He closed his eyes and smiled before pushing the button on the remote and activating the makeshift bomb.
The tunnel filled with horrible noise, then white light. And then nothing.
Chapter 74:
Improvised weapon
Kate watched the Tower's monitors and saw the brain ship crumble from within. The huge vessel crackled and split. Pressure continued to build inside until its shiny carapace exploded, causing it to fall apart like an egg squeezed in a giant invisible fist.
Flames flashed for just a moment before the vacuum of space snuffed them out. Somewhere in the midst of all the destruction, her best friend had stood alone, trying to save a world he'd truly never been comfortable living in.
She gritted her teeth, pushed all other thoughts to the back of her mind, and turned her attention to the seed ship, no longer under control of its brain but still hurtling, with increasing momentum, toward Earth. Still capable of terraforming the planet into something deadly with its organic machinery. A suicide bomb for a dead armada.
How did I get here? Kate thought. I didn't put on this mask to save the world. I did it to stop little crimes, to make things better one life at a time. I'm just a failed dancer in a costume. I don't belong here in a bloody space ship fighting to prevent the apocalypse.
You must be better than this, she reminded herself. Her consistent mantra, her prayer. There's always something you can do.
"Neal," she said. "Are you sure there's no weapons on this ship." "Nothing beyond personal weapons like the ones in the training room, Designation: Dancer," Neal said. "I apologize."
"How do you build a ship like this without weapons?" Kate said.
"This was a craft designed by hopeful people, Designation: Dancer," Neal said. "From what little I have been able to learn about them, they were healers and wise men. Allowed to travel the stars unharmed."
"Well, they still should have put some damned guns on this ship," she said.
They were rapidly approaching the plummeting seed ship. Do what you always do, Kate thought. When you see a problem, hit it. And, if you see a problem too big for your fist, hit it with something harder.
"Neal, if we ram it with the Tower, will we be able to knock that ship off course enough that it'll miss the Earth?" Kate said.
Neal went silent as he calculated projections, velocities, and angles.
"Designation: Dancer. If we increase our speed by sixty-five point seven percent, we will meet the seed ship before it strikes the Earth and create a sufficient impact to redirect it away from the planet."
"Do it," Kate said.
"Designation: Dancer," Neal said, panic overtaking his voice. "I should warn you there is a seventy-eight percent chance the Tower itself will not survive the impact. This vessel was not designed as a warship. Its hull—"
"—Can you come up with any other options, Neal?" Kate said. "Because I'm not seeing any and I'm not about to let my friends die because I didn't want to break our clubhouse."
Again, silence from Neal.
"Any other options I calculate result in mission failure or destruction of our ship, Designation: Dancer," Neal said.
"Jane told me to find a way to end this," Kate said. "I'm not letting her down. Any of them. Do I need to steer?"
"No. I will pilot the ship for you."
Engines revved up. The whole ship shuddered, moving faster than it had since Kate took up residence. I'm throwing a flying hospital at a living alien missile, she thought.
Kate sat down and watched the seed ship get closer and closer on the monitor. She turned her attention to another screen and watched the ravaged destruction of the brain ship float away. On a third, the chaos of the battle played as the Nemesis fleet's smaller vehicles seemed to have lost all sense of purpose, no longer fighting with the aggressive grace they'd seen in them earlier.
Another screen displayed only stars. A patch of empty sky, not far from the pitched battle in the grand scheme of things. It looked peaceful, a reflection of eternity.
Not a bad way to go, Kate thought.
"Designation: Dancer, I can prepare an escape pod for you," Neal said.
"I don't want to risk it," Kate said. "I need to make sure this works."
"We can jettison the escape pod very close to impact," Neal said, his voice growing concerned. "It is not necessary for you to go down with the ship."
Again, Kate glanced at the monitors and all the carnage floating around. She didn't feel like leaving. A strange sensation, an emptiness in the pit of her belly told her not to leave home.
"Designation: Dancer…"
"Neal, it's okay," Kate said.
"I do not want to die here," Neal said.
Kate bolted upright, shocked by the fear evident in the AI's voice.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't want to end my existence here," Neal said. "I want to leave."
Kate watched as the seed ship grew closer and closer on the main monitor.
"Can you escape?" she said. "When we traveled into the future, there was a, a portable you somehow, can you…?"
"I can download my consciousness into a mobile casing," Neal said. "I prepared for this when we left Earth earlier as a precaution, Designation: Dancer."
"Then go!" Kate said. "What are you waiting around for? Get out of here!"
One more long, soft pause from Neal.
"My programming does not allow me to leave a crewmate behind, Designation: Dancer. If you stay, then so must I."
Kate laughed. Of all the things in the world, it's this ridiculous computer, I'm going to have to rescue this silly living computer…
"Okay," she said, trying to withhold smile, her eyes itchy as she fought back a sense of hope she hadn't wanted to feel. "Where's the casing? I'll get it for you."
She wondered if she was losing her mind when she thought she could hear joy in the AI's voice.
"It is motorized, and on wheels, Designation: Dancer," Neal said. "I can meet you at the escape pod."
Kate released a hard, half-crazy, incredulous belly laugh.
"All this time we thought you were the ship itself," Kate thought. "All this time…"
"This ship has been a better body than I could ever make myself," Neal said. "But I am my own being."
"Get going, you crazy robot," Kate said. She took one last look around the control room. Resting against one chair was Titus's spear, the one he brought back from a training session with the other werewolves months ago. He'd left it behind when he went to the brain ship. Now Kate wondered why. She picked up the weapon and inspected it. She tried to convince herself she was bringing it because Titus would want it later, but the pragmatist in her told her this was only sentiment.
And for just this once, Kate was okay with sentiment.
"On my way," she said. "Meet you there, Neal."
Long strides carried her through the corridors into the bright, sterile halls of the Tower, this place they'd called home, this place where they'd felt secure. Even Kate felt safe here, the one spot she could turn to when she got in over her head, where she'd always be welcome.
She found the escape pods easily enough. Emily was fond of napping in them, since no one ever thought they'd be necessary, a row of cubby holes on the lower level of the Tower.
A blocky robot, not dissimilar from a trash can, dotted with sensors and cameras, waited for her by the pod. It rolled around on what looked like a set of ball bearings, with two segmented arms attached to its sides.
"Neal?" Kate said.
"This chassis has an issue with stairs and ladders, Designation: Dancer," Neal said. "Could you help me?"
Kate wrapped her arms around the little robot, barely half as tall as she was, picked up the surprisingly light machine and jumped inside the nearest escape pod with it. She set him down gently and pounded a button, closing the hatch behind them. Kate took a moment to catch her breath.
"Designation: Dancer, forty-five seconds to impact," Neal said.
"I
guess we better go," Kate said.
She took one last look inside through the reinforced glass window on the pod's door. It was a good home, she thought. I'm sorry I had to do this to you. She pressed the release switch.
Kate and Neal plummeted into space, the activation of the pod pushed them away from the Tower itself. They spun in the emptiness, a cork bobbing on the ocean. She watched out the window as the pod's movement turned the view of the impact into a slide show, the Tower racing closer and closer to the seed ship.
The ships collided, hospital crashing into terraforming device.
Like a pair of jousting knights, the two vessels smashed together, shuddering at the impact. Chunks of the seed ship were crushed under the armored hull of the Tower; the Tower itself sundered, a huge rift split open across the undercarriage of the flying hospital. Kate watched the two machines wrestle in space, and then exhaled deeply as the seed ship broke free, its direction altered by forty-five degrees or more, falling away silent and cruel into empty space, trailing broken pieces of its hull behind.
Two internal explosions rocked The Tower, leaving deep, smoking gashes in its hull. The ship's engines sputtered out as it turned and spinned and finally, began drifting on its final course.
"Neal, can you see this?" Kate said.
"Yes, Designation: Dancer."
"Will you know where the wreckage lands?"
"I was a part of that ship for decades, Designation: Dancer," Neal said. "And it was a part of me. I will always know where it is."
"I think I understand that feeling," Kate said, watching the remnants of their home tumble silently away.
Chapter 75:
Routed
Jane, still cut off from the rest of the team without a working earpiece, didn't need one to see the explosion that rocked the Nemesis fleet, its brain ship shattering in a quick, bright instant. She stopped chasing the closest Nemesis fighter in order to watch the explosion burn out.
"They did it," she said to herself.
The effect was instantaneous. Although the fighters didn't immediately go inert like she'd suspected they would without the brain ship controlling them, there was instant panic as they no longer seemed to have any real directions to follow. Some went blank and just kept flying in a straight line; others kept fighting, but sloppily, and without spirit or purpose. Jane knocked a passing fighter off course and back up into space, and she watched as it just kept going, as if her punch were a subtle suggestion that it might want to choose a different path, just because.
All around her, Billy's fellow Luminae hosts continued to battle, though Jane could see them making the same observation she had. The fighters weren't really a threat anymore. She frowned with concern as a wing or two of fighters took off into deep space together as if fleeing. Were they more sentient than the others? Was this some sort of autopilot instinct? Why were some running and others not?
Jane spotted the last seed ship, still making its way toward Earth. Her fists burst into flames and she prepared to head for it, ready to deplete herself a second time to destroy it if that were necessary. But then, in the distance, she saw the blocky shape of the Tower flying at an almost comical speed toward the seed ship, and watched it as the two crafts smashed together in a soundless, powerful collision.
Billy flew up next to her just as the last seed ship spun off into space, the Tower burning as it fell.
"Kate just flew our house into the seed ship," Billy said.
"I knew she'd figure something out," Jane said. "Where is everyone?"
"Hang on," Billy said, pressing the device in his ear. He shot Jane a worried look, then tossed her the earpiece. "You take this."
"What?" Jane said.
"We've got people missing up there. I gotta go."
Billy erupted in a white light and shot out into space, toward the wreckage of the brain ship. Jane placed the radio in her ear.
"Jane checking in," she said. "Who's out there."
"Still stuck," Emily said. "Jane, I don't know where Henry is."
"Neal and I made it out, Jane," Kate said. "We're fine. Go look for Titus. He was on the brain ship when it blew."
Jane's stomach twisted, the idea of Titus alone out there sent a shock of fear down her spine. Could he survive?
"On my way," Jane said, racing into space. "Doc?"
Doc Silence's comforting voice chimed in. "Already there," he said.
Jane rocketed out into the black, marveling, again, at how vast outer space felt, and wondering, with a growing fear, how they would find their friends in all of that emptiness.
Chapter 76:
Human debris
All these heroes, constantly looking for a way to die while saving the world, Henry Winter thought. Adrift in space, his suit's life support systems were still operational but nothing else really seemed to be working. Not me. I never wanted to die a hero.
Winter actually tried to fake his own death ten years before in specific hopes of never dying a hero. He'd pretended to die saving the world so that he could retire early. Winter had every intention of buying an island, marrying a woman people would judge him for being with while they went out in public, and drinking brightly colored beverages on the beach well into his old age. He'd live off patents and inventions he'd created during his lifetime.
He botched that pretty well, got himself captured, and lost ten years of his life.
Winter wanted his beach house and fruity drinks and someone stunning who loved him at least a bit to hang out with. Was that asking too much?
Instead, here he was, lost and alone, and fairly sure nobody would find him. The distress beacon on his suit no longer worked. His radio lost its signal. Rocket boots? Not functioning, and really, not particularly useful for getting home. The suit wasn't designed for reentry through the atmosphere. He'd be human bacon even if he could get back to Earth.
And then he heard the voice in his head. Which was precisely the moment he assumed the oxygen had cut out in his suit and he worried he'd begun to hallucinate.
"Henry Winter," the voice of Prevention, his onetime-jailer and sort-of nemesis spoke in his head. "Fancy meeting you out here."
"Well, this must be the end, then," Winter said, assuming this was the instant his brain would finally shut down. "I'm incredibly disappointed that Prevention was the person you came up with in my twilight moments, brain. Couldn't you have picked someone who actually liked me?"
"I do like you, Henry," Prevention said. "Always did. Sorry about the professional inconvenience of keeping you captive. If I save your life, do you think you'll be able to forgive me?"
Henry laughed, unconcerned that his oxygen was close to zero. I might as well suffocate with laughter on my lips, he thought.
"I'm serious," Prevention said. "Turn your head."
Winter turned to the left. Floating in space maybe thirty meters away was a small spacecraft, reminiscent of a submarine. A United States flag with forty-eight stars on a field of red, with blue and white stripes was printed on its side.
"Yup, I'm so dying right now," Winter said.
"You can if you want to," Prevention said. "But I'm serious about helping."
"Sure, you just happened to be driving along in your alternate reality space submarine."
"First of all, good guess on what this ship is," Prevention said. "Second, I'm a telepath. How do you think I found you out here?"
"That really you, Prevention?" Winter said.
The sound of her laughter filled his brain with just the right combination of warmth and creepiness.
"Call me Laura if you don't mind Henry. And yeah. I heard you were lost. And I figured since I ruined your life, the least I could do is come out and try to save you."
Now Henry really laughed, so hard tears pooled in the corners of his helmet. I don't have to die a hero after all, he thought. I feel like it's Christmas morning.
"Come get me before oxygen deprivation kills too many more brain cells, and I'll forgive every horrible thing you
ever did to me," Henry Winter said. "I don't want to die out here."
"Are you asking permission to come aboard my alternate reality space submarine, Henry?" she said.
"Absolutely."
In his delirium, he couldn't stop himself from asking one last question. "Hey Laura. What's your feeling about fruity drinks?"
Prevention belly laughed, her ship cruised in slowly to pick him up.
"I prefer my hard alcohol neat," she said. "But if you're buying, who am I to say no?"
Chapter 77:
Indestructible
Doc Silence moved through the cosmos on unseen waves, spells older than the planet glowing at his back, carrying him through the wreckage of the Nemesis fleet.
He pushed pieces of the brain ship aside with simple hand gestures, telekinetic nudges to make room for him to pass. Broken armor, blackish blood and fuel, pieces of organic machinery so complex it was hard to tell if they were organs or engines filled the vacuum around him.
The dead floated here, as well: enslaved hosts of the Nemesis fleet and its parasites, aliens from hundreds of worlds, powerful and pitiful creatures who had been dragged across light years, to die in a war they should never have been a part of. Doc mourned for them. If they'd learned one thing about the Nemesis fleet, it was that they chose their captives because they were powerful and brave. All of these deceased beings floating in space were the finest of their kind, laid low by a force they couldn't stop. They deserved better than this tragedy, every one of them.
Doc searched for one being in particular. The finest of his kind.
He saw a flash of silver and pink behind a slab of armor, a curved wall that once must have been some sort of vein inside the brain ship. Doc flew quickly toward it.
Clinging to that sliver of armor was Titus Whispering.
Reflexively returned to his werewolf form and unconscious, he held on to the debris with claws clenched in silent fury. Black lines of blood and brutality covered his body; blisters and burns marked his skin and patches of his silver fur had been torched away. The amulet Doc had given him still hung around Titus's neck on a metal chain, the gem in its center pulsed softly. A little bit of luck never hurt. Or nothing more than a trinket that provided you air when you couldn't breathe what surrounded you. A wizard's toy, really, but Doc understood all the best tricks began as toys and gimmicks. Not everything had to come from the pages of a book to save a life.
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 34
