“But it would be accurate to say we beat the odds, wouldn’t it, Doc?”
“Yeah, that would be accurate.”
We beat the odds.
Emanuel wondered how many times they would still have to beat the odds. On Mars, they hoped to find the NTC’s colony, but there was no guarantee. Dr. Eric Hoffman had led the initial escape off Earth in the Secundo Casu, a spaceship equipped with a life-sustaining Biosphere just like the Sunspot housed, in hopes of establishing salvation for the endangered human race on Mars.
“Sonya, please tell me we’ve heard something from Mars,” Emanuel said.
The AI took on her blue humanoid form on a display. “I am sorry, Dr. Rodriguez. The status of our communications with Mars remains unchanged.”
“Damn,” Bouma muttered. The Marine’s expression drained, all good humor replaced by the same pallor he’d worn since finally getting out of his patient bed in the med ward. “Not that I don’t enjoy the company on the ship, but it’d be nice to see some new faces. Just so long as…”
Bouma let the words trail off.
Emanuel knew what the Marine wanted to say. Just so long as they aren’t Organics.
The whole flight, they had tried to steer conversations around the frightening possibility of encountering Organics on Mars instead of a human colony. The prospect of escaping Earth only to delay their deaths until they landed on the Red Planet was too much for anyone on the crew to bear. They hadn’t been so foolish as to avoid planning for any engagements with their alien adversaries, but it still wasn’t a favorite conversation topic.
“If we don’t hear something from the NTC before we land, we’ll find them,” Emanuel said. He was eager to answer the question that hadn’t been asked. Hope was a rare commodity after the destruction of Earth, and Emanuel wanted to prop up its value as best he could. The crew needed it; he needed it.
“Hoffman had a plan,” Emanuel said. “The guy was smart. My guess is, we haven’t heard anything from his colony because he isn’t trying to attract attention.”
“You’re right,” Bouma said, wincing as he stretched in his chair. “The Organics would be on him like flies on shit if he sent out some kind of beacon.”
“Flies on shit,” Emanuel agreed. He pictured the mandibles of the spiders and their eerie blue flesh. He could still hear their unnatural shrieks, the scrape of their claws on metal. Hell, he could practically smell their stench wafting through the air ducts of the ship. “I’m not a fan of bugs. Less flies there are, the better.”
For a while they sat, watching the beeping displays. It would still be a few hours before Blake Ort and Lieutenant Mario Diego relieved them of their watch. Since escaping Earth’s atmosphere, the four of them had decided to take shifts keeping watch. Sonya had insisted it wasn’t necessary, that she could warn them at the first signal they received from a human—or an Organic. But Emanuel felt better having a human on watch. There was something reassuring about having a live fail-safe in case the computers went down—which was an all-too-real possibility. The Organics possessed electromagnetic pulse weapons capable of disrupting human electrical and computer systems. The Sunspot had been hardened against such weapons, but Emanuel didn’t want to take any chances. The ship was also equipped with a massive RVAMP system, and they had a slew of handheld versions they could take with them once they disembarked. The weapons helped neutralize Organics by decimating their shields.
Emanuel was confident in the capability of the RVAMPs—after all, he’d led their construction since their departure from Earth. And he’d designed the very first one, all the way back in Colorado. The RVAMPs had worked time and time again against the Organics. They were efficient and reliable. Maybe too much so.
It had been the activation of an RVAMP back on Earth that had severely injured Dr. Sophie Winston, thanks to her being infected with Organic nanobots. He still remembered the way she’d convulsed when she turned it on to save the children. The agony on her face was emblazoned in his memory. Thinking of it still sent physical jabs of pain through his chest.
“You got that far away look, Doc,” Bouma said, interrupting Emanuel’s thoughts. “Kind of like you just saw a ghost.”
Emanuel sighed, then shook himself from his despair. “In a way, I guess I did.”
“Sophie?”
“Sophie.”
Emanuel knew Bouma was no stranger to his love for Sophie. They’d had hours, days, to talk about everything under the sun and between the stars during the journey to Mars.
“We’ll get her to the colony,” Bouma said with new certainty. “They’ll know what to do there. They’ll save her.”
Emanuel merely nodded. He prayed Bouma was right.
Sonya suddenly appeared before them. Emanuel nearly jumped from his seat. “I’m receiving an encrypted message from a human ship.”
“What is it?” Emanuel asked, leaning forward in his seat.
The AI looked perplexed. “The message is scrambled. From what I detect, it originates from a human ship on the surface of Mars. There is a seventy-three percent probability that it comes from a biosphere ship that shares a build with the Sunspot.”
Could it be the Secundo Casu?
Emanuel hoped so. It would make the monumental task of finding the NTC colony that much easier.
“But you aren’t sure?” Bouma asked.
“I am afraid I cannot give a definitive answer.”
Emanuel sighed. “Then give us what you do have.”
“‘Landing successful. Contacts spotted. System damage reported. Making…’ Those are the only words I have been able to decipher with certainty. I would presume the crew of this ship encountered Organics.”
Emanuel’s momentary positivity blew away like the black ashes of the human civilization on Earth.
“Sure as hell sounds like it,” Bouma said. “Are they still alive?”
“That’s impossible to tell,” Sonya said. “The defective message indicates damage to their communications array. Reciprocal contact with the ship will be impossible. However, this is the only concrete signal I have from any human ships or colonies as of this moment. Our current landing coordinates bring us within two thousand kilometers of this human vessel. Would you like to reroute to investigate this ship?”
“Yes…” Bouma looked at Emanuel. “It’s your call, Doc.”
Even if it wasn’t the Secundo Casu, this might be the closest thing to a lead on the NTC colony they’d get. But, if this vessel had run into trouble with the Organics, there might not be anything but a crashed ship and a dead end. It didn’t seem like a good idea to inspect a ship that had probably already succumbed to the Organics. Still, it might have intel on its computer systems containing the location of the NTC colony on Mars. That alone would be worth the risk, and Emanuel wouldn’t be blindly leading the Sunspot around.
“Let’s check it out,” Emanuel said.
“Very good, Doctor Rodriguez. Landing coordinates have been altered. ETA is now one hour and thirty-three point four minutes.” There was a slight pause from Sonya. “Also, I am happy to report we have finally reached visual range of Mars. I have the first images available. Would you care to view them?”
“Yes!” Emanuel and Bouma said simultaneously.
Emanuel wrapped his fingers around the edge of his armrest. A sheet of nervous sweat was already forming over his palms. Then a blurry, pixelated image fizzled on-screen. Sonya hadn’t lied when she said they’d just reached visual range. The view cleared, and Emanuel leaned forward, his stomach churning. It wasn’t the Red Planet that had his guts knotting up, but rather, the blue speck floating in space near Mars.
“Sonya, can you magnify the image here at all?” Emanuel asked, indicating the suspect spot.
“I can,” Sonya said, “but doing so will not drastically improve the image quality.”
“Shit. Is that what I think it is, Doc?” Bouma asked.
Emanuel nodded. That blue was the same iridescent blue given off by the spiders and Sentinels a
nd all the goddamn Organic ships and drones they’d seen tearing Earth apart. He hesitated, preparing to say the words he’d been dreading the whole trip. “Sonya, sound the alarm. Call everyone to their battle stations.”
***
Heat shimmers flickered across a brown and red horizon. In all directions, seashells bleached white by the sun were scattered like bones across the sand.
Corporal Athena Rollins brought her binoculars to her visor to glass the dying world for hostiles. The sensors in her heads-up display (HUD) scanned for lifeforms, but, like so many times before, the reading came back negative.
“All clear,” she reported over the comms. She checked the life support system readout on her HUD, ensuring that the air filtration system and cooling unit were working properly before climbing out into the one-hundred-and-twenty-degree heat. Without her oxygen filtration unit, she wouldn’t be able to breathe for long out here.
She pulled her pulse rifle from the clip on the back of her armor, then bent down to help Private Sean Walker out of the open hatch.
The pads inside the dull black armored suit she wore conformed to her body as she pulled on his hand. As soon as Walker was on his feet, he unslung his old-school MP5 submachine gun.
“I don’t know why you bother with that thing,” she said.
“Saved my ass more times than I can count, that’s why.”
She couldn’t see his features behind his mirrored visor, but she had a feeling he was grinning. At just twenty-three years old, Walker was the youngest surviving member of her crew. He was also the cockiest, and, some would say, the funniest, although Athena would hesitate to agree.
“You’re just lucky,” she said.
Walker laughed his arrogant chuckle, and she turned back to the dry, arid terrain with her rifle shouldered. Somewhere to the west was the receding Pacific Ocean. She couldn’t see the blue anymore, nor could she see the massive black ships sucking the water into the sky.
Walker closed the hatch, and they covered up the only exposed metal of the Ghost of Atlantis submarine by kicking sand over it. Once it was secure, they both started off down the slope.
At the bottom, Athena’s boots crushed the shell of a dead crab. She shouldered her pulse rifle and did another scan for contacts.
Hard to believe this was once the ocean, she thought.
From this vantage, all she saw were more shells and skeletal remains of fish. The sight reminded her that time was running out for every surviving member of the twenty-one-person crew hiding in the belly of the GOA.
“Let’s move,” she said.
Walker dipped his helmet and followed her toward their target—a radio tower on the edge of Los Angeles that Alexia had told them to transmit from. Athena trusted the NTC AI from Cheyenne Mountain’s Biosphere. The AI hadn’t led her astray thus far, but there were horrifying creatures between here and the tower that the AI couldn’t protect Athena and Walker from.
All they could do was try to evade the Organics.
Athena drew in a breath of filtered air and set off over the dry seabed. For the next twenty minutes, they walked through the desert. The pumps inside her advanced suit churned coolant through the miniscule vessels in the membrane covering her flesh, but it wasn’t long before her body was covered in sweat.
She took a sip from the straw inside her helmet, but resisted the urge to swallow more than one sip. Conserving water was challenging, especially in the field, but she didn’t have a choice. They were down to the GOA’s reserve tanks now.
Batting the sweat from her eyes, she focused on the seemingly endless sand dunes in the distance. Getting lost was easy out here, and she watched the compass on her HUD to make sure she was still headed east.
Fifteen minutes passed before she spotted what had once been the shoreline. She knew it was the beach because of the white lawn chairs protruding out of the sand, some of them scattered about by the sand storms that assaulted the land. Off to their right, and about two hundred yards closer to the beach, was the hulking carcass of a dead whale.
Walker halted a few feet away, his helmet craning back the way they had come.
Athena heard the dull rumbling a second later.
Walker slowly pivoted to scan the skyline, but Athena didn’t waste any time. “Run!” she shouted.
They took off running for the whale’s carcass as the rumble grew in volume. A single teardrop-shaped Organic drone was coming in from the east, scanning the blasted wasteland for prey or potential buried water.
Between Walker and Athena, there was about two hundred pounds of water the Organics could suck from their bodies.
They had to reach that carcass, and fast.
The drone veered southwest, leaving a white trail of exhaust, but she could see it was already turning for another pass.
Athena saw the radio tower rising over a city block in the distance. So close, yet so far away, she thought. All they had to do was get their communication equipment up there, and they would be able to connect to Alexia to learn of her new plan. But the increasing rumble of the drone made that seem less and less likely.
The whale carcass looked like a tan tent held together by white poles.
Walker was first to reach it. He pulled back the dried skin and gestured for Athena to climb inside. She ducked under the flap and crouched beneath the white ribs holding the carcass together. Her boots squished on jellied chunks of decomposing flesh.
She scooted over to make way for Walker, and listened as the roar of the Organic ship grew closer. He pulled the flap back over the belly, the light dimming in their hiding place.
Slowing her breathing, she waited, doing her best to ignore her pounding heart. Walker raised the barrel of his rifle at the roof, and she did the same with her pulse rifle.
The alien ship shot by to the north, rustling the sand and candied flesh that made up the floor. Athena glanced down when she felt something brush her boot, and let out a muffled cry when she saw the snake.
Apparently they weren’t the only ones using this dead beast for shelter. The snake raised its head at her, tongue flickering in and out, before it moved over to Walker. He kept his gaze on the translucent ceiling.
“It’s coming back,” he whispered.
Athena listened as the drone changed course. Whatever engine the aliens used to power the craft hummed as it slowed to survey the beach.
It was definitely hunting.
She moved her finger to the outside of the trigger guard. If they were spotted, she might be able to take the drone down before it could capture them. But not before it called in reinforcements.
She glimpsed the alien aircraft coming in fast. From her location, she had a perfect view of the curved bow of the small ship. The surface pulsated from an interior light, like a beacon blinking over and over.
There was no creature piloting the craft. There wasn’t even a cockpit. The ship was controlled by some artificial intelligence that had one purpose—capture them and suck the water from their bodies.
Athena swallowed as it slowed and then began to descend, whipping up tornadoes of sand and grit. It passed by their location, and the gusting wind tore at the whale hide. The decayed flesh rippled until a piece tore away in front of Athena, providing an even more expansive window. The crunching and tearing sounds of splitting fragile flesh made Athena wince.
Walker raised his rifle, but she grabbed his wrist.
“No, get down,” she said quietly.
He hesitated, then did as ordered and moved down onto his belly next to her. The snake buried into the flesh too, vanishing. But there was no time to dig-in like the creature had. All they could do was flatten their bodies against the flesh and pray the drone didn’t spot them.
Another strip of hide tore away, letting in a blanket of sunlight. The drone turned for another pass, the raucous sound so loud now her ears were aching. She held her breath and closed her eyes, thinking of her sister and parents, who had died months ago.
She would be seein
g them again soon.
Two agonizing minutes passed as the drone scanned the area. Athena counted the seconds to keep her mind active, but counting just made her nerves clench more.
Walker remained silent next to her, but she knew he was itching to get up and blast the ship. She felt him move, and opened her eyes to see he had lifted his helmet, sand falling away from the chin.
That’s when she realized the ship was pulling away.
It hovered for a moment longer, then blasted away with a supersonic scream that stripped the hide right off the bones, leaving them completely exposed. In the silence, her ears began to ring. For a moment the two sailors remained motionless. When the snake poked back out, she figured it was clear.
“Come on,” she said to Walker.
They bolted for the distant beach, their armor shedding flecks of dried gray whale flesh as they moved. Finally they navigated the debris field of chairs and tables, and made their way toward a road halfway covered by sand.
A ball of sage rolled across the ground, tumbling over the top of a vehicle partially buried in a sand drift. In every direction the sight was the same—the old world buried by the new one.
She had scavenged in Los Angeles several times before, and knew these streets well. She also knew there were plenty of Organics. Spiders lurked in the shadows, hibernating and conserving energy until food presented itself.
Walker was also well-acquainted with the area. He ran ahead down the street, keeping low, his footsteps leaving tracks in the dirt.
Looking up, Athena scanned the windows for hostiles, but the thousands of glass panes were all blacked out by the same brown coating of grime that covered the buildings and roads.
She flashed a hand signal to Walker, who had waited at the end of the block for her to catch up, and, taking point, rounded the corner. Her boots smashed over something sticky. She didn’t need to look down to know it was the gooey lining of an orb. The human or animal or whatever had been inside was nothing more than a pile of mush now, the water sucked away by the spiders that comprised the alien army. Nevertheless, hunching down, she examined the remains by plucking out a stringy piece with her gloved fingers.
Orbs IV_Exodus_A Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction Survival Thriller Page 2