Action Figures - Issue Six: Power Play

by Michael Bailey

  “Not funny,” Concorde says. “Hated that movie.”

  “You hated Alien? Seriously?”

  “And the sequel,” TranzSister says. “I almost ended our friendship over that.”

  “Man, I do not know you anymore.”

  “Can we stay focused, please?” Concorde says.

  Matt takes point and leads us through, gun raised and ready. We come out at the top of a wide ramp leading down into a high-ceilinged room about as big as our high school cafeteria. TranzSister and Matt sweep the room with their lights. A series of squat steel boxes, each of them large enough to hold a full dining room set, occupies the center of the room. Empty racks line the walls on both sides. Concorde takes a quick, cautious peek in a few of the boxes. Also empty.

  “What do you think? An armory, maybe?” TranzSister says.

  “Sound guess. I recall the Vanguard took out some gunmen who emerged from that hatch,” Concorde says, motioning back toward the first room. “It stands to reason they armed up here.”

  “And here is now completely empty.”

  “Which suggests the ship has indeed been raided for its technology,” Doc Quantum says. “Its weaponry at the very least.”

  “That’s bad enough. It doesn’t take a genius to pull a trigger,” Concorde says. “Come on.”

  We descend.

  Our comms crap out after three levels. TranzSister boosts the signal enough to maintain contact for another two. It’s my show after that.

  As I said, the ship’s external appearance is weird by my human standards, but its insides seem to make sense. Corridors lead to rooms, rooms lead to other rooms, and the rooms for the most part have clear purposes — storage, crew quarters, access to the ship’s internal systems, et cetera. The one feature that stands out is the lack of stairs. We change levels by moving up and down wide ramps, and Matt theorizes that stairs might not be compatible with certain alien body types.

  “Speaking of compatibility,” I say, “why are we able to breathe the air in here? Wouldn’t aliens breathe something other than oxygen?”

  “That is an entirely reasonable assumption,” Doc Quantum says, “but you might have noticed that once they were removed from their battlesuits, the invaders had no obvious issues breathing our air.”

  “Neither did the Vanguard,” Concorde says.

  “Which means they all originally came from planets with similar atmospheres,” Matt says.

  “That’s highly unlikely.”

  “As is the likelihood that most of the invaders would be bipedal humanoids, and yet...”

  “The probability of so many diverse species sharing such key common traits is astronomical,” Doc Quantum says, “unless you posit that we all share common ancestry and sprang from the same genetic progenitors.” She breaks out in a giddy smile. “Imagine that! A cosmic Lucy! Oh, why didn’t I think to take DNA samples when I had the chance?”

  “Maybe if you ask nicely, Fast and At Mo Whatever will let you swab their mouths,” I say, and that causes everyone else to freeze.

  “Right, the Vanguard left two of their people behind to guard their prisoners,” Concorde says. “Where were they during all of this?”

  “Considering the size of this ship? It’s well within the realm of possibility they never heard the intruders,” Doc Quantum says.

  “Or they did hear the intruders, set out to investigate, and now they’re lying dead somewhere,” TranzSister says.

  “That won’t go over well with the Vanguard,” Matt says.

  “No it will not,” Concorde says, “and I do not want to be the one who pisses off an entire galactic military force comprised of beings each as powerful as Carrie.”

  “Don’t panic yet, honey,” TranzSister says. “Psyche, didn’t Carrie manage to link her Protectorate comm to the Vanguard’s communications system?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It wasn’t a great connection, though.”

  “I’ll take not great over none. Let’s keep moving. I’ll scan for their communications network and see if I can jack in.”

  Concorde makes the call to keep going down, going on the assumption that any brig this thing might have would be in the lower levels. Every time we descend a level, I ping Mindforce to see if we’re still in contact. We are, but whatever is interfering with the comms is also starting to muddle our connection. If we go too much farther, we could be cut off entirely.

  We emerge into a central corridor large enough to drive an SUV through. As we enter, the ship’s lights fade to a faint glow and threaten to wink out entirely. TranzSister cranks up her floodlights to compensate.

  Concorde stops. “This corridor,” he says, gesturing at the walls.

  I don’t get what he means until Doc Quantum looks around and says, “It curves.” Until now, we haven’t seen a single curved hallway.

  Concorde follows the hall around until we reach a set of high, wide double doors — heavy and solid, like a bank vault door. These babies were designed to keep anything short of Stuart out — or in. Either way they didn’t do their job; they’re wide open.

  The power kicks back in, and the space beyond the doors comes to life with daylight brilliance. We step inside, and I realize my description is a little too on the nose because what I’m seeing is, in defiance of all reason, daylight. A cloudy winter sky looms above me, and a panoramic view of Kingsport Heights Beach stretches off to either side. The view continues below me and, impossibly, below the surface of the water. If I look straight down, I can see clouds of seaweed swirling and rippling across the ocean floor, pushed along by the tide. Well, I can’t exactly look straight down because there’s a footbridge beneath my feet. It connects the doorway to a circular platform in the center of the room, and that’s when the last element finally clicks.

  “Is that a body?” I say.

  The big brains dash over to take a closer look. Against my better judgment, I join them.

  Like a lot of the aliens I’ve seen over the past two days, this one is more or less human in appearance. Its eyes are big and bulbous, like a goldfish’s eyes, and its skin is a milky white color, though I can’t tell if that’s its normal tone or if, like people, it loses color after death.

  But the corpse isn’t what has the brains so fascinated; they’re more interested in the cradle the body rests in. It’s like a recessed chaise lounge, padded and formfitting to keep its occupant firmly in place. A port above the alien’s head sprouts a series of cables that jack right into its head. If I call the walkway entrance north, this cradle is oriented toward the northwest. Two more identical cradles, each with its own dead occupant, face southeast and southwest, and we’re all standing in a space that could easily hold a northeast-facing cradle.

  Matt lays down on the walkway and peers beneath the platform. “Hey. There are four more down here.”

  “Gwen, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” TranzSister says.

  “If you’re thinking this is an immersive real-time virtual reality environment, then yes,” Doc Quantum says with breathless excitement. “Yes I am.”

  “This is a holodeck?” Matt says.

  “Not quite. I don’t think this is for recreational purposes,” Concorde says. “I have a theory.”

  “You mean you have a hypothesis,” Doc Quantum says, “but continue.”

  “I think we’ve found the bridge. Look: this chamber displays the ship’s surroundings — three hundred-sixty degrees on every axis.”

  “He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking,” Matt says, deadpan.

  “Exactly.”

  “Huh?” I say.

  “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” Matt says.

  “Okay...”

  “The concept of up and down doesn’t apply in space. You could attack in or be attacked from any direction.”

  “You mean these aliens are the pilots?”

  “You couldn’t ask for a more efficient or responsive means of control,” TranzSister says. �
�The human brain processes data faster than the most advanced supercomputer on the planet. Its speed is measured in petaFLOPS. Some estimates place the brain’s processing speed around one exaFLOPS.”

  “One exaFLOPS equals a billion billion calculations per second,” Matt explains. That earns an approving smile from Doc Quantum and a frown from me. I may be the only one here who can’t keep up with all the science flying around.

  “Now, imagine seven brains linked together and working in sync to form a living supercomputer that handles every function of this ship,” Concorde says. “The processing speed would be —”

  “Eight,” I say. The brains give me a funny look. “There should be eight aliens here.”

  Everyone clears out of the space where in theory — or is it in hypothesis? — an eighth cradle should be. TranzSister squats to get a closer look at the floor. A tiny module on the side of her helmet sweeps the floor with a red beam, like the checkout scanner at a supermarket.

  “Sara’s right; there was something here,” she says. “There’s some damage to the floor, scrapes and scorch marks, and faint traces of beach sand...”

  “Someone took one of these units,” Concorde says.

  “And, presumably, the being in it,” Doc Quantum says.

  “Great. I don’t know how we’re going to explain this to the Vanguard.”

  “Better come up with something fast, boss,” I say. “Looks like the tow truck’s here.”

  “What?”

  “Got a call over the brainphone. Mindforce said something just hit the atmosphere and the Space Surveillance Network is freaking out big-time.”

  We race topside. At a run, it takes us a solid twenty minutes to backtrack to the hatch leading out. We climb up, back into the biting winter air, and release a collective gasp.

  The dreadnought may be ginormous, but it’s got nothing on the Vanguard’s retrieval ship.

  SIX

  Concorde estimated the dreadnought’s size to be in the neighborhood of sixteen hundred feet long. The monster descending from the sky with a slow, steady, deep rumble that causes the surface of the ocean to ripple is easily three or four times that. A gust of wind shoves us, but it’s not your standard wintertime ocean breeze; the ship is pushing a massive wall of air in front of it as it approaches. All we can do is gawk in mute awe at the alien hulk, a blocky thing with an angled wedge of a bow. It looks like it could ram the moon and split it in half and never slow down.

  It’s more than a recovery ship. It’s a flying planet killer.

  “Concorde. That hum,” Doc Quantum says.

  “I know,” Concorde says. “It’s using maglev technology.”

  I don’t completely understand how Concorde’s suit works — thank you, science, making me feel stupid again — but I know he needs a bank of four nuclear micro-cells to power it. I can’t begin to imagine what’s fueling a ship so huge its front is in a different zip code than its back.

  All things considered, it’s completely understandable that the military and the government goons are losing their minds. Our comms, silent for so long, buzz with chatter. In the sky, the jet jockeys out of Stafford demand the same thing as the crews of the Navy destroyers floating beneath the ship like toy boats in a bathtub: permission to open fire. I don’t know who here is calling the shots, so to speak, but they’re not giving anyone the green light. Smart move. I doubt anything short of a nuke would make a dent anyway.

  My comm shrieks in my ears. I reach up to yank my headset off but stop when I hear a series of gravelly grunts.

  “That’s him. That’s Lieutenant Maasuur!” I say. I fumble for my belt pouch, my hands trembling, and take out those gross translator blob things Maasuur gave me. They feel every bit as disgusting going in the second time as they did the first. “Lieutenant Maasuur, this is Psyche, I read you.”

  “Message received. Remove yourself and your compatriots from the Nightwind immediately so we may begin the recovery operation,” Lt. Maasuur says. “I’ll meet you on the beach shortly.”

  One quick trip in the Raptor later, we’re back on solid ground. A few minutes after that, as the recovery ship eases into position directly overhead, bathing us in shadow, Lt. Maasuur touches down on the beach. Concorde follows me over, insisting that he should deliver the bad news.

  “I trust there were no problems in our absence?” Lt. Maasuur asks.

  “Actually, no. I mean, yes. I mean, there was a problem,” I say.

  “Someone staged an assault on the people guarding your ship. There were several casualties,” Concorde says, wisely leading with a detail that might gain us a little sympathy before we ruin Lt. Maasuur’s day. “Whoever was responsible for the attack also appears to have raided the Nightwind. We went in and found several areas that had been ransacked. We tried to make contact with your people but we were unable to reach them.”

  Lt. Maasuur squints at us. Oh, he is not happy.

  “Fast, report in,” he says into his own comm. He’s silent and still for an uncomfortably long time. “Wait here,” he says, and then he flies off toward the dreadnought.

  “That doesn’t bode well,” Concorde says.

  “But he didn’t incinerate us,” I offer. “Can’t be all bad.”

  It isn’t all good, either. Lt. Maasuur returns a half hour later to inform us he located First Rank At Mo Ke in the bowels of the ship, safe and sound and barricaded in a cargo bay-turned-impromptu holding area for the Vanguard’s prisoners. He found Lt. Fast’s body in a launch bay a few levels above that. According to At Mo Ke, Fast ordered him to hunker down with the prisoners and then set out to repel the invaders by his lonesome. At Mo Ke lost contact with Fast a few minutes later but, like a good soldier, followed his last order and stayed put.

  I translate for Concorde, who replies, “Lieutenant, we’ve encountered the Thrashers before — the battlesuits used in the attack,” he clarifies. “That gives us a solid lead to work off of, and I promise you we’ll find the people responsible for killing your comrade and recover everything that was taken from the ship.”

  “You also swore to safeguard the Nightwind until our return. You failed,” Maasuur says. “Why should I believe you now?”

  Concorde looks to me for a translation. “He said, ‘Good luck,’ ” I say. Maasuur turns his scowl on me. Man, he is good at giving people the stink-eye. “Lieutenant, did you deliver my message to Carrie?”

  “Ah. Yes,” he says. He hands my phone back to me but doesn’t relay any return message.

  He doesn’t have to. I turn my phone on and see two new files sitting on the home screen — video files, one of which is labeled TEAM. The other is labeled PARENTS.

  Lt. Maasuur tells us to clear out so the recovery ship, the Hyoephou, can do its job. We gather atop one of the command posts for the show, which involves several members of the Vanguard, working in cooperation with flying pods that remind me of those dinky deep-sea exploration subs, inspecting the Nightwind for damage and structural issues. Lt. Maasuur leads a second squadron of Vanguardians in transferring their prisoners from the Nightwind to the Hyoephou. The last prisoner out is Galt. As best as I can tell from this distance, he’s still out cold, but Maasuur puts a half-dozen people on him to be safe.

  The work settles into a dull routine after that, nothing worth watching. I can’t put it off any longer. I take out my phone. Matt, Missy, and Stuart press in around me so they can see the screen. Meg hugs me from behind and rests her head on my shoulder.

  Carrie’s face fills the screen. Oh, God, she looks like hell, but somehow she manages to give us a tired smile from across the galaxy.

  “Hi, guys,” she says. “Um. So. Yeah. I’m in outer space. I don’t know where, exactly. Commander Do says I’m still in the Milky Way galaxy, but that’s a moot point. There’s no way I can get home on my own power, so...”

  She pauses to take a breath and my heart sinks. I know that look. Oh, Carrie, no, please don’t, please don’t...

  “That’s also a moot
point, because I’m not coming back. Not anytime soon. The Kyros Alliance is dealing with a major crisis and they need all the help they can get. It’s a little complicated to go into now, but they’re fighting for a good cause and I can help. I want to help. They’re not forcing me to stay, if that’s what you’re thinking. This is my choice. Sara, you know me better than anyone. You know I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice catching in my throat. “I know.”

  “Sara.” She swallows hard, fighting back tears. “Sara, you have to tell Mom everything. Everything. There’s no point in hiding the truth anymore. It’s going to suck. It’s going to suck so much and this is going to be harder on you than anyone and I’m so sorry. I’m the worst friend in the world for dumping all of this on you.”

  No you’re not. You’re not. You’re the best friend in the world and I love you and I’d give anything if I could have just five seconds to say that to your face.

  The video jumps as if there was an edit. “There’s another video on the phone, for Mom and Dad. I want them to watch it together. Please do that for me.”

  “I will,” I sob. Meg hugs me tighter. “I promise I will.”

  Carrie smiles through her tears. “I love you. I love all of you. I’m sorry.”

  The video ends. I feel my friends’ hands on me, on my shoulders and my arms as they do their best to comfort me, but there’s no comfort to be found.

  “She’ll be back,” Matt says.

  “Of course she’ll be back,” Stuart says. “No power in the ‘verse can stop her.”

  I nod because I can’t speak. Nothing comes out of my mouth but racking sobs. I clutch the phone to my chest and cry. I cry until there’s nothing left, until I feel empty.

  “I have to go home,” I say. “I have to tell Christina and Carrie’s dad.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Meg offers, but I shake my head.

  “No. I have to do this.”

  “Sara, sweetie...”

  “No,” I say, my voice hard but calm. “This is my responsibility.”