by M. R. Forbes
“It hooks onto the helmet there,” he said, looking back and trying to show Hayden.
“What’s it for?” Hayden asked.
“Breathing, I think.”
Hayden figured out how to get his on. He was sure he would know if he needed it.
“Let’s see,” Nathan said, his hand hovering over the dashboard controls. “I think it’s this one.”
“Think?” Hayden said.
Nathan tapped the control, and the glass canopy of the cockpit began to close.
“Yup. I guessed right.”
“Guessed?” Hayden said.
Nathan laughed.
“You’re enjoying this too much, Nate.”
“Sorry Sheriff. It’s coming back to me now. The controls are ninety percent identical. Maybe more.” He began flipping switches with more authority and less hesitation. The fighter bucked slightly as the engines came online, a sharp whine sounding from behind Hayden’s back.
“I hope it’s supposed to do that,” Hayden said.
“Relax, Sheriff. I’ve got this.”
Hayden turned his head, noticing Bowers headed their way. The Sergeant grabbed the ladder, pulling it out of the way. Nathan motioned his thanks, and the Sergeant returned it.
“Good hunting, Colonel!” Bowers shouted.
Nathan worked the controls. The jet started rolling forward, slowly and under tight control, accelerating slightly as it cleared the hangar doors. Nathan turned the fighter to the left, guiding it along the tarmac.
“Where are we going?” Hayden asked.
“We need some runway to build up speed,” Nathan replied. “Proxima’s atmosphere is lighter than Earth’s but it does have one. I’m familiar with the concept of lift.”
Hayden’s heart was thumping, his stomach churning. He wasn’t a fan of heights or flying. His last experience hadn’t exactly gone smoothly.
The jet reached the end of the tarmac. Nathan turned it around, back the way they had come. The hangar was in the distance, Sergeant Bowers standing just in front of the open doors.
“Ready, Sheriff?” Nathan asked.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Hayden replied.
Nathan brought the mouthpiece up and connected it, so Hayden did the same. Fresh air flowed in from the tube.
“Can you hear me?” Nathan asked, his voice coming in from the helmet now, instead of permeating through it. His voice sounded artificial like it was coming through a cheap speaker.
“Pozz,” Hayden replied.
“Chandra, do you copy?” Nathan asked. His voice was doubled, coming through the comm in his ear and the speakers of the helmet.
“I hear you, Colonel,” Chandra said.
“Tell Lieutenant Lopez to lower the upper shields please.”
“Pozz. Standby.”
Hayden looked up. All he could hear was the whine of the engines and the rapid thumping of his heart pounding in his head. He watched the slight shimmer of the shields fade above.
“Shields are down, Colonel,” Chandra said.
“Here we go, Sheriff,” Nathan said.
Nathan’s hand pushed the throttle forward. The fighter didn’t move at first, held in place by the brakes. The engine grew louder behind them.
Then Nathan released the brakes and the jet lunged forward, quickly gaining speed as it crossed the tarmac. Hayden’s breath caught in his throat as the g-forces pushed him back in his seat. Nathan did something and the engines roared even louder, the aircraft bursting forward and then tilting and beginning to rise quickly into the air.
Hayden looked behind them, watching the ground shrink away as they rose. He was afraid, but also excited.
They were on their way.
Chapter 44
It took nearly four hours for the F-15 to make the trip across the continent, from the tarmac of Edenrise to the skies somewhere near Sansico. The aircraft held up well, built rock-solid and performing flawlessly despite its well-advanced age.
Hayden and Nathan spent the time conversing, talking about their histories and backgrounds, and what had led each of them to their present situation. Nathan was both fascinated, amused, and disgusted by Hayden’s origins, while Hayden found himself filled with compassion and empathy for the Centurion replica.
While Hayden knew he had made some questionable choices in his past, Nathan had been granted so few choices and had been taken advantage of more often than not. It didn’t matter to Hayden that Nathan loved Niobe or even if she had loved him back. She had used him instead of telling him her true purpose on Proxima. She had set him up to be blamed for her murder, to be driven to Earth where he was chased and hunted like an animal. That Nathan was still alive was more a stroke of good fortune than anything Niobe had done to try to protect him, and that simple fact rankled Hayden more than anything else. He had given both his hands and an eye to protect Natalia. It was the most important job he could ever do.
It was also the most important thing he could do right now.
They didn’t have any positioning equipment on the jet fighter, at least not any that was functional two centuries from the time it was produced. That meant trying to eyeball Sansico from the air, which had also meant judging their speed and heading and literally guessing when to descend closer to the surface. Hayden had a general idea of the distances involved from his discussions with Bennett, and he had done the math based on their cruising speed, but it was still a general estimate. The good news was that Sanisco was situated along the coast, so once they located the ocean all they had to do was skirt the edge of the mainland to come upon the city.
The biggest question with that was whether they had to turn south or north once they reached the shore. It was a fifty-fifty guess on its own, but Hayden also knew the Centurion base was a decent clip north of Sanisco. If they were too far south and they went south, they wouldn’t come across anything he recognized. If they were north and went north, if they had missed Sanisco they would still pass locations he recognized, like the abandoned cities of Ports and Seattle.
Nathan initiated the descent, dropping the nose of the jet and bringing them toward the thin clouds that partially obscured the landscape below. They had already passed over a mountain range Hayden was certain was the same range he had seen to the west of Sanisco. It was the same range as the foothills he was hoping to expand the United Western Front to. It was an area he doubted would have much threat of trife activity. The demons didn’t care for the cold air of high altitudes.
The ocean was visible further out, the coastline of the continent stretching ahead of them. Nathan kept the fighter angling toward it, one eye maintaining a constant watch on the fuel gauges. Hayden couldn’t see them clearly from his back-seat position, but Nathan’s confidence that they would make it had continued to rise as they had drawn closer to the water.
They remained silent as Nathan brought the fighter down to a thousand meters to stay below the ceiling of the clouds and angled the aircraft to the north, skirting the coastline and keeping the ground visible. The land below them was a mixture of lush green and dead brown, and there was consistent evidence of both human and trife occupation, though the trife were much more evident. Black stains seemed to litter the open ground, the creatures exposing themselves to the sunlight. Wisps of smoke were visible from the trees and the hills and the covered areas, alerting the passing jet to the human camps while keeping them hidden from the demons.
They flew over plenty of small towns and other former vestiges of civilization. Amusement parks rusted and crumbling, cities with buildings torn and tattered, roads filled with the worn out remains of old cars, closely built houses long abandoned, decayed and overgrown. Hayden was accustomed to the bleak scenery, but he could sense Nathan’s discomfort at the failure of humankind to win the war against the trife.
“Does it make you think Tinker was right?” Hayden asked. “Destroy it all and start over?”
“I never thought he was completely wrong,” Nathan admitted. “There’s so
mething to be said for starting over.”
“Not for Natalia and my daughter.”
“No offense intended, Hayden. But from an outsider’s perspective – ”
“Pozz. I can’t argue that. But even with all the destruction down there, I can’t help but see hope.”
“How do you find hope in that, Sheriff? The communities we’ve passed have been groups of a hundred or less, and we must have spotted a few thousand trife by now. The way I see it, it’s a miracle humankind has survived as long as they have.”
“Because you haven’t been part of the fight. Not really. Not yet. With the right know-how, with the right equipment, with the right mentality, we can overcome them. I believe that.”
“I know you – ”
The fighter jerked hard to the right, Nathan yanking on the stick and banking hard to the west for a second before catching himself and recovering. The maneuver took Hayden off-guard, the force throwing him hard into his harness and giving his stomach a solid jump.
“What the fuck is that?” Nathan asked, pointing out of the canopy.
Hayden leaned up in the seat, a little shaken by the sudden change in direction. He caught sight of the creature in the distance, rising too high above the landscape around it to be typical. He smiled in response to Nathan’s reaction. He had felt the same way the first time he had seen one of the apparent monsters.
“That’s a Goliath,” Hayden said. “Humanoid, thirty to fifty meters tall, not that bright. They eat anything vaguely trife-like that they can catch up with, but they can’t see you if you aren’t moving. I’d love more than anything to lead it over to those pockets of trife we spotted a ways back.”
“They eat trife?”
“Hundreds at a time. They’re a Space Force genetic experiment gone slightly awry. They help manage the population out here, where the warmth and sunshine keep the trife well fed and constantly reproducing.”
Nathan’s head was swiveled in the direction of the Goliath, whose silhouette was vanishing into the distant horizon. “Unbelievable. How many of them are there?”
“A dozen? Maybe two? We don’t have an exact count. Proxima doesn’t let us borrow their starships, and while we have a drone, its range is limited.”
“Any other monsters that I should know about before we get to Sanisco?”
“Not anymore.”
The fighter continued along the shoreline for another ten minutes, when Hayden caught sight of geography he recognized up ahead. He hadn’t seen it from the air before, but he knew Sanisco was separated from the mainland by a large bay, and he could see the beginnings of it up ahead.
“There,” he said, pointing. “We guessed right. Sanisco is up that way. Stay close to the coast and you can’t miss it.”
“Roger,” Nathan replied. He adjusted the stick slightly, angling them closer to the shore and pulling back on the throttle to slow their approach. The landscape was still passing rapidly beneath them, and the city’s largest intact tower became visible in no time.
“That’s the tower,” Hayden said. “It’s the seat of the United Western Front’s government.”
“I’m surprised it survived the war.”
“Me too. Supposedly, it was too expensive to risk destroying. At least at the time the government thought it could get the trife problem under control.”
The jet was closing on the city, Nathan guiding it closer to the floor.
“Uh, Sheriff,” he said hesitantly a moment later. “Did the tower always have a gaping hole in its side?”
“What?” Hayden said, leaning forward. His heart immediately began to race, hitting double-time when he saw the slagged glass and metal at the corner of the high floor. “That wasn’t there when I left.”
“It’s got the markings of a hit from a plasma cannon,” Nathan said.
“Fuck!” Hayden shouted. “I was afraid we were too late.”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff.”
The jet streaked past the tower and over the city. Hayden looked down, noting the activity in the city around the structure. There were too many people gathered there for the news to be anything but bad.
“We’ll find them, Hayden,” Nathan said.
“We don’t need to find them,” Hayden replied. “If they were here and gone, then I already know where they are. I was hoping they would never make it that far. There’s a wide street on the north side before the bay where you can put her down. I need to know if Nat and Hal are safe. After that, all bets are off.”
Chapter 45
Nathan landed the F-15 like an expert, bringing it down smoothly on the street north of the tower. Three cars were already chasing the aircraft by the time it touched down and rolled to a stop, the vehicles quickly surrounding the jet and the law officers piling out and taking defensive positions behind the armored frames.
“Just stay in your seat until I have a chance to talk to them,” Hayden said, pleased with his people for getting to them so fast.
“Pozz that,” Nathan replied. He hit the control to toggle the canopy. It unlocked and started to swing open.
“Come out slowly!” one of the deputies ordered from below. “Keep your hands where I can see them!”
Hayden reached up, turning his hands toward the officers. They wouldn’t recognize him by the hands. Not now. “I need to take the helmet off!” he shouted back to them.
“Slowly,” the deputy replied.
Hayden took the helmet with Gus’ large hand, gripping it and lifting it from his head, watching the officers on his right as he did. He could almost hear the gasps from the assembled officers when they recognized him.
“Sheriff Duke?” the deputy said.
“Pozz that,” Hayden replied. “Can I get up now?”
“Sir, yes sir.” The man’s voice had completely shifted, from frightened and serious to elated. “It’s great to have you back.”
“Welcome back, Sheriff,” the deputies around the cars started saying as Hayden came to his feet.
A fourth car rumbled down the street, coming to a stop behind the deputy. The door opened and Sheriff Kin jumped out.
“Sheriff Duke?” Kin said. “Fuck, I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my whole damn life.”
The jet had stairs at the other end of the trip. Hayden had to get down on his own here. He hopped onto the wing and slid off to the ground from there. The deputies had all relaxed, standing up straight, smiling, and holstering their revolvers.
“Natalia?” Hayden asked, approaching Kin. He noticed immediately the man had a bruise around his neck, the size in line with James Stacker’s armored hand.
Kin shook his head. “They took her, Sheriff. They wanted to know about the Pilgrim. None of us would tell them. She gave herself up so they would stop killing us.” He hung his head, tears streaming from his eyes. “We couldn’t stop them, not with that hulk in the armor. We tried. I swear, Sheriff. We tried.”
Hayden put his hand on Kin’s shoulder. His chest was tight at the news, but a part of him had always suspected it was going to go down this way. “It isn’t your fault, Rob. You did the best you could. I know you did. What about Hallia?”
“She’s safe, Sheriff,” Kin said, raising his head again. “Deputy Latos got her to the safe room in time, and they didn’t know about it. Or they didn’t care about it. All they wanted was the Pilgrim and your wife.”
“Where’s Malcolm?”
“Dead. They killed him. They killed all the clerks in the tower. Samantha, Kyle, Ohshi, Azad, all of them. Bastards.”
Each of the names hit Hayden like a solid jab to the gut. At least the Liberators had come and gone and left the rest of his people alone. Not that it would mean much if Tinker set the Others loose.
“I brought a friend with me,” Hayden said. “I need you to stay calm and trust me.”
“I don’t understand,” Kin said.
“Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t.” Hayden turned back toward the jet. “Stacker, you’re clear.”
/> Nathan stood in the cockpit, removing his helmet.
“What the – ” Kin said. A few of the other deputies began to mumble too, revealing who had been present when Natalia was taken.
“He’s a replica,” Hayden said, loud enough for them all to hear. “Like Bennett. I know he looks just like the asshole who took Nat, but he isn’t. He’s a good man.”
Nathan climbed down from the jet carrying the gun bag. He hurried over to Hayden.
“I’ll be damned,” Kin said.
“Deputy Sheriff Kin, this is Nathan Stacker.”
Nathan put his hand out. It took Kin a few seconds to work up the nerve to take it.
“Hayden,” Nathan said. “We shouldn’t waste time. If Tinker’s already on the way to the artifact…”
“Agreed. Rob, how long ago did they leave?”
“About two hours ago,” Kin replied. “In a starship. They’ve probably been at the site an hour and a half at least.”
“The jet’s the only thing we have that can get us there in any decent amount of time,” Hayden said. “But unless it can land vertically, I don’t know if we’ll find anywhere to set her down. The area’s pretty rocky and uneven.” He paused, frustrated to have made it this far only to be screwed by the geography around the site. “Rob, can I borrow your transceiver?”
“Of course, Sheriff,” Kin said, pulling his badge from his shirt and handing it to Hayden.
Hayden tapped it, a small LED on its face lighting green when it made the connection. “Mia, do you copy?” he asked.
“Sheriff Duke? Is that you?”
“Pozz.”
“Oh, thank the stars. Sheriff--”
“Not now, Mia. I need you to check the supply depot on the fourth floor and tell me if we have any parachutes.”
“What? Parachutes?”
“This is important, Mia. Hurry.”
“Pozz. I’m on it.”
Hayden tapped the star. “I’m going to keep this.”
“Of course, Sheriff,” Kin said.
“Parachutes, Sheriff?” Nathan asked. “You want to jump out of the fighter?”
