Cody peered through the cockpit at Hayden who was in the next closest mech. They traded a look and anger flashed in Hayden’s face. Cody surmised that he was remembering all the devastation the aliens had caused on Earth. Cody watched Hayden’s mech swing into action, continuing to mow down all of the aliens who made a move to surrender.
The Marines took out the remaining Syndicate soldiers in rows, those that were fighting, and those who’d apparently lost the will to fight. The mechs fought their way forward and past the loading dock until they were near an opening that led outside. They stumbled out into the blackness of space.
“Thrusters,” Cody said to the others over the communications system. . “I remember … there should be thrusters on the back and bottoms of the mech.”
Cody fumbled with the controls, but was able to locate the thrusters which could be manipulated with a small joystick. He powered the mech forward, following Hayden who led the others away from the Syndicate ships.
“What do we do now?” Quinn asked over the mechs’ communications system.
“Get as far away from the blast as possible,” Cody answered, with sadness in his voice. “There’s really no winning here, is there…” he muttered out loud without realizing he was still on comms.
Once they were far enough out, Cody signaled for them to stop. “No need to waste fuel reserves,” he said. “Time to send the signal.”
“Why don’t you send it,” Hayden asked.
“They have to hear it from you,” Cody said. “I planned the whole thing. The fighters back on Earth are watching the sky, waiting to see evidence of the explosion. They’ll be ready to go, but they need to hear the signal and it means more coming from a Marine. You need to do it, Gunny. You need to tell them that it’s time to fight back.”
“This whole plan of yours was predicated on someone trusting me?” Hayden asked. “You’re more of an idiot than I thought.”
Cody smiled darkly. “Tell them it’s time to bring the hammer down on the scuds.”
Hayden hesitated, then Cody heard him breathe into the communications system, his deep voice booming.
“This is an all hands broadcast,” Hayden said, into comms. “This is a message from Gunnery Sergeant Hayden of the United States Marine Corps. My squad has successfully set explosives onboard a Syndicate missile defense command station. When you see an explosion in the sky, you are weapons free. Repeat, you are WEAPONS FREE!”
Cody looked over at Hayden. “Will that do?” Hayden asked.
“Hell yeah,” Cody said.
Quinn came into view. “Hell yeah?” she said. “That doesn’t sound like any scientist I know.”
“You need to get around more,” Cody said, and smirked.
A nervous smile gripped Quinn’s face. “Is this really going to work?”
“We’re screwed if it doesn’t,” Cody said.
The Marines floated for several minutes before anything happened. In the distance, other Syndicate ships could be seen heading in their direction. But there wasn’t really much they could do about them unless the missile defenses were taken out. Their mechs could likely inflict some damage, but ultimately they’d stand little chance of winning a battle in open space.
“The alien ships are coming!” Quinn shouted.
“We’re fine,” Cody replied, his voice quivering.
“We’ve got two minutes, maybe less before they intercept us!” Hayden exclaimed.
Cody looked up and that’s when it happened.
The glider hidden inside the Syndicate ship detonated, causing an explosion that ripped a hole through the alien vessel.
“GET BACK!” Hayden shrieked.
The mechs powered themselves back as the Syndicate ship vanished in a fireball that was brighter than the explosion of a star. The blastwave scythed out, propelling the mechs back down toward the edge of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Debris was everywhere, slamming into the mechs, filling the sky. Cody powered up the viewscreen on his mech. He could see objects hurtling from the Earth up into the sky. They were doing it, the fighters back on Earth had evidently heard Hayden’s signal and they’d launched their ballistic missiles.
“HERE THEY COME!” Cody screamed.
Cody and the others turned as the missiles, hundreds of them from all over the world, filled the sky. The missiles slammed into the alien ships or burst in and around them, the resulting blasts eviscerating every last Syndicate ship.
Except one.
Cody recognized the last surviving ship as one he’d seen before. It was the Syndicate Temporal Ship, the time ship he and Quinn and the others had boarded. Cody hoped against reason that it was the Marines from his timeline onboard. He couldn’t breathe as he waited to see what would happen.
And then a voice somehow came over the mechs’ communications system. A deep, guttural voice that Cody had hoped never to hear again.
“Well played,” the voice said, and Cody immediately recognized it as the Potentate.
“It—it’s all over,” Cody replied, his voice quivering as the other Marines barked questions, wondering who the hell the other voice was. Cody ignored them, his eyes locked on the time ship. “We won,” Cody said.
“Not yet,” the Potentate replied. “I still live. And if I live, you die.”
“What do you want?” Cody asked.
“You. The others are free to go.”
“I’ve got a co-pilot,” Cody said. “You’ll let him go too.”
“Agreed,” the Potentate said. “But if you’re not onboard in precisely seven minutes, it will not end well for any of you.”
Static filled the comms and Cody turned to Hayden and the others.
“What the fuck was that?!” Hayden snapped.
“I have to go,” Cody replied.
“We can just leave,” Quinn offered. “We’re close. We beat them.”
Cody nodded at the truth of this, his face full of worry. “We did, but it’s just … I have to.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because that last ship is the time ship.”
“So … they could change all of this?” Quinn asked.
Cody paused, then nodded again. “In theory.”
He looked over at the others, trying to be as brave as possible. “Get out of here. Go on. We’ll catch up with you later.”
“You better,” Quinn replied. “Or I’m gonna be pissed.”
Cody smiled at this, then swallowed hard and looked back at Hawkins. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m a big boy,” Hawkins answered. “I knew what I was signing up for. Let’s go and finish this.”
12
The Gloom Ahead
Ava moved out ahead of the others, proceeding with alacrity. Quinn lost sight of her several times, only to emerge over the crest of an ice floe to see her down below windmilling her arms, shouting. “We’re close! This is the way you came in!”
Quinn and Renner hustled forward to Ava who was crouching, catching her breath. She pointed to a small rise in the distance, a dune of ice and snow that prevented a full view of the horizon beyond.
“What’s on the other side of that?” Quinn asked, pointing at the rise.
“The graveyard,” Ava relied.
Renner glanced over. “Whose graveyard?”
“The aliens,” Ava answered.
Before anyone could utter another word, Ava was on the move, Quinn and Renner jogging after her. The trio picked their way up over the prominence and slid down the reverse. Quinn couldn’t believe her eyes. The ice out in front of her was littered with junked alien vessels and sections of blackened metal and piles of debris and frozen bodies lying in all attitudes of death. The entire area apparently had been roiled in fits of extreme violence at some point in the past, a hellacious firefight by the look of things.
The three walked silently through the graveyard of fallen ships. Quinn’s senses were on overload. There was something strange in the air, a sensation that caused the tiny hairs on her arms to stand
at attention inside her armor.
She knelt before a section of carbonized metal, what appeared to be the wing from a spaceship, and wiped away a crust of ice and snow. There were markings on the destroyed ship. She recognized them because they were similar to the markings on the glider she and the others had used to board the time ship.
The craft before her was a Syndicate glider all right. Not exactly the same one they’d used, but something very similar. And out beyond the glider was the unmistakable form of a Reaper drone. The bubbletops on the drone had been pried off and there were several large puncture marks in the fighting machine’s turret that was partially frozen in the ocean. What the fuck had happened? Whatever battle had been fought here, the Syndicate wasn’t the victor.
Rushing forward, Quinn dropped to the ice before a bevy of frozen bodies. She’d initially assumed they were humans, probably resistance fighters or civilians caught in the crossfire, but she was wrong. All of the bodies were garbed in the same red alien armor that she wore.
“Jesus … they’re Syndicate soldiers,” she said, looking back at the others.
Ava nodded. “Of course. They were defeated here.”
“Wait. Who was?” Renner asked.
Ava gestured at the Reaper drone. “The Syndicate. You can’t imagine how terrible it was. The sounds … the explosions … we watched the battle. You could see the flames from the outpost.”
Quinn rose to her feet. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“That’s why we were so surprised to see you wearing the armor,” Ava said, gesturing at Quinn. “Didn’t you know? The Syndicate is gone. They were wiped out.”
“Wiped out by what?” Renner asked.
“The ones without a name. The things that took the sun away,” Ava said matter-of-factly.
Before Quinn could process this, there came a sound echoing across the frozen ocean. Guttural at first, the note built to something more impressive until Quinn was forced to cover her ears as a soul-shattering sonic wave crashed right over her followed by a tremendous wall of air and heat.
Quinn fell to the ice and looked up in trembling disbelief as something … some ship, some massive craft hovered over her. It bore a faint resemblance to the ship they’d seen when first they’d traveled across the ice, but this was much larger. Indeed, the vessel floating above her dwarfed anything she’d seen the Syndicate deploy and its irregular shape, a concave polygon with what looked like an extended prow, made it appear more like a biomechanical monstrosity than a vessel designed for flight. The machine’s middle section pulsed, expanding and contracting like a bellows, and hanging beneath it were lengths of flexible material from which dangled Syndicate drones. Hundreds of partially-destroyed Reaper drones, quivering in the air like scalps. Before Quinn could utter a word, the ship rocketed up into the blackness of the sky, vanishing from sight.
“Okay, yeah, so what the fuck was that?” Renner asked.
“That’s what defeated the Syndicate,” Ava whispered.
Nobody said anything for several seconds and then Ava stood. “Do you think if you go back you can stop them?” she asked. “Can you stop the others from ever coming here?”
“I don’t know,” Quinn answered. “But we have to try.”
Quinn and Renner followed Ava out across the ocean, past the hulking remains of commercial ships frozen in place and beyond the remnants of downed military and commercial aircraft. There were several surveillance drones still visible, planted in the ice. Ava said the drones were still beaming back footage and that’s how they’d initially seen Quinn and Renner after they first appeared on the ice. Quinn scanned the area, but had no memory of ever being here. She was busy chalking it up to the after effects of time travel when she spotted it in the distance, a light shining in the darkness like salvation.
Maneuvering through the ice and snow, Quinn could see that the light was actually a series of pinpricks of fire surrounding a section of unnatural blackness in the air, two or three feet off the surface of the ice, the size of a refrigerator door. The pinpricks of fire, little blobs of orange and red, oozed what appeared to be embers that dribbled down onto the ice. What the hell was it? A portal? A doorway back to wherever they’d come from? In her mind’s eye, she envisioned it as the end of some kind of cosmic slide. Was it so hard to believe that if this was the bottom of the slide, the top had to be back in the time ship? She prayed that if they entered through the darkened portal, somehow they’d be able to find their way back.
“Jesus, that’s it isn’t it?” Renner asked. “That’s where we came in.”
Ava nodded, but Renner kicked at the ice. “What are we supposed to do with that thing?”
“We go through it,” Quinn said.
“And then what?”
“And then you find a way to stop the invasion,” Ava said.
“Easy for you to say,” Renner offered.
“At least wherever you go, you’ve got a chance,” Ava replied. “The world here’s already dead.”
“You could come with us,” Quinn offered.
Ava considered this and then shook her head. “I can’t leave the others. They didn’t have to take me in, but they did. I owe them everything. I can’t turn my back on them.”
Quinn acknowledged the truth of this, hugging Ava, telling her two things: one, she would do her best to set things right, and two, she would find a way to track her down in the next life. Then she pivoted and moved with purpose across the ice, Renner at her side.
Her eyes studied the gloom ahead, watching the orange and red embers snap and pop. She could feel a warmth radiating from the portal along with the kind of energy thrown off by a machine that’s just been started up. Renner’s good hand found hers and the two hesitated for a moment, and then they ran screaming into the portal.
13
Solve the Riddle
Cody and Hawkins landed their mech inside the Syndicate time ship. They dismounted the machine and were greeted by a flurry of Syndicate soldiers. Cody was immediately shackled while Hawkins was left standing by himself, a lone Syndicate soldier flanking him. The Syndicate soldier gestured at a small circular craft the size of a sedan. The craft was positioned near a door that appeared to lead directly out into space.
“What the hell’s going on?” Hawkins asked.
“They want you to get into that thing,” Cody replied, angling his head at the circular craft. “It’s a life pod.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to see the Potentate.”
“Who’s that?”
“An old friend.”
Hawkins nodded, holding Cody’s look. “Travel lightly,” Cody said and Hawkins nodded.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” Hawkins said, before entering the life pod.
Hawkins climbed into the pod as the lid closed before him. Cody watched the Syndicate soldier swipe a touchscreen next to the pod as the vessel was fired out into space like a rocket, headed straight for Earth.
Cody was taken to a circular space and strapped down on a translucent table. An alien soldier poured liquid drops from a small vial into his eyes, before leaving him alone.
Holographic images suddenly appeared in the air in the middle of the room. Cody could see the massive amounts of debris from the obliterated Syndicate fleet. But there was something else. Something off in the background. What appeared to be tiny white dots in the distance. Were they ships? Some kind of signal?
After another moment passed, an unidentified armada intruded into the solar system. The ships looked unfamiliar and nothing like Syndicate technology. More streamlined, lean, efficient, minimal.
Cody began to panic. Sweat beaded down his brow. Somehow he knew what was coming. He tried to close his eyes, but his eyelids burnt each time he tried. His eyes were transfixed. Not because he wanted them to be, or because he was compelled. The liquid the soldier had dropped into Cody’s eyes was meant to force him to watch what was about to transpire.
The
unidentified ships ignored the wreckage from the Syndicate ships and formed a semi-circle at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. Hovering there for several seconds. Then they unleashed shock and awe.
First, an electromagnetic blast erupted from the unidentified ships in unison, instantly darkening the Earth. Cody imagined it was some kind of advanced, planet-level EMP that wiped out electricity, weapons, and communications.
Second, slow moving projectiles exited the unidentified ships and rained down over every corner of the globe like fire and brimstone, targeting on the planet’s populous areas. But when the projectiles struck land, the subsequent eruptions billowed outward, covering the entire planet in smoke and fire. The world was engulfed in flames making the earth look like a micro-sun.
Stunned and reeling, Cody leaned back, fighting to avoid seeing what happened next. How could this be? His plan had worked to perfection. No complete takeover as originally had occurred. No global conscription. Only a few could be forced into fighting against humanity under duress. The implants weren’t working, and the Syndicate’s missile defense had been defeated. He’d done everything that should have been required to save Earth, and more importantly in his eyes, Quinn and Samantha. What was happening?
Finally, the devastation came to a halt. But the sleek ships didn’t descend on Earth. There would be no mining of resources. There was nothing left to steal. No enslavement of humanity. There was barely anything left to enslave. Cody watched as mammoth, biomechanical machines were sent down to the Earth. He saw them rampaging across the globe, finishing off whatever had been left after the initial attack. And then, when that was over, the unidentified warships spiraled back up into space and vanished from sight. The Earth that they’d left behind was barren like the moon. A vast, desiccated wasteland, the oceans sucked dry, the mountains reduced to dust.
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