by M. R. Forbes
What he assumed to be the cockpit was intact, as was the fuselage leading back to the reactor. The ship was angled and sleek like an arrowhead, the glass of the cockpit small and right against the frame. There was no seat to speak of, but rather an imprint in a foam-like material that suggested the shape of the thing that had piloted it. It matched the general form of the figure from the sphere fairly closely, though he could imagine a smaller-framed human fitting into the same impression.
Wires ran from the rear of the craft, out through holes drilled into the material and leading up into the ceiling. There were terminals and computers set up near the back of the ship too, their fans creating most of the noise in the chamber.
Where had Tinker found this? How had he found it? He couldn’t even begin to fathom all of the implications of an alien starship’s existence. Did the USSF know about it? What else about the history of the trife war had been buried.
Or forgotten.
Hayden broke out of his shocked stasis, moving cautiously toward the starship. He leaned over the cockpit, looking in through the glass. The systems were active and alive, screens showing what he assumed was the alien’s language. A simple bar on a screen to the right suggested that whatever it was monitoring required only around ten percent of its capacity. He thought it was probably monitoring a nuclear reactor or perhaps even an anti-matter component.
He circled to the rear of the craft, checking the wires leading out of the ship’s engines. Then he went to the terminals, looking them over. He wasn’t sure what he was searching for, but he figured he would know it when he saw it.
Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he circled the craft again, looking over the fuselage. Whatever the Other had done, it had altered the energy shield. If this were its ship of course it would know how to modify things to cause trouble. Had it changed something internal to the craft? He wanted to get into the cockpit, but he wasn’t sure how to open it.
He ran his hand along the edge of the glass, searching for a seam. He also looked for a switch or button or handle, or anything else that could serve to open it. His fingers brushed the alloy, the replacements registering it as grainy and rough though it looked smooth to the eye. When he zoomed in with his mechanical eye, he could see the specks on the alloy.
He could also see a small impression where those specks disappeared. He put his hand on it, pushing against it. The cockpit hummed slightly, the glass sliding back and beneath the metal. An odd smell escaped, reminding him of flowers and a wood fire.
He lifted himself up and into the ship. His legs were too wide to slide into the impressions, so he wasn’t able to get in all the way. Still, he could imagine being in the ship, held tight by the foam as he traveled across the galaxy. Did the packing serve other purposes, like filtering bodily waste?
He touched the display lightly, pleased to find that it reacted, offering a new screen of symbols. They ran vertically rather than horizontally, but he had no ability even to guess what they meant. He played with it for a minute before deciding he was wasting time. If the Other had changed the ship’s computer, there was no way he could change it back. His only choice would be to pull the plug on the reactor, and once he did that, the city would be screwed anyway.
Damn it.
He jumped out of the cockpit, running his hand through his hair. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
He went to the rear of the ship again, tracing the wires. He hadn’t seen an access panel for the reactor in the cockpit. Was there one back here? He closed his right eye, using his left to zoom in on the metal, looking for another flat area. It took another minute, but it wasn’t a wasted minute.
There was another panel on the back, and he pressed his hand against it. A piece of the rear clicked and slid open, revealing the reactor.
It was minuscule. The size of his smaller fist. A tight bundle of wires surrounding a glowing core pulsed with energy. There were no wires or anything attached to it. It hung within its space, similar to the way the sphere was suspended between the magnets, energy siphoning through what he guessed were collectors at eight separate points around it. Natalia would have loved to see this, to take it apart and figure out how it worked.
He stared at it for a few seconds, his eyes tracking across the collectors. It didn’t take long for him to realize one of them was different than the others. It had a small disc placed over it, a translucent membrane with a web of energy spread across it, similar to the web of energy in the shields. It had to be the Other’s sabotage.
Hayden closed the fist of his left hand, extending his the sharp claw. He reached in with it, careful to get it past the reactor without touching it. Electricity sparked between it and the ball at the center, and his hand registered a sensation of heat. It didn’t stop him from pushing onward, taking the membrane on the tip of his claw, stabbing it and breaking the connection. He yanked his hand back, pulling the material out.
Like before, a buzz and deep rumble sounded from the shields, and the ground shook. Hayden grabbed the back of the ship to keep himself upright, holding on until the shaking subsided. Then he leaned back, breathing a sigh of relief. He had fixed the shields and hopefully fixed the crazy.
“Sheriff. Sheriff, can you hear me?”
He perked up at the sound of Nathan’s voice through his comm. Had fixing the shields also restored the link, or had Chandra managed to fix it?
“Sheriff, if you can hear me, meet me at Operations as soon as… shit. Sheriff, get here now! The shields. Fuck. The fucking shields. The virus. Sheriff, the shields are coming down. The shields are coming down, and the delivery vehicles are launching!”
Chapter 31
Hayden ran up the stairs as quickly as his legs would carry him, using the railing to propel himself up even faster. He cleared the stairs quickly, moving out into the spire control room and heading for the exit.
“Colonel Stacker, did you say Sheriff Duke?”
Hayden recognized General Neill’s voice. Nathan didn’t answer.
“Colonel? I’m speaking to you. Reply immediately. Sheriff Duke is supposed to be in lockup.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, General,” Nathan said. “Sheriff Duke is the only reason this city might survive. I can’t believe James left an incompetent asshole like you in charge.”
“Incompetent?” Neill growled. “I’ll have your head, Stacker.”
“Not if I have yours first.”
Hayden smiled as he burst out of the shield spire.
The smile vanished as quickly as it came. The soldiers were recovering from the hallucinations, but there were too many bodies spread across the streets ahead. Looking up, he could see that the city’s shields were gone, leaving Edenrise open to attack. He had fixed the reactor for nothing. In fact, if that was what had repaired the comms, he might have made things worse for himself.
He heard a loud whine to the north, and adjusted his gaze in that direction, just in time to see a rocket begin to ascend, it’s glowing blue thrusters accelerating it quickly into the sky. Zooming in with his left eye, he could see the hundreds of smaller rockets mounted on the launch vehicle, set to deploy the trife virus across the planet.
He was too late.
Operations. If the Other was in Operations, maybe they could get it to stop this?
He ran down the steps to the street. One of the soldiers noticed him, rounding on him and trying to get his weapon up to fire. Hayden reached the man first, slugging him in the chest and knocking him down. Damn it. There was no time for this.
He found the Liberator’s armored vehicle stopped in the middle of the street, surrounded by the dead. Crushed bodies lay in a path behind it, and a few of the soldiers were climbing onto it to get away from the scene.
“All squads, be on the lookout for Colonel Nathan Stacker and Sheriff Hayden Duke,” General Neill said. “Use any force necessary to contain them.”
“You asshole,” Nathan said. “We’re trying to stop the enemy from destroying the city. What
part of that don’t you understand?”
“There are rules, Stacker. Procedure. Chain of command. You don’t get to make or break the rules as you see fit. Not without consequences.”
The soldiers ahead saw Hayden coming. Most were still trying to get over their confusion, and they reacted slowly to his approach, sluggish in getting their weapons into a firing position. Hayden saw a dead soldier ahead, sidearm resting in an outstretched hand. He threw himself forward, scooping the gun up as he rolled to a crouch, using his large hand to dig in and stop his momentum, and the other one to open fire. A few rounds snapped into the ground around him. His aim was better. He dropped four of the soldiers before pushing off with his replacement hand and bringing himself back to his feet.
At a run, he hopped over the bodies, remaining in motion while the soldiers behind him tried to keep up. The compound Chandra had given him had affected his reflexes and changed his sense of time. He was acutely aware of each of the soldiers around him, the position of their weapons, and their readiness to fire. He could almost hear the reports from their guns before they fired, and he reacted hundredths of a second ahead of them, diving behind the armored vehicle with bullets whipping past his back.
He stayed there in a crouch. Reaching up and grabbing the side with Gus’ replacement hand, he pulled himself up, extending his claw and driving it into the first of the soldiers to look over the edge. Hayden pushed him back, throwing him off the other side of the vehicle. Dropping and pivoting, he shot another soldier while bringing his hand up in front of his face. Bullets hit the metal and bounced off. He spun again, killing the third soldier.
He scrambled to the hatch leading into the vehicle and dropped through it. Only the driver remained inside, and Hayden shot him as he tried to get out of his seat. Then he grabbed the hatch and pulled it closed, locking it. He ran up to the front of the vehicle and dragged the dead driver out of the way before sliding behind the wheel and putting the vehicle in motion. The soldiers shouted as he started moving out.
“General Neill, we have positive ID on Sheriff Duke,” someone said over the comm. “He just stole our APV.”
“Damn right I did,” Hayden said in reply.
He turned the corner, heading west. The scene of destruction wasn’t much different here. More dead civilians and soldiers littered the street, making it impossible for him to get through without running over their bodies. He winced each time he did, apologizing silently.
“Sheriff, another rocket just launched,” Nathan said. “Wherever you are, get here fast.”
Hayden’s heart pounded in his throat. He had no way to know where the delivery vehicles on the launch vehicle were programmed to land, or if any of them were going to head west. There weren’t enough of them to send everywhere on the planet, and only two had gone up so far. He had to make sure no more of them made it.
He didn’t let off the accelerator, sliding almost all the way around the corner. Crossing the next block, he turned left., spotting the eagle flag hanging outside the front of a smaller building up ahead. Alongside it was an old United States Flag and a third flag he didn’t recognize — a flat black standard with a circle in the center. There were soldiers stationed in front of it nearly two-dozen strong, presumedly there to guard General Neill against the incoming threat of Hayden and Nathan.
Hayden noticed motion to his right. It was Nathan near the corner of one of the buildings, raising his hand in a wave. Hayden didn’t bother to wave back; Nathan wouldn’t see it anyway. Instead, he accelerated toward the soldiers as they began to open fire, bullets pinging harmlessly off the armored shell of the vehicle.
They shouted and scrambled aside when Hayden reached them, throwing the APV into a hard left turn that caused the tires to squeal and complain. He lost a lot of momentum but not all of it, as the vehicle bounced and jerked its way up the steps up to the front of the building. The entire front entry was composed of glass, and Hayden put his foot down on the pedal, speeding up as he closed on it. Soldiers there tried shooting at him before diving out of the way. The APV hit the glass, barreling through it in a loud thud followed by the tinkling of shattering glass. He entered a white-tiled atrium lined with artwork along the walls and a reception desk near the back.
He slammed on the brakes, the APV sliding across the floor, brakes screaming and shuddering. The APV smashed into the desk, demolishing it and coming to rest against the wall behind it. The sudden stop nearly caused Hayden to smash his head on the steering wheel.
He sat motionless for a few seconds, shaken by the impact. Then he stood and ran back to the hatch, throwing it open and climbing up. Soldiers were gathering behind him, and he started shooting at them before ducking under cover.
“Hey!” he heard Nathan shout. He picked his head up in time to see the soldiers turn to face Nathan. He started shooting, easily dropping the distracted soldiers.
Hayden climbed onto he APV, looking down at him. “Nice of you to join me.”
“Fuck you, Sheriff,” Nathan said. “I had to run the whole way.”
“Work smarter, not harder,” Hayden said, jumping down beside him.
“The Other is remotely hooked into the hangar’s terminal,” Nathan said. “It’s manually setting the launch sequences on the rockets one at a time. It only had three when I left.”
“Out of how many?”
“Twenty or so that are ready for launch.”
Hayden looked ahead to the doorway, deeper into the building. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 32
“Is it just me,” Hayden said as he and Nathan entered the Liberator’s command center, “or is General Neill a complete asshole?”
“It isn’t just you,” Nathan replied, smiling.
They were in a hallway somewhere past the lobby where Hayden had crashed the APV. Resistance had been light so far. The only Liberator whose path they crossed surrendered his weapon without a fight, leaving it on the ground and running past them to escape.
Neither one of them was familiar enough with the building’s layout to head directly to Operations, and they decided not to contact Chandra because they didn’t want the general knowing she was helping them. It meant navigating the building on their own, racing against time to track down the source of the manual launch initiations that had already sent two rockets and nearly a thousand virus delivery vehicles out of Edenrise.
The shields were still down too, giving the trife nearest the city a chance to strike. Even worse, the Liberators were scattered and confused, and a lot of them had died during the confusion. They were in no shape to mount a defense against the creatures, and Hayden had no doubt the trife weren’t going to give them a choice.
“I want third battalion and fourth battalion on the western wall!” General Neill shouted into the comm. “I don’t give a flying fuck if they’re low on ammo. The whole damn army is low on ammo, and we don’t have time to resupply. The shields are down, damn it. You know what that means!”
Hayden knew if Neill had handled things more conservatively, he would have had plenty of fresh soldiers with full magazines to send to the wall to defend. Instead, he was scrambling to get warm bodies up there.
They had to get the shields back up before the trife could arrive in force. It was the only way to save the city.
They came to a corner, slowing as they neared it. Nathan pointed to himself, and then swung around the edge of the wall, rifle up and ready. He reacted with surprise but didn’t shoot.
Hayden joined him, as confused as the Spacer at the scene ahead. Two soldiers were positioned on either side of a closed door. They had each discarded their clothing and were sitting on the floor with their knees in their hands, rocking back and forth.
“What the fuck?” Nathan said.
The men looked up at the sound of his voice. They both froze, staring. Then they started to cry. The one on the left began to urinate.
“The Other did this,” Hayden said. “I’d bet my left arm on it.”
“I
s that how you lost it, Sheriff? You made the wrong kind of bet?”
“No. It was the right kind of bet. The outcome was the same though.”
They advanced along the corridor, moving past the two soldiers to the door. It was locked, but all it took was Nathan’s hand on the security panel to get it open.
They moved into a stark room filled with simple metal desks, computers, and displays. There were people at all of the desks, each of them slumped over in their seats. Nathan went over to one of them and lifted him up, revealing a gunshot wound in his forehead.
“It’s like they sat there and took it when someone put a gun to their heads,” he said.
“Maybe they didn’t know what was happening.”
Nathan lowered the man back to the desk. There was another door on the opposite side of the room, also closed and probably also locked.
General Neill was still barking orders over the comm, and Hayden could hear the same cadence and tone filtering through the door ahead as a deep mumble. The general was in there. Had he killed these people? Hayden glanced at one of the terminals. There were lines of computer code on the screen, a white cursor blinking at the bottom. Natalia could have read the code and guessed at what it meant. He had no idea. He followed Nathan past the desks to the secured door. A small sign beside it read “Central Operations.”
“This is it,” Nathan said, reaching for the security panel.
“Wait,” Hayden said. “If the Other is in there--”
“It’s General Neill,” Nathan finished. “That makes sense, doesn’t it? James would have briefed him on everything he needed to know to handle Edenrise while he was gone. He would know about the shields, about the launch vehicles, everything. Plus, the way he’s been handling the troops? He’s essentially maximizing casualties.”
“We need to be careful. We don’t know what it’s capable of. If it shoots us, we might not know what we’re doing. We’re liable to shoot one another, or ourselves.”