by Jim Miesner
“I want to help,” a man said and stepped forward. “I know how to fly drones.”
“I want to help too,” said another. “I can’t fly but I can fight.”
A woman wearing golden fabric and heavy eye-shadow walked from the tents and stood next to them. Then a shirtless man covered in tattoos who looked like he was in his sixties did the same. One after another they stepped forward and stood side by side. The old man and the small group that had followed him, looked back in disbelief.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Hey. Let go. Take your hands off me, you filthy chewer,” a guard said as they pushed him out of the hatch and he tumbled down the ramp into the dirt.
He patted his hands over his red bio-suit looking for any tears in the lining, as the rag-covered crowd surrounded him. Jumping to his feet, he pointed a finger at them all.
“I am an officer of the New Covenant. If any of you so much as put a hand on me it's considered an act of war. I am keeping a mental record of all of your faces.”
Everyone in the crowd froze before a roar of laughter spread across them, and they lifted him up as he screamed.
Sam pushed another crew member in a red bio-suit forward. He looked back at her with terror in his eyes. It was Jenkins. The one who had come the closest to stopping her.
“Please, no. Don’t do this,” he said and squirmed in her grip. “Take us with you. Don’t leave us out here. Not like this. Please.”
“You’re safer here than you will be on the ship. Trust me.”
A large dirty hand ripped him from Sam’s grip, and he tumbled down the ramp until he came to rest in the dirt. As he whimpered another laugh arose in the crowd.
Sam turned to see the large hand that had pushed him belonged to Kelly.
“What did you do that for?” she asked.
“Because I could.”
“You don’t have to treat them like that.”
He looked at her with a smile. “This isn’t a tea party, sweetie.”
Then his smile disappeared.
“It took guts to do what you did,” he said. “Even if you are Coven. Nice to know someone like you has my back.”
“You think I have your back?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe not, but if I had to bet on you or Emmanuel, I’d put my money on you any day.”
“Please. Don’t do this. Don’t do this,” a voice cried.
He walked in between them with his arms pinned behind his back as Marlena pushed him forward. In a moment of panic, he tried to run back into the ship and stepped off the edge of the ramp, dropping face first to the ground ten feet below. The crowd groaned as he pushed himself up and ran his hands over his visor. Miraculously there were no cracks but blood dripped out of his mouth and nose and ran down the transparent plastic visor.
Reynolds coughed, he stood just inside the ship watching the whole thing as Kelly let out a laugh. Three men had been led out. Reynolds remained on board and Sam waited for the fifth when she realized he wasn’t coming. The commander she had fought so desperately hadn’t made it. He was dead. She looked down at her own hands as it set in.
“You promise, you'll return them unharmed,” Reynolds said.
Kelly put his arm around him and slapped his shoulder.
“You know, you’d feel a lot better if you took that suit off and let in a little dirt.”
Reynolds looked down at his arm like it was a tentacle and Kelly smiled at his reaction.
“We didn’t have the five-second rule in my house growing up.”
“I can see that.”
“Your men will be fine,” Marlena said, “If you obey orders.”
Emmanuel walked out of the ship. He had a pair of green holo-glasses on his head. His right eyebrow was swollen and his lip had a cut on it where a dab of medical salve glimmered on top. “We’re ready.”
Reynolds swallowed. “I don’t know if I can do this. What if something goes wrong? Or someone gets hurt?”
“If we do nothing, a lot of people get hurt,” Marlena said. “It’s going to be okay. No one will blame you. You’re our hostage. Right, Sam?” She turned to Sam as she still looked at her hands. “You okay?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, let’s go,” she said just above a whisper.
Reynolds swallowed again as the five of them walked back inside the ship. Sweat, body odor and an odd mix of different perfumes replaced the sterile antiseptic smell the ship had before. It smacked Sam in the face the hardest, when they entered the control room. Twelve chairs were arranged in a circle and she wished she still had her plugs. Men and women sat in the chairs with the holo-glasses over their eyes as they fiddled with controllers in their hands. On a screen nearby it showed twelve separate bird's-eye views of drones, underneath each screen it read ‘simulated test flight.’
Marlena, Emmanuel and Kelly sat down in the remaining chairs in the room. Putting on the glasses, as others played with the controllers. Short-handed on pilots, they had to fill in. Reynolds stood at the edge of the circle and looked at Sam. She nodded and entered the middle before she cleared a lump in her throat.
“My name is…” she said as she stared at all of them. “My name is Samantha Lewinson. We understand most of you have experience flying recommissioned drones, for surveillance. This mission will be different, however. The purpose will be tactical.”
Warning bells rang out as Sam watched the ground race up on one screen before it went to black. She couldn’t tell whose it was, but she suspected it was Marlena’s or Emmanuel’s.
“That’s okay it will take-”
More warning bells rang out, and a drone crashed into another before two more screens went black. Kelly let out a little laugh and then Sam saw the problem as one of the drones shot out flames that encompassed another before it crashed to the ground.
“Hey,” a woman said.
The four black screens flashed for only a moment before they refreshed to the same view as before.
Sam cleared her throat. “This isn’t a game,” she said.
“Relax,” Kelly said. "I was just-"
“You were just what? Screwing around? Endangering all of our lives by wasting time?”
Kelly looked around and rolled his eyes. Sam took a breath and calmed herself.
“As you know the controls are simple. Move Up, down, right, left and fire on your right. Look up, down, right and left on your left with the fire button in the middle.”
She paused and looked up at the screens. None went to black but several spun awkwardly or moved and jerked to a stop. It looked like they didn’t know what they were doing but they were just putting them through the paces, finding the drones’ limits.
Still she was starting to wonder if this plan even had a chance. What they were asking them to do even a professional drone pilot would find difficult. How much experience did they really have? Flying them around for reconnaissance and using them tactically, were two completely different things.
She flicked her hand in the air and all the screens were replaced by one large spherical map. At the center was the New Covenant, surrounding it was desert and within it, three red dots blinked. She moved her hand again, and the map zoomed in on a dot to show a blueprint of a building not more than two stories high. She paused to take another breath and wondered how she got here. She wasn’t a military commander. Everything they planned was based on maps and building plans they had found in the ship’s computer. She was as clueless about this as the rest, and she looked at Reynolds. The Covenant had protocols for everything, was this one of them? Could Reynolds have brought up a decoy map that targeted nonessential buildings? He kept eye contact with her as she stared at him and she turned back to the group.
“This is a station. Four drones are assigned to each one. We’ve been informed each is locked and guarded. The only way you can enter undetected is through an air shaft here,” she said and pointed an arrow to a ventilation hatch near the top.
“Before gaining access, there a
re two grates you will need to take out. Two of the four drones in each team will be assigned to getting us through the grates. One on the outside and the other on the inside.”
She circled a second point inside the building.
“Once we have entered, there will only be a couple of minutes before they realize what we’re trying to do.”
“Can we burn through them?” someone asked.
“No. You'll need to ram them. Go fast enough and you should be able to tear an opening large enough for the rest to go through.”
“So, we’re down to six then,” said a woman.
Sam nodded. “Yes. The other drones will need to navigate through the ventilation shafts which are quite narrow. They'll also need to reach the target before emergency systems kick in and seal off each one. You should assign your best pilots to each target.”
She cracked her neck.
“Once you are beyond each grate, you should have a straight line of sight to the main conduits that feed the grid.”
She swiped her hand and the rest of the blueprint faded in, showing another five stories underground. She pinched her fingers together to zoom in on a duct shaded in blue. They flew along it until they reached the end and a view of a series of cables appeared that led out of a single point.
“This is the main conduit where each station connects to the grid. It is your point of attack. Once one is destroyed, the other two teams should have only a minute before emergency systems seal off any entry. You’ll have to synchronize your efforts and be quick.”
Kelly flipped his glasses up.
“This is suicide. Even if we bring down the Shell, we’re going in there now with what, at most a hundred or two hundred people? We wait a few days, get support from all the territories and we can go in with thousands. I say we wait and don’t just get our kids but we hurt them bad. Make it so they can’t get that Shell back up again ever.”
“No. This is… this is just about the kids and the virus. I was promised,” Reynolds said.
“And our asses,” said Kelly.
“We don’t have a few days,” said Sam. “Jenny won’t be alive in a few days.”
“Neither will all of us if we go in with only a few hundred people. They’ll mow us down with the drones and then the guards will come through and clean up the rest.”
“I thought the main purpose was to destroy the weapon,” a woman said.
“It is,” said Emmanuel, “That’s why we need to do this as soon as possible. If we do our job, we won’t have to worry about the drones or the guards.”
He turned to look at Reynolds, whose mouth was agape.
“Uh, yes. Without power, there is no way to communicate with the drones. They would be useless.”
“What about the guards?” Kelly asked.
"There aren’t more than a couple hundred at most," said Reynolds. "Their first priority is to defend and re-engage the stations. The children should be essentially unguarded, but I can’t say that for the virus."
Kelly shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
“We’re putting our people's lives on the line for something two Coven are telling us? What if they’re spies? What if this whole thing is a trap?”
Sam scoffed. “I’m here because of you. You think this whole thing has been a ploy? Jenny and I risk our lives, only so we can trap a few hundred people the Coven could have just as easily taken out with drones and a little patience?” she asked.
Kelly snarled and pointed a finger at Reynolds. “It still doesn’t mean we should trust him.”
“Anyone that isn’t one hundred percent on board with this plan, there’s the door,” said Emmanuel. “If we’re divided on this, it won’t work.”
“All I’m saying is how do we know we’re not walking into a trap? You don’t think they don’t know something is up by now. Three ships leave and only two return. They have to-”
“We relayed a message we were undergoing mechanical repairs and disconnected the com,” Emmanuel said. “It’s likely by now that they might suspect that isn’t the case. They might very well be preparing for the worst now, we don’t know for certain. The only thing we are sure of is that the longer we argue the more chance of them figuring it out. We have to attack as soon as possible while we still have the element of surprise or we lose our only shot.” He looked around at the rest of the group before his eyes landed on Kelly.
“We need to destroy them,” said Kelly. “It’s the only way to guarantee survival. Why are we wasting our time on power stations? You know the building where they would have the weapon, don’t you? Why don’t we just crash this puppy into it?”
People looked around at each other as if considering that possibility for the first time before Sam heard a gravelly voice shout over top of them, it was Reynolds’.
“You can’t do that. There’s an untold number of people in that building and the surrounding ones, you would kill thousands.” He swallowed. “Some of them may be your own children. Not to mention you can’t be positive that is the only place they would hold the research. What if they make a copy? If it’s not destroyed, you will just be cementing your fate.”
“He’s right,” Emmanuel said. “We can’t risk that. The drones are still the best way. Does anyone disagree with that?” He stared hard at Kelly. “Speak now.”
“We can’t forget we’re not just here to destroy a weapon, either,” Sam said. “There are children in there that have been taken from their parents. We destroy that building and they lose their only chance. Is that what you want?”
Kelly waved them off. “Fine,” he said.
The silence hung in the air until Reynolds coughed and they began to practice again on the screen. Reynolds looked up and gave Sam a weak smile. He had so much wanted to stay out of this, but just like her he had been drawn into the middle of it. As much as he didn’t want to help, he couldn’t allow the alternative to happen. He couldn’t stand by and let them kill thousands of innocent people.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
On the cockpit monitor, a large cluster of vehicles had appeared while they were discussing their plan of attack. Sam hadn’t realized there was half that many in the camp. It was almost a small army. People squished in elbow to elbow in the back of wagons, in the realization that today was different, that today they would finally take something back.
Reynolds coughed into his gloved hand then brushed his arm across his visor as he watched the screen. He didn’t say a word but sweat dripped down his forehead. He looked not just pale but a greenish color accented his skin. Was it just the lighting?
“Are you okay?” Sam asked.
“I think so,” he said and itched at his collar.
“Thank you,” she said. “For saying something back there.”
He shook his head as if he was clearing water in his ears that wasn’t there.
“I can’t stop you. All I can do is to help save as many lives as possible.”
He flicked a series of controls while more sweat dripped down his brow. His hands shaking with each press of a button or flip of a switch.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
On the main monitor, the ground below them fell away, and the long caravan stretched out through the hills. Behind them the Covenant came into view on the horizon. It wouldn’t take the caravan more than twenty minutes to reach the Shell, but if they couldn’t bring it down, they would be sitting ducks.
She looked at the skyline of the Covenant again. It looked as beautiful as she had ever seen it with the sun beginning to set, but something was different. It was like she was looking on it with fresh eyes for the first time.
All those school lessons about it being one of their crowning achievements flooded back to the forefront of her brain. The Shell kept out everything from the barbarians to a fly that flew too close. It protected their little garden of Eden from the sin and dirtiness of the world around. The Source and the Shell were everything to them. They
were the two pillars their society stood on. A small pang of guilt crept up inside her at the thought of turning it off. Then a light lit up on the dash.
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
“Someone is contacting us.”
Reynolds stared at it a moment before he put both hands on his helmet and twisted it off with a hiss. Then he unzipped the double zipper lining along the front. It was far more utilitarian than the other suits. No form-fitting fabric or invisibility.
“What are you doing?”
“They might find it odd if I answer in a bio-suit. You still need the element of surprise, right?”
He let it drop to the floor around his legs.
“How do I look?”
Sam reached out her hand and then brought it back. She didn’t want to make him sicker.
“Your hair is sticking to your face.”
He brushed it back, his collar moved and Sam saw the first signs creeping up his neck. The first little spider web of black tendrils. She couldn’t help but pull his collar back. The tendrils grew larger and blacker the further down they went.
“When did you know?” she asked.
He coughed into his hand and nodded. “I noticed them when I first put on the suit. How bad does it look?”
“Not bad,” she lied, then grabbed the collar of his shirt and flipped it up so it was covering them.
Reynolds turned back toward the panel, hit the button and a small red hologram appeared of a man from his chest up. Sam watched Reynolds hold his breath and stifle a cough.
“N9701, have you completed the mechanical repairs?”
Reynolds swallowed and tapped his foot on the ground but his eyes stayed locked forward.
“Yes. They’ve been completed but some systems are still not operational and we need to remain under manual control for the duration of the flight.”
“That’s unusual. What caused the problems? Perhaps you should land the craft and we can send you more techs so you don’t have to fly manual over a populated area.”
“The ship took damage to the autopilot during the incident on the beach. It went unnoticed until we were mid-flight. We prefer to just come home and out of hostile territory if it’s all the same to you.”
