by Cam Daly
She couldn’t let that happen. The only solution she could think of would be to decapitate Mez, grab the Interloper body and retreat to Dallas. Save Park, and hope that Sousa could explain how the human field made it possible to find tanglecomm systems.
It’s what Keryapt Zess would do.
But what if Sousa didn’t know? She wanted to ask him, but Connor was still cut off. By the time she found out if he knew, Ormlan’s offspring might be fully converted. If she wanted to get the full human field technology from the Molu, she had to do it now. And she would need Mez’s help to get there. But only if they could somehow neutralize the bomb. Could she get Mez to trust her enough to break Ormlan’s rules? Or safely get close enough to scan Mez herself?
She had two minutes to get Mezerello to realize her situation and break the rules, or else Kery would have to decapitate her on sight.
#
Bremmer moved to put his gun down, but Taylor held her ground. “What about…?” She nodded towards the hostages. Of course the Tumorish wouldn’t want to leave weapons where their hostages could get to them.
Connor grabbed one of the grenades from Bremmer and gave Taylor his best evil smile. “I will take care of them. You need to move.”
She hesitated, then nodded to Bremmer and lowered her gun to the ground. She placed her grenades there as well, but left a pistol in her holster. He almost asked her to leave it as well but decided against pushing his luck.
“Stay together. Comms are down. I’ll be right behind you.”
Taylor moved out of the semicircle of hostages at a jog, quicker than Connor expected. Bremmer stumbled after her. She accelerated to a run as she moved up the hallway and he realized they would both be on top of DeVries, and then Park, unless he moved quickly.
He dropped the unarmed grenade on the pile of weapons and brought the shotgun up. Taylor was nearing the corner.
He shot her first, the deafening boom of the shotgun wiping away the cacophony in the waiting area. The left side of her uniform shredded under the impact, sending a cloud of blood into the air. She spun and fell.
Bremmer had started to turn back towards the waiting area when Connor fired the second time. The shotgun blast hit him in the chest, transforming the already bloodstained uniform into a jumble of cloth and gore. He stood with a surprised look for a moment, perhaps unable to comprehend why his fellow Tumorish was shooting him. The screaming around Connor ramped up again as the tied-together hostages struggled in different directions, dragging each other with them.
He tried to aim for Bremmer’s head, but the combination of adrenaline, recoil and inexperience caused the third load to tear into the ceiling above the man, destroying the fluorescent lighting and sending a shower of sparks out.
He needed to be closer. He scrambled around the contorting group of hostages and passed others starting to run in every direction, then slipped in a pool of blood and lost his balance for a second.
When he looked back up, it took him another fraction of a second to understand what he was seeing. Taylor had somehow regained her feet and was now behind Bremmer. With one arm around his waist, she was propping him up - or perhaps even lifting him - while fumbling for his holstered pistol with her other hand. Connor hastily fired again, hitting Bremmer once more in the chest.
Taylor had the pistol out and was bringing it up when another weapon sounded nearby. A dark spot appeared on Taylor’s forearm and she dropped the pistol. Other impacts appeared on Bremmer’s torso. Connor realized the shots were coming from behind him.
A woman had picked up one of the AR-15s that the Tumorish had dropped, and it was clear that she knew how to use it. Her head was bent low over the sights, one eye closed as she fired, a constant pop pop pop of bullets which hit Bremmer in the head and chest. Taylor stumbled back with his body another meter or so, then let go and dove around the corner.
The woman fired a few more times at Bremmer, his body jerking with each impact. She kept pulling the trigger even after the gun was empty.
A gangly young man - maybe just a teenager - said something to her and she dropped the rifle, clutching him. She started sobbing.
The young man looked at Connor over her shoulder and nodded.
Connor nodded back, dumbfounded, then ran down the hall after the Tumorish.
Bremmer was motionless, riddled with bullets. Connor ran to the corner, reluctant to take his eyes off the body but much more concerned about Taylor. He was relieved to see her holster and pistol on the ground near Bremmer as well - his first shot must have cut through her belt. She was unarmed.
He rounded the corner and almost shot the figure scrabbling on the floor. It was DeVries, who had clearly been just at the corner before the shooting started but had fallen backwards while trying to retreat. He looked up at Connor then mutely pointed towards an open door into one of the office areas. A trail of blood conveniently revealed which path Taylor had taken into the small maze of waist high cubicles, office equipment and potted plants.
He brought the shotgun back up to his shoulder. Taylor had seen DeVries, but might not think of him as an enemy. Would she retreat and try to get - or worse yet, make - reinforcements?
He thought that he saw movement behind a set of cubicles but hesitated. What if there were more innocent bystanders here too?
#
“Okay, I give up. Why would someone send your head back to Fleet like that?”
Mez was clearly interested, not just dismissing it as another random distraction in the simulation. Keryapt had always longed to tell the story to someone, anyone, and it just happened that this was a time when the truth was a more powerful tool than any lie might have been. With any luck the Molu wouldn’t interfere, wanting to hear the details as well.
“The ‘why’ also includes the ‘who’. The ‘how’ isn’t that important.”
“Only Fleet knows about the Activation process - how can ‘how’ not be important?”
“Because the people who did it to me were also Fleet.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would we-”
“It wasn’t our Fleet. Not Fleet Four. You were a good student. What can you tell me about Fleet Seventeen?”
“The Lost Fleet? It disappeared centuries ago. Their Admiralty disagreed with the others about how to deal with some perceived threat, and decided to Activate the entire population. Their society fractured under the strain of having everyone running at whatever mental speed they desired, and ended up in a massive civil war. The survivors scattered and were never heard from again. It’s a cautionary tale for children who dream of Activation.”
“That’s mostly true, except they weren’t all wiped out. Our Admiralty still had contact with the remainder of theirs. And finally convinced them to let us dispatch an emissary, an Active, to understand everything that they had learned. They thought they had achieved the pinnacle of physical existence.”
“You were that emissary. The best of the best of our Actives.”
“Yes.”
“And the Lost Fleet betrayed you.”
“No. We betrayed them.”
Keryapt entered the western edge of Golden Gate Park where it met the ocean. She slowed dramatically and dropped below treetop level. When she emerged from the urban forest, she would be halfway across the city and only 20 zig zag blocks from Mezerello.
Across the Bay, the three pairs of winglets approached through the maze of buildings making up downtown Oakland. They avoided direct lines of sight to the aerial defenders at Alcatraz for as long as possible. On a human clock with Alcatraz at its center, they would be attacking from the 1, 3 and 5 o’clock locations with Keryapt and Mezerello at 6.
If all went according to plan. And Mezerello didn’t try to kill her on sight. Again.
#
Connor repeated his shout into the Admissions area. “The police have control of the situation. If there's anyone in this area, please come out and move to the exits.” The screams and wails still coming fro
m the waiting area behind him might make anyone hiding amongst the cubicles think twice about coming out. He didn’t want to go in.
DeVries had regained his feet and was now close enough to Connor’s side to whisper to him. “She was limping, and bleeding a lot. You can take her.”
Connor wasn’t entirely sure that was true. “We should just contain her here. She may be tough but the more she bleeds, the better off we are. Take the pistol from my belt.” Two guns were better than one. He kept his shotgun aimed towards the cubicles.
As DeVries pulled out the pistol, Connor realized how badly the bald man’s hands were shaking and immediately regretted his decision.
He aimed it at Connor. “No. You go in there.”
Connor cautiously locked eyes with the man, saw the desperation there. DeVries was more afraid of the Tumorish than Connor was. “You bastard. What about all that ‘we have to work together’ crap?”
“Go.” DeVries’ eyelid was twitching. He might fire accidentally at this point.
Connor turned away from the gun and entered the office area. Behind him he could hear DeVries backing away.
He tried to shut out the sound of the waiting area and focus on what was here. The gentle hum of office equipment. Bubbles gurgling to the surface of a water cooler. The rush of cool air from an overhead vent as the building’s air conditioner tried to fight the Texas heat. Nothing hostile, yet.
He passed a first row of desks and entered into an area of low cubicles. There were doors along a back wall, but they looked like they were dead end offices. The blood trail tapered off as it passed around the waist high cubicles to his left. He was about to follow the trail when he realized what a terrible idea that was.
He straightened up from his inadvertent crouch, aimed at a giant filing cabinet along the back wall and fired. Screams came from at least one of the offices, and to his left a copier moved. He turned towards it and fired again, sending a cloud of shredded paper and plastic parts in the air.
Taylor whispered theatrically from somewhere in the back of the room. “Do you know why we are eternal?”
He turned the gun in the direction of the sound. “Because you are a disgusting alien parasite that needs to be burned off the face of the world?”
She stood up from the corner diagonally across from him and showed him the end of a power cord. She tugged at it and the copier moved again. “Because we are better at this than you. That shotgun only holds six rounds. I didn’t hear you reload.”
She snapped her teeth at him, so loudly that it almost made him drop the empty gun. There were more shells attached to its stock but he didn’t imagine he could reload before she got to him.
He ran for the hall.
“DeVries! Shoot her!”
#
Keryapt’s gravitic drive tore the remaining winter leaves apart in front of her as she flew, creating a cloud of brownish-yellow confetti around her and leaving barren branches behind. Pedestrians on the path below would be buffeted by the sudden decrease in gravity and air pressure as she passed, but no one should be seriously harmed. She altered her path slightly as she closed on a young couple pushing a baby carriage, trying to spare them the worst of the effects.
Encouragingly, Mez’s next question revealed that she didn’t doubt the story about Fleet 17. So far.
“We betrayed them? How? Or should I ask ‘why’?”
“In this case, ‘how’ is relevant also. I traveled in the usual Active fashion, as a brain in a delivery ship. Fleet Seventeen gave us access to a Factory of their own which matched our old designs. Our Admiralty built a test remote there, which verified that the Factory was hundreds of years old. It responded to all the old commands and had all the same quirks. It even had one old design flaw, which Fleet 17 hadn’t been informed of and never corrected. There was a very clever and insidious way for our construction program to build something without accurately reporting it to anyone monitoring the process. And they - I mean we - did.”
Mezerello’s voice was hushed. “What did we build?”
“A bomb. Our Admiralty built a body for me which contained almost all of the antimatter from their Factory, done in such a way that the Factory itself didn’t notice. I didn’t know anything about it. The plan, though, was for me to visit Fleet Seventeen’s Admiralty in person. If our Admiralty wasn't certain that they could be trusted, then…”
“And you didn’t know? How could they do that? We aren’t remotes, to be thrown away! How can that be true?”
Keryapt continued mercilessly. This was the truth of the Admiralty, and why she had left Fleet and never come back. Until now. Until her daughter was involved. “I know it was true because their Admiralty told me. Showed me. Fleet 17 knew about the design flaw in the old Factory design. They built a recreation of it so perfect that it fooled us.”
“See, they knew what we were doing the entire time. It was a test of us, and we failed. They told me everything after the fact, while I was alone on a ship a safe distance away from anything of theirs. There was no point for either side in detonating the bomb, so Fleet Seventeen just took my body back apart and sent me back home. But they made sure that I had plenty of time to think about it. That was my sentence for being part of the attempt to destroy them.”
As Kery told the story of betrayal, she finalized the programming for her attack plan. If the bomb in Mez’s skull was a very small nuclear or antimatter device, she couldn’t approach any closer than a couple hundred meters. When she reached that distance, she would cut off her drive and release the two winglets she carried. As the younger Active tracked them, she would take her eyes off Keryapt for an instant. There would be no chance of missing a decapitation shot at that range on a stationary target.
The winglets would grab the severed head and try to get it far enough away from Mez’s body so that the bomb wouldn’t damage the biolab. As long as there wasn’t a dead man switch…
#
Taylor caught Connor just as he made it to the hallway. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs with mostly hers on top. Her right hand flopped around like a mortally wounded bird as they struggled, its connecting tendons apparently cut by the bullet that had gone through her forearm. That made the critical difference and he managed to get the still-empty shotgun between them and hold her snapping jaws at bay for a moment.
“DeVries! Where the hell are you!” He tried to push her away but she was quicker that any human could be. She wrenched the gun violently to his side, smashing his right hand against the ground. His left hand scrabbled against the front of her uniform and the tangle of tubes and syringe still taped there.
He squeezed.
At the same time, she brought the gun down on his hand again. The pain was so great that he blacked out for a second.
When the world came back, Taylor was standing above him with the shotgun in her good hand and a triumphant smile on her face. He tried to curl his entire body around the pain in his broken hand.
“Connor?”
He couldn’t tell who had whisper-shouted his name. Taylor looked to the corner where DeVries had disappeared but didn’t move that direction. She quietly slipped the shotgun under her right arm and pulled a spare shell from the holder on its stock. With almost exaggerated care she slid it into the gun.
Connor tried to squirm out from between her legs but she turned back to look down at him. The shotgun was in her left hand now, pointed at him. She brought her right hand up and flopped it back and forth until one finger rested against her lips. “Shh.” She had one shot and wanted to save it for whoever came around the corner.
“Connor!”
The voice came louder and closer now. It was Sousa, about to come around the corner from the emergency room area. “DeVries ran. Are you there? Is it safe?”
If Connor shouted, she would kill him. If he didn’t, she would kill Sousa and then probably kill him. Or worse. The pain from his hand was almost blinding and he felt like he would throw up at any moment. Everything s
eemed to be coming to him from a distance.
He tried to get himself to make some noise, some signal to save Sousa, but he couldn’t do it. Trapped in his own tiny ball of misery, he couldn’t bring it on himself to make it worse.
Without warning, Taylor staggered and almost fell. The shotgun drooped to one side. She turned drunkenly towards Connor, arms sagging, with an accusing look on her face. She leaned sideways, trying to bring the gun up far enough to shoot him where he lay.
He rolled away desperately.
She fired, blasting apart the tile floor where he had just been. His side felt like he had just been cut by a dozen razors.
He hit the wall, out of room to go.
She stared at him for one more second then collapsed in slow motion. The gun clattered to the tiled floor.
Sousa peeked around the corner at them then ran to Connor. “Madre de Dios! What happened?” He looked at Conner’s side. “You’ve been shot! Don’t move. I’ll get the doctor.”
“Wait. Help me up. It’s not that bad. We have to-Aaaaaaaagh.” He screamed as Sousa tried to pull him up by his broken hand.
“What?” Sousa dropped him, sending another wave of pain shuddering through him.
After a moment of stifled sobs, Connor rolled to his good side. “Stop. I’ll do it.” He rose to his hand and knees, then sat up. “We have to make sure they stay down.”
Sousa stood there, uncertain how to help. “What did you do to her? She looks like she’s sleeping.”
“The syringe there, on her chest. They prepped her for the coma drugs but hadn’t injected them yet. When she grabbed me, I managed to…” He gently pantomimed a squeezing motion with his left hand. “But we need to burn her body. And the other guy. There’s no cure for them.”
“But…Kery said she could…”
“Park hasn’t converted yet. They had. They got hit a few hours before her.”
“Susan still has time?”
He didn’t want to tell Sousa that Kery had been killed in Vegas. Not yet. “I think so. But we don’t know how much.”
