Noble turned his attention to the other fighters still on the tarmac. Laser fire slammed into their shields. Explosions followed, rocking the tarmac. Wings and burned hulls flew into the air.
In seconds, there wasn’t anything but the smoldering wreckage of alien fighters. A single Sentinel had managed to slither away from the destruction, heading for a dirt trail.
Noble focused the sights on the monster and fired, pulverizing it in a spray of blue that coated the mountainside.
“Hell yes!” he shouted.
Roots let out a cackle, and touched Noble with another warning. He turned to look out the back of the translucent ship, and identified the drones Roots had discovered patrolling the skies.
Noble targeted the smaller craft with the dorsal cannon. One by one, they shattered in a spray of blue mist. Another scan revealed the area was clear of hostiles.
“Take us down,” Noble said. He took in the scene of devastation with grim satisfaction.
But Noble knew this victory would be short-lived. The Organics would send reinforcements. They only had a small window of time to get inside the Biosphere and find Alexia. The AI was the only one that would know where the survivors of his crew were holed up—assuming they were still alive.
Smoke rose away from the tarmac as Roots put them down between bits of flaming debris. Noble touched Roots.
“Stay here, buddy, and keep the engines warm. I’ll be right back.”
Opening the hatch, Noble jumped out of the ship, his naked feet slapping the ground. A small shard of metal cut into his right foot, but he didn’t care. He was finally back on human soil, and standing on solid ground.
A tear fell from his eyes as he plucked the shard from his foot, but it wasn’t from pain—it was from joy. He resisted the urge to get down and kiss the earth. Instead he ran for the blast doors, waving his arms and shouting, “Alexia, it’s me! It’s me, Captain Rick Noble of the Ghost of Atlantis!”
He stood there waving his arms like a mad man, realizing he probably looked like a crazy Neanderthal standing there naked and covered in grime.
But, despite his appearance, the doors creaked open to reveal the inside of a large garage. He went to step inside when laser fire spread to his right. He ducked down as Roots fired into the open space.
Noble only got a glimpse of what it was firing at. The lasers obliterated small disc-like objects and punched head-sized holes in the concrete floor. Looking over his shoulder, Noble frowned at Roots.
The cannons continued moving, scanning for targets.
“Alexia!” Noble shouted. He cautiously took a step into the open space, knowing there could still be Organics insides.
“Captain Rick Noble, I presume,” came a smooth feminine voice.
“That you, Alexia?” he said.
“Yes indeed, Captain. You’re just in time to help me leave Cheyenne Mountain. We have a new mission to complete.”
Noble couldn’t help but smile at the sound of her voice. She was an AI, but damn did it feel good to hear a human voice again, even if it was synthetic.
“Do you know where my crew is?” he asked.
“I do indeed, Captain, but time is of the essence. Come inside and pull my hard drive. I’ll take you to them.”
— 23 —
“Now!” Jeff yelled.
He and David threw EMP grenades from their perch in the rafters. The grenades exploded between the four Sentinels staring Diego and Bouma down. As soon as their shields fell, Jeff and David doused them with a salvo of gunfire. The first Sentinel collapsed amid broken, bloodied limbs, crushing several of the smaller spiders beneath its weight. Hordes of people screamed as the aliens descended on them, climbing over the fallen Sentinel.
Jeff fired at one of the other Sentinels that was getting too close to Sophie and the others. “Bouma! Sophie!”
Both of them looked confused for a moment as they searched the rafters and catwalks. Jeff waved at them.
“Ho-ly shit!” Bouma said. “Jeff! David!”
“Here!” Jeff threw down the two extra rifles he and David had been lugging around since they’d first escaped the Sunspot. “I knew those would be useful.”
As soon as Bouma caught his, he started firing into the mass of aliens. Sophie handed her rifle off to Emanuel. Jeff was happy to see her alive, but he noticed she seemed paler than usual, and wasn’t moving as fast as the others. Diego was now one of the humanoid aliens, but now things at least made sense to Jeff. He’d overheard everything Hoffman had told the others. It had looked so painful and disgusting. He’d hated having to watch it, but what else was he supposed to do?
He and David had bided their time until the right moment.
I think Dad would be pretty proud, Jeff thought. He took out another spider trying to attack one of the helpless humans.
David ended another.
“Good job, bud,” Jeff said.
He’d thought they were only going to be saving Sophie and the others, but now they were helping a bunch more people than he’d ever thought possible.
“You, too,” David said.
“Boys, you got to get down here!” Bouma yelled. “Hurry!”
Jeff threw his rifle over his back. “Come on, bud, you heard him.”
Together, they scrambled down the scaffolding to the ground. The screams of the aliens still filled the air between the scorch of gunfire. A few of the humanoids seemed to have joined the human forces, and were fighting off their former comrades. Spiders reared back, trying to stab at the fleeing humans. Many of the chambers were still filled with people swinging their arms and legs around, trying to free themselves from their prisons.
“Boys, keep moving!” Bouma roared.
“What about them?” David asked, pointing to the people in the integration chambers. “Don’t we need to help them?”
Jeff’s stomach flipped. “I don’t think we can save them.”
A spider charged into the throng of escaping humans. The alien ripped into the first few humans in its path, tearing them into chunks of meat and bone in a red flurry. Jeff fired on the alien and it crumpled, sliding headlong into an integration chamber. The alien was dead, but the damage was already done. People scattered around the broken monster. Their faces showed pure terror. Diego and Bouma were losing control of the crowd.
More Sentinels clambered into the space. They pushed between the integration chambers and the corpses of humans and aliens in pursuit of their prey. Jeff’s heart pounded faster than light speed. The cacophony of the aliens and the exchange of gunfire crashed against his eardrums. His eyes sought to make sense of the rush of colors flashing from the broken integration chambers and the bleeding aliens and dying people. The odor of death and burned flesh stung his nostrils. A voice at the back of his mind screamed in terror, telling him everything was screwed. That he really would be seeing dad soon. They couldn’t make it out of this madness.
But the look on David’s face said otherwise. His younger brother’s expression was set in grim determination, focused on the path before them. Only a few spiders stood between them and the airlock to outdoors. They were cut down in a matter of seconds.
But the real danger wasn’t the aliens. Even Jeff knew that.
While the terraforming efforts had been underway, barely any oxygen was to be found in the thin Martian atmosphere. People began to fight over the few available EVA suits that had been abandoned by the Organics’ human prisoners.
“Come on, people!” Bouma yelled. “Get it together!”
Sophie tried to pull two people off each other. “Stop!”
One of them backhanded her, and she fell into Emanuel’s waiting arms.
Diego bounded toward them and ripped the two people off each other. “We do not have time for our own civil war.” His booming voice seemed to settle them through sheer force of fright. “We will have to make do.” He took the suit and gave it to Owen. After securing another suit for Jamie, Diego pushed his way through the swarm of people. Bouma h
elped Holly and the kids along behind Diego.
Jeff raced to catch up with them, David by his side.
“Before all hell breaks loose out there,” Bouma said, “what’s the plan?”
“Get me to one of those ships, and I’ll get us out of here,” Diego said.
“First ship we see?” Bouma asked.
“First one big enough to fit all these people.”
“No,” Sophie said. “No, that won’t work. We’ve got to make sure people can actually live on the ship. Very few of them can support human life.”
“Then what do we do?” Emanuel asked.
“We have to take one of the zoo ships,” Sophie said.
“Are you sure that’ll work?” Bouma asked.
“I am,” Sophie said. “I’ve been on one. Long story, but you’re going to have to trust me. Do you?”
“I do,” Jeff said.
David straightened, still holding his rifle at the ready. “I do, too.”
“Hey,” Diego said, “Hoffman said those zoo ships could transport people, so I’m with you, Sophie.”
A spider shrieked as it crawled over one of the integration chambers. The people huddled around the airlock screamed and cowered. Diego fired at the alien’s face, decapitating it with pulse rounds.
“We need to move now!” he said. “Tell these people they’ve got to hold their breath for a few seconds. That’s the best we can do!”
“Into the airlock!” Sophie yelled. “Everyone! Now!”
She waved all the surviving people into the airlock, cramming them in. The rest of the crew did what they could to hold off the advance of the Organics. The people clamored, and one frightened man rushed Jeff, nearly knocking him off his feet. David yanked him up. The aliens were drawing closer, and the half-humans that had banded together seemed mostly defeated now. There was very little between Jeff, David, and the encroaching Organics.
If the aliens didn’t kill them all, Jeff wondered if he’d be turned into a half-human, enduring that painful transition and forced to live as a slave to the Organics. He couldn’t imagine being forced into servitude like the spiders, dying on some alien planet just to fulfill their masters’ thirst for water.
Jeff’s breath came and went in shallow gasps. He wanted to throw down his rifle and run, follow the mass of people into the airlock. His whole world turned into a violent rush of sound and color. Dizziness started to take him.
“Jeff, we’re going to make it, right?” David looked up at him. His bottom lip trembled behind his suit’s visor, and his face had drained of color.
All of a sudden, the panic threatening to strangle Jeff’s mind released. “We’re going to make it, bud. We’re going to save these people and get off this planet.”
“We’re ready!” Sophie shouted over the crowd. She was positioned on the far side of the airlock. She had an EVA suit on.
“Here we go, boys!” Bouma said, ushering Jeff and David into the airlock next to Holly and the other children. Diego and Emanuel came last.
The hatch to the airlock slammed shut. Sophie initiated the atmosphere transition procedure. Air hissed out of the airlock. A few people screamed, and others whimpered. Jeff guessed there were nearly thirty people in here besides the crew he’d arrived on Mars with. It looked like they’d found some colonists after all.
Something slammed against the hatch.
The airlock shook, and a hose overhead came loose. It whipped around like an angry cobra trying to strike. The hatch shook again, and the frustrated bellows of a Sentinel echoed through.
More people screamed, pressing toward Sophie and the opposite end of the airlock. Some wore the suits they’d gathered; others looked like they were already struggling to hold their breath. Finally the hatch out to the shipyards started to open. People began pushing themselves through before it had even finished.
“Stick together!” Emanuel yelled, struggling to be heard above the clamour of the crowd.
Jeff saw his attempts were nearly futile as he tried to shepherd these people together. Panic drove people out of the half-opened hatch.
The interior hatch trembled again, denting inward. Jeff raised his rifle, backing up slowly from the hatch. It shook again, and the metal groaned. Rivets and wires broke free, then the door gave way completely. Air rushed through in a violent wind, pushing Jeff and David over each other and against a wall. A Sentinel trounced in, impaling the nearest human with its claws and dragging the body across the deck.
Jeff tried to find the last remnants of his courage as the rest of the aliens entered the airlock, but the shrieks of the invading horde made that nearly impossible.
David looked up at him, hoisting his rifle, ready to fight. The odds were stacked against them in that small place.
All Jeff could do was shake his head and yell, “Run!”
***
Sophie climbed out of the airlock. People started scattering in different directions. Some grasped at their throats, unprepared for the thin atmosphere. Desperation took them, despite Sophie’s pleas for them to follow her.
“Where to?” Emanuel asked, striding beside her as they moved through the shipyard. They passed under a black ship nearly the size of the Sunspot. Most of the people still followed them. A blaze of pulsefire ripped from Diego, Bouma, and the boys at rear of the group. A Sentinel was now leading the spiders out of the airlock and between the ships.
She searched her mind for the zoo ship she’d seen in her visions. Ahead of them was a beetle-shaped ship that towered above the rest. Gun barrels poked up along its side around massive, bulbous enclosures.
“That’s it,” she said, pointing. “We’ve got to get everyone in there.”
The entrance to the zoo ship was no more than a couple hundred meters away, but it may as well have been another fifty kilometers away, with the crowd of human refugees in disarray.
A shock of pain tore through Sophie’s head. She doubled over and started panting. People streamed around her, heading in the direction she’d pointed.
“Sophie!” Emanuel called. He pushed against the tide of racing people to get to her.
Her vision flashed red, and a sudden urge to strangle Emanuel took hold. A voice in her mind told her to stay where she was, to tell all those people to surrender. That their plight was futile, their minds corrupted by traitors.
She eyed the rifle in Emanuel’s hands hungrily. With it, she could end this crazy attempt to escape. All those humans running from their future, running from the inevitable. They were afraid of becoming great. Of becoming part of the Organics.
They didn’t deserve to be part of this new world.
“Are you okay?” Emanuel asked. “What happened?”
He placed a hand on her shoulder. Even through their suits, his touch scorched through her like a pulse round to her heart.
A sudden violent fury raged in her head, and her fingers twitched, yearning to strangle him and take his rifle.
The nanobots.
No, Sophie thought. You will not win. You will not win.
She doubled over in pain again, and Emanuel held her tight. The OCT dropped from her pack. She didn’t bother picking it up. She already knew, if she used it later, what she would see.
“You’ve… got… to go,” she said, jaw clenched. She worked past the agony, her teeth grinding together. “Get Diego to open the ship to these people.”
“No, Sophie,” Emanuel said. “You’re coming too.”
He threw an arm under her shoulder and lifted her. Hot pain erupted from her like a solar flare. The nanobots wanted her to turn around. Every step closer to the zoo ship made them attack her at a cellular level. They had been allowed to rejuvenate, and they would destroy her if she left Hoffman’s mad laboratory of half-human aliens for good.
But she would never go back there. No matter how awful the pain became or how loud the voices in her head screamed. A darkness crept into her consciousness, threatening to make her pass out. She knew that as soon as she did, t
his would all be over.
“These people need you,” Sophie said. She was vaguely aware of the bodies moving past her and the faraway-sounding chorus of aliens chasing them. It took every bit of willpower she had left to focus on Emanuel. “You can save them. Take them somewhere to start over.”
“No way in hell am I doing that without you, Sophie. We’re not going through this again.”
Emanuel continued pushing forward, supporting her every step of the way. Her strength was sapped. Emanuel was risking his life by staying back here with her. Diego and Bouma were catching up to them. Holly was rushing ahead with the children, while Jeff and David provided cover fire.
“Diego,” Sophie managed, her voice now coming out ragged, “You’ve got to get everyone into that ship. You’re the only one that can get this thing started.”
The Hybrid nodded at her. “Consider it done, Doctor.”
He bounded ahead, surging past the crowd of people and toward the hatch into the zoo ship. A slight wave of relief washed through Sophie when she saw him tap on the hatch controls and it actually opened. People flooded in.
“We’re actually doing it, Sophie!” Emanuel said. “We’re getting off this rock, and we’re taking these people with us.”
Bouma limped along beside them. Somewhere between the initial rebellion and now, he had evidently twisted his ankle. Still he fired back at the aliens, covering the last of the humans rushing toward the zoo ship.
“We’re almost there,” Bouma said. Sophie watched a small smile cross his face briefly when Holly and the children loaded into the ship. “Just a little farther.”
A sudden blast of plasma exploded to their right. Emanuel and Sophie were thrown off their feet. Clods of dirt and rock pelted Sophie’s suit. From across the shipyard, a few Slingers were bombarding them with plasma bombs, the bombs slamming around them indiscriminately. Shrapnel cut through the air and ricocheted off other ships.
“They must know what we’re trying to do,” Emanuel said. “They’re desperate to stop us.”
The last of the escaped humans that were not part of their crew made it aboard the zoo ship. Plasma rounds exploded around the shipyard, geysers of debris erupting everywhere the rounds hit. Despite the blasts, the other Sentinels and spiders still coursed over the landscape.
Orbs IV_Exodus_A Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction Survival Thriller Page 30