The tissue was still decomposing, which told her it was fresh. Probably just a few days old. She doubted it was a human. They hadn’t found a survivor for weeks now. But it was possible, and she decided to keep an eye out for anyone that might be hiding out here.
Walker brought his submachine gun up to search for contacts as she moved down the next street. They kept to the right side of the road, away from the abandoned vehicles, using the shadows of a high-rise building for cover.
They passed a park on the next street, where the spindly branches of trees whipped in the gusting wind, the limbs cracking back and forth. Visible just beyond the dead brown space was their target. The red tip of the radio tower rose above the city blocks ahead like a beacon. They were almost there.
Athena moved at a crouch, trying to keep her footfalls as quiet as possible. She stopped for another scan halfway down the block, then continued on.
The next intersection was clogged with more cars, some of the doors still open from when the occupants had fled on invasion day. They hadn’t made it very far. A minefield of decaying orbs littered the filthy road.
These were older.
Still, she listened and looked for tracks, just to make sure it wasn’t a trap. Sometimes the aliens would hide in areas that looked abandoned. But if they were out there, she saw and heard no sign of them. No tracks, no scratching sounds, no screeches. Nothing but the wind. She motioned Walker to take point.
They fanned out through the park, taking a short cut in the open. The sun beat down on their dull armored suits, and Athena continued to work on her breathing. Sweat bled down her face, but at least she wasn’t wearing make up to get into her eyes. She didn’t miss things like that anyways. What she did miss was food. She was sick of the canned food and MREs they had scavenged.
God, I would kill for some fresh sashimi and a dirty martini.
She licked her cracked lips at the thought of sitting down to her favorite meal with her sister, then blinked away the painful memories and focused on the mission.
Walker reached the end of the park and was about to step out into the street when he froze like a statue on the sidewalk.
Athena heard what had spooked him.
Scratch, scrape, scratch, scrape.
Her eyes darted to the tower rising above the buildings framing the next road. A single spider emerged on the rooftop of an old hotel.
Then dozens.
The spiders perched on the edge of the rooftop, looking down on the street and the park. One of them raised its claws into the air, letting out a deafening screech. The others all skittered down the side of the building, their claws scoring ruts in the brick, causing a sound like nails on a chalkboard to reverberate between the buildings.
For a second she just stood there, staring at the beasts. Walker snapped her from the trance by running toward her and grabbing her arm. He yanked her back through the park, away from the tower, as spiders filled the street.
— 2 —
“Remember, David, it’s like a video game,” Jeff said. “You just aim and squeeze.”
“Cool!” David said, eagerness shining in his eyes.
Despite everything they had gone through, Jeff’s little brother still had an air of innocence. Maybe he was just trying to be optimistic or lighten the mood. Maybe it was just having something to do after all the boredom. Either way, what they were about to do was deadly serious.
They sat together in one of the three turret stations on the Sunspot. While Emanuel had retrofitted the ship with RVAMP capabilities, they’d also used salvaged fighters and weapons, with Sonya’s help, to create these turrets. After weeks of running drills, they were finally about to experience combat.
This time it wasn’t a drill. This time it was real.
An electric buzz of anticipation coursed through Jeff’s nerves as he tightened his fingers around the controls. “All we have to do is wait for Emanuel to tell us when,” Jeff said, “then we fire. Not before. Got it, bud?”
David nodded.
Dad, if you’re up there, we could really use your help, Jeff thought. It seemed so long ago since he had left them in White Sands. Jeff hoped their dad would be proud. He had kept his promise and protected David, and soon they’d be somewhere safe. They just had to make it through this.
“Gunners ready?” Emanuel asked over the ship’s comms.
“Turret 1 reporting ready,” Jeff said, doing his best imitation of a battle-hardened soldier. He wanted to sound like an adult and not just some kid.
“Turret 2 reporting ready,” Diego said next. He would be at his station with Ort, the electrical-engineer-turned-soldier Captain Noble had sent up with them in the Sunspot.
“Turret 3 reporting ready,” Bouma said. Dr. Holly Brown would be sitting next to him to serve as his co-gunner, just like David was Jeff’s. She was such a nice lady. She’d looked after Jeff, David, and the other kids, Owen and Jamie, like she was their mother. But even though she was the crew’s resident psychologist, they needed every hand they could get now.
Sonya shimmered on the display in front of Jeff and David. “I have not detected any sign that the Organics have spotted us. We are still clear for our approach.”
Jeff had gone up against too many Organics on Earth to believe they’d make it to Mars without a scratch.
“Reports indicate that there is an Organic capital ship orbiting Mars, similar to those that launched the initial invasion on Earth. Then there are at least half a dozen larger vessels that may be warships. This gives a ninety-nine point six percent probability that there are other smaller fighter-type vessels and drones in the space around Mars that are not yet detectable at this range.”
“I’ll take that point four percent,” Emanuel said.
“I’m ready to wipe the sky with those blue-faces,” Diego said.
Jeff drank in Diego’s confidence. He had only known the man for the few months they’d been aboard the ship, but Diego displayed a lot of the attributes Jeff admired in Bouma. Diego seemed fearless. If he was ever scared of the Organics, he didn’t show it. Maybe someday Jeff would be like that, too. The truth was, he was still scared every time he saw those spidery blue maws, even when they appeared in his dreams.
“We’re approaching Mars,” Sonya’s monotone voice reported over the ship’s comms. “Still no sign that the Organics have detected our arrival.”
Good, Jeff thought. Although he found that hard to believe. How could the advanced aliens not have seen their ship yet?
His fingers itched to pull the trigger, but it would be better for all of them if they didn’t have to fire a single shot. He and David hadn’t survived as long as they had because they were trigger-happy. It was because they had been cautious and stealthy.
“You don’t even need a telescope to see Mars now,” Emanuel said.
“Ho-ly shit,” Bouma remarked.
“Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought Mars was the Red Planet,” Diego said. “That doesn’t look completely red to me.”
Jeff and David leaned forward in their harnesses. Three months of sitting cooped up in this metal bucket and they were finally seeing their destination on the screens. But it looked way different from the planet he remembered in his school books. There were swirls of light blue and white—clouds, maybe? Underneath it all, he saw specks of brown, and even some green dots.
“They’ve been terraforming it,” Emanuel said. Then he went on, puzzlement clear in his voice, “I didn’t think human technology was capable of such rapid progress.”
“Hoffman and his colony move fast?” Diego asked hopefully.
“What do they mean?” David asked, wide-eyed.
“They’re wondering if the Organics did it,” Jeff said.
“But why?”
Jeff shrugged. He had no good answer for that. The adults probably didn’t either.
And he didn’t have long to think about it.
The bark of alarms pierced Jeff’s ears, and red lights flashed all around. He s
traightened in his seat, his heart thudding faster than a racecar.
“Incoming contacts!” Sonya called between the whirring alarms.
Blue and black shapes raced across the space between Mars and the Sunspot. The sight of the Organic drones made Jeff’s stomach drop, the memory surfacing of the time he had been captured by one of them.
“Open fire!” Emanuel said.
Jeff held down on the trigger, gritting his teeth. Pearly laces of orange roped away into the blackness of space. Light cut and flashed through the black. The drones spun around their incoming fire, drawing ever closer to the Sunspot.
“Come on, come on!” Jeff said.
“I can’t hit ’em!” David yelled.
One of the drones exploded in a distant, brilliant blast of orange and red. Bouma whooped over the comms. More drones came at them like a swarm of angry bees. Jeff focused his fire. Beads of sweat trickled over his forehead. He wanted so desperately to hit them, to see them all disappear into a cloud of debris. His fingers trembled as he yanked on the trigger as hard as he could.
Finally one of the drones he’d been aiming at burst into pieces, followed by another, and then yet another.
“We’re doing it!” David exclaimed. “We’re stopping them!”
“RVAMP ready,” Sonya said.
The ship shook as the massive weapon unloaded its electromagnetic pulse. The red battle lights in their turret station shimmered off for a second. Jeff was surrounded by blackness. His lungs drew in tight, and he wondered if it would be like this forever. Then the lights bloomed back to life. The drones were now floating, lifeless, in the darkness around them, nothing more than flotsam adrift on the ocean.
“Like shooting fish in a barrel now,” Diego said.
Drones fell apart like popped balloons under the resurgent fire from the Sunspot.
“This is way easier than I thought!” David exclaimed. He was bouncing in his seat as he fired at the drifting drones.
Soon there was nothing but slagged chunks of metal left. The Sunspot carried on majestically through the field of debris. A shiver crept down Jeff’s spine. Something didn’t feel right to him, even as they passed the shards of broken, lifeless drones. This had been too easy. If he had learned anything, it was that the Organics were anything but easy to defeat. As if in answer, Sonya’s voice came over the comms.
“More contacts incoming,” she said.
A flood of blue appeared across Jeff’s viewscreen.
“Oh crap,” David said.
The drones had merely been testing their defenses, probing for weak spots. Now that they had unleashed the RVAMP, the Organics knew what they were up against. They were coming in hard for Round Two, and they had added fighter jet-like crafts to their armada. The ships each had two wings, a dorsal fin, and what looked to be laser cannons.
“Shit,” Bouma said. “How long before the RVAMP is recharged?”
“Thirty seconds,” Emanuel said.
“Thirty seconds never seemed so long,” Diego replied.
They unleashed a flurry of rounds as the drones and new alien fighters approached. Fire lanced away from the turrets, but for every ship they turned to shrapnel, it seemed there were two more speeding toward the Sunspot.
Jeff dared to steal a glance at his younger brother. David had a white-knuckled grip on his turret controls. His lips were pressed together thinly, and his face was paler than Jeff had ever seen it.
The Sunspot rocked as the first hits from the drones pounded across their hull. David let out a slight whimper, but never took his eyes off the targeting reticules.
Adrenaline pushed itself through Jeff’s blood vessels. His fingers trembled, and his vision narrowed as the rest of the ship faded away. He felt the quakes shaking through his seat, and saw only the viewscreen before him. The bark of an alarm sounded as if it was coming through a pool. He thought he heard Emanuel’s voice. Or maybe it was Diego’s, it was impossible to tell. All that mattered was that they lived for just a few more seconds so they could launch another RVAMP attack.
Then they would be safe. It would all be okay once again. It had to be. They hadn’t made it this far only so he could break his promise to his dad by letting David get swallowed up by space.
No way.
“Come on, you bastards,” Jeff said.
The Sunspot shook like it had been hit by a storm of rockets. Alarms screeched, and the lights flickered. The ship shook violently. The sounds of breaking and bending metal screamed from every direction. Jeff grabbed his brother’s hand and squeezed as hard as he could. He wanted desperately to let David know he was here for him until the end, no matter how soon that came.
Drones continued to pepper them with gunfire. Through a porthole, Mars grew larger, the tug of its gravity well now pulling on the wounded Sunspot. Now Jeff could see the mountains and canyons stretching along the craggy landscape. David’s mouth was open. Jeff thought he was screaming in terror, but the din from the dying ship masked his screams.
A flash of heat swallowed Jeff. Blinding light came next. The ground rose to meet them.
I’m sorry, Dad, Jeff thought. Then, I’m sorry, David.
***
Captain Rick Noble stirred awake to an overwhelming feeling of despair and solitude. Orbs sparkled across his vision, filling the darkness like ephemeral blue stars. If he squinted, he could trick himself into believing he wasn’t inside a ship, but rather floating alone, deep in space.
Hell, maybe he was deep in space. Truth was, he wasn’t sure where the hell they were. All he knew was that his wife, daughters, crew, and everyone else was likely dead, and he was in a living nightmare.
All around him, hundreds of prisoners were trapped inside orbs attached to the bulkheads of a massive vessel. The other prisoners weren’t human. Most weren’t even from Earth. They were alien creatures from other planets—alien races the Organics had captured and brought here, like him, in some twisted Noah’s Ark of sentient beings from across the galaxy.
He wasn’t sure why the multi-dimensional entities housed them here. Maybe they were just trying to preserve species from the worlds they had destroyed. If that were true, then Noble was just a goddamn science specimen, nothing more than a cryo sample, or whatever the science folks would call it.
The multi-dimensionals were going to great lengths to keep him alive, that was for sure. He looked down at the tube inserted into his gut. On the day of his capture, the fluid suspending him in the orb had drained away. This tube had then snaked up from the hard floor of the orb and cut into his belly. Every time he tried to rip it out, an electrical current paralyzed his body. Whatever nutrients were being pumped into him through the tube were keeping him alive, despite his efforts to end the terror.
With no way to track the days, he may have been stuck here for hours or months. However long it had been, it felt like an eternity. He’d spent the first chunk of that time praying that maybe they would let him out of here, or that he would find a way to escape.
But he’d soon found there was no escaping the orb.
He reached out with his right index finger, its tip swollen and bloody from touching the glowing lining of his blue prison hundreds of times. Even the hard floor zapped him if he tried to pound it or claw his way out.
His fingernails were gone from doing just that.
And no matter how many times he tried to kill himself by touching the orb walls, the electrical jolt was never strong enough to do anything but cause extreme pain.
He pounded the lining with his palm, earning himself a strong current that ripped first through his hand and arm, and then his entire body. He jerked on the ground for several seconds, losing all control of his body. When it was finally over, he was lying in a puddle of his own piss.
“Let me out of here!” he screamed. “PLEASE!”
Captain Noble had always considered himself to have a high pain tolerance, but it was hard to be physically strong when your mind was weak.
Interminable capt
ivity in the dark, cold space gave him too much time to think. He thought of his wife and daughters and then the crew of the Ghost of Atlantis, and how he had failed them all.
Not just them… he had failed the entire human race with the failure of Operation Redemption.
Those thoughts haunted him, torturing him almost as much as—maybe more than—the electric currents teeming through the Orb.
Noble screamed again, and this time several otherworldly voices responded. One, a croak from the creature in the orb above his, reverberated through the hollow chamber.
The noise came from the oval mouth of the creature staring down at him with a Cyclops eye where a nose should have been. Perched on two webbed feet, the alien Noble had nicknamed Ribbit was a cross between a bird and a frog, with thin stick legs, a wide torso, and slimy green skin.
Noble had attempted communication multiple times, but the alien simply croaked with no discernible intention.
“Stop that!” Noble barked back.
Ribbit seemed to understand and went back to curling up on the bottom of its orb. Noble sat up and wrapped his arms around his chest.
His eyes flitted to the orb below his. It housed the oddest-looking alien he could see in the chamber—a cross between a plant and a tree and an octopus with a bulb head. Centered on its curved head were three compound eyes. Below that, orange lips covered its mouth. Jagged teeth lined a maw that Noble had only seen once.
While the face was a thing of horror, the rest of the creature wasn’t all that scary. Four branches that served as arms were connected to a slimy pink torso, each of them covered in what looked like bark. Below that, where there should have been a butt and legs, were dozens of wormy appendages that looked like roots. The alien used them to move around. He wasn’t sure what the heck the arms were used for, though, as they rarely moved.
Currently, it was hanging upside down from the top of its orb, using those root-like appendages to keep it fixed in place. That’s what he was calling the alien now.
“Hey, Roots,” Noble said.
Orbs IV_Exodus_A Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction Survival Thriller Page 3