With no warning, a large round penetrated her shield, creating a fissure in the outer hull of the Seraphim. A gaping hole grew right before her eyes. It caused confusion between her natural vision and the occipital input from the sensor array. She continued to dive toward her target while fragments of ammunition rained into the cockpit.
The time had come. She locked every missile she had left on her target and fired, but even as she engaged her weapons she knew it was too late. The Leviathan had launched its barrage toward the hangar where Jack sat defenseless in the bunker.
EIGHTY-THREE
Jack watched the Seraphim skim past the Leviathan, vanishing from the hologram as the rear port engine exploded and tore the rear third of the ship away.
“EVANGELINE!” he cried. The carrier erupted in smoke and sparks, spinning out of control and careening towards the ground.
The Leviathan spiraled toward the ground as a leaf caught in a whirlpool. Jack cheered as multiple explosions burst from the top of the carrier. He believed Evangeline’s attack had caused the Leviathan to explode from the inside, but he was wrong.
“Jack,” Gideon interrupted the celebration. “The Leviathan has launched a payload into the air. They are air-to-ground missiles locked onto our coordinates.”
Jack’s stomach tightened into painful knots. He had never feared death before he met Evangeline, but the thought of living without her, or leaving her behind after a tragic accident, had caused him deep physical pain. Now, standing with Gideon in the virtual command center, Jack knew he preferred the outcome in which Evangeline lived instead of himself.
Gideon continued his dire report as Jack’s stomach contorted.
“I estimate the missiles will be here within three minutes,” Gideon said in his analytical fashion. “However, I estimate the Leviathan will impact the surface in less than one. There is a high probability that the impact will destroy the networks aboard the carrier and eliminate the equipment that is guiding the missiles. The chances of survival will increase. In that event, however, the network will also be unable to sustain my program.”
“Gideon!” Jack shouted in wide-eyed panic. “You’ve got to get out of there! Transmit yourself back to Olympus. Find the Dissidents and do whatever you can to assist them! Now!”
Gideon observed Jack’s display of emotion. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he began. “The long-range transmitters on the Leviathan were damaged by the HATs we sent to attack it. I am unable to relocate my program off the ship. There is no connected device within the area large enough to contain my program.”
Jack put his hands on his hips and stared with fixed determination at his creation, his mind racing to find a way to preserve him.
Gideon recognized the calculating visage on Jack’s face. Between them, the illuminated image of carrier was moments from smashing into the ground. With long, angry steps, Jack charged through the holographic map toward Gideon. Surprised, Gideon took a step backward.
“Jack, what are you doing?”
“I can’t let you be found in the wreckage,” Jack said as he spun Gideon around and started entering commands on his console. “If the network on that ship survives, they’ll find you and they’ll either be able to reprogram you to help find the Dissidents, or they’ll use you as a template to create others like you. If they do that, they can do to others what we did to them.”
“Why not just decompile my program?” Gideon asked with casual inquisitiveness. “You should be able to recreate me.”
Jack smiled at Gideon’s willingness to be subject to termination. Jack had not programmed him with self-preservation protocols.
“Because of everything you’ve learned on your own,” he said like a father to a young son. “I can’t recreate that. You’ve progressed beyond my expectations, and I don’t want to lose you, too. I’m going to save you in a place where no one will look for you. But you should be safe even if I’m killed.”
“Where is that?” Gideon asked just as his image shrank and morphed into a glowing cube in the palm of Jack’s hand. Jack walked over to another console and activated a display, setting the cube on a tray next to it. The display showed the amount of data storage that Gideon’s program would need to remain intact. He looked over at the other side of the display and saw the remaining capacity of his only storage device. He needed Gideon to survive, and if it would benefit Evangeline in the future, it was worth the sacrifice.
It would be close, but there was enough.
He doubted that that bunker would survive the incoming missiles. The odds were the bunker would disintegrate to rubble within a matter of seconds.
A voice, Gideon’s voice, seemed to elaborate a final question in Jack’s mind.
“Where are you going to put me, Jack?”
Jack sat down in a virtual chair and activated the data transfer.
“Inside me,” he said into the darkness as his own thoughts began scrambling with the memory engrams of his priceless creation.
EIGHTY-FOUR
The missiles had fallen on the facility like thunderclaps. Massive craters yawned wide in the earth where moments before there had existed rooms, corridors, stairwells, lifts, and every other part of a building Evangeline could not think of. She soared over the hangar bay at the far end of the facility where Jacobs and the rest of the surviving pilots had already landed. She felt a surge of gratitude that the Leviathan had only been able to fire a handful of mortar shells toward the Dissident compound. The destruction was bad, but she recognized it could have been much worse.
The corpse of the downed carrier had sliced into the earth, displacing massive clots of soil and vegetation. The section closest to the carrier’s smoldering husk, where the majority of the damage had been inflicted, was directly above where Jack’s bunker had been located.
If Evangeline had been able to see to the bottom of all the rubble, she would have witnessed Jack’s body sitting in the same chair he had occupied when he first entered the virtual command center with Gideon. His body had remained motionless throughout the entire battle.
The two soldiers who had agreed to protect Jack throughout the attack lay dead, prostrate on the floor. The roof of the bunker had fractured and collapsed under the onslaught of the bombing, missing Jack’s body by mere feet. He may have sat unmoving in the chair with his eyes covered, but the neural interface showed signs of rapid brain activity.
Evangeline landed the Seraphim near the edge of the crater which had been formed by the downed Leviathan. Her seat descended from the cockpit and she strained to pull herself from the connections that bound her to the machine.
Scrapes and bruises covered her face from the hail of debris that had found its way into her cockpit. She trotted down into the crater, hoping that it did not give way under her weight until she had a chance to search for Jack. She begged in her heart that he was still alive. If he did not survive the bombing, she knew she could never make up for the sacrifice he paid for her parents’ escape. She was not sure if she could live without Jack.
She slid down the sloping floor plates that had once been the hangar deck before she located his body.
“Jack!” she cried out, scrambling over chunks of jagged concrete and twisted steel. “Jack, answer me! Please!”
The first thing she noticed was the neural interface propped askew across his scratched face. She could not tell by his closed eyelids if he were alive or dead, but there was subtle movement in his chest. She prayed with all her might that he was breathing. She feared that the wind sweeping down from the Seraphim’s engines was obscuring her vision.
She reached his body, as still as a monument in the middle of the ruins. The lights of the neural interface, still attached to his head, flashed in quick bursts. For her it was a bad sign. He always removed the interface the moment he exited his virtual workshop.
“Jack!” she screamed as she shook him by the shoulders. “Jack, come on. Get up!” She took the broken helmet off her head and pressed her ear against his chest
. She heard the throbbing of his heartbeat under his skin, and heard the slow respiration of his lungs. “Oh, thank goodness!” she cried out, weeping. “You’re alive!”
She thought that if she removed the neural interface for him, he would regain consciousness on his own. However, the moment her hands touched the connection ports, Jack’s eyes flew open and his hands shot up and locked her fingers against the sides of his head.
“Stop!” he said. “Do not remove the neural interface, Evangeline. If you do, we’ll both die!” His voice was eerie, strangely calm, and monotonous, void of its usual warmth.
Evangeline shook her head in confusion. She slowly pulled her hands out from under Jack’s touch and rested them on his face. “How would removing your interface kill you?” she asked.
A sudden whirlwind swept about them as a HAT appeared overhead. The turbulence from its engines pelted Evangeline with dust and debris. She covered Jack with her body, protecting him from the swirling cloud of rocks and charred papers.
The HAT passed over them and landed on the edge of the crater a few yards from the Seraphim. Once the engines slowed to an easy thrumming pace, the pilot and co-pilot exited from their separate cockpits and disconnected. Their flight suits were made from the standard green material, but designed for flight as well as combat. The fabric, interwoven with armor plates, refracted brightly in the sunlight, giving the pilots the appearance of six-foot tall chameleons.
The two pilots walked to the edge of the crater and stopped. They had their side arms drawn, but they were holding them in a defensive posture. As non-threatening as she thought they appeared, Evangeline grabbed her own sidearm and took a knee, placing herself between Jack and the invading soldiers. She aimed her weapon and prepared herself to die defending her husband.
The HAT pilots raised their hands in surrender, and then made a show of holstering their weapons with slow, exaggerated movements. The one in front, the primary pilot, retracted the shield on his helmet, exposing his face to her. He was an older man, scarred, and carrying an air of weariness in his azure eyes that Evangeline understood from her years in the military.
“It wasn’t right!” he shouted down into the crater, his voice echoing off the vast empty pit. “It wasn’t right, what happened here.” The co-pilot retracted his face shield as well. He was younger, fresh-faced and plastered with fear. Evangeline wondered if he had just finished training at the academy.
“What do you want?” Evangeline called up. With her weapon still trained on the two pilots, she tried to size them up and determine if she needed to shoot, or keep asking questions. “None of the other HATs survived the battle. How did you get here?” she demanded.
“We were part of the third wave. We were hit by an EMP missile and lost control. We barely managed to land before suffering an entire system failure.” He looked over at his co-pilot who nodded his agreement to the story. “We watched from the ground as your small squadron defended those transports. Those were civilians, weren’t they?”
Evangeline looked back and forth between the two men. The older one held his hands up like a shield while the younger one continued holding his arms outstretched to the sky. She made a quick decision to trust them and she relaxed her stance a fraction as a gesture that it was not her intention to kill them.
“Yes, they were!” she answered. “They were trying to get away with civilian scientists and researchers who are the key to finding a cure.”
The ominous tone of her voice evoked surprise in the older man’s eyes, disbelief in the eyes of the younger. “A cure for what?” the older man asked with a mixture of suspicion and surprise.
Evangeline did not know how much the man knew about the assault today, what had really been at stake. She was certain no one on Olympus understood the gravity of what was actually going on.
“A cure for a plague that’s starting to spread. Soon, it will be out of control!” She searched his face. “It’s a disease that has the potential to wipe out the Human race, this time for good!”
“Are you Captain Evans?” the younger pilot interrupted. Evangeline was taken aback by the turn in the conversation. “Captain Evangeline Evans?” he asked again with more urgency. Evangeline nodded. The older pilot removed his helmet, and the younger pilot followed suit. Free of their helmets, Evangeline could see an unmistakable resemblance between the two men’s straw blond hair and crystal blue eyes.
Off to her left she saw the figures of Kevin and Felicia take an offensive position on the edge of the crater behind and to the right of the two pilots. She had the sick feeling that she was supposed to know who they were, but for the weariness and exertion of the battle, she could not make the connection in her mind.
She called out, “B.B.! Don’t fire!” She lowered her weapon and stood up from the ground. With a wave from her free hand, she gestured for the two men to approach her in the crater. As they picked their way through the debris, Kevin and Felicia followed behind, keeping their weapons aimed at the two men. They made their way down and stopped a few feet before her. She kept her body positioned between the men and Jack, like a lioness protecting her cub.
“Who are you?” she said to the older man. The familiarity in his face haunted her.
“I’m Major John Simmonds,” he began. He pointed to the man beside him. “This is my son, Chris.” Evangeline noticed the lieutenant’s insignia on the younger man’s chest as her hands flew to cover her mouth. A wave of anguish passed through her, as she understood why the men seemed familiar.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered through her tears. She holstered her sidearm in a smooth, fluid motion, and walked toward Major Simmonds, embracing him.
“I’m so sorry about Daryl,” she said into his ear. Stunned, he suspended his arms out for a moment and then wrapped his arms around her in a tight squeeze.
“Thank you,” Major Simmonds said. “On behalf of our family. Daryl spoke very highly of you in his last message.” Evangeline put her hands on the Chris’s shoulders and gave him a compassionate smile.
“Is that what killed him?” Chris asked with pain brimming with the tears in his eyes. “Was it this plague you were talking about? Is that what killed him?” Evangeline did not know what else to do but nod her head in affirmation. “Who started it? This plague?” he demanded.
Over their shoulders, Evangeline could hear Felicia speak through her earpiece. “I’m going to kill Garrett!”
Evangeline opened her mouth to attempt to summarize the situation when the Major cut her off. “It doesn’t matter at this point!” he said to his son. “What matters is that these people say they’re trying to find a cure. And in Daryl’s memory I’m going to do what I can to help.”
Chris’s eyes were full of hurt and anger, still grieving the loss of his brother, but he nodded his head with a simple response. “Yes, sir.”
“Captain,” the major said with a sudden return to military propriety. “Is there any way we can assist you?” Evangeline’s eyes darted between the men and Jack.
“I need to get my husband out of here.” Evangeline turned and started clearing debris off Jack’s body.
“We’re going to get you out of here, Jack,” she whispered. “Somewhere safe.” The Simmonds’s, Kevin, and Felicia pitched in to get Jack out of his chair. They had picked him up and were carrying him out of the crater when he opened his mouth again to speak.
Jack’s eyes gazed up toward the sky with a blank expression. When he opened his mouth to speak Evangeline smiled in anticipation of his voice.
“Evangeline,” he said, again speaking in the strange hollow, foreign tone. “I believe several ground vehicles and troops survived the Leviathan’s crash. I calculate they will be here within the next thirty minutes.”
Kevin looked around and saw clouds of dust off in the distance. “He’s right, here they come! Let’s get Jack into the HAT’s cargo bay. Felicia and I will ride with him. Evangeline, you’re going to need to get the Seraphim to the freighter so we can all g
et off-world and rendezvous with the rest of our people.”
It had not occurred to Evangeline that Kevin and Felicia came to the crater on foot. She felt better knowing that Jack would be watched over by a man she trusted. John and Chris returned to their pilot seats, reconnected, and ascended up into their cockpits. Evangeline did the same with the Seraphim as she watched Kevin and Felicia carry Jack into the cargo area of the HAT as it launched upward.
She felt like she was being held hostage. Jack, her husband and the single most important person in the world to her, was in the care of someone else and she could do nothing about it. She and the HAT launched from the ground within seconds of each other, with the HAT taking the lead. She assumed Kevin was directing them to the undamaged hangar and the remaining freighter.
They flew both their vehicles straight into the freighter’s loading bay. After they landed, they made sure their vehicles were secure for transport. Evangeline walked next to Jack’s body as the Major and Kevin carried him on a stretcher toward the infirmary. As they reached the medical bay, she felt the freighter rise up out of the hangar, engaging its engines at full throttle to escape from the demolished facility.
Hundreds of feet below the crater, Garrett wrenched open the steel door of the abandoned mechanical room at the lowest level of the facility. The old boilers he had stumbled upon during his exploration of the Dissident base became his hiding place, and the stockpile for the supplies he had pilfered from his temporary allies.
The battle overhead had raged on longer than he had expected, but he was in no hurry to expose himself when the combat appeared to have ceased. He had ignored the call to get on one of the transports escaping the area, delighting in the thought that he would be presumed dead when he was not found among the surviving Dissidents.
Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 44
