by Richard Fox
The foyer was overgrown with now-dead potted plants that had burst from their pots and pressed into the ceiling like smoke from a nascent fire. Fish tanks, their water brown from algae, filtered the sun’s light into an ugly brown miasma through the hallway leading to a glass and gold elevator.
“That’s your elevator, right?” Hale asked Stacey.
“Not exactly.” She kept her head low and ran down the hallway, stopping to the side of a gilded elevator, and ripped vines from the wall. A panel hinged open, a receptacle the size of a soda can waited to be filled.
“Franklin, a spare,” Hale said. Franklin unclipped a battery from his belt and tossed it to Stacey. She placed the battery and shut the panel. A soft whirr came from behind the wall.
“Cortaro, I’ll go down with her. Secure this spot,” Hale said.
“For how long, sir?” Cortaro asked.
Hale looked at Stacey, who shrugged.
“No problem, sir, we’ll just stay here. With the aliens,” Standish said.
The wall next to the main elevator opened. Vines cracked and fell away as the doors to the auxiliary lift rolled aside.
Stacey took a hesitant step into the elevator and Hale followed her a second later.
“Now,” Hale said “how do we—”
The doors slammed shut lightning fast. Hale’s breathing quickened as he realized just how enclosed—and tiny—this space was. He reached out to touch the walls, which were solid. There was no emergency exit, no way out of here. He concentrated on the lights along the ceiling, the sound of his breathing. He wasn’t in the womb; this wasn’t the test. His panic died down but it stayed over his shoulder, waiting for him to lower his guard.
“Remove headgear for biometric identification. Lethal countermeasures are authorized by subsection twelve dash nine comment three by your employment contract. You have twelve seconds to comply,” a monotone voice said from a speaker in the ceiling.
Stacey twisted off her helmet and tossed it to Hale. She used her teeth to strip off a glove and placed her hand on a pad that extended from the wall.
“Say your name for voice print identification,” came from the speaker.
“Stacey Fabe—Ibarra! Stacey Ibarra!” She winced as Hale’s count to twelve elapsed.
A bell dinged.
“Welcome, Stacey Ibarra. One moment please.”
They heard the plates beneath the elevator shifting aside and felt the elevator descend.
Hale, who barely fit in the elevator, shifted in his armor.
Stacey ran a hand through sweat-soaked hair and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“I hate this,” she said. “I was it growing up. I had five aunts but I was the only grandchild. I think I was five when I realized that I was going to inherit the biggest business in history. No pressure, right? ‘Hey Stacey, sure hope you’re good to manage millions of employees and trillions of dollars in assets soon as Gramps kicks the bucket. Whole world’s counting on you.’
“Now, I’m supposed to be the lynchpin for all of humanity. I just wanted to be an astrophysicist. Me and a bunch of telescopes, grant money and a house full of cats if I never got married.”
Stacey sniffed, fighting tears.
“I wanted to be an armor pilot, but that didn’t work out,” Hale said.
“What happened?”
Hale’s teeth clenched as prickles of fear ran down his spine, his nascent claustrophobia coming to the forefront of his emotions.
“I failed the last isolation test. And—could we not talk about that? In here? Right now?”
“Sorry. So, you and Durand, eh?” Hale’s growing unease vanished. How the heck did she know about him and the fighter pilot?
The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened with a ding.
Hale pushed past Stacey and leveled his rifle at the plinth in the middle of the room. Lying next to the plinth was a desiccated body, an ornate cane clutched in its hand.
“Grandpa?” Stacey stepped around Hale and walked up to the body, her hands at her mouth. She knelt beside the body, its skin shriveled and eye sockets empty. Wisps of white hair wavered in a slight breeze.
“Is this what he wanted us to find?” Hale asked.
A column of white light burst from the plinth. Stacey fell back on her haunches with a squeak. Hale jumped in front of her, holding a hand in front of his face to block the light.
“Stacey, I’m so glad to see you,” came a voice from the light, a voice familiar to Hale, but with a deep resonance—Ibarra.
“What are you?” she asked. The light dimmed, fluctuating as if the light source was just under water.
“I am an approximation of Marc Ibarra. His memories and personality were imprinted onto my matrix. More of him will be apparent as my higher functions come online,” said the light.
“I’m first Lieutenant Ken Hale of the Atlantic Union Marine Corps. You want to explain just what the hell’s going on out there?”
The light shrank to the size of a needle and sparkled.
“You aren’t using unshielded electronics. Good. Have the Xaros detected you? Where is Ceres?”
“The what?” Hale asked.
“The big ugly footballs that wiped out humanity, you dolt—the Xaros! Do they know you’re here?” The light quaked with anger.
“No, no, I don’t think so,” Stacey said. “We couldn’t find Ceres when we looked for it.”
“I know where it’s going. This is working better than my projections. Stacey, pick me up,” the light said.
Stacey backed away, a grimace on her face.
“Stacey Prudence Ibarra, I did not raise you to be chicken. The fate of the world really does depend on us leaving as quickly as possible. It’s not like I’m asking you to repopulate the Earth with this knuckle-dragger,” the light said.
“Knuckle-dragger?” Hale said with indignation.
“Wait, you are my grandfather,” Stacey said. She stepped over Ibarra’s desiccated corpse and reached out to the sliver of light that contained his mind. Her hand opened and clenched a few inches from the light, like it was a burning ember.
“For Pete’s sake,” the Ibarra light said. The light snapped into Stacey’s hand and she yelped in surprise.
She held her hand by the wrist and tried to shake the light loose, but it had embedded in her palm.
“Stop sniveling. I know that didn’t hurt. You wouldn’t believe where I had to carry this thing for the first decade. Now let’s get out of here,” Ibarra said.
Stacey rubbed her palm against the side of her thigh and looked at Hale with desperation.
Hale grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her toward the elevator.
“Where are we supposed to take you?” Hale asked.
“My fleet, and hurry. There’s more at stake than just the survival of what little remains of humanity,” Ibarra said.
****
Cortaro pressed his back against the wall as the buzzing sound continued. The probe had meandered back to the tower since Hale and Stacey took the elevator and was dismantling an office several floors above them.
The sergeant looked over the Marines, each pressed against the walls out of sight from the probe, their faces hard against the stress of being so close to an enemy they didn’t know how to fight. Standish, the Marine Cortaro thought would crack under the pressure first, nodded his head back and forth slightly, a song on his lips that he didn’t sing over the IR net.
Cortaro shifted slightly to peek at the battery powering the elevator—still above three quarters charge but draining fast.
As he leaned over, the Ubi Hale recovered from the girl’s room caught a direct ray of sunlight in Cortaro’s mesh pouch. The solar power lining of the screen converted the energy into battery power and brought the Ubi to life.
The Ubi vibrated in the pouch and, in a high-pitched voice, said, “Please return me to direct sunlight.” Marines snapped their head around to the sudden noise.
The buzzing of the probe ceased.
Cor
taro ripped the battery from the Ubi and held very still.
A hum filled the air and set Cortaro’s teeth on edge. A shadow passed across the hallway as the probe floated along the outer wall. The shadow’s stalks writhed as the humming grew louder.
Cortaro shifted back away from where he’d been sitting, praying that he’d killed the Ubi before that thing knew exactly where his Marines were hiding. Seconds ticked by like hours and the humming faded. Cortaro let out a sigh of relief—just before an amber beam shot through the wall and struck the gilded elevator with a hiss. Cortaro saw the burning point of one of the probe’s stalk tips twist toward him in the new smoking hole in the wall. Cortaro rolled away as a second beam cut through where his head had been.
“Contact!” Vincenti yelled. He sprung to his feet and fired his gauss rifle at the drone. On high power, the bolt left his barrel at three times the speed of sound and blew out half the windows in the hallway with the sudden sonic boom.
The bolt hit the drone with the clang of a metal girder snapping in half and knocked it spinning into the wall. Stalks shot out of the drone and embedded into the tower, whipping it against the wall so hard that it embedded itself in the marble facade. The drone swung loose from the crater, like a condemned man hanging by his noose. A deep divot in the swirling gray and black surface marked where Vincenti’s round had impacted.
The rest of the Marines were on their feet, weapons trained on the drone.
“I think I got it,” Vincenti said.
Franklin’s Gustav hummed as a full-power shot readied in the weapon’s chamber.
“Let me double-tap it,” Franklin said.
“No,” Cortaro said. “If you miss, you’ll take out half a floor and everyone from here to Phoenix will see it.”
One of the drone’s stalks fell from the wall and twitched in the air.
“What’s it doing?” Vincenti said, his voice reedy with fear. “Should I—”
A crimson blast from a stalk struck Vincenti in the chest and he crumpled to the ground. The drone sprang into the air, stalks swirling around it.
The team unloaded on the drone without orders. Hits from high-velocity slugs sent the drone tumbling in the air. A shot from Torni sheered two stalks from the drone. The dismembered limbs floated in the air like falling leaves, then disintegrated like they were burning from the inside out.
Two new stalks grew from the drone within seconds and their points joined together. A yellow beam scythed through the air, missing Torni’s head by a handbreadth as it slashed through the foyer. Glass and masonry blasted loose where the beam struck. The ornate elevator erupted outward as the beam passed across it. Shards of glass careened off Cortaro’s armor as he lined up a shot on the drone.
Cortaro put two rounds into the drone and a crack burst across its surface. The crack expanded, showing the drone’s innards: a chrome and gold crystal lattice that sparked with energy.
Franklin’s Gustav boomed and the drone burst into a million pieces. The remnants floated in the air, golden spurts of energy arcing between the spinning fragments of the drone’s inner workings. The pieces burned away within seconds; the destruction left behind was the only remnant of the drone.
Cortaro ran to Vincenti, the Marine’s team icon reading an error.
“Walsh, get over here!” Cortaro said. The medic didn’t answer as Cortaro rolled Vincenti onto his back.
Vincenti had a perfect hole in his armor and the interior of his visor swirled with a deep-red smoke. Cortaro put his fingers under Vincenti’s jaw to unlatch the helmet and pulled it free.
A gout of red smoke wafted from the helmet. Cortaro looked down where Vincenti’s head should have been but nothing was there. More red smoke drifted up from where the blast struck Vincenti and from the hole in the neck armor.
Cortaro dropped Vincenti’s helmet and got back to his feet.
“Walsh?” Cortaro asked. He turned around and saw Torni and Standish standing beside where Walsh lay on his back—in pieces. The drone’s yellow beam had sliced through Walsh’s chest, cauterizing the flesh with a black glaze of seared blood. Cortaro was thankful he couldn’t smell anything with his helmet on.
“Franklin?”
“I’m fine. I think I see another one coming right for us,” Franklin said. “Make that three.” He hefted his Gustav and braced himself for the recoil.
The sound of straining metal groaned from what remained of the elevator. The false doors to the private lift partly opened and closed, accompanied by a warning buzzer.
“Lieutenant Hale, going to need you to hurry the hell up,” Cortaro said into the IR net, unsure his words could reach him. He took cover against what remained of the wall. Franklin’s Gustav fired with the clang of a church bell and Cortaro aimed at the approaching drones.
****
The elevator carrying Hale and Stacey jerked to a halt. The lights switched to amber and pulsed.
“That’s not good,” Hale said, tapping at the control panel.
“What happened?” Stacey asked the sliver of light in her palm.
“I don’t know. The shielding is too strong for me to reach out,” Ibarra said.
The building rocked and the elevator lights went solid red.
“Those are the emergency brakes. We are definitely stuck now,” Ibarra said. Thuds reverberated through the elevator and a tremor made the floor tick-tick-tick against Hale’s boots.
“That’s a firefight.” Hale pawed at the ceiling panels, which refused to budge. He switched his gauss rifle to low power and pressed the muzzle against the ceiling. “When all else fails, we can shoot our way out.”
“Don’t! I designed this to withstand gauss fire. One shot and you’ll turn our ride into a blender,” Ibarra said.
“If you designed this, then how did you intend to get out in case of an emergency?” Stacey asked.
“I didn’t,” Ibarra said.
“Some genius you are,” Hale said.
The elevator rumbled, then went into free fall. Stacey screamed and braced herself against the sides. The elevator slammed to a halt and sent her and Hale to the ground in a jumble of limbs. The elevator heaved upwards, paused, and then moved up again.
“What the hell is going on?” Hale asked.
“Ah, OK. We’ll be fine in a minute,” Ibarra said. Their ascent continued in pulses.
Stacey pulled her sidearm from its holster and powered it up. The lights in the elevator cut out. The only illumination came from the glow from Stacey’s palm and the lights on their weapons.
The elevator fell on its side, taking its passengers down with it. It tumbled to one side, then slammed against the ground with a metallic slap. Metal groaned and light burst through rents in the elevator door. The tips of gray tendrils bent the metal with ease.
The doors ripped away and Stacey fired her pistol. A gauss round bounced off the head of Elias’ armor. The suit, its grayscale armor blending with the clouds above it, shook its head from side to side.
“You’re welcome,” Elias said. The suit’s huge arm reached into the elevator and scooped Stacey out.
Hale stood up and looked around. The elevator lay in what remained of the Euskal Tower’s VIP entrance. Most of the roof was blasted away, the carpet scorched and smoking.
Hale’s visor struggled to update as information flooded it.
“Sir? You get what we came for?” Cortaro asked. “Major Acera wants us to leave like yesterday.”
“We’ve got it. What happened? Where are Walsh and Vincenti? Why aren’t they on my screens?”
“They’re down, sir. Those things…they’re murder,” Cortaro said.
Hale looked at the remains of his two Marines lying side by side outside the wrecked entrance. Two men gone and he hadn’t been there when it happened. Guilt hit him in the stomach like a fist and he climbed out of the elevator. He got two steps toward Walsh and Vincenti before Cortaro put a hand to his chest.
“I have their tags. We have to go before more show up
. Mission, sir. Remember the mission,” Cortaro said.
Hale clenched his jaw and forced himself to look away.
The sound of gauss fire reverberated through the city. Red and yellow flashes burst from the perimeter wall near their exit.
“We destroyed the drone that Acera was watching soon as you made contact. More must have shown up,” Elias said. “The major sent me over as soon as that fight was over. He figured you might need me.”
“There are fifteen Xaros drones approaching this location from the northeast. I suggest we leave now,” Ibarra said.
Elias’ head snapped down to look at the glowing light in Stacey’s palm.
“What the hell is that?” Elias asked.
“It’s the mind of my dead grandfather imprinted on some sort of alien intelligence,” Stacey said.
“Sure. Why not. Not like this day can get any weirder,” Elias said.
A horn honked from behind Hale. A white truck with a double cab pulled up beside them, Standish behind the wheel. He reached through the open driver’s window and slapped at his door.
“Mount up! Told you I could hotwire this thing to run off my suit battery,” he said.
“Stacey, get in the backseat,” Hale said. “Torni and Cortaro on her sides. Franklin, get in the back with me. Elias, can you keep up with the truck?” Hale pulled himself into the back of the truck, which rode low on its axles from the weight of five armored Marines.
“Three Xaros inbound, six hundred meters and closing,” Ibarra said.
“Go. I’ll take care of this and catch up,” Elias said.
Hale nodded to the hulking suit of armor and knocked twice on the top of the truck, which lurched forward, slammed to a halt, and spun its wheels in place before jerking forward.
“You can hotwire but not drive, eh, Standish?” Torni asked.
“Ha ha, you’d rather walk?” Standish asked. Their truck turned down the four-lane road heading south to their exit. Red and yellow lights mixed with the pale white flashes of heavy gauss fire.
“Where did you learn to steal cars?” Franklin asked.
“Steal is such an ugly word. This is a military re-appropriation,” Standish said, weaving their truck between dead cars.