Starfire

by B. V. Larson

  “Brandt, you could open this compartment?” Jackie asked him.

  His eyes were roving, watching the external cameras. They had a wireless connection that operated when the ship was open, transmitting vid data in and out. There were guards out there, but this was the shift change. The new men were due to come in over the next fifteen minutes. Four men, four targets. He watched them almost hungrily.

  “Brandt?”

  He looked at Jackie.

  “Sorry, Dr. Linscott. What did you need?”

  “Could you touch this cowl, please? I need it slid back so I can try a new fitting. I’m very hopeful about this one.”

  He made an impatient gesture and walked over to her, placing his bare hand on the cowl for a moment. A dimpled surface like a giant half-egg slid back, exposing tubes and mist-producing hardware. Everything these aliens built was cold. Whoever they were, he was sure he wouldn’t like them.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He mumbled a response and went back to watching the external cameras. The guards were moving slowly, and two of them were chatting on the circle that ran around the ship. Damn, why did they have to gossip today?

  He’d wasted enough of his life in this chamber, studying this ship. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been an egghead like everyone else. But he wasn’t. He was a man of action. A man who’d as soon go camping as tinker with a computer. He liked hunting and fishing—he couldn’t stand labs and artificial chemical stinks.

  “What are you going to try, Brandt?” Jackie asked him in a quiet voice.

  His head snapped around, and he stared at her. She continued working on her alien apparatus without even looking at him.

  “You don’t have to do anything drastic,” she said. “I’m pretty sure we’ll go to trials next week. Can you hold on that long?”

  He bared his teeth at her. “All you want is to use me like the rest of them,” he said. “I’ve known your kind all my life. Soft voices, concerned smiles—but in the end, all you want is for me to massage some organ of this devil’s ship until it does what you want.”

  Jackie licked her lips, but she didn’t look at him. “That’s not true. I want you to get out of here. But I want you to do it in a sane, reasonable fashion. Look, can you at least wait until I do this next test? It should work—really. It could all be over within a few days.”

  Brandt laughed, shaking his head. “You don’t really believe that, do you? They’re not going to let you out of here. Clark, Clayworth—they own us. You’ll fly with this ship, and either do or die. Then what? Let’s say there’s another ship out there. A bigger one. One that’s newer and full of fresh tricks. What then? You think they’ll let you go back to your house on the beach? Forget it.”

  Jackie eyed him now in concern. “Why would they—”

  “Because no one leaves this place. Not really. Not forever. How do you think they’ve kept this a secret all these years? That requires ruthless dedication. It’s been that way since the Cold War. No one gets out completely. No one squeals to the press. If they do, they vanish.”

  “How did you know about my house on the beach?” she asked in a small voice.

  Brandt shrugged. “I looked you up. I had to know who I’m dealing with. I know everyone’s dossier in this pit.”

  He went back to watching the cameras. The two guards who’d been chatting separated. It was almost time to move.

  “Would you take me with you if I asked?”

  Brandt glanced at her, hesitating. He liked her, he really did. “I would take you if I could—but I can’t. Besides, you don’t want to leave. I’ve seen your eyes. You like it down here. You belong here.”

  “What about Jenna?”

  “I’m getting her out.”

  “How?”

  Brandt got up and walked toward her with purpose. Her eyes grew wide, and she froze in place. He knew what he should do—what he had to do—but he couldn’t for some reason.

  He sighed. “Can you do me a solid? Can you keep quiet for about ten minutes?”

  “Yes,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  “All right then,” he said, and he stalked away. “Just give me my ten. I’ll owe you one.”

  “All right.”

  Brandt touched the ship, he touched it low. He opened a way out that none of them knew about.

  They’d been lulled, over the years, into thinking that there were only certain hatches, all on the upper level. But Brandt had spent time feeling along the walls long ago, searching every crevice to find a service hatch. It led out of the ship, underneath the belly.

  He slid out and closed the hatch behind himself. It was cold here, down in the pit. There was mist everywhere, condensation caused by the ship drawing moisture from the air. They had to steam-blast the surface now and then, or the whole thing would ice over into a solid lump.

  Three fast paces, and he was under a ramp. The cold was so bad down here, it hurt his face, and he could even feel it through his suit. He moved quickly, almost silently. He clambered in the undercarriage of the ramp. Speed was of the essence. Jackie could change her mind at any moment, or someone might glance down into the misty pit and spot him, sounding the alarm.

  The shift change was in mid-motion when he vaulted over the ramp and caught two guards changing places at the entrance.

  One pumping fist put down the man walking in—the new man. The other had his back to him, and wheeled. This guy was on the ball.

  Brandt could only imagine what he saw. A wild-man in a silver suit that was laced with ice crystals and shedding white vapor.

  The guard did something he wasn’t supposed to do. He fired his weapon. A ripple of automatic fire stitched across Brandt’s chest, knocking him aside.

  Only the suit saved him. Shocked he realized the guard probably hadn’t recognized him. Thinking fast, Brandt went down on his face and lay still.

  “Oh shit, that’s Brandt. You okay, Stevens? I think I killed Brandt. Shit.”

  A hand rested on Brandt’s shoulder. He was sore, but he was still game. He reached, grabbed and twisted before the guard had time to think.

  It was a crazy move to play on an armed, trained man. Brandt never would have dared it if the guy hadn’t just stated he knew who he was, and that he knew he wasn’t supposed to kill this particular madman.

  Brandt struggled with the man, trading blows for perhaps eight seconds. The man’s gun got in the way, as he wasn’t supposed to use it. He tried to pistol whip Brandt with the barrel, but instead Brandt caught the strap, wound it around the man’s neck and tapped him out.

  He did something then he had hoped wouldn’t be necessary. It was quick, and the man wouldn’t feel it until later. He cut off the tip of his thumb and ran with it in his pocket.

  By this time, two other guards were coming, fast. Brandt squirted a burst at each man, making them duck and curse. He was armed, he could fire, and they couldn’t.

  He made it to the main doors before they locked them down, and rushed through. Sirens whooped and yellow lights spun. He buttoned up his facemask, and again his suit saved him. There was gas hissing out of the holes in the floor beyond the door. They hadn’t turned on all the fireworks, but they were trying to render him unconscious with gas.

  The two guards behind him folded like toys that someone had shut off. They fell onto the grate, and lay there motionless.

  Brandt ran on. He touched the guard’s bloody thumb to the last cell door on the right. Jenna was inside. She ran out and hugged him.

  “I knew you’d come, Dad,” she said.

  “Let’s move.”

  They made it as far as the elevator. Clark had something waiting for them there, something Brandt hadn’t known about.

  A wire sprang up, tripping them both. The floor contacted Jenna’s flesh and Brandt’s metallic suit. A moment later thousands of volts hit each of them, and they were tazed.

  Brandt struggled to rise. Jenna was out cold.

  “Brandt?” called a voic
e behind him. A calm voice that he knew too well. “It’s time to stop this now. You’ve endangered a lot of good people today. Not the least of which are yourself and Jenna.”

  Brandt turned and lifted the gun. Clark ducked away. Brandt fired a burst, which popped and sparked on the nose of the distant ship.

  “You can’t get out, man,” Clark called. “We’ve disabled the guard’s biometric ID on the elevator lock. There’s no way up to the surface.”

  Brandt was breathing hard. He wanted to kill someone—and Clark was topping his list right now. He picked his daughter up and stroked her head. She was coming around.

  “Sorry honey,” he said gently.

  “Brandt,” Clark called down the corridor. “This sort of thing has to stop. I’m not going to stand for it any longer.”

  “Yeah? What are you going to do about it?”

  “Imprison you. Lock you up and throw away the key.”

  Brandt thought about that. He understood what it really meant. “Jenna won’t forget about me, Clark. She’ll fight you just as hard as I do.”

  “Perhaps. Would you like to drop the weapon now? Come back in here, and we’ll talk about it like civilized people.”

  Coldly, Brandt made a hard choice. He gently took his daughter back into her cell and laid her there. She was conscious, but woozy. He kissed her and told her to take a nap.

  Then he went back into the corridor. He walked the length of it, shedding the gun as he went. It clattered on the floor.

  Clark appeared at the entrance, on cue. He was smiling, the bastard.

  Brandt did his best to keep his mood off his face, but he doubted he could manage it with the Major, so he looked down at the floor as he walked. Stepping into the chamber, he saw two nervous guards, Clark, and that spooky guy named Perez. Everyone else had gone into the catacombs around the ship and hidden themselves from view.

  He waited until he was within reach of Clark, then offered his hand. Clark looked at it, but didn’t try to shake hands.

  “I’m sensing you’re not completely—” that was as far as Clark managed to get.

  Brandt snapped out a vicious hand and brought him down. He swept his foot back for a kick to the ribs—

  Something hit him in the back. An odd explosion of numbness came up from his kidney area. A pressure point had been probed. His suit had saved him, but when he turned around he found Perez there in a fighting stance.

  A foot came up at his face incredibly fast. Brandt took it in the cheek, rocking his head back. He was stunned but not out. He didn’t go for the foot, which was already snapping back. Instead, he lunged close, throwing his arms around the smaller man’s waist.

  Blows rained on Brandt’s head, but he was still wearing a hood of tough fabric. He felt blood trickle down his back—his blood, he was pretty sure.

  Brandt was in bad shape from that surprise hit and from the electricity that had jolted him earlier. He had to play for time. The one thing he didn’t want to do was let this little dynamo get out of his grasp. He had to bulldog him to the ground with sheer weight and force.

  They went down and struggled there. Slowly, Brandt’s superior strength began to win the battle. He was squeezing now, crushing ribs together, making it impossible for the other man to draw in a breath.

  “Stop, or I’ll have to get mean,” wheezed Perez.

  Brandt knew what that meant. He lowered his head and shoved his face into the other man’s belly. He didn’t want his eyes gouged out.

  Hands grabbed the two of them and hauled them up, but not apart. The guards were on them, trying to separate them. That turned out to be a mistake.

  Lashing out with his heels, Brandt brought one man to the floor. The other smashed him with the butt of his rifle, but Brandt remained standing, bleeding and roaring.

  “Stop it!” shouted a shrill voice. “Damn, you two are both out of your minds! This fight is pointless. Look, damn you, just turn your head for one second and look. It’s flying!”

  The fingers that were digging, probing into Brandt’s hood, stopped.

  “She’s right,” gasped Perez. “I give. Look.”

  Brandt dared to lift up his head and throw a punch at Perez. He caught him a grazing blow on the chin.

  Grinning in triumph, he raised his hand higher, ready for the knockout punch. Perez was on his back, almost out of breath, and his hands—his hands were pointing to one side.

  Brandt flicked his eyes that way, just for a split second—but then they lingered. He let go of Perez and stood up, amazed.

  The ship was flying. It was only about a foot off the ground, but it was actually flying.

  Jackie Linscott stood beside the main hatch, pointing and waving wildly for his attention.

  “You don’t have to kill each other,” she said. “I’ve got it working!”

  Brandt stared. Never in his life had he believed—but there it was, floating. Undeniable proof met his eyes, and it calmed him as nothing else could have.

  He turned and looked down at Clark. His neck didn't look straight. Two people were already at his side, checking him over.

  “I think I heard a few of his vertebrae crack,” said Perez.

  Brandt frowned, but said nothing.

  Chapter 44

  Area 51, Gamma Level

  Underground

  “How did you do it?” croaked Major Clark from the floor. He was sprawled in an awkward position. He wasn’t moving.

  Jackie walked down the ramp and around the outer ring catwalk that circled the chamber. She became increasingly concerned and winced visibly at Clark’s state.

  A few emergency people were working on him. She wasn’t a medical person—but it didn’t look good.

  For his part, Clark was straining his eyes, staring at the ship. He seemed to be oblivious to his injuries.

  Most of the rest of the crowd was equally stricken. The hovering ship—which had never before moved to the best of their knowledge, certainly not since before any of them had been born—had them all transfixed. Even Brandt and Perez were looking at it.

  “Clark…” Jackie said. “Are you—are you paralyzed?”

  “I’m taking great care not to move, if that’s what you mean. I’m not completely without feeling in my lower extremities, but I’m certain there’s been spinal damage. I thank you for your concern.”

  Calm to the last, she thought. She looked at Brandt. She’d kind of liked his virile, tough exterior from the start, but had he gone too far? His daughter wasn’t here to see it, fortunately. Jackie had the feeling that poor little girl had seen her daddy do a lot of bad things for good causes.

  “It’s really flying,” Brandt said. “I can’t believe it. I spent my whole youth waiting for this. My father gave his life for it.”

  “I told you I was close.”

  “I thought you were trying to slow me down. Sorry for the lack of faith, Dr. Linscott.”

  Jackie knelt beside Clark. She didn’t know what to think of the man. In his view, he’d been acting patriotically. Hell, if the Russians did get a lot of advanced tech and the national economy went down hard here in the U. S., a lot of people might come to wish he’d succeeded in his quixotic quest.

  EMTs scooted a board under Clark with gentle motions. They strapped him to it and immobilized his head and neck. He still wore that smile, but there were signs of pain. Droplets of perspiration ran down his forehead.

  Security people who’d been summoned from the surface arrived in twos and threes. They encircled Brandt, but Clark kept cautioning them to do nothing violent. Jackie could see their eyes. They wanted to throw him down, chain him up and maybe shoot him a few times. She could hardly blame them.

  What a pair these two were, she thought. Both were in the right, in their own way. Clark was a monster, but he was working for the greater good. Brandt was trying to regain his freedom, to have as normal a life as was possible for himself and his daughter.

  When did the needs of the many outweigh the rights of a s
ingle family? All her life, Jackie had been someone who’d distrusted the government and believed in people like Brandt. But he was the violent one in the end. No one else in this chamber had paralyzed anyone else.

  “I can see you’re conflicted, Dr. Linscott,” Clark said.

  “We have to get you to the infirmary, sir,” one of the EMTs said. “It could be critical to your recovery.”

  “A moment longer, please,” he insisted, and they obeyed him. Crippled or not, he was still in charge of this installation.

  Jackie had only recently come to the realization that Clark was the big boss at this installation. She’d thought at first that Clark was an orderly, or a guard. Then, it became clear to her he was the base psychologist. But now, faced with the way that everyone associated with the installation deferred to him, she’d come to the inescapable conclusion that he was in charge of everything.

  “How did you do it, Jackie?” he asked, his voice straining but still mild in tone. “I must know.”

  “It was all about the containment field,” she explained. “The EM-Drive is a harmonic reaction, essentially, but it lacks brute power. Our experimental engines only produced enough steady thrust to be useful when out in space.”

  “Yes, less than a kilogram of lateral force was the best measurable output you achieved at Blue-Sky.”

  Her face clouded for a moment. She didn’t like to know how closely she’d been watched. She didn’t like to think what that meant.

  “Right,” she went on quickly. “The reaction was impressive and good enough to deploy a satellite into high orbit, or even cut months out of an interstellar journey if a spacecraft could be equipped with it. But it never was in our design plans to provide lift and control like this.”

  She gestured toward the drifting spaceship. Now that it was hovering, it seemed to be growing even colder. Mists roiled under it, and there was a distinct chill in the chamber now.

  “I didn’t actually know it was going to do this,” she said, staring at her own handiwork. “But it makes sense. How else could the ship travel if it relied on an EM-Drive for its primary thrust?”