Breakout

by David Ryker

  “Huh!” Maggott gasped shakily. “I—I think it’s over. How ‘bout the rest o’ ye?”

  “Yeah,” Bishop breathed. “I’m already feeling better.”

  “Chelsea?” Quinn asked. “Ulysses? Status.”

  “I’m okay,” said Chelsea.

  Ulysses nodded. “I’ll live. Shit, man, what was that?”

  “That was what the guards did to me after ye ran,” Maggott said in a quiet voice. “Only this was a thousand times easier.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Ulysses breathed. “And you all been through that?”

  “Yeah,” said Quinn. “And now, so has everyone on the station.”

  That only had a moment to sink in before the sound of an alarm rang through their headsets.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Quinn.

  Schuster called up the rear cameras on a split screen on the monitor in front of him.

  “Oh shit,” he said, wide-eyed.

  According to the screen, the other five Rafts were on their tail and closing in. And in front of them, the surface of Oberon was rising quickly to meet them.

  42

  “Bogeys!”

  “Yessir,” Schuster replied, his eyes on the screen. “If I was going to guess, I’d say the drones are flying them.”

  A plasma cannon rocked the ship. If not for their magnetic boots, they would likely have been tossed around the cabin.

  “Hit on the tail,” said Schuster.

  “Looks like they all have working cannons,” said Quinn. “Suggestions on how we shake them?”

  “Pull up,” Schuster said before anyone else could speak.

  “What?”

  Quinn looked at him and saw that his eyes weren’t actually fixed on the monitor. They were almost glazed, as if he was looking at the inside of his own skull.

  “Dev, what’s going on?”

  “Pull up,” he repeated.

  They continued the dive towards the surface as more plasma blasts hit the Raft. Each one rocked the ship, but the integrity hadn’t been breached yet.

  “Sergeant!” Quinn barked. “Report!”

  Schuster flinched and shook his head. He looked around, startled.

  “Yessir! Shields are holding, sir!”

  “Shields?” Bishop gaped. “What the hell is a shield?”

  “Magnetic resonance field that repels charged particles.”

  Quinn frowned. “Are you okay, Dev?”

  Schuster turned to him, his eyes wide. A grin spread across his face.

  “Sir, there’s new technology on this Raft! We thought it was just the cannons and a modification to the thrusters, but it’s a lot more! Shields, new flight maneuverability controls, engines. This is a whole new ship!”

  “How the hell d’ya know that?” asked Ulysses. “We been on this tub as long as you have. You find some owner’s manual or somethin’?”

  Schuster ignored him. “I don’t know how I know it, sir, but I do. Just like I know what to do with the ship.”

  Quinn thought hard. His men had followed his orders for years without question. Did he have enough faith in his men to do the same?

  He felt ashamed for even thinking about it.

  “It’s your show, Dev,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”

  A grin crept across Schuster’s face as he gripped the control stick.

  “You might want to get into the jump seats,” he said.

  The others clomped their way to the drop seats in the wall. Quinn kept his eyes on the monitor the whole time, watching as black space disappeared from the horizon, replaced entirely by the faintly ruddy color of the surface of Oberon.

  Another plasma blast rocked the ship to the left, followed by another that caused it to shudder forward.

  “You sure we’re not gonna split apart?” Maggott asked. “Those blasts’re awful powerful.”

  “The shields will hold,” said Schuster. “I think, anyway.”

  Quinn’s heart skipped a beat. “You think?”

  “I don’t know everything about the ship. I don’t even know how I know what I know.”

  “How ‘bout you start thinkin’ ‘bout that ground that’s comin’ up to meet us?”

  “You’re not helping, Ulysses.” Chelsea gripped the handles on either side of her seat. She’d only flown in space once, on the supply ship that brought her to Oberon One. This trip wasn’t like that one.

  “Incapable of independent thought,” Schuster said quietly.

  “What?”

  “It is of no consequence.”

  “What?!”

  Schuster was silent, but his right hand gripped the control stick as his left manipulated a keyboard set into the arm of his seat.

  “Optimal angle set,” he muttered. “Reducing thrust.”

  Quinn breathed deep. Have faith in him.

  “What do you need from us?” he called.

  “Just hold on,” said Schuster. “And try not to throw up in your helmets.”

  Chelsea took her right hand from the handle next to her seat and grabbed Quinn’s left. She looked him in the eye.

  “I’m glad I met you, Not-Captain Napoleon Quinn.”

  He nodded. “Same here, Not-Doctor Chelsea Bloom.” He turned to face the others. “Gentlemen, it’s been an honor.”

  His men nodded.

  “Once more unto the breach, my friends,” said Bishop. “Once more.”

  Maggott grinned. “Or close up the wall wi’ our English dead. Always liked the ring o’ that one.”

  Ulysses looked from one to another, his eyes wide.

  “Y’all are fuckin’ nuts,” he sighed. “But it’s been a helluva ride.”

  “Steady…” said Schuster, more to himself than them.

  Quinn gripped his seat handle as Chelsea tightened her hold on him.

  “Steady…”

  Details of the craters were visible on the monitor now. Another pair of blasts rocked the ship, making Schuster pitch sideways in his seat.

  “Dev!” Quinn barked.

  “NOW!” Schuster shouted.

  The Raft banked abruptly upward and Quinn felt the force of multiplied gravity against him, though less than he would have if they’d attempted the same stunt on Earth. The monitor in front of them was suddenly filled with stars as the Raft began to climb out of the power dive and head back toward space.

  The split screen showed the ships in their wake. Quinn felt a ridiculous joy rise in him as he saw five distinct puffs on the surface of the moon as each of their pursuers struck it.

  “Oorah!” cried Maggott, pumping a huge fist into the air.

  “Dev, you’re a fucking wonder!” Bishop hooted.

  “Oh, my God.” Chelsea’s faceplate was steamed from her heavy breathing, though it quickly cleared. “We didn’t—we didn’t crash.”

  “My man!” said Ulysses. Quinn thought the man’s face looked a lot more relieved than his voice sounded.

  “I knew it all along,” said Quinn. “Never doubted you for a second.”

  Schuster heaved a sigh. “Yessir. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I think I need to get up and change my underwear.”

  Quinn thought the laughter that followed was the most welcome sound he’d ever heard in his life.

  43

  The blackness of space stretched out endlessly in the monitor and through the portholes, now that Uranus was in the rearview mirror, so to speak. The Raft was currently cruising at somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.5 million kilometers per hour, on a heading that would take them first to Saturn’s orbit, then eventually onward to Earth.

  “At this rate, we’ll reach Earth in just under three weeks,” said Schuster.

  They had all freed themselves from the jump seats and were floating around the cargo hold, taking advantage of the zero gravity. It wasn’t as warm as a hot tub, but weightlessness could be incredibly relaxing.

  “How is that even possible?” asked Bishop. “That’s over four times faster than the fastest ship I’ve ever he
ard of.”

  “There are some private craft that beat government ships,” said Chelsea. “For the ultra-wealthy. But even they can’t match this kind of speed.”

  “Do you know the answer, Dev?”

  Schuster looked abashed. “Could we, uh, speak on Channel 4, sir?”

  Quinn frowned. “I think from this point on, we can’t have any secrets from each other.”

  “Goddamn right,” Ulysses echoed. “I dunno if you Jarheads have a secret handshake or some shit, but I ain’t into that. Strictly cards on the table, if yuh know what I mean.”

  “You can count on it,” said Quinn. “We’re all in this together. Whatever you have to say, Dev, it’s for everyone’s ears.”

  “Yessir.” He cleared his throat. “Well, as far as I can tell, the propulsion system was completely rebuilt.”

  “How is that possible?” asked Chelsea.

  “Sloane had access to the collective knowledge of his species, whatever they are, which means he had access to incredibly advanced technology. Once he had his drones, he basically had himself, plus four alien engineers, working on the Rafts. Their only limitation was the resources available on the station.”

  Quinn nodded. “He needed the element from the moon to do any more than what they were already doing.”

  “Exactly,” said Schuster. “I think they could have done a lot more once they got it in hand. Sloane told me that the element could even create true anti-gravity, which means the opposite, true gravity generation, is also possible. That’s a game changer.”

  “Whyzzat?” asked Ulysses. “All the spaceships in cortical reality games have gravity.”

  “In reality, gravity is a lot more complex. It’s easy enough to generate pseudo-gravity like on the station, just like magnetics can produce a type of pseudo-antigravity. But the real deal requires theoretical particles called gravitons, and gravity manipulation can theoretically be used in weapons, or even propulsion. Like I said, a game changer.”

  “But wait,” said Bishop. “I think we can assume that wave meant the entire station was attenuated, right? That means they have, what, a couple hundred people at most?”

  The others nodded.

  “Okay, but they’re still limited by resources. They only have what there is on the station.”

  “And the element we brought back,” said Quinn. “That’s a key.”

  “But even so,” said Bishop, “the station has a finite amount of resources. What could they build, maybe one ship? A few weapons? Nothing that could challenge the combined military power of Earth.”

  Maggott was making the face that he made when he was worried about sounding stupid.

  “What’s going on in that head, big guy?” Quinn asked.

  “Well, it’s just that, ye’d think they took that inta account, wouldn’t ye?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “They wouldn’ta bothered takin’ over the station if they didn’t think it could lead to somethin’ else, aye?”

  Quinn caught Schuster fidgeting, which was an awkward process in zero-G.

  “Go ahead and say what’s on your mind, Dev. We don’t have the luxury of fucking around. If you know something, tell us.”

  Schuster heaved a heavy sigh. “Look, when we were all feeling the effects of the amplifier… well, something happened to me. I felt something enter my head.”

  “I think we all felt something like that,” said Chelsea.

  “Yeah, except mine was more like someone.”

  Quinn felt his heart jump, and his mind flew back to what Schuster had said when he was piloting the ship straight towards the surface of Oberon: It is of no consequence.

  “Spit it out, man.”

  “I think that, somehow, part of Sloane got into my head. And he might even still be there.”

  “What?” Maggott sputtered.

  “Calm down,” said Quinn. “That goes for all of you. Keep talking, Dev.”

  Dev frowned as if trying to find the best words to use.

  “I can’t be sure of this, but I think Kergan may have killed Sloane.”

  “Shee-it,” Ulysses breathed.

  “They weren’t seeing eye-to-eye, that much I knew. It’s possible that Sloane was trying to stop what was going on.”

  Chelsea nodded. “I never spent any time with Sloane, but Kergan was definitely unstable.”

  “I think that may have been the problem,” said Schuster. “Sloane and Kergan, the humans, had vastly different effects on the aliens who took over their minds. It’s probably a lot more complicated than this, but I think we can all agree that Sloane, the human, was a much nicer guy than Kergan.”

  “And now Kergan is in charge,” Quinn said somberly.

  “Then I’m glad we are where we are,” said Bishop. “And that we at least have a shot at stopping him. I don’t think my soul could rest if I knew that fucking idiot had brought about the downfall of humanity.”

  Maggott held up a beefy finger. “But Geordie, ye were just sayin’ that they ent got the resources to do anything we need to worry about.”

  Quinn noticed a shadow pass over Schuster’s face. This was what he hadn’t wanted to talk about before the conversation shifted focus.

  “Dammit, Schuster,” he said. “Get to the point. What is it you’re holding back? What else did you glean from your connection with Sloane?”

  Schuster swallowed. “All right. Oberon One isn’t what we have to worry about. Geordie is right, they’re limited to what they can build there. But that doesn’t matter, because they’re only interested in building one thing: a wormhole.”

  Quinn’s stomach suddenly bunched. That didn’t sound good at all.

  “What do they need a wormhole for?” he asked, but the answer was already slicing its way into his brain like a cold blade.

  “We’re not the first species they’ve done this to,” Schuster said. “Or even the thousandth. They’ve done this all across the Milky Way.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Chelsea. “Kergan and Sloane—they were just scouts.”

  Schuster nodded. “They’re going to bring an army of alien drones into our solar system via Oberon. And Earth isn’t even remotely prepared for it. Once they conquer, they’ll invade our brains like parasites and take over the entire human species.”

  Quinn could feel his pulse in his throat. “Then all that we accomplished was for nothing.”

  “No, sir,” Schuster stressed. “Not for nothing. I think that was why Sloane sought me out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think he made the connection with me so that I could pass along his knowledge.” He tapped his temple. “I haven’t been able to work it all out yet—hell, I haven’t even scratched the surface—but he dumped a lot into me. If I can get to the right people on Earth, we might be able to build enough so we can resist. I don’t know if we can win, but we can sure as hell fight back. And isn’t that what we do? Fight back?”

  Quinn felt a swell of pride.

  “Oorah,” he said. A grin spread across his face as he realized the others had said it with him. Even Ulysses, though he looked like it might have tasted like snakeshit coming out of his mouth.

  He took a deep breath, then let it out again. Outside the porthole, space stretched out into infinity—an infinity that now seemed much smaller than it had even two weeks earlier.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” he said. “We may have the fastest ship known to man, but that’s it. We’re still fugitives. I’m sure Kergan has already gotten in touch with the authorities on Earth to tell them his version of what happened: there was a riot on Oberon One, and we escaped in a stolen ship. I’m sure every death will be blamed on us.”

  “So what else is new?” Maggott asked quietly.

  “Out only advantage is that we’re going to arrive on Earth sooner than they’ll expect. But once we’re there, finding someone to listen to us will be almost impossible.” He turned to Chelsea. “We may need to rely on your family.”
r />   Her cheeks turned red. “I don’t think that’s possible. Kergan contacted my father and lied to him, told him that I was part of the riot. That I helped the inmates.”

  “What?” Quinn frowned. “Why on Earth would your father believe that?”

  “Technically, it’s the truth,” Bishop offered, but was silenced by Quinn’s look.

  “It’s a long story,” said Chelsea. “Let’s just say I’ve got a ways to go before my father will trust me again. We can’t rely on him. Maybe some of my other family, but definitely not him.”

  “Screw the Man in the Iv’ry Tower,” Ulysses drawled. “I got Southern Saints all across the United States and Mexico, and they’re closer’n family. And I know for a fact they’re all loyal to me. Whatever I need, they’ll provide.”

  Quinn nodded. “That means a lot, Ulysses. We’re going to need to be able to rely on each other. The fate of the human race depends on it.”

  They would sit awake for several more hours talking, debating, even laughing, until they finally tethered themselves in place and let themselves give in to the siren call of exhaustion.

  Before he dropped into unconsciousness, Quinn thought about their circumstances. They were four ex-Marines convicted of treason, who had incited a riot and broken out of a prison orbiting the moon Oberon by stealing a spaceship, bringing with them a high-ranking member of an organized crime outfit, and the daughter of one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world. Oh, and one of them was carrying the remnants of an alien brain parasite along with him. And all they had to do to stop an alien invasion was convince the government of Earth that they were the saviors of humanity.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Epilogue

  The drones had begun the long task of rounding up and removing the dead from the tube, but two bodies remained on the floor of the bridge. Kergan wasn’t ready to have them taken away just yet.

  He stared at the monitors on the wall. It had taken him too long to start paying attention to what was happening in them. If he’d started earlier, he knew, things likely would have turned out differently. But he had just been so enamored of this new relationship with his human vessel, and everything that life on board this station had to offer. He regretted nothing.