by P. T. Hylton
“As to your other question,” the general said, “the Council has increased R&D funding fifty percent, and they want the entire team outfitted and trained for jet pack usage as quickly as possible.”
This time, Alex had to look down to hide her smile.
“Captain, come with me.” With that, the general turned and marched out of the room, CB close at his heels.
Alex barely had time to snap a salute before they were gone.
She sank back into her chair, relieved that the meeting was over and she was still a lieutenant in the GMT.
“She’s a good kid, General,” CB said. They were walking down a long hallway in a part of the GMT Headquarters that only a select few ever saw. CB was careful to pace himself exactly a half step behind General Craig.
Craig sighed. “I know. She just needs to learn some discipline.”
“She’ll learn. She’s not that different than me, when I was her age.”
The general barked out a harsh laugh. “Honestly, I think you were worse.”
Now that they were out of the Strategic Planning room and alone, Craig was letting down his guard a little. As much as he’d blustered at Alex’s little stunt, CB suspected the general was secretly amused by the whole situation. It certainly helped that the demonstration had been successful.
“Only question is, will she be ready when we really need her?” They came to a locked set of steel double doors, and the general swiped his ID over the key reader. The light above the doors turned green, and they pushed them open.
CB raised an eyebrow at the general’s comment. “Something I should know, General? We got a ground mission coming up?”
The general shook his head. “This is something else.”
CB waited. He’d worked with Craig long enough to understand that the best way to get something out of him was to shut up and let him talk.
“The intelligence spooks tell me there are some serious people throwing around the idea of landing the ship and trying to take back some ground on the surface.”
CB stopped in his tracks. That idea was pure idiocy. “Resettlement? But it’s just talk, right?”
The general shrugged. “For now. But apparently, they’re organizing. It’s becoming a bit of a movement.”
“Jesus.” As someone who’d been to the surface of Earth more than a hundred times in his career, CB knew survival was impossible. Forty thousand humans versus what was down there? The humans wouldn’t last three days.
They came to another set of steel doors. This time, Craig punched a ten-digit code into the number pad on the wall and again swiped his badge. The doors opened, and they stepped into the most restricted area in New Haven.
It was a large open room, mostly empty except for a fifteen-by-fifteen steel box. The walls on three sides of the room were glass, and sunlight streamed in, making CB blink against the brightness.
“How quickly they forget, right, CB?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Humanity fights for its survival and somehow, against all odds, our ancestors are among the lucky few who escape on the Haven. And just a few generations later, people want to go back.”
Steel rang out as the thing inside the cage slammed against the wall.
“In their defense, sir, they haven’t seen what we have.”
There was a hint of sadness in the general’s voice when he replied, “No, they haven’t.”
Craig stepped toward a monitor mounted on the wall. It showed a live feed of the inside of the steel box. CB reluctantly walked to the general’s side in front of the monitor.
The general gently tapped a fingernail on the screen. “You and I both know the only way we’re going back to Earth is if old Frank here kicks the bucket.”
CB forced himself to look at the screen.
He’d seen the creature hundreds of times, but it never failed to make him shudder. Huddled in the corner and looking directly into the camera, the creature looked more animal than human. Its ears, teeth, and fingers were longer than any man’s, and its eyes were as red as the blood for which it hungered. The feral creature was New Haven’s sole vampire.
4
Alex’s feet slapped the concrete as she ran through the Hub. It was midmorning of the day after she’d been reprimanded by CB and the general. She’d spent the last hour cleaning latrines, and now she needed to sweat a little. Exercise always helped to clear her mind, too. Things that seemed complicated often clarified themselves after a few miles of running.
After a night of reflecting on the jet pack situation, she understood why the general had been upset. More than that, she knew that he was right. Her actions had been rash, and she’d put herself in danger with untested equipment. It had been the wrong move, even if it had achieved a positive result. But she also knew what had driven her to do it: she loved the Ground Mission Team more than anything, and she wanted the best possible equipment for her teammates.
Before she’d joined the GMT, she’d been a traditional badge—an officer of the law. While that had been rewarding in its own way, it had been a means to an end. She’d wanted to be a member of the GMT for as long as she could remember. She’d wanted to set foot on the surface of Earth, the place humans had lived for most of their history. The place humans belonged.
Here aboard New Haven everyone had a job to do, and all those jobs added up to keeping the massive airship in the sky. It hadn’t been until the first time she’d stood on the surface of Earth that she realized how different things were there. It felt like home. Standing there had felt right. For the first time, she’d understood that humans didn’t have to exist simply as tools to keep New Haven functional. On Earth, she’d felt free.
She’d tried to explain the feeling to a couple of non-GMT friends, but she couldn’t properly put it into words. Her friends had looked at her like she was crazy. Maybe that was part of the reason she’d been spending less time with them over the past six months and more time with her teammates. There was a bond among those who’d been to the surface, a shared knowledge that others just couldn’t understand.
The streets were quiet this morning, and the sun shone brightly through the windows of the ship. Alex wiped a forearm across her brow, sweeping away the sweat before it fell into her eyes. She pushed a little harder, increasing her pace.
Up ahead, she saw a familiar building. She’d spent twelve years there, learning history, math, and science. As she approached, she glanced through a window into a classroom of twenty or so children she guessed were about ten years old. She hoped they weren’t giving their teacher as much trouble as she had given hers. It was strange to think these kids would live their entire lives aboard New Haven while the great big Earth sat below them, not a single human on its surface.
Seeing the children brought on another passing thought: as a member of the GMT, she had the right to have up to three children. Births were highly regulated on New Haven; they had to be, if the proper population required for the safe operation of the ship was to be maintained. A baby boom would be a disaster, stretching the limited space, food, and other resources past the breaking point.
Couples on New Haven were allowed to have two children, no more. The GMT was the exception. Probably because so many of them didn’t live long enough to start a family.
Alex wasn’t in a rush to have kids, but having the option was nice. For now, she just wanted to be the most kick-ass GMT member CB and the general had ever seen. If she got lucky, maybe she’d have the chance to make a real difference in the future of the kids in that classroom and everyone else aboard.
It was a long shot, but on runs like this she often dreamed that she’d one day help humanity return home.
Jessica Bowen, Director of Engineering, stood in the center of the control room, surveying her team, hard at work all around her.
The Engineering control room was hidden away in the depths of the airship, and most residents of New Haven rarely gave it any thought. It wasn’t like the Agricultural section, which cove
red a significant percentage of the ship’s surface. Most residents didn’t go more than a day or two without seeing the fields of corn, wheat, and vegetables covered by a glass dome that darkened to simulate night for twelve hours each day.
Jessica had to admit that there was something beautiful about the fields, something that screamed Earth. Not that she’d ever actually been down to the surface. But the pictures and videos she’d seen resembled the fields more than anything else on the ship. It felt especially Earthy when the gentle, artificial mist fell on the crops, gathered by the ship from cloud vapors.
But just because people didn’t think about Engineering didn’t mean it was any less important. That was part of the reason Jessica loved her job. She was surrounded by the guts of the ship, the moving parts that kept humanity afloat and alive.
She cleared her throat and addressed her four-person monitoring crew. “All right, gang, hit me with the numbers. How we doing?”
She’d addressed the question to everyone, but Steven, the newest member of the crew, was monitoring the power levels, so he was expected to answer.
“Um, we’re looking good, Jessica.”
“Care to be a bit more specific?”
Jessica waited as the young man frantically scanned the monitors in front of him for the required information.
“Um, okay, here we are. Cruising altitude, holding steady at just over twenty-five thousand feet above sea level.”
“Twenty-five thousand, one hundred sixty-two,” another crew member interjected.
“Right,” Steven said, clearly a little flummoxed. “Speed, four-hundred-two miles per hour. Current location, just off the tip of the land mass that was formerly known as the nation of Australia. Power levels holding steady.”
Jessica nodded toward Steven. “Good.”
The kid visibly relaxed now that his report was over.
On most days, Engineering did very little. The ship’s auto-regulation systems kept things running smoothly the majority of the time. The computers flew the ship near the poles—the south pole for half the year, and the north for the other half—at the precise speed needed to keep them in sunlight. They traveled with the rotation of the Earth, maintaining speed and altitude through a combination of solar and nuclear power.
Jessica wasn’t one to be complacent. The only reason things ran so well was because previous generations of engineers had worked hard to make it so. She intended to leave New Haven to her successor in better condition than she’d found it, so she was constantly looking for new, better ways to do things. Questioning was part of her nature.
She still remembered a conversation she’d had with her mother shortly after she’d toured the Engineering department as a teenager.
“Don’t you think all the work we put into staying in sunlight is overkill?” she’d asked her mother.
Her mother had smiled. She’d always encouraged Jessica’s questions. “You know what dentures and vampires have in common? They both come out at night.”
Jessica had chuckled. “I know that. But do we even know if the vampires are still alive? They need blood to survive, right? And even if they are alive, we’re at twenty-five thousand feet.”
“It’s a fair question. One of the reasons is that the ship is partially solar powered. Haven needs all the sunlight she can drink.”
“What’s the other reason?”
“We really don’t know what the vampires are capable of. They’ve had the Earth to themselves for one hundred and fifty years. I’d like to think we’re safe up here. On the other hand, we’re the last of humanity. As far as we can tell, the vampires don’t even know New Haven exists. Best to keep it that way.”
“Ma’am, there’s something you should see.” Steven’s voice brought her back from the memory.
She marched to his station and saw a red light flashing on one of the monitors. It was a motor in the temperature-regulation system. Not vital to keeping the ship in the sky, but things would get pretty cold in New Haven if that went out.
“Check the inventory for a backup unit,” she said.
Steven’s fingers danced on his keyboard. “Um, that is the backup unit, ma’am. Looks like the primary went out last year. We requested the Council send the GMT down for a replacement, but the request is still pending.”
“After a year?” Jessica shook her head in disgust. She stormed back to her desk and radioed Councilman Stearns’s office.
Alex showered after her run, then headed toward the R&D room. She still needed to de-stress, and nothing calmed her like playing with experimental weapons that could blow up in her hands at any moment.
Besides, she owed the R&D department a report on how the jet pack operated.
To call Research and Development a department was a bit of an overstatement. It was really one man, Brian McElroy, and his dozen or so assistants. Brian was a certified genius, with a curious mind, a sleep disorder that let him work long into the night, and a major crush on Alex, one she wasn’t above exploiting when it came time for him to select who would test his latest creations.
Today, like most days, she found him hunched over a circuit board in the corner of the lab. His assistant, Sarah, saw Alex approaching, but Alex put a finger to her lips.
She snuck up close behind Brian. Not that she had to sneak too carefully. He was oblivious to everything in his world when he was working. She looked over his shoulder to make sure there was nothing too breakable in front of him, then grabbed him from behind in a big hug.
He nearly jumped out of his skin and let out a decidedly unmanly squeal, but when he realized who was hugging him, he quickly relaxed.
“Brian, the jet pack was kick-ass!”
A broad smile broke out on his face. “Good! I’m glad it, you know, performed to your expectations.”
She punched his arm playfully. “It did more than that. It was like the thing was obeying my every thought. I was corkscrewing, flipping—you name it.”
“You were doing corkscrews in the hangar?”
“You didn’t hear? I took it outside.”
Brian’s face grew pale. “Wait, seriously? It wasn’t ready for that. The stabilizers aren’t calibrated for that kind of wind.”
“Relax, buddy. It worked great.” She glanced a Sarah, who was watching the awkward interaction with a smile on her face.
“It must have gone well,” Sarah said. “We just got the City Council’s requisition. They want two dozen more of these things in three months. Between that and everything else our boy Brian is working on, we’ll be pulling some long hours for the foreseeable future.”
“You’re welcome,” Alex said. She leaned against Brian’s desk. “So, you’re working on other stuff?”
Brian glanced at Sarah. “Should we tell her?”
“Probably not.”
Brian considered that for a moment, then said, “Okay, Alex, but you can’t tell anyone.”
Sarah groaned. “If you’re not going to take my opinion into consideration, maybe don’t ask.”
“Seriously, Alex,” Brian said. “I need to tell leadership about it when I’m ready. Can you keep it secret?”
That was part of the reason Alex pushed him on this kind of stuff. If it were up to him, he’d keep tweaking things until they were perfect. If it hadn’t been for her “accidentally” letting something slip to CB, the jet pack would probably still be sitting in this room, untested. “Yeah, of course I’ll keep a secret.”
“Good.” Brian scurried across the room and pulled something out of a drawer. He tossed it to Alex, but the throw was off target and she had to lunge to catch the small object. “Look familiar?”
She weighed it in her hand. “It’s a bullet.”
“Yes!” Brian smiled like she’d just solved a tough math equation. “But it’s a better bullet. Think of it as a hollow-point round taken to the next level.”
It felt pretty ordinary to Alex. “You have my attention.”
Brian was talking faster now, getting e
xcited. All his shyness and awkwardness disappeared when he started talking about his work. “This thing explodes just after impact. It was difficult to get the timing down, but I think we’ve finally nailed it. You shoot a vampire in the neck with this thing, it’ll take its head off.”
“That’s fantastic.” Alex was tempted to hug Brian again, but she didn’t want to overdo the flirting. “Can I take some with me? Test them on the shooting range?”
The smile disappeared from Brian’s face. “I wish that were possible, but you know it isn’t. General Craig needs to approve the design before we can test it.”
Alex sighed. “Okay. You can’t blame a girl for trying.” She headed toward the door. “Stay brilliant, you two.”
After Alex left, Sarah waited ten minutes, then slipped away. She hopped in her cart and left GMT headquarters. After taking a few unnecessary turns to assure herself she wasn’t being followed, she cut through Sparrow’s Ridge and headed for the Hub.
She parked her cart a block away from the City Council Building and approached the rest of the way on foot. Once she was inside, she headed toward a service elevator in toward the back of the building. Using the key card she’d been given, she let herself into the restricted area and made her way to an unmarked door. She knocked three times, then waited.
After nearly twenty seconds, a voice said, “It’s safe. Come in.”
She opened the door and slipped through the back entrance to the office of Councilman Fleming.
“Were you followed?” Fleming asked.
Sarah shook her head. “I doubled back twice like you said.”
“Good.” Fleming leaned forward and smiled. “Now tell me what the GMT R&D department is working on.”
5
Alex arrived at the GMT workout facility just after lunch. The place was more crowded than usual. Her teammates Drew, Firefly, and Owl were working out with free weights, and two non-GMT members, Wesley and Thomas, were sparring on one of the mats.
