Sledge spat, and the saliva clung to the Major’s metal leg armor.
“You killed more than that you—”
Suddenly Sledge’s mouth clamped shut and started twitching. The Ascendi Major exchanged a smile with the Minor.
“What is this? Your idea of a trial?” Laura snapped, writhing under an invisible grip.
Johnny made a mental note that the Minor was levitating them in the air. Not the Major. If they could only hurt the Minor somehow…
He sucked in a breath and tried with all his might to bring his arms up, but someone might as well have wrapped his body in rope. His arms were strapped to him.
The Major said a few more words in Nebirian, then addressed Laura. “Something like that. But it wouldn’t be a very safe one if we let that electrostatic bomb go off.”
Without warning, Demo’s tactical vest ripped apart and the front pouched tore open. A grey satchel popped out and flew onto the ground. Strips of cloth and wiring broke off the satchel, exposing the inner detonator box and the timer display. With a crunch, the device detached into five flaps of jagged-edged plastic.
The Ascendi Major spoke again in Nebirian. This time the Anunnaki soldiers hissed in amusement. Johnny fought back the urge to shout hate-filled curses at them. Quivering, short breaths coupled with the trembling of his entire body, and he felt like the Minor’s hold would have to break any second. But despite his certainty, nothing happened. This was one struggle his willpower alone couldn’t win.
The Ascendi raised its palm. The whine of a pulse surge followed.
Demo didn’t even have time to scream. Horror twisted in Johnny. He shuddered and forced himself to take a deep breath. Goose bumps covered his skin.
No matter how hard he struggled, the gravity Conifer trapped everything below his neckline in a bind. His tactical pouches carried a pistol, single grenade, and a knife, but reaching them was out of the question. His gaze fell upon his friends, still kneeling like statues.
They weren’t physically restrained by the Ascendi Minor’s Conifer. The shattered remains of the electrostatic bomb rested in front of them. Sharp as daggers around the edges. Whether or not they were in control, his friends had to see that.
He’d broken free of the Ascendi Major’s mind control with a fresh dosage of pain. A horrible but desperate thought spawned. Force enough agony out of them and it would have to break the Ascendi’s grip. Maybe only for a couple of seconds, but that might be enough. He racked his mind for some way to evoke that insidious pain in his friends.
What kind of pain, though? The Ascendi had felt a lot. So much, Johnny wanted to just give up. Bottle himself up in a memory of his days at New Bagram before the firestorm. Except even that wasn’t sacred. Not the way Hamiad had gone behind his back trying to become a Snake-eater.
It dawned on him then and there. The Ascendi were all so close, so connected, they trusted each other with everything. So the Major knew nothing of betrayal by close friends.
The Ascendi Major aimed its palm at Ninja. It hummed. Misery smothering him, Johnny looked away. Another whine, then a thud.
“Do me next,” Laura challenged. “I’ve killed dozens of you with my landmines.”
“That’s nothing,” Sledge said. “Remember the Shroud War, Major? Remember what we did to you there?”
Was it too late? Johnny asked himself. The others had accepted death and they wanted to end it on their terms. Or were they buying time? For what?
“Ascendi Major,” Johnny said, injecting all his desperation into his words. This had to sound as pathetic and selfish as possible. Not hard because he was quivering and tired. “Let me live. Please. I know where the Eagle is. Take control of my mind, send me back to her. I’ll give you everything you want.”
Avoiding his friends, he forced himself to gaze directly into the Ascendi Major’s sinister face. See it considering the option. And if he’d interested him, surely his friends bought into his lie too. Behind the Major, something big and silver caught his attention in the sky.
Hamiad gave a sudden motion and the shriek of an Anunnaki filled Johnny’s ears. The Ascendi Minor hit the ground, corpsified, thanks to a shard of the electrostatic bomb lodged in its forehead. The Major knelt over him, his eyes widening in horror.
The scene ripped a new one straight down the fabric of the space and time of the moment. Johnny and the Snake-eaters fell to the ground. A blue canister launched into the air. In the back of his mind, Johnny heard someone shout, “Flash-bang out!” and managed to cover his ears and shut his eyes.
The next thing he knew there was a blinding white light. The end of the world. Chaos exploded. Gunfire blazed from Laura and Sledge. Stupefied Anunnaki collapsed.
But all of that paled in comparison to the shuttle tearing up the black dirt a hundred feet away. Dirt burst upward in a wave, the shuttle a colossal whale crashing through a sea of black. Seventy feet away. The air itself trembled with the roar of the shuttle hurtling at them. Fifty feet away. The Ascendi’s platform swerved out of sight, its balance wavering. Twenty feet away. From above, his ruby-red Conifer plummeted to the dirt. The shuttle’s silver frame and black dirt devoured everything else in view. A metallic groan wailed in his head. He shrank back, the world darkening around him.
Chapter 50
Johnny rubbed his head, and a single ache flowed through him. He tried to talk, but a sudden sting tightened his throat. He coughed instead and swallowed. Little particles of dirt lingered in his mouth.
“You damn traitor,” said a distant but familiar voice. Hamiad’s.
Johnny smiled at that.
The next thing he knew his friend was on top of him, clutching him by the collar. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t beat you silly.” A fresh red cut ran along his forehead, and black dust coated his face.
Images flooded his mind. His friends kneeling. The Ascendi Minor levitating him and the Snake-eaters. The Ascendi Major executing Ninja and Demo. A deep regret welled up in him. They hadn’t saved them. Had they saved the others? Vaguely, he recalled Hamiad launching a piece of the electrostatic bomb into the Ascendi Minor’s head. Hopefully that meant only one Ascendi left.
“Are you listening?” Hamiad growled, spit flying on his face.
Johnny groaned. “I saved us, didn’t I? I had to hurt your feelings to free you.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Hamiad snapped.
“Maybe that’s why it worked,” Krem said quietly. “Now would you shut it before they find us.”
Krem and Skunk beamed at Johnny, crawling over to him from a pit in the dirt. Metal sheltered them, the deep scent of fire and smoke hanging in the air. Johnny looked up and saw the bloodied pilot still strapped upside down into his station on the ceiling. It must’ve taken some serious guts to pull off that maneuver. He vowed not to let it be in vain.
It was hard to tell exactly how much of the shuttle remained. About ten feet away the carpet and wood beneath splintered along with exposed metal, hanging inches above the dirt. Light flickered there, and he felt the heat of a fire.
Krem patted the dirt off his jumpsuit as Hamiad wiped the sweat and blood from his forehead. Skunk wandered for a few seconds, pointed, and raced to the far side of the wreckage. There, a hand poked out from behind a pile of metal and carpet. A wall and part of the shuttle’s floor must’ve caved in.
“Careful,” Johnny said weakly.
He got up to help. By the time he reached it, Skunk had shoved off the debris. Johnny’s heart rose at the sight of Sarah, looking alive but covered in the black dirt.
Skunk nudged her and she blinked her eyes open. As soon as she saw Johnny, rage and hurt filled in them.
“Why did you do that?” she asked solemnly.
“Claims it was for our own good,” Skunk said with played-up suspicion. Not that Sarah was ready for jokes.
She stumbled on her next sentence. “I—But how? We’re all…”
All okay, she probably meant.
“Yeah,” Joh
nny said. “Sorry. But I knew it was the only way to get you guys riled up enough. The Ascendi tried to control me too.”
She dipped her head and offered a soft smile. “You really came to save us?”
“Kind of,” he said, deciding he couldn’t tell her any more lies. “Me and the Snake-eaters came to stop the Ark of the Covenant. Saving you all was part of a deal I made, though.”
He thought of the Brotherhood militia. The wretched soldiers going back on their word was almost as upsetting as his fear of the Ark’s activation. At that, panic sprang to the forefront of his mind. He checked his watch: 11:47. Thirteen minutes until Mars and Earth aligned. Thirteen minutes until the Ascendi could kick off humanity’s extinction. Nauseous, he remembered the Major escaping the shuttle’s path.
“Has anyone seen Sergeant Sledge or Colonel Laura?” Skunk asked.
Everyone shook their heads. Not good. If they weren’t here, they might be outside. Maybe hidden under a pile of debris, but more than likely either dead or killed by the Anunnaki. Flashes of the skirmish came to him. Sledge had deployed the flash-bang. Saved all their lives. At least long enough for the shuttle to do the rest.
What remained of the cabin swirled around Johnny. He blinked, thinking he must’ve suffered head damage. And then an all-too-familiar and terrifying voice pierced his head.
I know the Conifer is there. Return it now, and you may live on as my slaves. This is your only chance.
Johnny’s stomach bottomed out. That confirmed the Ascendi Major was alive. Alive and pissed.
What’s he talking about? They had nothing. No Conifers. They would’ve used one if they did.
By the unsettled looks on the others’ faces, he knew they had received the same mental message.
“What’s the Ascendi talking about?” Krem said, taking the words right out of Johnny’s thoughts.
“Look,” Skunk said quietly, eyes wide with a mix of excitement and fear.
Toward the front of the wreckage, the shuttle ceiling, really the floor upside down, hung over the dirt. A deep trench revealed the part of shuttle that had ripped off. The jagged, silver hull poked out alongside the trench, deeply embedded in the earth.
“What?” Hamiad asked.
Skunk slid down to the lips of the opening. Specks of black dirt trickled in, and electric wires dangled over the edge, casting occasional sparks. A few sparks fell the ten feet to the bottom of the shuttle wreckage. A thin opening revealed motionless grey Anunnaki. Amid the bodies gleamed a single yellow gem. The gravity Conifer.
He watched Skunk grab a shovel out of the dirt, take it to the trench, and insert it into the crevice. A few seconds later, he frowned. “No luck.”
Johnny dove to the edge of the opening and stretched his hand through the crevice. That’s what it felt like. A crevice you might find among canyons or rock formations. And like those, it gave nothing in the way of hospitality. Johnny reached until his arm and shoulder ached, and still the Conifer rested a good six feet out of his grasp. Dirt, the shuttle’s hull, and cracked pieces of the flooring bottlenecked the spot where the Conifer rested.
The Ascendi must’ve sensed its presence through the beacon it still emitted.
Johnny pressed as hard as he could against the mass of debris clogging the shuttle’s hull. Solid as stone. It didn’t even budge. Hamiad appeared feet first and kicked against a panel of the shuttle’s hull. No effect. They couldn’t reach the Conifer.
Hamiad let out a long sigh and plopped down on the dirt. He looked as hopeless as Johnny felt.
They killed a few seconds fidgeting and shifting their weight between their feet.
Suddenly the roof of the shuttle came alive with bangs and thuds. Johnny’s head snapped up. Anunnaki. They were surrounded. He checked the space where the shuttle’s hull hung a couple of inches over the dirt. The five of them bolted into alertness. Footsteps. And the grunts, hisses, and screeches of Nebirian. Soldiers outside. Johnny pursed his lips. They couldn’t walk out of here if they wanted to.
“W-what’s going on?” someone stammered. They turned to find the pilot struggling in the cockpit.
“Hang on,” Sarah said, the closest to him. She put her hands over his flailing arms. It calmed him, and they began to unbuckle his seat belt.
“Wait,” Johnny said, coming up to him.
The pilot removed his helmet and rubbed his eyes.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” the pilot, said, smiling. “But can I get down from here?”
Johnny gnawed at the inside of his cheek. “Not yet. I need you to radio an SOS to the Brotherhood militia.”
“Are you nuts?” Hamiad snapped. “They tried to kill us.”
“We might’ve been under the Ascendi’s control, but we saw them shooting the other slaves,” Krem added quietly.
Johnny swallowed. “They did what they had to.” He didn’t believe that, but he needed his friends to believe it for right now. “We need them.”
Johnny reached a hand to his hip holster and found his pistol. In his front pocket there was the tug of a grenade. And of course a knife rested in his back pocket. Combined with his friends’ shovels and pickaxes, maybe they could scrounge up some kind of a defense. He checked his watch: 11:49. Eleven minutes.
“What does the Ascendi even need the gravity Conifer for?” Johnny found himself asking.
“We did kind of undermine him,” Sarah said.
True, Johnny thought.
“Heh. We know a lot more about the Ascendi’s plans than we want to,” Skunk groaned. He looked ready to break into an all-out rant. “The thing believes he’s going to start a new world order of some sort. No evil humans. No Sinsers or their supporters. Trials based purely on logic. That’s why he didn’t kill us outright.”
What kind of a leader would the Ascendi Major be if he let a Conifer slip through his fingers? He needed this as much to cement his reputation as to fully unlock the Ark’s power. Plus Johnny remembered seeing the optical Conifer drop out of the sky as the shuttle came crashing into the ground. The Ascendi must’ve lost it.
At least he couldn’t control their minds again.
He noticed Krem forming circles in the dirt with his sandal, picking at the sleeve of his dark grey slave jumpsuit, face etched with concern.
“What is it?” Johnny asked, walking over.
“I don’t get why the militia will come now,” Krem said. “They already ran scared.”
Johnny ran a hand over his bushy hair, combing out bits of the blackened dirt. Krem had a good point, but the Ascendi wasn’t the only one with a reputation. He walked over to the pilot’s station.
“Open up a recorder for me and send this message out as far as it’ll go.”
The pilot nodded and flicked a couple of switches. “Ready?”
“Yeah, record.”
Johnny massaged the back of his neck.
“This is Johnny Aldrin. The deadliest earthling. You’ve followed me here to this point and I have one more request. I’ve survived the shuttle crash and I could use some backup. Oh, and you can use your guns again. I made sure of that.”
He ran his thumb over his neck, and the pilot released the recorder.
“Broadcasting it now,” the pilot said.
“And how the heck are we supposed to survive?” Hamiad whispered, motioning to the red heat lines forming in the hull of the shuttle. Red lines cutting through the few inches that separated them from the Anunnaki.
He checked his watch: 11:53 a.m. There was no guarantee the militia would return, and even if they did, the Anunnaki were way too close. They would activate the Ark. With that thought, the full weight of the past few minutes collapsed over Johnny. Whether he wanted it to or not, the operation seemed headed to the same place as his parents’. Unfinished. Except that in this case, there was no reward for partial success. Either the Naga won or they lost.
He began to foster an idea, even as he knew it might kill them. But this wasn’t really about trying to escape. It was
about trying to prevent the Anunnaki from activating the Ark.
Johnny scooped up a handful of the black sand and let it sift through his fingers. What a place to wait for the end of the world.
He breathed out, listening to the Nebirian quiet. He turned to his friends, his eyes hopping to each of theirs. Part of him thought about his parents’ demise and wanted to embrace the end quickly. The rest of him thought about the aftermath of his parents failed mission.
“The Eagle asked me something once.”
And he replayed the gist of it in his mind, more for himself than for them. He knew the sentiment, the greater message behind it, if not the exact words.
“Not long after my parents died,” he said, feeling awkward. He’d never told anyone this. Never unlocked his heart, doused it with oil, and given his friends lighters. Never seen how they’d react.
Skunk watched him with puzzled eyes.
“Yeah?” Krem asked delicately.
Johnny clucked his tongue softly and cleared his throat. “Would I rather pity myself or try and prove some of them wrong?”
“Prove who wrong?” Sarah asked, eyes pinched in concern.
“Everyone who thought my parents were failures,” Johnny said quietly. “And that I would be one too.”
At that moment his watch beeped: 11:55. He looked down and slapped it into silence. Five minutes until Mars perfectly aligned with Earth and the Ark could be activated.
“Would you guys rather go out quiet or go out with a bang?”
Hesitation formed on his friends’ faces. Hamiad alone seemed determined. A searing sound from one wall, where the Anunnaki were burning their way through, decided it for Johnny.
He turned to the pilot. “Can you start up the gravity generator?”
Chapter 51
The pilot’s jaw fell open.
“You thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
The pilot also knew the Eagle’s gravity generator story, then.
Glass shattered in another part of the shuttle. Johnny immediately pictured the cabin with the window. The Naga were still probing, searching for weaknesses or booby traps. But any minute they’d begin forcing their way inside.
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