“I’m working on it. What’s your name, sweetie?”
“Madison Canfield. Most people just call me Maddie.
“I’m Lori, Maddie. You okay? They hurt you in any way?”
The little girl looked down, suddenly interested in the frayed hem of her T-shirt. She shrugged, then spoke in a quiet voice. “That big bug grabbed me around the neck. I—I peed myself. I couldn’t help it.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mattie. I’m sure that was super scary for you.” Lori narrowed her eyes and shot a hateful glare up to the Wikk commander. Now turning to the bearded man, she said, “And what about you? What’s your story?”
“Name’s Gus. I’m just a mail carrier . . . got swooped up with a bunch of others in midtown.” As tears welled up in his eyes, he wiped away dripping snot from his nostrils with the sleeve of his shirt. “There were eight of us in here,” he said, gesturing to their enclosure. “That thing’s been feeding on us, one person every few hours. Most recently . . .” his voice cracked, “. . . it was a gentle older man.”
Prime Strength was clicking, making strumming tones again. A moment later, the now-familiar computerized voice blared out her translated message. The commander pointed upward, seemingly signaling to heed the message. Lori, of course, already knew what the commander had said.
“You will order your army to surrender . . . you will do so now.”
Before Lori could respond with an appropriate fuck you, the giant insect strode over to the pen, unlatching and opening its gate. Both Gus and Maddie pushed their bodies tightly back against the cell’s rear surface. Gus, making a whimpering sound, slinked down low. Bringing his knees in close, he curled into a ball—in effect, making himself smaller, less noticeable, than young Maddie. Lori couldn’t help but thinking of it as a cowardly act—then again, the girl was possessed with truly remarkable courage.
Prime Strength fed one of her spindly forward limbs into the cage then held it suspended there between the two prisoners—as if deciding which one to take.
Maddie finally broke a bit, starting to cry.
“Stop it!” Lori yelled out, using the Wikk’s native language. Shit! Oh shit!
Chapter 47
Dominic Moretti
The Watcher Craft had left the armory several minutes past. I sat behind the wheel of the Stryker and listened to the repetitive flop flop flop of the flattened front right tire. En route back to the treatment plant with Gordo and Georgina, no one spoke. I slowly shook my head—First it was Elmo, and just like that, we’re down another three: Matteo, Carlo and Lori. I tried to ignore the tightening in my chest—it was as if my new heart was in the grips of a vise. Strange how the potential loss of Lori, a woman I barely knew, was filling me with dread. Thinking about anything or anyone else, thinking about the overall mission even, had become virtually impossible.
As if peering into my thoughts, Georgina, sitting shotgun, said, “They may still be alive. In fact, I’m sure of. Wouldn’t they want to use them as bargaining chips? Use them for leverage, like they are that little girl?”
My comms crackled and I heard Hannig’s voice. “Dominic, we have arrived at the entrance to the treatment plant. I wanted to let you know that the Wikk combatants—they’re gone.”
A quarter-mile ahead down the long corridor, I could see what Hannig was talking about. The Wikk were, in fact, absent. “Copy that. Strange. I thought for sure they would have breached the treatment plant compartment long before now. So why’d they leave?”
“I have a theory about that,” Hannig continued. “This vessel, the Dominate, it was never built for our unique method of resistance. No one in their right mind fires projectile weapons within the confines of a space-faring craft. I suppose you would call it an unwritten rule.”
Dominic had to smile. “Well I guess they hadn’t anticipated being boarded by a team unaccustomed to space warfare etiquette.”
The tone in Hannig’s voice turned more serious. “Dominic, the problem our enemy is facing is now far more than an unconventional invading force such as ours. According to System, the Dominate has incurred 3,011 individual hull breaches, occurring on virtually all deck levels. Your .50-caliber machine-gun is of course the root cause. Even a hundred, two hundred such breaches would not have been sufficient damage that the ship’s environmental systems could not compensate for it. But with three-thousand-plus and counting, feeding into each other—repairs cannot keep up. I’m afraid the Dominate has been deemed . . . unsalvageable.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?’ I asked.
There was a long pause, and I could hear Hannig tapping away at his console in the background. “The Wikk are evacuating even now, as we speak. The shuttles, tightly packed, are leaving the flight bay. Yes, the Wikk are abandoning ship.”
I glanced over to Georgina, who was listening in on the open-channel conversation. She said, “Where are they going? It’s not like there’s another ship they can catch a ride on anywhere around here.”
Caputo chimed in. “They’re probably making a run for Earth. Why don’t we just land this ship? Maybe back in New York. Hell, I can be home for my wife’s Manicotti by dinner time.”
“Hannig?” I said, not liking his all-too-sudden silence. Then he spoke.
“According to what System can now determine from the Dominate’s AI, I was wrong.”
“About what?”
Hannig paused, long enough that I began to grow anxious. Then he spoke. “Everything.”
I waited for him to go on. I listened to more tapping. “Hannig?”
“I was not aware of the Dominate’s shuttles—they have interstellar communications capabilities.”
“So . . . what? They’ve been able to call home all along now?” I asked, doing my best to curtail my growing agitation. Then I thought of poor Elmo, who had died at that communications power couplings cabinet. Who had been literally eaten alive. “That was more than a simple fucking mistake, Hannig. What you’re telling me is we’ve accomplished absolutely nothing except getting our good people killed!”
“I am sorry, Dominic. I am not a soldier. I am ill-prepared for combat, but also for such strategic planning, it would seem. I am responsible. I am incompetent.” I heard the alien man start to quietly sob.
Caputo’s voice broke in, “Um, best we forget about the blame game for now? I think we have bigger problems at hand.”
I tried to picture what was going on within the confines of the Watcher Craft’s control center. “Like what kind of problems?”
“Hannig has brought up another virtual representation of a spacecraft. Like the previous model of the Dominate—but this one’s a whole lot bigger.”
I heard Hannig in the background, “Six miles long, a full mile wide. Its designation is . . . the Retribution.”
“And I thought the Dominate was ugly,” someone else commented.
“And there’s one more thing. Probably why the model is showing up. That ship is here,” Caputo added.
“Here?”
“Circling Earth.”
“Oh my,” a new voice chimed in. “Can this possibly be true?”
“Who is that—can what be true?” I asked, pulling up to the treatment plant’s outside hatchway.
“LOP! It’s LOP. It’s alive!” Hannig was yelling so loud I winced.
I heard the alien let out a relieved breath, “System has reestablished contact. Oh, LOP. I’m so pleased you have been found.”
“So where is it—where’s LOP, now?” I asked.
“Interesting,” Hannig, said in the background, his voice fading.
“Damn it, Caputo, can you tell Hannig to get back on comms?”
A moment later, Hannig’s voice came loud and clear. “LOP is in a kind of garbage refuse, approximately mid-ship.”
I thought about how well the little bot had navigated the apartment building’s dumpster back in Tremont. Already practiced with navigating trash bins, the thing would be well-suited to free itself here.
&nbs
p; “LOP is already three-quarters the way up a refuse shoot. Oh no, it’s injured. One of its appendages has been torn away. Those horrible, horrible, insects! “ Hannig said with contempt. Clearly the love Hannig had for LOP was akin to that of a favorite, beloved, pet. Maybe a friend, even.
The Stryker continued to idle outside of the hatchway. “Hannig, can you direct someone to open the hatch?” I asked.
Several moments later, the hatch opened wide, I drove inside and maneuvered in between the congregating human prisoners in a wide U-turn to face the Stryker toward the entrance again. “Everyone out!”
Two minutes later, Georgina, Gordo and I entered the Watcher Craft’s control center. The first thing I noticed was the imposing virtual spaceship model hovering above everyone. So this was the Retribution. Ugly. Imposing. The second thing I noticed was Hannig’s demeanor. His eyes were red. His overall expression spoke of sorrow and humility.
“Mistakes happen, Hannig. No one, especially me, should blame you. In fact, without you and this little ship of yours, things would be a whole lot worse.”
Hannig nodded, but the guilt still weighed heavy on his narrow shoulders.
“I have three questions,” I said. “First, talk to me about Lori and Carlo. Has System established enough communications with the Dominate’s AI to locate them?”
Hannig nodded. “As of ten minutes ago, they were on the Dominate’s bridge.”
“Can you direct LOP to head there?” He wanted to say that their rescue needed to be the number-one priority, but he knew it couldn’t be.
Hannig tapped at his console and was speaking, presumably, directly to LOP. He turned and looked back up to me. “LOP is on its way there.”
I took a closer look at the ginormous Wikk craft. “What are the odds that once their people are off this vessel, they’ll simply destroy the Dominate? Fire missiles or use plasma canons?”
“The chances of that are excellent,” Hannig said. “And your third question?”
“Will you be able to transport us over to that other ship, like you did here to the Dominate?”
“Us?” Caputo chimed in.
Confused, I gestured to our Watcher Craft’s surroundings. “Us!”
“Yeah?” Georgina said. “And what about them?” She pointed out the portal window to the human captives milling about outside. “And what about all those still down there in the holding cells? How do we transport them? If they’re left here when the ship is obliterated, everything we did to save them was for nothing.”
Chapter 48
Officer Lori Tedesco
The bearded man spoke again. Balled up into the back corner of the pen and with his face buried into his knees, he said, “I have a family. I have an important job—people depend on me. I deserve to live, to survive. Just as much as anyone else. Maybe—maybe more so.”
Lori listened to his muffled rantings, the desperation in his voice. She was disgusted that any adult could be so cowardly as to be making a case for a little girl to be sacrificed before them.
Prime Strength loomed tall, poised just outside of their pen, one of her spindly forward arms still inserted in through its open gate. The spear-like appendage moved, slowly, back and forth—coming close to the man and then drifting over to the little girl. All the while, the menacing insect kept her head turned toward Lori, gauging her reaction.
Tones and clicks emanated from the ship commander’s gortch. Thanks to Lori having previously spoken in the Wikk’s native tongue, Prime Strength would already know her following words would be understood.
“The evacuation process is nearly complete. In truth, I am surprised that such a barbaric, unintelligent species could have accomplished such a thing. And, for that matter, that you can understand me. You have succeeded in making this vessel . . . uninhabitable. But it is of no consequence. You have only put off the inevitable. Soon, any human that survives the impending Earth onslaught will come to the same realization. That they, and all of you, were born to serve the Wikk.” Her large head pivoted upon a neckless body, again examining the two captives within the metal pen.
“I’m scared,” Maddie said, her bottom lip now starting to quiver. The little girl took another step back from the all-too-close Wikk appendage. “Mommy! I want my Mommy.”
Lori’s mind raced. Oh God, how do I stop this? What could she possibly say to this creature to convince her, or trick her, to leave them be? She turned, her eyes finding Carlo at the bottom of the ramp—there, his arms secured between two Wikk insect soldiers, he stared back up at her. He shrugged and shook his head. He had no solution to their predicament. Behind him, the bridge was empty. The crew had evacuated.
Turning back to the ship’s commander, she said, “Take me, instead.” Realizing she’d spoken in English, she said it again, this time making the necessary Wikk tones and clicks.
In a rapid blur of motion, Prime Strength reached farther into the pen and pulled one of the captives out—a vine-like appendage tightly wrapped around a constricted neck. Gus was unable to speak, unable to scream. Wild terror filled his eyes—he twisted and squirmed, his arms and legs flailing.
Lori’s hands went to her mouth, stifling her own scream. She wanted to yell to the man to stop the flailing, that that was exactly what the Wikk commander desired. But she knew it was already too late to say anything. Prime Strength’s mouth was doing that guppy thing, repeatedly opening and closing, moisture dripping from the corners of her thin lips. Two of her mid-section spindly legs were almost-lovingly snaking up and around his torso, finding and encircling, wrapping first around an arm and then a leg. Then, with one decisive motion, like two kids pulling apart a Thanksgiving turkey wishbone, an opposing arm and leg ripped away from the man’s torso.
Blood gushed from both torn-open sockets. The vine wrapping around the man’s throat released just enough for him to scream bloody murder. Prime Strength, looking pleased with herself, shoved Gus’s torn-away leg into her mouth. She jerked her head back, fully swallowing it. Next came the dismembered arm—again, her head jerked backward. The bearded man was still alive but, mercifully, looked to have gone into shock. Lidded eyes relayed that Gus had mentally disconnected from what was happening. Now Prime Strength shoved the top portion of Gus’s body into her mouth—all but that remaining leg, which still protruded, dangling there for several moments. Two exaggerated backward jerks of her head, and the bearded man was completely gone from sight.
The Wikk made a contented series of tonal noises—noises that Lori understood as being sounds of utter satisfaction.
Lori looked to Maddie. She stood wide-eyed, paralyzed with fear. Good. Don’t fucking move, kid.
Lori realized there was a klaxon alarm blaring from somewhere overhead. She wondered how long that had been going on. A series of tone chords and clicks announced that what breathable atmosphere remained would soon be completely vented out to space. All personnel must make their way to the flight bay. Only one shuttle remained.
Prime Strength tilted her head, listening. She glanced toward the pen, and the still-open gate, and then to the little girl.
“Oh come on! You can’t still be hungry! Didn’t you hear the announcement? You need to go, to escape!” Lori spoke, using the Wikk language.
The towering insect shook her head in an all-too-human mannerism. “No. I would not be offered that recourse. A commander who loses her vessel, and as easily as I have lost this one, and to you lowly humans—I have but one fate. Death. So no, I will remain onboard until the atmosphere is no more. Until I suffocate. That, or until the Dominate is obliterated by incoming missiles.” Her ever-present smile seemed to take on an even more menacing curve. “Up until my final moments I will feed. I will gorge myself on those that have become the very bane of my existence.” She turned her attention to Maddie. And again, with amazing speed, the little girl was now captured within a spindly appendage and pulled free of the pen. Seeing her suspended there, with Prime Strength’s mouth guppying, Lori’s inner fury, pure rag
e, took control. Hands balled into tight fists—she charged the insect commander. Somehow, Lori would get Maddie away from her, even if meant sacrificing herself.
Prime Strength casually tossed Lori aside as if she was no more than an annoying nat. Lori tumbled onto the deck, rolling and hitting her head on the edge of a console. Dazed, she tried to get to her feet. She needed to keep that precious little girl from experiencing the same fate as Gus. “Please don’t . . . please. Spare her.”
Prime Strength, her mouth now gaping grotesquely open mere inches from Mattie’s head, did in fact hesitate.
“Yes,” Lori continued. “Take me. Gorge on me! Look. I’m so much bigger than she is. More meat on my bones . . . take me!” Lori got to her feet, feeling dizzy. She touched the back of her head, and her fingers came away bloody. She wavered. She realized, in a moment of hopelessness, that Prime Strength hadn’t hesitated because of anything she was saying. It was what was creeping along, upside-down, high up on the ceiling. Something was coming toward them. Lori blinked her eyes, but this wasn’t some kind of aberration. Her head injury—her eyes might be playing tricks on her. But no. it was definitely Hannig’s little bot. LOP, who hadn’t, actually, been destroyed, somehow. The robot was covered with soot or dirt, or both, and one of its spidery legs was missing. Damaged, but alive. Here.
LOP crept closer. Lori wondered how something so broken and tiny could look so ominous—so lethal. She hoped it wasn’t just wishful thinking. Then, LOP confirmed her wish, not just dropping from the ceiling, but diving at impossible speed toward the Wikk commander.
Chapter 49
Maddie let out a shrill scream as the spider-like robot landed directly onto the top of Prime Strength’s head. The Wikk commander was forced to release her hold on the little girl, and Maddie dropped hard onto her bottom. “Ouch!”
Then Lori was there, clutching the girl around the waist, pulling her clear from the frenzied, erupting battle. Together they landed back on the deck several yards away. Maddie’s arms encircled her, her face buried into Lori’s neck.
Guardian Ship Page 23
