Super 3 could see the subtle signs of sympathizers, mostly because he felt the same. He wondered if some of them felt trapped, wishing they could escape the Breaker colony and return to their Meken brothers. But it wasn’t something he tried to investigate. Any true sympathizers had to hide their sentiments deep in order to survive. He quickly found how stressful this was; a split of the internal belief system and the public persona was challenging to Meken programming. And it led to his discovery of a new feeling: loneliness. It took him some time to give it a name. He found it a very unpleasant feeling and one that, left unchecked, could lead to despair. He had to combat it with thoughts of being reunited with his friends. While he had contempt for the Breakers’ core philosophy, he actually felt some sympathy toward Rakaan when he considered how Rakaan had lived among the Mekens, trapped in his own personal isolation for a thousand years.
The fog faded and they entered a swath of clear sky. The intercom crackled.
“We are being tracked by Meken aircraft,” Rakaan said. “We expected this. Do not be alarmed and do not attempt to fire on them. This means they will know we are coming. It does not matter. They will not be prepared. And, we have another surprise in store for the humans and our Meken brothers. Maintain complete silence.”
A surprise? Supervisor 3 raced through tactical permutations, but he soon saw the futility of trying to calculate a surprise.
The captain of Super 3’s boat announced quietly to his crew, “We have just passed the halfway point.”
A moment later the intercom crackled again and an unfamiliar voice spoke.
“Rakaan, we have a problem on the west end.”
“I told you, silence!” came back the reply.
The unknown voice continued despite the reprimand. “The leviathan is approaching our position.”
“Has it seen you?” Rakaan asked.
“It does not appear to be coming toward us, but is on a trajectory toward a point that is somewhere in front of us. I believe it will miss us if we stop our forward movement.”
“Full stop,” Rakaan commanded. All the boats slowed and coasted to a stop. The faint sound of boat engines could be heard in the distance, ahead of the armada but hidden behind another blanket of fog. Super 3 scanned the fog line and finally saw them—four Ahlemoni speedboats running at full power, approximately two miles out, heading directly toward the Breaker fleet.
Then the channel in between them swelled like a mountain rising from the sea. The water broke as Leevee made a surface dive on a direct intercept path to the oncoming speedboats, totally ignoring the silent Breaker ships.
As his own boat rolled over the swell of water raised by Leevee’s wake, Moses watched the speedboats separate, spreading out in a wide swath, hoping to get at least one boat past Leevee. The Meken plan was clear; they were trying to draw Leevee to the Breakers—and Super 3 knew they would fail. Leevee reached the first speedboat and it disappeared into her open mouth. She was too big and too fast; the others were destined to the same fate before they could reach the armada.
The Breakers watched, mesmerized by the scene unfolding before them. And, Super 3 made an instinctual decision. Silently sidling up to the Breaker gunner in the opposite rear corner of his boat, he reached up and wrenched the Breaker’s head with a violent twist. Super 3 caught him as he collapsed and quietly laid him on the deck. He approached the captain from behind and performed the same lethal maneuver. Fortunately, the two remaining Breaker sentries had joined the last gunner at the bow of the boat to watch Leevee, and they had no idea of what was happening behind them. In a series of swift movements, Super 3 either pushed or threw each of the last three Breakers into the water, where they quickly sank to the bottom of the ocean, likely wondering what had just happened to them. Finally, he returned to the helm and fired up the boat engine and it roared to life. In a single instant, every Breaker eye turned upon him.
He slammed the boat into reverse, but it quickly jolted to a halt when the tether cable went taut, struggling against the tow submersible. He went to the bow and fired the laser cannon into the water, severing the tether. The boat bucked backward and he almost fell off, but he quickly regained his footing, returned to the helm, and pulled the boat out of the armada line.
The intercom buzzed. “Shut down that boat now!” Rakaan shouted.
A couple of the boats next to him powered up. Several turned their laser cannons his way. But he was already away, running behind and parallel to the Breaker line, pushing the engine to its maximum RPM to make as much noise as possible. Locking the auto navigation into a straight path, he left the helm, stepped back to the rear laser cannon, and started firing on the Breaker boats. Focusing his aim on their energy converters, he finally connected with a target, and a boat exploded. Several Breakers tried to return fire as he raced by, but he was moving fast, and they were not experienced marksmen. Then, to his relief, other Breaker boats started their engines— but not to chase him. Leevee had finished off the Meken speedboats and had turned her attention to the armada. The Breakers were beginning to panic.
Rakaan screamed over the intercom. “Shut down! Shut down everything!”
But it was too late. Super 3 watched as the armada fell into chaos. Several tethered boat trios dragged their submersibles backward as they tried to get away from Leevee. Those with the presence of mind cut the submersible tethers with their forward laser cannon. Those that did not ended up in a tug of war, sometimes breaking free when the tethers snapped or tore their submersible apart.
Leevee bore down on the boats behind Super 3 at the far end of the armada line. She rose up out of the water five hundred feet and wavered there for a moment, surveying her prey. And just as Super 3 had hoped, a half dozen Breaker boats started firing their laser cannons at her.
This was a new experience for Leevee. The Mekens had always taken great care not to seriously harm her. What little laser fire they had directed at her was low intensity, used only as a means to distract her. But this was a full laser cannon assault, and despite her great bulk and titanium-like scales, she was feeling the burn. Roaring with anger and pain, she twisted in the air with surprising speed and threw herself down, thrashing as she went, smashing ten Breaker boats and capsizing a half dozen more. Then she dove under the water and was gone. She had not resurfaced when Super 3 reached the end of the armada line, and he feared that the Breakers had forced her into a retreat. Disengaging the auto navigation, he moved his boat into a wide arc, setting his course for Alto Raun. The intercom buzzed to life.
“Look at me, traitor.”
Supervisor 3 looked behind and at the last armada boat. Rakaan stood at the helm, staring at him.
“Whoever you are, you will be dead soon.” Then Rakaan turned back to his armada and shouted into the intercom, “All boats, full speed to Alto Raun. Take the city!”
But then, instead of following his armada, Rakaan peeled off in pursuit of Super 3. They each had similar boats, designed for speed and maneuverability. Super 3 locked in the course heading and moved to the laser cannon at the rear of his boat just as two laser cannons from Rakaan’s boat started firing on him. It was six Breakers versus one Meken. Super 3 was now dependent on the distance between them and the bounce of the speedboats on rough water; he was a difficult target to hit.
Then he entered the fog, hiding him from his pursuer. He left the cannon and returned to the helm, where he adjusted the intercom settings and tried to communicate with Alto Raun.
“Alto Raun, this is Supervisor 3, approaching Alto Raun by watercraft from Alto Mair. Do you read me?”
The intercom responded with static.
He tried twice more and got the same results. He was beginning to think that the Breakers had limited the frequencies on the boat to avoid any transmissions that could be overheard by the Mekens when a static-filled reply came over the intercome.
“This is Alto Raun. Do you read?”
“Yes, Alto Raun. This is Supervisor 3, heading your direction f
rom Alto Mair.”
“Please verify your identity.”
Super 3 conveyed a series of alphanumeric pass codes that only a Meken could confirm, verifying his personal identification.
“This is Builder 144,” came the reply. “What is your status?”
Super 3 explained the situation in as few words as possible.
“We are tracking the Breaker boats,” the builder said. “There are eleven—no, ten remaining Breaker boats.” Every minute, the Meken dispatcher updated Moses. “Another boat is gone. They are disappearing one at a time.”
“It is Leevee,” Moses replied.
“You are the lead boat, Supervisor 3, and the leviathan is steadily making her way toward you.”
So Leevee was still in the game and doing just as he had hoped. But a new sense of urgency struck him. When he had fired up the Breaker boat, he was certain he had started a suicide mission, that he would draw Leevee to the armada and he would be destroyed along with all of the Breakers. But now there was a chance that he could actually reach Alto Raun alive—and suddenly, he preferred to survive.
“Builder, can you calculate the time of my arrival at Alto Raun and compare to Leevee’s expected intercept of my boat?”
Several moments passed before a reply came.
“If you remain at your current speed, they are almost simultaneous. But you also have a secondary threat. The boat closest to you has just increased its speed. It is running parallel to your trajectory, to your right, and is fast gaining on your position.”
Supervisor 3’s boat was already cranked to maximum speed. Then he envisioned Rakaan sacrificing one of his Breaker crew members by connecting its core directly to the boat’s energy converter, thus boosting its power.
The fog was heavy, and he was thankful for it. While it wouldn’t conceal him from Leevee, it helped him elude Rakaan. To widen the gap between them, Super 3 altered his course to the left and hoped that he wouldn’t miss Alto Raun altogether.
Suddenly, the fog was gone and he was awash in sunlight, a clear blue sky overhead. Alto Raun towered above the sea, a mile ahead. Then a laser trail flew across the bow of his boat. Rakaan was shooting at him from half a mile away. Super 3 veered even further to the left, as far as he could without missing the city. Rakaan’s boat closed the gap between them; it would be close.
Resigned to defensive maneuvers, Super 3 swerved constantly to avoid being hit by a laser. But he kept an eye on his pursuer, and thus he saw what Rakaan did not see. At the leading edge of the fog, just behind Rakaan’s boat, the water swelled. Then Leevee rose from the water, openmouthed and bellowing, announcing that she had come to destroy her last two challengers.
The three laser cannons on Rakaan’s boat turned their fire on Leevee. She roared as the lasers seared her scales. Diving into the water, she created a wave that catapulted his boat toward Alto Raun and away from Super 3. The battle between the two supervisors would have to wait. Now it was an all-out race to survive Leevee’s wrath.
Super 3 reached the city and turned his boat in the direction of Rakaan, locking it on a collision course, and then he jumped into the water. Mekens cannot swim, but they don’t require air like humans. While their systems were not designed for extended exposure to water, they could remain underwater for hours without sustaining serious damage. Super 3 sank to the barrier rocks below, quickly climbed out of the water, and then stood on the ledge at the base of the city’s outer wall.
He watched as Rakaan easily maneuvered around Super 3’s stray boat and then headed straight for the city wall. Behind Rakaan, Leevee’s head rose from the water just enough to swallow Super 3’s boat, and then she disappeared again.
Rakaan jumped from his boat just before it crashed into the barrier rocks, where it exploded, destroying the remaining Breakers along with it. It wasn’t long before he rose out of the water, climbing the rocks just as Super 3 had done. Standing on the ledge two hundred yards away, Rakaan turned and looked down the city wall until he spotted Super 3. Their eyes locked. Super 3’s system processors accelerated to the point that his metal frame trembled. He knew that he had to destroy Rakaan, and now was the time. It would come down to hand-to-hand combat between the two. Rakaan appeared to have come to the same conclusion, since they simultaneously launched into a run toward one another.
But Super 3’s vision of mortal combat came to an abrupt end when Rakaan stopped and started climbing up the city wall. He had not been running to engage in battle; he had run to an exterior maintenance ladder that ran the entire height of the city. He was trying to escape.
Supervisor 3 slowed as he considered what to do, but he resumed his sprint when he realized that he could not let Rakaan run loose in the city. Before he had run a hundred feet, a hangar door opened ahead of him and several maintenance Mekens and a builder Meken stuck their heads out. They waved for him to hurry. Can’t they see I am hurrying? As he neared them, they waved him into the hangar. They clearly didn’t know about Rakaan. Super 3 didn’t slow down and pointed to the ladder ahead. Then, to his surprise, the builder picked up a small maintenance Meken and threw it into Super 3’s path. The little Meken tangled in his legs, and he fell in a hard crash on the ledge. Super 3 jumped up, his system exploding with chaotic energy; he was enraged. All he could think about was smashing the builder’s head for what he had just done. He was about to resume his chase when he saw all the Mekens pointing out to sea and frantically waving at him to look. He turned and saw Leevee a half mile out from the city, towering a thousand feet in the air. She trumpeted her triumph with a great roar, daring anything that challenged her. As she started to fall forward, all the Mekens pulled back and the hangar door started to close. Super 3 scooped up the little maintenance Meken and jumped into the hangar. Leevee fell like a skyscraper. Her crash set in motion the final blow of her attack, a wave that rose two hundred feet and rushed toward the city. The hangar door clanged shut just as the great wave hit. Water sprayed through the seams as the entire hangar shook from the force of the blow.
Supervisor 3 sat on the floor, dazed, as he tried to sort through everything that had just happened. He was jolted back to the present when the little maintenance Meken tapped him on the shoulder.
“Thank you for saving me,” the little Meken said in a small, nasally voice.
“You’re welcome,” Moses replied. “And thank you for stopping me.”
“You’re welcome.”
The builder approached them, apologizing profusely. “Supervisor, I am sorry for taking such rude measures, but I had to get your attention. You would have run right past us and—”
The little Meken kicked the builder in his metal shin and squealed loudly.
“I am sorry,” the builder said, looking down at the little Meken. “I reacted, and you were the closest thing that—”
The little Meken went crazy, squealing and kicking the builder again and again. The builder shut up and just stood there, letting the little guy get it out of his system.
As Supervisor 3 watched this, his own body started convulsing. He ran a quick diagnostic of his system and found that his empathic processor was sending a most unusual combination of instructions—commands designed to release processor stress were blended with commands to generate random mechanical tensions throughout his body. He realized he liked the combination, and he let it run. As soon as he did, the program increased in intensity; his body started shaking, and strange, involuntary noises erupted from his audio generator. The little Meken stopped kicking the builder, and they both turned to look at Super 3. Then the little Meken started shaking and emitting strange noises; showing a similar system reaction as Super 3. The builder looked back and forth between the two of them.
“Are you . . . laughing?” he asked.
Supervisor 3 could barely speak through his involuntary system spasms, but finally, he managed, “Yes. I think I am. I am laughing. And I am home.”
44
Return to Earth Day
1000 hours
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A park in southwest Canada, Earth
Under a smooth canopy of grey clouds, a thousand people mingled, dressed mostly in black. After five weeks of tireless searching, the airline had graciously planned this memorial gathering as a way to help families and friends bring some closure to their loss and move on with their lives. It would likely be years before their grief would fade, but the door of hope for finding their loved ones had really closed weeks ago. As it stood now, the fate of flight 1402 would likely remain an unsolved mystery.
With a hand on their shoulders, Melissa Tygert guided her daughter and son up to the memorial table. Melissa set an eight-by-ten-inch photo in an open space held by a place card that read “Capt. John Tygert.” Holding the frame for a moment, she gazed at her husband, looking handsome in his trim airline uniform and showing off his winning smile. When her hand started to tremble, she pulled it away and held it over her mouth as tears streamed down her face. Her son, John Jr., stepped forward and placed a six-inch figurine of Superman next to the photo. At Melissa’s side, her daughter, Lacey, squeezed a Beanie Baby against her cheek: a fuzzy, brown puppy, given to her by her father. “Oh, Daddy,” she said, bursting into tears as she reached out and set the little stuffed animal in front of the photo.
Melissa pulled both of her children close, and for the umpteenth time, they cried together. As the emotional waves of the moment subsided, she became aware of others gathered around them, heads bowed, silently sharing their pain. Yes, this is good, she thought. They were not alone in their grief and anger, and she found a comfort that she had not realized she needed. Nodding her gratitude, she and her children walked down the long row of tables, pausing occasionally to share the sorrowfull moments that others were now experiencing. One after the other, photos and mementos reflected the stories and impact of 125 lives lost. Representing husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, parents, children, and friends, every one of the people gathered in the park carried the same pain, and Melissa and her children took comfort in their new extended family.
The Last City (The Ahlemon Saga Book 1) Page 31
