Izzy shook her head. “I have another idea.”
Alec grimaced. “What is it?”
“We take control of the tower instead. Imagine if we controlled the thousands of Seekers and Trackers around Detroit.” Her eyes were wide, and Alec thought he saw something close to insanity in them. But she was right.
“Fine. We’d be more useful doing that than cutting them off and rushing to Tom’s aide. What help would we really be up there?” Alec asked.
“Right. It’s settled.” Izzy stared forward, and Alec did too, seeing the looming alien tower piercing the sky along the East Coast. If they could take over the drones, they could take over the war.
Cole
“Ready?” Soares asked, snaking the cable through his fingers and plugging the end into his tablet.
“Good to go on your say so,” Renata answered. She was standing over the shoulder of one of her tech people, who had pulled up a kind of suitcase, which folded out into a rugged computer the likes of which Cole hadn’t seen before.
“Power back on in three, two, one…” The tech guy hit a key on the laptop built into his contraption. Cole expected something to happen, but nothing did. Soares snapped his fingers and held up a thumb, unplugging the tablet and watching intently as the one-handed man’s fingers danced over the keys.
“Aaaand it’s up,” he said with a flourish and a final, decisive keystroke.
“Sweet,” Renata declared loudly. “Let’s see how those assholes like a little truth and propaganda comin’ their way, huh?” Her people started up a ragged, muted cheer that sounded almost sarcastic until Cole remembered these people lived in the quiet underground because their lives depended on it.
“Cut the cars,” she yelled, turning the ragged cheer into an aggressive chant that altered the tone inside the train to one of angry anticipation. Renata unclipped a small radio from her vest and spoke into it.
“All ahead full,” she said solemnly. “God speed and thank you.”
The drivers, Cole guessed. She was saying goodbye to the people about to give up their lives.
Chapter 40
Tom
“Tom, we’re not ready. The message isn’t playing yet, the power hadn’t been restored,” Bailey said, her arms crossed over her chest. She was a sight for sore eyes. She’d been gone since before the others had departed Cripple Creek, and there weren’t many people on this god forsaken earth he trusted more than her. Maybe only Soares.
“That’s because it’s not time yet, my dear.” He patted her cheek, and she reached for his hand, pressing on it.
“Tom, you look like shit.”
“I love how you’ve never minced your words.” Tom was still wearing his uniform, an act of structure in a world without any. He almost felt foolish for keeping it on, but when he’d arrived at the hideout, the Reclaimers told him to leave it on. They felt stronger with him like that, and so did he. His coughing had subsided, his aching bones and lungs had eased enough for him to do this.
The group was a strong one, a hundred of their best. They were only three miles from the factory, and he could see the glowing gateway from the backyard. Everyone was in black outfits, armed to the teeth. It was his time to rally the troops, not that they needed it.
If this was a sports game, they weren’t in the fourth quarter; they were in overtime and on borrowed time. The gate was spinning, the crackling blue energy casting an ominous cloud over the Detroit automotive plant.
“The pieces are in place. This might be a one-way trip, for me at least. I know I said I was bringing a team of ten with me, but I’m going to ask that you stop some distance behind. Alert them to your presence, but from a distance,” Tom said firmly. One hundred heads focused on him, they stood in ranks along the farmhouse’s yard. The grass was trampled, the house in a shambles.
Bailey stepped forward to object as he’d expected, but he lifted a hand. “No. I’ve made up my mind. You’ll all be close by to attack when needed. I have no doubt of your commitment or loyalty, but now isn’t a time for ego. The main objective is the gate, and barring that, the fact that a large percentage of the remaining humans around the world will see the feed we want them to see.
“They can witness my brother, Travis Mason, as he pleaded for their efforts twenty-five years ago. We failed then, but not without trying. The Occupation has brainwashed our people; we have generations of newcomers who have never known anything but rule under their oppression. Those children have children of their own.
“We need to appeal to everyone, to show them we have other options.”
“How will they connect with us?” a man asked. Tom peered over Bailey’s shoulder and recognized it as a young soldier named Bruno.
“Bruno, I’ve added an encryption into the file, one linked to the music playing in the background file,” Tom said.
“Won’t they find it too?” he asked.
“Have you ever heard them playing music?” Tom asked. It wasn’t foolproof, but from all the intelligence he’d gathered, the Overseers were not the most thorough rulers. They led with a blind eye and minimal efforts.
“Will Zhao be pissed?” Bailey asked.
“Most assuredly, but Alec is there, and he has this innate ability to persuade everyone to see the best in a plan.” Tom thought about his boys, his nephews, and felt a sudden lurch of emotion. He was never going to see them again. They’d persevere. They were Travis and Elaine’s sons. Masons through and through.
“When do we go?” Bailey asked, her voice silky and calm.
Tom peered at his watch. “Now.”
They piled into the high mobility all-terrain military-issued vehicles. He’d snuck these near Detroit over a decade ago in preparation, and was happy to find them in working order. The engines had been adapted to the aliens’ tech, so their rotten fuel was no longer an issue.
Tom sat up front as a wide man with a drooping mustache steered down the road, leading the charge toward the plant. The trucks split off, shifting into position around the field, and only Tom’s retained its head on direction.
Ten to six. If all went well, the grid would be restored, and the video would be feeding to every tablet, television, and computer screen under Occupation rule, which was damn well near all of them.
The ride was bumpy, and Tom’s chest burned as they slowed a half mile from the factory. The gateway was in full motion, the lights crackling and intense. It wasn’t turned on yet. That was a good sign. They still had time.
If only he could convince the Colonel to switch sides live on camera, he might have a real shot at this. Tom stood as they stopped, and peered over the truck, hanging on to the open door. The intel was right. The tracks led up to the gateway. Damn it, they were right. Tom smiled at the turn of luck. The Roamers had taken his hint so many years before and ran with it. The factory would have been one of the largest users of the rail system decades earlier, and the aliens didn’t seem to consider this an issue. Not with the tracks having been abandoned for so long.
They’d never expect the rush of a zooming train strapped with so many explosives that might well take the entire facility down with it. What Tom hadn’t been expecting were the Overseers.
They had a ship on the ground, landed near the gate, and the field was littered with the bastards. He could almost smell them from his position. He hopped off, slamming the door shut behind him. He walked with purpose. He didn’t have minutes to wait around.
“Sir,” Bailey said, catching up to his fast-paced steps.
“Bailey, stay behind. I need to do this alone. Get the drone filming.”
She grabbed his arm. “Be careful, Tom. We want to see you make it out of this alive.” Her eyes were brimming with tears.
He pulled her in, hugging her tightly. “My journey ends here.” He kissed her cheek and turned, walking away. The sound of a small drone carried from above him, and he glanced up, seeing the red light on its center. It was filming him. His watch told him he had two minutes, and he hurried
toward the factory yard.
There were hundreds of Occupation drones around, none between him and the parking lot. They all seemed to congregate on and around the great field outside the plant, protecting the gateway. This was going to happen very soon. The energy crackled through the air, and the hair on Tom’s arms stood under his long sleeves. It was warm, and the sweat drenched his uniform as he took the last stretch of steps.
A Tracker appeared to notice him from a couple hundred yards away, just as he approached the entrance on the chain link fence. Its eyes flashed red, and it began running for him. No. Not now.
His wrist alarm beeped, informing him it was 1800 on the nose, and the Tracker stopped abruptly, turning away, and loping toward the train tracks. Someone had given it a new command. Tom had half expected them to power off with the grid, but they were clearly linked to a different source. His heart still raced and didn’t slow when his target was acquired.
Outside the Detroit facility, there was a massive screen, one that gave the human staff details like weather, factory goals, and output. The image snapped to a picture of his brother, his wife beside him, holding Alec and Cole when they were only weeks old.
People around the yard broke their focus from the gateway to the screen as the volume rose. Tom almost didn’t notice the figure walking toward him.
The man he’d known so long ago was alive, scarred and disfigured, wearing a well-tailored suit. “Tom Mason. I never thought I’d see you again.”
Three months after the initial invasion
Another dull thud sounded from the ceiling, indicating something much worse happening far above. Tom peered up, expecting to see plaster dust dropping like choking rain, but nothing fell.
“How the hell did they find us here?” his younger brother asked him. Tom restored his wide-eyed terror to one of staunch resolve.
“It’s not like it’s that big a big secret, Travis,” he answered. “Besides, plenty of people have switched sides to give up the locations.” Travis grimaced at the reply.
The fact that their own side—hell, their own species—could turn on them like that sickened him and made him angry enough to spit.
“Go,” Tom said. “Get Elaine and the boys and head to the escape tunnels.” He snapped his fingers at a capitol police officer, making the man freeze to the spot like he’d been shot at.
“Yes, sir, Colonel?” the man said.
“Private… Soares,” Tom said, reading the man’s nameplate and resting a hand on his shoulder while pointing at his younger brother. “The congressman here has been placed in charge of transporting himself, as well as his family out of this facility. I’m placing you in charge of making sure it happens.”
“Sir. Yes, sir,” Soares answered, seeming to fight the urge to salute him. Tom drew the Colt forty-five from his holster and held it pointing at the ground as he retrieved the two spare magazines for the weapon.
“Here,” he said to his younger brother, “take this.”
“I can’t…” Travis began to say, but he knew better than to argue. Travis had done well to make congress at his age, but his older brother had soared through the ranks of the United States Marine Corps to make full colonel before he had turned thirty-five. When Tom decided something, he didn’t rest until he made it happen.
Tom watched as Travis reached out and took the gun, pointing it to the ground like he’d been taught before, drawing back the slide to see a round ready to fire. Keeping his finger well away from the trigger guard, he pocketed the two spare magazines. Tom smiled to see his brother copying what their dad had taught them as soon as they were old enough to go to the range with him and practice with his nineteen-eleven, which was so old that the wooden grip had been worn smooth.
“You don’t have a weapon now,” Travis said.
“Colonel,” said a uniformed major behind him urgently. He had a finger pressed to his radio earpiece. “They’ve breached the fifth sub-level.”
“All right. There’s an armory on this floor,” Tom told his brother. “I’ll find a replacement and help myself to an M-twenty-seven while I’m there. Don’t worry about me, just shift your ass,” he barked, making the Capitol cop jostle Travis towards the exit.
“You’re following us, right?” Travis called out to his brother.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Tom yelled back.
“Sir,” the major snapped again, “we need to move this instant.”
“I hear you, Hansen,” Tom said, suddenly feeling vulnerable without a weapon. “Armory first, then we start rigging grenades in the stairwells. I want everybody out of here by the time these bastards break in.”
He stopped at a nondescript door and nodded reassuringly to the Marine guarding it. Stepping inside, he took off his uniform hat and tossed it on a chair before picking up a service weapon and checking it with fast, practiced hands. True to his word, he selected and loaded a replacement for the pistol he’d forced his brother to take and turned at the sound of gunfire on the floor above.
“We need to hold them off long enough so everyone makes it out of here,” he said to the few Marines gathered around him. “Ready?” They chorused their agreement with their battle cry that must have sounded just as loud to the attackers above as their gunfire did to the Marines below.
Travis turned and went with the flow, feeling the big Marine sergeant breathing down his neck the whole time. At the massive room before the escape tunnel, a loud, high voice called out to him. He scanned the panic and saw his wife, then eagerly shoved through people to reach where she stood clutching two bundles in knitted blankets inside the open rear Humvee door. She squirmed to balance the two babies in her arms and not lose the bags over both shoulders.
“Elaine,” Travis said as he reached in to take one of the boys off her, stopping when he realized he still had the gun in his hand.
“Where’s Tom?” she said, her eyes pleading, but her face strong and showing the same amount of resolve as her husband. “He’s coming, right? We need the boys’ car seats. I can’t take them in a car without their seats; it’s not safe.”
“Elaine,” Travis said patiently, “listen to me carefully, we don’t have the time to go back for their seats, okay? We need to get you and the boys out of h—” He flinched as gunfire echoed loudly from the stairwell he’d just come from. He practically shoved her inside the Humvee as he turned and lifted the weapon to point it at the doorway behind them.
“Sir,” Soares said with as much insistent force as he could muster, “it’s time to leave.”
“Not without my brother,” Travis answered stubbornly. “He said he was following us. He said he’d be right behind us.”
“Sir, I—” Soares tried again, stopping as another burst of staccato automatic fire rattled its sound through the open door. Travis moved towards the doorway, pistol up and aimed with his right index finger pressed against the side of the trigger guard. He was no US Marine and no cop, but he knew how to handle a weapon. Soares, unwilling to leave the man behind, followed at an off-set angle to support the stubborn congressman.
As they reached the doorway and took cover either side of the opening, more gunfire—deafening this time—erupted close by.
“I’m out,” yelled a voice that Travis instantly recognized as his brother’s.
“Covering,” shouted another voice, which he guessed sounded like the major who followed Tom around everywhere he went. “Last mag!” The sounds of the gunfight changed then, as the rattling bursts of automatic fire gave way to the loud pop sounds of single rounds being fired from sidearms.
“Go, Hansen! Move, move!” Tom’s voice shouted before the reply came out just as forcefully.
“No, you first, Colonel.” Cursing, Tom burst through the doorway into the vehicle bay as the last of the loaded trucks were pulling out into the long tunnel that led to the surface miles away. Tom turned as a bullet tore through the top of his shoulder and spun him out onto the ground.
Travis didn’t think, didn�
��t act consciously, just threw himself on top of his brother to protect him instinctively. Tom clawed at him, tried to push him away as their eyes met.
Travis froze, his body stiffening like he’d been hit with an electrical current, then his eyes went wide as the light behind them faded fast.
Travis flopped over Tom, his body a dead weight that trapped Tom under a crushing tide of regret and responsibility.
“Travis,” he whispered. “Travis, no. Come on, buddy. Get up… Get up! Get up!”
“Confirmed,” said Hansen’s voice angrily from close by. “Sub-level nine, vehicle escape tunnel. Yeah… he’s down, I bagged the son of a bitch.”
Tom’s face contorted in rage. He shoved the lifeless form of his little brother off him and leapt to his feet. He gripped the gun in both hands and squeezed, the treacherous outline of the bastard Hansen in his sights, but nothing happened. Tom’s slide had locked. Hansen stared at him, the fear in his eyes washing away as a cruel smile crept across his face and his left hand reached behind his back to produce a fresh magazine for his own weapon. The smile stayed on his face as he anticipated the kill.
Soares sparked to life, dropping to one knee and popping out of the doorway’s cover to fire three rounds into the stairwell. It saved Tom’s life, because Hansen was forced to dive for cover of his own, firing blindly towards the doorway as he went. Tom dropped his weapon, picking up the one from Travis’ hand as the warm fingers offered no resistance to him instead of wasting time reloading his own gun. He raised it, seeing Hansen’s face peer around the edge of the wall; the world stopped turning and halted the passage of time for him.
He pulled the trigger, squeezing off four rounds fast at the unforgiveable bastard who had just murdered his little brother.
The first round tore a chunk of painted concrete from the wall right above Hansen’s head. The second and third missed the wall and the man entirely as they flattened against the opposite wall far behind him, but the fourth blew a hole in the left side of his face and dropped him.
Salvation (Rise Book 2) Page 26
