by Gary Dejean
Each member of the squad is feeling let down; the night is a real blow to their operation, an old albeit savvy lady having made fools of them all.
Finally, the Major adds: “Personally, I’m going to check out that freighter.”
They can’t believe his words at first, but when one of them cheers in relief, the entire squad bursts out loud. “Let’s make our own fireworks!” boasts the squad leader, his troops barking in approval as they return inside the dropship to suit back up.
Hanzo looks over the city while the troopers embark the transport. A proud smile escapes him, which he quickly conceals. “Prepare for take-off,” he orders. Angelo locks down the lateral doors, and the dropship flies up into the clouds.
Now that the freighter is at sea, Jake has come out of the van. Sitting next to the surveillance console, David slowly sips through a straw one of the protein shakes Morgan stored as rations, his head still spinning from the realization that his life has been upended despite his best efforts. On the monitor, the city looks tiny, its blinding lights reflected over the sea conferring it the aspect of an exploding star in the night sky.
Jake and Chloe are sitting on crates, jokingly talking about her implant which the young lady dares not turn on. With the weight of the decision to flee lifted by the departure, they tease each other like the children that they are. Jake, whose entire body has been prosthetics for the better part of a year, can hardly remember how it felt to wake up in his artificial shell. “I mean,” he teases, “I don’t even know why you’re waiting.”
“Give her time,” advises Morgan. She still has difficulty believing she’s not making that trip alone, and every second of it is a blessing.
Chloe smiles, thankful of her understanding and a little ashamed of being bullied by a ten-year-old. “I’m just…” she tries to explain, shyly. “It’s a big step for me, OK?”
Jake shrugs. “You’re a chicken!” he asserts, moving his elbows like short wings.
Chloe and Morgan both laugh at his remark. “Ah! Unbelievable!” the young woman exclaims. “You know what? I wish I’d been filming that, so there you go. The chicken roosts.”
Pulling the bandages over her forehead, she palpates her temple in search of the implant’s digital interface. Keeping the power button pressed for a second, Chloe sees her new eye come into focus, its visual quality oddly similar to her natural eyesight. As soon as she’s comfortable, she presses the record button, bringing a red dot in the corner of her field of view. The experience is just like she’s been dreaming of half of her life; she laughs, at herself, at the circumstances, at her overwhelming lack of regrets.
Morgan feels the weirdest pride at seeing her own flesh and blood rejoicing about her body modification.
David, meanwhile, is slouching more and more, hoping he could just disappear and wake up the day before. The security cameras still allowing a distant view of the city, he notices the dark silhouette of the dropship approaching from the East, a black spot on the bright background which at first looks inoffensive, but soon reveals itself to be frighteningly familiar.
“Hem…” David voices, hesitant.
Deep in their conversation Morgan and their respective children do not pay attention. “HEM,” he insists, louder.
Chapter 11
Flying low over the dark sea, the dropship approaches. Inside, Angelo is trying to contact the freighter’s captain who, lost in a virtual reality, doesn’t hear the ringtone coming from his console.
“The ship’s command is not responding, sir,” informs the young overseer.
“Sweep for thermal signatures,” orders the Major.
Angelo launches surveillance drones to circle the freighter. Switching their cameras to infrared, he scans containers on the main deck as well as the control tower. “Well, the ship’s clear,” he says. “There’s someone at the command deck, though.”
Behind him, Hanzo sounds suspicious. “This feels off,” the veteran grumbles. “How far are we from international waters?”
“Thirty minutes.”
The Japanese turns around to address his troops, now packaged once more in their combat suits and looking for a fight. “Morgan Zhu may be using concealment from our equipment,” he begins. “I want that ship anchored down until we’ve run a full check. Bravo team will rendezvous with Alpha as soon as they’re done.”
The lateral doors pull up under the turbines, revealing the cargo deck of the freighter below them. “Let’s get one thing straight,” adds the Major, shouting over the noise of the ocean, “if any of you spot that prototype, I want you to shoot on sight. Target the legs to impede movement. No customary warning, you got that?”
“Sir! Yes, sir!” the squad barks in unison, turning on their assisted rifles.
The Major pulls down the cord fitting behind his neck, connecting his own exoframe to the shared interface. With their shielding units destroyed by Morgan’s malware, the squad drops Alpha team at the bow of the ship, before the dropship moves to the control tower.
In formation, the troopers face hundreds of containers piled up three levels high. Two thin alleys link the bow to the control tower. The three men team engages itself in, opening one by one the units on ground level.
Chloe, Morgan and Jake have now gathered next to David around the surveillance console. The scientist reaches for a soft keyboard, directing a camera to face the dropship now landed on the roof of the control tower. Bravo team exits the transport, jumping down on the metallic staircase leading to the command deck.
“Look!” David points out, his blood running cold. “They have rifles! This has gone way too far, Morgan. We need to surrender.”
The mother sighs in great despair, Jake and Chloe awaiting her reply with anxiety. “I agree,” she admits finally. “They’re relentless.”
“Come on, Mum,” Chloe intervenes. “For real? This is loser talk.”
Morgan rolls over to the life support unit, pulling it on her lap, and boots up the device. “Jake, come over here,” she says.
As he sees her do, the little boy takes refuge behind Chloe, keeping a watchful eye on his father as well. “I recognize this ship,” he says. “I couldn’t hack it earlier.”
Morgan nods. “It’s another one of our contracts,” she shrugs. “They must be using secure encryption.”
Chloe grabs the soft keyboard to zoom in on the ship. The doors left open, she recognizes Angelo sitting at the console; it’s hardly a surprise, still, a resentful sneer escapes her. Quickly, she studies the remote control system used by the Major. “These two must have the cipher, don’t you think?” she asks, rhetorically.
David scoffs. “I can’t believe you’re even taking part in this conversation,” he tells Morgan, behaving like they’re the only adults in the room.
The lady shakes her head off. “There’s no way Jake can get in there,” she asserts, depressed.
Chloe turns to the little boy. “Jake?” she asks, forming in her mind a last stand strategy.
“They’re leaving the doors open,” the child remarks. “That’s just sloppy,” he concludes, his tone excessively confident.
Chloe doesn’t leave David and Morgan a second to interrupt. “Alright,” she declares, “this is the plan: try to get in there before they take off. We’ll use the van to get to the control tower.”
Jake nods. “I’ll make a mess to keep them distracted,” he agrees.
This is too much for David who steps forth. “OK,” the confused father interrupts. “I’m putting my foot down.”
Jake raises a hand, peacefully motioning his father to back off. “Don’t worry Dad,” he says. “I got this.”
David grabs him by the wrist, gripping it so firmly that Jake’s receptors transmit a faint warning to his HUD. “That’s ENOUGH, Jake!” the father snaps. Yet, aware of the strike team’s proximity, he keeps his voice down. “You wanna get us all killed?”
But behind him, Morgan’s going back and forth on the issue. Faced with the child’s terr
or at the sight of the life-support casing, she drops it aside and pushes open another crate of H+ equipment. Inside, hundreds of insect-sized drones lie dormant. Morgan pulls the control device stored in protective foam and turns on the swarm remotely, lighting the miniature robots which quietly hover out of the crate, pouring to the ceiling like fluid in an inverted space.
“You’ll need these,” she tells the boy. “We designed them as peripherals for the Little Blackjack. They’re routers, Jake. Do you understand?”
Giddy with excitement, Jake overrides the device, seizing control of the drones. To his back, the container is facing another, separated only by a foot. Opening the electronic lock, he lets the mechanism pull up the metallic curtain, before sending the drones dispersing outside.
All the while, still holding him tight, David looks at the swarm with growing terror. “You’re staying here, son,” he orders.
“Relax Dad,” Jake replies. “I can send one of these drones inside the ship and do it from here, right?”
Morgan shakes her head off. “I’m afraid you’ll need direct access,” she replies, fully aware of the dropship’s electronic countermeasures.
Jake doesn’t mind. “Well, either way,” he concludes, rotating his wrist three hundred and sixty degrees. The friction forces David to release his grip; he tries to grasp Jake again but the boy swiftly retreats, lifting the tip of his feet and rolling backwards in a surrealist fashion, out of the container.
Stabilizing himself with his elbows between the rows, the boy gets ready to propel himself upwards. He looks at his father once more, his coy demeanor masking a more somber fear. “I’m not putting my brain in that box, Dad,” he insists, final.
And a second later he slides up, vanishing as a theater actor hanging from a wire. Chloe doesn’t waste time; getting inside the van and to the driver seat, she ignites the engine. Atop the third layer of shipping containers, Jake emerges springing out, softly landing in a crawl position. Silent, he moves to the edge like a spider, his limbs unfolding to cushion his movements.
Cameras in his fingertips let him spy down the alleyway. Alpha team is already a third of the way; their exoskeletons ill-suited for searching the inside of the cars, only one of them goes in while the others keep their heads on a swivel.
Up in the command deck, the ship’s captain is holding his controllers like an assault rifle, his feet on the dashboard, immersed in a photo-realistic battlefield. Headphones on, turned to maximum volume and blasting explosive sound effects, the glorified watchman remains deaf to the signal on his console warning of an incoming call.
Bravo team walks in from the outdoor stairwell, their heavy armors filling the confined space. Reyes and Yuwono move to the elevator while Patti closes in on the captain and snatches off his headset. Thunderstruck by that unexpected invasion of his personal space, the man who thought he was alone at sea turns around frantically; his yell turns to a whimper when he discovers the menacing figure standing over him, her enormous rifle held with a single hand.
Patti drops the headset to the ground. “You gotta answer the call, man,” she says, with a hint of disappointment in her voice coming through speakers on her shoulder plates. Leaning forward to pick up the incoming communication, she steps on the headset, crushing the device into tiny fragments under the weight of her heavy armor. “Oops,” she adds, sardonic, before joining her teammates in the elevator.
Angelo’s face has now appeared on the monitor. The ship’s captain, turned pale, is still looking over his shoulder, shocked and awed. Trying to get him to focus, Angelo snaps his fingers repeatedly, talking to the man as some would to a dog.
“Hey, over here, buddy.”
The freighter’s engine emits a loud noise as it cuts off all thrust. The sudden deceleration sends the troopers shaking, drawing a metallic moan from the pressurized hull. Lying flat over the containers, his dark figure concealing his movements, Jake hangs tight. And soon enough, silence falls, leaving only inertia to move the ship forth. The sound of water rippling against the vessel is all that can be heard.
Alpha team is advancing through the alley, methodically searching ground level containers while scanning those above. Only a few meters separate them from Morgan’s camouflaged unit. Under Jake’s command, the swarm of insect drones spreads between the rows, dispatching each of them to a separate unit. They latch onto the magnetic locks keeping the units closed, they latch onto the driverless cars left exposed, and out of sight they infest the entire freighter.
Near the bow of the ship, in one of the first containers searched by the ground team, a car suddenly powers up, its two headlights flashing while the alarm starts to shriek. Alpha team pull up their rifles, hurrying back to check the inside of the car, where there’s nothing to discover.
“I don’t think that’s random, sir,” Bautista suggests in his radio, speaking over the high-pitched sound reverberated all across the ship.
Inside the dropship, the Major silently agrees. “Get the NICA on the line,” he tells Angelo.
Alpha team exit the container when at the other end of the alley, a dozen storage units open, in which the headlights of as many cars light up. “Heads up!” bursts the squad leader. Driving out of their respective compartments in orderly fashion, the vehicles turn for the bow and start accelerating, their width filling the entire alleyway as they rush one after another at an increasing speed.
Meaning to get back inside the container they just searched, the three troopers are forced out when the car comes alive before them, pushing them out of its way. Bautista and Ocampo take refuge at the bow, where the cars rush off the ship like a train derailing from a cliff, but a few meters behind, the Nigerian gets hit in the back.
The ceramic plates of his armor crush the hood of the car below him, the man tipping horizontally. He lands through the windshield, carried away like a bride across a threshold, first in a long line of vehicles to land in the ocean. The mercenary cries as it happens, and hits the water hard. Safety buoys inflate around his neck, pulling him back up to the surface and keeping his head above water. Knocked down, the trooper floats, under a continuous string of cars rushing off of the ship.
At each corner of the main deck, a loading crane unfolds from its travel position and starts rotating randomly. Above the noise of alarms, car engines, screeching metal, the troopers can hardly hear each other. The cranes rotate faster and faster, sending their claws swinging at an oblique angle. Alpha One and Alpha Two stand back to back, on edge.
Using the distraction, Jake silently descends upon them. He lands between the troopers, unleashing a series of jabs to their lower backs, but their ceramic armors easily cushion the blows. As each of them pivots, their rifles converging into a deadly combination, the boy grabs the squad leader’s shoulder and swirls around him, landing his foot in Ocampo’s face as he comes back around. The female trooper tumbles back a single step, Bautista thrown off balance by the monkeying boy who disappears between the rows of containers just as quickly as he appeared.
“Contact!” Alpha team shout in their radio, a little late, while trying to reestablish line of sight.
With chaos erupted over the main deck, Chloe floors the gas pedal and throws the van into a straight turn toward the control tower. In the back, David and Morgan are keeping their heads low. Jake sends a few cars in front of them to serve as cover, when Bravo team shows up on ground level. Cameras set to infrared, they detect the heat signatures inside the moving vehicle, and shine their laser dazzlers at it.
“Stop the car!” shouts the Bravo team leader through his speakerphones.
Chloe’s natural eye is forced shut by the headache-inducing lamps, but her cybernetic optics narrows its aperture; and when she realizes what is happening, the young woman roars with exhilaration. Other cars move in between the van and the troopers. “They ain’t stopping!” cries Patti, locking her rifle on Chloe.
“Open fire!” orders Reyes.
Bravo team lets their automatic rifles speak.
The windshield of the van blows into fragments sprinkling on the passenger seat, and unto David and Morgan lying in the back. Chloe’s face gets scratched as well, though the adrenaline coursing through her veins wouldn’t let her know. Bullets deviated by the driverless cars, she feels their impacts all around her.
When the first cars reach Bravo team they make a turn for the troopers, armor-piercing bullets tearing their structures like delicate origami. Faced with a wave of vehicles careening at high speed, the troopers unload their underbarrel rifles. The explosive bullets ignite fuel reserves, prompting a chain reaction resulting in a fireball. In the turmoil, Bravo One gets thrown out of the ship’s side by the rest of an inbound car, turned into a flaming pile of scrap.
From atop the containers, where he’s controlling the hundreds of remote units, Jake sees the cloud of flames rise along the control tower. As more cars get destroyed or sink in the water, he sends a signal to the insect drones latched onto the locks of the second level. Lifting up their metal curtain, storage units release another wave of vehicles that awkwardly land on the debris of their predecessors, before entering the flow leading them off the ship.
Chloe glimpses the explosion in her rear-view mirror as she makes a hard turn toward the open staircase leading to the command deck. “Holy shit!” she whispers to herself, while Morgan and David hug each other in terror. Up there, the freighter captain too sees the fireball crawl up his windows. White with fear, he slowly gets under his station.
Patti and Yuwono painfully get back up, patches of flames still clinging to the fabric covering their armors. Beyond the mess of burning cars, they spot the van parked at the corner of the control tower. Chloe and David are carrying Morgan by the shoulders and making a run for the stairs. Patti cries in her radio: “They’re on the outside stairwell!”
The Major sees the fireball climb up to the roof and vanish before his eyes. Stepping to the gun racks, he grabs a spare smart-rifle which he loads and turns on, planting his feet at the edge of the open dropship. “Get us in the air,” he orders Angelo.