A thump on the side of his helmet made Turcotte start, then he realized it was his own hand, unconsciously moving up to touch the spot over the implant. That brought him back to the current situation. Aspasia’s Shadow. Immortal.
But.
The word echoed in Turcotte’s mind. Checks and balances. He doubted very much that the Airlia had designed the Grail to give immortality to humans without having a way of taking back the gift. In his mind he replayed the scene when he had first met Aspasia’s Shadow in the mothership, inside Ararat—the first time he’d met the creature after it had partaken of the Grail. Only one thing had seemed to disconcert Aspasia’s Shadow.
Turcotte drew the sword from his side and grasped it gingerly with his mechanical hand. He drew the arm back, the stars glistening off the blade.
Aspasia’s Shadow’s eyes came alive with intelligence. His mouth opened, struggling for air, the pain etched across his features. He focused on the sword above Turcotte’s head, and his eyes widened in fear.
Turcotte swung, and the sword sliced through Aspasia’s Shadow’s neck, parting head from body in one smooth stroke.
Blood flowed out of the neck for a moment, then stopped. Turcotte waited to see if there would be any change. After a minute nothing. Aspasia’s Shadow was finally dead.
CHAPTER 16: THE PRESENT
Space
Turcotte turned toward the mothership. “Yakov?” “Yes?” “How are they doing on stopping the launches?”
“I haven’t heard from them since the initial transmission,” Yakov said. “FM radio won’t reach through the side of the station.”
“Damn.it,” Turcotte cursed.
With one last glance at Aspasia’s Shadow’s severed head and torso, Turcotte jetted around the mothership toward the space station. He spotted two suited men flanking the tear that had been blown in the side of the station. Turcotte passed between them.
Lights were flickering as the station’s power struggled to continue running. There was no one in the module. Turcotte twisted and went headfirst into the connecting corridor. He bumped into one of the commandos as he entered the next module.
He was assaulted by a blast of FM communications. It sounded like everyone was trying to speak at once, the radio waves contained inside the module. Six men in TASC suits were crowded inside along with four dead Guides. They were all gathered around one of their own, who was seated at a laptop computer, trying to type with great difficulty, given the limitations of the oversize hand he was using.
“Shut up!” Turcotte yelled.
The airwaves fell silent. “Status?”
“I can’t get the codes entered,” Manning said. Turcotte saw the name tag on the man at the computer and realized it was Manning.
Turcotte checked the chronometer display inside his helmet. Less than three minutes until the matrix was fired. He’d counted on Manning and his men to take care of this. He wouldn’t have floated above the planet contemplating Aspasia’s Shadow’s fate if he’d known there was a problem.
“Why not?”
Manning held up his artificial hand, now with a screwdriver grasped between two large fingers. “Too big.”
“Why didn’t you bring it back to the mothership?”
Manning was still trying to type in codes using the screwdriver. “By the time we took it off-line from the station’s SATCom system, transported it over, hooked it back up and got it on-line…” Manning didn’t finish the statement as he continued to peck at the keyboard. “I’ve got five of the targets off the matrix.”
Turcotte found it so amazing he almost started laughing. After all he’d been through, to have the planet devastated by a nuclear strike from his own country—and to fail to stop it because they simply couldn’t type in the proper code to stop it in time.
He did a time check. Two minutes.
Turcotte turned toward the side of the module closest to the mothership. He raised the MK-98 and fired his remaining six rounds, tearing a gap in the wall so he could communicate on the local FM band—line of sight.
“Quinn.” “Sir?”
“If we can’t get all the stop codes entered in time—options?” There was silence.
“Seven,” Manning announced.
Eighteen to go, Turcotte thought. No way will Manning will make it. “Quinn?”
“Ten,” Manning was poking with the screwdriver. Turcotte wondered which cities had been saved and which were still doomed as he waited for a response. “Send a new matrix,” Quinn said. “What?” Turcotte asked.
“It’s the quickest way. One new entry instead of deleting all the old entries.”
Turcotte reached forward and tapped the commando’s commander on the shoulder. “Manning, you get that?”
“I got it, but how do I do it? And the nukes will still go off somewhere.”
“Not if you reset to target their own launch sites,” Quinn said. “The data is already there—it has to be in order for a matrix to work. Just turn it against itself.”
Quinn rattled off a series of numbers and Manning pecked at the keyboard. Turcotte floated in the background, feeling quite useless. He checked the time. Under a minute. The seconds clicked off.
Quinn fell silent. Ten seconds. “Quinn?” Turcotte asked.
“It’s done.”
Turcotte grabbed hold and moved himself to the opening he had created. He pushed out of the hatch and looked down at the planet. He could imagine the turmoil on board submarines, inside bombers and launch control centers as crews realized they would be destroying themselves if they launched their weapons. He watched the United States, now almost all in daylight, waiting for the telltale burst of a nuclear weapon exploding as there would be no transit time. Nothing.
Tripler Army Medical Center, Oahu, Hawaii
It was early morning, a few hours before the sun would come up. Terry Cummings carefully unhooked the various monitoring devices from Kelly Reynolds. Cummings knew that other than the intravenous drip providing nourishment, none of the gear made any difference. The doctors had done all they could and the consensus was that it was a miracle Reynolds was alive and no one had any faith that she would ever recover.
Cummings rolled the bed into the quiet hallway to the elevator. Once on board, she pressed the button for the roof. When the doors slid open, she pushed the bed onto the roof of the center tower of Tripler. Since the hospital was already high up on top of Moanalua Ridge, she had a commanding view of the south side of the island of Oahu. An offshore breeze gently blew across the rooftop. Cummings turned the crank on the side of Reynolds’s bed, raising her frail upper body so that she was half-sitting. The lights of Honolulu were off to the left. The island was still in the throes of recovering from the nanovirus assault but life was slowly getting back to normal. Cummings looked down at Reynolds. Her eyes were closed, the skin taut against her cheekbones.
Cummings leaned over, her mouth near Reynolds’s ear. “Feel the breeze?” She reached down and took the clawlike hands in her own, rubbing the leathery skin. “Do you feel my hands on yours?”
Cummings moved from the hands up the arms, working Reynolds’s entire body, slowly and with great diligence so that when the sun began to rise, she had just finished. Throughout she had spoken to Reynolds, keeping up the conversation as if the other woman were replying. Cummings stretched, then cranked the top half of the bed back down. Focused on pushing it back toward the elevator, she failed to notice a muscle on the side of Reynolds’s face twitch as if the woman were trying to speak. The muscle moved for several moments, then subsided.
Camp Rowe, North Carolina
Turcotte was actually looking forward to the journey to Mars. It would be an opportunity to rest and recuperate. As far as what would happen when they got to the Red Planet, he blocked thinking about that right now, shutting down his thought projection as effectively as if a steel door had come down through his mind. He was so tired he knew that any plan he came up with at the moment would likely have serious flaws i
n it.
They were touching down at Camp Rowe, returning from defeating Aspasia’s Shadow—for the last time—a phrase that Turcotte savored. A creature that had led the Mission for generations and haunted the history of mankind had finally been vanquished. It was a victory, a clear-cut one. Yakov was by Turcotte’s side as they went down the main corridor of the mothership.
“One down, two to go,” Yakov said. “Excuse me?”
“The Swarm and Artad,” Yakov said.
Exactly what Turcotte didn’t want to contemplate at the moment. The cargo door slowly slid open and Turcotte paused. There was someone standing by the ramp leading into the mothership, silhouetted by the lights ringing the airfield. A tall woman clutching an old leather briefcase to her chest with an overnight bag at her feet. She had wide shoulders and shoulder-length gray hair.
She extended one hand as Turcotte approached. “Major Turcotte, I’m Professor Leahy.”
“Can you duplicate what Tesla did?” Turcotte asked.
She didn’t answer. She kept her hand extended, until Turcotte shook it. “Yes.”
Turcotte blinked, surprised at her confidence. “You only just saw his lost papers, how—” “Do you want me to make his weapon?” Leahy asked.
Turcotte nodded. Yakov came up behind him.
“Then why are you questioning my answer?” she asked.
Turcotte smiled. “You’ll do well with this gang. Welcome aboard.” He introduced her to Yakov. The Russian picked up her overnight bag and indicated for her to follow him on board. She pointed where several forklifts were lined up, holding pallets.
“I gave Major Quinn a list of what I’ll need. Pretty basic stuff, actually. It wasn’t hard to find. And most of what I brought is material I already had. I’ve been working on Tesla’s coil for over thirty years.”
“Why?” Turcotte asked.
“Because of the potential.” She smiled. “And I was right, wasn’t I? You’ve called, haven’t you?” Turcotte nodded. “Good. Let’s move then. We’ve got a long way to go.”
Mars
The Airlia convoy reached the edge of the array. The large vehicles were dwarfed by the pylons arching overhead. They maneuvered around to the one that wasn’t complete and came to a halt. Hatches opened on the vehicles and Airlia piled out dressed in black pressure suits. All the survivors that Aspasia had left behind.
Most began putting together prefab enclosures. A handful walked over to the thick base of the pylon. They looked up. The unfinished portion was far above them, but in the lesser gravity of Mars a half dozen Airlia began climbing up the slightly curving outer surface. As they climbed, others began backing up the tracked vehicles, leaving a space in between which they started covering with a heavy material to form a living area.
Twenty miles away, on the ramp, the last vehicle, the one bearing the crystal, was approaching.
Space
Garlin was near the Swarm orb, waiting placidly as his tentacle, now attached to the orb, made a report.
On the gurney, Duncan slowly opened her eyes, the virus having repaired the physical damage done to her mind. She lifted her right arm—a fully formed hand with smooth skin was at the end.
There was a throbbing noise inside the spacecraft, something she vaguely recognized. She stared up at the ceiling for several seconds, trying to orient herself. It too was familiar although she couldn’t immediately place it. Her head hurt and it was hard to concentrate.
Her last conscious memory was of Garlin cutting off her hand. She stretched the fingers of the new hand. It was strapped to the table at the elbow, limiting her movement. Another strap ran across her ankles, thighs, and chest. She lifted her head, noting the dried blood encrusted on the robe she wore.
Immortal.
The word echoed in her consciousness as her head slumped back on the table. What good was immortality in the current situation? Where was she? That was the question that bothered her as this place seemed familiar, almost comforting despite her predicament.
Her spaceship—the Fynbar. It came to her with a wave of sharply conflicting emotions. A warm, familiar feeling, spiked through with the realization that the Swarm was in control of it. Memories poured through her mind in an overwhelming cascade. Her conditioning had been broken. If she could remember, then the Swarm knew what she did. She felt despair, then, as she was able to sort through the memories, she was crushed with a flood of grief.
Duncan turned her head as tears streamed from her eyes. Two cloning/sleep tubes were at the edge of the room, pressed up against the bulkhead. Her hand closest to them strained against the strap as she reached toward one.
“My love,” she whispered in a language she had not spoken for over a thousand years. “My love.”
• • •
Ten thousand kilometers behind Duncan’s ship, the mothership was moving away from Earth. Yakov was in the pilot’s seat, directing the ship onto the vector that Larry Kincaid had programmed in order to intercept Mars. On his lap he had the thin instruction manual containing all the material that Majestic had managed to assemble on the workings of the mothership after studying it for fifty years.
“How long until we get there?” Yakov asked.
Turcotte was seated behind Yakov, eyes closed, head back, apparently asleep. A slight opening of one eye indicated he was awake and also waiting for the answer.
“Just over a day at this speed,” Kincaid said. “And the Swarm and Talon?” Yakov asked.
Kincaid checked his laptop. “The Talon will get to Mars about two hours before us. The Swarm ship about two hours after that.”
“At the same time we arrive?”
“Roughly,” Kincaid said. “We’re faster than the Swarm ship, but moving at pretty much the same speed as the Talon. I think we might even get to Mars before the Swarm ship.”
Two hours. Turcotte considered that. “When will the array be done?” he asked, still without opening his eyes.
Kincaid shrugged, the motion lost on Turcotte. “Hard to say. The convoy just arrived at the construction site.”
“What we need to know,” Turcotte said, emphasizing the last word, “is whether it will be done before the Talon arrives. If it is, I’m sure Artad can get a message out in two hours.”
“We should get an idea pretty soon,” Kincaid said. “I think it’s going to take them a while. They’ve got to complete the third pylon by hand, and then who knows what else they have to do to get operational.”
Turcotte opened his eyes and wearily got out of the seat. “I don’t know much about space travel, but since Mars is moving around the sun, our track isn’t exactly a straight shot, right?”
Kincaid brought up an image of the inner four planets of the solar system’s orbits on his laptop. “We’re heading for this intercept point right here.” He indicated a location on Mars orbit ahead of where the planet currently was. He tapped the touch pad and a green dot was fixed in that spot. “The Talon will reach Mars when it’s here.” Slightly before the mothership intercept a red dot appeared. “And this is its vector.” The Talon’s path was to the “right” of their track.
“What about the Swarm ship with Duncan?” Turcotte asked.
“Here.” A third track and dot appeared, this time to the left of the mothership’s.
Turcotte rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You said we’re going faster than that ship, right?” Kincaid nodded. “Somewhat.”
“If we change our path to intercept it, where would that happen and how much time would we lose?” Turcotte asked. Yakov had left the pilot’s seat and come over during the conversation.
“What do you have in mind, my friend?” the Russian asked. Turcotte ignored Yakov for the moment as Kincaid calculated.
“We would intercept here.” He indicated a spot well short of Mars orbit. “Because we’d change vectors slightly and then have to redirect to intercept Mars, we’d lose a little time, but not much. A couple of minutes, give or take.”
“How far out from
Mars would the intercept be?” Turcotte asked. “Three hours.”
Yakov cleared his throat. “We must stop Artad first. That is our primary mission.”
Turcotte shook his head. “We have to stop both. They’re equally important. Artad is first because he gets to Mars first. But”—Turcotte dragged the word out—“if the array isn’t complete, then it doesn’t matter. And if it is complete, then it doesn’t matter if we get there a couple of minutes late.”
Yakov frowned. “Are you suggesting that we intercept the Swarm ship first?” “Why not?” Turcotte asked in turn.
“But what if the array is completed during that few-minute window?”
“Then we screwed up,” Turcotte said. “But if we intercept en route, then we have three hours after that to get ready for Artad. If we go straight to Mars, we have to attack Artad and the array, then have the Swarm ship show up a couple of minutes later. Things could get very busy.” Something had occurred to him as he spoke. “And we have three, not two, groups we have to stop. Artad and the Swarm aren’t enough. We also have to stop the Airlia on Mars. Even if we stop Artad, the Airlia on the surface can still send a message. And let’s remember something else. The Airlia on Mars were Aspasia’s. We can’t be sure that Artad is going to be welcome when he shows up. That might gain us some time.” Turcotte turned to Yakov. “What do you think?”
“It is taking a chance intercepting the Swarm ship. I agree, though, that having the Swarm show up right after we get there could be a problem. We could be battling the Talon and it could go straight to the array to send a message. If we do intercept the Swarm ship en route, how do you propose to stop it?”
“The old-fashioned way,” Turcotte said. “We board it. Just like pirates used to in the old days.” Yakov shook his head wearily. “Pirates in the old days. Another great plan.”
• • •
Artad was lying on his back, his command chair enclosed by a curved display. He brought up the tactical situation, noting his ship’s projected course to the fourth planet. He also saw the two spacecraft chasing him.
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