Mother Ship

by Scott Bartlett

  “You’re not, though.”

  Cynthia jerked back as if she’d been slapped. Part of him regretted that, but a larger part relished it. The memory of the GDA soldiers’ corpses flashed through his mind—four people dead, because of what he’d done to them. He’d hurt them so they couldn’t stop him, and they were vulnerable to the Ravagers as a result.

  They weren’t the first people he’d killed, but they were the first ones who’d retained their humanity. They were fully conscious. They might have had futures. But now, they didn’t.

  What had happened to their bodies? Had Janet even bothered to have them buried?

  “You’re not my mother,” he repeated. “And you didn’t raise a son. You raised a weapon.”

  Tears fell from Cynthia’s eyes, trickling down her cheeks, glistening in the dim light.

  Still, he pressed on. “Is that what you meant by making me great, Peter? Is that what I’m supposed to be so thankful for? You haven’t seen what I’ve done. You saw the result—some of it, anyway—but you don’t know what it’s like to be the one to pull the trigger. To take human lives. Let me tell you. It scars your soul in a way that never heals. Those marks are fresh, but I already know they’ll never leave me. So thanks for that.”

  He fell silent, breathing hard, thinking he was done. But he found that he had one more thing to say.

  “If I am a weapon, then I guess you do know what it’s like to pull the trigger. You created me, after all, and your creation has killed people. Lots of them.” He glared at Peter, who stared back at him, still silent. “But you’re clearly such a noble person that it probably won’t disturb your sleep like it has mine.”

  After that, none of them had anything to say as the truck whisked them toward wherever Janet had chosen as their destination. Colorado, no doubt.

  Max wondered what Ted would say if he was here. Probably nothing good. The man had gone rogue so that Max could keep away from Janet. Now, his efforts counted for nothing.

  Somehow, Max couldn’t bring himself to care.

  39

  4 days to extinction

  Benson’s search party was considerably smaller than it had been before the Ravager attack.

  There were six.

  “I can’t leave the fort underdefended, Ted. Not for one boy. Not when there are women and children that need protecting.”

  Ted understood. In fact, he was surprised Benson had agreed to reassemble the search party at all, considering they’d almost been overwhelmed while defending Fort Benson with everyone he had. If Maisie had fallen in the attack, Ted wasn’t sure the search would be happening right now. He doubted there was anyone else Benson trusted enough to put in charge of the place’s defense.

  Of the fifty-four people Benson had originally gathered at his farm, thirty-seven now remained, and eight of those were injured. They’d lost seventeen people. It would have been a devastating blow under normal circumstances. Here at the end of the world, it felt ruinous.

  For the most part, the people they’d lost hadn’t been military, or even police. They’d been civilians. Survivalists, yes, but people who should never have found themselves in the line of fire. They’d gone to battle anyway, for their own survival and the survival of those around them. And they’d died for that.

  Ted felt a tear tumble down his cheek, and he wiped it away, sniffing sharply.

  Benson had a far-off look to him. He was a good man, who seemed capable of great empathy. In Ted’s distress over losing Max, he read the angst of a father who’d lost his son, and the farmer was obviously able to translate that into how he would feel if he lost Tara.

  The fact the man could muster such empathy after losing seventeen of his people astounded Ted. He wasn’t sure he could have done it, in Benson’s position.

  I’d go cold. I’d want payback from the Ravagers, and I’d want it with interest.

  But somehow, Benson was holding onto his humanity. Chambers shook his head. Amazing.

  Picking out Yago’s trail proved challenging, with the surrounding wheat fields as trampled as they were. After twenty minutes of crisscrossing the property, Ted spied three hoof prints between the woods and the barn. He knelt beside them, fingering them lightly. They pointed toward the woods to the east.

  East. The same direction Benson’s scout had seen the GDA operative come from, just before the attack.

  So Max hadn’t chosen a random direction to flee in. He’d been headed toward Janet.

  Why?

  Then, the answer hit him like a sack of potatoes up the side of his head. Cynthia and Peter. Ted wasn’t a psychologist, and since he’d taken on the task of keeping Max away from Janet, he’d been focused on only that. Max’s internal reactions to everything happening around him had remained a mystery to Ted, and he hadn’t bothered trying to decipher them.

  Now that he did try, the lad’s motives presented themselves within seconds. Clearly, he’d been feeling guilty about letting his guardians remain in Janet’s hands, all so he could be free. A guilt he’d successfully concealed from Ted, and maybe from Jimmy too.

  It didn’t pay to forget that the boy had been bred for his intelligence as well as his ability to resist the aliens’ neural smart dust. Max didn’t wear his enhanced cognition on his sleeve, so it was easy to ignore his IQ, which Ted knew clocked in at genius levels. Clearly, part of that intelligence was the ability to keep a tight rein on his emotions.

  Ted rose to his feet and whistled to Benson, who jogged over from the north, where he’d been combing the ground there.

  The man was slightly out of breath when he drew close, though not as much as Ted would have expected. “Found something?” Benson asked.

  Ted nodded. “He went east. Let’s saddle up.”

  Ten minutes later, Ted, Benson, and four other searchers were spread out in a line, carefully picking their way through the blackjack oaks on horseback.

  Ted picked up the trail again twenty meters into the woods, and they followed it for another five. A cracked branch here, at the height of a person on horseback, a scuffed rock there. Then the trail vanished again underneath the stampede of human footprints.

  Shaking his head, he cursed. Benson gave a sympathetic smile and said nothing.

  They rode on, traveling in widening arcs to cover all the likely trajectories.

  “You don’t have to answer this,” Benson said, after a long stretch of focused silence. “But you ain’t a farmer, are you? At least, not just a farmer. If I had to guess, I’d say special ops. Rangers?”

  “You said I didn’t have to answer.” A smile tugged at his lips, but he didn’t let it form.

  “You don’t.”

  “All right, then.” He waited as Benson’s restlessness played across his face. The man was obviously struggling with what to say next, or whether to say anything.

  Ted resumed his inspection of the forest floor. “You were close. I served two tours as a SEAL. In Iraq.”

  “I knew it. We were paired with a SEAL Task Unit in Fallujah, to clear out one of the hottest areas of the city. Basically, we watched their sixes while they got in the enemy’s faces.” Benson chuckled. “You guys always walked around like your shit don’t stink.”

  “It doesn’t. They beat the shit out of you in BUD/S.” Despite how taxing his SEAL physical testing had been, Ted still harbored a certain fondness for it—as well as pride, for being one of the few to get through it.

  “Ha. And you got to have beards on top of it all. Bastards.”

  Ted raised his eyes, amused. He glanced meaningfully at Benson’s clean-shaven cheeks.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know I don’t have one even now. Damn thing itches. But it’s the principle of it.”

  The ground seemed to hold nothing for Ted—no sign of Yago’s passage. But he continued to inspect it as he processed what Benson had told him. “So you were in Fallujah.”

  Benson nodded. “Infantry. Staff sergeant.” He spat. “Fallujah. There’s one shitshow I don’t miss. Except
for spending every minute of every day wishing I was back there.”

  “Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ted returned to his thoughts. Usually, he could tell when someone was military. But Benson didn’t act like it. And he certainly hadn’t kept himself in the physical condition the army demanded, though few did.

  “The way you handled that knife, back in the house—they didn’t teach you that technique in the army.”

  Benson grinned. “I always had my own way of doing things. It worked, didn’t it?”

  “I suppose it did.”

  I’ve been blind. Now that he considered it more, the way Benson had organized his home’s defense was beyond the skill of a survivalist. So did the way he marshaled his people, and his knack for keeping their morale up.

  Ted had read once that men naturally maintained social circles that resembled military units. Each man tended to keep a few close friends—his squad—along with a larger circle of acquaintances, which equated to a platoon. The next largest, more disparate circle represented his company, and the one after that, his battalion.

  Men were always preparing for war, even without knowing it. But few people could have leveraged that natural tendency like Benson had.

  “Look here.” The big man had brought his horse, a paint, to a halt. “These footprints are all going against the shit-for-brains’. Looks like dozens of people came this way. The footprints are more orderly, too, and judging by the tread marks, they were all wearing the same sort of footwear.”

  Ted brought Daisy over to where Benson was looking. “Combat boots.”

  They exchanged glances, Benson’s eyes widened. “The same unit that soldier belonged to?”

  “Seems likely.” He scanned the surrounding area, taking Daisy in widening circles. Two parallel sets of footprints branched off from this area: one approaching, the other retreating.

  As they followed the retreating footprints to the east, a narrative began to assemble itself in Ted’s mind. Janet had managed to figure out where they were, and had sent soldiers in to extract Max from Fort Benson. But outnumbered by the Ravager hordes and running out of ammo, she’d called a retreat.

  He and Benson broke from the trees and into a clearing. His breath caught in his throat.

  There, in the middle of the open space, stood Yago, munching on a patch of thick stalks protruding from the ground. The red roan rose his head to glance at them, whinnied, and returned to his meal.

  “That’s your boy’s horse.” Benson’s voice was still and solemn.

  Ted dismounted from Daisy and crossed the clearing, hand outstretched. Yago nosed his palm, probably checking for snacks, before lowering his muzzle to the stalks once more.

  “He doesn’t seem scared. Meaning there probably wasn’t a struggle.”

  “How does that make sense?” Something had crept into Benson’s voice. Suspicion? “The shit-for-brains would have torn the horse apart along with your son. Clearly, that didn’t happen. There was no reason for him to leave the animal. Except if he was taken by someone else.”

  Ted said nothing.

  “These soldiers…why would they want your boy, Ted?”

  Ted shook his head as he returned to Daisy’s side. Once there, he pulled himself back into the saddle. “Come on.”

  They followed the soldiers’ footsteps out of the woods, to a grassy field that bore the marks of heavy vehicles.

  “I recognize these tracks.” They’d both dismounted, and Benson was pointing at the ground. “They’re Bradley tracks. Whoever these soldiers are, they’re not screwing around. Are they, Ted?”

  He still didn’t answer. Instead, he followed the tracks to the road. His gaze was drawn left, to the west, where the road disappeared over the horizon. There was no sign of the GDA.

  “Damn it.”

  Benson drew up beside him and stared off into the distance, in the same direction as Ted. Then he turned to face him. “Care to share exactly what’s going on?”

  I haven’t decided yet. “Round up the others,” he said. “I’ll get Yago. We’re heading back.”

  There’s no catching them now.

  40

  4 days to extinction

  There was so much Cynthia wanted to tell Max, she felt like she would burst.

  She wanted to convey to him how it had felt to hold him as a newborn. Mostly, she had been surprised at the endless well of emotion inside her. Before taking this job, she’d told herself she had no desire to have children. In a strange way, that had been part of what made her ideal for this position.

  “I don’t have a mothering instinct,” she would joke with her friends.

  But in the weeks after Max’s arrival, she felt almost overcome with love for him. She developed a strong attachment, along with the knowledge she would sooner die than let him come to harm.

  Looking back, she knew now that if she hadn’t had that response—if she’d remained the clinical scientist while attempting to raise him—it likely wouldn’t have worked. It was her and Peter’s love, and Max’s trust they wouldn’t fail him, which had allowed him to grow into a young man who everyone believed might actually be capable of bearing the enormous burden now placed on him.

  Maybe the GDA’s psychoanalysts had detected that parenting instinct in her and Peter, even when they’d missed it in themselves. Either way, it was why any of this had worked.

  And it was also what had allowed them to deceive Max so thoroughly.

  They really were his loving parents—or at least, they’d acted the part so convincingly that he never suspected the truth, other than the low-level anxiety that had plagued him all his life. But sometime in the last year, it seemed he’d overcome even that hurdle.

  Janet didn’t understand how Cynthia had come to feel about Max. She couldn’t understand, being childless herself. Instead, the woman saw him as the asset she insisted on calling him. A tool to be used. A weapon to be wielded. And now that was exactly what she planned to do.

  Meanwhile, Cynthia was finally united with Max, who she saw as her son, even if he’d stopped thinking of her as his mother. They were finally together again—except, everything was wrong.

  She’d given up her freedom, and endured Janet’s cruelty, so that he could be free of the woman’s influence. Peter had done the same. Yet here Max was. So suspicious that he probably wouldn’t trust a thing Cynthia or Peter said.

  Still, I have to try.

  She couldn’t tell him how much it had meant to her to hear him speak his first words. How magical it had been to watch him learn to crawl, and then to walk.

  She was his mother. Of course she was. She felt it in her very bones. But she couldn’t communicate an emotion. Couldn’t speak a sensation.

  I have to get through to him all the same.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Max spoke instead, surprising her. Even though she’d spent the last two decades analyzing his psychology, he still surprised her.

  “Tell me what to expect in Colorado,” he said.

  At first, she couldn’t speak. The simple fact he was asking her suggested that at least some of their bond remained. He still trusted her, at least on some level. Even after what he’d discovered, and even after what he’d said earlier.

  “Cynthia?”

  The sound of her name from his mouth brought her back to reality. Would he ever call her his mother again? “We’re headed for the Rockies, to a secret installation the government first constructed in the early fifties.”

  “After Roswell happened.”

  “That’s right. The government was having good progress reverse engineering the tech they recovered from the crashed vessel—that work happened at a facility closer to the crash site. They became confident enough to open another site. The one where we’re headed. Very few people know about it, which was a precaution against the aliens figuring out what we were up to.”

  He nodded. “Chambers explained all that to me.”

  C
hambers. It was odd to hear Max call the agent that, and not “Principal Chambers,” or “Mr. Chambers.” He’d always had such respect for the man, but clearly their relationship had changed as well.

  “Then you know the installation in the Rockies is the location from which the GDA has always planned to launch its counterattack. The fighters only became viable for space combat in 2009, and we’ve managed to produce no more than a squadron of them.”

  “Why is that? You must have known the alien invasion force would be huge. Why just one squadron?”

  “It’s because of the fuel they require, called element 115, or Moscovium. That’s what allows the aliens to generate gravity waves—what allows them to hover stationary over cities like we’ve seen, among other things. But we’ve never been able to produce a stable version of the element, and without it, our fighters are useless against the alien ships. The crashed vessel had enough stable Moscovium to power sixteen of our fighters for around four hours, and that’s it.”

  “So we’ll have four hours to fend off the entire invasion force.”

  Cynthia sighed. “That’s right.”

  Max laughed. “Seems likely.” Then he sighed too, and in that exhalation Cynthia could hear the weight of the task that had been placed on his shoulders. “You still haven’t told me what I should expect when we reach the installation.”

  She steadied herself with a couple deep breaths. There was only one outcome she could allow herself to entertain. “General Andrews will be there, by now. He’s a good man, and he’ll have plenty of backup. Plenty of firepower. Janet answers to him, so she’ll have no choice but to hand you over. You’ll be treated as a human being. A collaborator. Not a weapon.”