And now the mission situation was critical. Six civilians, six Union soldiers, confined in a building where the only hope of escape was to descend into the area where the Sand creatures were. Trying to reach the sky bridge was no longer an option, since both stairwells were blocked. They had to go down into the part of the city that was barricaded off from all the rest, including their escape route to the water.
Granted, the entire point of going up into the buildings had been her idea to get them into the barricaded area. But now, with Sergeant Malone dead, trying to reach the energy source no longer seemed like such a great idea. If it was up to Stephanie, they would get away from the city and off the island. Immediately.
But there was no turning back.
They had to go down, no matter what might be waiting for them.
Only four of the remaining six soldiers were in the large room on the tenth floor. Cort had assigned the others to new positions on the floors below.
Sitting across the floor in a clear area were Bogle, Lee, Edaro, and Stanton. They all looked lost, just as she was feeling. Stanton was almost shaking. And there was no sign of Edaro’s golf ball or Lee’s smile. Only Hank seemed to be picking up the slack and trying to keep going. He was crouched alongside Cort and Waters, watching as they worked on the motion detector. It, too, had taken damage in the explosions. Their satellite uplink to the orbital stations had been destroyed, so the only way to contact the mainland would be to get closer to the water or to rise high enough to get a commlink signal out of the tall buildings.
In essence, they were on their own for the moment.
And the ocean and their escape were on the other side of the debris barricade.
The light coming through the invisible walls was very dull, and the debris in the room cast deep shadows. They had very few hours of daylight left. And if Edaro was right, she doubted they had many hours until the island shifted again, taking all of them along to who knew where.
She worked to catch her breath for a minute, watching Hank. He was covered in dust, hadn’t eaten, and had to be as tired as she was, yet he hadn’t slowed down. It was a good thing Major Lancaster had put him in charge of the civilians. He would keep them going and would work to save all their lives as well as the mission.
And Cort had stepped in with total professionalism. She studied what she could see of him behind his standard armor. He had black hair, intense black eyes, and wide shoulders. He spoke slowly and carefully and treated his Special Ops comrades with respect. With Sergeant Malone gone, the group was lucky to have him as their leader.
Still, Cort and Hank were going to need as much help as they could get if any of them were going to make it out alive. Maybe it was time to see what she could do.
She pushed herself to her feet, took another deep breath, and walked over to the four doctors.
“Dr. Edaro,” she said, “did your molecular-sensing equipment survive the explosion?”
“I don’t know,” he said, pulling his pack around and digging into it.
She watched as he quickly set up the odd-looking device with the metal bars poking out of the back. After a moment he glanced up at her. “It’s working.”
“Good,” she said. “Any idea how long we have?”
He studied the screen for a moment, typing in a few commands, then shrugged. “From what I can tell, the energy buildup is continuing. Right now it’s far greater than it was before the earthquake four hours ago.”
“Greater?” Lee asked. “Not good.”
Edaro nodded slowly while staring at the screen on his device. “Nothing about this is good.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Doctor,” Stephanie said, even as she feared his answer. But they needed to know. Hank would need to know. “How long?”
Again Edaro just shrugged. “What exact level of energy will cause the island to phase to a new location is anyone’s guess. That will totally depend on what the trigger is. All I can do is guess that it will happen sometime in the next three or four hours, assuming a constant rate of buildup of energy.”
“Great, just great,” Stanton said.
“So it could happen any minute?” Hank asked.
“It could,” Edaro said. “But again, it depends on the trigger, on what exactly causes the phasing. I could give you a better guess if I knew the answer to that.”
Hank nodded. “Okay, maybe we’ll get you that answer, but first we’ve got to get out of this building.”
“And how do you propose we get past the barricades?” Stanton asked.
“Same way we got in,” Hank said, glancing at Stephanie. “Just not the same route. But we’ve got to try and make one quick stop first.”
“The energy source?” Bogle asked.
“If we’re going to bring back anything from this mission, it’s got to be there,” Hank said. “Let’s get moving.” He turned and headed toward the staircase.
Stephanie followed, quickly catching up.
“You got the motion sensor working?” she asked as they headed for the stairwell door.
“Working like a charm,” Hank said. “Private Waters has it. Nothing in the building below us at this point.”
“The Pharons?”
“In a building on the other side of the barrier.”
That was the first piece of good news Stephanie had heard in the last hour. At least they would still have a warning if someone or something was coming at them. That would help some.
Hank stopped at the staircase door and waited for the other four civilians to catch up with them.
“Where exactly are we going?” Edaro asked.
“We’re going to find that energy source,” Hank said, “by the most direct route we can find.”
“We’re dead,” Stanton said softly.
Stephanie desperately wanted to just backhand the pale-skinned excuse of a man, but it wouldn’t have done the mission any good, no matter how good it would make her feel.
“Not just yet, Doctor,” Hank said, his voice cold.
“I don’t feel dead, do you?” Bogle asked, reaching over and pinching Stanton hard on the arm.
Stanton twisted away, but said nothing more.
Hank glanced around at Bogle and Lee. “Better check your rifles to make sure they’re still working.”
Stephanie touched the pistol in her pocket as the others checked their guns. So far she hadn’t needed to take her pistol out of her pocket. But it was still there if she needed it.
Hank turned to Private Cort. “We’re ready when you are.”
Cort nodded. “Do it like the sergeant would have, people,” he said into his commlink. “Two-by-two cover from the second floor on. Vasquez with Jenkins, Marva with Waters. Move on my command. Hawk, behind us.”
Stephanie was impressed with Cort. And with this entire unit. They had just lost three of their comrades, including their sergeant, and they were still functioning like a clock.
She just hoped the soldiers were impressive enough to keep them alive. She had a feeling that their only hope of getting out of the city while there was still time was the six Union soldiers.
19
Time: 4:36 P . M . Pacific Time
15 hours, 05 minutes after Arrival
Hank could see the debris barricade just one block behind them and about five blocks ahead of them in the other direction. The effort was crude, but the barricades were obviously intended to protect the center of the city from penetration. Not a very effective defense, which only made him wonder all the more why it had been done. What was in this area of the city that someone, at some point in the past, thought important enough to try to protect? Was it the power source? Or might it have been something else? There was no way of telling at the moment.
The air was cold around him, and the light from the Maw didn’t even come close to illuminating the deep canyons of the streets. Every detail was cast in long, black shadows, making it seem closer to night than four-thirty on a clear afternoon.
From wh
at the motion sensor told them, nothing was moving on the streets around the building. And there was no longer any sign at all of where the Pharons had gone. At last sight they had been climbing up the levels of a tower a few blocks away. Hank could only hope they hadn’t made it in here yet.
Private Cort had tried to contact base via the commlink when they left the building, but nothing seemed to get through. And he got no response at all.
The energy source was another block deeper into the barricaded center of the city.
And down.
It was the down part that had him the most worried. He didn’t at all like the idea of going underground. Not in the slightest. But if they were going to salvage the mission, they might have to. And do it fast.
“Move out,” Private Cort said into his commlink.
Hank watched as the four soldiers leapfrogged forward up the street on both sides, two giving cover while the other two ran ahead.
“Stay against the wall,” Cort ordered Hank and the rest. “And keep a good three meters distance at all times.”
Cort nodded for Hank to follow Private Jenkins along the wall behind the front four.
Hank had his rifle up, loaded and ready to fire. He carried it in one hand, leaving the other free as he moved along the side of the building behind Jenkins. Stephanie followed behind.
It didn’t take them long to go the block.
Nothing tried to stop them. If they were to meet resistance, it would most likely be as they started into wherever the energy source was.
Or maybe they would get lucky and meet no resistance at all. Hank knew that was dreaming.
The building that seemed to contain the energy source was the shortest by far in the entire central city. Surrounded by hundred-story skyscrapers, it looked almost tiny at fewer than twenty.
Like a four-pointed cap, sky bridges led off in four directions from the top of the building. Clearly this had been one very special building to the original residents of this city. And Hank had a sneaking hunch they were just about to find out why.
They moved to the corner across from the edifice, and Cort had his men take up cover positions. From there Hank could see three of the sky bridges leading from the top of the energy building, but not the other structures around it. Maybe, if they had to, they could just go up inside the energy building to one of those four capping sky bridges.
They’d be taking a chance, since he didn’t know if they could get up and across the barricade that way or not. At the moment, they would have to play their escape by ear until they had more information. He didn’t think that was much of plan, but it was the only one they had.
“Everyone ready?” Cort asked.
Hank glanced back at the other scientists and gave Stephanie a smile, then turned back to Cort, and said, “As ever.”
“Get that door open,” Cort ordered his men.
Two of them were already there near the corner of the building. On Cort’s order, one reached up and pushed on the corner. As with all the other buildings so far, the corner split and opened inward.
Privates Hawk and Marva ducked inside, one going right, one left.
“Clear,” Hank heard Hawk say. “It’s a small room with corridors leading both left and right.”
“Copy that,” Cort said. “Marva, go right. Hawk left. Check it out. Vasquez, Waters, cover them.”
Then Cort glanced around at the scientists. “Move it, people. Through the door double time.”
With Jenkins in the lead, Hank ran across the street and into the open doors of the building.
Just as he entered, he heard Hawk say, “Clear up here, but you’ve got to see this.”
“Same this way,” Marva said. “Flat amazing.”
The room was small, like an entryway. As Hawk had described, two wide corridors veered to the left and right, along the outside wall, which was not transparent. Vasquez covered one hallway, Waters the other.
Cort went left, and Hank followed him down the corridor the way Hawk had gone. For a moment he thought they were going to need flashlights, but then he saw light twenty steps ahead. And the closer they got to where Hawk was pressed against the outside wall, staring into that light, the louder became a humming sound in the background. It was as if the area ahead was almost alive.
Cort moved up beside Hawk, also pressed against the wall, rifle ready.
Hank did the same.
And what he saw through that door made him forget where he was for the moment.
The entire twenty-story building was hollow and maybe four times as big as the insides of any of the other buildings they had been in. There were ramps circling up around the inside of the building, and from the fifth or sixth floor to the sky bridges, the entire building was basically transparent. He could see all the other skyscrapers towering into the blue sky above. This place was far, far larger than any indoor, covered football stadium on the mainland.
Bigger than anything he’d ever been inside.
“Spectacular,” Stephanie said beside him.
Granted, the hollow building was something to behold, but it was what was below them that Hank couldn’t get his gaze away from.
The building was hollow down a good ten more floors into the ground. At the moment they were standing on what was basically a wide ledge. And square in the center of the massive open space below was the biggest machine he had ever seen.
It had to stand three stories tall and would have covered a normal New York City block, yet from inside it almost looked small. It was lined with some sort of bright, shiny material polished brighter than any chrome Hank had ever seen.
Around the massive machine were thousands of Sand, moving in a zombielike state. All of them wore the black robes that hid their faces, hands, and feet. There seemed to be no purpose at all to their movement except to stay close, without touching, to the massive machine.
He had no idea what they were doing, or why. He was just glad that at the moment none of the Sand seemed to notice him standing above them.
The hum that reverberated throughout the space was coming from that machine, which made it seem alive.
“One of you doctors want to tell me what that is?” Cort asked, turning to Hank.
Hank glanced back at where the other five also stood staring into the massive, hollow building and the giant machine it held. They seemed almost in shock at the sight.
“Dr. Edaro,” Hank said, “is that the energy source that’s powering the island phasing?”
Edaro seemed to shake himself, then yanked his backpack around so he could get to his equipment. He quickly had it out and working. Within seconds he glanced back up at Hank. “That’s it.”
“If I were a betting man,” Bogle said, “I’d bet that was the biggest phase generator in existence.”
“Could be,” Edaro said, nodding.
“It’s similar in exterior design to what the Pharon priests use to speed them around a battlefield,” Stanton said. “Only about a million times bigger.”
“The energy field around it is building from underneath,” Edaro said. “More than likely some sort of massive storage down in the ground there.”
“Can we get this recorded?” Hank asked, focusing them back on their task at hand. “I want every measurement you can take on this thing as quickly as you can take it—photos, energy readings, molecular cross sections. Everything.”
“Going to have to make it quick,” Cort said. “We got Sand coming at us up the ramps from below.”
Hank glanced over at where Cort had indicated. Six or seven Sand were seemingly floating up the ramp, moving slowly and in one group toward them.
On the other wall six more were headed up.
“Can you hold them off?” Hank asked.
“For a time,” Cort said.
“Buy us some,” Hank said. “Taking all the information from this that we can get might just make this entire mission worthwhile.”
Hank watched as Cort deployed his men, two each along the tops
of both ramps leading down to the floor holding the machine. He left Private Waters guarding the door from the street.
Beside him Lee, Edaro, Bogle, and Stanton went to work, using the equipment they had brought to record every detail, both seen and unseen, of the alien machine. Hank desperately wanted to take them right down to it, but with the thousands of Sand below, milling around on the lower level, plus the ones coming up, there was no chance of that happening.
The information they could get would be as good as they could get. He just hoped it was enough to justify the lives of three good Union soldiers.
“Amazing,” Edaro said. “Stanton is right. I just did a single molecular cross section of that machine. It does look like some sort of massive phase generator. Extremely advanced.”
“But why the hell would it be in the middle of a city?” Stephanie asked.
Hank glanced up at the buildings towering over this one. “I’d bet this machine was working for a long time before any disaster hit this city. In fact, I’d wager the whole place was mostly built around this building. It just has an older feel. And a central feel.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Stephanie said, nodding as she looked around.
“So why build a massive phase generator here, then build a city around it?” Stanton asked as he worked a video-recording unit.
“What better way to explore than take your entire city and culture with you,” Edaro said.
“You’re saying these people were a race that jumped around through space in their cities?” Bogle asked.
“It’s kind of logical,” Stephanie said.
“Could be,” Lee said. “Fascinating structure for a culture, that’s for sure.”
“I still don’t think it happened that way,” Bogle said.
Hank looked up at the sky bridges above his head, then pointed. “This building was here before many of those other skyscrapers were built. The center of this city built up around this place, not the other way around. You can tell by how the architecture fits.”
“Learn that in physics class, Doctor?” Stephanie asked, smiling at him.
“Logic class,” he said.
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