by M. R. Forbes
“They should. Maybe I’ll grab one of Tinker’s toys on the way out.”
“Be careful if you do, I don’t know what state they’re in.”
“Pozz. Good hunting, Stacker.”
“You too, Sheriff.”
Nathan headed out of the workshop. Hayden turned and retreated to where Chandra was sitting, her fingers sliding briskly along the terminal’s control surface.
“What’s making the search so challenging?” he asked.
“Volume,” she replied. “The base had over four dozen cameras spread around it, and they recorded and stored every second for all of them. The mainframe has petabytes of recordings, and none of it is labeled or organized.”
“How would you ever find anything in that?”
“I’m not an interface programmer. I know how to work the robotic enhancement software, and I know a little bit of basic machine language, but this kind of work is over my head.”
“Why didn’t you tell Nathan that?”
She turned her head to look at him. “I want to help, Sheriff. Especially if that fucking thing is part of the reason Earth was lost to the trife. I want to help you find it and kill it.”
“It’s all speculation. Conjecture. We have no idea what we’re after. What we do know is that it moved on from the Shield Spire to Hangar Six.”
Hayden glanced at the terminal display. It was filled with small windows, saved video feeds of the many cameras lining the halls of the USSF underground complex. He noticed movement in a few of them. Soldiers and scientists were walking through the corridors to one place or another. The Other had gone to the Shield Spire, and then to the hangar where Tinker was storing the virus. Did it know about the trife-killing particles? Did it know what Tinker was planning to do with it?
It would have helped if they had any idea of the Other’s intelligence. Was it operating at the same level as a human? Would it think like they did, or would it act in ways they would struggle to understand? The destinations seemed straightforward to Hayden, but the motivations for visiting them were harder to determine. He could understand if it wanted to take down the city’s shield and let the trife in. He could understand if it went to the hangar and released the virus inside the shield to kill everyone in the city. But was there a reason it had gone from one to the next? According to Nathan, it hadn’t touched anything in the spire. It had only killed two of the guards at the outermost perimeter.
Hayden turned his attention away from the terminal to the glass partition and the sphere resting on the other side of it. Was the part of the war’s history they didn’t understand the part that would help them catch the Other?
Natalia had always thought the enemy sent the trife to keep humankind from reaching the stars. They had never considered that the aliens who had started the war wanted to take control of the planet, especially since they had been absent all of this time. It was hard to accept, and at the same time made some amount of sense. The trife were the perfect soldiers. They had won the war. But now there were billions of them scattered across the planet. Did the Others have a way to control them?
Did they have a way to kill them?
What had happened all of those years ago, when the trife had first arrived? What had happened the night the asteroids fell to Earth, and in the weeks leading up to it?
He didn’t know. He didn’t think he would ever know.
“Sheriff,” Chandra said, getting his attention.
“Did you find something?”
“I don’t know. I did notice something strange.”
“What is it?”
“It happens in a blink,” she said. “At least it did the first time because I accelerated the scrub speed. I would have missed it except she’s just so damn beautiful.”
“What?”
“Sorry. Look.” She used the control surface to reverse the feeds. She went back three days in a matter of seconds. “There she is.”
A woman in a white lab coat and a knee length skirt walked across the frame. She had short black hair styled in a bob, a narrow face and full lips. She was slender and in good physical shape. Hayden didn’t notice anything that made her stand out. She turned left down the corridor and vanished around a corner.
“Okay,” Hayden said. “What about it?”
“Nothing on the surface,” Chandra replied. “Except look at the feed there.” She pointed to one of the small boxes near the center of the display. She reversed the stream and then played it back again.
Again, the woman walked into the frame and disappeared around a corner.
“I consider myself fairly sharp when it comes to observation,” Hayden said. “It’s part of the job. But whatever you see, I don’t see it.”
“That’s because you don’t think she’s gorgeous,” Chandra said. “Not that I want to date her or anything, but I can appreciate a pretty woman as well as the next girl.”
“I don’t care. Focus on the facts.”
“Look at the timestamp, Sheriff. These are two different cameras, spaced nearly six hundred meters apart. The fact is, she goes through both of them at the same time.”
Hayden stared at the feeds. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
He hurried over to the satchel, grabbing the two small comm links out of it. He had no idea which one was his, so he handed them both to Chandra.
“We need to tell Nathan.”
“Pozz, Sheriff.” She put one of the comms in her ear and activated it. “Colonel Stacker, this is Chandra. Do you copy? Colonel Stacker?” She pulled it out and handed it to him. “Not this one.” She stuck the second device in her ear. “Colonel Stacker, do you copy? Colonel?” Her expression shifted. She stared at Hayden. “Nobody’s answering.”
Chapter 23
Nathan headed away from the lab on foot. Hangar Six was part of the airfield located east of the dock complex, about three klicks away. He could have called for a car, but he decided it would be faster to run.
He needed the exercise to help clear his head and calm his mind. He hadn’t rescued Hayden with the idea that he would rewrite the entire narrative on the alien sphere, or that Hayden would get him thinking more about what was real and true versus what was all smoke and mirrors. He had been exposed to so many new perspectives in the last week he could barely keep up with them all – from the betrayal of the Trust to Proxima Command and Judicus Shia, to Rhonna and the Amtraks, to the horse nomads, Loki, the Crosstons, and finally to James, Tinker and Hayden. His head was a maelstrom of contradicting emotions and outcomes and his future had never felt more uncertain.
He knew what he wanted, but he had no confidence that he would ever get it. Not here. Not now. Even if they stopped the Other, even if they stopped Tinker, Proxima was still in play. How would they react to all of this? He had believed the Trust was the enemy, but they had killed Niobe to protect this secret – and in doing so – protect the Earth. Because of what Earth provided them, or because they had more important motives? Just because they operated outside of the law, did that mean everything they did was wrong?
“Colonel Stacker,” General Neill said, his hard voice cutting into his thoughts. “Relentless. Where are you?”
“I’m coming east from Tinker’s lab, sir,” Nathan replied. “Still two klicks out.”
“Roger. Did the botter come up with anything?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Useless bitch,” Neill grumbled under his breath. Nathan had never met Neill. This was only his second time speaking to him, and he hated him already. “We’ve got two more men down near Hangar Six. One from the bastard thing you brought back with you, the other from friendly fire.”
Nathan tensed slightly. The way Neill said you made it clear the man blamed him for the whole mess.
“Roger that, sir,” Nathan replied. “Have you gotten word to General Stacker?”
“Negative. Something’s wrong with our satellite uplink and screwing up long-range communications.”
“CSF, sir?”
&
nbsp; “We use one of the Trust’s comm satellites. Unless the Trust is working with Centurion Space Force now and they managed to bounce – ”
General Neill’s voice vanished without warning. Nathan came to a sudden stop, tapping on the device in his ear.
“General? General, do you copy? General Neill.”
The comm was dead. He pulled the small pill-like apparatus out of his ear and looked it over. The odds of it failing like that were pretty slim, but he would know for sure once he hooked up with the Liberators near Hangar Six.
He pushed the comm back in his ear and resumed his run, a fresh sense of urgency causing him to pick up the tempo. That urgency doubled when he began hearing the report of gunfire echoing from up ahead, steady bursts of automatic weapons fire crackling through the air.
He pounded the pavement east, approaching the airfield a few minutes later. He reached down and grabbed his sidearm as he neared, his heart beginning to race. After what he had seen at Area 51, after what he had experienced a couple of days ago, he had no idea what to expect.
The scene still managed to shock him.
General Neill had sent three platoons of Liberators to the area, intent on keeping the DVs and the loading processes for the vehicles safe and on schedule. Now those platoons were locked in deadly combat with one another, spread across the airfield campus and jockeying for position to take one another out. There were already a few bodies strewn across the tarmac ahead of the first line of hangars – the soldiers who had reacted the slowest, or maybe those who were the most resistant to the Other’s weapon.
Which didn’t make sense. How had the alien managed to hit nearly a hundred soldiers at one time?
He threw himself to the ground as a few rounds started coming in his direction, the bullets chipping into the pavement to his left, the shooter’s aim still a bit off. He scrambled up, finding cover behind one of the empty buildings on the outskirts of the airfield. He stayed around the corner for a few seconds, leaning out to look back at the firefight in search of his attacker. A single round hit the building close to his face. He ducked back under cover, trying to decide what to do next.
He wanted to get to the hangar, but it was on the other side of the firefight, and trying to get around to it was going to take time. He would have waited for backup if he had any way of knowing whether or not it was coming. Even without their comm links, General Neill wasn’t far from the barracks. He could rustle up another few platoons of Liberators in no time if he knew he needed them.
But how would he know he needed them.
Nathan would have waited for Hayden, but without the comm, he had no way to signal him to move up. They might figure the link was down if they tried to contact him, but when might that be? If the Other was making its way to the Hangar and the virus, no matter what it was up to, it couldn’t be anything good.
He poked his head out again at a slight lull in the fighting. He drew back when he saw one of the squads had broken off from their main group and was making its way toward him. They crouched low with their rifles up and ready. He didn’t want to fight the men. He knew they weren’t seeing him standing there. In their minds, they were hunting down a trife or something.
He looked at the building. It had been damaged at some point in its history, and that damage had yet to be repaired. The cement was cracked, the windows broken, the facade crumbling. His eyes stopped on the second-floor window. There was no glass in the frame, not even shards. He took a few steps back, returning his sidearm to his hip. Then he ran forward, jumping and planting his feet on the wall to give himself a boost. He pushed off and up, reaching for the window.
His fingertips latched onto the bottom, and he gritted his teeth, straining to hold on. He shifted his left hand and then his right, getting a more secure purchase before quickly pulling himself up and in.
He looked back over the edge of the window as the two squads made it to the rear. They looked around, confused. He ducked his head back before they glanced up, and then felt a sharp tug in the pit of his stomach as the soldiers started shooting.
Not at him. At each other.
It was over in a breath, all ten of the Liberators splayed out on the ground below the window, bloody and broken. Nathan felt sick at the sight, but he climbed back out of the building and dropped in the center of them, grabbing an assault rifle and a pair of spare magazines. He ejected the partially-used magazine from the weapon and replaced it with a fresh one before going around the south side of the building again.
He ran the length of it, hoping he wouldn’t have to use the gun on anything human. The firefight had eased slightly, but the soldiers were still shooting at one another, barking to their squad mates to “get those fucking demons.”
He stopped at the edge of the building, quickly scanning the field ahead. One squad had found cover behind one of the other hangars. He saw two soldiers crouched behind a row of old gas cans. He found another pair on their stomachs alongside some rubble, and a larger group was further back, positioned behind a couple of old cars. Hangar Six — a large gray metal structure with a pair of large blast doors at either end — sat directly to the east.
The only direct route to it was through the soldiers.
He was hesitant to try that, not only because he could wind up dead in the attempt. He wouldn’t be able to make it without confronting any of the soldiers, and he didn’t want to get into a scrape with them that would leave one or more wounded or worse. There was another segment of commercial buildings to the south. If he could make it to them, he could circle the battlefield and come up on the hangar from the southwest. With any luck, the soldiers would never notice. The downside was that it would take longer to use that route. He had a feeling time wasn’t on his side.
That feeling was rewarded before he could take another step. He heard a loud clang from Hangar Six like something heavy slammed into the side of it. Then he heard an even louder hum, a large motor getting to work.
He watched in terrified fascination as the roof of the hangar started to slowly swing open.
Chapter 24
“We can’t wait here,” Hayden said. “Nathan’s going to need help, and—” He paused when he heard a ringing sound nearby. He followed the source of the noise to the desk with the rifle on it, to a small red block with a wire running out of the back. He knew what it was from some of the old movie streams he had seen.
“You need to get that,” he said to Chandra.
She stood and rushed over to the phone as it rang a third time. She picked it up and turned it over, tapping on one of the buttons.
“Hello?” she said.
Hayden got closer to her so he could hear what was said...
“Chandra, it’s Doc. I’m glad I was able to reach you. The comm link system is down. Completely down. We can’t raise anyone except through the local lines.”
“Oh no,” Chandra said. “I was trying to get through to Colonel Stacker. I have information he—”
“Do you know anything about transmitter arrays?” Doc asked. “Our comms haven’t gone out before, and Tinker is the only one who really knows how the system works.”
“Not really,” Chandra said. “I don’t think I can help with that. Listen, Major. I found something in the mainframe. The enemy—”
“Give me the phone,” a gruff voice said in the background of the call. Hayden heard thunking and clicking as the phone at other end changed hands. “Chandra, is it?”
“That’s right.”
“This is General Adam Neill. Look, I don’t know you from a hole in the wall, but we need someone to get our comm systems back up and running, stat. I had three platoons deployed near Hangar Six, and every last one of them reported they were about to engage the trife before the links went dead. As far as I know, the shield is still up, which means there can’t be any trife in the city.”
“I’m not familiar with the comm systems, General,” Chandra said. “If you just listen to me for a second, I can help you with—”
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“Damn it, Chandra. Do you know what we’re up against here? Get your ass over to Operations and see what you can do.”
“I’m not a soldier, General,” Chandra said. “I don’t even know where Operations is.”
General Neill growled, handing the phone back to Doc.
“Chandra, we need you here. You know more about this stuff than we do.”
Hayden grabbed the phone from Chandra, trying to find the button to hang it up. Failing that, he squeezed, crushing it in his large hand.
“They can’t help,” he said. “They like to play at soldier, but outside of James and Nathan and a few of their top units, I don’t think they’re very good at it.”
“Pozz that, Sheriff,” Chandra said. “Still, won’t hanging up on them send them running over here?”
“Nathan’s the only one who can get into the building. They’d have to wait for us to come out. But you’re right. We don’t want to walk out into an array of guns pointed at our heads.”
Hayden started for the door, Chandra on his heels. They walked quickly down the corridor to the lift, and then up to the ground floor. Hayden’s mind was going almost as fast as his feet, cycling through everything they had learned in the last thirty minutes. He could almost hear his father’s voice in his mind. “Look at the whole picture, son. Pay attention to the obvious and don’t get caught up in the details; they’ll just make your focus too narrow, and you’ll miss something. People aren’t as smart as they think they are. It's always better to take a straightforward approach and drill in from there.”
It was good advice that he had often used as Sheriff and needed again now. The Other had a plan. It wasn’t acting chaotically. It wasn’t acting with uncertainty.
It knew exactly what it was doing.
So why had it gone it to the shield spire, and then to the hangar containing the virus-bearing delivery vehicles? How did it know what each thing was and how it wanted to use them?
It had spent two hundred years trapped in Area 51. It had probably learned all about human language and culture. It also had an ability to make itself look like someone else. What was to say it hadn’t been tailing Nathan, James, or even Tinker since the moment it had arrived?
