by Joshua James
First through the door was Ben, with Morgan in his arms. Ada followed him inside. Then came Francesca, Ace, and Tomas, now bringing up the rear.
Ada and the group were in a kitchen. They’d broken into a restaurant of some kind. The cooks and other kitchen staff cowered as the group made their way through out into the dining room.
Ben stood near the windows of the restaurant dining room that looked out on the street. Ada could tell he didn’t know what to do. When she caught up with him, she understood why.
The streets of Vassar-1 were embroiled in pure chaos, panic, and confusion. People were running in every direction. In the distance, Ada saw an explosion. Multiple plumes of smoke rose up over the endless skyline. Sentinels tried to manage the crowds and fight back against an unseen enemy.
“All right, let’s plan this out,” said Ada, seeing that there was a need for someone to take the lead. “Why don’t you put her down for a second, take a little rest?”
“I don’t think she has a second to rest. We need to keep moving. Besides, it might do more harm to put her down and pick her back up again.” Ben said.
“Fair enough. Let’s make this quick, then. Can you send me the location we need to go to, and the map?” Ada was determined to ease Ben’s load.
“That’s all right, I can—”
“No! You can’t!” Ada’s adrenaline was on full blast. “You need to make sure Morgan’s okay. I’ll take point. I just need to know where to go.”
Twenty-Eight
“Okay, I sent it over,” Ben said after he made the file transfer to Ada’s HUD.
Ada looked over the map quickly as Ace and Tomas took stock of how many rounds they had left. According to what she saw, they were only a few blocks away from their destination, something called New Dawn Bio Hacks.
It didn’t sound promising, but Ada figured beggars couldn’t be choosers. They couldn’t stay outside in this chaos. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get there through the alleyways. They had to go out into the streets, which was less than ideal.
“Two power packs for the rifles, about a half a mag in my pistol, and what do you have, Swede?” asked Ace, who was doing a quick ammo check.
“Whatever’s left in my sidearm and one more after that. That’s it,” answered Ada.
“Please remain calm,” boomed a loud, droning voice from above. “Do not panic. Everything is under control. Please stay in your homes.”
“I hope they don’t think that bullshit message is helping,” Ace said.
“We’re low on ammo,” Ada said, stating the obvious. She stood by the restaurant exit. “But we can get it done with what we have. Everyone, on me. Let’s save Morgan and find some shelter. Shall we?”
With her pistol out in front of her, ready and aiming forward, Ada led the way out of the restaurant and into the streets. She hugged the sides of the buildings, staying as far away from the mass of humanity in the middle of the road as she could. They made it a block without incident before they were spotted.
“You! Freeze! You are under arrest by the authority of the Senate!” Ada turned to see three police hoverbikes closing on them from across the street. Each bike rider was armed with a military-grade rifle. They were heavily armored and definitely more than run-of-the-mill beat cops. They were out there to fight terrorists, not petty crime.
“What do we do?” asked Francesca, her voice trembling.
“We keep moving! They won’t fire through the crowd!” ordered Ada as she followed her own instructions.
But she was wrong. High-speed super-heated rounds cut through an unlucky section of the crowds in the street. It was a slaughter.
Ada ducked as bullets hit all around her. Tomas didn’t return fire, not wanting to kill innocents, and proving to Ada she’d been wrong in her earlier assessment of his distaste for the people of Vassar-1. Ace, on the other hand, had no such reservations, and fired indiscriminately back at the cops.
All at once, bullets started flying from atop the building Ada and the group were running past. She assumed terrorists had dug in up there and were opening up on the Sentinels on the hoverbikes.
Ada had started forward again when a massive explosion blew out all the windows in a storefront just in front of her.
Glass went flying out into the crowd of civilians, injuring many of them. But it was the fireball and blast wave accompanying the razor-sharp projectiles that did the most damage.
Ada got up with the help of Ace, ears ringing and bleeding. The street in front of the storefront was littered with the bodies of the dead and injured, which other civilians just stepped over and on.
Ace was trying to yell something to Ada. She stared at his face, but couldn’t hear a single word he was saying, so she tried to read his lips. As far as she could tell, he was saying something about almost being here or there. It was hard to tell. But then he turned from her and raised his rifle.
Ada saw three men and a woman step out from the fiery wreck of the storefront that had just blown up. They were all bald, dressed in ratty clothes with old surplus flak jackets on, outdated guns in their hands.
The Oblivion cult!
Ada felt no guilt, no hesitation, when she put a bullet in one cultist’s head. She didn’t feel that tinge of human morality and compassion as she watched a piece of the cultist’s skull go flying out the back of his head. Nor did she feel sympathy as Ace lit them up with what she now saw not as violent psychosis, but purely justified, righteous glee.
As the last cultist fell in a pool of their own blood, Ace changed his magazine out. “Hey,” he yelled, pointing over at a neon sign across the street, over a thick sliding metal door. “New Dawn Bio Hacks! That’s where we need to go?”
“It sure as hell is,” Ada said. “Let’s get out of this damn meat grinder when we can.”
She bum-rushed through the crowd, waving her gun around so they made space for her. The rest of the group followed close behind.
When they reached the steel-reinforced front door, it was locked. Ada didn’t know why she didn’t see that coming. Not willing to just give up, especially since they’d come so far, she went over to Morgan.
“Morgan?” Ada tried to get Morgan’s attention. The poor woman was fading in and out of consciousness, and was in no shape to think, let alone answer a single question. “Morgan, we need your help. Is there a code or—?”
“I doubt she can even hear you,” Ben pointed out.
“Well, we need to try something,” Tomas said. He and Ace stood guard over the rest of the group, rifle-butting anyone who got too close.
Think, Ada. Think. How can we get this door open?
Ada looked around for anything that could help. That was when she saw the small camera right above the door. It was a floating orb that had a little green light next to a small lens.
“Open up!” Ada pounded on the door. “I know someone is in there! I can see the camera! Open up!” She kept pounding and pounding. At the very least, if there was someone inside who didn’t want to comply, she could annoy the shit out of them as a sort of small victory.
“I can go around.” Francesca managed to build up enough bravery to make an offer for the group. “I can go around and look for another entrance.”
Ada appreciated Francesca’s offer, but didn’t want to put the teen at risk. Unlike everyone else, she wasn’t trained to fight or to take care of herself. “No, stay here. We’ll find another way.”
As if on cue, a panel on the metal door slid open. Through it, Ada could see a pair of glowing orange eyes in darkness. Someone was there, she knew it!
“Who the hell are you, and what do you want?” asked a gruff woman’s voice.
“We need your help! This is a safe house, right? Or something like it?”
Apparently that was the wrong answer. From behind the neon sign, two small automated turrets activated, armed themselves, and aimed straight at the group.
“Or something like it,” the gruff woman’s voice answered. “Who sent
you? How did you find this place? Talk and talk fast, or I’ll happily fill you with holes.”
Ben shoulder-butted Ada out of the way. He positioned his body in such a way that the person inside could clearly see Morgan’s face. “She did. And she’s gonna die unless you can help her.”
Twenty-Nine
“In closing, esteemed members of the 223rd Senate, a picture is emerging of a real threat from the radical group Oblivion. A significant threat to Vassar-1 for now, but one that will soon spread to all the worlds of the Allied Colonies.” Heather Engano paused. “If it hasn’t already.”
Engano stepped back from the lectern and bowed.
She expected no reaction, and got none. She heard only the shuffling of chairs and the sound of aides coming and going from the chamber proper.
Engano stepped forward to the lectern. Sitting in the rows of seats in the Senate Circle, fifty senators from fifty worlds looked back at her. At least, a few of them did: the ones who could be bothered to be here and actually pay attention. “I’m sure many of you have questions.”
A senator from OV-34 raised her hand. It was a mining planet, not terribly hospitable to anyone other than workers and their families. Owned by the Orion Vander Corporation, it had been branded with a creative name.
“Madam Director. You’ve outlined a dire scenario, yet you’ve offered scant few details of what comes next. What do you and the Intelligence Agency plan to do about the Oblivion radicals?”
As the woman talked, Engano could see floating holographic information on her through her HUD. As an intelligence director, she had dirt on everyone. The senator’s name was Marwa Adilay. She was young. This was her first term. She’d been born in orbit around OV-34, and her family still lived there, but she now made Vassar-1 her home. Just another senator who worked to care about a home they never visited any longer. She had an on-again, off-again affair with two members of her staff. Her older brother had died when she was a teen. Her younger brother was shaping up to be a fine juvenile delinquent. Nothing of much interest to Engano.
Engano was tempted to point out to Adilay that it wasn’t the job of her agency to act on the information gathered. But these people could barely be bothered to understand even something that simple, and besides, Engano acted on the information she gathered all the time. She just wasn’t about to tell these people that.
“I can’t speak to the specific policies of the enforcement agencies, Senator Adilay, but my understanding is that the ‘watch and contain but do not harass’ policy remains in effect.” She heard a few whispers, but she didn’t blame them. The current administration of President Vallens was a joke as far as Engano was concerned. “On Vassar-1, the radicals aren’t allowed to gather publicly or preach their beliefs in the streets.”
“But surely we could do more.”
Senator Balbins, who chaired one of the three joint defense committees that seemed to exist only to counteract the other two, stood. “If we take the offensive against them, we have reason to think that that would entice a war, much like the one on Earth. Which we have no desire to undertake, or make the great people of our Allied Colonies endure.”
Engano kept her face passive, or hoped she did. Balbins would take the side of anyone who’d pay him enough. It was almost useless to gather information on him at this point.
“But what about when that doesn’t work?” Adilay pressed. “For example, how about what happened to you, Madam Director, on your way to the District today? What’s to stop that from happening again?”
I knew that question was coming. What took these useless people so long to ask? Of course they should be doing more. It was obvious to everyone. Everyone except Engano’s only true boss, President Vallens, it seemed.
Engano knew the president was watching. She’d have to toe the line. It grated, but she’d been a politician far too long to stumble in this chamber. “Yes, I was attacked this morning. But we strongly believe that it was a targeted attack, meant to take me out as a high-priority target to make people, even important people like you esteemed senators, question whether or not anyone is safe. I assure you, we are safe. A couple of handfuls of extremists here in our city are not enough to raise much concern.”
“But how did they know where you would be?” asked Senator Dal, an older man from the outer world of Yren.
“We’re still investigating. As you might imagine, since it happened recently, we haven’t had the time to pinpoint an answer yet.”
“With all due respect, Madam Director,” Dal said coldly. “If they can almost get to you, one of the most protected officials on this planet, how can you be so sure that the rest of us are safe from these radicals?”
You’re not, obviously.
“I can be sure of precious few things, Senator,” Engano said. “But I can promise you and the other senators that the enforcement agencies, in conjunction with the president’s office, are taking all the necessary steps and precautions to contain the threat. Now, if there is nothing else—”
“How about what happened on Magellan 5? Surely you’ve heard those reports?” asked Adilay.
Engano hesitated before she answered. It seemed the senator was drawing a line from those events to Oblivion. In fact, Engano’s office had as well, but that wasn’t common knowledge. On the one hand, she was glad that others were beginning to suspect a wider role for the Oblivion. On the other, it could lead to panic, and the president would trace that right back to her.
She really shouldn’t answer, but she was sick of sticking her head in the sand.
“It’s our working theory that a group of separatist extremists got control of decommissioned AIC ships that were lost and assumed destroyed during the outer colony revolts. They then used those vessels to attack that UEF mining colony on Magellan 5. Now, how they were able to attain the ships and the materials necessary to repair them is still unknown, but we’re working to nail that down.”
Engano could feel the energy in the room shifting. That was new information. She pushed ahead before she could be interrupted. “We’ve reached out to our opposing intelligence agency in the UEF and assured them that we had nothing to do with the attack, and we’ve also entered into an agreement to share any information we can dig up about the incident. Now, I think we’ve gotten a bit off-topic here, which is usually a sign for me to wrap things up. Thank you all for your questions, and—”
“And the Perseverance?” a deep voice boomed from the rear of the assembly. “What of her?”
Thirty
Ah, shit.
It was Senator Harrison LeFleur, father of the commander of the AIC Perseverance and longtime friend of the director’s family. He represented the farming communities outside of Vassar-1.
“That’s classified, Senator, and not pertinent to today’s discussion. I understand that you might feel—”
“My daughter’s dreadnought, crew, and several dozen fighters have all disappeared, along with two cruisers that were accompanying her,” LeFleur said to anyone in the chamber who was listening.
As it turned out, many were. Suddenly the sound of chair and papers and aides whispering fell silent.
“No one has been able to contact them,” LeFleur said, his voice lowered now, matching the hushed Senate Chamber. “No one has been able to get word to the families.”
Engano knew exactly what the Perseverance had been after. To admit that the Atlas’ payload, a weapon of unimaginable power, could be out there right now, in the hands of another party, would create a galaxy-wide panic. “As I said, Senator, it’s still under investigation. I’m sorry, but that’s all the information I can share at this moment. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I need to get to work answering this body’s many justified inquiries.” Engano turned and walked towards the exit. Everyone would have been able to hear her high-heeled footsteps echo throughout the Senate Circle if not for the uproar in the usually civil assembly.
“Well, that went well, ma’am,” Stacey said, voice dripping with sarcasm, as
Engano stepped into the chamber foyer. “They do realize that the point of these briefings is to ask questions about the issue at hand, not unrelated and unsubstantiated wild rumors about lost ships and unprovoked attacks, right?”
“My concern is that they were asking about the issue at hand,” Engano said.
“Ma’am?”
“We need to figure out what the hell is going on. I feel like there’s something coming, something bad.”
Stacey attempted to change the subject to their upcoming meeting schedule, but Engano tuned her out. All she could think about was what Agent Moreno had told her about the Atlas. If there were aliens out there—and the jury was still out on that—what would they want from humanity? What did they want with the Atlas’ hidden payload?
How did it connect to Magellan 5, if it did at all?
And why had the Oblivion decided to attack her in the heavily fortified markets, at midday, with such a small force? They must’ve known they’d lose.
The only thing Engano could compare the sinking feeling in her gut to was chess. It felt as if someone was setting her and the AIC up for a move that was five steps ahead. She needed to uncover those moves and end game before they found themselves in a checkmate.
Engano saw a notification in her HUD. It was an incoming video call from a source she had in the City Sentinel Force.
“Answer call,” ordered Engano.
“Madam Director?” A thirty-something Sentinel Officer appeared in a little box in Engano’s HUD.
“What is it, Lt. Harmonie?” asked Engano, fearing the words she was about to hear. She just knew it wasn’t going to be good news.
“A raider-class ship just broke through our planetary shield defenses.”
Damn. “Did they have a clearance code?”
“An outdated one.”
Engano pulled up short. Stacey stopped and looked back with a frown. Engano waved her away and turned to concentrate on what she was hearing.
