“This has been the strangest day,” Merv replies, but he follows orders. The data streams on a holographic display in front of Marsden.
Marsden’s eyes scroll over the text, and you can practically see his conviction melting away with each line he reads.
“This is impossible,” he repeats.
“It doesn’t matter how many times you try to graft your own DNA onto any of us,” I tell him. “The stronger species will always win out. And humans are the stronger species. So suck on that until it tastes like candy.”
“I am not in the mood for games, Elvie.”
“Neither am I. The writing is literally on the wall, Doc. So maybe you should just put down the gun and go to your Devastator buddies out there for an honorable beheading, or whatever.”
“Speaking of which,” Merv interjects. “The encroaching aliens have come into contact with the first line of turrets. Shields at ninety-three percent. Analysis suggests defensive systems will hold for ten minutes.”
“They’re here?” Marsden asks, his face going white.
“Dearheart, what exactly is going on?” Dad asks.
“Same old stuff, Dad. Aliens. Revelation. Drama. Put the gun down, Doc.”
Marsden ignores me, staring intently at the genetic analysis scrolling in front of him. “My work . . .” I’ve got to give it to him, the man sounds truly gutted. “If all this is true . . . If we had known, we never would have come to your backward planet.”
And there it is. The cartoon lightbulb going off above my head. “I guess you wouldn’t have, would you?” I say. I turn to my new buddy the hologram. “Merv, maybe you can help us out after all.”
“As I mentioned previously, there are no weapons systems left on the planet that would be of use to you in a planetary conflict.”
“We don’t need to beat the Devastators,” I say, thinking things through out loud. “We only need to make them realize how pointless beating us would be.”
Byron shakes his head. “I don’t follow,” he says.
“What are you getting at, Elvie?” Marsden asks. His grip on Ducky has not loosened in the slightest.
“The whole point of this stupid invasion is for the Jin’Kai to find a new source of baby mommas, right? But if we could get a signal out, share the info about the mutation, let them see that hybridization is an inevitable and systemic thing at this point, and there’s no reason to stay . . .”
“Then they’ll just exterminate the whole planet,” Marsden says.
“That sounds bad,” Cole puts in.
“They wouldn’t waste their time with extermination if they have somewhere better to be,” I say. “Heck, this might even save your bacon, Doc.”
“Elvie . . .” Ducky starts to ask. But Marsden squeezes more tightly, and he shuts up.
“Merv,” I say, attempting to keep my cool. A plan, Elvie. All you need is a plan. “You said there are, what, four hundred some species out there compatible with the Klahnia? I’m assuming they’re pretty far away, right? I mean, seeing as the Almiri never found them before.”
“The species are a considerable distance from this system, yes.”
“And you have broadcast capabilities, right? If I wanted to transmit a message on an open frequency, the Jin’Kai fleet would be able to pick it up and understand it?”
“That is correct.”
“So if they’re so desperate to start making babies, there’d be very little reason to stay here and fight before they left. If we could send them coordinates . . .”
“It is against my programming to allow you to expose a vulnerable species to an aggressor.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” I say. “Do you have a user interface I can operate manually?”
“Yes, but—”
“Can you activate it, please?”
“It is against my programming to—”
“I got that part. Just open the goddamn interface.”
“Very well.” Merv’s eyes widen and spin, and a three-dimensional holographic keyboard panel appears in front of me, complete with a monitor. But when Marsden retrains his gun on me, I take a step back from the keyboard, arms raised.
“What are you playing at?” Marsden asks.
“I’m not playing, Doc. What you’re seeing here is a last ditch effort to keep us all alive.”
Marsden appears very unsure—an unusual look for him. His gun arm relaxes ever so slightly, which I take to mean that I momentarily have his attention. I move back to the keyboard. The cryptic martian code scrawls in front of me.
“I slept through Beginners’ Martian freshman year, Merv,” I say, already furiously scrolling through the data in front of me. “Mind throwing a universal translator my way?” Cole and Chloe crowd around me as English appears on the screen. “Show me star charts for the nearest compatible species.” Merv complies.
Embedded in the charts are data about each inhabited planet, detailing varieties of plant and animal life, sentient species (some planets, remarkably, have more than one), and levels of technological advancement. It’s pretty much the most astounding discovery in history, but I’ll have time to contemplate it later. Hopefully. In the present I need coordinates. The right coordinates.
“Elvie, don’t,” Byron says. “This is wrong.”
“He’s right, Elvs,” Cole says. “You can’t just shove the Jin’Kai off onto some other unsuspecting race because it’s convenient.”
For his part Ducky makes a gagging noise that I take as agreement.
“Look, I don’t know about you all,” I say, “but I just met my daughter, like, a week ago, and for most of that time she’s been a real bitch. No offense, sweetie.”
“None taken.”
“I’d like a little more time to get to know her better, and worldwide annihilation would seriously get in the way of that. I mean to survive this. I mean for us all to survive.”
“If we were to sacrifice another planet’s freedom to save our own skins,” Byron warns—and I swear I will knee him in the groin if he starts in on the poetry right now—“that would make us no better than the Jin’Kai.”
“He’s right, dearheart,” Dad says gently. “While I cannot contemplate oblivion, I find it a sweeter fate than that of being an accomplice to mass genocide.”
“All right. That’s just about enough, I think.” It’s Marsden who says it. When I look up, his gun is trained steadily on me, his forearm still firmly pressed into Ducky’s windpipe.
“Doc, this will work, I swear. You just have to—”
“Trust you? I think not.” He takes a step back toward the sealed door. “You are all quite convincing, but I’m not about to be hoodwinked by a half-assed ruse concocted by the Almiri and their pets.”
“This is the only way, Marsden,” I plead, doing my best to stay calm. “What do you think you’re going to do, just walk out there and fly away happily with the monsters who want to kill you?”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do. But they won’t lay a finger on me,” he says, throwing his glance to Chloe. “Not once I have her.”
My heart does a nosedive straight to the pit of my stomach. “Forget it, Doc. She’s with us now. You burned that bridge when you revealed yourself as the cold, calculating prick that you are.”
Marsden trains the gun on Chloe.
“I don’t care if I have to carry her out in pieces. She’s coming with me.”
“This may not be the best time,” Merv interjects, “but the intruders have crossed the first threshold and have engaged the secondary turret position. Shields are at sixty-seven percent.”
“I don’t think you’ve thought this through, Doc,” I say. “Taking my daughter with you won’t change any of the facts that we’ve learned here today.”
“This is not your daughter,” Marsden says. His tone is so matter-of-fact that it sounds like a s
mirk.
“What do you mean?” I feel breathless. “Of course she is.”
“Your troublesome mother took your mewling infant when she abandoned my facility weeks ago,” Marsden tells me. “This one is of my making.”
Chloe and I lock eyes with each other, and I’m not sure which of us is more terrified.
“A clone?” Cole asks. His voice is weak, nearly defeated. It’s a tone I don’t think I’ve ever heard from him.
“But the tracker . . . ,” I say. “It led me right to her. It . . . it beeped.”
“The tracer is genetic,” Byron offers. His voice is gentle, as though he knows that what he’s about to explain will gut me. “If Chloe is really a clone, it’s possible the tracer could have been transferred into her DNA as well.”
I spent all that time rescuing my baby girl, and now I’ve lost her all over again. And my mom has her? Where? Are they safe?
No. No time for this. You’re in a cave underneath the surface of Mars, Elvie Nara. You have an evil alien doctor holding you at gunpoint. The lives of your father, your friends, and yes, even the clone of your daughter, are at stake. Push it down. Push it deep down and save that worry for later. Right now you have to save the world.
“Marsden,” I say. “You’re a putz.”
“Not your best insult, Miss Nara, but given the circumstances I’ll let it slide.”
“Taking Chloe won’t help you one bit.”
“It is my fifth attempt at splicing your offspring’s hybrid DNA with the superior Jin’Kai code, and the only one to survive this long,” Marsden says. “My best shot at creating a sustainable breeding population lies in her cells.”
“Marsden, haven’t you listened to a single thing that I’ve been saying?” I snap. “Your DNA cannot overwrite the hybrid gene. This was all by design. You lie with Enosi, and Enosi is all you’re going to get.”
“Lies!” Marsden booms. “I will unlock the secret! Make it viable. We will never need to depend on an inferior race again. We will be eternal!”
“I should point out,” Merv butts in, “that the intruders have engaged the final line of turrets. Shields at twenty-nine percent. If this room is breached, I will be forced to terminate life support.”
“Do you plan on being a complete racist idiot the rest of your soon-to-be-very-short life?” I rage at the doc. “There’s still a way for everyone to walk away from this!”
“You know, Elvie, now that I think about it, I don’t find you all that charming anymore. Perhaps your particular brand of snark has grown old.” He tightens his grip on his gun. “Maybe it’s time that we shut you up once and for all.”
“Stop!” Chloe shouts. She looks at me for a brief second, then turns to Marsden, her mind made up. “I’ll go with you.”
The surprise is written all over Marsden’s face, as I’m sure it is on mine.
“I’ll come without a fight, all right?” Chloe tells him. “Just don’t hurt anyone.”
“I’m not in the mood for tricks,” Marsden warns.
“No tricks. You leave them be, and I come with you. You don’t, and you’ll have to extract the DNA you need from your ass, ’cause that’s where my foot will be.”
“Chloe,” I say, suddenly choked up. “You don’t have to do this. There must be some other—”
“If there’s one thing you taught me, it’s that I have the right to choose my own path,” she says. “So. This is my choice. Besides, I’m not even really your daughter.”
“I might not have given birth to you,” I say. “But either way, you’re my daughter. That foot-up-the-ass remark seems to prove it.”
I get a slight smile out of her with that. “I hope you find your real daughter,” she tells me. Then she turns back to Marsden. “We have a deal?”
“We have a deal,” he says.
Chloe walks slowly over to him, her hands raised. As soon as she gets close to him, Marsden shoves Ducky away and grabs hold of her, pulling her against him into the same headlock.
“Of course, you realize I can’t just leave them here to continue what they’re doing,” Marsden says, raising the gun toward me again, his finger on the trigger.
“And of course you realize that you should have checked me for a weapon,” Chloe says. Her hand flies into her tunic and she squeezes. The blaster shot sizzles through the loose fabric on her back and catches Marsden in the ribs. “How’s that free will taste, scumbag?”
Marsden cries out, stumbling back a few steps. Chloe tries to pull the gun free to get off another shot, but Marsden kicks her squarely in the face, knocking her out cold.
“Chloe!” I scream, rushing to her on the ground.
That’s when Cole and Byron make their move on Marsden. The doctor gets off a shot that hits Byron in the shoulder, sending him sprawling. Cole collides with Marsden, whose gun falls to the ground, and Ducky makes a beeline for it, nearly overrunning the weapon, fumbling it, and kicking it ahead of him as he stumbles, bent over. Even Dad tries to get in on the fisticuffs, grappling with Cole and Marsden, but one well-placed kick into his bad knee, and he crumples to the floor in agony. Marsden turns over and rolls Cole into a choke hold. Cole’s face turns purple, the veins throbbing in his throat and forehead.
“I expected a little better after our first sparring match,” Marsden tells him.
“Stop it!” I cry. I’m cradling Chloe’s head in my lap on the ground, tears streaming down my face. “You’re killing him!”
“That is the general idea,” Marsden says.
“Let him go. Now.”
Marsden turns to see Ducky training his own gun on him. Ducky’s sweating and trembling. I want to tell Duck to step back, that he’s too close to Marsden, but before I can open my mouth, the doctor reaches out and snatches the gun right from Ducky’s hands. He flings Cole to the floor, where he gasps desperately for air, unable to move.
Marsden grins at me as he trains the gun on Ducky. “Perhaps I’ll let you watch me kill everyone you love before I get to you,” he says. “How would you like that, Elvie?”
“Please,” I whimper. “No.”
Dad has crawled over to me and is wrapping me and Chloe in a protective embrace. Ducky looks at me wistfully and smiles.
“Elvie . . . ,” Dad whispers. “Listen.”
That’s when I hear the humming sound. Marsden hears it too—a split second too late. Ducky drops and covers his face just as the blaster explodes in the doctor’s hand, flinging him across the room, where he crashes into a bloody heap on the floor. The blast knocks Ducky in the opposite direction and throws me and Dad back on the floor as well. The ceiling is spinning above me, until I focus in on the red hologram staring down at me.
“Are you badly injured?” Merv asks, blinking.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Good. I just wanted to inform you that shielding will fail in approximately ninety seconds. It’s been nice getting to know you.”
“Don’t write me off just yet, Merv,” I say, rising unsteadily from the ground. “Show me that manual interface again.”
“Did you see that?” Ducky asks a little too loudly. His ears are probably ringing even more than mine are. “Elvie, did you see what I did? I did it! I totally did it.” He tries to stand up too quickly, and winces, holding his shoulder.
“I saw, Ducky,” I say without looking away from the display. “Great job.”
“I overloaded the pistol, just like Chloe did before.” He’s still beaming with excitement. “I tricked him into grabbing the gun, and then it blew up right in his hand!”
“Like I said, I saw. Cole, make sure Chloe is okay.”
“I hope that guy stays dead this time,” Cole mutters. His voice is hoarse, and he rubs his throat as he makes his way over to Chloe. As if in answer, a moan emanates from Marsden’s slumped mass, and the doctor shifts sligh
tly on the ground.
“Oh, come on!” Cole says. “Are you kidding me?”
Merv considers Marsden. “This one is badly damaged. Disintegrated limb. Ruptured internal organs. Heavy blood loss. He will be deceased in moments.”
“Good,” Ducky says, but then he stops himself. “I mean, not ‘good,’ but . . . I never killed anyone before.” He looks at me. “I don’t think I like it, Elvie.”
“How . . . do you think . . . I feel?” Marsden manages to flip himself over, and the sight of him is enough to make me sick. The left side of his face looks melted, and his left arm has been blown off past the elbow. His stomach is a mass of leaking organs, and his shirt is so slick with blood that I can’t even remember what color it was originally. Upon looking at the doctor, Ducky immediately barfs on the ground.
“Done in . . . by a human,” Marsden croaks.
“Just die already,” I say. “I’m so done with you.”
“He really does seem like quite the anal orifice,” Merv remarks.
So I guess there’s a little tweaking needed in the AI’s colorful metaphor subroutine.
“Elvie.” Dad puts his hands on mine, halting my typing. “Stop, dearheart. It’s over.”
“I really wish I had time to debate this with you guys, but I don’t. You’re just going to have to trust that I know what I’m doing.” I put the last touches on the info packet. “Merv, prepare to upload the packet.”
“While I am impressed that you have managed to override the considerable safeguards in my programming in such a short amount of time, I still must protest this course of action.”
“Listen to the ancient artificial intelligence, dearheart.”
“I just need a few more seconds,” I say through gritted teeth.
There is a sudden blast from outside. The lights momentarily flutter, and red dust falls from the ceiling. The unmistakable sound of blaster fire can be heard, each shot sending another shudder through the room.
“Shielding has failed,” Merv states. “The door will hold a few seconds only. You have my sympathies, truly.”
“Elvie, enough!” Byron grabs me and pulls me away from the keyboard. “Look at what we’ve learned here today. My species believed that they were a benevolent, enlightened people who bestowed their goodness on mankind. Our forefathers buried the truth about how we really came to live as we do, and that arrogance has lead to our undoing. Let the cycle of madness end here. Do not sentence another people to our fate.”
The World Forgot Page 21
