The doors to the launch bay opened, sucking upward, disappearing into the ceiling. The clatter of boots were closing in behind her, the chatter of mechanics and techs clinging away at the myriad of starfighters, dropships, odd-looking dune buggies, and Jetson-like flying cars in front of her.
Reaching the bay, she knew she would be safe – relatively, unless the moron with a rifle trailing her decided to let loose with a barrage of weapon fire, pitting everyone in the bay in danger, even himself. Any errant shot could hit a nuclear dynamo or an ion drive in a dropship’s power plant and set this entire starship on its way to hell and high water in a matter of seconds.
But even morons weren’t that dumb.
“She is under arrest. Grab her,” a guard hollered.
A pilot, on the bay tarmac, and walking his way to a starfighter heeded the call and dropped his helmet and charged her. He got within two feet before he realized he just ran into a shit storm.
Without altering her course, she slapped him with an open palm and caught him with a knee to the side of the head as his body angled downward from the first blow. He was knocked out, eyes shut, and on the floor in under 1.3 seconds.
You’re losing your touch, Rivkah.
She swiped up his helmet and headed to a starfighter with an open cockpit. A hand grabbed the back of her shirt, tugging her onto her back, knocking the wind out of her, nearly paralyzing her. The helmet slid away from her as the man jumped on her, pinning her to the ground.
“Rivkah!” The voice was like lightening, shattering the still.
Rivkah flung an elbow, missing her intended target – the guy holding her down. His eyes narrowed and he shoved her, then brought the butt of his rifle up, ready to strike.
“Rivkah!”
There was that voice again but she couldn’t turn. She had other problems. She put her hands up to block the rifle thrust just as the footsteps came louder. A whoosh of air breezed by her face, a body jumping over her and pummeling the man about to strike her. The rifle flew from the man’s fingers and slid by Rivkah.
She didn’t know who saved her and she didn’t have a second to care.
She stood and ran, picking up the helmet. The helmet’s ID read 102, Dizzy. She put it on as she ran at full throttle toward to the starfighter. She looked over her shoulder and nearly stopped, seeing the man who saved her. He was landing blow after blow to the guard.
Kaden Jaxx, her piece of shit hero wannabe. The son-of-a-bitch who had a magnetic pull to her heart so strong she wanted to pull an IPR-8’s trigger and unload a magazine in his face.
I have issues.
Her mind raced, her shoulder ached, the wet drip of blood slid down her back. Should she help Jaxx? Leave him be? Was he really a sellout or had he just saved her? The oncoming mess of guards made her decision easy and made the decision easy for Jaxx, too. He dropped the guard, letting him fall to the floor, and raced after Rivkah.
Now he’s coming after me?
She picked up her pace, quickly approaching an SF-13 Air Wing. Up the ladder, she plopped into the cockpit and started the starfighter’s engine, the vibration of the craft making her smile. “I’m back you mother-fuckers.”
She clicked the comm line. She gave her best male voice. “Pilot 102, call sign Dizzy, ready for take off.”
Static filled her helmet.
“This is Dizzy. Open launch tubes. I’m ready to fly out of here.”
“Dizzy, that’s a negative. We have a situation on the tarmac. Hold your position.”
Fuck! She’d have to go to her old tricks. If she could, she’d just blast her way out, but she could tell the starship’s armor was too dense for her ion cannons. If she punched a few missiles through the launch tubes, then Jaxx would bite the big one.
She wondered if Jaxx was doing alright, then pushed the thought out of her mind as quickly as it came.
She drove her starfighter forward, heading for Launch Tube One. “Asking for an Admiral’s Bell.”
Rarely used, an admiral always had a green light to leave a ship whenever necessary. In case of special emergencies, used on rarer occasions, a pilot could ask for the Admiral’s Bell and get a green light to enter a launch tube and leave the carrier or starship or cruiser. On even rarer occasions, it was actually approved.
“For what reason, 102?”
Rivkah pushed out her lower lip, inching her craft closer to the launch tube. “Hotel Sierra. I don’t want a nuclear mess right now. I’m carrying highly flammable experimental propulsion. I’m under orders from Colonel Slade Roberson and President Craig Martelle.” Hotel Sierra essentially meant, “Holy shit. I’m being targeted. Get me out of this mess.”
“Just a moment.”
She was just a few feet from the tube and mission control was probably asking for Slade’s or Craig’s permission to execute an Admiral’s Bell. When they’d get no answer, mission control would have to make an executive decision. She knew Slade and Craig wouldn’t be easy to get in touch with, so maybe she had a shot at this.
“Uh...affirmative, 102. Tube opening.”
Two strokes of luck in one day? She wanted to flip her father the bird, but she wasn’t out of this mess just yet.
She entered the tube and the tube door closed behind her, amber runway lights highlighted her cockpit. The exit doors opened, displaying the stars of the universe before her, a beauty she would never get used to. She floated a centimeter into her restraints, the gravity becoming nil and she weightless. She clicked over to her Air Wing’s holographic display and pressed the launch button. Her ion boosters pushed her toward the exit, the tube’s lining zipping past her at hundreds of miles per hour.
Mission Control hissed in her ear. “Closing tubes. You’re conducting an unauthorized launch. You’re not Dizzy. Identify yourself.”
She bared her teeth as the tube’s exit doors started to close. She zipped her finger over the holographic throttle, pushing it to the max, making a safe launch dangerous and potentially deadly. Her craft shuttered as her wing slid across the tube, scraping off chunks of paint and shards of metal. The door was closing fast. She wasn’t going to make it.
Fuck it.
She clicked on her Space to Space Short Range Missiles – SSSRM-23 Slingers – and targeted the exit door, and let one loose. The Air Wing shuddered and pain streaked across her shoulder. A blue streak of fire shot out the back of the missile, propelling it at tens of thousands of miles per hour, igniting a quick ball of bluish-white flame the moment it touched the door, ripping it off its hinges and sending it spiraling out into space, the flame dying in the vacuum of the cosmos a moment later as Rivkah exited the tube, banking hard right, knowing the starship would fire the moment she was seen.
And she was right.
The Air Wing’s targeting alerts blared and her HUD indicated incoming fire. The starship’s IC’s – Ion Cannons – spun in place, the turrets moved in position, pointing directly at Rivkah’s craft.
Her helmet display showed approaching bolts. She zig-zagged, spiraling away, the bolts missing on her port, traveling toward the red planet in the distance, Mars – its incredible glow lighting up space like a flare in the night sky.
Her Air Wing suddenly stopped alerting and beeping, no longer telling her that danger and death were imminent. She brought up her HUD, wondering if there was a malfunction.
It wasn’t malfunctioning. The starship stopped firing.
Why?
Her answer came an instant later as a Star Carrier jumped from God-knows-where to right in her flight trajectory. She pulled back on her control stick, barely avoiding a collision. A Destroyer popped up out of nowhere, then a Cruiser, two Frigates, and a patrol ship. And one by one, more of the fleet jumped in.
These were Secret Space Program Class ships. But why? Were they sent to rescue her?
She shook her head at the latter. No one helped Rivkah.
Except Jaxx.
“Fuck Jaxx.”
She veered left, then pushed her st
ick forward, going into a quick dive, adjusting her throttle to sub-light .30, roughly 5,100 miles per hour. Once out of collision-factor, she’d adjust to sub-light 2.5 – 17,000 miles per hour – and hightail the hell out of this quadrant. If starfighters had the Alcubierre Metric like the larger ships, a solution to Einstein’s field equations, that would allow her craft to create an artificial wormhole that lasted only seconds before closing back up, letting her traverse enormous distances by contracting space in front of her Air Wing and expanding space behind it, resulting in faster-than-light travel, placing her far from here.
But her ship didn’t. She’d have to do it the old-fashioned way and fly as far and as fast as she could.
A ship appeared on her helmet hologram. Another SF-13 Air Wing had exited out of the starship she just escaped from, moving in her direction.
“Just one?”
She was expecting an entire squadron. One would be suicide – for the other pilot.
Another ship expelled from the starship.
Yep. They were sending more. And more.
“Put up or shut up,” she said. “It’s show time.”
16
Charlotte, North Carolina
Drew sat on his porch, the end of the world as he knew it on his mind. “How long are you going to stand there and not say anything?”
The screen door squeaked open. “Sorry, Sir.” It was the girl. She’d been standing there a while, too afraid to make a noise.
It was morning and Drew gazed down the road. The streets were bare, unhappy, his neighborhood nearly empty of neighbors who were most likely fleeing this portion of the United States or the entire east coast. They had an idea of what was coming.
Now that he’d sobered up, so did Drew.
He scratched his cheek, shifting his eyes to the boarded-up house across the street. “Your name is Mya?”
The girl stood behind him. “Yeah.”
“How old are you, Mya?”
“Six.”
Drew patted the ground, asking Mya to take a seat, suddenly feeling like a father-figure, someone with responsibilities. Drew sucked at responsibility. The only thing he was good at sucking was a joint. “Where is your mom?”
Mya walked over and sat next to Drew. “She isn’t awake yet, Sir.”
“Is your Dad in the military?”
Mya nodded her head.
“Do you know how I knew that?”
The girl shook her head and picked at the ground. The poor kid. She had no idea what was going on, why her life had suddenly changed and what was next, where they were headed – if they were headed anywhere.
“Because you keep calling me, sir.” He pointed to the clouds. “I don’t like to be called sir, because that’s my Dad’s name, Slade Isaac Roberson, and when you take his initials, it spells S-I-R, Sir. He is the reason we have this fu...bad situation at hand. Please don’t call me Sir anymore, okay?”
“Oh...”
Mya’s mom pushed open the screen door. Her hair was disheveled, eyes swollen from crying or lack of sleep or both. “They shut off the electricity.”
Drew slumped. “Those motherfu...mean people. They couldn’t leave it on? They can’t give us people a break before we go insane and start killing each other before the coming apocalypse?” He was kidding – sort of.
“What are we going to do?” Her voice was flat, not because she didn’t care, but because for the last few days that Drew had gotten to know her, she was a straight-shooter, no bullshit kind of gal. She was to the point, not one of those annoying “I’m going to question the shit out of you until you guessed what I’m trying to get at” type of person. He liked her. “We need a car. Did any of your neighbors leave one around?”
“I already checked. Nothing.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Camila, why didn’t you tell me your husband was military?”
Camila pointed down the street. “It doesn’t matter. He knows stuff and told me to take Mya west where it’s safer. That’s where we will eventually go. You can come.”
Fuck. He almost forgot. He had to go West as well. Anderle, his internet buddy and converse-wearing genius, who was almost as smart as him – though he blew Drew out of the water in regards to computer smarts – needed Drew in Tennessee. How the fuck was he going to get there? No car. No public transportation. And what were they going to do about food and water? He couldn’t trek across country with a woman and two kids.
Right on cue, the baby started crying. He was hungry. They were all hungry.
Drew bit his lip. This wasn’t good. He had to think of something. “Where is your husband?”
“The Coast Guard base over in Nags Head.” Camila frowned, but held off the tears. “He’s a Marine. He’s been stationed there for what’s coming.”
“Who would station him there?”
Camila shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know who took over the White House or military operations. Whoever it was ordered my husband to guard the beaches. Something is –”
Shhhhkbooom! Bratatat Ratatat Bratatat Ratatat!
An explosion and the sound of machine guns blared in the distance. Drew stood, prodding the girl to stand. “Get in the house. We’ll get supplies. I’m guessing we gotta leave.”
“Do you think it’s them?” asked Mya.
Camila shoved Mya in the house and Drew followed closely behind.
“Who’s them?” Drew asked.
Mya turned, her eyes wide and innocent, her lips trembling. “My dad said the Cheese are coming.”
Drew understood what she was saying – the Chinese. She was scared for her father, more so than she was scared for herself or her mother or her little brother. She didn’t want her dad to die. Drew had never had that feeling in his life and for a moment, he envied the kid. To have a connection, something tangible with his father was something Drew had always wanted. But his father was a dick. Potentially one of the biggest dicks alive. What lottery number did Drew draw to get so lucky? “Life is fucked up.”
Camila rummaged through the fridge. “What?”
“Nothing.” Drew pointed to the top edge of the refrigerator. “Remember the first aid kit.”
Drew ran to his room, grabbing his duffel-bag. He slipped his laptop in it, just in case, then ran back to the fridge, opening it for Camila to dump as much food in there as she could. There wasn’t much.
“We need flashlights,” she said. “Blankets.”
Drew opened a kitchen drawer. “Mya, search in here. I’m pretty sure I have a flashlight.” Drew hurried over to the door that opened up into the garage and threw it open.
He rifled through his recycle bin, picking up all the empty plastic bottles he had; Gatorade, two water bottles, and an organic orange juice container. That would have to do.
He raced back into the house and to the sink, washing the bottles out and then filled them up with water. Was it still safe? Was the water plant running? He shrugged. They were going to die of something, some day. Might as well be contaminated water. At least they wouldn’t be thirsty. He tossed them into his bag and Camila dropped a few cans of beans, something Drew didn’t remember ever buying, but everyone had beans.
“Got the flashlight, Mya?”
Mya closed the drawer. “Just one.”
“Does it work?”
She nodded her head.
“Good. Now, go into my room and pull of my blankets. That’s all I got.”
Jikoooosh!
The house rumbled and they all looked at the ceiling.
“That’s a military jet,” muttered Drew, his hands by his side, dumbfounded. They don’t usually fly over the city so low.
Jikoooosh!
Jikoooosh!
Two more.
They ran outside, staring into the sky. A jet fighter was being chased by two distinctively different looking ones. The one being chased was American, the others? Perhaps Chinese. They were black.
Bratatat Ratatat Bratatat Ratatat!
The machine guns were getting clos
er, only a couple of blocks away. They had to get going and now.
Drew picked up the girl. “Let’s go.”
Camila had the duffel-bag’s strap around her shoulder, the baby against her hip. She raised her fist to the east and blew a kiss. “Vuelves vivo, mi alma!” She let out a deep breath, whispering, “I love you.” She spun around, looking Drew directly in the eyes. “What’s your plan?”
“Follow me. Don’t get pissed at me if this doesn’t work.”
17
M-Quadrant, Solar System
Starship Atlantis
She left, rocketing out of the launch tube. Jaxx had saved her again and she wouldn’t care, or wouldn’t know. The alarms were blaring, the lights in the launch bay blinking red and yellow and Jaxx punched a guard one more time before he realized he’d spent too much time with this young man. He managed to spin away from an incoming guard and put his foot out, tripping the camo-loving, taking-orders-from-the-wrong-side soldier. The guy landed face first and tumbled to his side.
A gang of guards rushed past the launch bay doors, coming directly for Jaxx. A special agent, wearing a striated-ebb nebula titanium exo-suit, the most bad ass in the Secret Space Program – Jaxx didn’t know how he knew the specifications of the suit – took a flying leap over the mess of guards, his boots clanging across the bay as he landed. It wasn’t an agent. It was Richard “Fuckface” Fox. In another life and another time, Jaxx would have smiled. Today, he stopped himself from shitting his pants.
This wasn’t good. How had he been patched up so fast? What did it mean that he’d geared up in the exo-suit? Jaxx was no expert with his own powers, but expert or not, he had to try. He ducked another attempt by the grunt he’d tripped and kneed the poor guy in the groin, dropping him to the floor. He then brought every emotion to the surface, every inch of disappointment, anger, frustration – the times he was ridiculed for his work by people who hadn’t studied or took the time to read more than a few paragraphs of his massively researched articles, books, and talks…
Destination Atlantis (Ascendant Chronicles Book 2) Page 8
