by Scott Baron
Even the Chithiid’s normally stoic expression took on a look of horror.
“So the missiles?” he asked, knowing the answer already.
“Deactivated and inaccessible,” she replied. “There’s simply no way now. Even if we changed plans and used the breaching charges to disrupt the power feeds to the Ra’az communications centers, their facilities would just switch to backup generators and signal the fleet. It might take weeks, or even years for them to get the message and come back, but even if the warp ships didn’t launch, the damage would be done.”
“But we know the Ra’az are only days away from a functioning warp drive. Even if the transmission is never sent, the likelihood of my people’s obsolescence grows exponentially once they possess the ability to travel to and from their homeworld in an instant. Despite the risks, we should pursue our goal.”
Daisy slowly pushed up to her feet and gave a sad little smile. “I know, Craaxit, but we simply don’t have the resources to do anything about it. I’m so sorry, but I don’t think we can even save our own planet, let alone yours.”
Daisy pulled a small video player from her hip pocket. Miraculously, it had survived the fight unscathed.
“These were sent by our team in Sydney,” she said, handing him the device. “The Ra’az did this before you and I had even met. They did it before there was any hint of a threat. This kind of evil? I don’t know what we can do against them now. Life means nothing to them, if they kill so many so easily. And for what?”
Craaxit’s jaw twitched as he looked at the images of the dead Chithiid.
“May I keep this?” he asked.
“Of course,” Daisy replied. “I’m sorry, Craaxit,” she said as she turned for the door. “Have your people stand down. There’s no need for any more lives to be lost for a hopeless cause.”
Craaxit said nothing further as he watched his broken friend walk away, aimlessly wandering as she processed the day’s tragedy.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tamara brushed the dust from herself as she sat atop a stalled-out vehicle, its engine rudely cut off by the EMP burst that had escaped from beneath Cheyenne Mountain, a result of Joshua’s suicidal nuclear detonation.
There had been no dirt or dust exploding forth from the mouth of the mountain. Joshua had seen to it that all doors were tightly sealed before triggering the deeply buried device. Nevertheless, the EM pulse traveled up through the solid ground, fanning out for miles.
All of the vehicles were immediately knocked out of commission, as were their portable communications devices and the cyborg assistants that had traveled with from Los Angeles. Only the heavily shielded cybernetic troops from Joshua’s base had been able to withstand the pulse, but even they weren’t totally immune to its effects.
“Th-th-th-thirteen of m-my squad made it clear. Th-three were n-not able to escape in t-t-time,” Duke managed to say as his twitching systems recalibrated. “It appears th-that two of your h-humans were also s-s-sealed in before the blast. I’m afraid they w-were vaporized.”
The heavy-duty internal redundancies that kept him active allowed Duke and his brethren to stay functional in such circumstances, shifting power to maintain their crucial systems, much like a human body shunts blood from extremities to internal organs in times of shock.
“How do you know that?” Tamara asked as she checked Jonathan’s inert body, waiting for him to reboot. "All of the comms systems are down, as well as the relays from within NORAD.”
Duke tapped a small external speaker on his upper chest, which emitted a burst of static.
“Spec ops b-b-backup comms,” he said.
“Um, that’s static," Tamara said.
He flashed what could best be described as a pained smile.
“It’s n-not,” he replied. “B-but that’s what people are s-supposed to think.”
The static sound shifted as he slowed the signal. Tamara realized there was something to the garbled hiss. Something more than just white noise.
“Hang on, is that––?”
He slowed the signal even further, the sound clearing into a rapid series of slow and long tones, only audible in the clear when slowed down thousands of percent.
“It is! That’s Morse Code!”
“Exactly.”
“Holy shit, that’s clever.”
“And was top secret until j-just now,” he said quietly, looking over the shocked survivors sitting not too far from them. “So k-keep it to y-yourself, if you will.”
“But even sped up like that for your processors, don’t the Ra’az still pick it up?”
“It’s only a short-range signal. Anyth-th-thing stronger w-would draw attention.”
“So we have contact with all the teams. At least we have that.”
A soft whoosh caught her attention in the distance. Tamara spun and just caught a brief glimpse of a vessel flashing out of sight from where it had landed near what she was pretty sure was the external entry to the heavily guarded data hub whose cannons she had barely escaped not long ago.
“Looks like the Ra’az are already probing the area. They must realize the defenses are down,” she said.
“N-not all of them, though,” Duke replied. “Those auto cannons are still live.”
“Hopefully it’s enough to keep them from accessing the tunnels. We know firsthand how tough those things are. I’m just surprised they came so fast.”
“I’m not. This has been a very high-value t-target pretty much since they f-first invaded. It only makes sense they’d swoop in the second they could.”
“Shit. Fingers crossed those cannons are up to the task.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “The facilities beneath th-the mountain are all melted slag n-n-now, anyway.”
Jonathan suddenly snapped into consciousness as his systems rebooted, lurching into motion, his limbs moving in a disjointed manner.
“I––We––Shit!”
He fell silent, his twitching slowing as his systems came into alignment.
“Oh my. P-pardon my language.”
Tamara and Duke burst into much-needed laughter.
“Glad you’re okay, Jonathan,” she said.
“I appear to have had my s-s-systems sent into a forced reboot. My last recorded incident was being t-told to run. We arrived outside the large exterior doors, and they had just shut behind us when something shut me off.”
“That was an EMP,” Tamara informed him.
“I’m sorry, I do not know what that is.”
“An electromagnetic pulse,” Duke chimed in. “Joshua detonated his m-m-megaton nuke and self-destructed. When that happens, the blast emits a p-pulse.”
“He killed himself?” Jonathan said in horror. “But why would he do that? It g-goes against everything we believe for an AI to do such a thing.”
“Normally, yes,” the soldier replied, grimly. “But this wasn’t for no reason.”
Tamara glanced over the gathering humans and recovering cyborgs. It was going to be up to her to brief them. Once she knew what was happening, that is.
“What did happen, Duke?”
“Stand by. I need to confirm a few things.”
He fell silent a moment as he and his squad covertly communicated.
“Okay, I have confirmation. It seems Jim was able to send a burst transmission before he was taken out.”
“Wait, taken out inside the base?”
“Yes. His last message stated that a crazy, scruffy human had apparently snuck a virus-carrying portable data chip into the facility. He came across him loading it directly into Joshua’s systems. When he tried to confront him, the man––who was apparently also carrying an explosive device strapped to his chest––blew them both up.”
Tamara was shocked.
“But the humans are all from Cal’s people. There’s no way that––”
She remembered the scruffy man from the battle. Moses, he said his name was. He did seem a bit skinny and rough around the e
dges, but she figured the battle had shaken him up, was all. Apparently not.
“Alma,” she said.
“What?”
“One of Alma’s people, I’m willing to bet. Moses. He must have infiltrated us all the way back in Los Angeles.”
“And no one noticed?” Jonathan asked.
“They were all new faces to us,” she replied. “Easy enough for one hostile to sneak in among the masses of unfamiliars.”
“Why didn’t the other humans say anything?” Duke asked. “That’s piss-poor op-sec.”
“They had only just met us. We were the first outsiders they’d ever seen. For all we know, they might have thought he was part of our team.”
“You know what this means.”
“Yeah. There could be more of them.”
Duke fell silent as he communicated with his comrades.
“Okay, we have decided on a course of action,” he said, turning to scan the faces of the human survivors among his group.
“What course of action?” Tamara asked.
“Strip search. All of them,” he replied coldly.
“Wait, what? We can’t force these people to––”
“Damn right we can,” he cut her off. “And we must. If you are correct, then they should be easy to spot based on their morphology. Cal’s people are well-fed and well taken care of, but you said Alma’s were rather malnourished. Should be easy to spot. Other things can be covered up and disguised, but not their own bodies.”
“I’m normally all for roughing people up, but––”
“It beats the alternative, Tamara.”
“What alternative would that be?”
“Locking them up. All of them. If we can’t trust one, we can’t trust any.”
Grudgingly, Tamara realized he was right.
“Okay. But I’ll handle the women.”
“It’s all the same to me. I’m a cyborg, gender isn’t a big deal to my kind. Not usually, anyway”
The teams each went through the motions and checked every human survivor in their midst.
“Everyone has reported back in,” Duke informed his group. “No other infiltrators.”
“At least that’s one bit of good news, but we’ve got another, bigger problem now.”
“Can I be of assistance?” Jonathan offered.
“It’s not so simple, Johnny boy. We need to find some way to let Cal and the others know what happened. We need to warn them.”
“All the comms systems are fried in the region. We’re going to have to get outside of Colorado Springs.”
“The military base or airfield?”
“Negative. Those were struck by the Ra’az in the early attacks. Only the facilities right at Cheyenne Mountain were left unscathed, and the EMP took any remaining ones out in the blast.”
Tamara ran through their options and didn’t like any of them.
“How about the data hub?” she finally suggested. “I know it has cannons inside––”
“There’s one outside too. Only activates if the door is forced, though.”
“Then let’s not force the door,” Tamara said. “Do you think there might be an intact link somewhere on the external panels of the facility that we could tap into?”
“I’m not sure,” Duke said, pondering the idea. “But since it’s that or trekking out of town, we might as well give it a try.”
“Great, let’s have all of your team and the survivors with them meet us there to regroup.”
“No can do. Most of my guys didn’t have these new Faraday suits handy when they evacuated the base. Only a handful of us can move freely. The others will need to stay under heavy cover to stay off of Ra’az scans.”
“Shit. So they’re sitting ducks.”
“Not exactly, but they can’t trek anywhere with anything resembling an efficient rate of speed. The only way for them to move and not send up a hot spot on a scan is painfully slow. But I have an idea how they can still be helpful. We’ll set them up within range for our short-range comms like a daisy chain. That way they can act as an eyes and ears network until we can get shielding suits back to them.”
“But that could take days. Weeks, even.”
“We’ve experienced worse, believe me,” he replied. “And with active hostiles, at least this time it won’t be a boring wait. Come on. Gather everyone up and head to the rendezvous. We’ll reassess our options once we’re there.”
It took nearly an hour for the surviving team to make the long trek through the thick brush covering the uneven terrain. What had merely been a long walk in the air-conditioned tunnel network was quite a bit more arduous above ground. More so, given the difficult topography of the area.
Tamara held up her functional hand in a tight fist as they neared the network hub’s deeply hidden door.
“Something’s not right,” she hissed.
“You’re right,” Duke agreed. “Take flanking positions, left and right,” he quietly signaled his teammates. “Tamara and I will go up the middle. Stay sharp.”
The other Faraday-suited cyborgs nodded silently and moved out, surprisingly stealthy for such large units.
As they drew closer and the hidden doors became visible through the dense brush, Tamara realized what was wrong.
“Look at the foliage,” she whispered.
“Crushed flat. Something landed here,” Duke noted. “The others said the perimeter is clear. Whatever it was, we’re alone, now.”
They strode into the flattened clearing and paused. The door stood ajar, and both the external and internal cannons lay in pieces. Beside them was what appeared to be the shattered remains of a mechanoid of some kind, torn to pieces by the likewise destroyed weapons system.
“Something with some hefty firepower did this,” Duke growled. “But look at this. This thing tried to tie in to Joshua’s data cables.” He picked up a piece from the rubble. “This is strange, though. I’ve never seen any attack on our systems like this before. You see the way the linkages broke free? It looks like they burned out from the attempt.”
“Or from the blast.”
“Not likely, though. We’d have almost certainly known if that door had been breached before that happened.”
“In any case, whatever went down here, they’re long gone,” Tamara said, kicking one of the trashed linkages.
“For now,” Duke replied. “But it won’t take the Ra’az too long to bring a disassembly team to see if there’s anything they can salvage.”
“We’d better get moving, then.”
“My thoughts, exactly."
“You think the monorail still works?” she asked, dreading the answer.
Her fears were well placed.
“Maybe,” he answered, unsure. “But Joshua had been running that system since your arrival, and even if it weren’t cut off when he went down, the EMP could have knocked it out. Only one way to be sure, though.”
“We go into town and try it out.”
“Precisely.”
“Well, shit, Duke. I hope it works, for all our sakes. Otherwise, we’re in for a helluva long walk.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The streets of Los Angeles had been exceptionally quiet during her meandering stroll, which Daisy was very grateful for. No more chance encounters with hostile aliens was a good thing, as she was still in a more than somewhat bloody-minded mood after the day’s events and might just opt for the opposite of her normal choice of conflict avoidance.
As it stood, she was glad to be left to her own thoughts as she slowly trudged a roundabout path back toward their subterranean base of operations.
To have gone from having no intention of ever returning to Earth’s surface to actually working to save not only that planet, but also that of an alien race she’d thought was her enemy until so recently was a huge step for her. Now she felt like she’d taken an equally huge step backward.
Fatima never imagined this scenario, I bet.
“Probably not,” Sarah agreed
. “So what now?”
No idea, Sis. No fucking idea.
“You really think the Ra’az will wipe out the Chithiid if they get that warp drive functional?”
You saw what they did to those barracks full of unarmed workers. I wouldn’t put it past them.
“Goddamn animals.”
Worse than animals. At least animals kill for sustenance.
“You forget about cats.” Sarah chuckled. “Sadistic little bastards.”
Fine. Except cats, Daisy said, allowing herself the tiniest of grins.
Daisy altered her course, taking an unfamiliar side street to an adjacent boulevard.
“Where you going?”
I honestly don’t know. Anywhere but back, right now. I just really need to clear my head for a bit, and once I go back, it’s going to be non-stop questions, and I really don’t think I can deal with that right now.
“Perfectly reasonable,” Sarah replied. “So, you want a quiet escape from prying eyes.”
That sounds wonderful.
“Ask and you shall receive. You see that? Up there on the left?”
Daisy scanned the overgrown courtyards lining the way. Sure enough, just barely visible through the dense brush, the flicker of flowing water caught the sunlight.
Good eyes, Sis.
Drawing near, she carefully parted the bushes and stepped through into a quiet, protected oasis.
Perhaps oasis was a bit of a stretch, given the pools of algae-thick water below the trickling fountain, but it was tranquil, insect-free, and provided a quiet place away from prying eyes, and that was exactly what Daisy needed at the moment.
Every fiber of her body, it seemed, was drained from the emotional highs and lows of the past twenty-four hours, and exhaustion washed over her as she sank down onto the small patch of long grass.
Rather than slipping into a much-desired nap and tuning out the day’s events, she instead folded herself into a cross-legged position and began breathing slowly and deeply.
Even with the soothing sound of trickling water, it still took her a while, given all that was racing through her mind, but eventually, Daisy managed to relax into herself, find her center, and begin letting the traumas of the day flow out of her.
