E-Day

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Kichiro struggled on the ground, entangled in the binding limbs of another Canebrake.

  Everything seemed to freeze in that moment—everything important to Akira left on Earth was dying in front of his eyes.

  Not ten feet away, a Canebrake had cornered Contos. The War Commander deflected some of the arms, but the plasma cannons struck his golden armor.

  “No!” Akira screamed. He closed his eyes and fired his jetpack, blasting up with the Canebrake holding on. It finally let go, flailing back to the parapet.

  Akira hovered for a moment, looking at the scene from above. Plasma bolts crisscrossed below, and blood splattered the stone walls.

  The forty-seven ronin and their lord fought bravely in their final moments. Akira dropped back down behind the machine stabbing Contos. The stone crushed under his boots, falling away, and knocking the Canebrake off balance.

  Okami jumped up and bit down on the thick titanium neck as the machine whirled. Akira grabbed its fanned head and ripped it clean off. The body clanked to the ground.

  Contos lay sideways, gripping his gut, and Akira knelt in front of him. Okami and Kichiro stood behind him, and the other surviving soldiers formed a wall around their War Commander.

  Dozens of Canebrakes slowly advanced, firing at the armored line.

  Akira felt his life source fading. His armor couldn’t stop the bleeding. He tried to stay awake, gritting his teeth and moving his fingers.

  “Hold the line!” Ghost yelled.

  Frost fired off the last of her rifle rounds and pulled out her sword, backing toward Akira in a low hunch. Tadhg swung his sword into the torso of a Canebrake in an explosion of sparks. A blade punched into his thigh, but he remained standing until another punctured his other leg.

  “Tadhg,” Akira mumbled.

  A wave of bolts hit Frost in the side. She cried out and fell to the ground. Ghost went down next, his left prosthetic shattered by a heated blade.

  Akira reached out to them as darkness flooded his vision. The physical pain was gone now, replaced by a different type of pain, an even worse pain from the past. Mental anguish took him as images of his son, wife, brother—all those he had lost to war—flashed through his mind.

  But then those faded, too.

  The black encroached until it consumed Akira entirely.

  He wasn’t sure when he awoke to a soothing voice.

  “Captain, can you hear me?”

  He stared at the blurred face of a Piston medic crouched in front of him. Another medic worked on the War Commander next to him. Akira felt a tug on his arm and then saw Okami gently biting his hand. Kichiro looked down at him and snorted.

  Akira tried to reach up.

  “Don’t move, Captain,” said the medic.

  Akira did anyways, sitting up slightly to look for his squad. Across the parapet, Tadhg was on a table with thrusters holding up his massive frame. Most of his armor had been removed, and nano-tech patches peppered his bloody flesh. His eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell. Frost was sitting up, holding one arm up as a medic worked on her side. She nodded at Akira. Ghost rushed over to him.

  “What happened?” Akira asked.

  “The Canebrakes just stopped their attack and retreated,” Ghost replied. “Command believes Tokyo is their next target, which means we don’t have much time to get out of here.”

  “Akira,” came a weak voice.

  He looked over to War Commander Contos, who held out a piece of paper stained red with blood. “I need you to deliver this note to General Thacker at Kepler Station.”

  Akira didn’t need to ask him why he couldn’t deliver the note himself.

  A whirl of wind rushed over the castle, whipping the note violently, as two MOTHs descended from the smoke-choked sky.

  “We have to get him out of here,” said the medic working on Contos.

  Akira took the note, and the War Commander was carried away on a hover stretcher. The medic working on Akira had finished, and he followed.

  Ghost limped over and reached down to help Akira to his feet. Frost staggered, holding her side as they joined the Pistons working on Tadhg.

  Akira crouched and put a hand on his chest. “Tadhg, can you hear me?”

  Tadhg tried to open his eyes. “Bosu, did we kill all of them?”

  “Yes,” Akira lied. He tucked the note into a pouch on Tadhg’s duty belt. “I need you to take that to General Thacker and find my family. Tell them I love them, and I’ll see them again.”

  “Where are you going…” Tadhg muttered. “Why am I…”

  “You’re going to the Moon, brother,” Akira said.

  Tadhg’s eyes opened wide. “No… please, I don’t want to leave…”

  Akira nodded at the Pistons, and they carted Tadhg off as he bucked against the straps holding him stable.

  “I’m not done with the machines!” Tadhg bellowed.

  The MOTH doors closed, silencing his shouts. The pilots wasted no time lifting into the sky and plowing into the wind. The smoke swallowed the spacecraft.

  “Good luck, Tadhg,” Akira whispered.

  Ghost and Frost helped him to the other MOTH. Okami and Kichiro followed after Akira whistled in two different pitches.

  The pilots lifted off and pulled away just as a blinding light flashed out of the clouds. Akira stared out the window as a tsunami of fire obliterated the city in a nightmarish halo of flames. The hull shook violently as the pilots pulled higher into the sky.

  Akira leaned back. Today was supposed to be a day of joy, a day when the Nova Alliance celebrated the destruction of Hros-1 and a future of peace, a day when Akira began to transition to a new life with a family that he had neglected for years.

  But peace was not to be. Instead, today would be a day of defeat, a day of death, the day he lost his only son and brother.

  To humanity, today would be known as Extinction Day, or simply E-Day.

  — 35 —

  The corvette docked at Kepler Station eight hours after leaving Nova One Station. During the flight, Jason had replayed the events that had led to the exodus. It was clear now that Apeiron had failed to secure Nova Station, and that Dr. Cross had turned the cannons on Earth. They had played right into the monster’s hand, providing him the weapons of mass destruction for his reset.

  And Apeiron had unknowingly gifted him those weapons in her quest to save humanity and unite them under the lie of Hros-1. The cannons had instead doomed them all.

  By the time the corvette docked with Kepler Station, the gravity of the situation had freed Jason from his shock. Earth was lost, but they still had one final hope, a top-secret colony unknown to even Apeiron—had been constructed under the Shackleton Crater on the dark side of the Moon.

  They called it Mesopotamia, the new cradle of life.

  “Let’s go,” said a sad voice. Darnel stood at the hatch to the open airlock connecting the corvette to Kepler Station, a look of dread on his face unlike any Jason had seen before. Darnel had always been Jason’s fixer, but nothing he could do would fix this situation.

  Slowly, Jason made his way into the airlock. With every step, he felt something he wasn’t used to: a feeling of weakness. Helplessness.

  As he looked out the viewports, he saw Kepler Station for the second time in his life. Hundreds of shuttles were docked on platforms or waiting for clearance to land. His family would be in one of them, but he had no idea which one.

  They survived. That’s what matters.

  Hope broke through the utter horror of the past day as Jason walked through the open hatch into Kepler Station. Outside, two Lunar Defense soldiers in vacuum-rated armor blocked the next hatch.

  “Doctor Crichton,” one said.

  “Yes, that’s me,” Jason said.

  The soldier jerked his helmet. “Come with us.”

  Darnel and Jason exchanged a glance as they followed them down a tunnel with views of the spaceport. Shuttles contin
ued to touch down on the regolith, packed full of refugees from Earth, people who had fled for their lives from his own creations.

  “Where are you taking us?” Jason asked.

  The guard didn’t answer. They stopped at an elevator and stepped inside. The car rose into a tower, and the doors opened onto a pasty white hallway with bright white hatches.

  One of the soldiers opened the first hatch and gestured inside. “Have a seat.”

  Darnel started to step into the room but stopped when a guard grabbed his arm.

  “Not you,” said the soldier. “You come with us.”

  Darnel stood defiant. “I’m not leaving the doctor.”

  “You don’t have a choice, sir,” said the other guard.

  “It’s okay,” Jason said. “Do as they say.”

  Darnel’s face contorted with anger.

  “I said, let’s go.” The guard grabbed his arm again.

  Darnel yanked away. “Don’t touch me,” he growled.

  Jason nodded at his best friend as he left. The hatch closed and locked. Jason paced the room as he waited. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he heard footsteps. The hatch opened and a tall man with spiked hair entered.

  Jason instantly recognized the icy blue eyes of General Thacker.

  “The father of AI,” the general said with a head shake. “The man who destroyed everything.”

  Jason felt a stab of anxiety. “General, I did everything I could to stop this. To save us from the Coalition, and from Hros-1.”

  “To save us…” Thacker snorted. “Your effort to save us ended up killing billions and now we are even closer to extinction.”

  “Doctor Otto—”

  “It was Apeiron,” the general snapped. “She was wrong about the asteroid. We saw it pass by. Perhaps it was never going to hit. How could your all-knowing AI get that wrong? The simplest answer is the clearest. She had us create those cannons to destroy ourselves and tricked us all.”

  “No… she… she wasn’t wrong.”

  “Did she lie about the asteroid?”

  Jason hesitated, then nodded.

  “Did she direct the construction of those cannons?”

  “Just let me explain,” he said. “Apeiron remained behind to stop Doctor Cross. It was Doctor Cross who uploaded new orders to the Canebrakes at Nova One Station. Apeiron did everything she could to stop him. You have to believe me.”

  Thacker let Jason explain, but as he did, Jason realized how it sounded. With INN down, he couldn’t prove anything.

  “How can I believe you when an AI you created led you astray about Hros-1?” the general asked.

  “The pilots,” he said. “The pilots know the truth.”

  “What pilots?” Thacker replied. “They’re all dead.” The general put a finger to his earpiece. “Copy that.”

  Thacker nodded at two guards, who entered and approached Jason.

  “I have about a hundred questions for you, but first, there’s something you need to see,” said the General.

  Jason followed the soldiers to a flight control tower overlooking the gray regolith. Inside, a dozen officers at their workstations spoke in frantic voices.

  On the tarmac below, two six-person teams of Pistons filed out, forming a perimeter on the landing pad, their plasma rifles aimed at a descending shuttle. Two MOTHs followed the corvette, their plasma cannons directed at the hull.

  Jason froze when he saw the lettering: Liberty.

  “My family is on board,” he said.

  “I’m well aware, and we have reason to believe it’s been compromised by a Canebrake that boarded before it left the Life Ark,” Thacker explained. “One of your machines.”

  He turned to one of his flight control officers. “Hail them again.”

  Jason swallowed hard, realization hitting him like a heated energy blade.

  “CR-1, this is Flight Tower 3, do you copy? Over,” said one of the flight control officers. He waited a moment before shaking his head. “Nothing, General. They’re on auto-pilot, but no one’s responding.”

  “Flight Tower 3, this is Fox 1,” came a voice from the speakers. “I can see blood on the windows from my location.”

  “No,” Jason murmured. “Please, God, no.”

  “God?” Thacker said, looking at Jason. “I thought your God was AI?”

  There was no empathy in his gaze, only hatred.

  Deep, raw hatred.

  And Jason understood why. He hated himself right now too, and if his family was dead, by the hands of one of his creations…

  The shuttle touched down in the dust, and the teams closed in.

  Jason watched the Pistons advance slowly toward the shuttle. Two went to the automated ramp that had extended from the shuttle, their rifles shouldered. One tried the hatch handle, and it opened into a pressurized compartment. A black blade suddenly pierced the soldier through the mid-section, blood shooting out his back. The other soldier retreated, but not fast enough to avoid another limb that shot out and wrapped around his body, squeezing so hard it crushed him.

  “Son of a bitch,” Thacker grumbled.

  Panicked voices broke over the comms saying something about a hostage, but Jason wasn’t listening, couldn’t hear, couldn’t think.

  A Canebrake emerged from the darkness of the compartment, black eyes glowing like a soulless demon from a cold hell. The armored droid opened a mouth full of jagged teeth and pulled itself out of the hatch with three arms. In the fourth, it waved a person.

  “Dispatch it now!” Thacker shouted.

  Jason took a step forward toward the window, willing his feet to get him closer. The hostage was small, the size of a child, and they were wearing a vacuum-rated suit with a helmet that masked their features.

  Was it one of his girls?

  “General, you have to do something!” Jason reached out, but Thacker smacked his hand away.

  “Restrain this man,” Thacker ordered.

  Two soldiers took Jason by the arms and pulled him away. He fought their grip, twisting and turning.

  “You have to do something!” he yelled.

  “Take it down, now,” Thacker ordered.

  Plasma bolts slammed into the Canebrake. The child slumped out of its grip, vanishing from view.

  Jason ripped out of the soldiers’ grip and ran to the viewport, only to be tackled halfway there.

  “No, let me go!” he shouted.

  “Get him out of here,” Thacker said.

  The guards hauled Jason up and pulled him away.

  “No!” he shouted. “Let me go!”

  “Calm down, sir,” said one of the soldiers. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Fuck him,” said the other.

  Jason fought harder, veins and eyes bulging as he tried to get free.

  “Oh, my God,” someone said.

  Jason stopped struggling for a moment, trying to see.

  “What?” Jason asked. “What’s happening?”

  He knew deep down. The hostage, and everyone else, was dead.

  “Sir, we have it surrounded,” said one of the officers. “What are your orders?”

  “Capture it,” Thacker said. He looked down at Jason. “Put this man under arrest and throw him in a dark cell.”

  The soldiers dragged Jason away. He fell limp in their arms, unable to fight any longer. There was no reason to fight. Everyone he loved was dead.

  Betsy, Nina, Autumn. His sweet wife and girls.

  Dead, because of him.

  In that moment, he felt an unfamiliar urge. Fueled by adrenaline, he yanked free and grabbed for a pistol holstered on one of the soldiers’ utility belts. Before anyone could react, he brought it to his head.

  Something hit his back, knocking him to the ground. A knee fell on his neck, and someone sat on his legs, pinning him down. A soldier stomped on his hand, his fingers splayed from the pain, and the gun clattered away.


  “No!” Jason yelled.

  General Thacker walked over, looking down on Jason with his blue eyes.

  “Kill me! Just kill me!” Jason screamed.

  “I won’t let you get away with what you’ve done so easily,” Thacker said. “You’ll live haunted by the horrors you created.”

  ***

  Chloe ran through the spaceport toward the terminals. Using INVS eyes, she homed in on over one hundred shuttles outside.

  “My God,” she whispered.

  Kepler Station was never meant to support this many people. There had to be hundreds of thousands of refugees from Earth.

  According to the logs her uncle had recovered, Cyrus was one of them. He had somehow made it onto a shuttle out of Megacity Paris during the evacuation, and Chloe was headed to meet him at the Kepler Spaceport.

  She had packed her bag and stuffed Radar inside, terrified that the Lunar Defense Corps (LDC) would confiscate and destroy the droid bird like they were doing with Hummer Droid worker units. It wasn’t just the worker units either. On her way to gather her meager belongings, Chloe had watched service droids and drones loaded up into the back of cargo vehicles, chained like prisoners of war.

  She hurried away from the elevator to get a view of the tarmac. Outside, hundreds of LDC soldiers in vacuum-rated suits and exoskeletons were patrolling the regolith as new shuttles touched down to let off their human cargo.

  Inside the concourses, more LDC soldiers armed with energy blades directed the civilians away from the airlocks and toward the security checkpoints. They surged in her direction, but she pushed through until she got to a stairwell that led to the connecting terminal.

  Two soldiers guarded the entrance to Terminal L. Neither tried to stop Chloe as she crossed the bridge. She reached the other terminal, on the top level. Below, people flooded out of the open airlocks. One woman went down on her knees and prayed. Others rushed past, some wearing clothes soiled with blood.

  Chloe could only imagine what these people had been through.

  Actually, you do know.

  The thousands of refugees flooding the spaceport reminded her of scenes she had witnessed during and after the fall of Megacity Paris.