by Kyle Noe
Giovanni’s jaw locked. “Don’t be a dick, Renner.”
“I’ll stop being a dick when you come back to reality.”
“We’re making a difference,” Giovanni said. “We’ve noticed a change in their tactics as a result of our hit and run operations.”
Giovanni turned back to the screens. He gestured at footage of a man running toward a resistance position, a group of fighters hidden behind a metal barricade. The running man threw up his hands and vanished in a fireball.
“After we hit them for a few months at night,” Giovanni turned to her to be sure she was listening, “the bastards got so worked up that they started using those during the day.”
“Homicide bombers?” asked Quinn.
“We call ‘em SEDs,” Giovanni replied, shaking his head. “Synthetic explosive devices.”
“Hate to break it to you, but all explosives are synthetic,” Renner said.
“The explosives aren’t the synthetic part. These things are a new kind of drone. Synthetic people with the explosives planted inside.”
“We call them ‘copies,’” said a woman.
Quinn and the others looked sideways to see a female resistance fighter appear out of the shadows. She was of average height, but built like a powerlifter, her shoulders and quads bulging under the camouflage-colored singlet she wore beneath a black tactical vest. She strode forward, and Quinn admired the knife she had strategically placed in her dirty-blond hair that was so tightly coiled atop her head that it looked like a snake waiting to strike.
“This is Alexandra,” Giovanni said.
“Xan for short,” she said.
Giovanni angled a thumb at Xan. “She conducts most of our long-range patrols.”
“Everywhere from Carson City to Phoenix and all points in between,” Xan replied with a nod. She moved over to the screen and squinted at the aftermath of the explosion. Then, she turned back to the Marines.
Giovanni turned to face the Marines. “We started noticing the copies a few weeks ago. One of our units was doing recon near Bakersfield when they were approached by this lovely old lady. She had a basket full of food for them.”
“What happened?” asked Renner.
“You mean before or after she blew herself up?” Giovanni asked.
The Marines traded looks.
Hayden let out a long breath. “Christ, if that’s true, how the hell do you tell if they’re real or not?”
“Their blood.” Giovanni said.
“They bleed?” Milo asked.
“Sometimes,” Xan said, shaking her head. “They might get pricked or cut… and it’s white… some white liquid that pumps around inside them. That’s the only way you can tell.”
“This shit keeps getting better and better,” Renner said.
Xan moved over to Renner and iced him with a look. “You’d know better than anyone, wouldn’t you? I mean, from what I hear, the Marines serve the aliens now, right? You’re the Syndicate’s biggest bitches.”
“You gonna say that to my face?” Renner asked.
“I’m already up in your grill, babycakes,” Xan said, leaning to within an inch of Renner who blinked.
“There’s a way around that,” Quinn said.
Xan snorted. “The only way around anything with the aliens is by brute force. That’s all the bastards understand. They kill one of ours, we kill ten of theirs.”
“What if there was another way? What if we could help you?” Quinn asked.
“Help us? Please. You can’t even help yourselves,” Xan said, placing a finger on Quinn’s red Syndicate armor.
Quinn eased back and lifted her rifle and aimed at Xan who stared her down. The other resistance fighters reacted, clutching their weapons, ready for anything. Xan whipped out the knife from her hair and held it at an angle. Quinn didn’t lower her gun. “There’s a reason I can use this against you and not against them,” she said.
“I’m all ears, sister,” Xan said, hard-gripping her knife.
“There’s a signal inside all the Marines that’s somehow connected to the alien technology. An implant. As long as I live and breathe, I’m one with this weapon. I cannot turn it against its maker.”
“Yeah, well, that’s your problem,” Xan said.
“No, it’s our problem. But we’ve found a way around it. For all of us to live, we have to die.”
Several seconds of silence ensued, then Renner shot up a hand. “Yeah, about that last part, Quinn—”
Quinn turned to him. “You heard me, Marine. Once the user dies, there’s a period of time—only a few seconds of inactivity, dead space—when the Syndicate signal can be circumvented or deactivated.”
“And you’d know this how?” asked Hayden.
“Because Cody and I were told about it.”
“Who told you?” asked Milo.
Her head sagged, then she looked up. “Somebody from the future.”
“Okay, yeah, and I’m the crazy one,” Renner said, holding up his hands.
“This bitch is straight up loco,” Xan said, chuckling as she lowered her knife. “We need to get her ass in a rubber room, Giovanni.”
“Listen to me, goddammit!” Quinn shouted. “There is someone or some thing that’s sending back messages through these silver objects, temporal totems. They’re like a kind of time capsule. They’ve got messages inside, including one that tells us how to turn the Syndicates’ weapons against them.”
Xan cast a wary eye in Giovanni’s direction. “You gonna believe this voodoo bullshit?”
“Gotta admit, Quinn,” Giovanni said, “what you’ve said is almost impossible to believe.”
Quinn lowered her rifle. She could tell from the looks she was getting that nobody believed her, so she did her best to conjure up a reassuring smile.
“To quote a friend, impossible things happen every day.”
MINUTES LATER, Quinn and Giovanni moved down through a tunnel that lay beneath the casino. All around them, the darkness stirred. Quinn watched resistance fighters scampering past with weapons, gear, and supplies.
“You’ve got a helluva operation, Giovanni, but without us, without the technology we’ve got access to, you’ll never turn the tables on them.”
Xan heard this and looked up. “So, then we’ll fight a guerrilla war. We’re already wearing them down and forcing them to change their tactics. Who’s to say they won’t just leave in a few months?”
Quinn glared at her. “The Syndicate’s flipped the script. They’re an attrition army, sweetheart. They’ve got the watches and the time. And you don’t have enough bodies or bullets to beat them.”
Giovanni stopped, his eyes gleaming in the semi-darkness.
Quinn placed her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got to believe me. We can do this. We can team up and find a way to defeat the bastards.”
“I believe you, Quinn.”
“You do?”
Giovanni nodded and gestured for her and the others to follow. He crouch-ran down through the tunnel and into an ante-chamber lit by a series of yellow and green chem-lights that were suspended by wires all around the room. At the back of the room was a wooden crate. Giovanni moved over and reached into the crate and removed a silver object, another temporal totem.
“We found this thing six days ago,” he said.
He moved over, and Quinn studied it. A ram’s head with horns larger than the face. It reverberated when she drew near. “It’s another temporal totem.”
Giovanni shot her a quizzical look. “Temporal totem?”
Quinn nodded.
“That’s the best name you could come up with?”
She shrugged. “Silver thingies was a close second.”
Quinn placed her hand on it and felt a faint pulse of electricity.
“I felt it, too,” Giovanni said, reading her look.
“This is it,” Quinn said. “This is one of the keys to the kingdom.”
“If it’s a key, what does it open?” Giovanni asked. “
What’s it say?”
“I won’t know until I get back to the command ship and get it examined,” Quinn replied.
“And then?”
“And then we take the fight to the aliens,” Hayden said, looking around. “We do like Quinn says. We find a way around our implants and turn the tables on the Syndicate.”
“How many of you are there?” Xan asked.
“Don’t worry about that, little lady,” Renner said. “We’re Marines. Force multipliers. Each of us is equal to a hundred of you.”
Xan shot a fiery look at Renner. “I got a feeling, little man, that me and you are gonna have some words when all of this is over.”
“Can’t wait for it,” Renner replied.
“Enough flapping our gums,” Giovanni said. He hoisted the silver object and turned it around before handing it over to Quinn which she then slipped into her rucksack. “How the hell are we gonna know what’s going on up there? Can’t exactly pick up the phone and give you a call, Quinn.”
Milo dropped to his knees and took off his own damaged HUD helmet. He placed it on the ground. “You can use this. I took a wicked shot in the side before, and the screen’s all hinked up, but it still holds a signal. I’ll say I lost it during the fight. As long as you have this, we can send and receive messages.”
Quinn looked from the helmet to Giovanni. “What say?”
“I say the man who’s got nothing, has nothing to lose.” Giovanni extended a hand. Quinn accepted it, and the two hugged.
Milo tapped Quinn on the shoulder. “Hate to be a killjoy, but there’s still the issue of the weapons cache. If we don’t blow something, the boys upstairs are gonna be very suspicious.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Giovanni said with a smile.
THE MARINES WERE SHOWN a secondary resistance fuel and ammunition depot some ten minutes later. The depot was housed in a sewer line that was sufficiently distanced from the resistance command and control tunnels, so any explosions wouldn’t disrupt their operations. Giovanni was concerned about losing any supplies, but conceded that it was a risk worth taking. Quinn and the others watched Renner drop a number of bricks of explosives around the depot, then insert detonators and detonation cord. Quinn looked back to see Giovanni gesturing to her. She stepped toward him, and he took her aside, out of earshot of the others.
Giovanni handed Quinn the small metal robot, the one named Zeus that Detwyler had given him.
“I meant to give this to you before,” he whispered.
Quinn’s eyes went wide. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She remembered taking Samantha to a toy store around the time of her sixth birthday. She’d showed her the stuff she’d assumed her daughter might be into, girlie dolls and princess-related outfits and the like, Samantha hadn’t cottoned to any of it. The girl had always been a bit of a rebel—confident, self-reliant. The kind of young girl who plopped down in the Toys ‘R Us, arms folded across her chest, and asked why she couldn’t play with the stuff the boys liked.
Quinn held the toy up, thinking it all might just be a coincidence. But then she closed her eyes, and she smelled something, Samantha’s scent. It was very faint, but there. Tears welled up as she brought the animal in close to her chest.
“Where the hell did you get this?”
Giovanni looked to see if the others could hear, and then he leaned in close to Quinn. “One of our field operatives brought it in.”
“What? When?!”
“He was with her maybe a week ago.”
“I want to talk to him.”
Giovanni’s face fell. “He’s dead. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others. The Syndicate ambushed him.”
Quinn took a liking to the ground. “What about Samantha?”
“She’s out there somewhere.”
“You’re sure of this?” Quinn looked up. “How?”
“She’s your daughter,” Giovanni said with a smile. “She found a way.”
“She’s twelve years old for Crissakes!”
“Let’s just say she’s no ordinary twelve-year-old. She’s like her momma.”
“I’m not fucking twelve,” Quinn said with a scowl. “I have to go and find her, Giovanni. I have to go right now and get—”
“You can’t!”
“WHY THE HELL NOT?!”
“For starters, she’s not here, Quinn. We haven’t tracked her whereabouts. Besides, if you go AWOL, you’ll never see her again. We both know what the Syndicate is capable of. The only chance we’ve got is to find a way to end this, before the aliens end us.”
Quinn reeled. She had the strongest desire to bolt, to just leave the others behind and go back out into the world to find Samantha. What kind of mother allows her only daughter to go alone in the middle of a war zone? But quickly, she realized there was little chance of finding Samantha on her own. Moreover, what would happen to the others if she went rogue? Things would not end well, and any hope of defeating the Syndicate would be dashed. No, she reluctantly admitted to herself, that Giovanni was right. The only hope of seeing Samantha again lay with the defeat of the aliens.
“That is my little girl out there, Gio—”
“We’ve got some good people looking. They’ll find her.”
“I want you to know one thing.”
“Anything, Quinn.”
Before she knew what she was saying, the words left her mouth. “I hold you responsible for Samantha’s safety.”
“That a threat?”
“Hell yes, it is.”
Quinn handed the robot back to him. “I want you to give this back when you find her.”
He nodded with a smile, and Quinn looked back at Renner who was finished placing his explosives before shouting.
“BURNING TIME!” Renner called out.
Quinn and the Marines ducked into a side tunnel and set off running. The sound of Renner laughing manically from behind bounced off the walls. “TIME TO BRING THE NOISE!” Quinn heard the little man bellow and then—
CAROOM!
Quinn felt a surge of energy, then a blast of warm air as the explosives detonated. The shockwave propelled everyone forward, and the tunnel illuminated from the blast behind them, the explosion ricocheting off the tunnel walls.
They ran all out, and soon Quinn and the others had maneuvered down another tunnel and then were climbing back up a ladder that led to a manhole cover. Quinn pushed the cover off to see that the opening was at the far end of the business district, an area a quarter mile away from the casinos.
After climbing out of the tunnel, the Marines looked back to see a tower of flames rising out of holes in the city streets, the remnants from the blast at the weapons depot. Renner grinned, taking in the tongue of flame, eerily beautiful as it danced against the dark sky. Quinn looked back at Giovanni.
“So, this is the end, huh?”
Giovanni smiled and shook his head. “More like the beginning.”
Quinn and the other Marines watched him vanish back down into the tunnel. Then they turned and jogged back down the street, shuttling off into the desert. Quinn cued her HUD and saw coordinates for the exfiltration spot, maybe a half mile away. She knew that the gliders were already on the move, swooping down to retrieve the Marines.
IN THE LOWER LEVEL OF the casino, Giovanni came to a stop next to Xan and some of the other resistance fighters. He took a set of night-vision goggles, watching the gliders ascent back into space.
“That was a huge mistake,” Xan said, turning from Giovanni.
“You heard what they said, Xan.”
“I heard a bunch of bullshit, that’s what I heard,” she countered.
“They’ve got a way around the alien technology.”
“Why? Because of that message from the future? You actually believe that crap?”
“What choice do we have?” he asked, a quiver of desperation in his voice.
Xan’s eyes narrowed to slits. “We could go on the offensive. We could lay some traps and take the fight to
the enemy. I mean, to send the right message, sometimes you’ve gotta be prepared to suffer some losses.”
“Spoken by someone who’s never led people into battle,” he snapped.
Giovanni instantly regretted that. He could see the pain in Xan’s face, the shock that he thought was not unlike the first seconds after someone strikes you in the face. The alarm quickly vanished and anger flashed in Xan’s unblinking, eerily blue eyes.
She reached over and violently jabbed a finger in his chest. “Fuck you, Giovanni. I’m the one that’s out there twenty-four-seven, conducting raids, bringing back intel.”
“I know that,” he said.
“So, show a little goddamn respect,” she said, nearly spitting the words out. “I was here kicking ass and taking names long before you decided to saddle up with us.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I just meant it’s difficult to consider more operations and more losses of life when we may have an out.”
She sighed. “You really believe them?”
“I’d trust them with my lives.”
“So, what then? We just sit here and suck on it and wait?”
He nodded. “Hawkins radioed in. They found Quinn’s daughter and have requested an extraction team. We need to get there.”
“Where?” Xan asked.
“The Midwest. They’re heading for Shiloh. I’m going to meet them there.”
“Who’s the One-Zero while you’re gone?” she asked.
Giovanni smiled and slapped her on the shoulder. “Congrats. Just don’t burn the fucking place down while I’m gone.”
He turned, steeling his emotions as he debated his next move and how Luke was going to fit into it.
12
SURVIVING
Samantha remained in the back of one of the four matte-black trucks, watching the countryside whip past outside. The procession continued to drive into the shadows of the open road, headlights out.
Losing all sense of direction in the darkness, Samantha dozed, watching the countryside pass by. The trucks drove through deserted and destroyed towns, over mountain roads, and across vast stretches of land that was without trees, not even a bump of high ground. She saw places where the aliens had attacked, the wreckage of spacecrafts, helicopters, and jet fighters. She witnessed the bodies of animals and people frozen in death mid-stride on either side of the road.
