The Harvest (36 page)

Taking off his helmet, he overheard the kid
in front of him talking excitedly about the mission ahead, grateful
for the opportunity to avenge his parents. These were the perfect
slaves. The Anunnaki actually made these kids believe in what they
were fighting for, convincing them that they were under attack by
another group of aliens.

His team gathered together, and he glanced
around and saw no Anunnaki watching their corner of the hangar.

“You got this?” he whispered to Tracy,
nodding toward the chattering new recruits.

She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.

He hoped the communications between them
weren’t being monitored. It seemed unlikely—there were too many
people in this room to listen to every conversation. Once they
placed the Shock Troop decals on, it would sever the suits from the
ship’s computer, and they wouldn’t have to worry about being
overheard.

He turned and walked toward the small access
hatch that should be in the back left corner of the room. It was
hidden between two metal beams that rose from the floor at an
angle, part of the skeletal structure of the pyramid-shaped vessel.
He tried to be casual, though he was holding his breath the entire
way. The beams provided cover, and he sighed with relief once he
stepped between them and saw the service hatch. Except for Tracy,
the rest of his team slipped over to join him, Steve and Laura
first.

“Holy crap,” Steve whispered. “I can’t
believe this ship is for real.”

“Believe it,” Shane snapped. “Stay
focused.”

Shane rested his fingers on the control panel
to the right side of the hatch, his stomach doing somersaults
because he worried some of the codes had slipped from his mind.
Trying not to think about it, he entered the first sequence that
came to him. All the information he needed was supposed to be in
his brain, though he feared it was a jumble and would prove useless
when he called upon it. His fingers danced across the screen,
regurgitating information from his mind in an almost involuntary
process. Nothing happened. He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus on
letting the information flow from him.

Failing a second time, Shane glanced back at
his friends, sick with concern. What if the enemy had somehow found
out they were coming and changed all the access codes?

“Let me,” Laura whispered, gently pushing him
aside and putting her hand over the controls. Her fingers danced
confidently over the alien symbols, and the door made a whishing
sound as it leapt aside.

“Thank God for you, Laura,” Maurice said. “I
don’t think my mind retained any of that stuff.”

Shane made a sound of agreement, relief
flooding his veins. Laura had always been the best at operating the
Anunnaki computers in the simulations. He’d been thinking all along
that he’d have to be the one to input the sequences into the
reactor controls to destroy it, and had been stressing so much that
he made himself forget the hatch access codes. He should have
recognized this was probably Laura’s purpose, the reason she’d been
selected to be on his team in the first place.

Beyond was a narrow, gray corridor, lit by a
string of lights running along the ceiling. Shane imagined it
wasn’t too different from what might be seen on a modern naval
warship. Other than the control panels at the hatches, the overall
appearance of the behemoth spacecraft was not as high tech-looking
as he would’ve expected an alien vessel to be. The Anunnaki seemed
to have gone out of their way to make the ship seem almost antique
in some ways.

“The maintenance corridor,” Liam observed
excitedly.

Hope surged through him. They’d made it this
far, and Kelly’s team probably had too. He started to believe in
the rebels’ impossible plan.

They climbed through the opening, and he
looked out into the crowded chamber before closing it. He hated
leaving Tracy all alone with the slave soldiers, but she was the
best person for the job.

The hatch snuffed all sound coming from the
holding chamber. They stood motionless. Cocked heads inspected the
fresh silence, and wide eyes blinked in disbelief. The corridor
sloped upward, curving deeper into the spacecraft. Not wasting any
time, Shane took his armored glove off and retrieved the two small
circles of material hidden between his cheek and upper gum.

“Put them on,” he ordered. They wouldn’t be
invisible to the ship’s computer until they had the Shock Troop
symbol unraveled across their armor.

He stuck one on his chest, and it spread like
living paint across the glossy, red surface, forming the emblem of
the Shock Troop as promised and covering the black slave stripe. He
handed the other to Steve, who placed it on his back. Then Shane
returned the favor. Once they were all disguised, there was another
pause, like they expected something dramatic to happen.

Overcome with relief that they were
essentially invisible now, Shane chuckled at the tension.

“It’s okay, people,” he said quietly, looking
in each of their eyes. “We’re kicking butt. We just have to keep
doing what we’re doing, and we got this.”

“Yeah,” Steve seconded enthusiastically.
“It’s on!”

The others sighed and appeared to relax as
well, their growing confidence showing on their faces.

Shane put his glove and helmet back on,
heading up the corridor with his friends in tow. They were over the
halfway point—the hardest part might be behind them. They just had
to play the Shock Troop card if they encountered the enemy along
the way.

A couple of hundred yards up, Shane came upon
a hatch on the right.

“We should find charged weapons in here,” he
said, butterflies returning to his stomach as Laura placed her hand
on the control pad. Each of these hatches had different access
codes, and he wasn’t sure he remembered any of them. What if Laura
didn’t retain them all either? This mission could go to hell in a
hurry if they couldn’t open hatches.

Yet again, the first sequence that she tried
worked. The opening revealed a small, empty chamber with glass
sloping away from the floor, like the window of an air traffic
control tower. There were three chairs and a computer terminal in
front of the glass. Shane stepped into the room and looked out of
the window. Below, he could see the Great Pyramid. Long poles
reached away from the ship, down to rest on the massive stones. The
dim light reflected off streams flowing up through the cracks in
the ancient pyramid’s stones. They were all different colors—white,
gold, silver, yellow, black, and transparent like water. They
flowed through the pyramid and into the mouths of the poles, which
were apparently pipes.

“Like a giant tick,” Jake said distantly.
“Sucking Earth dry.”

“No
use in staying here and watching the show,” Steve said, nodding
toward the hatch. His red armor added so much bulk to his
already-big frame. Holding the plasma rifle, he looked more
formidable than ever. “This ain’t what we’re looking for.”

“He’s right.” Shane opened the cabinet with
rifles in it, the reason they’d stopped in this chamber. “Swap your
weapon with one of these.”

He retrieved a plasma rifle from the rack and
replaced it with his empty one. As soon as he took hold of the new
gun, a horizontal bar showed up on the charge gauge in his
helmet.

“These babies are live,” Liam said after
taking his weapon. “Now it’s time to get even.”

Holding the fully charged plasma gun in his
hands brought to mind images of the holes it could sear through
flesh and bone, the lives it could take. It was the deadliest
weapon he’d ever held and, inevitably, he’d have to kill with it.
He swallowed the metallic taste in his mouth and watched his team
swap out their rifles. After glancing both ways to be sure it was
clear, he slipped out of the chamber. He signaled for them to
follow and continued climbing into the ship.

Looking down at the weapon as he walked, he
came to terms with what had to be done. He desperately wanted
revenge, but he couldn’t stand the idea of killing again. One
moment of hesitation at the wrong time, and it would be his friends
who’d be getting killed. A question struck him that made him feel
even sicker. Was he more worried about taking the lives of those
who’d destroyed his, or afraid he might enjoy it?

“Heads up,” Steve whispered.

Two Anunnaki, wearing the white jumpsuits of
engineers, came down the passageway toward them. As he’d been
taught in the simulations, Shane immediately adopted an air of
confidence, pulling his shoulders back and walking as tall as he
could. His friends fell in a line behind him so they could pass the
aliens. Sweat beaded on his brow, and the armor blasted him with a
puff of cool air. His breathing seemed to roar inside the helmet,
though he tried to stay calm and have faith in his disguise. He
marched toward the engineers, hoping they’d ignore his team.

When they drew close, the Anunnaki’s eyes
widened. They stepped to the side and stopped, putting their right
fists over their hearts and bowing their heads as Shane and his
friends passed.

The disguise worked brilliantly. Cool relief
flooding through him, Shane dared a glance over his shoulder and
saw the engineers hurrying down the passageway, like they didn’t
want to be under the scrutiny of the soldiers for any longer than
necessary.

“That was easy,” Laura whispered.

“Yeah, but it’s gonna get a whole lot
harder,” Shane warned, not wanting anyone to get cocky.

Another hatch appeared on the right.

“This should be the one,” Shane whispered,
holding his breath and stepping aside so Laura could enter the
access code.

The door leapt open, revealing a long
passageway. It was narrower than the one they’d been climbing, with
metal ribs spaced every twenty feet and the ceiling curving
overhead.

“This looks like it,” Liam said eagerly,
pushing his way past Shane into the passageway.

“Reminds me of the tunnel under Atlanta where
I whooped that ass,” Steve teased, nudging him. When the pressure
was on, he never failed to interject a dose of humor.

“Yeah, those were some good times,” he
replied with a tense chuckle. “But I’m pretty sure I was the one
doing the whooping.” Although Shane wasn’t keen on remembering the
nightmare they’d been through in Atlanta at this time, he did
respect what Steve was trying to do.

Glancing up and down the main corridor, Shane
ushered his friends into the passageway. He worried their chances
of being discovered doubled with each passing second and was amazed
they’d come this far without problems. The hatch closed, and they
headed toward the engineering compartment.

“I wonder how the other teams are doing?”
Laura said, her voice pitched with anxiety.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Shane replied
promptly, unable to keep the concern out of his voice. “We just
have to hope they’re on schedule.”

Thinking of the timing issue once again, he
suddenly felt like the plan was too ridiculous to work. It seemed
impossible for seven teams spread across the globe to hit seven
targets at about the same time with no communication between them.
There was no choice but to have faith. They passed the point of no
return as soon as they mounted the ramp leading into this wretched
ship.

The access tunnel rose upward. In spite of
the armor assisting their movement, they were huffing by the time
they came to the next hatch. They were all in peak physical
condition, but he reckoned the stress caused them to breathe too
shallow. This hatch carried the strange warning symbol he
remembered, indicating it was a blast door into the reactor
chamber. He exhaled some tension and rallied his courage.

“This is it,” he said, looking at his
friends. “Once we get inside, we have to go straight to the reactor
control panel. Laura, you stay with me. You guys distract any
engineers near it. Don’t act aggressive. They may not suspect us
until it’s too late.”

“Quarterback sneak,” Steve mused.

“Exactly.”

“Hey,” Laura said, laughing nervously. He
couldn’t see her face, but it sounded like she was trembling. “I am
not a ball.”

In the wake of a chuckle, he thought of
Tracy. She’d fought alongside him in every conflict since the world
went to shit. She was always cool in these situations and
wolverine-vicious when it came to a fight. But she was also a born
leader, which was what it would take to get the teens organized
once they were released from Anunnaki control. Whether he liked it
or not, she was right where she needed to be.

“Put it here,” Shane said, sticking his
gloved hand out, palm down.

Steve put his hand on top, and the rest
followed.

“We are one,” he said, channeling Coach Rice.
“The individual can be crushed, but the team is
indestructible.”