General Aames watched this from the blind he’d been hiding in, a concealed location at the far end of the deck. He clutched a pistol, quivering, staring out at the inferno, watching his troops being burned alive. The heat was intense, singeing his eyebrows, the General trembling as he watched Samantha rain down hellfire. Survival mode kicked in and the General scooted down a walkway, scurrying away from the flames. He entered an elevator and powered himself up toward the upper deck of the base, hoping like hell that he could reach his drones and unleash them before the girl came for him.
BACK OUT ON THE DECK, Samantha had little time to celebrate the destruction because the drone holding her staggered and then began collapsing into the water. The lasso around her waist broke free and Samantha fell down through the air. She windmilled her arms, the deck rushing up to greet her when—
WHUNK!
She was able to arrest her downward descent until she was hovering in the air, twenty feet off the surface of the inland sea. It was the strangest sensation, like being held aloft by blasts of cool air. And simply by focusing her mind and drawing the energy through the tips of her fingers she was able to rotate her body around and down. It was going to take some getting used to, but Samantha liked the feeling of flight. It was terrifying yet terrifically empowering all at once. She looked down and over and caught the eyes of a knot of Syndicate soldiers preparing to pursue her mother. There was something in their eyes. Shock and respect for Samantha … and fear.
She focused the energy coursing through her arms and brought her body around until she was facing the deck of the alien base. She twirled her arms and loosed a primal scream and exploded every inanimate object in sight. Shrapnel and debris filled the air, ripping the surviving alien soldiers apart, blasting holes in the alien base, barely missing Xan who dove out of the way, continuing to struggle up the faraway ramp toward the base’s upper deck.
She held aloft a hand and brought her fingers into her palm and ripped up whole sections of the decking. She flew forward and continued to tear the base asunder and that’s when she heard a voice. It was Quinn, her eyes wide and swollen. She was bobbing in the water, staring up at Samantha.
“Samantha … wha – what are you doing?!” Quinn asked with a groaning cry.
Samantha felt a vibration in the air which meant something seismic was about to happen and so she swooped down and grabbed Quinn’s wrist and began pulling her back through the water. The glider was visible up ahead and it banked hard and began knifing back over the water to the mainland. Samantha’s gaze found her mother’s. “My God,” Quinn whispered. “What have they done to you?”
Samantha heard a metallic screech and turned back to see several more monstrous submersible drones rise up out of the water like metal krakens. She let go of her mother as she ascended, then pulled her hands together and made the air sing. Quinn watched, awestruck as the pseudo-ocean turned into a literal lake of fire around the approaching drones.
AT THAT MOMENT, Xan climbed the final few steps of the ramp and plunged through an opening in the base’s upper deck and fell to the ground inside the base’s command center. Her side was on fire and she could see blood pooling underneath her. Somehow, some way, a round had found its way through her arm. She’d been shot.
Coughing up blood, she rose and saw dozens of aliens inside the base. Just staring at her. Then a figure lurched out in front of them and it was General Aames! He had a gun in his hand and a look of pure homicide in his eyes.
“You!” he shouted.
Xan bulled forward and grabbed the General in a bear hug. He tossed her aside and she fell to the ground, wheezing. The General straddled Xan, looking down at her like a fairy tale giant.
“You’re not even a Marine are you?” General Aames sneered.
“I’m the resistance.”
The General barked out a haughty laugh.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“I’m the crazy bitch with a bomb,” Xan replied, grinning darkly.
The pistol came around and was placed against Xan’s temple.
“Go to hell,” the General whispered.
“You first,” Xan replied with a smile.
General Aames fired his gun as Xan pressed on the detonator and—
WHUMP-BOOM!
A column of pure, sterilizing light issued forth from the bomb in the rucksack, atomizing everything in sight. General Aames, Xan, and every alien soldier were vaporized as columns of fire ravaged the Syndicate base.
The world went white as the boiling tide of flame swept across the decking of the base. The modular nuclear reactor broke off from the base, sinking into the water but not before it spawned a rolling wave of thunder, a tower of flames that shot hundreds of feet into the air.
QUINN HAD PADDLED several hundred yards away from the alien base. The air was heavy with the scent of burning fuels and material, and small fires raged here and there. She called out for Samantha and for a moment she caught sight of her. Suspended over what was left of the alien base, attacking two of the still-functioning drones. Quinn watched her windmill her arms as the air roiled and she somehow tore through the drones like a wrecking ball, turning them into metal splinters. And then came a humming note and what sounded like a sigh. As if the world itself had exhaled a breath, taking a pause between all of the devastation. Then a massive secondary explosion obliterated what was left of the alien base, causing the wreckage to glow red. A fireball smeared over the man-made ocean, forcing Quinn back down under the water. She kicked her legs and dove down, watching the flames sweep across the water’s surface. Seconds later, she breached the water, and searched for Samantha, but there was nothing there. Literally. Everything that had once been in sight only moments earlier was gone. All that was left was the smoking detritus of the blast.
“SAMANTHA!” Quinn wailed.
Nothing.
Silence.
She called out again and again and then she heard another sound and turned back to see the glider descending over her. She could see Milo and Hayden waving and screaming at her, but she didn’t hear them. She couldn’t hear anything anymore. Her body went limp and the last thing she remembered before she passed out was somebody from the glider jumping down into the water next to her.
25
Insidious is the force that causes one to dream of things they know will never be. On being hauled up into the rear of the glider after the destruction of the alien base, Quinn collapsed to the ground and lay there alone in nerve-brutalized wonderment, curled in a fetal ball. No words of comfort were offered by any of the others, and none were sought. What good would it have done? What could anyone say that would possibly numb the pain of losing your only child? She prayed that none of it was real, that the events of the last few hours were, instead, the figment of an unquiet mind.
Only in the relative quiet of the glider’s back bay, did she begin putting the pieces together. She and the others had successfully run a gauntlet that stretched between Shiloh and the edge of the alien’s man-made ocean. Once over the water, Quinn had swooped down on Xan and taken the fight directly to the Syndicate’s main forward operating base while struggling to free Samantha, who’d been captured by a massive alien drone. Then, when all hope seemed lost, Quinn witnessed a sight that would haunt her for the rest of her days.
She’d seen her daughter do … what? Do something. Even at that moment, Quinn wasn’t entirely sure of what she’d seen, but there was no doubt that she felt it, felt some unholy energy radiating from Samantha. The kind of sensation you got when standing under power lines.
Before she set the air on fire, Quinn read the look in Samantha’s eyes, a mix of terror and awe. She continued to play the images over and over in her mind, subtly reordering and altering them. She conjured up a final conversation with Samantha where Samantha would whisper: “Don’t look at me that way, mom.” And then she’d say: “What way?” and Samantha would reply: “Like you’re a scientist and I’m some bug trapped under a glas
s.”
And then Samantha would fly, and God help her she had actually seen her little girl fly, and hover over Quinn and whisper, “There is something coming, mom. Something you can’t even imagine.”
“You’re scaring me,” Quinn whispered back.
“You need to be scared,” Samantha replied, her voice thinning with fear. Then she had torqued herself up into the air and unleashed hellfire on the aliens.
Jesus, had that really happened? Or had Quinn simply lost her mind? She remembered she’d had an aunt who killed herself many years before. What was it? Bi-polar? Schizophrenia? She couldn’t remember which, but there was a history of mental illness in the family. Maybe it was attributable to that or maybe she’d just cracked after witnessing so much death and devastation. Or perhaps, most troubling of all, was the thought that her reality now was worse than any nightmare. What she’d seen had taken place and now Samantha was gone, gone away, never to be seen again. It pained her to think that they’d been right. Xan and Comerford and all the others who’d said they’d seen Samantha engaged in some very unusual activities. They’d likely seen her do the very same things she’d done to the aliens, which is why they’d all been imprisoned back in Shiloh.
She lay her head against the glider’s cool floor as a collage of images bombarded her: she saw herself giving birth to Samantha in the hospital, very much alone, the hospital cold, sterile, the epidural ineffective. How many hours had she endured? Ten? Twelve? And then a final, titanic shudder had coursed through her body followed by an explosion and Samantha emerged and screamed… Then the doctor handing her over for bonding, and how she had grabbed Quinn’s right index finger. She remembered all of that vividly. The images then fast-forwarded at an alarming rate, Quinn watching Samantha advance in years until she saw the incident out over the water again. She watched the drones burst into flames along with the alien base and then it was too much. She threw her hands over her ears and closed her eyes and fought to will the images away. Her body went limp, and she knew that the flight back to Shiloh would be the longest thirty minutes of her life.
MINUTES AFTER FEELING the glider land, Quinn heard a whisper. “Quinn?” a voice called. “Hey, Quinn?”
She rolled over and stared up at Cody, who stood several feet away from her. The others were visible behind him, but their eyes were downcast. It was clear they were trying to give Quinn plenty of space.
“We’re all really sorry,” Cody whispered. “I know that doesn’t mean anything at all, but we – I – wanted you to know that.”
At that moment, barely holding onto sanity, Quinn took in Cody’s look and nodded.
“You need anything at all you let us know,” Cody added, laying a hand on her wrist.
All she needed was one thing, Quinn thought to herself. But it was the one thing she’d never be able to have again. But then, lying there in a stupefied state, she suddenly remembered the bodies back under the ice on the asteroid. With that came the realization that there was a way to change things. There was a potential way out. The time ship! Cody had the coordinates didn’t he? They knew where it was and had the means to go and assault it. How could she have forgotten about all of that?
Quinn sat herself up, drawing strength from the notion that there might still be a way to change everything. To erase all of the bad things that had resulted after the Syndicate invasion. She stood and turned to the others who still stared nervously at her.
“You don’t have to do this,” Cody said. “I mean, it might be best if you stay in here and rest.”
“We need to make plans,” she replied.
“For what?”
“An attack on the time ship.”
The rear ramp on the glider descended and Quinn marched down into the light of day to see several dozen resistance fighters assembled. She instinctively squared her shoulders, ready to fight, but none of them appeared to be armed. A baseball-cap wearing man, with raccoon-eyes and a long face like a shovel, emerged from the crowd and moved toward Quinn. She vaguely recalled seeing him at some point in the past, but didn’t know the man’s name. He moved to within a few feet of Quinn and removed his cap.
“You made it back, then,” the man said.
Quinn nodded.
“We had an intel report of a series of explosions out on the west lands,” shovel-face added.
“That’s in the area where we encountered several alien bases,” Quinn said.
“You … encountered them?”
“Yep. Right before they were destroyed,” Quinn replied.
The shovel-faced man looked beyond Quinn, peering at the others dismounting the glider as if doing a mental headcount.
“You’re missing some people,” he said.
“Comerford and Xan are dead,” Quinn responded.
Her words received a current of disapproving murmurs along with the shaking of heads from most of the gathered resistance fighters.
“If what you say is true,” shovel-face said, “if you blew up an alien base, the scuds are likely gonna want some payback.”
“That’s certainly possible,” Quinn replied.
He shifted his weight and slapped his hands against his baseball cap. “Sergeant, you and your people could probably kill all of us if you wanted to.”
Quinn nodded.
The man pointed back toward their base, the entrance to the silo.
“You’re more than welcome to everything we have, but we’d like … well, we’d like you all to go.”
“You discussed that?”
The man nodded. “We voted on it. We’re done with the fighting and just want to be left alone.”
“You can’t hide down there forever.”
“We know that. But we’re tired of living life on other peoples’ terms. I hope you can understand that.”
Quinn took this in, trading looks with Cody, Hayden, and the others who were nodding.
“Twenty-four hours,” Quinn said with a nod. “We grab what we can carry and then you’ll never see us again.”
“Deal,” shovel-face said, extending a hand that Quinn shook.
26
Q uinn made sure to keep busy over the next several hours. She and the others returned to the silo and commenced gathering up and packing their armor (from the room that Xan had previously sealed), along with their gear and other items. Moving down through one of the central walkways, Quinn made two quick stops. First, she stopped at the room where they’d been imprisoned, which was still in disarray. She searched for and found Zeus, Samantha’s tiny toy robot, and pocketed it before moving on to the room where Samantha had been kept. She knelt and picked up the pieces of the loop of string Eli had given Samantha, and pocketed these as well. Then she turned and studied the rest of the room, catching what she thought might be Samantha’s scent still lingering in the air.
Trudging back down an inner corridor, Quinn spotted Cody gesturing to her. He laid a hand on her shoulder. “You want to talk?”
“There’s no time to talk,” she replied. “We’ve got to get everything ready.”
“For what?” he asked.
“The time ship,” she answered. “We’ve got to game plan for how to hit that sucker.”
His face fell. “Yeah, about the time ship, Quinn...”
“What?” she asked, flinging him a nasty look.
He gestured down the corridor. “It’s just … the others are back in the control room. They’re having a meeting.”
“About…?”
“It’s probably better if you just … come and listen.”
Quinn brushed past Cody, threading her way down the corridor. Snatches of conversation were audible up ahead as Quinn breezed through the open door that led into the silo’s control room. Hayden, Milo, Renner, Giovanni, and all the others who’d gone on the mission to attack the alien bases were present. They looked up, surprised to see her.
“Plotting without me, huh?” Quinn said.
Milo summoned a quick smile as Cody closed the door. Nobo
dy said anything for several seconds while Quinn prowled the space, exchanging looks with everyone.
“Why is everybody so goddamn quiet? You heard the man before. We’ve got twenty-four hours to lock and load, which means we need to start planning now,” Quinn said, turning to Cody. “You’ve got the coordinates, so let’s talk about how we’re going to do the deed. We don’t want to lose our opportunity with the time ship.”
“What about if we don’t hit it?” Milo said.
Quinn wheeled on him. “Excuse me?”
“Some people think that maybe we don’t need to risk everything for one ship,” Milo said. “Maybe there’s another way.”
Quinn’s brow furrowed. “But that’s not what our plan was.”
“Plans can change,” Mackie said. “After all, look what we accomplished back there.”
Mira nodded. “We took out a bunch of alien bases.”
“And?” Quinn said.
“And some people think maybe that’s where we need to focus,” Milo said. “That maybe we need to concentrate more on conducting larger hit and run operations. Y’know, focus on things down here instead of up there.”
Quinn looked at Hayden and Giovanni. “Are you buying this bullshit?”
No response.
Quinn shook her head. “The only reason we blew up the bases was because of Samantha. You all saw it. Without her we wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“So then we’ll get better weapons,” Mira replied.
“We can’t beat them, don’t you understand that?” Quinn said, smacking her hands together. “The only way to change the future is to go back into the past!”
Syndicate Wars: False Dawn (Seppukarian Book 4) Page 15
