H2O (19 page)

Miloff and
Sanders ran through the debris and into the building. Benny and I followed, and
Platt and Uli were a few steps behind us.

We raced through the outer room,
through a door, and into the inner chamber. We sprinted down the chamber,
passing abandoned Accelerator equipment, huge and far more sophisticated than
anything I’d ever seen. Up ahead, I saw a room built into the chamber. The Communications Center. And farther down, I saw a wall. A barrier. It ran all the way across
the chamber and I knew that on the other side lay the heart of the Line.

Miloff and
Sanders barreled into the Communications Center, ready to take on the two Fibs
manning the Line. It was possible they’d deserted their posts, but we were
pretty sure they’d never leave in the middle of a crisis unless Crow ordered
them to. Benny and I continued toward the barrier and let Platt and Uli take
the lead.

They arrived
at the wall. There was a steel door smack in the middle, but it had no handles
and no visible way of opening it. Uli looked it over, ready to make a quick
decision. To me, the door looked as sleek and formidable as the alien facility
at Black Rock. No way we’d be able to open it. Uli turned to Platt. “We go with
the cables,” he said, which meant he thought the same thing. No way to get
through here in the next thirty seconds.

We all looked
up, to the top of the barrier. We knew there’d be cables leading from the other
side of the barrier to the Communications Center. Benny spotted them first.
They ran along the chamber wall to our left, right above the Accelerator
equipment.

Uli scrambled
up onto the equipment and we followed. The cables ran from the Communications
Center into a grate right in front of us. Uli took a second to assess the grate
and I thought he’d pull out one of the tools he’d brought and pry it open, but
in one powerful motion, he kicked it in.

We crawled
inside and followed the cables through a ventilation channel imbedded in the
concrete wall. The cables exited through a grate on the other side of the
barrier. Uli kicked that grate out and we climbed out onto more oversized
equipment, then scrambled down to the chamber floor.

I saw two
distinct set-ups.

One, I
expected to see. The servers, routers, and switchers that made up the heart of
the Line, neatly ordered and effortlessly humming.

But next to
it, I saw another set-up. Two large metal blocks, both bigger than any of the
Line’s hardware. They were rectangular, silent, and fiery bronze, the color of
the cylinders that had descended from the golden ship. And while the routers
and servers were adorned with LED readouts, screens, and switches, these
monoliths were perfectly smooth. Not one seam or rivet anywhere along their
gleaming surfaces.

Ten cables
connected the silent monoliths to the Line’s hardware and, as soon as I saw
those cables, I knew that the monoliths were the aliens’ Earth station. They
were how the aliens controlled the Line. And us.

Benny focused
on the fiery bronze blocks. No doubt, he wanted to study them. But our job was
to find out
how
the aliens controlled the Line, and we had. They
controlled it remotely, from somewhere across the universe. And now that we
knew, Uli and Platt had to do their jobs. They placed explosive charges on the
monoliths and on the routers, servers, and switchers, then set the timers.

We had four
minutes to get out.

We crawled back through the
ventilation channel, past the barrier, and climbed out on the other side. We
raced through the chamber. Miloff and Sanders were waiting in front of the
Communications Center, holding two Fibs at gunpoint. As we approached, they
shoved the Fibs forward, and we all ran toward the outer room.

But when we
got there, we ran into an unpleasant surprise. Twenty to thirty Fibs, weapons
drawn, waiting for us. One of them shouted, “On the ground!” We didn’t move and
I’m sure they would’ve gunned us all down if it hadn’t been for the two Fibs
from the Communications Center. They were between them and us.

We had two
choices. Get on the ground or engage in a firefight and get slaughtered.
Sanders made the choice. He put his weapon down and started to lie down on the
ground. I saw him mouth to Miloff, “Line’s going down.” He was right. In thirty
seconds or so, the Line would be destroyed. We all followed Sanders’ lead and,
as we put our weapons aside and lay down on the floor, Crow marched in. But he
didn’t stop to bark out any orders. He continued past us and into the
Accelerator chamber. Miloff whispered to me, “Crow’s going down with the Line.”

“Get up,”
shouted one of the Fibs. We did and the Fibs collected our weapons and herded
us out of the building. They marshaled us through the grove and lined us up
against the wall of the Controls Building. Lily and the marauders who’d gone to
Crow’s headquarters were already lined up here. Except for my father. I didn’t
see him.

I looked over
at Miloff and he was checking his watch. He looked puzzled and I knew why. The
explosives should’ve gone off by now. Crow must’ve shut them down. But how was
that possible? He couldn’t have had enough time.

A dozen Fibs trained their guns
on us. I glanced over at Lily and wanted to ask her what had happened to my
father. Sanders, who was lined up next to me, must’ve read the worry on my face
because he said, “The other entrance, Roy.”

And he didn’t
have to explain anything more. I knew what he meant, and the respect that I’d
lost for my dad was restored and grew tenfold. Will Xere was executing the
back-up plan. A plan to get into the building through the original entrance. My
dad was racing through the Accelerator chamber toward the heart of the Line.

Crow stepped
out from the grove of trees and headed over to us. “Very brave,” he said. His
eyes reflected bemused anger, as if he admired our ambitious plan. He focused
on Sanders and Sanders held his stare. Crow stepped up to him and it was all
over in a flash. Crow raised his sidearm, shot Sanders in the head, and I felt
blood spatter onto my cheek. Sanders crumbled to the ground.

Crow lowered
his weapon, locked his other hand over his silver belt buckle, and scanned the
rest of us. I was shaking, holding my breath, and I could feel Sanders’ blood
running down my cheek. I didn’t move and didn’t make eye contact with Crow.

I don’t know
what he’d planned next, to execute us all at once or kill us one at a time or
send us to Devinbridge to rot in the penitentiary, but I’d never find out
because right then a massive blast rocked us all. I looked toward the
Accelerator Building and saw raging flames and thick smoke billowing over the
grove of trees. My dad had reached the heart of the Line.

In the chaos that followed, we
all ran. Some Fibs took off after us, but Crow ordered many of them to secure
other areas of the grounds. I caught up to Lily, grabbed her hand, and we
sprinted away from Pep Ring Road and into the dark. I tried to remember the
layout of the grounds, but it was hard not to think about my dad. I was sure
that the back-up plan hadn’t called for timers and that he’d been killed in the
explosion. That was why he hadn’t sent another marauder in.

Lily and I ran
parallel to the Accelerator Building, but kept to the shadows. Behind us, I
could hear gunfire. I remembered that the Accelerator ran under the 280 freeway
and thought we could use the freeway as temporary cover. Then, if luck was on
our side, we could head south to the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. After
the assault, all the teams were supposed to meet at its southern border.

We made it to
the freeway and found Miloff, Uli and Platt already there. I looked back toward
the grounds, hoping to see Benny running our way, but I didn’t.

We started
south. The original plan was to go back to Stanford Hills Park first and drive
to Jasper Ridge, but now, we’d be hiking. After a mile or so, we had to leave
the cover of the freeway and cross open land. I expected to see helicopters,
but the skies were clear. We entered the north end of the Preserve and found
cover again in the wilderness.

We moved
through Jasper Ridge as fast as we could, until we arrived at its southern
border. The other teams were there, minus five marauders including Sue Chen and
Benny, the two we needed to run the new Line. On the positive side, the others
had been able to drive here, so we had three cars.

Miloff debated
with the other marauders whether to wait for Sue Chen and Benny, while I looked
to the forest and thought about the sacrifice my dad had made. The plan hadn’t
gone perfectly but thanks to him, the first objective had been met, in
spectacular fashion. No one would ever forget that blast.

Miloff and the
other marauders decided not to wait. They didn’t want to risk the Fibs tracking
them down. So we climbed into the cars, and just as we were pulling out, Benny
darted out of the forest.

The trip south had been mapped
out by Miloff. He’d mapped it out knowing that the Fibs would be hunting us
down after Palo Alto. The route avoided all towns (populated or dead),
freeways, wide boulevards, and roads easily visible from the air. It was rural
roads and the back roads of National and State Parks, all the way down to Santa
Barbara.

I rode with
Miloff, Benny, and Uli. The mood was somber. Miloff said a few words about my
father, formal words about his sacrifice and his commitment to freeing the
Territory. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “I’m sorry.” Not formal
words, but personal words from his heart. Acknowledging that I’d lost my dad.

Miloff then
talked about Sanders, too, but there was a hardness to those words. A hardness
that reflected his desire to avenge the cold-blooded execution of his good
friend. He also spoke about completing the mission. He was determined to get
the new Line up and running and, as he talked about that, I began to understand
what he was feeling. Sanders and Crater were gone. My father was gone, too. The
Jonah Wolfe
and
the Will Xere chapters of the marauders’ story had ended
tonight. If there was going to be a next chapter, it was up to us to start
writing it.

Our adrenaline started to ebb and
we settled into a quiet anxiousness. The night was silent. Dawn was a few hours
away.

Miloff talked
about the upcoming morning. The original plan called for Sue Chen to fire up
the new Line at dawn. In towns up and down the Territory, the workers who ran
the Line would come in to do their jobs and see what they’d always seen. The
Line would look no different. But the first message they’d get would be completely
different.

My father had
planned to tell them to gather their Town Councilmen and once they’d done that,
he was going to tell those Councilmen that the Territory was a mining colony
set up to steal our water. Then he planned to call for a summit of all the Town
Councils to explain what was going on. He knew that he couldn’t just blurt out
that aliens had enslaved us. The Councilmen would want proof. But by the time
of the summit, the Councilmen would already have some proof. Trade would no
longer be geared toward getting water to Black Rock and all those patterns
would’ve changed. At the summit, my dad would offer to take representatives to
Black Rock and show them the alien storage facility.

Now, if the
aliens decided to attack, his entire strategy would be different. It’d be about
organizing and defending. Ironically, that would be easier because the
marauders wouldn’t have to prove anything
and
the Fibs would help defend
the Territory.

Miloff told
Benny that it was now up to him to fire up the Line. If he couldn’t pull it
off, Town Councilmen would come in to work and be told that the Line had been
down all morning. That had never happened before and there’d be panic in every
Town Hall. We had to avoid that.

Dawn rose blue and purple, and
the sun started to burn off the mist lingering on the road. We were closing in
on Santa Barbara. The towering White Firs of the Los Padres National Forest
were protecting us on the last leg of our trip, and I congratulated Miloff on
mapping a safe route.

He said that
we weren’t home free.

Benny and Uli
had fallen asleep, so I took the opportunity to ask Miloff a question I’d
wanted to ask him the entire trip. “How many people knew about the back-up
plan?”

“I didn’t,” he
said, as if he were insulted that he hadn’t been told. “I’m sure your father
told Sanders and Crater. That was probably it. They were his closest advisers.”

“Why didn’t he
tell everyone?”

“My guess is,
he didn’t want anyone to lose faith in the main plan.”

I wanted to
ask Miloff why my father hadn’t told me, as if he’d know the answer. I couldn’t
help but think my dad had done it again. At nine, he didn’t tell me he was
leaving for good and, last night, he didn’t tell me he might end up on a
suicide mission. But I realized exhaustion was fueling my thoughts, and I
focused on another question before anger took over.

How was it
possible for Crow to disarm the explosives before they detonated? That was the
real cause of my dad’s death. If we’d succeeded, my father, Will Xere, would’ve
never had to go in. Crow couldn’t have had enough time to crawl through that
ventilation shaft and that meant he must’ve known how to open that sleek metal
door. And
that
meant he must’ve had access to that restricted area and
knew about the bronze monoliths. He must’ve seen them before. Of course that
didn’t
mean he would’ve jumped to the conclusion that they were linked to aliens. So
what did he think they were?