He blinked in realization. If the deadliest earthling title died, then he was only Johnny Aldrin. Not even the Keeper, because that really meant nothing with New Bagram’s destruction. She wanted him to live as only himself.
Maybe he wanted this. As soon as the thought popped into his head, he regretted it, though. The Eagle had her faults. But part of him thought about his parents’ final mission. So many of the finer details of that night evaded him. There was that one moment, though. The red glow of the digital clock read 1:00. The light hurt his eyes, so he kept them shut. And in that moment, he let himself fall into the huge well of pain and misery forming in his heart.
The footfalls around him hadn’t mattered. They could’ve been an Anunnaki for all he cared. He’d genuinely hated life in that instant. But a strange scent woke him up in full. Hot chocolate. Whipped cream with cinnamon. The whole shebang. The smell of something you wouldn’t mind dying smothered in. They didn’t even make that stuff anymore. He opened his eyes and saw the Eagle there, smiling. His real grandparents were long dead, but right then, he’d kind of wished she’d been his grandmother. Or his aunt. Maybe even his mom.
Orun and his friends were gone. That left Morris and the Eagle. They were it. The last of his family. For as lukewarm as the Eagle had treated him lately, she’d cared about him at least as much as his parents. Didn’t that make her family?
A plan formed in his mind. He’d play along with her wishes and pretend he was complying. But really, he would force her to abort this suicide mission.
“Okay, thanks, bye,” Johnny said, cloaking himself and creating a hologram of him running out of the bunker.
He swore for a second the Eagle’s eyes reddened. But she looked away. Maybe it was only the gunpowder tarnishing the air.
The constant crack of resonance blasters indicated a lot of Berserkers. Eliminating all of them wasn’t an option.
If the place was set to explode, he needed to disarm the bomb. But he didn’t know how to do that. Where was it anyway?
Given the setup of the Eagle, Laura, and Beyta’s defense, they were protecting the surveillance room. Then the bomb was either inside the surveillance room or triggered by computers inside of it. Johnny bit his inner cheek. Juan probably knew how to disarm the bomb after all the time he’d spent inside the surveillance room. Or maybe he could use a fire extinguisher like he had to stop the bomb under the high school.
He wondered why the Naga didn’t pile on the assault. Their Berserker elites had the gear to do so. Defensive shields and that sort of thing. That’s when he remembered what Dagos said about the geometric shapes on the floor. The stealth panels prevented the Anunnaki’s scanners from properly mapping the structure. Not knowing the layout of the bunker had to be keeping them cautious. Then there were the low ceilings that encumbered them.
Was there any chance they suspected a trap? He doubted it. And it wasn’t like yelling out There’s a bomb would work. They wouldn’t believe him.
Careful not to trip over the stealth panels, Johnny edged to the hall and dashed across to the surveillance room. All the monitors showed a timer, counting down from three minutes. He glanced at the fire extinguisher on the wall. He could freeze the monitors, but a cable leading into a small hole in the cement suggested the computers themselves were heavily protected. He couldn’t shut those off.
An empty stretch of hall separated them from Berserkers camped behind furniture against the wall. Juan’s door lay between them. Now, why did he have to go and get himself trapped?
Moving him out of there wouldn’t be easy under the circumstances. But no one was leaving this place if Juan couldn’t disarm the bomb.
“Sirrush!” Juan yelled.
These things, Johnny thought wearily. He looked into the hall again and saw one poking its long neck and eerie robotic snake-dog face into the open.
If he had mud, he could deceive the sirrush like he did those Anunnaki after he and Morris left the sewers. Then it hit him. As Beyta’s machine gun blazed, he grabbed the extinguisher off the wall.
With a squeeze, he sprayed the fire extinguisher’s strange-smelling foam on himself. Colder than the muck from the sewers, but it spread and clung much easier. Soon he was shivering. He probably resembled one of those snow monsters Sarah’s mom told stories about.
In a series of alternating shots, the Eagle and Laura gunned down the first sirrush. Another positioned itself at the curve of the hallway, releasing a pulse surge “bark.” At that, a drawer in the filing cabinet broke apart, sending papers flying. Johnny heard the Eagle, her daughter, and Beyta scramble back.
Cloaked by the Conifer and foam, he waddled through the hall. Frost bit at the edges of his body, numbing his skin so that he barely registered his feet touching the ground. Suddenly, the sirrush sprang forward. He was too slow to dodge it and literally froze in place as it swept past. But what was it going for? Only Dagos and Laura lay ahead.
“Heads up!” Johnny cried on impulse, and clapped a hand over his mouth. Just help Juan and we can leave.
At the edge of his vision, he noticed Berserkers lined up along the wall. They were preparing to storm in. Cold cutting off his circulation, he tried to jump into the bedroom. Instead, he collapsed, foam spewing across the floor as he broke out shivering.
“What’s that?” Juan muttered, looking up from behind a metal bed frame.
“Let’s go,” Johnny said, revealing himself. Juan reared back, his eyes widening.
“It’s just foam.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Juan said, still startled. “The Eagle planned for you to live.”
“What are you talking about?” Johnny said, teeth chattering. He extended a trembling hand to get Juan standing quicker.
“The militia leader said his men found you. The Eagle radioed back for him to keep you there, but it was too late. So she made a new deal with the benefactors. Her death for your life.”
Johnny didn’t fully understand, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“It’s too late, then,” Johnny said. “I’m not leaving you guys. If you’re dying, I’m dying. So you might as well shut off the bomb.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“You do know how, right?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
An explosion from Dagos’s position sent a tremble through him.
Cloaked, he and Juan peered into the corridor. A plume of smoke danced outside the surveillance room.
He forced himself through the haze as the smoke clawed at his lungs and throat. For a brief second, the grey surrounding him seemed to sap his sense of direction. The incinerated body of a sirrush on the ground materialized before him on the floor. Hope blossomed in him that he could still pull off saving the Eagle.
Pieces of the wall flaked off as he pushed up against it. Holding his breath, the surveillance room materialized around him and Juan.
“Disarm it and tell the Eagle we have to go,” Johnny said, de-cloaking Juan. He wiped off the fire extinguisher foam as Juan typed up command lines onto one of the computer’s terminal screens. Smoke billowed inside. Johnny tightened the grip on his rifle, his shivering subsiding. He could feel heat emanating from right outside the door.
“It’s off,” Juan cried twenty seconds later. “Let’s find the others.”
Johnny swept out a hand to wait. At the same time, he activated the Conifer’s optical manipulation and visually thinned out the smoke. Now they could see through it.
The entire corridor had changed in the last minute. In the midst of smoke, Beyta lay sprawled over the floor, lifeless and his blood streaked as if the Naga killed him with a single blow. Several huddled figures stood in a mass a few feet down the hall. Two Berserkers loomed over the Eagle and Laura. Both held their hands over their heads in surrender, eyes full of mirthless defiance. In one horrific moment, a Berserker snapped the Eagle’s cane in half and threw the pieces to the side.
All he could think about was what would come next as the Eagl
e’s eyes flared in alarm. That decided it for him. He plunged his finger on the trigger, dispatching both with a three-round burst.
An alarmed grunting followed. Other Berserkers down the hall.
Johnny bolted out, Juan right behind him.
“What happened to the bomb?” the Eagle demanded.
“It’s a dud. Everyone out,” Juan said.
The bunker, the smell of gunpowder, the shrieks of Berserkers, the chill of the foam. It all faded away as they scrambled down the ramp. Johnny willed himself to feel some victory, but nothing came. There was only a vague sense of failure. He was confronted with the reality that they had nothing to help find the Conifers. No new avenues.
Emerging from the shack, he gulped in a breath of fresh air, his eyes itchy from smoke. He noticed a giant shadow, and his entire body tensed. The Anunnaki ship he’d watched approaching minutes ago hovered over them.
Chapter 40
The ship was one massive, shining crescent, the wings curving back. Johnny had never seen a whale, but he kind of imagined this thing to be about the same size. Maybe larger. He marveled at the way it floated there without a sound. That was the power of anti-gravity fueled by mannadium.
The ship cruised forward a few feet. The motion was jarring, and he hesitated to raise his rifle. His parents never trained him to fight something like this.
“No,” Laura said, throwing out a hand.
At the same time, the ship stopped a few feet above their heads. They could reach up and touch it. Johnny flinched at the disc-shaped slot that opened up.
“Get in,” Sergeant Sledge said, poking out of the opening.
Johnny’s jaw dropped. Sledge and the other two soldiers from before helped lift the Eagle, then the others, inside.
Johnny intentionally waited until he was last in line. He couldn’t leave right now. Some innate feeling cemented him to that spot on the hill.
“Aldrin, what’s the holdup?” Sledge growled, motioning for his hand.
Johnny nipped his lip in contemplation. The Berserkers would arrive soon to stop their escape. Doubtless sent by the Ascendi. They were elite soldiers, meaning they’d probably have access to the secure branches of the World Tree network.
Johnny breathed out slowly. If he could capture a Berserker, couldn’t Magu, the Anunnaki working with the Watchers, use its designator and visor data to access the World Tree? And locate the current whereabouts of the Conifers from there?
Now, how the hell was he going to capture a Berserker? His rifle felt like a burning log in his hands. The Berserkers would kill him as soon as they saw him with it. He threw it down. And his Conifer wouldn’t trick their visors, which they’d no doubt use. So he needed to beat at least one of them without any weapons or his Conifer. The way Orun had tried to train him to.
A pang of shame welled in him at his failure to learn. Surging frustration forced it away. He had this small chance, and he couldn’t screw it up.
“Johnny,” Sledge snapped.
He dismissed his former instructor with the wave of his hand. The shack he and Morris entered less than ten minutes before lay ahead ominously.
But no way they’d leave him here to die.
Johnny vaulted toward the shack right as five Berserkers stormed out onto the hillside. How do you beat an Anunnaki with only your hands?
Orun’s voice made him swallow nervously. His heart was pounding. This was impossible. His every instinct told him to surrender. There was no way to beat an Anunnaki. Surrender. The thought froze him as he faced the oncoming Berserkers.
“I surrender,” Johnny said, putting his arms up slowly.
Four of the Berserkers rushed out, filling the air with pulse surges aimed at the ship. A fifth lumbered at him unperturbed, reaching out a single hand. Johnny stared at the two-thumbed, three-fingered hand in horror. Cruising at him without any real sense of urgency. The milliseconds of waiting seemed to last forever. He could almost dodge it if he wanted to.
Then everything clicked. How did he defeat an Anunnaki without any weapons? By feigning a surrender. The Anunnaki was completely off guard, expecting no more resistance from him. And yet there was that one weapon. Its hand. Energized with a special charge that numbed muscle signals and knocked someone unconscious.
Sucking in a breath, Johnny shuffled his feet. In a single fluid motion, he sidestepped and planted his arms on the Anunnaki’s. All of his weight into it. His fists crashed against its wrist, the impact of its cold metal suit numbing them at the same time. The Anunnaki faltered at his boldness. Unable to stop itself in that instant, its own stunning hand brushed against its waist.
“Good night,” Johnny said, watching the stunned look in its eyes fade as it crumpled over. He jumped back as dust flew up, but not enough dust to hide him from the other Berserkers.
One launched its arm out his way, and he knew he was dead. But the cold pop of gunfire in his ears meant otherwise. He ducked as the sounds of engagement replaced everything. Somewhere, he detected a moist thunk.
In seconds the Berserkers lay a pile of wounded, dead hulks. Ignoring the throbbing in his hands, Johnny bent over and grabbed the Berserker by its massive midsection.
He didn’t have to say anything. Sledge, Laura, and the two other soldiers surrounded the Anunnaki, smothering its limbs in their grip. Even then it was still a heavy load. Not a surprise, given the average male Anunnaki weighed close to four hundred pounds. Add on their combat armor, and they were a bit over five hundred pounds.
The ship descended to help make up the deficit, and they lugged it inside, slipping in themselves to ease the process with some pull.
“Wish this thing still had its tractor beams,” Sledge grumbled.
They slopped the Anunnaki onto the cargo hold floor inside with a collective exhalation.
“My prayer worked,” Morris said, coming up to Johnny with the biggest grin he had ever seen.
Johnny blinked, watching the hatch close. “Hey,” he said, only half aware of his cousin.
He looked around the ship, expecting to see Anunnaki. The interior design resembled his jet from New Bagram, though. The light came from bulbs in the ceiling a few feet above. There was beige carpeting on the floor, a wooden trim to the walls. The room was designed like someone’s study, but circular and lacking any real furniture.
The others gathered around the Anunnaki. One soldier checked its pulse. “Still alive. What happened to it, Aldrin?”
“I got it to zap itself.”
The others broke out in laughs. “Nice work.”
“It’s bleeding,” Laura said urgently. Johnny noticed the red stain sprouting from its stomach. Normally, shooting an Anunnaki there was a good thing. But they needed this one alive.
“Come on,” Sledge said, ushering Johnny and Morris to join him. “They’ll watch it.”
Sledge stopped at the wooden door at the end of the hall but didn’t bother turning to face Johnny. “Aldrin, what were you thinking?”
“I figured we could use the Berserker’s access to vital info on the Conifers,” he said, noting the appropriateness of his own words.
“That’s not what I mean,” Sledge said wearily, raising his hand to the knob. “I mean you and your cousin coming to the bunker. You said Orun ordered you, but he’s…The Eagle is not happy about any of this.”
Johnny felt himself growing defensive at the mere hint that he’d somehow done wrong. “Because I saved her? It sounded like she wanted to commit suicide.”
Sledge lowered his hand. “Before you arrived, she made a deal with New Bagram’s sponsors. She would go out in a big boom, take down a dozen Anunnaki and the Ascendi with her. Immortalize her legend with a glorious end. In exchange, the benefactors would forget your oath. They’d forget the Conifers.”
Juan had hinted at this, hadn’t he? For as stunned as Johnny was, Sledge might’ve slapped him.
“Then why’d she call you to save her?”
“She didn’t. We knew where she was and we h
eard about the Anunnaki arriving in Kandrazi. We sent a message that we were coming, but she’d already made her choice.”
“And you were going to let her?”
Sledge turned to him, eyes looking as angry as Johnny felt. “I’ve served with the Eagle on some nasty missions. The things we’ve done and lost, well, I can’t judge anyone for wanting to go out their own way.”
That sounded so miserable, Johnny didn’t want to think about it. The history books never spoke of anything the Eagle had lost. His teachers and parents always praised her fighting spirit, her fierce determination, and all her glorious achievements.
“So she wanted to go out with a bang?” Johnny asked, trying to find some resolution in the matter.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway. The Ascendi probably never even showed up. Must’ve gotten sick of putting themselves in harm’s way.” Sledge sighed. “She’s not happy with you, but I think you should still go speak with her. She’ll want updates from you.”
Sledge opened the door, and again the room surprised him in its humanness. Carpeting, lights. It resembled the inside of a giant cruise ship. He’d seen before-and-after photos of one the Anunnaki attacked in the Shroud War.
At the far side of the room, two pilots in grey jumpsuits sat in special cockpit-style stations against the wall, wearing strange helmets with wires attached that ran into the floor. Anunnaki aircraft didn’t use windows. These must’ve been special helmets to see outside and fly the craft.
“What is this thing?” Johnny asked, trying to delay his meeting with the Eagle. All of this was way too wild to be something rigged up in a day.
“Stolen Anunnaki shuttle from the Shroud War. Specially designed for speed and stealth.”
Sledge mentioned this back in the tunnels, after they all escaped New Bagram, hadn’t he?
“Which reminds me, we need your Conifer,” Sledge said.
Arching an eyebrow, Johnny wondered if this was some kind of punishment.
The Deadliest Earthling Page 17