Diego tried not to resent them, but once again they were taking risks to save civilians. On the other hand, this is why he was a soldier. To help and protect people, especially the kids, who now might be the last remnants of humanity.
Suddenly he realized why Emanuel was so determined to save Sophie’s life. There were no more governments. No militaries to defend them. There was no more Earth to return to. All they had was each other, and now, more than ever, every single human life counted.
Diego clapped the biologist on the shoulder. He regretted even thinking about abandoning Sophie, and the resentment he’d felt earlier. “Ready, Doc?”
Emanuel merely nodded before carting the cryo chamber down toward the Rhino. Diego helped push, realizing exactly what the mission required of him—the same mission Captain Noble had been intent on: to protect what was left of the human race at all costs, even if it meant laying down his own life.
— 7 —
“How are you feeling?” Holly asked, brushing back Jamie’s hair. The med bay still hummed with the intermittent beeps from the biomonitors hooked up to the children.
The young girl yawned and stretched her arms, balling her hands into fists. “I’m so sleepy. I’ve never been so tired.”
“That’ll wear off after a while. Nothing hurts?”
“No.” Jamie’s eyes opened wider. “Should it?”
“No,” Holly said. She curled her fingers around the rail along Jamie’s bed. “Do you remember where you are?”
Jamie examined the bulkheads around them. “The spaceship…” She blinked rapidly, as if recalling a painful memory. “The last thing I remember are the aliens.”
“They aren’t on the ship,” Holly said, reaching out to reassure the girl. The child shivered, and Holly used her other hand to stroke Jamie’s hair.
But Holly couldn’t hold her forever. Owen needed to be roused next. Then medical supplies and food had to be loaded. Any remaining oxygen supplies had to be moved to their escape Rhino. What the children needed most right now was time to adjust to their new environments peacefully. Working Jamie and Owen into a panic wouldn’t help anyone.
As calmly as she could, Holly continued in what she hoped was a soothing voice. “We need to get going now. Your legs are probably going to feel like jelly, but can you stand?”
Jamie sat up, then swung her legs over the side of the patient bed. Holly helped her slide off.
“It feels funny,” Jamie said. “Like a bunch of needles are in my legs.”
“It’s going to feel like that for a little bit,” Holly said. She helped Jamie walk across the med bay floor. “Keep walking around until you feel comfortable.”
What she didn’t tell the girl was that she wanted her to be able to run if they had to. Holly glanced at one of the terminals attached to a bulkhead. Sonya was displaying a live image of the encroaching dust storm on the wall-mounted screen. A few blue dots shone like beacons at the storm’s perimeter. Those were the Organics leading the charge. In the corner of the display, a timer counted down. They had no more than thirty minutes before the Organics would be on them. If they hoped to escape in the Rhino, they needed to leave much sooner than that.
The hatch to the med bay swung open. Bouma entered, hair matted and flesh glistening with sweat. His muscles pressed against the white t-shirt he wore.
“Sophie’s loaded, and we’re grabbing all the food and water we can scavenge,” Bouma said. “Ammo’s in there. Emanuel sent me back up here to grab the rest of the medical supplies.”
“Everything’s ready over there,” Holly said, jerking her chin toward one of the tables.
A few crates and bags were packed on top of it, containing everything from emergency surgical supplies to the last few liters of cryostat fluid.
“I’m on it,” Bouma said. He started to walk toward the supplies, then abruptly paused and turned back to Holly. He threw his arms around her and planted a long kiss on her forehead. A comforting warmth spread through her body, radiating from his strength. She lingered in his grip, letting the rest of the world fade away for that moment. Finally he pulled back from her.
“I was worried to death about you,” Holly said. She felt Jamie’s eyes on her as the girl continued walking around the med bay to wake her muscles, but she kept her attention on Bouma.
“Going to take more than a few Organics to kill me. You should know that by now,” he said.
Holly chuckled, and then gave Bouma another hug. When she pulled away, he snuck another brief kiss.
“Ewwww,” Jamie said, making a face.
“Sorry kid,” Bouma said, grinning. He scooped up the medical supplies and hurried back to the Rhino.
“He really likes you,” Jamie said.
“And I really like him, too.”
Holly’s heart ached. She dreamed of a life back on Earth where she was still working at her clinical practice, and dating Bouma in the normal way. But at least they were still alive. Their relationship was like a solitary floating beam in the middle of a shipwreck. It kept them both afloat, and gave them hope of a future together.
Holly patted Jamie’s shoulder. “Now can you help me get Owen up?”
“Okay.”
A few minutes later, and the boy was yawning and coming to in his chamber. They walked him through all the checkups Holly had performed on Jamie. The girl seemed to take pride in helping get the younger boy up and moving. That was good. The job might distract her from their otherwise deteriorating situation.
Time was running out, but Holly couldn’t tell the kids that or they would lose it. Waking them so quickly had been risky enough. Their psyches had bent and flexed on Earth, but adding too much stress too fast after abruptly interrupting their cryo slumbers could break them.
The kids were healthy enough to be outside the protective cocoon of those chambers. Sophie, as far as they knew, still could not survive without the protection of the cryostat fluid holding her biological systems in balance. At least, with the kids out of their chambers, they had an extra few days’ cryostat fluid they could add to Sophie’s supply.
Sonya appeared on the screens throughout the medical bay. “The Rhino will be fully charged and ready to depart in five minutes.”
“Thank you, Sonya,” Holly said. She bent down to eye level with Owen and Jamie. “Hear that? We’re going for a ride soon. You two ready for that?”
“Yes!” they said together.
Emanuel’s voice crackled over the comms next. “Holly, I’m still securing Sophie’s chamber into the Rhino. Can you get Jeff and David?”
“On it.” She led the two children, hand-in-hand, out of the med bay and down the corridor toward the turrets. She tried to portray a cool appearance—anything to keep the kids calm.
“What are Jeff and David doing?” Owen asked, rubbing his eyes.
“They’re looking out for Organics in one of the turrets,” she replied.
Jamie just nodded.
Holly forced a smile. “We’re lucky to have them watching our butts.”
It was good that the children had such powerful, resilient personalities, but she hated to see such young children have to take on the role of soldier. It was just the world they lived in now.
As they hurried up the ladders toward the turret where Jeff and David were keeping watch, cold sweat beaded over Holly’s palms. The children looked up at her with scrutinizing eyes.
“We have to hurry,” Holly said.
“The monsters are back, aren’t they?” Jamie said, matter-of-factly. “That’s why we’re in such a rush.”
Holly wanted to protect the children, but she couldn’t hide behind a lie. “We’re safe for now, but we need to leave the ship to stay safe.”
Owen looked at his boots, and Jamie trembled slightly.
“It’s going to be okay,” Holly assured them. “Don’t you trust me?”
They both nodded.
“Good,” she said. “Now follow me.”
They rounded the cor
ridor past a jumble of broken wires and a singed bulkhead. The smell of burned plastic still hung, acrid and heavy, in the air.
“Jeff, David!” Holly called as they approached the hatch to the turret. Only the slight hum of the ship’s reactors and the whoosh of air through the ventilation systems answered her. She called their names a little louder, and once again they didn’t respond.
“One minute and we should be out of here,” Emanuel called over the comms.
“Copy,” Holly replied. She opened the hatch, and scanned the empty seats in the turret.
Cracks spiderwebbed over the damaged viewport, and the displays on the turret glared red with a message that simply said, “ERROR.”
She felt like a parent who had lost her children in a foreign city. Maybe they went to one of the other turrets? she tried to tell herself.
But both of the other turrets had been irreparably damaged, crushed against the planet’s surface. While it was possible to get into them, there was no space to operate the cannons.
“Where’d they go?” Jamie asked innocently.
“Maybe they’re hiding,” Owen offered.
Even without the display ticking down in the med bay, Holly could practically see the seconds ticking by. “Come on,” she said, waving the kids onward. They hurried down the corridor to a working terminal.
“Emanuel,” she said, as calmly as she could, “Jeff and David aren’t in the turret.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean they’re gone,” she said. “Can you have the guys check the corridors on your end?”
“Wait… What the hell do you mean they’re gone?”
Rapid footsteps exploded down the corridor. They echoed tinnily against the bulkhead. Bouma appeared at the door, breathing heavily. “The armory,” he said between breaths. “I went back to grab the last of our suits. We’re missing two.”
That knot in Holly’s gut tightened. What the hell were Jeff and David up to? Leave them alone for a few minutes… Her eyes searched the damaged corridor. Behind Bouma was an emergency airlock. Holly ran to it. The children trailed her, peppering her with questions. She couldn’t respond to them now. Once she reached the hatch, she pressed her palm against the dust covered window and peered inside.
The outer hatch was still hanging open.
“What about the GPS units?” she asked, the words spilling out of her mouth faster than she could think. “Can’t we activate their comms?”
Bouma cursed under his breath and held up one of the headsets.
“I found these. It’s supposed to be attached to the suits,” Bouma said, “and has their tracking and comm equipment. They’re heavy.” He turned away for a second as if gathering his emotions. “They must not have worn them because they’re too big.”
“What are you saying?” Holly asked. “We have no way to contact Jeff and David?”
Bouma shook his head.
***
Emanuel stared at the display panel in the Rhino’s cockpit as it sat within the Sunspot’s vehicle hold. The dust storm would be on them in fifteen minutes. That meant they needed to leave now if they stood any chance of escape.
“Where the hell are Jeff and David?” Diego asked, starting the motors. They whirred to life with an electric hum. The vehicle shook slightly, as if it too was growing impatient.
“They were supposed to be in that turret, but must have left to defend us,” Emanuel said. “Sonya, broadcast over all public channels. Make sure Jeff and David know we are leaving now.”
The AI followed the order, her voice booming inside of the ship.
Emanuel waited a second. “Nothing?”
“I have relayed your message over all relevant frequencies.”
“Son of a…” Emanuel trailed off. He couldn’t understand why Jeff and David would have taken off without telling him, unless they were trying to prove something.
He cursed again. That’s exactly what they were trying to do, and it wasn’t the first time.
Ort jumped aboard the transport, rocking it slightly. His face was flushed, and he was breathing heavily. “There’s no sign of them on the ship. Holly and Bouma think they took an emergency exit.”
“We have to search for them,” Emanuel said. He looked at Diego for a second, ready to argue against any protests. These were kids, for Christ’s sake. They’d saved Sophie and the team before, and Emanuel sure as hell wouldn’t leave them alone on the surface of some God-forsaken planet with a swarm of violent aliens descending on them.
But Diego surprised him. “Absolutely. They didn’t take a Rhino, so they were on foot. They couldn’t have gone far.”
A flurry of footsteps announced the latest arrivals. Holly and Bouma helped Owen and Jamie into the Rhino. The modified electric truck was expansive, but with Sophie’s cryo chamber in the rear cargo hold, and the latest additions, it was quickly becoming cramped.
“Sonya, initiate a hard copy transfer to the Rhino,” Emanuel said.
“Transfer in progress,” Sonya said. “Soon all my systems will be integrated completely with the Rhino.”
“Everyone in?” Diego asked, sliding into the driver’s seat. “We’re going to find those kids. Sonya, can you complete the transfer while we’re on the move?”
“As long as we’re within a 500 km range,” she said. “It should take me no more than an hour.”
“No way we can go 500 km in an hour,” Diego said. “Looks like we’re in the clear. Here we go.”
Diego punched a button on his console, and the vehicle hold’s hatch spiraled open. Dim light flooded into the bay. Winds carried red grit inward, swirling it around the vehicle.
Emanuel settled in beside Holly and the children. “We’re ready to—”
A loud explosion burst somewhere above them. Emanuel grabbed a strap in the Rhino’s ceiling to prevent himself from being thrown forward. The ship rocked as if hit by a tidal wave. A steel beam slammed into the deck behind them, denting it and sending up a shock of metal shards. The children cried and leaned into Holly.
“What the hell was that?” Ort asked.
“The Organics appear to have a new land-based weapon,” Sonya answered him.
An image appeared on the screen, focused on one of the aliens marching amid a blanket of swirling dust. Emanuel’s stomach churned. Nearly three times as large as a spider, the alien looked somewhere between a tank and a scorpion. It moved on thick, armor-plated legs, and a huge tail coiled behind it. At the end of that tail was a glowing orb. But this was clearly not the type that encased humans. Instead, it looked like a hot ball of plasma.
“It’s just going to sling that shit at us, isn’t it?” Ort asked.
“Goddamn Slinger,” Bouma said.
True to their suspicions, the Slinger launched the plasma ball. A few seconds later, a violent blast tore through the Sunspot. Chunks of bulkhead crumbled away as a fresh hole appeared above the Rhino.
The counter Sonya had started didn’t take into consideration long distance weapons, but rather the speed at which the Organics were marching toward the Sunspot. These new monsters were going to tear the ship apart before the swarm even got there.
Diego punched the throttle, and the Rhino jolted forward. They jetted out the crooked hatch, damaged from the attack on the ship. The Rhino’s wheels spun in the air until they landed onto the planet’s surface, then tore into the dirt, kicking up a wide spray behind them. The storm roared in front of them. Two more plasma balls sailed overhead. One smashed into the Sunspot, tearing a massive hole in one of the biomes at the stern of the ship. Metal caved in as if it was paper. The other plasma projectile splashed into the dirt near the Rhino. The super-heated matter was hot enough to melt the dirt and dust into globs of slag that shattered against the Rhino’s side.
Emanuel tried to ignore the worried exclamations around him as the others turned their eyes toward the sky. He searched the horizon, the rocks, the cliff faces, but he didn’t see any sign of the boys. If they were
out here, they wouldn’t survive long, especially with these Slingers now hammering the landscape.
More plasma erupted around them, launching geysers of dirt and rock around the Sunspot. If the ship had stood any chance of flying before, it most certainly didn’t now. Melted slag from the hull flew off when another round hit. Jamie and Owen were wide awake now, screaming and crying in terror despite Holly’s best efforts to comfort them.
“Sonya, any way to make that transfer faster?” Emanuel asked.
“Negative, Doctor,” she replied. “Bandwidth is limited by the Rhino’s data transfer capabilities, which I fear are vastly inferior to the Sunspot’s.”
Great…
If the ship was dismantled before she could complete her transfer, they might be stranded on the planet without a ship or AI support. Their future looked bleak enough as it was, but without her, they would be both blind and deaf.
“Diego, take us around the bow of the ship,” Emanuel said. “Everyone, keep your eyes peeled for footprints or anything leading from that airlock. That should help us find them.”
Diego glanced at the display mounted near the dashboard. The timer there blinked red, indicating it was far past their deadline to leave the vicinity of the Sunspot.
Emanuel searched their route for the kids. Two boys on foot with pilfered EVA suits and weapons. It shouldn’t take that long to find them. But trying to drive a comprehensive perimeter around the ship searching for potential locations wasn’t going to work. They simply didn’t have the time.
Then Emanuel realized he was asking the wrong question. He shouldn’t be wondering where they went. He had no way to properly answer that without first knowing why they left the turret.
The boys had been tasked with keeping an eye out for incoming Organics. Emanuel knew enough about them that he could expect them to take that responsibility seriously. Even back on Earth, Jeff was willing to act like—often did act like—a young warrior. And the boys were no strangers to firearms.
Emanuel’s gaze went back to the turret perched atop the Sunspot. He didn’t know much about being a soldier, but Sonya had warned them that the turret offered only limited sightlines.
Orbs IV_Exodus_A Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction Survival Thriller Page 11