“The fact that you don’t know…” Corso trailed off before yelling over his shoulder. “Boss man, if you want your team to live, I need this nugget out of my way and Katie girl’s gear ready to squawk instead of track.”
“Screw you, conv—” Coop shouted, but Corso talked right over him.
“Thirty seconds till that drone locks us. That happens, not even I can save us.”
Michael dropped to a crouch and looked down the steps. From the back of the transport, Elias stared back as he strapped himself in beside Kate. Michael nodded hurriedly, but Elias continued to stare at him for a few precious seconds before he responded.
“Coop, get back here and help Kate,” he yelled.
Coop was too angry to form a coherent word. The sounds coming from him were more growl than speech as he unlatched his harness, flung the ends aside and shoved past Michael to bound down the steps.
“Take a seat, kid,” Corso said calmly, like that whole scene hadn’t been his fault.
Michael pulled himself into the vacant pilot seat and fumbled for the harness buckles as the transport banked hard again.
“You believe that guy?” Corso said, giving Michael a quick glance before returning his gaze to the displays and sky. “They must be hard up to give that plumber the con.”
“Plumber?”
Corso spared him another quick glance, one side of his mouth quirking up in that lopsided grin of his. “Somebody who has no business in a cockpit.”
Michael nodded without fully understanding. Truth was, he understood very little of what Corso had said since the thief had run to the cockpit.
“Should I be doing something?” he asked, looking over the bewildering array of touchscreens, switches, and knobs around him.
“Yeah,” Corso replied. He slid out of his seat to swing open another access panel, this one beside Michael’s leg. “Keep an eye on the scanner display on your left.”
Michael found the display, but that was about all he could do. The one green dot moving from the bottom toward the center had to be their transport, seeing as how it was the only thing on the screen. But that didn’t tell him where their attacker was or what was happening. “Keep an eye on it for what?” he asked.
“Anything turns red, scream,” Corso replied before shouting, “How we going, Katie girl?”
“Almost got it,” her somehow still calm voice called back.
Michael was impressed by Kate’s composure, by everyone’s composure. His own heart was pounding in his chest, enough to make focusing on the display in front of him a challenge. He felt helpless, at the mercy of an unseen enemy in a situation where he had no control, no way to defend himself. Without Nikki by his side, he felt exposed and vulnerable, even more so than he should in this situation. The people around him didn’t have his special link. They’d never had a twin around to heal them of any injury, yet they were doing their jobs and keeping their cool in the face of a very likely fiery death. Their courage shamed him.
On the display, a smaller light appeared in front of the green one, a light that moved much faster toward the center of the screen. In that instant, Michael’s perception of the display shifted. He realized the light he’d been watching wasn’t them in the transport—it was their attacker. Which meant the transport was the dull fixed icon in the center of the screen. Which made the object racing toward it—
A flashing red halo appeared around the speeding dot, and a warning tone joined the words suddenly flashing on the display announcing an incoming missile. “Corso!”
“Yeah, I hear it,” he said as he slid back into his seat. “Now or nothing, Katie girl!”
“I just need to—no, no wait. I got it!” she shouted back. “I got it. Do it!”
Corso reached across the scanner and hit a series of keys, then shoved the steering controls forward with both hands, sending the transport into a dive that thrust Michael back into his seat and gave him a clear view of the ground rushing toward them. Almost immediately Corso pulled the transport level and the pressure let up.
Michael looked down at the scanner but saw only a swirl of distorted lines twitching across the screen. Before he could get a word out, Corso pointed toward the top of the windshield.
“There, mate,” the thief said with a darker version of his crooked grin. “That one almost had our names on it.”
Michael looked up to see a whitish light leaving a quickly fading trail as it angled up toward the low clouds. As he watched, a small craft passed over them following the missile’s trail. The dull gray ship had two sets of long, thin wings, the back set angled forward and slanted into an upward V. Its body was impossibly narrow for the wingspan. He didn’t see how a pilot could even fit inside. Not even the bulbous nose seemed big enough for more than a cramped cockpit. When he said as much, Corso grunted a laugh.
“That’s because the pilot is leagues away in a cushy command center,” Corso said as he slid his arms through his seat harness. “Unmanned drone. Only reason we’re still breathing. Toy jocks don’t fly by visuals. They’re too spoiled on all their fancy sensors. Sensors that are all but useless now thanks to Kate.”
Michael looked at him blankly.
“She’s pushing so much noise through our own sensors, half the state’s probably deaf,” he clarified. “Anybody not strapped in back there best get that way. The fun’s about to start.”
Michael followed Corso’s gaze to see the drone bank sharply and angle toward their flight path. “I thought you said he couldn’t see us.”
“Sight’s all he’s got left, mate. Kate’s noise mucks up the fancy stuff, but it won’t stop basic vid.” The thief accelerated and angled down toward the snowcapped mountains below. “He’s no other choice now but to fly like a man.”
Michael glanced over at Corso’s tone. The smile on the man’s face gave Michael a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with their steep drop.
“Relax, mate,” Corso said without looking over. “It’s skill for skill now, and this is what I do.”
Michael didn’t get airsick. He’d never suffered from any kind of motion sickness that he could remember. But he was sure what Corso started doing with the blocky transport would have made the most hardened pilots queasy. Nikki would have loved it. Michael didn’t.
Under Corso’s guiding hands, the transport swayed back and forth at sickening speed through the twisting valleys, skimming just meters from the pines stabbing up from the snowy, rocky slopes.
Michael called up the rear video at Corso’s command and superimposed the translucent feed over the corner of the windshield. So he had a clear view when the dro
ne fired on them. Each time the tiny light flashed from the nose of the ghost image, Corso anticipated it with a smooth change of direction, and the heavy caliber bullets would tear into tree and rock instead of their hull.
“How long can you keep this up?” Michael asked.
“He can’t,” Coop called from the back. “He can’t outrun or outfly an attack drone.”
“Somebody cinch up sweetpea’s training bra,” Corso called back. “I think he’s getting nervous.”
“Keep your seat, Corporal!” Elias barked from the bay.
Michael didn’t turn to see what was going on back there, but he could well imagine Coop’s reaction to the thief’s taunting. Corso just laughed, but it barely reached his eyes.
“The plumber’s half right,” he said for Michael’s ears alone. “That thing’s got us on speed, and he can afford to run out of fuel and crash. We can’t. We need to come up with something good, sooner rather than later.”
“Like what?”
Corso muttered something Michael didn’t catch at all as the transport banked hard around the bare rock of a jagged outcropping.
“Not a lot of options, mate. His bird’s sleek and fast and ready to gun us down if I make a mistake. I’m flying a bloody heavy crate good for nothing but—” He paused then barked a laugh that gave Michael a bad, bad feeling. “You’re gonna want to hold on to something.”
“Everybody hold on!” Michael shouted to the back. He watched Corso ease the thrusters to full power and straighten their course down toward the bottom of a narrow pass.
“Come on, hot shot,” Corso said under his breath, much like Kate had what seemed like hours ago. “Now’s your chance. I’m making a run. Pour on the speed—line me up. Perfect chance to lase me for that last beam rider you’re dying to let off the chain.”
“Corso,” Michael warned. He knew the man had to be watching the drone grow steadily larger on the ghost image as it gained on them. And this time they weren’t bobbing and weaving. In the pale image before him, Michael watched the drone steady behind them as it lined them up for a shot. Through the image, the rocky walls of the pass rapidly narrowed to within a few meters on either side.
Just when Michael was sure the drone was going to fire, Corso pulled up hard and cut thrust. The blocky transport’s lack of aerodynamics made the sudden loss of thrust a jarring loss of speed that flung Michael forward against his restraints. The drone racing toward their tail had nowhere to go but under them. When it did so, Corso cut power completely. They dropped like dead weight.
Corso immediately fired the thrusters back to life, but not before an impact jarred the transport, rattling the lockers in the bay and every tooth in Michael’s head.
Through the windshield Michael saw the drone spiral past ahead of them, two short, jagged stumps where its right wings used to be. It plowed into the trees below leaving a trail of splintered wood and pine needles before it disappeared completely.
For a long minute as they slowly climbed, no one said a word.
“So, maybe it’s too late to ask,” Michael broke the silence, “but do you have any business in a cockpit?”
Corso laughed. “Some people used to think so—Royal Australian Air Force, a few pirate groups out of the southern Caribbean—but after what I just pulled, probably not.”
Michael watched Corso calmly checking systems after that and setting a course toward the coast. When Corso told him they hadn’t suffered any critical damage, he called toward the back, “It’s OK. Looks like we’re in the clear.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you,” Corso said, throwing Michael a look. “Looks like Savior doesn’t want to capture you after all, mate. Drone like that’s got one purpose, and it’s not bringing back prisoners. Congratulations, kid, looks like you made Savior’s hit list.”
Chapter 32
Gideon
Gideon stood in the gloom of the darkened hangar, staring out through the screen of fake ivy at the moonlit sound, his thoughts a dark swirl of past, present, and future. As he watched the moon easing behind the forested hills across the water, he struggled to reconcile the images he’d seen months ago with the reality of his past few weeks with the twins. At least, that’s what he told himself he was doing. In reality, what he was really doing was delaying the inevitable.
Gideon knew what he must to do to get the answers he needed. He knew no amount of logic and introspection was up to the task. Not yet. He simply didn’t have enough data to reach a conclusion, not with any degree of confidence. What could make a difference, however, was something he had come to dread.
To untangle the threads that lead to the one possible future he had to prevent, he had to give up control. He had to let the creature take over, and that was something he was finding harder and harder to make himself do. Not because it was difficult—quite the opposite. It had, in fact, become far too easy to give up control, to slip into the maelstrom where the creature’s mind resided. Finding the details he needed, however, took time. Too much time. Time the creature could use to adjust to their body. Time it could use to break free from its bonds.
Gideon had made the mistake before of allowing the creature too much time in control of their flesh. He hesitated to risk such carnage again.
A glint of light caught Gideon’s eye, a flash of moonlight reflecting off an object skimming rapidly over the water toward the base. The ivy before him split and started to retract toward either side of the hangar door, the mechanical whir of the motors pulling the screen along its tracks a jarring intrusion into the rhythm of the surf on the rocks below. Gideon instinctively moved with the screen, drawing back into the deeper shadows.
With a barely audible purr, the skimmer glided through the retracting ivy and into the hangar. Padre eased it to a stop under the weak halo of one of the emergency lights. His head never turned in Gideon’s direction, but Gideon was confident Padre knew he was there. Not much escaped the scout’s notice.
Padre keyed a code into the skimmer, and the ivy reversed direction and started to close.
“What did you find?” Gideon said quietly, stepping toward the faint orange light near the skimmer.
“Nothing,” Padre replied. As expected, he evidenced no surprise at Gideon’s presence as he swung off the skimmer. He didn’t even glance up until he said, “Dead ends, like all the others. He’s abandoned every warehouse we knew about.”
Gideon said nothing. He’d expected as much, but that hadn’t stopped him from hoping.
“Tomorrow I’ll start on the Wasteland.” Padre met Gideon’s eyes, but unlike many, he didn’t flinch or try to keep his gaze off the alien side. There was a strength to Padre, a strength Gideon would undoubtedly need in the days ahead.
“I know it’s a long shot with so much ground to cover, but we’re pretty sure that’s where Savior’s supplies were headed a few weeks ago," Padre said. "With a set grid pattern, I’ll find him if he’s out there, given enough time.”
Time—something Gideon doubted they had at their disposal.
“You need to rest,” Gideon said, “but wake Elias first. Tell him I’m going to the vault.”
Gideon turned away without waiting for a response and strode from the hangar, but not before seeing the quick flash of hope in Padre’s eyes. Like most of the others, Padre didn’t know what really occurred when Gideon went to the vault for answers. He and the rest of the team knew about the loss of control, the need for the shackles and the secure room, but they didn’t know the nebulous nature of Gideon’s visions on the other side. Only Elias knew the full truth. Padre and the others knew only that when Gideon went to the vault, he came back with answers. They didn’t know what it took to find those answers, or how ambiguous they really were.
Gideon had no intention of disabusing Padre or the rest of the team. If their misconception brought them some measure of comfort, or better still fortified their resolve to follow his orders, so be it.
The corridors were darker than when Gideon had enter
ed the hangar, lit now only by the faintly glowing emergency globes spaced every half dozen meters along the center of the arched ceiling. Everyone else had long since retired for the night.
He lengthened his stride as he left the hangar. The chitinous talons on his right foot clicked on the cold concrete with each step, the sound echoing back off the curved walls and nearly masking Padre’s soft steps behind him.
He usually kept his darker half covered as best he could to spare others the sight of his deformity and himself the pain of seeing their discomfort, but tonight he’d left the modified boot and glove in his room. Both felt restrictive and unnatural to his alien limbs. Tonight, he’d let his own physical comfort take precedence to free his mind from distraction for his fruitless search for clarity.
Padre turned aside toward Elias’s quarters, but Gideon barely registered his departure. Already his thoughts were on the door in the back of his mind he was about to open.
At an early age, Gideon had learned to compartmentalize his thoughts, to order them, to categorize them, to secure them each in their own niches in his brain. It had started as a game, something to occupy his mind in grade school as a child, where he’d found little to challenge him. He’d developed a structured system in his mind for the storage and recovery of every piece of information he learned. As he grew older, he’d improved the system, simplifying and expanding it simultaneously in order to maximize his mental efficiency. As a result, his memory was nearly flawless.
His mind, conditioned as it was, was thus uniquely prepared to house a second consciousness. After the Event, Gideon had discovered the alien mind within his own, secured in a vault like the rest of his thoughts. He’d learned over time that when he wanted to release the alien mind and take its place, he had but to open the door.