Clones vs. Aliens (21 page)

“But the chip—” Alex stuttered through gritted teeth. “You promised—”

“This chip is identical to the one powering our home world’s Mother Machine, but not the same one,” one Mechastacean said. “This will operate the
new
Mother Machine.”

“And what happens to us?” Fisher said.

“It is difficult to say,” another Mechastacean said. “Perhaps, in those few regions of the planet we do not require for our use, you may eke out an existence of sorts.”

Alex sprang forward, grabbing for the chip, but
the pirate brushed him aside easily and Alex hit the ground hard.

A hot spike of rage shot through Fisher. He and Alex had risked a lot to get the chip back from the Gemini, and now they’d been betrayed. Fisher lunged at the pirate, hoping to catch it off balance. It moved faster than he’d expected, and swatted him off his feet with a long steel arm. Both pirates retreated back toward their shuttle. Fisher landed on his back, the wind completely knocked out of him.

The tactical teams took aim.

“Hold fire!” Mason said. “Hold fire! The boys are too close.
Boys
, get behind me!” Fisher and Alex scrambled out of the way as Mason pulled out a weapon that was definitely about a hundred years ahead of standard FBI issue. Amanda and Veronica jumped from the car as Fisher and Alex reached their parents. Fisher tripped on the turf and crashed to the ground, scraping his forearms and tasting cold earth.

“Wait for my order,” Mason said to the men. He turned his focus back to the Mechastaceans. “Listen to me,” he said, finger tensed around the trigger, “I am a very good shot. I might not be able to hurt you, but I
can
hit the chip before you get away.” Veronica and Mr. Bas helped Fisher to his feet.

The Mechastaceans paused. A long series of nearly
indistinguishable digital static noises emanated from both of them. Mason raised one hand up to keep the weird sounds from rattling his men.

“Ordinarily,” the leader said, “you would be correct. But we are already inside the range of our craft’s force field.” To illustrate the point, a semitransparent white dome became momentarily visible.

“Nevertheless,” another Mechastacean said, “your bravery is impressive. So we are prepared to offer you another deal. We will select another rocky world in this system—the next planet out, perhaps.”
Mars
, Fisher thought.
Well, people have imagined that there are aliens on Mars for centuries. Wouldn’t be so much of a stretch.
“If you provide us with a fee. In order to build our machines, we require certain uncommon metals. Particularly, those of proton counts twenty-two, twenty-nine, forty-six, seventy-four, and seventy-nine.”

Mason cocked his head to the side. Amanda and Veronica looked at Fisher and Alex.

“Titanium,” Fisher said.

“Copper,” Alex said.

“Palladium,” Mr. Bas said.

“Tungsten,” Mrs. Bas said.

“And gold,” Fisher concluded.

“All right,” Mason said warily. “How much?”

“All of it,” said one pirate.

“What, our entire reserve?” Mason said. “Fort Knox? Everything we’ve got in our warehouses and factories?”

“No,” the other pirate said. “
All
of it.”

Fisher’s already heavy heart turned to an anchor.

“You’re telling me you want all of the gold that has ever been mined,” said Mason, finger still tight on the trigger.

“And even the gold that has not,” said the Mechastacean. “You have until six
P
.
M
., local time. Farewell, and have a pleasant afternoon.”

“FIRE!” Mason barked without hesitation, cutting loose with his experimental weapon, which spat crackling white bolts at the chip. His men opened up, and Fisher was deafened by the percussive blasts. Veronica grabbed his arm and pulled him around the back of the car as his parents grabbed Alex. He braced himself for the return fire from the aliens, but it never came. Every shot, even the high-powered bursts from the Apaches’ nose cannons, was absorbed harmlessly into the shield, and the Mechastaceans boarded their craft. With a dull roar and a massive gust of air, it lifted off.

The next moment, the shuttle accelerated and was gone.

And so, it seemed, was the last chance for the human race.

Nobody spoke on the short ride back to the underground base. The helicopters flew low above them, and the sound of roaring engines would have drowned out any attempt at conversation, anyway.

Fisher’s mind was caught in a series of tight loops of calculation. But he couldn’t see any way around the facts.

Earth was done for.

Fisher watched more military vehicles and emplacements move into position in fields and on hillsides, and wondered how long they could possibly hold out. A few days? A week? Would the Mechastaceans pick them off slowly, town by town, or incinerate every city at once? He pictured every single city on Earth in flames. He wondered whether something he could have done would’ve spared them.

Strangely, he didn’t feel much of anything at all. Just kind of cold, and kind of hollow, and weary near the point of collapse. Fisher and Alex had saved the world from
one terrible fate only to deliver it straight into another.

Alex and Amanda sat silently, his arm around her shoulders, their heads leaning together. Fisher’s dad leaned forward to place his hand on the back of Fisher’s mom’s seat. Veronica was squeezing Fisher’s fingers tightly in hers.

This was all they had, these precious final moments, before the world ended.

Mason was frantically trying to get through to the White House. Fisher couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he knew it wouldn’t matter, anyway. Unless the president was a time-traveling wizard, what the Mechastaceans had asked for was simply not physically possible.

The whole world was wired with copper. You’d have to rip apart pretty much every electrical grid, house, and machine on Earth to retrieve all the copper humans had unearthed. To do the same for gold, titanium, and the others…

Fisher wondered if the Mechastaceans vastly overestimated human physical capacity and work rate … or if the whole thing was just a game to them, a sick joke.

Fisher thought about the way that he, and all of them, had been used, and the hollowness and coldness started to give way to something new. A little flame clicked on. It wasn’t much. A pilot light. But it grew brighter and hotter.

He’d been pulled back and forth between two alien races competing to take over the planet. He’d been used, tricked, conned. He and his friends were the pieces in a chess game whose players were about to knock the board right off the table. The fire filled up his gut and blossomed into his chest. He wasn’t going to be played with anymore.

If he couldn’t stop the end from coming, he was at least going to bring some alien invaders down with him.

The guards at the base barely got the gate open in time for the black SUV to barrel its way through.

“Any ideas?” Mason said as they all disembarked.

Fisher turned to him, still feeling that fire burning deep inside of him. “They’re not leaving us with any options at this point. I say we fight.”

“Seconded,” said Amanda.

Alex impatiently hummed a few bars of “Gift-Wrapped Heart,” and the door in the silo materialized and slid silently open. The group got into the big steel elevator and started to descend into the base.

“We have to be smart about a counterattack,” Mrs. Bas said. “The Mechastaceans are much too strong to take on head-to-head.”

The elevator door opened into the cavernous base. Fisher gasped when he looked down to the cave floor. The
Gemini ship was aglow with shifting, flowing lights. A steady, strong rhythm carried all the way up to the top of the cavern. A hatch was open in its side.

The ship was operational.

Fisher bolted for the nearest stairs, everyone else hot on his heels. He clattered down each section of metal steps quicker than the last, knowing but not caring that a wrong slip could send him plummeting to the cave floor.

On the cave floor, the engine thrum was much stronger. Fisher felt it in his bones. His sternum buzzed with every beat of the alien machine’s cycle.

Dr. X appeared in the hatchway, a very pleased look on his face. He slowly descended the steps, raising his arms high to indicate the machine around him, as if the group might have failed to notice it.

“From me to you,” he said. “A fully functioning extraterrestrial spacecraft, completely under our control.”

“Having control of the Gemini ship might change everything,” Veronica said excitedly. “We can get close to the pirates. To sneak aboard their ship and attack them when they least expect it.”

“Oh,” Dr. X said, clasping his hands behind his back. “There is one other thing.”

A figure appeared in the hatchway behind him. Short, but imposing. Calm, but arrogant. His hands were clasped
behind his back in much the same way as Dr. X’s.

Fisher stumbled backward, gasping. He couldn’t believe it.

“Three,” Fisher croaked.

Amanda dropped into a wrestling stance. Alex raised his fists into a boxing guard. Even Veronica looked ready to brawl.

Mason pulled out his strange pistol, flicked a switch on its side, and took aim.

“This is set to stun now,” he said, “but I promise, it still hurts. A lot. So, Doc, I recommend you start talking before I demonstrate exactly how much ‘a lot’ is.”

Only then did Fisher notice his parents gaping at
Three. Mr. and Mrs. Bas had never gotten a good look at Fisher’s second clone during his attempted takeover of Palo Alto. Maybe they’d realized what Three was, and maybe not. Either way, coming face-to-face with another carbon copy of their only son—an evil carbon copy, at that—must have been super creepy.

“Easy now,” Dr. X said, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. Three stood motionless, a very slim smile on his cold features. “Allow me to explain. I have had a great deal of time and resources at my disposal. In between figuring out how to bring this ship back to life—you’re welcome, by the way—I was able to figure out the location of our friend here. With a very small amount of recovered Gemini residue for its rapid shape-changing ability and a sample of Fisher’s DNA, I was able to construct a duplicate Three. Not another clone, mind you. It was more or less a statue that appears to breathe—convincing enough, however, to slip into Three’s cell when I sent a couple of robots to retrieve him, thanks to the amazing technology on hand here.”

“Wait,” Fisher said. “A sample of my DNA? How did you get that?”

“A micro-abrasive and adhesive pad stuck to my palm,” said Dr. X, holding his hand up. “You did the rest.”

Fisher’s memory jumped back to what had seemed a weird but totally unimportant moment at the time. The
moment played in super slow motion in his head, Dr. X shouting, in a crawling, low-pitched tone,
Hiiiiigggghhh fiiiiiiiiive
, as he put up his hand.

“I knew I should’ve left you hanging,” Fisher said bitterly.

“But he betrayed you,” Alex said. “Why would you help him?”

“Because he can help us,” Dr. X said. “He’s brilliant, clever, ruthless, and concerned above all with his own survival. As a threat to his survival, the Mechastaceans are as much his enemy as ours.”

Three still hadn’t moved. Fisher couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with his shadowy, destructive reflection. No matter
what
the circumstances, Three was a threat to
everyone.
He was an agent of destruction, pure and simple. Just like that, a dousing bucket of water had been tossed onto Fisher’s building rage. He felt nothing but fear and confusion.

Three spoke up at last. “As I understand it, the Earth is about to be completely overrun by a hostile, vastly more powerful force.” His voice was like Fisher’s, if Fisher were hooked up to a huge iron machine that drained from him all traces of feeling. “If we allow the conflict to become open war between the aliens and the nations of Earth, millions will perish in the cross fire, and humanity will lose. What few survive the war will be slaughtered as the
Mechastaceans take over the planet. Human civilization will be completely eradicated. The planet will become a giant manufacturing facility.” He inclined his head slightly to the left. “I would likely not survive the conflict, and if I did, life afterward would be very dull.”