Hank stepped back out of the way, but he had no intention of going up the stairs just yet. He was going to stay with Malone and see what happened next.
“All right if I stay here?” he asked. “And out of the way.”
Malone glanced at him, then nodded.
Private Marva appeared from out of the stairwell carrying the rocket launcher he’d been hauling around since they started. He followed Harden over to Malone at a jog.
Hank watched as Stephanie and the other four scientists, along with five Union soldiers, ran for the stairs as fast as they could go. The door to the stairwell closed and then vanished behind them. Hank spotted a hunk of debris directly in front of the door and decided to use it as a landmark to find the door again quickly.
Then, as he turned around, Malone said, “Damn.”
Below, on the street, the band of aliens had stopped, and one of them was gesturing up toward their location. The motion sent a shiver down Hank’s spine. He didn’t much like the idea of an alien knowing where he was. Let alone pointing at him.
He wanted to step back, to run and hide.
Instead he just stood and watched.
“They know we’re here now,” Malone said. “Let’s sting them before they can do anything with the knowledge.”
Hank liked that idea a lot.
“Draco launcher up. I also want the Bulldogs to fire grenades at the same time. Range finders off, aim about fifteen meters over their heads.”
Private Marva rested the long, fat tube of the Draco expertly against his shoulder as he loaded a missile in. Hank knew the weapon fired Arrowhead missiles with enough power to blow a hole in the side of a concrete bunker. He’d seen one do just that once during a test. No alien would stand up to one of them.
“Marva, take direct aim on the center of their group. I want that priest out of commission if we can do it. Get them leaderless, and we’ll be better off.”
Marva nodded.
Hank stared at the aliens. They were fairly spread out across the center of the street. From this height, taking out the one with the bigger headdress was going to be some fantastic shot. He wasn’t even sure if he could tell which one did have the biggest headdress from so far away.
“Harden,” Malone said, “you and I will fire two grenades each, quick succession.”
Below them the Pharons were in an open area, giving Malone and her men a clear line of sight as they moved to the opening in the side of the building. And the aliens had a clear view of them in return.
“Okay, people, one attempt at this is all we get,” Malone said. “We fire and drop back into the stairwell. If one of their energy beams makes it through this opening, we’re all dead. Understand?”
Then Malone turned to Hank. “Get that door open for us and be ready to run up those stairs.”
Hank nodded. “Done.”
He did a quick run through the debris over to where he knew the door was and faced it as it opened. Then he blocked it open with his back.
Malone nodded to him, then turned back to the hole in the wall, pulling her rifle up into grenade-launch position.
Through the transparent walls Hank could see down into the street and the Pharons below. They had stopped and were gesturing up at them.
“In position, Hawk?” Malone asked into her commlink.
“Fire!” she ordered a moment later.
The Arrowhead missile shot from the Draco launcher with a thump, trailing smoke that swirled up into the room. The grenade launchers made a louder whomp sound as Malone and Harden fired an instant later.
The missile exploded among the Pharons in a massive white cloud of dust, hiding them. An instant later the explosion echoed up through the buildings, shaking dust loose as it filled the huge room like an angry wave.
Malone and Harden fired the second round of grenades, then as a unit all three turned and ran toward Hank at breakneck speed.
He waited until they were nearly on top of him, then turned and opened the door to the stairwell, not looking back as he ran, focusing his flashlight on the stairs ahead.
Behind him he could hear Malone and her men following closely, the pounding of their boots like drums in the dark stairwell.
They had all rounded the corner of the stairs when the building shook around them, and Hank could feel his ears popping from the concussions behind them.
The aliens had fired back. And done so fairly accurately.
The sound was deafening as everything seemed to rumble in the surrounding darkness.
Again the air filled with dust as the entire building shook.
Hank didn’t even slow down, forcing himself to put one foot after another on the widely spaced stairs, keeping his entire attention on focusing the light just the right distance ahead of him so he wouldn’t trip. Falling was the last thing he wanted at that point.
Another explosion—a smaller one—rocked the building just before they reached the next landing. He went through the door, then across and through the next door to the next up staircase, not even slowing down.
His heart felt like it would explode out of his chest, and his lungs were starting to burn. He feared he might choke at any minute on the dust in the air.
About halfway to the next floor level Sergeant Malone shouted to him, “Dr. Downer, let Harden take point. Harden, slow the pace about half.”
Hank almost said, “Thank you,” then decided he didn’t have enough air to speak.
Below them another explosion rocked the building as Harden patted Hank on the shoulder and moved past.
They clearly had pissed off the Pharons.
And Hank was sure that wasn’t a good idea.
14
Time: 2:37 P . M . Pacific Time
13 hours, 06 minutes after Arrival
Stephanie stopped and tried to catch her breath from running up the stairs just inside the thirty-fourth floor of the alien tower. The sounds of the explosions and the building shaking as they were climbing the stairs had scared her, but she’d forced herself to take deep, full breaths, exhaling completely to calm her nerves. They might have to run again quickly, and she wanted to be ready.
After this expedition, assuming she survived it, she was going to have nightmares for months.
“Are they alive down there?” Bogle managed to ask Private Waters, who had set up his equipment the moment they reached this floor.
“The sergeant and the others should be coming through that door just about now,” Waters said.
At that moment that was exactly what happened. Stephanie was very glad when Hank did so, and she rushed over to see if he was all right while he tried to catch his breath. He and the troopers had obviously raced up the stairs hard and fast.
“Where are the Pharons?” Malone asked Waters, making her way over to them, not even seeming winded by the run up the stairs.
“Pulled back two blocks down the street. They stopped there.”
“Can you tell how many there are?”
“I can’t, Sergeant,” Waters said. “Too far for this equipment to show that.”
Malone nodded. “They’ll be coming back. We just surprised them this time.” She turned to Private Hawk. “Got the recon on the fight?”
“I did,” he said, turning a very powerful video camera around so the sergeant could see the display. She watched in silence for a moment, then nodded. “Good.”
“May we?” Hank asked from beside Stephanie.
Malone nodded.
Stephanie had no desire to see how much damage they had done to the Pharons, but she went with Hank and the others anyway as they went to look at the playback display on the camera.
“I’ll run it in slow motion,” Hawk said, clicking the rewind and starting the images.
On the small screen Stephanie could see the Pharon warriors shambling up the street slowly in their ornate, golden armor. It felt almost like being face-to-face with them.
The walking dead.
The Rotten, as Stanton had called t
hem.
Way, way too close. She wanted to turn away and not watch, but she forced herself to stay put. She might need this information.
Their armor was beautiful, covered with symbols and hieroglyphics, and with high, ornate collars behind their heads. They all carried large antique-looking weapons and support tanks on their backs. She assumed those were the tanks Stanton had mentioned that kept the fluids flowing through their bodies.
But their faces were nothing more than wrappings and gray skin, long since dead, as if frostbite had taken it. If what Stanton had told them about the Pharons was accurate, these warriors were in pretty good condition for dead beings. Only one or two had complete chunks of them missing or rotted away.
Just looking at them made her queasy. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen plenty of gruesome sights in her life as a physician, but there was something about the aliens that turned her stomach.
“Who’s the one all dressed up?” Bogle asked.
“We call them high priests,” Stanton said. “They run the show.”
Stephanie focused her attention on him. The high priest’s ornate decoration was even more impressive, and he carried two long, curved blades, one in each wrapped hand. He had on a long, mailed skirt that looked like it was made out of some shiny metal. There was an ornate, jewel-like object over his head that Stephanie guessed had some strange purpose or another.
Suddenly on the display the missile streaked in and smashed straight into the middle of the group, about ten meters beyond the priest, exploding in a surrealist sort of slow motion. For an instant the bright flash clouded the image, then it cleared again.
“Yes!” Bogle exclaimed behind Stephanie.
“Good shot!” Hank said.
On the screen it was clear that at least four, maybe more, of the aliens had been blown completely apart by the missile explosion. But the priest had survived.
The next moment, even as the warriors were still turning toward the explosion, two more blasts ripped into the Pharons. One cut the legs off a warrior, while a second explosion ripped off near the priest, sending him blinking backward at an impressive speed.
“We think the priests wear some sort of phase generators,” Stanton said. “Allows them to move at very quick speeds if they need to.”
“Phase generators?” Edaro asked. “Similar to the technology that’s moving this island around?”
“You got me,” Stanton said. “Might be.”
Stephanie continued watching the small playback monitor as if she were watching a slow-motion car wreck in progress. She wanted to turn away, but she couldn’t.
Suddenly two more explosions tore into the Pharons, completely destroying another warrior.
At that moment three of the other warriors took aim upward with their weapons. A seemingly long moment later, they fired while the rest of their kind, along with the priest, pulled back to better cover.
Those shots must have been the explosions that had rocked the building while she’d been ascending the stairs.
“That’s it,” Hawk said, stopping the playback.
“Took out a bunch of them,” Bogle said.
“They aren’t going to retreat from this,” Stanton said firmly.
Stephanie turned to him, as did Sergeant Malone.
“My understanding, Dr. Stanton,” Malone said, “is that they will not break off any attack.”
Stanton nodded. “That’s right. There will be no stopping them. They will not retreat.”
“So how do we fight them,” Hank asked, “besides the way we just did?”
“We stay ahead of them,” Malone said. “And we pick how we strike and when.”
“Or we get the hell off this island,” Stanton said, “and let the Union military blow this city right out of the water.”
“Why were you even sent along on this mission, Stanton?” Bogle asked, the disgust clear in his voice.
Stephanie had been wondering the same thing.
“That option, Dr. Stanton,” Malone said, her voice low and controlled, “has been in place since the moment the Pharons landed on this island.” She stared directly at Stanton, then went on. “If we’re killed, this island will be destroyed.”
Stephanie felt her heart race at the sergeant’s words. Stanton’s face went completely white, but at least he had the sense to say nothing more.
There was an uneasy moment of silence, broken by Private Waters.
“Sergeant, the Pharons are moving again.”
In two steps Malone was beside Waters, staring at the motion sensor. Stephanie desperately wanted to know what Malone was seeing, but she didn’t want to get in her way.
She tried to make herself breathe slowly, get her pulse back to normal, just as she’d learned to do back in the emergency-room days of her intern years. The ER staff needed nerves of steel so they could think and act quickly.
Finally, Malone looked away from the motion sensor and clicked her commlink. “Listen up, people,” she said. “They’re coming into this building below us.”
“Damn,” Bogle said.
Malone went on. “We’ve got a thirty-four-story head start, and we’re going to use it to get to that energy source before they do.”
“You’re assuming they were headed there,” Edaro said.
Stanton laughed. “It doesn’t matter where they were headed,” he said. “From what we saw in the Cache, they’re persistent and vicious. They won’t give up until we’re dead.”
“Exactly,” Malone said. “I’m counting on just that.” She turned to Waters. “Let me know the minute they’re on the second floor.”
Waters nodded. “Just entering the building now.”
She pointed to the open corner of the building that led out onto the sky bridge. “When I give the order we move across that bridge quickly, keeping spread out. We get to the next building, then ascend what looks to be about twelve floors to the next sky bridge leading to that building over there.”
Stephanie’s gaze followed where Malone was pointing. Then Malone turned back to them. “Harden, Vasquez, bring up the rear. I want enough explosives on that sky bridge to take it down on my order. Understood?”
Harden and Vasquez both nodded.
“You’re going to try to blow the bridge with them on it?” Hank asked.
“Exactly,” Malone said. “But what I’m going to damn well make sure of is that they can’t follow us over those barricades down to that energy source.”
Right at that moment Stephanie was very, very glad that Phoebe Malone was in charge of the mission. Malone was one of the most competent people she had ever met. And that was saying something.
“The Pharons are on the second floor,” Waters said.
“Let’s move it,” Malone said. “Jenkins, take point. The rest follow me. Single file, move quickly once you’re on the bridge. We don’t know how solid it is.”
Another thought Stephanie didn’t want to contemplate.
She moved quickly behind Hank over to the edge of the large room where the corner of the building led out onto the wide walkway to the next building over.
“Oh, shit!” Lee said, his usual smile completely gone.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Edaro said, twisting the golf ball in his hand like he was trying to wring water out of it.
Stephanie agreed. She didn’t think she could do it either.
The sky bridges, when looked at from the side, through the clear walls of the building, looked contained, just as the walls of the buildings had looked solid from the street below.
But from the inside of the bridge, it became very, very obvious that it, too, was built of the same material as the building’s walls.
It was completely transparent.
Ceiling.
Walls.
And floors.
From the inside, looking across at the hole in the building on the other side, there didn’t look to be anything at all in the air between them.
From the inside, the sky b
ridge was completely transparent.
“How crazy were these aliens?” Bogle asked.
Stephanie watched as Jenkins took the lead, seeming to walk right out into thin air, moving as surely and as quickly as if he was walking across a solid field of dirt. Two of his comrades followed him, acting as if there was nothing in the slightest odd about all this.
Stephanie could feel her head spin. If she’d had anything to eat lately, she was sure she’d have thrown it up right there.
“Okay, people,” Sergeant Malone said, “just don’t look down.”
“No kidding,” Hank said.
“So which way do we look?” Stephanie asked, not trying to be funny.
“I can’t do this,” Lee said. “Sorry.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hank said.
“I’m not sure I can do it, either,” Stephanie said.
“Just close your eyes,” Hank told her.
“Good idea,” Malone said. “Marva, help Dr. Lee across. Cort, you help Dr. Peters. Doctors, close your eyes and don’t open them until I say so.”
Lee nodded and did as she ordered.
Stephanie also nodded.
“Got you all the way, Doc,” Private Marva said to Lee, heading out into what looked to Stephanie like sheer emptiness.
“Ready?” Cort asked, taking her arm firmly.
She took a very large and deep breath, then closed her eyes and focused on the feel of the hard floor underfoot, imagining a concrete highway. “I am.”
Cort’s grip felt reassuring as they started off. And not once did the ground feel anything but solid under her feet.
And not once was Stephanie tempted to open her eyes.
15
Time: 2:49 P . M . Pacific Time
13 hours, 18 minutes after Arrival
Crossing that invisible bridge thirty-four alien stories in the air behind Stephanie and Private Cort was the hardest thing Hank could ever remember doing. Every step of the way he was convinced he would plunge to his death.
Yet with each step his heel hit a hard surface, a surface he couldn’t see. After about ten steps of looking down at the street far below, he decided he’d better keep his eyes focused straight ahead, at the building they were approaching.
VOR 03 Island of Power Page 11
