by Kyle Noe
The cartridges burst forth and Quinn felt like she was strapped onto the back of a rocket. The water foamed behind her and she grabbed Milo’s wrist as they shot up through the lake. The liquid rushed past the pair who were launching up toward what was obviously, a very narrow hole in the ice. Quinn was screaming inside the HUD, fighting like hell to control her momentum so that she didn’t veer off and smack into one of the sheets of ice that hemmed her and Milo in. She prayed that they’d have enough gas in the cartridges to hit the hole before it closed up.
On the surface, the ice had nearly frozen over the hole again and Hayden was standing, his finger curling around the trigger when he saw them. Saw what looked like walruses rising up under the ice.
“What the hell?” Hayden muttered, to himself.
He dropped to one knee and squinted, gaping at the ice when—
WHAM!
Quinn and Milo jettisoned up and out through the hole in the lake. They nearly took Hayden’s chin off as the big man fell back on his ass. Quinn and Milo landed off to his left. They smashed down onto the ice and skidded to a stop. Hayden pushed himself up, following the Marine and the resistance fighters over. He could see that Quinn and Milo’s armor was slicked with ice, but they were moving and alive. Hayden slid forward, damn near tackling the two, throwing his giant hands around them.
“Jesus, girl, how ‘bout next time you decide to go for a swim you let me know!” Hayden shouted.
Quinn shouted and hugged him as he pulled her up. Before they could celebrate the moment, however, Giovanni tapped Hayden on the shoulder. Hayden looked back and up at him.
“You’re gonna wanna see this, Gunny.”
Hayden helped Quinn and Milo to their feet. The three looked out over the lake. The entire horizon was filled with Syndicate drones, hundreds of them. The drones were likely a quarter mile away, but closing fast. It was unclear whether they’d spotted the fighters.
“Can’t these fuckers give us a hot second to celebrate?” Hayden said.
“They are on us like ticks on a hound, brother,” Eli added.
Giovanni lifted a Hafnium rocket as did Hawkins and Mackie.
“If they want to crash our party, let’s give ‘em a welcome,” Giovanni said.
The warriors lifted their Hafnium launchers and fired them simultaneously. Quinn stood back, admiring the arc of the rockets as they soared out over the lake and detonated. The explosion birthed a fireball that buckled the ice in one ear-shattering upheaval, great sheets of it splitting apart. Dozens of Reaper drones vanished into the murky depths of the lake as Quinn raised a fist and shrieked with joy.
Then she turned and Hayden pulled out his ruggedized scanner which revealed that they were very close to the other side of the lake, the area where the path toward the hidden temporal totem was located. Quinn pulled up the map on her HUD. She could see the temporal totem blinking green. The mist subsided and she pointed at the mountainous region and the strange, barely visible formations that loomed ahead. The totem was supposed to be located on the other side of them.
She powered up the communications link with Cody.
“We’re across the lake,” she said.
“Which means you’re close to the shortest route to the totem,” Cody replied. “It’s a shortcut really.”
“Wish us luck,” she replied. “Just make sure you’re at the exfiltration spot or your ass is mine.”
“Don’t tease me,” Cody said, before the link went dead.
Quinn held up a clenched fist, then gestured to the ground that lay before them.
“There’s a shortcut that way! All we have to do is hit the path on the other side and find the target and then we’re gonna get the hell out of here!”
The other warriors cheered before moving out.
Cody watched helplessly on his viewer screen as intermittent explosions sickled Hygiea’s upper atmosphere, the gaseous cloud that haloed the rock, the result of the unstable chlorine and chlorine dioxide which had been set ablaze by several Syndicate ground to air missiles. The bastards were still firing at him, Cody thought. While the asteroid didn’t have a proper atmosphere, the fact that it had gravity and functioned more like a dwarf planet allowed it to draw in a variety of gas, hence the chlorine and chlorine dioxide clouds, which were easily detonated by the alien ordnance.
Several things worried him as he watched the glider’s A.I. controls pilot the craft over the surface of the asteroid. He was scared about being downed by a Syndicate rocket and of losing contact with Quinn and the others. Communications were largely a crapshoot given the conditions, and if the fighters got into a bind, there was little to no chance that he’d be able to assist them. He felt helpless in the glider, circling around, watching the others do the real work, the dirty work, down on the ground.
Cody knew he had to keep an open channel as long as possible, but the higher the glider climbed, the more scattered communications became. That was basically his job at this point. A glorified getaway vehicle. He wanted to be inside the Syndicate base when Quinn and the others found the temporal totem, but he was overruled. “Too valuable to the cause,” Hayden had said. And Quinn had agreed. Besides, if they didn’t get the totem off Hygiea in the glider, whatever they learned from it wouldn’t matter anyway. Still, he couldn’t help but wish he was down there to help in some way.
Lost in his thoughts, worrying, Cody had no choice but to wait out the battle. If he got any lower, they’d lose their ride.
That’s when an alarm sounded and an explosion buffeted the glider. He franticly looked to the readouts. It hadn’t been a direct hit, just a strike a few thousand yards off the glider’s port side. Considering the vastness of the gaseous clouds, it was more luck that they got that close than that the ship had just barely avoided the impact, which gave Cody an idea.
He veered the ship around and headed straight for the location of the explosion. Once there, he engaged reverse thrusters at a low level and then forward thrusters. Just enough to keep the ship in the same space as long as possible, to essentially execute a hover in space.
He surmised that the Syndicate batteries were firing into the sky in grids, that there was a method to their madness. They didn’t know precisely where the glider was, but hoped to smoke him out with random patterns of missile fire. In point of fact, what they were trying to do was eliminate the places where the glider wasn’t. It was a gamble for sure, but worth it nonetheless. In all likelihood, the aliens would fire blindly, obliterating the sky, trying to track the glider down while hopefully running out of ammunition. And when they did, Cody would engage in a little shake-and-bake, and guide the glider down into the area where he planned to extract Quinn and the other fighters.
Sure enough, less than a minute after Cody had repositioned the ship, another alarm sounded and another blast erupted two thousand yards away. Cody looked to the readouts. He needed one more explosion to be sure his theory was right. Exactly a minute passed, followed by a third alarm and a third explosion in the distance, farther away this time.
Cody checked the readouts again. Exact same distance between the third explosion and the second as there was between the second and the first. The alien gunners were making a grid
in their hunt for him. He was right! His smile slipped away and he began to wonder how he’d known this.
It was just a hunch wasn’t it? He’d spotted a pattern and made an educated guess. Yes, that had to be it! But something gnawed at him, the feeling it might be more than that. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention when he caught his reflection in a faraway window and something, some inhuman yellow light that seemed to beacon from his eyes. He blinked and looked back and the light was gone.
Nervous, sweat dripping down his back, he turned back to the glider’s controls. He was safe right now, but if the aliens got wise to his maneuvers, all bets would be off. He eased himself down in a chair and studied the screens before him, praying that Quinn and the other fighters made it to the to
tem before the aliens figured out that he was onto them.
At the same time that Cody was contemplating issues of survival, Quinn and Giovanni were leading the Marines and resistance fighters across the remaining section of lake. They stopped at the far shoreline which was crowned by an ice formation that rose up in front of them. The formation appeared to have been created eons ago, back when some molten, lava-like substance had ruptured the surface of the asteroid. The lava had apparently punched through the ice and then froze again, leaving a forest of what looked like stalagmites.
“Keep moving!” Quinn shouted. “There’s not much time!”
They continued on through channels in the ice formation until they reached a section of solid ground. Here was a vast sweep of what looked like limestone karst, an ancient raised reef that had been pushed up by a million years of weather and tectonic action. The entire area resembled a kind of crude cityscape, spiky skyscrapers of sharpened stone rising up hundreds of feet into the air like the horns on some great beast.
“Okay, so I’m gonna be the first to say it,” Renner said. “I’d like to skip the shortcut and take the long way around.”
Several others laughed nervously and nodded. Quinn and Milo swapped looks. Quinn bobbed her head in the direction of the shortcut. “This is the only way,” she said.
Milo kicked at the ground. “You know what I’m about to say,” he whispered.
“You’re welcome,” Quinn replied. “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Milo shook his head. “I was gonna say I’m really pissed that you came back for me. You could’ve jeopardized the entire mission, you idiot.”
“Marines don’t leave anybody behind. Even jackasses like you.”
Milo just stared at her. “You know what I mean, Quinn. What we’re doing here is bigger than any one of us.”
Quinn snapped the firing bolt back on her rifle. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
She turned to head out, but he grabbed her arm. “I still think you’re an idiot, but … thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Quinn said.
“Hey, Quinn,” Milo said, tugging on her arm. “Hold on.”
She hesitated and he gestured back across the ice. There were drones, likely hundreds of them, advancing forward.
“We are seriously outnumbered and outgunned,” he said.
“So it’s just like every other time,” she replied. “We either stay and die, or we take the shortcut.”
“In which case our deaths are likely just delayed, eh?” Milo answered.
“At least it’ll be on our terms.”
Quinn looked out over the Marines and resistance fighters. She realized they’d had differences in the past, but that was behind them now. They’d come this far and would have to go a little farther and so she did like she’d done so many times in the past when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. She gave herself orders. She would lead them through whatever lay ahead and finish the mission. They’d find the temporal totem and then she’d find a way to get the hell off of the asteroid. They’d do that or die trying. Everyone checked to make sure their weapons were loaded, and then Quinn grabbed up her rifle and ran into the maze of sharpened stones as the others followed.
13
Escape from Shiloh
There were two choices if you wanted to watch a movie in the blue room that had been set aside for kids at Shiloh. A dreadful cartoon called “Invertebrate Buddies” that centered around a group of anthropomorphized shellfish, or an old Scooby Doo cartoon. On the day that the glider left for Hygiea, the children had voted for Scooby Doo. Samantha lounged on a beanbag next to five other kids, ages five to thirteen, rolling her eyes at the episode, a particularly ludicrous one featuring Scrappy Doo, who she’d come to loathe. ‘Crappy Doo’ would have been a more appropriate name she thought to herself.
“Anyone ever wonder why the villains at the end are arrested?” she asked.
Several of the children looked back at her. “I mean they were just scaring people with masks and costumes,” Samantha added. “How’s that even a crime?”
The only adult in the room, a rotund resistance fighter in his late forties, named Ted Lewis, groaned. “Can’t we just enjoy the cartoon, Samantha?”
“But it doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s a cartoon,” Ted replied, leaning forward as if to emphasize the point. “It’s not supposed to make sense.”
Samantha shrugged and turned away. She glanced at the exit door. She’d been cast down here by Comerford and a few of the others who were adamant that she was not to be around the command center while they communicated with her mother and the others during the assault on the asteroid.
“I’m going to hit the head,” Samantha said. The other kids had no idea what she was talking about and turned back to the cartoon.
Samantha exited the room and hooked a right, easing down a narrow corridor. She had absolutely, positively no plans to use the bathroom, she just needed an excuse to bolt. Watching cartoons was for, well kids, and she didn’t really consider herself one anymore. Besides, the recirculated air down at the bottom of the silo was stale and sometimes smelled like old people and older books and urine. She heard snatches of conversation from a side hallway and loped down. On the other side of a metal door that was cracked open she could see Comerford and the others stooped over communications gear.
There was lots of static, but she could distinctly hear the voice of Cody relaying information back about the mission. It was impossible to tell the details, but then Comerford glanced over and she startled and ducked back down the hallway. Worried that they’d find and send her back to the friggin’ Scrappy Doo torture room, Samantha decided to head topside. She found a metal staircase and headed up, catching some glances from a few resistance fighters going the other way.
She reached an upper hatch and pushed it open, taking in the day’s cool air. There was activity on the other side of the base near a few of the outer buildings. Samantha squinted and saw the resistance fighter named Xan and several others. They were loading gear into a primer-splotched Nissan Pathfinder SUV, which had been modified with sections of metal baffles that ran on the sides from the front wheels to the back.
Samantha twirled the piece of string around her wrist and then moved across a long strip of blacktop. Xan and the other fighters were alternating between loading ammunition in several rifles and tossing assorted gear into rucksacks.
“Where are you going?” Samantha asked.
“Outside the wire,” Xan said, not even looking back.
“I figured that.”
Xan pocketed a satellite phone and looked over. “Then why’d you ask?”
Samantha was silent and the fighters continued to stack and pack what looked like enough material for a long range patrol.
Samantha pointed to the SUV. “You got any extra room inside that bad boy?”
“We’ve got height and weight requirements,” Xan replied.
“Yeah, well, I punch above mine.”
Xan stopped and looked back down at Samantha. “You’re Quinn’s kid aren’t you?”
Samantha nodded.
A strange smile played at the corner of Xan’s mouth. She looked off into the distance, then back to Samantha. “We can squeeze you in if you want to come, but we aren’t taking responsibility for your safety.”
Samantha smiled and climbed aboard, contorting her body to fit into a bench at the very back of the SUV. “So what’s the plan?” she asked.
“We’re going out to recon an area down past South Greeley,” Xan replied. “There’s been some activity reported.”
“What kind of activity?” Samantha asked.
“The unusual kind,” Xan replied, slamming the door shut.
Even assuming there were tunes to listen to, the SUV’s radio was busted, so Samantha stared outside at the desolate landscape. Even before the invasion not many people called Wyoming home and after the attacks, those that had been around scat
tered like rabbits. She’d heard that many of the locals, who were naturally hardy people, had taken to the mountains to sit things out. Others had sought shelter in the FEMA camps that had initially been established down near Denver before the entire area had been bombed by the Syndicate during those terrifying days directly after the initial invasion.
They drove on into the arid land of the High Plains, motoring up Highway 85, swerving between a few abandoned cars and several tractor-trailers that lay off on the shoulder, jack-knifed and torched, either by the aliens or teams of bandits and scavengers that purportedly had been operating in the vicinity over the prior few weeks.
Samantha leaned back and heard several conspiracy theories being shared between Xan and the other fighters seated beyond her—two men in their thirties with what looked like prison ink and shags of brown hair, and a woman with a long face like a shovel whose right eye nervously ticked.
The shovel-faced woman rubbed what appeared to be rosary beads and ran the conversation for a good twenty minutes, blaming everything at first on the Russians. “The Russians got this malware called ‘Fire Eye’ that they used to shut down the utilities and whatnot,” she said, before turning to the possibility that the entire thing was a false flag operation.
“Oh, hell yes, they’ve done it before,” the shovel-faced woman said, smacking her hands together. “Anybody ever heard about Operation Northwoods? They planned to blow up part of the country and blame it on our enemies. True fact. Look it up. It’s the Deep State, the Gray State, all the way.”
“But we’ve seen them,” one of the men countered. “We seen the goddamn aliens. We’ve fought ‘em.”
“Sure, yeah, but it all could be special effects,” the shovel-faced woman replied. “For Crissakes they hired that famous director and he done the same when they faked them moon landings.”
“Maybe they’re like vampires,” Xan mused. “Maybe somebody high up in government invited the aliens in, and now they’re not gonna leave.”
