by Scott Baron
He turned it on and depressed the broadcast key.
“Test. Test. Is this functional? Are you picking this up?”
“Yes, sir. The signal anomaly matches. That is indeed what we detected.”
The leader roughly pulled Daisy to her feet, studying her closely, while holding her in a firm grip. Unimpressed, he shoved her into an empty chair.
“Four pulse rifles, Daze. One is still slung.”
I know.
“You can take them.”
Not yet.
“But, Daisy––”
Not yet!
“This is very unusual. The only way she could possess this is if she somehow procured it from one of our people.” Curiosity flashed across the loyalist’s face. “What have you found in her belongings?”
“Food of some sort, and what appears to be a liquid replenishment packet. There is also a broken sound-projecting device,” the troop said, holding up her battered music player.
“All worthless,” their leader huffed. “Look at her wrist. She is wearing one of our work gauntlets.”
“Filthy creature must have scavenged it from the dead,” the nearest Chithiid spat in disgust. “Allow me to dispose of her.”
Daisy continued to breathe slowly, forcing calmness to flow through her as she casually began peeling her gloves off, one finger at a time.
The loyalist leader watched her calm demeanor with fascination.
“No. I do not think we will eliminate this one just yet. There is something unusual about her. An intelligence behind her eyes.”
Daisy’s gloves fell to the floor.
“Almost as if she understood what we were––”
“Oh, I do understand,” she said icily, rising to her feet, positioning her body just right.
“One behind, three on the left, and two in front.”
Thanks.
“Sir, she speaks our language!”
“Indeed,” their leader replied. Unlike the others, he did not seem nearly as surprised.
“Some of us have thought there may be a human involved in the recent disruptive activity in the area, given the unusual evidence. Now that suspicion has been confirmed. Tell me, woman, how did you come to speak our tongue?”
“I listened,” she hissed, venom in her voice.
“Your confidence is impressive, if not misplaced,” he replied. “You appear to fail to notice you are surrounded and unarmed.”
Daisy casually drew her sword from the scabbard on her back. Its bloodlust coursed through her hands, almost singing out its vicious intentions.
The large alien just grinned.
“A simple hand weapon against all six of us? Ridiculous creature. You fail to perceive your jeopardy.”
“No,” Daisy replied coolly. “It is you who are mistaken.” A scary smile spread across her face. “There’s an old quote that I believe applies here quite well.”
“And what would that be?”
Daisy flashed back to her movie nights with Vince.
“What you don’t realize is I’m not locked in here with you,” she said, her smile growing as her hands tightened on the blade’s grip. “You’re locked in here with––”
The kitchen doors burst open, Craaxit’s weapons blasting out deadly pulse fire as he charged into the room.
Daisy dove to the side, narrowly avoiding the shots fired at where she’d just been standing.
In a flurry of motion, the loyalists tried to outflank her, while avoiding their attacker’s pulse blasts. Craaxit, however, was having none of that.
Diving over the counter Daisy had taken cover behind, he grabbed her with two of his arms, firing his pair of rifles with the other two as he physically carried her from the building at a run.
Weapons fire peppered the doorway behind them as they rolled clear and into the open street.
Craaxit spun and took up a kneeling position behind a wrecked vehicle in the road and lay down suppressing fire, keeping the loyalists trapped within the building, at least for the moment.
“Run, Daisy! I will hold them off!”
Daisy got to her feet and brushed herself off.
“Dammit, Craaxit, I had it under control!”
“If you consider that under––”
“And I didn’t even get to finish my badass line! Do you know how rare it is to get an opportunity to use something like that?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small device.
“Again, my apologies,” he retorted as he fired another volley of shots. “Next time I shall let them torture you before rendering my assistance.”
With no warning, a massive blast erupted from within the building, blowing the doors clean off their hinges.
Craaxit turned slowly.
Daisy was standing calmly in the street, her sword in one hand, the small remote detonator in the other.
“They really thought I’d take a music player into combat?” she said with a laugh. “Idiots.” Her face then darkened as she walked back into the building.
The scene was utter carnage, body parts strewn about from the force of the blast.
“I’m sorry,” she said to her sentient sword, driving it into the torso of what was left of a Chithiid. “I know you wanted to play. But at least you can feast.”
The sword, though denied a glorious battle, nevertheless warmed with joy as it absorbed nutrient-rich blood.
Craaxit watched, both horrified and amazed.
When the blade had its fill, Daisy slid it back into its scabbard.
“We need to get out of here and find somewhere safe to talk. Those were all loyalists, and if they were tracking our comms units, there may be more of them coming.”
“I had feared our devices had outlived their usefulness. Here is a new one. A different model, and different frequency. It will be good for two uses, no more.”
Daisy pocketed the device and turned on her heel.
Craaxit tossed his old comms unit to the ground, stomped it to pieces, then followed her as she ran through the empty streets. A dozen blocks away, they finally stepped into the safety of a thick-walled building and found their way to an inner room.
It had been an impressive escape, but when the tall alien looked at her dejected face, he realized something was terribly wrong.
“What is it? What happened?”
“I’m sorry, Craaxit. The mission is off.”
The Chithiid began pacing with nervous energy.
“No, it cannot be. I have put plans in motion. To call them back now would be disastrous.”
“You have to,” Daisy said apologetically. “We lost the AI. We lost Joshua.”
A strange look flashed across his face.
“The Colorado facility?”
“Yes.”
“Then this would explain the activity. The Ra’az have been extremely agitated. Something got them worried. Something big. Many high-power military resources have been diverted from San Francisco and other high-priority cities to investigate. They sent the most powerful units they possess, expecting a fight.”
“They won’t find one. The entire site was nuked.”
Craaxit gasped.
“How did the Ra’az discover our plan?”
“It wasn’t the Ra’az. It was a human’s doing. One stupid human brought the whole thing tumbling down. He infected him, get it? Joshua was a military mind above all else, and in control of all the missile systems on the continent. When he realized what was happening, rather than allow himself to become an unwilling weapon against humanity, he detonated his self-destruct device––a one megaton warhead buried in the heart of the mountain.”
Even the Chithiid’s normally stoic expression took on a look of horror.
“So the missiles?” he asked, knowing the answer already.
“Deactivated and inaccessible,” she replied. “There’s simply no way now. Even if we changed plans and used the breaching charges to disrupt the power feeds to the Ra’az communications centers, their facilities wo
uld just switch to backup generators and signal the fleet. It might take weeks, or even years for them to get the message and come back, but even if the warp ships didn’t launch, the damage would be done.”
“But we know the Ra’az are only days away from a functioning warp drive. Even if the transmission is never sent, the likelihood of my people’s obsolescence grows exponentially once they possess the ability to travel to and from their homeworld in an instant. Despite the risks, we should pursue our goal.”
Daisy slowly pushed up to her feet and gave a sad little smile. “I know, Craaxit, but we simply don’t have the resources to do anything about it. I’m so sorry, but I don’t think we can even save our own planet, let alone yours.”
Daisy pulled a small video player from her hip pocket. Miraculously, it had survived the fight unscathed.
“These were sent by our team in Sydney,” she said, handing him the device. “The Ra’az did this before you and I had even met. They did it before there was any hint of a threat. This kind of evil? I don’t know what we can do against them now. Life means nothing to them, if they kill so many so easily. And for what?”
Craaxit’s jaw twitched as he looked at the images of the dead Chithiid.
“May I keep this?” he asked.
“Of course,” Daisy replied. “I’m sorry, Craaxit,” she said as she turned for the door. “Have your people stand down. There’s no need for any more lives to be lost for a hopeless cause.”
Craaxit said nothing further as he watched his broken friend walk away, aimlessly wandering as she processed the day’s tragedy.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tamara brushed the dust from herself as she sat atop a stalled-out vehicle, its engine rudely cut off by the EMP burst that had escaped from beneath Cheyenne Mountain, a result of Joshua’s suicidal nuclear detonation.
There had been no dirt or dust exploding forth from the mouth of the mountain. Joshua had seen to it that all doors were tightly sealed before triggering the deeply buried device. Nevertheless, the EM pulse traveled up through the solid ground, fanning out for miles.
All of the vehicles were immediately knocked out of commission, as were their portable communications devices and the cyborg assistants that had traveled with from Los Angeles. Only the heavily shielded cybernetic troops from Joshua’s base had been able to withstand the pulse, but even they weren’t totally immune to its effects.
“Th-th-th-thirteen of m-my squad made it clear. Th-three were n-not able to escape in t-t-time,” Duke managed to say as his twitching systems recalibrated. “It appears th-that two of your h-humans were also s-s-sealed in before the blast. I’m afraid they w-were vaporized.”
The heavy-duty internal redundancies that kept him active allowed Duke and his brethren to stay functional in such circumstances, shifting power to maintain their crucial systems, much like a human body shunts blood from extremities to internal organs in times of shock.
“How do you know that?” Tamara asked as she checked Jonathan’s inert body, waiting for him to reboot. "All of the comms systems are down, as well as the relays from within NORAD.”
Duke tapped a small external speaker on his upper chest, which emitted a burst of static.
“Spec ops b-b-backup comms,” he said.
“Um, that’s static," Tamara said.
He flashed what could best be described as a pained smile.
“It’s n-not,” he replied. “B-but that’s what people are s-supposed to think.”
The static sound shifted as he slowed the signal. Tamara realized there was something to the garbled hiss. Something more than just white noise.
“Hang on, is that––?”
He slowed the signal even further, the sound clearing into a rapid series of slow and long tones, only audible in the clear when slowed down thousands of percent.
“It is! That’s Morse Code!”
“Exactly.”
“Holy shit, that’s clever.”
“And was top secret until j-just now,” he said quietly, looking over the shocked survivors sitting not too far from them. “So k-keep it to y-yourself, if you will.”
“But even sped up like that for your processors, don’t the Ra’az still pick it up?”
“It’s only a short-range signal. Anyth-th-thing stronger w-would draw attention.”
“So we have contact with all the teams. At least we have that.”
A soft whoosh caught her attention in the distance. Tamara spun and just caught a brief glimpse of a vessel flashing out of sight from where it had landed near what she was pretty sure was the external entry to the heavily guarded data hub whose cannons she had barely escaped not long ago.
“Looks like the Ra’az are already probing the area. They must realize the defenses are down,” she said.
“N-not all of them, though,” Duke replied. “Those auto cannons are still live.”
“Hopefully it’s enough to keep them from accessing the tunnels. We know firsthand how tough those things are. I’m just surprised they came so fast.”
“I’m not. This has been a very high-value t-target pretty much since they f-first invaded. It only makes sense they’d swoop in the second they could.”
“Shit. Fingers crossed those cannons are up to the task.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “The facilities beneath th-the mountain are all melted slag n-n-now, anyway.”
Jonathan suddenly snapped into consciousness as his systems rebooted, lurching into motion, his limbs moving in a disjointed manner.
“I––We––Shit!”
He fell silent, his twitching slowing as his systems came into alignment.
“Oh my. P-pardon my language.”
Tamara and Duke burst into much-needed laughter.
“Glad you’re okay, Jonathan,” she said.
“I appear to have had my s-s-systems sent into a forced reboot. My last recorded incident was being t-told to run. We arrived outside the large exterior doors, and they had just shut behind us when something shut me off.”
“That was an EMP,” Tamara informed him.
“I’m sorry, I do not know what that is.”
“An electromagnetic pulse,” Duke chimed in. “Joshua detonated his m-m-megaton nuke and self-destructed. When that happens, the blast emits a p-pulse.”
“He killed himself?” Jonathan said in horror. “But why would he do that? It g-goes against everything we believe for an AI to do such a thing.”
“Normally, yes,” the soldier replied, grimly. “But this wasn’t for no reason.”
Tamara glanced over the gathering humans and recovering cyborgs. It was going to be up to her to brief them. Once she knew what was happening, that is.
“What did happen, Duke?”
“Stand by. I need to confirm a few things.”
He fell silent a moment as he and his squad covertly communicated.
“Okay, I have confirmation. It seems Jim was able to send a burst transmission before he was taken out.”
“Wait, taken out inside the base?”
“Yes. His last message stated that a crazy, scruffy human had apparently snuck a virus-carrying portable data chip into the facility. He came across him loading it directly into Joshua’s systems. When he tried to confront him, the man––who was apparently also carrying an explosive device strapped to his chest––blew them both up.”
Tamara was shocked.
“But the humans are all from Cal’s people. There’s no way that––”
She remembered the scruffy man from the battle. Moses, he said his name was. He did seem a bit skinny and rough around the edges, but she figured the battle had shaken him up, was all. Apparently not.
“Alma,” she said.
“What?”
“One of Alma’s people, I’m willing to bet. Moses. He must have infiltrated us all the way back in Los Angeles.”
“And no one noticed?” Jonathan asked.
“They were all new faces to us,” she replie
d. “Easy enough for one hostile to sneak in among the masses of unfamiliars.”
“Why didn’t the other humans say anything?” Duke asked. “That’s piss-poor op-sec.”
“They had only just met us. We were the first outsiders they’d ever seen. For all we know, they might have thought he was part of our team.”
“You know what this means.”
“Yeah. There could be more of them.”
Duke fell silent as he communicated with his comrades.
“Okay, we have decided on a course of action,” he said, turning to scan the faces of the human survivors among his group.
“What course of action?” Tamara asked.
“Strip search. All of them,” he replied coldly.
“Wait, what? We can’t force these people to––”
“Damn right we can,” he cut her off. “And we must. If you are correct, then they should be easy to spot based on their morphology. Cal’s people are well-fed and well taken care of, but you said Alma’s were rather malnourished. Should be easy to spot. Other things can be covered up and disguised, but not their own bodies.”
“I’m normally all for roughing people up, but––”
“It beats the alternative, Tamara.”
“What alternative would that be?”
“Locking them up. All of them. If we can’t trust one, we can’t trust any.”
Grudgingly, Tamara realized he was right.
“Okay. But I’ll handle the women.”
“It’s all the same to me. I’m a cyborg, gender isn’t a big deal to my kind. Not usually, anyway”
The teams each went through the motions and checked every human survivor in their midst.
“Everyone has reported back in,” Duke informed his group. “No other infiltrators.”
“At least that’s one bit of good news, but we’ve got another, bigger problem now.”
“Can I be of assistance?” Jonathan offered.
“It’s not so simple, Johnny boy. We need to find some way to let Cal and the others know what happened. We need to warn them.”
“All the comms systems are fried in the region. We’re going to have to get outside of Colorado Springs.”
“The military base or airfield?”