Escape Velocity (The Quantum War Book 1)

by Jonathan Paul Isaacs

  Wyatt gave the hand signal. Maya released the latch and began to press through slowly. Then she suddenly froze with her weapon up.

  “What is it?” Wyatt said.

  Silence.

  “Maya?”

  She cleared her throat. “People face-down in a ring.”

  The hairs on the back of Wyatt’s neck stood up. “How many?”

  “Six.”

  “Are they moving?”

  “No movement yet.”

  Chris turned toward him as recognition slid across his face. You’ve seen Constricted before. You didn’t tell me.

  Wyatt nodded. Part of him felt dishonest, but there wasn’t a lot he could say at the moment. He’d have to explain later that he hadn’t been ready to share all his cards with someone he’d just met.

  Chris wore his disapproval openly as he spoke. “Finn. Is there a path around them?”

  “On the left. Maybe two meters wide.”

  “I guess it’s your show, Lieutenant,” Chris said.

  “Okay. My show. Let’s move. Everybody walks on the left, single file.”

  Maya held the door and they carefully stepped through, one at a time. Wyatt saw six people kneeling in a small circle, arms to their sides and foreheads touching the ground. Five men. One woman. If he hadn’t known better, they could have simply been asleep, or perhaps praying in the formation of some obscure religious sect. He still didn’t understand what this was. But he knew it was dangerous.

  As he passed Maya, he felt the tension in her to match his own.

  “Steady, Maya,” he whispered.

  “Yes, sir,” came an unsteady reply.

  He made it beyond the strange ring of constricted people and stood aside to let the others pass. Dr. Bell looked thoughtful as he moved alongside them. Calista kept her eyes on her feet.

  Then Annika’s turn came. She walked more slowly than the others, her attention drawn to the ring of people with unusual intensity. Wyatt saw her eyebrows furrow the way someone might react in spotting a familiar face across a room full of strangers. Her steps slowed. She might have stopped altogether except that Laramie grabbed her arm and forced her onward.

  As the last of their squad came through the door, Wyatt moved up toward the front of their column. Finn pressed down the corridor to another T-intersection. Here, the colored lines diverged into different paths on the walls. Flight Control led off to the left. A green line to the catapult terminals went right.

  More constricted lay along the floor of both corridors, strewn about in individual sprawls of one or two.

  Finn motioned with his Vector at the prone bodies. “This isn’t a good sign,” he said, his voice low. “There’s going to be a lot more in the concourse.”

  Did constricted react to sound? Wyatt tried to be as silent as he could as he cleared his throat. “How many more?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

  “Hundreds. At least.”

  How were they going to sneak a eighteen people past hundreds of constricted? He looked at Maya by the door. Her body screamed anxiety. She pointed her weapon at the ring of bodies, fearful they might jump up at any moment.

  Wyatt turned to Chris. “Maya’s the one we need to get to Flight Control. She’s our tech. She can configure a catapult launch. Let’s move everyone else directly to the passenger terminal. Does that work for you?” He threw his chin toward Annika and Calista. “For them?”

  Chris scowled, clearly still not happy from before. But he nodded in agreement. “Yeah.”

  He looked at Maya again, how stiffly she stood.

  “I’ll escort Maya and pull security. Help Laramie and Gavin get the others to the right terminal. I’ll honor our bargain—you, Finn, and Elton can have our weapons, and we’ll take the girls with us off this rock. You can be on your way.”

  Chris arched an eyebrow. His anger seemed to diminish slightly.

  Wyatt looked back in their ranks until his eyes fell on Jack Bell. The Director was watching him with interest.

  “Doctor Bell, a word?”

  Bell shuffled forward with clear reluctance, perhaps afraid he was going to get assigned some military task. “What?”

  “These people—these constricted. If we don’t interact with them in any way, will they stay like this?”

  Bell’s eyes drifted toward the body closest to them, a heavyset woman with a bundle of long, braided hair obscuring her face.

  “There’s a lot we don’t know,” Bell said. “Probably, yes. When they make these rings, it seems to be some sort of recuperative ritual. But it doesn’t last forever. Eventually they’ll wake up and … hunt.”

  “Well, that’s encouraging.”

  Bell regarded him strangely. “Is that an optimistic comment that they might stay dormant, or a sarcastic one that they won’t?”

  “Whichever keeps us alive longer.”

  The director’s lip curled into a half-smile. It disappeared a moment later. “Remember, Lieutenant. Even if they wake up, infection doesn’t happen instantaneously. There’s a window—a small one. Just get away before it has a chance to take hold. Whatever you do, don’t provoke or injure them. It would be the last thing you ever do.”

  “I understand.”

  They divided up the team. Maya knew a programming assignment was coming, since all the operational personnel were motionless and inert on the floor. Her eyes betrayed her feelings about splitting off from the main group.

  Wyatt tried to get her mind off the constricted. “How long do you think you’ll need to set up a script?”

  “Sir?”

  “Maya. Focus.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “It depends on which version of software they’re on. I’m going to guess fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

  “Fifteen minutes. It’ll go by like nothing.” Wyatt clasped her shoulder. “You’ve got this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay.” He turned to find the others huddling at the intersection. “Everybody, be careful. There are no points for being reckless. Stay clear of the constricted. Get to the terminal. Chris will take the front, Laramie the back. Don’t do anything stupid. Questions?”

  The hum of a ventilation fan was all that broke the silence in the corridor.

  Another phantom shock sent pain through nerves that were no longer there. Wyatt grimaced. It took him a moment to collect himself, to get back the focus of a RESIT officer.

  There wasn’t room for any mistakes.

  “Let’s move.”

  31

  Maya and Wyatt crept slowly through the complex, Vectors up, following the yellow line that led to Flight Ops. Constricted bodies lay on the floor every five or ten meters. Almost all were in pairs, perhaps one person a carrier, the other the recipient of the infection. Wyatt couldn’t imagine something so virulent. It was as if constriction had stopped time for these people, dropping them in their tracks as they transformed into whatever it was they now were.

  The corridor terminated in a security door with an industrial-looking bio scanner mounted in the wall. The heavy construction rivaled any reactor room hatch found on interstellar spacecraft. It hung slightly open, beckoning.

  “I was kind of hoping there’d be good guys barricaded in here,” Maya said.

  “Me too. Keep your guard up.”

  He tugged on the security door. It swung open silently, without protest.

  Maya entered first and swept to the left. Wyatt covered the right. He saw a wide, multi-tiered operations room with multiple banks of control stations. Blinking lights and holo monitors relayed launch system status for the benefit of anyone without a neural stub. On the far wall, a series of giant windows revealed a brilliant stretch of blue water sparkling in the evening sun. Remnants of storm clouds clung to the coastline. Underneath them, the maglev rails of an orbital catapult ran along the rocky coastline.

  “Lieutenant.” Maya gestured with her weapon. “Four on the floor.”

  “I see them.”

&n
bsp; The constricted had arranged themselves haphazardly behind the operations consoles. Each had the same posture—kneeling, head down—but their orientation was different. Perhaps they tried to make one of their rings and ran out of space.

  He stepped carefully around the console. “Two more over here.”

  “Copy. I’ve got three up against the window.”

  “Can you get to a control deck?”

  “I think so.”

  “Get on it.”

  Maya took careful steps around to the console, as if she were testing her away across a frozen lake. A moment later she punched up a holo monitor. “Maybe our luck’s going to turn, Lieutenant. The last flight operator was still logged in.”

  “Copy. You know where you’re sending us, right?”

  “Gateway Station.”

  “You got it.”

  Wyatt eyed the prone figures sprawled out across of the room and busied his mind to keep it off the phantom pain from his prosthetic. Such a strange behavior, trying to form a ring. Why did they put their heads together like that? Gavin had told him stories about ranching in Texas, how horses would huddle up in a circle to shelter each other from the cold. They did it head-first to maintain social connection. Very different than cows, who went head-to-rump. Cows apparently weren’t very smart.

  He scanned the room. Nine people total in Flight Control. Most wore business-type clothing. One had security apparel. None of them seemed injured—no blood, no signs of a struggle like in Parrell. Wyatt wondered what the end must have been like, whether anyone had been able to hold their wits long enough to even attempt to seal the security door.

  The comm came to life with Chris’s voice. “Acid One, Acid Two. Come in.”

  “This is Acid One.”

  “We’ve reached Passenger Embarkation, Terminal Six, with no incidents. What’s your status?”

  “All quiet here. Everybody’s sleeping.”

  A beat of silence. “How’s the script coming?”

  “Good,” Maya responded, overhearing. “I’ve got a standard launch package up that I can automate the hold gates in the countdown. Five more minutes.”

  “Okay,” Chris said. “Just so you know, there’s no shuttle pod at the gate.”

  “There won’t be anything served up until I kick off the sequence.” Maya spoke with distraction in her voice, and kept her eyes glued to the holo monitor.

  “Copy. Signal us when you’re moving out.”

  “Roger that,” Wyatt answered.

  He glanced at Maya hunched over her keyboard. Behind her, the blues of the ocean battled the growing red of sunset.

  “You sure are taking your time, Sergeant. You making a shopping list over there?”

  An absent-minded laugh. “You want to sit in a nice, lonely orbit and play cards until the O2 runs out, Lieutenant?”

  “Fair enough.” The nerves around his leg danced in a slow smolder. He gazed out the window and saw whitecaps. “Looks windy.”

  “I don’t handle that part. The catapult makes those adjustments.”

  Wyatt nodded and went back to watching the bodies. He felt optimistic with how things were coming along. He had only known Maya through this mission, but there was no doubt around what she could do with computers. Maybe that would be just enough to get them back to Proxima alive.

  Some final adjustments and Maya stood up. “All done. Give the word and we’re ready.”

  Wyatt signaled Chris on the comm. “Acid Two, we’re about to move out. Over.”

  “Copy, Acid One. When the passenger shuttle comes up, Finn and I will make sure everyone gets onboard.”

  “You sure you won’t come with us?” Wyatt said.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant. Our fight is down here.”

  “Understood. Stand by.” Wyatt looked around and mentally plotted his path around bodies to the door. He nodded at Maya.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  Maya tapped one of the screens to begin her script.

  Nine kneeling bodies sat suddenly up on their heels.

  It happened in absolute silence. Wyatt yanked his Vector up. The constricted didn’t move any further. They just stared emptily into space like they were in a trance.

  Maya’s eyes grew wide in alarm. “Lieutenant?”

  “Psst.” Wyatt pointed at the figure to Maya’s left. He motioned for her to come toward him in a wide berth, aiming his weapon at the kneeling shape.

  She took small, fearful steps. Wyatt had to focus on his own breathing to keep steady. He remembered Parrell, feeling like he was sliding into a burning hole, losing himself. He understood what Maya was feeling. She had been there with him in the building.

  The comm crackled to life with Laramie’s voice. “LT. Something just woke up all these people lying on the deck.”

  “Copy. Same here.” He started to move backward toward the door, covering the constricted with his weapon, making sure none of them tried to do anything to his partner.

  “Doctor Bell says you need to get out of there, fast.”

  He crossed the threshold into the corridor. A moment later, Maya stepped out of the room, her face pale. Wyatt grabbed her elbow and pulled her down the hall. “We just exited Flight Control. Script is running. En route to the concourse now.”

  They reached the end of the corridor and pushed open a set of double doors. The main spaceport concourse ran left to right, a tall and airy structure made of tinted glass and dark carbon fiber. They stood in what was obviously the commercial wing. Multiple freight staging areas divided the floor space, with overhead winches and powered hand lifts strewn about for loading pods. Wyatt’s eyes searched the pallets until he found a map placard on a nearby column. Terminal Six, in the passenger wing, was to the right.

  “This way,” he said, and again had to tug on Maya’s arm.

  “They’re watching us.” Her voice trembled.

  She was right. A freight worker in a hard hat stood near a column and stared directly at them. Even from twenty meters away, Wyatt could see the pinprick pupils in the man’s blue eyes.

  They had to keep it together. “Keep moving.”

  A new voice came over the comm. “Lieutenant, this is Jack Bell. You have maybe two minutes, tops, before all these dormant constricted become fully active. You need to haul ass.”

  “Roger that.” His thoughts ran in all directions as more eyes followed them. For a second he forgot where they were going. “Confirm your position.”

  “We are at Terminal Six, standing outside the—wait, a shuttle just moved up the track and is approaching the gate.”

  Maya’s script seemed to be working. “Get everyone onboard and stand by. We are headed toward you.”

  They approached a wide cargo hatch with the words Terminal Two stenciled above it. A nearby monitor rotated through warning messages about the high-gee loadings used with commercial freight. This area seemed empty of constricted. A few cargo pods lay strewn about, along with a large, cylindrical container with a red inspection tag wired to the end.

  Why Terminal Six? Wyatt thought. We couldn’t catch a ride at a closer dock?

  He was breathing heavy now. They left Terminal Two behind and hustled down the concourse, passing stacks of cargo boxes waiting to be loaded from areas marked off in yellow tape. At Terminal Three, however, they had to stop. Tall pallets of cargo boxes stretched across the thoroughfare and completely blocked progress forward.

  “Did they try to build a barricade?” Maya asked. She motioned toward a nearby lift loader parked to the side.

  Wyatt scanned the concourse for a solution. A narrow path looked clear near the exterior window. Four gaunt figures stood in front of it, watching.

  “Um, we have a problem. Three is blocked.”

  “Copy,” Laramie said back on the comm. “Look for a cleared area on your left. That’s what we used.”

  “A couple of our friends are standing in the way.”

  A pause. “Okay. We’re sending a team back to
you.”

  “Negative,” Wyatt said. He fought down the tension that tried to creep into his voice. “Everyone stays on that shuttle. That’s a direct order. We’ll figure it out.”

  Maya aimed her Vector at the constricted. Wyatt did the same. The constricted stared back with hollow eyes.

  “You’re sure we can’t shoot these guys?” Wyatt asked.

  “No!” Jack Bell’s voice cut through the comm. “Don’t engage. You’ll trigger all of them to attack. Just get around them somehow.”

  Wyatt thought back to how his laser blast in the Parrell rec center set off a chain reaction of crippling mental pain. He lowered his weapon in frustration. Maya didn’t.

  “Hold your fire, Maya.”

  She stole a glance at him, pale as a ghost.

  Come on, keep it together, trooper.

  The burn in his leg intensified, starting to scorch.

  Wyatt looked for another way around. He pushed against one of the crates to gauge the weight. It didn’t budge. He tried again, this time using most of his body mass, but he might as well have been trying to heave a traffic barrier.

  His eyes wandered to the lift loader. Instinctively, he made a dash toward it.

  Metal bars formed the rough outline of the loader’s cockpit. Wyatt swung himself in and pushed back onto the padded stool that passed for a seat. The controls seemed simple enough—a steering wheel and a pair of levers. The thumb grip of a keycard extended from the dashboard. Wyatt thanked God it wasn’t biometric and switched on the power.

  A moment’s hesitation gripped him. He was about to make a hell of a racket. Would the constricted take it as a threat? Would a hundred minds suddenly come to bear in an attack designed not to infect, but to destroy?

  A tiny, golden speck winked at him from his peripheral vision and made his decision for him.

  Wyatt stepped on the accelerator pedal.

  The loader glided forward with the hum of an electric motor. Wyatt picked up speed and rammed the barricade, crashing into the heavy pods and sending them tumbling from the top of the pile. He kept his boot jammed on the accelerator and could feel the wheels spinning beneath the footplate. As the loader struggled to push aside the metal containers, the faint smell of burned plastic wafted from the motor housing.