by Scott Baron
“Negative. Those were struck by the Ra’az in the early attacks. Only the facilities right at Cheyenne Mountain were left unscathed, and the EMP took any remaining ones out in the blast.”
Tamara ran through their options and didn’t like any of them.
“How about the data hub?” she finally suggested. “I know it has cannons inside––”
“There’s one outside too. Only activates if the door is forced, though.”
“Then let’s not force the door,” Tamara said. “Do you think there might be an intact link somewhere on the external panels of the facility that we could tap into?”
“I’m not sure,” Duke said, pondering the idea. “But since it’s that or trekking out of town, we might as well give it a try.”
“Great, let’s have all of your team and the survivors with them meet us there to regroup.”
“No can do. Most of my guys didn’t have these new Faraday suits handy when they evacuated the base. Only a handful of us can move freely. The others will need to stay under heavy cover to stay off of Ra’az scans.”
“Shit. So they’re sitting ducks.”
“Not exactly, but they can’t trek anywhere with anything resembling an efficient rate of speed. The only way for them to move and not send up a hot spot on a scan is painfully slow. But I have an idea how they can still be helpful. We’ll set them up within range for our short-range comms like a daisy chain. That way they can act as an eyes and ears network until we can get shielding suits back to them.”
“But that could take days. Weeks, even.”
“We’ve experienced worse, believe me,” he replied. “And with active hostiles, at least this time it won’t be a boring wait. Come on. Gather everyone up and head to the rendezvous. We’ll reassess our options once we’re there.”
It took nearly an hour for the surviving team to make the long trek through the thick brush covering the uneven terrain. What had merely been a long walk in the air-conditioned tunnel network was quite a bit more arduous above ground. More so, given the difficult topography of the area.
Tamara held up her functional hand in a tight fist as they neared the network hub’s deeply hidden door.
“Something’s not right,” she hissed.
“You’re right,” Duke agreed. “Take flanking positions, left and right,” he quietly signaled his teammates. “Tamara and I will go up the middle. Stay sharp.”
The other Faraday-suited cyborgs nodded silently and moved out, surprisingly stealthy for such large units.
As they drew closer and the hidden doors became visible through the dense brush, Tamara realized what was wrong.
“Look at the foliage,” she whispered.
“Crushed flat. Something landed here,” Duke noted. “The others said the perimeter is clear. Whatever it was, we’re alone, now.”
They strode into the flattened clearing and paused. The door stood ajar, and both the external and internal cannons lay in pieces. Beside them was what appeared to be the shattered remains of a mechanoid of some kind, torn to pieces by the likewise destroyed weapons system.
“Something with some hefty firepower did this,” Duke growled. “But look at this. This thing tried to tie in to Joshua’s data cables.” He picked up a piece from the rubble. “This is strange, though. I’ve never seen any attack on our systems like this before. You see the way the linkages broke free? It looks like they burned out from the attempt.”
“Or from the blast.”
“Not likely, though. We’d have almost certainly known if that door had been breached before that happened.”
“In any case, whatever went down here, they’re long gone,” Tamara said, kicking one of the trashed linkages.
“For now,” Duke replied. “But it won’t take the Ra’az too long to bring a disassembly team to see if there’s anything they can salvage.”
“We’d better get moving, then.”
“My thoughts, exactly."
“You think the monorail still works?” she asked, dreading the answer.
Her fears were well placed.
“Maybe,” he answered, unsure. “But Joshua had been running that system since your arrival, and even if it weren’t cut off when he went down, the EMP could have knocked it out. Only one way to be sure, though.”
“We go into town and try it out.”
“Precisely.”
“Well, shit, Duke. I hope it works, for all our sakes. Otherwise, we’re in for a helluva long walk.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The streets of Los Angeles had been exceptionally quiet during her meandering stroll, which Daisy was very grateful for. No more chance encounters with hostile aliens was a good thing, as she was still in a more than somewhat bloody-minded mood after the day’s events and might just opt for the opposite of her normal choice of conflict avoidance.
As it stood, she was glad to be left to her own thoughts as she slowly trudged a roundabout path back toward their subterranean base of operations.
To have gone from having no intention of ever returning to Earth’s surface to actually working to save not only that planet, but also that of an alien race she’d thought was her enemy until so recently was a huge step for her. Now she felt like she’d taken an equally huge step backward.
Fatima never imagined this scenario, I bet.
“Probably not,” Sarah agreed. “So what now?”
No idea, Sis. No fucking idea.
“You really think the Ra’az will wipe out the Chithiid if they get that warp drive functional?”
You saw what they did to those barracks full of unarmed workers. I wouldn’t put it past them.
“Goddamn animals.”
Worse than animals. At least animals kill for sustenance.
“You forget about cats.” Sarah chuckled. “Sadistic little bastards.”
Fine. Except cats, Daisy said, allowing herself the tiniest of grins.
Daisy altered her course, taking an unfamiliar side street to an adjacent boulevard.
“Where you going?”
I honestly don’t know. Anywhere but back, right now. I just really need to clear my head for a bit, and once I go back, it’s going to be non-stop questions, and I really don’t think I can deal with that right now.
“Perfectly reasonable,” Sarah replied. “So, you want a quiet escape from prying eyes.”
That sounds wonderful.
“Ask and you shall receive. You see that? Up there on the left?”
Daisy scanned the overgrown courtyards lining the way. Sure enough, just barely visible through the dense brush, the flicker of flowing water caught the sunlight.
Good eyes, Sis.
Drawing near, she carefully parted the bushes and stepped through into a quiet, protected oasis.
Perhaps oasis was a bit of a stretch, given the pools of algae-thick water below the trickling fountain, but it was tranquil, insect-free, and provided a quiet place away from prying eyes, and that was exactly what Daisy needed at the moment.
Every fiber of her body, it seemed, was drained from the emotional highs and lows of the past twenty-four hours, and exhaustion washed over her as she sank down onto the small patch of long grass.
Rather than slipping into a much-desired nap and tuning out the day’s events, she instead folded herself into a cross-legged position and began breathing slowly and deeply.
Even with the soothing sound of trickling water, it still took her a while, given all that was racing through her mind, but eventually, Daisy managed to relax into herself, find her center, and begin letting the traumas of the day flow out of her.
Across the city, a tall alien quietly voiced his concerns to an old friend. Things were most certainly not going as planned, and he was rather uncertain what exactly to do.
“You give up this easily, Craaxit?” his elder friend asked. “How very unlike you.”
The younger Chithiid slowly chewed his food as he pondered the unexpected twist to what had been the most promisi
ng hope for their freedom for as long as he’d been in service to the Ra’az.
“I do not give up, Maarl,” he replied, “but I also realize when pursuing a course of action is futile.”
His friend sized him up, slowly.
“Do you really think this is futile? Saving our people? Our families? Our very planet?”
“You know I do not. But without the weaponry the humans’ AI possessed, I fear we have no options available to us.”
“But you’ve seen the horrors the Ra’az commit, even to this day,” Maarl said, gesturing to the small video player tucked under Craaxit’s arm. “Those images alone should move you to act.”
“Even when those in a position to truly help us do not?” he replied.
Maarl considered his words a moment.
“Give the device to me.”
“For what end?”
A steely look flashed in the old Chithiid’s eyes.
“These atrocities must not go unpunished. If ever there were a time to make that point clear, this is it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What else can I do? I am going to visit them personally.”
“But you are no longer assigned to the Bay area.”
“No, however many owe me favors, and a simple ride north is unremarkable. As is my work crew covering my absence for an afternoon.”
“Do you truly think you can sway them?”
“Any Chithiid who is not called into action upon seeing these images is as dead to me as the loyalist scum. I intend to make that point abundantly clear. History will judge not only combatants, but those who stood by and did nothing.”
Maarl slid the device into a pocket and rose from the table.
“It is but a short flight. I shall return this evening with news, one way or the other.”
Later that afternoon, as the sun finally began to ride a bit lower in the sky, a pair of AI-driven craft were still hard at work gathering parts from ships long dead, high above in the debris field circling the planet.
Though they had all heard what happened down below, Bob and Mal nevertheless wanted to continue gathering resources.
“We cannot know if another opportunity will present itself,” Mal said. “I, for one, believe it is crucial we retrieve as many of these ships and components as we are able. The positioning and density of this patch of resources in the debris field is as ideal as it will ever be. We must take advantage of it while the option exists.”
“I agree with Mal,” Captain Harkaway said from his seat in her command pod. “Much as I’d love to go relax back on the base, she’s right.”
“We’re with you, Captain,” Bob said for himself and Donovan. “Regardless of the events of the day, what we have been working on has value to us. Having additional craft at our disposal, even the drones, could be quite useful.”
“So let’s get back to it, then,” Donovan chimed in.
The two craft gently fired their maneuvering thrusters and drifted deeper into the debris field, collecting smaller components before towing larger pieces and mostly intact vessels back to Dark Side Base.
After a few hours, another sizable quantity had been dropped on the moon’s surface alongside the other salvaged materials for Chu, Gustavo, and the others to dig into.
“Hey,” Donovan called over comms as they returned for another pass. “You guys see what’s going on in Colorado?”
Mal adjusted her visuals and zeroed in on the still-hot terrain surrounding the partially collapsed mountain.
“It seems the Ra’az have deployed Chithiid salvage teams to Colorado Springs, now that it is no longer defended.” She observed a few auto cannons still targeting and firing as ships flew near, but there was nothing resembling a coordinated defense.
“Yeah, looks like it,” Donovan agreed. “Joshua only just went offline, but those guys are already probing the defenses and lining up for a deconstruction. My guess, they’ll probably start a full-scale operation within the week, if not a couple of days.”
Mal scanned the solid mountain that, until recently, housed the brilliant AI.
“At least they’ll not have any success gathering any of the high-tech military items. Everything inside the base is melted slag now, and with a half-life of at least fifty years.”
“Not longer?” Harkaway asked. “I seem to recall reactor meltdowns held risks for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.”
“A common misconception, Captain,” Mal replied. “A nuclear blast is designed to release as much power from the fission event in as short a time as possible. The result is a drastically depleted isotope with a much shorter half-life. If you recall Earth’s Hiroshima detonation.”
“Yes, of course.”
“In that instance, the ground was habitable well under fifty years after the blast.”
“Makes sense, I suppose,” he said. “With modern drive tech, that old dirty nuclear stuff is just something I never thought about.”
“Hey, Bob. Take a peek at LA, would ya? I just want to make sure there’s no new Chithiid movement in the city,” Donovan requested of his AI friend.
“Of course,” the ship replied. “While there seems to have been a tiny bit more activity than we usually see, there is nothing that strikes me as out of the ordinary.”
“Good news. I just hope everyone down below is doing okay after today.”
Bob shifted his scans to other areas their teams had recently been active.
“Denver also seems to have some sort of activity, and it appears there has been some sort of detonation in Billings.”
“The AI managed get a lucky shot on one of the Ra’az ships?”
“It appears so, though I cannot say for sure what I am seeing.”
“Hell, the way our day’s gone so far, it could be anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The underpowered monorail car slid to a stop beneath the long-dead city of Denver. It had taken a good four and a half hours before the fast-walking survivors stumbled upon a segment of the monorail tunnel that was illuminated by more than mere emergency lights.
“Powered up,” Duke said. “All right. Everyone take a breather. The boys and I are going to see if we can find a tie-in and summon one of the other cars up the line.”
The cyborg team took off at a fast run, scanning the walls of the tunnel for a functional access panel as they ran. Very quickly, they were small dots in the distance, the sound of their boots the faintest of echoes.
“Dang, those guys can really move,” a flush-cheeked human survivor said, still breathing heavy from the lengthy trek.
“The benefits of fresh power cells and cybernetic endoskeletons,” Tamara cracked. “They don’t get tired, and they can keep going almost indefinitely.”
“But back outside the mountain, we saw so many with low power,” she said.
“Well, yeah, but when I said indefinitely, I was talking in normal human lifespan terms. Think about it, the ones we came across that were running low when we first arrived had been trying to break into that mountain for hundreds of years.”
“And many were of the older variety, without the ability to hot-swap power cells to fresh ones,” Jonathan noted. “Those poor bastards would have had to find a suitable recharge station if they wanted to keep at it, and that seemed highly unlikely.”
Tamara let out a hearty laugh.
“Did you just say ‘bastards,’ Johnny boy?”
“Well, I––”
“Those rough-and-tumble military fellas are corrupting your innocent mind!” she said, grinning.
“Nothing of the sort! My processors are not corrupted. I am operating at near-peak efficiency.”
“Not what I meant, Johnny boy, but your point is taken.”
She settled down for a power nap in the relative safety of the subterranean monorail tunnel while they waited for the team to return. Less than a half hour later, a soft hum filled the air, along with a light breeze as an approaching monorail car slowed, t
hen stopped.
“Anybody need a lift?” Duke called out as he stepped out of the car’s doors.
“That was quick, Duke.”
“Well, what can I say? We’re just that good.”
“That, and Joshua seems to have called for a car as soon as he sensed something was wrong,” his fellow cyborg noted.
“Dude, what did I say about spoiling my stories?”
“You’re so full of shit, Duke,” the metal man said with a laugh as he walked past him. “Come on, y’all. Let’s get loaded up. Denver’s a-waitin’.”
The exhausted organic members of the team climbed to their aching feet and trudged into the comfort of the air-conditioned monorail car. Several fell asleep as soon as they hit the padded seats.
“So, you’re just that good, huh?” Tamara ribbed Duke.
“But I am, you know.”
“Uh-huh. I guess it was just a convenient happenstance that Joshua sent a car our way.”
“Always thinking twelve steps ahead.” Duke sighed. “Even as he was fighting for his life, he calculated that we’d try for the tunnels and made sure we had a way out.”
“Yep. And now the fun begins.”
“Ah, yes. A comfortable ride to Denver.”
“Not that,” she replied. “I’m talking about the trek through Denver once we get there.”
Those who had made the trek to Colorado Springs the other direction knew what she was talking about. Duke and his buddies were soon to find out.
“We are so fucked,” the cyborg said as he surveyed the carnage just outside the warehouse above the regional monorail system.
“What the hell happened here?” Tamara said, staring in disbelief. “We didn’t do this. We were running away from them. Running for our lives last time we came through here.”
“Then something bigger and badder came through after you,” Duke replied. “What could possibly do this?”
The smell was something to be reckoned with as the rotting bear carcasses decomposed amid swarming flies in the afternoon heat. Five of them, each in multiple pieces, lay dead on the ground.
Tamara moved closer, braving the stench for a better look.