by M. R. Forbes
“James?” he said softly. “What the hell is going on?”
James didn’t say anything. He was sitting in a chair that was too small for him, next to Nathan’s bed. He wore an angry expression, but Nathan didn’t get the feeling it was directed at him.
“You were hallucinating,” Doc said.
Nathan looked away from James. She was standing by his feet, a tablet in her hand. She tapped on it a couple of times before looking at him.
“I know,” Nathan said. He had killed someone, hadn’t he? An innocent person had died because of him. Again.
“Tell me what happened,” Doc said.
“I was in my apartment. Ebion came to the door. I let her in. She told me Tinker wanted me to attend a council meeting, to talk about the future of Edenrise. Then I turned around, and Sheriff Duke was standing there. He drew his revolver and shot at me. He missed me and hit Ebion. Then he vanished.” Nathan paused, shaking his head. “That sounds so crazy to say out loud. Am I going crazy, Doc?”
“Yes,” Doc replied.
“I went back to your place,” James said, his voice low. “I found Ebion. She had a gunshot wound to her abdomen. Robots like her are well protected where the synthetic skeletal structure is positioned, but not where you hit her. You ruptured a coolant line and her main processor overheated.”
“Where I hit her? I didn’t shoot Ebion.”
“Recovering the bullet was easy,” James said. “It was fired from your gun.”
“I didn’t even have my weapon when Hayden appeared.”
“The shot was perfectly placed,” James said. “I don’t even know how you knew where to shoot her to destroy her. Not to mention, you hit her with your off-hand.”
“I didn’t.” Nathan looked at Doc, and then at his arm, noticing they had removed the gel cast. He stretched it out, glad to be free of the restraint. “What the hell is going on?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” Doc said. “I ran an entire battery of tests on you. I can’t make sense of the results.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not hallucinating,” James said. “I did the same tests a second time and came back clean.”
“Whatever’s happening, it’s only happening to you,” Doc said.
“How long did you have me under?”
“Two days,” Doc said.
“Two wasted fucking days,” James spat. “Without my best soldier.”
“What do your tests say?” Nathan asked. James was pissed about something. He was afraid to ask him what.
“That’s what I meant when I said I can’t make sense of the results. Apparently, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
It was the last thing Nathan thought he would hear. “What?”
“You aren’t showing any of the symptoms you had when you came back. Your brain activity is normal. Your hormone levels are normal. There’s nothing in there to suggest you should be seeing things.”
“I am seeing things, damn it!” Nathan snapped. “I didn’t kill a man for the fun of it.”
“Hold on, Nathan,” Doc said. “I believe you didn’t mean to hurt anyone or destroy Ebion. That’s part of the problem.”
“What are you saying?”
“It would be easy if the tests showed some abnormalities. It would also be easy if we could conclusively say you’ve lost your mind. But we don’t have either of those things. So, either you’re lying about what you saw, or something is happening that we can’t track with the science we have available.”
“I’m not lying,” Nathan said. “Hook me up to a detector. I’ll prove it.”
“We believe you, Nathan,” James said. “Which is another part of the problem.”
“I’m sorry, James. I don’t understand.”
“Something happened when we recovered the mainframe. We were both seeing and feeling things that weren’t there. I might have died if you hadn’t carried me back to the Pulse and gotten me home. It hasn’t happened to me again, but something happened to you. We’re replicas. We have the same root DNA. If it were a chemical of some kind, it should be having the same effect on me.” He paused. “That’s not the point, though. My problem is the relationship between the artifact and your experience.”
“You think the artifact caused this?”
“I don’t know. I wish I could say for sure it didn’t. I’m picturing a scenario where we recover the door, use the key, and whatever happened to the people on that base happens to all the people left on Earth.”
“You mean the Others?”
“I don’t know if I mean the Others. I don’t know what I mean. But I’m not happy about it.”
“You were worried about Tinker’s visions before this.”
James glanced at Doc. So did Nathan. He realized he should have kept that opinion quiet.
“General, you know I’ll follow you wherever you lead,” Doc said.
James looked back at Nathan. “I was. And now I’m more concerned. But Tinker isn’t going to let this stop him.”
“He knows what happened?”
“Of course. I gave him a full briefing. He swears whatever is happening to you is from something else. And maybe it is. But the risk is there, and I can’t ignore it even if he can.”
“But you’re still going after the artifact.”
James nodded again. “Tinker won’t change his mind on that, and I have no choice but to follow his orders. I told you that.”
Nathan’s heart sank. He realized what James was saying. “I’m grounded, aren’t I?”
“Yes. Your orders are to stay behind for further testing and observation. Tinker and I are heading out west with a platoon of Liberators.”
Nathan knew what that meant. He was supposed to be James’ foil. The one who could act out if he thought Tinker was about to do something that would jeopardize the planet.
Like stop the potentially mind-controlling aliens from coming through the door and killing them all.
He did his best to keep his expression flat and push aside the nervous disappointment the turn of events created. He didn’t want Tinker to recover the artifact or let the Others in.
“Out west? Do you know where?”
“Not yet.”
“What about Sheriff Duke?”
“I’ve been questioning him for two days. We know he knows where the artifact is, or at least has a general idea. He won’t give up the information.” James’ face hardened again, his eyes smoldering. “He’s a tough son of a bitch.”
“You’re torturing him?” Nathan asked.
“No, we bring him cookies and ask politely,” James replied angrily. “Yes, Nathan. What the fuck did you think Tinker wanted him for? To head up our law enforcement? He has intel we need, and he refuses to give it up. Sixteen hours so far, and I haven’t been able to break him.”
“He has a lot to lose if he talks.”
“Maybe, but pain is a great equalizer. Unfortunately, we’re on a tight schedule, and he’s pushing us to the edge of it. We don’t have any choice but to head out west now and see if we can figure out the exact location ourselves or find someone else who might know. The Sheriff’s wife, maybe.”
Nathan’s body shivered. Things were escalating in ways he didn’t like. “Have you offered to bring his wife and child to Edenrise in exchange for the information? He might agree to that.”
“Tinker won’t do it,” James said. “It’s a pissing contest now, and he doesn’t intend to lose.”
Nathan shook his head. The fate of the planet, and Tinker was worried about compromising? “Maybe I can talk to Hayden? Maybe I can convince him?”
James smiled. “I’m glad you said that, Nathan. That’s exactly what Tinker wants you to do.”
“I won’t torture him.”
James’ smile vanished as quickly as it had arrived. “You don’t get to make that call, Nathan. If your orders are to peel off his toenails, that’s what you’ll do, or you’ll find yourself on the other side of the shiel
d when the bombs start dropping.”
Nathan glared back at James, not giving in. “If I were that disposable to you, then you would have disposed of me already.”
“Are you challenging me, Nathan?”
“I don’t know. Are we going to get into a pissing match too?”
James stared at him for a few seconds. Then he sat back in his chair. “You don’t have to do it. I wasn’t even going to ask you. We’ve got other people for that. People who are probably a hell of a lot better at it than some Centurion Spacer fuck-up of a replica. You need to talk to him. See if you can get him to open up while Tinker and I are off hunting down an alternate source.”
“Okay,” Nathan said. “I’ll do my best. What about this?” He motioned to the hospital room. He still couldn’t trust himself. He couldn’t trust anything he saw or heard. Not completely. He felt okay right now, but he had no idea if the hallucinations would come back.
“I’ll be keeping a close eye on you,” Doc said. “If you see anything weird, I’ve got the drugs to put you out again.”
“When are you leaving?” Nathan asked.
“Two hours,” James replied.
“When am I getting out of here?”
“I want to keep an eye on you here for a little while,” Doc said. “If you manage not to see things that aren’t there you’ll be released. But you need to keep a comm link on you at all times, and this.” She picked up a wristband from the edge of the bed. “I can activate this remotely. It’ll deliver enough sedative to knock out a Hellion.”
“Roger that,” Nathan said.
“James, without me there to help you if Tinker is going to do something catastrophic--”
“I know,” James said, interrupting. “We just have to hope that whatever we unlock, it turns out the way Tinker is convinced it will.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I’ll probably be too dead to care.”
Chapter 7
General James Stacker left the hospital – and Nathan – behind. He would never admit it to the replica he had taken to considering a brother, but he was worried...
Worried about Nathan and the hallucinations that had caused him to kill one of Edenrise’s police officers.
Worried about Tinker and his quest to find the artifact that would let the Others in when all the evidence he had seen suggested the Others weren’t the godlike saviors the old man believed them to be.
Worried about the future of Edenrise, and his place in it.
And most of all worried that everything he was doing was leading humankind closer and closer to extinction.
Tinker created him to be a soldier in the image of his namesake— a strong, willful man who had denied the loss of the war and continued to fight, surviving into old age and carving out a place for the soldiers who stood with him both in the unwritten history of Earth and the future of the community that had blossomed into Edenrise. He had been made to carry on the fight, and to keep the war against the trife alive. Everything he had worked for, everything he had killed for, was tied up in the thousands of delivery vehicles being loaded with canisters containing the trife virus. It was represented in the artifact Tinker was hunting, and the loyalty James reserved for his maker.
His worry tortured him almost as severely as he had set to torturing Sheriff Hayden Duke. It weighed on his thoughts. It burned in his mind. It ate away at his confidence, which was something he had never lacked before.
A week ago, everything had seemed so certain. James had his orders, and he knew how to carry them out. But things had changed since then, so radically and so fast he was struggling to keep up. He knew the orders. He knew the expectations. He knew when it came down to it he would do whatever Tinker told him to do.
He had tried to install Nathan by his side to act with the freedom of will he was lacking. Now fate had stolen that option away from him, and he was left in a state he had never found himself in before.
Nervous. Worried. Frightened. Anxious.
It made him angry. So angry he wanted to head over to the barracks and find something to hit. So angry he was glad his work with the sheriff was done, or he might not have had enough control to leave the man alive.
A car was already waiting when he emerged from the hospital. He pulled the door open and dragged himself in. The driver barely spared him a glance, pulling away from the curb in silence and taking the most direct route to the old aircraft carrier on the other side of the city.
James arrived within a couple of minutes, jumping out of the car and hurrying up the ramp onto the old Naval vessel. He advanced through an inner hatch to a ladder and up the ladder to the main deck. Following a long corridor out to the open space, he found half the platoon of twenty-five Liberators already arranged in two neat columns ahead of their dropship.
It wasn’t the Pulse this time. Tinker had refused to go near the Trust’s ship knowing what had happened during the last mission and after Nathan’s more recent actions. The old man wouldn’t say it directly, but James knew he was afraid that whatever had caused the hallucinations was still contaminating the ship.
Not that James cared which vessel got them from this side of the country to the other. The Harpy wasn’t as small or maneuverable as the Pulse, but it hardly mattered. The only people on the ground who had the technology to shoot her down were the Liberators, and the Centurion Space Force had lost the sensors that would have allowed them to track either ship.
Of course, leaving Nathan behind meant the piloting duties fell on Captain Fahri, the Centurion Tinker had taken prisoner. The Captain had barely survived the fighting at Fort McGuire, forgotten in his holding cell while the soldiers outside were trying to survive the Hellion and two separate nests of trife. He had been found still locked in his cage, a pair of trife circling him and trying to find a way to reach more than his free hand, which one of them had managed to bite off. The incident had left Fahri shaken, his desire to resist the Liberators greatly diminished.
He was lucky to be alive.
James caught sight of Captain Fahri at the back of the rows of soldiers, looking up as he approached.
“Midnight Platoon, AH-Tehn-SHUN! General on deck!”
James didn’t see who said it, but the assembled platoon snapped to attention, Captain Fahri joining them like part of a well-oiled machine. He stopped when he came within a couple meters of the front line, remaining still as he looked over the troops.
“Where are the rest of your lazy ass platoon mates?” he barked.
“Sir,” the man in the corner said. “Orders stated full assembly and mission readiness by sixteen hundred, sir. It’s fifteen forty-five.”
James stepped over to the soldier. “Are you suggesting I’m early, Lieutenant?”
“Sir, yes sir!” the lieutenant replied.
“Is Tinker on board the Harpy?” he asked.
“Sir, yes sir!”
“At ease,” James said, loud enough for the platoon to hear. He leaned in closer to the lieutenant. “You’re responsible for the platoon, Lieutenant. You aren’t on the Harpy and ready to go at sixteen-hundred, it’s your ass going on my plate.”
“Sir, yes sir!” the lieutenant replied, face flushing slightly as the man considered what it would mean if anyone were late.
James moved past him, pausing again in front of Captain Fahri.
“Captain,” he said. “How are you feeling?” He noticed Fahri’s replacement hand. It had belonged to Sheriff Duke as of a few days ago, but the good sheriff wasn’t going to need it anymore.
“I’m ready to go, sir,” Fahri replied.
“What about the Harpy?”
“She’s old, but she’s in great shape, sir.”
“And your hand?”
He turned it over, wiggling the fingers. “It took a few days to get used to it, sir. But Chandra is a wizard with these things.”
“So I’ve heard,” James said.
Their new botter was already a step above the other botter they had
in the city. Even better was the fact that she hadn’t exhibited any kind of loyalty to Sheriff Duke, the man she had arrived with. According to her, he was her ticket to Edenrise and nothing more, and she was lucky to have escaped Crosston with him when she did. While she wasn’t privy to the information Hayden was withholding from them, she had spent hours debriefing James on everything that had happened since Hayden escaped the virus, in enough detail that he had started to feel as though he were resting in the trunk of the car with her.
“I’m heading up,” James said.
“Yes, sir,” Fahri replied.
James climbed the ramp into the Harpy. The hold was filled with supplies and equipment for twenty-five soldiers plus his powered armor and a pair of Guardian robots. The two machines swiveled toward him as he entered the area, registering him as a friendly and keeping their guns down. They allowed him to pass to a small module that had been loaded into the aft corner of the hold. The door to it was closed, and he raised his hand to knock.
“James, come in,” Tinker said before he had the chance.
James eyed the frame of the door, looking for the camera but not finding it. He pulled the door open, stepping into Tinker’s makeshift war room.
Displays lined the left side of the module, each one corresponding to the helmets Midnight Platoon would wear once the real action started. The right side had more screens, dark at the moment and reserved for the drones affixed to the fuselage beneath the ship’s wings. The front held a terminal and a single larger display to which Tinker could pass any of the smaller displays’ content. The center held a rig for the wheelchair that would allow him to maneuver in a tight circle to monitor the action.
The module itself was also armored and shielded, able to withstand anything short of a nuclear blast. James hadn’t noticed it on his way in, but he knew there would also be a loading device next to the module that Tinker could use to transfer to a powered suit of his own. His version was barely armored, but it would allow him to move as though all of his limbs were properly functional.
“You met with Nate?” Tinker asked, spinning around to look at James.
“Yes, sir,” James said.
