“Doctor Peralta,” a well-groomed, uniformed man said from the corridor. Her eyes darted to him and then back to Troy. “They have to know,” she said.
“Know what?” Troy asked. He recognized the uniform. The silver-haired man wore officer blacks, a name plate over his heart that read Samuels and the winged insignia on his collar meant he was a colonel.
“She was taken,” he said.
“By who?”
The colonel’s reply was deep, gravelly, formal, and Troy noticed a Texan lilt. “We don’t know for sure. We believe it was one of the activist groups.”
“The Guffers?”
“Quite possibly. We would hope so.”
Leana eyes darted from the man to her husband. “Why is that? Why hope it’s the Guffers?”
“Because,” Troy said, “they believe our baby is the Messiah. They won’t let any harm come to her.” The colonel confirmed with a short nod.
“How could you let them escape?” Leana asked.
The colonel sucked in a cheek. “We couldn’t risk hurting the child.”
“Oh,” Leana said softly. “Of course.”
“We are trailing them. They won’t be able to leave the city. We’ll have them soon.”
“You’re sure of that?” Troy asked.
“We have to,” Doctor Peralta said. “We don’t have much time.”
“Why do you say that?” Leana asked.
“The power,” Troy said.
“The power unit is significant, but that’s not the issue. It’s the oxygen. If the child is not released from the Syn womb before the oxygen pumped into the embryotic fluid expires she will suffocate.”
The colonel put his finger to his ear and frowned.
“What is it?” Troy asked.
“They’ve somehow managed to jam the city grid… For the moment, we’ve lost them.”
* * *
Night brought more rain and Troy wiping another steamed window, this time from the back seat of the colonel’s SUV as it crawled through the dense midtown traffic of Manhattan. He felt out of place, powerless. He was a bureaucrat, not a trooper — along for the ride and nothing more. His finger traced the rivulets trickling down the smoke-tinted glass. Even with the condensation cleared, he couldn’t see much — the blurred inner lights of the street-side shops, the umbrella-toting silhouettes of the few traversing the sidewalk, and the recognizable glaring neon blue mermaid that hung above a jazz bar he’d been to years before, when music and cocktails were in their repertoire, La Sirène Bleue. That was when there were still shared smiles. Leana’s skirts had gone from long to knee-length, yet her blouses were still sleeveless, and bras were optional. They were younger then. There were nights they would sit at the corner table, where the bass and sax bounced off the walls, sipping overpriced pink champagne until the brightening of the lights would shun them to the streets. Then, arm in arm, they would stroll to the sushi bar near their flat and warm themselves with Syn sashimi and sake. And there were jokes, and innuendo, and her emerald eyes, and then they were upstairs to capitalize on the heat of the rice wine.
The view outside was bleak.
He glanced over at Leana across the seat. She’d upgraded that embroidered skirt for pencil black, and the hair she swore she’d never cut was half the length.
Troy was glad he couldn’t see himself.
He thought again of how gaunt his face had become, how wiry his frame. He had been absently tugging at the hair of his temple, but the images of self-degradation reminded him of the thinning at his fingertips and that it would not be long before he began to resemble the silvered colonel sitting in front of him.
Troy shifted his eyes to the SUV’s ceiling-mounted screens. The two digital readout monitors and two security cam feeds were the least foul and meant nothing much to Troy at all, but the other two were media feeds, and news juggernauts were only airing one story.
Troy reached across the bench seat to take Leana’s hand. She was staring out her own side window. She pulled her hand away.
A pang of guilt thrust through him.
He’d let his mind wander. Even in the smallest way, he’d failed her again.
He didn’t force it. He glanced over at her and then the colonel. Troy had discovered Colonel Samuels’s sole mission was to protect the baby and them.
Troy snickered.
He’s doing a spot-on shit job, Troy thought.
But that was why Samuels had rushed to them himself, and why they were with him now.
The colonel wasn’t about to let them out of his sight.
Beside the colonel was his assistant — a young lackey named Spitz. Spitz monitored the screens, spoke rapidly into his headset, and relayed the colonel’s orders into the laptop on his small desk. Troy could see that screen too and it also meant about nothing.
“We’ve learned it was an inside job,” Samuels had said. “One of the surgical techs had ties to an extreme Guffer group. We missed it.”
To Troy the response was more matter-of-fact than apologetic. The colonel was reporting the milk had spilt, but he wasn’t crying about it.
“You missed it?” Troy had asked in disbelief, and he became immediately aware that the colonel was taken aback by his tone. Surely no one spoke to the senior official so candidly.
“We have an intense screening process. That’s why most of the positions at the fertility center are filled with Syns in the first place. And surgical techs have a high clearance. For one thing, they don’t chum around with luddites, the two usually don’t mix. Oil and water.”
“But they do chum around with Guffers.”
“Well, in these times many people have converted. The old ways have become attractive. And the Guffers aren’t adverse to all technology, they pick and choose. Some of the extreme Guffers dress plain, like the Amish, but the technology they find useful, they use like everyone else.”
“You seem to know a lot about the Guffers.”
“It’s my job.”
At least they knew it was the Guffers, Troy thought. Samuels had said that too.
Troy thought back on the conversation, and about the bearded barrel of a man on the television earlier. Bastion. He was on the news again, a replay of the interview. Across the bottom of the display were the words ‘Massive Manhunt.’
“Is that for him or our child?” Troy asked.
Samuels turned his head back to Troy. “Excuse me?”
“It says massive manhunt under that Bastion character.”
Samuels casually looked to the screen and then back to Troy. Everything the colonel said was paced. Troy understood that was part of the military demeanor, but it rubbed him.
“No,” Samuels said. “We’ve questioned Bastion. He crows a bit loudly, that’s all. The manhunt is referring to your daughter, of course.”
Troy nodded. “It’s an odd phrase… For such a little person, I mean.”
“I guess it is,” Samuels added. “But you know, it’s not just us searching for her. Every resource, government and private, is on the lookout for that little girl. Your daughter is—”
“The key to the human race,” snapped Troy. The colonel wasn’t going to say more.
It was then that Leana softly spoke. “We just want to find our daughter.”
* * *
The colonel’s mobile command had become stifling and at about the time Troy thought all of the oxygen had been exhausted, they made a stop for Leana. Fifty black fatigues appeared from nowhere, swarming from the shadows of the rain to escort the couple into a commandeered bistro.
There was hot food. That’d boosted Troy’s morale slightly, but then they were back in the truck.
The media feed and its constant loop of talking heads and Baby Jane banners most always repelled Troy. It had all evening, but now — perhaps worn down by the stress of confinement — the sedating glow of the talking screen drew him, an exposé of the world’s decline. Image after image rolled by of the devastation in Africa, Australia, the nuclear
annihilation of Pakistan and the fallout on India. If his daughter was the key to the next generation of the human race, it was probably good that the old one was dying out. The species needed a reboot. We poisoned ourselves, he thought, as he and every other sane person had many times over. But this time the thought was shadowed with a contempt he’d never before felt for his fellow man. The clips on the screen, the mass graves, the piles of dead; they’d been gruesome, sad, but only now did he feel as though maybe the species had it coming.
He dropped his eyes from the screen. This was why he’d stopped watching the feeds. Then something occurred to Troy that had passed by him before. It was right in front of him. The driver. He hadn’t paid much attention to the man behind the wheel — too many things on his mind. Drivers were unnecessary in most vehicles. It made sense that a military vehicle would have one. But a Syn?
It was while staring at the driver that the corner of his eye caught lines of text beginning to rapidly fill one of the readout displays. Spitz’s excitement confirmed a happening. Though no one had actually told Troy how the Guffers were able to escape on the surface streets so easily, his close quarters with the colonel filled in the blanks. The closed circuit camera systems had been hacked, all of them, the citywide, the Fed Sats, all of them. There were still video images coming in — choice feeds displayed on the two monitors above Spitz — but the brains that pulled the system together, the facial recognition, the pedestrian and vehicular tracking system, those had been disabled during the kidnapping.
“How long?” Troy asked.
Samuels’s eyes were glued to the feeds as well. “How long for what?”
“Don’t,” Troy said. “Please don’t. I’m not about to be toyed with.”
Samuels let out a light sigh and then said, “Minutes, a half hour, an hour, I don’t know, really. The system will be up, but it’s never had to put the city back together before. And I don’t know how much it has to work with.”
“So it may be useless.”
“Oh, no. It’s just a matter of time now. The question is how much do we have?”
* * *
The text running across the displays was gibberish, an alphanumeric jumble interspersed with the occasional cross-marked square. Still Troy’s eyes didn’t veer. His attention was so fixed that he was jarred when Leana fingers reached over his. He didn’t need to turn his head.
“Yes… Yes… YES!!!” Spitz yelled. His head spun toward Samuels. “We have the coordinates sir.”
“Good,” the colonel replied. A thin smile crossed the old man’s face as he pivoted on his seat back to Troy.
“You found her?” Troy asked.
“Yes. We found her.”
“How fast can we get there?” Leana asked.
“Don’t you worry, ma’am, we’ll get there. Spitz here is already getting us a faster ride.”
Perhaps because of the excitement, the old military man’s manner had relaxed, even if ever so slightly, and the drawl was taking over his tone.
Troy glared out into the pouring rain. “How will we get there any faster in this traffic?”
“You’ll see,” the colonel said.
And on cue, a blinding bright white spotlight shone down, surrounding the command vehicle.
“I’ll be,” Troy said.
“As I said, we have every resource at our disposal.”
The SUV then angled to the right, onto the corner of an intersection, lit as bright as day. At least a dozen troopers dressed in full weather gear were clearing traffic.
It all happened rather quickly.
People couldn’t mistake the huge craft descending from the sky and hastily cleared the street. Troy could now hear the gunship coming down, the pressure of loud turbofans blasting away the pools of water and ruffling the ponchos of the troopers.
Then he saw it.
Troy had only seen turbofan gunships of this type on the newsfeed, large helicopter-like aircraft capable of vertical takeoff and landing, with huge guns protruding from the sides and four mammoth turbofans in the place of the rotors.
As soon as the tires touched down the doors of the SUV were pulled open and umbrella-bearing troopers swooped Leana and Troy across the intersection and into the gunship.
Once in, the hatch was slammed behind them. As if they were children, Troy and Leana were harnessed, seated, and buckled down. Troy heard three loud slaps and then the sound of the turbofans accelerating. It was as the trooper was placing the noise reduction headset over his ears, that he noticed the backlit cerulean blue eyes of the man in black fatigues, another Syn.
The turbofans muted.
The sensation of lift was exhilarating. Troy’s throat sank into his neck as his whole body shot upward.
His eyes went to Leana by his side, buckled in, headset firm over her red hair. He watched her trooper take up his position at the side-mounted cannon in front of her. His trooper did the same — both gunners were Syn. In the far front of the cabin, the colonel and Spitz joined two other men seated at monitor-laden consoles.
Out the gunner’s small horizontal slit window, the canyon of the skyscraper was rapidly dropping.
And then they were high above the city of New York, en route to rescue their child.
* * *
They hadn’t been airborne long when Samuels, holding a cord near the ceiling, made his way across the cabin. His gravelly voice filled Troy’s headset.
“The city’s closed-circuit system has determined that the kidnappers have taken your child to a building in the Seawall Reclamation Project. Now, they probably thought that was good for them because that zone is currently marked off limits, but it’s good for us.”
“How so?” Leana asked.
The colonel shook his head, tapped the side of his headset, and then reached down and swung a mic down from Leana’s left ear. She repeated herself. “How so?”
Troy dropped his mic into place and answered for the colonel. “They’re the only souls out there. And there’s not too many places to hide.” He knew what the Seawall Reclamation Project was. He was one of the city planners. The area covered miles of shoreline that’d been lost before the walls had been put up. “This should be quick,” Samuels continued. “Apart from every available ground unit in the area, we have two other gunships coming in. Troop carriers. If you look out the sides you can see them flanking us.”
Troy leaned forward. Out the right window there was only blackness. Then an arc of lightning spider-webbed high in the horizon, backlighting a soaring gunship. He then peered out the left gunner’s window and a flash illuminated another.
“You think we’ll be able to march right in?”
The colonel nodded. “Listen. For the most part, these people are misguided. I don’t think they realize the danger the child is in. I don’t think they want to hurt the child.”
“I beg to differ,” Leana said.
The restrained smirk that had already visited the colonel’s face several times that day returned. “My point is we don’t expect strong resistance. They only had small arms at the fertility center. They relied on intelligence and it worked. Now it’s working for us again. In a few minutes, this will all be over, and you’ll be reunited with your child. You’re going in with a highly trained unit. I assure you this will be a piece of cake.”
* * *
Troy had flown before. Not many times in recent years, but as younger man. The way the cabin rocked was similar to when a plane hit an air pocket, a sudden rise and drop. The first jolt was mild, the second jarred Troy’s stomach.
The other occupants of the gunship, those he expected were seasoned, appeared to be caught by surprise, even the Syns. He didn’t have to think too hard to figure out what was happening. Both gunners were firing, and through the side windows Troy saw tracers of light rapidly flying from the other gunship cannons. The night had become a maelstrom of rain, tracers, and green laser daggers piercing up from the ground.
He wasn’t sure what the lasers were for u
ntil he saw a small rocket dart into one of the massive turbofans of the gunship to their right. The cylinder spat out a plume of flame above and below, and the turbofan was destroyed but the gunship spared. The craft’s Syn gunner — the one with his cannon — continued to fire as the colossal air machine rocked and corrected itself.
Troy turned to the left to see the second gunship suffer a less fortunate fate. One second the mighty gunship was a sky platform raining fire toward the earth, and then a stream of orange burning streaks met her hull. They were rapid — no different than the Roman candles of his youth. Time froze in that instant as Troy’s brain attempted to register what was happening next — then it couldn’t. There was no place in his experience to process the enormity of the fireball that took the place of the gunship at their flank.
The concussion of the blast threw Troy’s gunship across the face of the lightning-scarred firmament. When the turbofans finally stabilized, he could see they’d been pushed closer to the winged gunship to the right. He looked up at Samuels. He didn’t need to have the colonel’s mic in his ear to hear him screaming at the pilot, “Get us out of here!”
Troy felt the weightlessness of the maneuver and the nauseating consequence as the gunship began to dip left, away from its sister. But the tactic didn’t come soon enough. The firing array below concentrated on the two close craft. The toll was instantaneous. Loud thunks filled the cabin as high caliber anti-aircraft turrets found their mark, and as the craft corrected to the right, three rounds shot into the window, one through the head of the right-side Syn gunner.
Troy’s eyes darted to Leana. She was okay. Wide eyed, she gestured toward the cannon.
He scanned the others. The left-side gunner was too busy firing to take note of the cabin interior, as were any of the colonel’s men at the console. Only Samuels himself met eyes with Troy.
Troy unlatched the seatbelt harness the fallen gunner had placed on him.
The colonel threw a hand to his headset to switch the channel. “Can you do it?”
Troy nodded and stood to take the gunner’s position. The gunship had appeared more stable from his seat and his legs jellied when he rose, but he quickly regained his footing.
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 29