Charged - Book One (18 page)

Maybe this was a good thing? Surely only the eldest
knew how to launch and fly this thing.

“How many on board, know how to fly this thing?”

Aaron raised his eyebrows at me. He knew what I was
thinking. Maybe there were only a couple on board that would have
this information. Then there would only a couple that we would
really have to worry about revealing this information should they
be attacked.

“Everyone is taught, in theory,” Kye said.

I looked at Aaron. “Get the other gun and all the
ammo we have from the suite.” He nodded his head and started
running down the hall.

I looked at Kye for a long time. We should have had
more time. There was a long silence that seemed to hang in the air.
Only a few minutes had passed when Aaron returned, breathing
heavily, spilling our small supply of rounds and the extra gun on
the table. It was a sad sight. It would never be enough, not for
all of us. Aaron then started loading the extra clips for the
pistol.

“Wait a second,” Aaron said, “I thought you said you
could send an electrical current through the dishes… was that
true?”

“Yes.”

“How many amps?”

“Around twenty thousand.”

“Well, if they have a brain, we can fry it,” Aaron
said, smiling.

“And if that doesn’t kill them?” I said.

“Then they’ll dig,” Danel responded.

“How far under are we?”

“One hundred and fifty feet, give or take a
yard.”

“How much more time does that give us?”

“Triple the speed for digging, about maybe a
half-hour.”

So maybe we had enough time for Station Ten to reach
us.

WE WERE NOW HEADED to the communications center,
where we could monitor every part of the ship. When we got there,
it was filled with more than twenty screens much more advanced than
anything I’d ever seen. Most were holographic.

We seated ourselves at an oval black table in the
center of the room. There were six holographic screens in front of
us. I was sitting across from Aaron and he was looking at an
opposite mirror image of the screen.

“What’s the most secure room besides this one?” Danel
asked Kye.

“The main hall doors have been repaired; they are our
thickest interior doors. It can be completely sectioned off and
only has one entrance,” Kye answered, as she pulled up various
blueprint screens that hovered above the table’s surface.

When she said this, I realized she was not a research
assistant — she was ops. She was a topside covert. She moved fast
and apparently knew more about the ship than Danel.

“Collin, get the others together,” Danel ordered.
“Don’t miss anyone. Get them all in the main hall, let them know
what’s going on and don’t let them leave. Station Ten will get them
out when they get here. Close the main door and destroy the control
panel. Barricade the door if you can.”

“And find Jessica!” Aaron said.

Collin didn’t argue or question anything. He left
quickly to complete his task.

I almost forgot that Danel was in charge of
everything. I wondered about how the others would feel being left
unarmed in the main hall. I thought it was a bad idea.

“Let me know when they’ve closed the doors,” he said
to Kye.

Aaron continued pushing bullets into clips and I
thought about giving the pistol to Danel or Kye. Aaron was now
looking a little scary, like he was contemplating the thousand
different ways to kill these things in hand-to-hand combat.

“Can you shoot that?”

“You have no idea.”

I put my elbows on the table and tried to think of
anything else that could be done. I had the .357 in my holster and
hollow points in my pocket. How many? Forty-five rounds, at best. I
was hoping the hollow points would just blow the head off one of
these suckers, but they were only really good with soft tissue.

Kye was still concentrating on the schematics in
front of her.

“The doors are closed and secured,” she said.

“I think this is a bad idea. We should all stay
together. The others are completely unarmed.”

Danel looked at Kye to answer for him again. She gave
him an irritated look, but complied.

“The children are still learning how to control their
emotions. I’m certain the creatures will come for this room first.
It’s better if we don’t have everyone emotionally overwhelmed if we
can avoid it.”

“Why this room?”

“They’ve killed a couple of our coverts already and
if they can pull images from us, then they’ll want to get in this
room…”

She slid back the huge table with ease, showing a
square indentation in the center with thirteen plugs.

“…because this is the helm. You can start the ship
from any location, but you can only control flight destinations
from here.” She slid the table back and continued typing on the
screen in front of her and then a visual of the main hall appeared
on all the screens.

“Do you have audio?” Aaron said.

“Yes.”

Aaron nodded at Kye to connect him. “Jessica, are you
there?”

“I’m here,” she stood up, waving at the camera.

“Baby, hide.”

She stopped moving her hands and moved to the back of
the room, looking through cabinets and pulling out large
containers, trying to find a space large enough for her.

“Everyone hold tight. We’ll do everything we can and
Station Ten is on its way,” Aaron said into the mouthpiece. He then
told Kye to hit mute and took a deep breath.

Danel tapped the screen in front of us. There were
several more screens, which showed feed from the main hall. We
could now see many glowing eyes. Not all were yellow or orange;
some were green and some purplish-blue. They sat there waiting, not
talking or moving, all huddled around one of the circular tables.
All were present and most were dressed in white lab coats. Each was
touching the hand of another, except for Jessica and all eyes were
bright.

I could recognize most of them, even Lyra, who almost
never spoke to me. Maybe they were praying or talking in other
ways; I didn’t know. I could see Jessica trying to squeeze her
large body into one of the pantries. She was so different from the
rest.

Danel quickly glanced over the guns on the table. “Is
that everything?”

“Yes,” Aaron said. We all knew it wasn’t enough.

“Remember to aim for the head.”

I was sitting next to Kye and put my hand on hers and
squeezed slightly and she squeezed back, looking at me.

“Is there any way to turn up the lighting in here?” I
said.

Kye hit a few buttons on the table in front of her
and the soft blue light increased by eighty percent. She then
looked at Danel, who had closed his eyes for a moment and then
strained a little as he opened them.

“I don’t want them missing the target.” Her voice was
soft but stern.

“I know,” he said.

Kye was so in control of her emotions and here I was,
sweating like a pig. How many times had I been in the line of fire
and kept a cool, calm head? Where was that now? I tried to compose
myself. I looked at Aaron and he had a look on his face that
clearly said he had been in some bad situations that I probably
didn’t want to know about. He enjoyed the chaos, almost like he was
getting high off it. My adrenaline was still in flight mode, but I
knew when the time came, I would shoot straight without a single
tremor. Hopefully.

As I stared at Aaron’s glowing eyes, I wondered if he
could still see in the brighter light.

“Do the brighter lights affect your vision?”

“No,” he answered. “Jessica enhanced the muscles
surrounding my pupils. It looks like I have no pupils in dim light
because the muscles surrounding the iris are completely relaxed to
allow maximum illumination and she put in a reflective patch to
maximize the light. That muscle contracts in bright light and the
patch flips to the unreflective side.”

Danel then tapped on three of the holographic screens
hanging above the oval table, activating them by disrupting the
screens’ lighting source. They went black for a half a second and
then switched to a clear view of the inside of the satellite
dishes. The video cams that were placed on the dishes were set high
up on the edges of the panels, so you could see the whole inner
dish, but not the outside and surrounding areas. So far, there were
no signs of the black-winged creatures.

“Kye, max out the electrical load to the dishes up
top and turn on all the mini cams in the bases of the dishes,”
Danel instructed.

Kye worked with ease as Aaron and I watched. She
tapped on the table and screens in front of her, manipulating the
images.

“Done.”

Danel then touched the left bottom corner of each of
the three holographic screens hanging over the table and they
enlarged to three times their size. Each screen was a larger view
of the inside of each satellite dish above.

“Do you see them?” Aaron said in a way that suggested
that he saw something that the rest of us didn’t.

We all searched the monitors and saw nothing. Danel
then touched the small blue square in each screen to reproduce the
image on the screen that just Aaron was observing. Still, I saw
nothing.

“The small shadows moving across the dish… they’re
flying over it,” Aaron explained.

We inspected the screens again and we could see three
dim shadows passing back and forth across the center satellite dish
as if they were waiting for something. They might be reflective,
but they still cast shadows.

They were here earlier than expected. My stomach
lurched up into my throat, making it dry and my heart sank into my
feet making my whole body feel like a brick.

“I think I can direct another electrical current to
the doors of this room, but we won’t have auxiliary if I do. Lewis,
when that happens, everyone will be able to see except you.”

I didn’t get the enhancement that Aaron did and now I
regretted it.

Kye continued to manipulate the tabletop’s
schematics, tapping it in various places. This meant they would
need the guns and rounds when this happened. I looked at Aaron and
he nodded as if he could read my mind.

“How many times can we surge the dishes?”

“Just once,” she said, “and it’s going to fry every
wire up there when we do.”

Kye started working on the table, switching screens
back and forth as the rest of us watched the cam feed. Five more
shadows started flying across the south dish and two more shadows
were hovering above the north dish.

Kye’s skin started radiating even more. The swirling
veins under her skin started moving faster. I looked at Danel and
he was also brighter and I remembered what Kye said. They were
sweating. Only Aaron looked calm now.

Finally, a group of six landed on the north dish
without camouflage. They wanted their presence known. Just watching
these things move made me want to run. The black-winged creatures
didn’t look fluid in movement. Their upper bodies bounced out of
sync with their lower bodies, as if they weren’t completely
connected. Their wings rotated a full three hundred and sixty
degrees and their hooked claws embedded themselves into the dishes
as they landed.

We simply didn’t have enough ammo for this many. Even
if we got really close, it would just be Aaron and me shooting and
Danel and Kye waiting. Not enough guns.

“How many?”

“Sixteen,” Aaron said.

Three more landed on the south dish. I couldn’t count
fast enough to separate the shadows, apart from the ones that had
landed.

“Nineteen,” Aaron called out, as if we were sharing
the same thought.

“Done,” Kye said. “We can surge these doors as well,
but I don’t know if it will be enough to kill them.”

Suddenly, one of the creatures drew its attention to
the camera mounted on the base of the center satellite. It drew
closer, as if it knew we were watching. Its eyeless face contorted
with rage as it let out a scream and then with one hooked arm, it
reached back and swung forward, crushing the camera.

I tore my eyes away from the screen and looked at my
watch. Thirty minutes until Station Ten arrived.

We still had the rest of the cameras functioning and
we watched silently as two of the creatures on the south dish flew
over to the center dish. Danel looked at me and then back at the
screen. For the first time, he looked nervous. His fingers were
rubbing his lipless mouth and he kept closing his eyes as if he was
talking to himself, or maybe he was trying to mask his emotions
from the others.

His attention was suddenly drawn to one of the
screens. One of the two creatures that landed in the center dish
was reaching back and stabbing the door to the elevator shaft that
Aaron and I had gone through.

“We don’t have a choice now. The electrical current
won’t conduct through the different materials in the shaft. We have
to open the circuit before they climb inside,” he said.

The creature holding the shaft door contracted its’
hooks directly back into its skin for a moment and I think I
stopped breathing. The metal circular door fell to the base of the
dish, just to the left of the opening and I shuddered at its power.
After a moment, it started crawling inside.

“Kye, do it now!” Danel yelled.

“No! Wait!” Aaron said. “Three more are about to
land!”

Kye hesitated.

“Do it now!” Danel said, standing up, now clearly
afraid, clearly terrified.

“Two seconds!” Aaron’s voice sounded strained. Then
we saw one slowly crawl into the tube and three more land in the
center dish.

“Now!” Aaron
said.             

I was with Aaron on this. It was better to kill three
more than worry about one.

Kye activated the electrical charge and the creatures
started screaming. They couldn’t escape and we listened to their
screeches that were inhuman and ear-piercing. Their bodies jerked
violently and the one that was almost in the tube still had one
claw on the base of the dish. Then the cameras went out.