by Jaxon Reed
Dee Dee frowned back at me. The look on her face expressed the same feelings of disappointment and frustration that I had, too.
“I don’t like this.”
“I don’t either, sweetie. But at least your father didn’t lock us in. We can monitor what’s going on, and if things go south we can always leave and help out, regardless of what he says.”
That made her feel better. The thought made me feel better, too.
-+-
The GPs did not attack that night. Much like we did in our assault on Redwood City months earlier, they stopped at the edge of the desert and made camp. The major difference: this time people in the city were paying attention to the satellite, and we knew they were out there.
Being stuck in the Corrie ten Boom Suite, we had very little to do other than monitor the control center at The Old Man’s office where most of the action took place. We watched as Jeremy phoned in from New Texas to say hello to his parents, then he informed Professor Cruz that the NTAMU satellite around Orange, Lonestar Two, had been repositioned to better monitor Janus 30 for any additional spacecraft coming through from Old Earth.
President Montoya stepped into the conversation and assured everyone that two of the gunships guarding Janus 25, between Alexandria and New Hong Kong, were heading for Janus 30 in order to intercept additional ships trying to sneak in. Of course they were months away, so everyone prayed their presence would not be needed in the interim.
Another thought unvocalized: the gunships’ weapons would likely be useless. They’d have to try and ram any ship coming through, like I had.
Professor Cruz suggested they consider leaving one at Janus 28, between New Texas and Redwood, in case the GPs managed to achieve their objective and gain access to a spaceship. We could tell the Professor felt it was far more prudent to guard the Janus to New Texas than the one to Old Earth.
“We can hold them off indefinitely, Tony. If the entire string falls, Athena, Alexandria, and New Texas will be the last hope for the human race. We’ve got to bottle up the strong at both ends leading to those three planets.”
Tense silence filled the air for almost a minute.
Finally, Montoya nodded.
“I’ll discuss it with the Board of Regents. We’ve got some time before our ships get to that point before a decision needs to be made.”
What he left unspoken hung in the air. The Board, along with everyone else back on New Texas, would find out if we even survived the next few days.
-+-
We watched the command center’s proceedings on the vid screen in the living room through the evening. We grabbed some food out of the kitchen and ate it on the couch in front of the screen.
Later that night, Dee Dee went to one of the bedrooms and fell asleep. I stayed on the couch, watching my friends discuss plans and developments.
Toward midnight, I dozed off.
I woke up to the sound of Jason’s voice.
“What’s going on?”
He had walked into the communications room. Charlie looked up at him from the main console.
“There’s something strange about the GP camp.”
She adjusted some switches on the console and her vid screen zoomed in on the satellite shot.
“What’s that, some kind of circle?”
She nodded, her long blonde hair moving up and down.
“There were twenty-one GPs, right? You would think they’d want to sleep overnight. But it looks like only four are sleeping. The others are standing in a circle around them.”
Jason moved closer to the screen, partially blocking my view.
“Maybe they’re taking shifts while standing guard.”
“Seventeen standing guard while only four sleep? All night? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe they can sleep standing up? Maybe those four have damaged suits and they have to lie down.”
Charlie shook her head, dismissing the notion.
Jason looked exasperated.
“Okay, smarty pants. What do you think it is?”
“I think the seventeen standing guard are not human. I think they’re synthetic or something. My guess is, the ones sleeping are the only real persons we’re dealing with.”
Jason’s eyes widened. Mine did, too. Charlie made a good case.
“Have you told anybody about this?”
“No, I just figured it out. The four went down around ten o’clock. The others encircled them and haven’t moved since.”
“If they’re all still like that in the morning, then you’re probably right. Let’s be sure and tell the Professor about it.”
-+-
One of the men in the middle of the circle woke up at six the next morning. Several of us watched him stretch on the satellite feed. Then he walked out of the circle and relieved himself. The standing figures remained completely still.
Jason said, “They’re synthetic alright.”
Several others in the room nodded, including Professor Cruz.
“Good call, Charlotte. I’m not sure how it helps us, other than the knowledge that only a few on their side can benefit from the blood right now.”
Mrs. Jones spoke up.
“If the others are synthetic, Professor, will that make them easier to take out or harder?”
“My guess is harder. But time will tell.”
We watched as the lone figure returned to the circle. He stood staring down at the other three still sleeping on the ground.
“What’s he doing?” Jason said.
“Looks like he’s thinking,” the Professor said. “Trying to reach some decision, probably.”
The sleeper nearest to him moved, sitting up on the ground. The one standing reached out his hand, and at first it looked like he would try and help the guy get up.
Instead, a burst of light spit out from his arm. The guy’s head exploded. Everybody close to the monitor jumped back in the surprise.
The other two on the ground scrambled up. He sent another light bolt into the head of the closest one. The third reached out his own arm, but before he could fire off a bolt, the early riser blew off his head, too.
“He just killed three people in cold blood!” Jason said.
Everyone stared at the monitor in stunned silence.
The early riser looked down at the men he killed for a moment, then glanced up and evidently gave a command to the group standing guard.
He flew up in the air and headed toward Redwood City. The others followed him.
Professor Cruz turned and addressed the group.
“Now we know what we’re up against. One human, seventeen synthetics. The human has no compunctions against killing.
“Everybody ready? Jason, how’s our catapult system?”
“Ready to go. Hopefully we can knock some of those things out of the sky.”
“Inner hall defenses? Brad?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be, sir.”
Professor Cruz went around the room and questioned each person about their responsibilities for the upcoming assault.
Satisfied, he turned back to the monitor and watched as the eighteen figures continued heading our way.
“This is it. Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
“Okay, we’ve got eighteen bogeys. Let’s see what this thing can do.”
Dee Dee and I switched over to the cam monitoring Jason’s console and watched as he fired up the city’s defense system.
Sergeant Sledge came over and sat near him, ready to help.
“Think it’ll do any good, O’Donnell?”
“Not on its own, Sarge. The system was designed to take out marauding armies of giant monkeys on foot, back when the State was paranoid about hematophagic animals attacking. Our synthetic birds were able to dodge the flying rocks easily.”
“So it didn’t take out any of you, huh?”
“No. Well, Marc and Dee Dee were in a quadcopter which went down, but they survived.”
My ears burned re
d. The rest of the group had flown in on synthetic birds, which had advanced AI that could avoid the boulders slung at them. The QC had no such system, and I had to try and steer clear of the rocks by sight alone, with Dee Dee’s help.
We almost made it, too, except a bit of debris took out one of our blades at the last minute, forcing a crash landing.
“Probably not going to be too effective against this advanced technology, then.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Sarge. I’ve got an idea or two.”
Redwood City’s invasion protocols were activated. The spaceport door sealed shut, and all the load bots went into defense mode, carrying standard issue nine millimeter rifles.
Several of them lined up boulders to feed the giant catapults out beyond the spaceport’s landing pad.
“Okay, we’re all loaded. Tracking coordinates are in. Let’s see how they handle some rocks flying their way.”
Jason pressed a red button on his control panel, and watched his monitor showing several large sleds shoot large rocks up in the air at an angle.
“I thought you said they were catapults. Those look like giant guns of some sort.”
“They operate on similar principles as old fashioned catapults. They’re using energy to propel the rocks instead of wood and ropes.”
He adjusted his screen to show the satellite image of the intruders. He and Sledge watched as the figures adjusted their course to avoid the boulders.
Sledge pulled out an unlit stogie and chomped down on it in irritation.
“Can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Don’t be a Nancy, Sarge. That was just my test shot.”
Jason made some adjustments on the console while the load bots placed more rocks in the catapults.
He shot off three, waited a moment, then three more.
We watched as the figures in the middle of the group adjusted course to avoid the first three boulders. Then the second round came in right behind them.
One of the boulders nicked an invader on the arm. It wobbled off course for a moment, falling behind the others.
“Ha!”
“He’s still flying,” Sledge pointed out.
“Yeah, but now we know they’re not perfect.”
Jason’s hands raced across the control board. The load bots outside the city hurried to reload the catapults, and round after round of boulders flew into the air. He adjusted frequency, angles, velocities, and any other variable he could think of while raining down a storm of boulders on the approaching figures.
On occasion, he’d graze somebody, and they’d wobble in the air for a moment, but he never got a direct hit.
“They’re still flying, O’Donnell.”
Jason creased his eyebrows in frustration.
“They’re close enough I can go shotgun on them.”
The bots began loading several smaller rocks into each catapult.
“Dodge this,” Jason said, pressing the fire button.
The figures separated, largely avoiding the scattershot. One didn’t move fast enough, though, and a boulder the size of a table took out its head. It spiraled down to the desert floor.
“Yes!”
But now they were close enough to see the catapults. The remaining seventeen figures raised their arms and shot out bolts of light. All the catapults exploded, sending nearby load bots flying.
Jason sat in silence, his hands still.
“Well, you did better than I thought you would, O’Donnell. Too bad you couldn’t take out more, but at least you got one.”
Sledge stood up and moved to another station. I followed him by switching cams over to Charlie’s location. She monitored the remaining load bots, who were already in battle formation and firing on the GPs.
“Those nines are going to be useless against their armor.”
Charlie nodded, without looking up.
“We’ve programmed them to aim for the head. Hope the visors are a weak point, just like they are with the load bots.”
One of the GPs tossed out a shiny black object into the middle of the bots, ignoring the bullets pinging off his visor. It exploded in a burst of light, and all the load bots went limp.
Sledge chewed his cigar a little faster.
“What happened?”
“Looks like an EMP grenade, similar to the one that took out our ship. All the bots are offline and not responding.”
“Well, that’s convenient.”
The GPs walked up to the loading dock door. The leader bent down to inspect it, where the lip of the door met the floor of the landing pad.
A note of satisfaction finally found its way into Sledge’s voice.
“You’re gonna have a tough time getting through that one, mister.”
The leader stepped back and looked up and around the wall. He stopped when he saw the smaller Customs Entry platform jutting out a few levels above.
He floated up to it, and Charlie switched her cam view.
Dee Dee and I exchanged glances. The look on her face matched my apprehension. We had gained access to the city through that very same door in our assault months earlier.
The leader approached the door, filling up Charlie’s screen. We couldn’t see his face, thanks to the reflective visor. He looked down at the access pad.
He lifted his left hand and pointed his index finger at the pad. A tiny probe came out of the finger, slender and snake-like. It circled around the pad, looking for an opening. The virtual keyboard appeared.
“What’s going on, Stevens?”
“He appears to be looking for a connection, but there aren’t any on the outside of the city. The only way to get in is by typing in the correct password. I think he expected to find an interface he could exploit, or something.”
Indeed, the leader pulled back his hand, and the probe, in what seemed to be an annoyed manner.
Evidently, he gave some kind of command, because one of the other units flew up to the Customs Entry platform, walked over to him and turned around. I noticed some markings on this unit, the letters “XO.”
He grabbed a small, egg-shaped item off XO’s back, slapped it on the door and pressed it in the center. Then he and XO flew off some distance away.
We heard a loud Boom! before the mic went out, and the cam feed went offline. An alarm sounded on Charlie’s console.
“Perimeter breach!”
She switched to a cam inside the Custom’s Office, and we watched as one GP after another filed into the city.
Chapter Six
“Can we shut the elevators down?”
Charlie posed a decent question. I hadn’t thought of it, but now that she mentioned it that seemed like a good idea.
We watched as others in the command center looked to the Professor for the answer.
“Even if we could, there are maintenance shafts between all the levels and they’d get up here anyway.
“We need to evacuate, now. Set the timers for two minutes, and everyone go to your fall back stations!”
He ran to the main console and flipped a com switch.
“Breach squad! Assume your locations, level five!”
Ranger Jones’s voice came back over the intercom.
“We’re on it, Curt!”
“Be careful, Brad. Fall back if you can’t hold them.”
“Don’t worry about us, Professor. Just get to safety.”
Mrs. Cruz rushed into the room with several bricks of explosives connected to primers and timers.
“Set them for two minutes, Melody. Everybody out!”
We watched them hurry out the door as Mrs. Cruz methodically placed a brick on each console and set the timers. Then she ran out, too.
The numbers on the timers counted down. When they reached zero, we heard a beep! Then the screen fuzzed out as the bombs went off, taking our cam with it.
I switched through several other feeds until I found one showing the main hallway on Level 5. Bradley and Leesa Jones, along with Major Moore, Jacob, and Andrea were hunkere
d down behind corners and doorways with half a dozen cadets and a handful of people from Redwood who must have volunteered.
Everybody carried a rifle.
“If the load bots couldn’t stop them with nine millimeters, we can’t either,” Dee Dee said.
“Yeah, but they have to try. Let’s just hope we don’t lose anybody.”
I took control of the hall cam and zoomed in on their faces, saying a little prayer for each one of them. I never felt more helpless.
Somebody said, “They’re coming!”
Everyone cycled the bolts on their rifles. Their primitive rifles, I thought to myself. A memory crossed my mind. Something Dee Dee had mentioned about the British Empire giving colonists and natives old muskets while their soldiers went armed with more modern weapons.
The first GPs rounded a corner from the hall to the Customs Office.
Major Moore squeezed off the first shot, aiming for the visor of the one in the lead. It bounced off harmlessly. The others opened fire, raining nine millimeter bullets down the hallway.
The GPs stopped and took cover, but they didn’t really have to. They were impervious to the bullets. They began returning fire, with energy bolts zapping out from ray guns attached under their arms.
One bolt slammed through a corner, cutting right through the wall and blasting through two cadets. Another bolt sailed down the corridor, disappearing a quarter kilometer away. Other bolts passed through walls to parts unknown.
“Fall back!”
Major Moore grabbed a brick of explosives from her backpack and set the timer for fifteen seconds. She tossed it toward the GPs, and joined the others as they retreated down nearby halls.
KABLUMPF!
Amazingly, the cam in the hall survived the explosion. I held my breath, waiting for the smoke to clear, to see if Moore had taken out any GPs.
The city’s vents kicked on automatically, sucking out the smoke. The hallway was a mess, blackened residue from the bomb spread everywhere. A couple GPs had been knocked down.
One struggled to his feet, his right arm dangling useless. We could see wires poking out.
“Definitely a bot,” Dee Dee said.
I nodded in agreement.
The other one looked to be in worse shape, and did not move at all. I zoomed the cam in and looked at various pieces of it lying around on the floor.