Overrun: Project Hideaway (21 page)

Baldwin had accompanied him that
day. In the execution chamber, he stood alone in the shadows. He talked to
those that questioned the President’s participation in the punishment
procedures after the failed trial. Never once did Baldwin advise him that his
public display of spite and vengeance was a political mistake.

After pressing his switch, Ford
stood again between the two execution tables. The radiation entered their
system, and their bodies started thrashing violently about. Ignoring the small
crowd there to witness the event, Ford looked on without compassion. Anger
seared through his body. He relished in their torment and watched over them
until the end finally came.

When it was over, he backed
away. Baldwin reached from the shadows then and gently took his arm. Leading
him through the door of the chamber, they left the penitentiary down a darkened
hall.

None of it was enough. The
tortured deaths of the men that killed his family did nothing to ease his despair.

Rage consumed his life.
Heartache dulled his senses. He became blinded to the implications of the
events around him and everything that had just occurred.

Eyeing the gun on his table,
Ford finally realized he had chosen to ignore what did not make sense and let
himself be blinded to the information and procedural holes. Shock and grief
overwhelmed his body and tore away his nerve. He suffocated beneath it for a
long time while the dome government continued to operate around him.

It wasn’t until just now after
his conversation with Baldwin that Ford completely understood. He had allowed
an underground to grow up around him while he wallowed in his sorrow.
Bureaucratic demons had come to exist. Ones who used the murders of his own
family to make him look strong.

These were the men responsible
for this war, a governmental underground now bent on using Ford to cover for
their ambitions and make true their lies.

While they worked to one day
rule the Earth.

President Ford swallowed the
rest of the drink in his glass. He pulled out the file Baldwin had given him
and reviewed again the secrets and implications of the Hideaway Project.

He vowed to God that the day
these men lorded over the Earth was a day that never in a million years would
ever come.

Both men aboard the Hideaway
were silent. Sweat dripped heavily from their foreheads.

"What do we do, Jed?"

"What do you mean what do
we do?” Parker answered curtly back. “What we do is we wait."

"Jed, there’s something
wrong. We’ve been in hypersleep up here for more than fifty years,” Barnes’
voice started to go up in pitch. “Something is really fucking wrong."

"Nothing is wrong."

"Jed, listen to me. We’re
not even supposed to be awake. The ship for god’s sake brought us out.
Something went wrong. There might not be anybody left that even knows we’re up
here. We could be completely screwed."

"We don't know that."

"Like hell we don't."

"Jeff, listen to me,”
Parker said in a carefully guarded tone. “We have to sit. We have to assess. We
need to wait for someone to contact us. That's what we are up here to do. And
you know that. We came up here knowing that."

"We can't do that forever,
Jed," Barnes responded slightly more calmly.

“Forever hasn’t even begun to
start yet, Jeff.”

"What if the world is dead?
And what we have up here is the only thing that can possibly bring it back.
Where's your loyalty? It shouldn’t be just to the people that sent us up. Not
anymore. Not now. We have a moral duty to bring this ship back. To let whoever
is alive down there use what’s on it. To try and save at least somebody."

Parker looked at him then. His
eyes narrowed to a dark glare.

His vision flashed quickly back
to the day he found his wife in their tub and the white tiles he had stared at
for so long in their bathroom. A surge of sadness rushed to fill his aching
heart. And then like a ship opening an airlock into the blackness of space, it
was quickly sucked completely out. Until only nothingness filled it once again.

"Barnes, who is there
really to be loyal to anymore?”

Barnes didn't immediately say
anything back. He turned and looked straight ahead.

“Then why the hell are you even
up here?” Barnes asked sullenly. His voice echoed quietly in the small Hideaway
command cabin.

“The same reason you are,
Barnes. Just to get the hell away.”

Barnes was silent for another
long minute before responding again.

“What if we’re the only ones
left?”

This time Parker didn't respond.

"My suggestion to the
captain is this," Barnes said talking just slightly above a whisper.
"We need to think about this and not rule any course of action out. We
won't do anything or deviate from current mission orders until we’ve thought it
completely through. And we’re both in complete agreement."

Parker turned his head at this
and gave a soft laugh.

"Well, I hope we can agree
on this. We can’t even begin to think about landing this goddamn thing until we
figure out a way to neutralize the RCCs."

The forced calmness Barnes had
worked hard to create shattered with these words. The edge of his lips started
to twitch, and new patches of sweat beaded across his forehead.

"Yeah," Barnes nodded
while rubbing at the lump on the back of his neck from the radiation caplet
sitting below his skin. "On that, I agree."

“Well that’s a start,” Parker
said leaning back into his seat.

He scratched at his chin with
the back of his hand and gazed absently out into space.

He stared out there for many
long minutes marveling at the utter blackness of the galaxy and listening to
the nervous sound of Barnes’ body trying to breathe.

He was about to order Barnes to
go to the rear of the ship to initiate a complete systems check, just to give
him something to do, when something outside the command cabin caught his eye.
Something small that didn't look quite right against the black backdrop of
space.

Parker stared at it for a long
while. Without the aid of the ship’s equipment, it was still too far out to
see.

"Jeff, you still got those
extended range glasses strapped away somewhere?"

"What?"

"Don't you keep them up
here?"

"Yeah, they're right
here," Barnes said reaching uneasily beneath his seat. "What do you
need them for?"

"Could I have them,
please?" Parker's voice trailed off. His eyes didn't leave the Hideaway
viewport.

"What do you see?"
Barnes asked staring hard at Parker and handing over the glasses.

Without looking at Barnes or
acknowledging his question, Parker took the glasses and lifted them to his
eyes.

He worked their controls until
the object came into clearer view. A silver speck floated in the distance. It
was still pretty far out. Even through the extended range glasses, there wasn’t
much more detail.

"I don't know. There’s
something out there."

"What do you mean
something's out there?” Parker asked quickly back. “What, something like a
meteor? Satellite? What?"

"I think it's a ship."

"A ship?” Barnes asked
again nervously. “One of ours?"

"One of ours would have
contacted us before getting this close," Parker said lowering the glasses
and looking at Barnes. “Get down to the observation area.”

With these words, as if cracked
by a lightning burst, the stale still air permeating the cockpit coursed with
energy.

Barnes sprang abruptly from his
seat and grabbed a headset hanging near the cockpit door. He jogged down the
corridor while he adjusted it across his head. His plastic shoes made a light
tapping noise across the metal grates with every step.

Parker stayed in his seat and
pulled his own headset across his ear.

"You read me?" Parker
spoke calmly into the transmitter while pressing it closer to his face.

"Yeah, signal’s
clear," Barnes responded pulling his own transmitter to his jaw.

Heavy breaths interrupted
Barnes’ voice. His body was still adjusting to moving around again after fifty
years of not being used.

"When you get down there,
use the long-range scope. But no power to anything. Do you got that? The only
power going through that room should be for your lights."

"Christ, Jed," Barnes
started to say through another tortured wheeze.

He turned a right corner, then a
left. He came to a ladder at the end of the next corridor. Without breaking
stride, he kicked both legs around its side and slid five floors deeper into
the ship.

"With the power down, we're
not going to be able to see shit. If it is a ship, and we don’t power up to
monitor communication transmissions, we won’t know anything until its right up
on top of us."

"We can't risk power to the
scope," Parker replied firmly. "I'm not one hundred percent sure it’s
even a ship."

"Well, then why the fuck am
I even down here?" Barnes stopped for a second to catch his breath.

Parker could hear his heavy
wheezing through the headset.

"Because whatever it
is," Parker spoke steadily. "It’s coming closer. I can see
that."

"It's coming closer? Shit,
Jed. We have to light up the sensors," Barnes said starting to run again.
"I'm not going to be seeing much more through a powerless scope than
you're seeing up there right now."

Back in the cockpit, what Parker
had seen in the distance was becoming larger. It now looked like a silver dot.
Its small shape was plainly visible against the extreme blackness of deep space
and the dark shadow of the moon. As Parker watched, the dot continued to
steadily grow.

"Velocity is constant.
Bearing three. Dash two. Dash three. It's definitely coming this way."

Down in the bottommost portion
of the ship, Barnes slapped his fist against the door controls to the
observation area. With a swoosh, the door lifted quickly up. Before it was even
flush with the ceiling, Barnes ducked under and ran towards the ship's
long-range view scope.

The observation area was a
gigantic room. Its walls were composed of giant plates of turbo glass making
them transparent to the great outside of space. The long and cylindrical
long-range scope stood obtrusively at its center above the rest of the sensory
equipment. Barnes had always thought it resembled a giant shotgun aimed away into
the galaxy’s unknown.

"Are you there, Jeff?"
Parker’s voice spoke again into his ear.

"I'm at the scope,"
Barnes said swinging the mammoth power scope towards the location bearing his
captain had just rattled off.

He pulled the cover off its
eyepiece and squinted into the device. He lugged its bulky frame around
forcefully with his shoulders until the silver dot came into view.

From where Parker was watching
it, it had grown another three times in size.

"I can see it, but can’t
quite make it out, Captain."

"Alright. Keep the scope on
that setting. Get to the gun."

"The gun's going to take
power." Barnes slid his shoulders from the scope. Pulled down by its own
weight, its rear barrel sank to the floor.

"No power," Parker
said from back in the cockpit refocusing the extended range glasses back to his
eyes. "Not yet."

Barnes ducked back into the
corridor. The door to the observation room swooshed shut behind him. Holding
his arms out against the wall, he ran two doors further down the silent empty
passages that lined the ship. He again punched the entrance controls with his
fist. This time the door didn't open right away. He had to pound the control a
second time before it allowed him to go in.

"I'm in weapons,
Captain," Barnes said entering the ship's west side ammunitions room. A
single control panel stood alone in the center of the chamber. Parker stepped
quickly up to it and hit a series of buttons. An entire section of wall dropped
through the floor revealing more turbo glass and another grand eyeful of the
nothingness outside the Hideaway.

The assault cannon was mounted
near the giant window. Through a section of wall beneath the glass, its long
nose reached out of the room away from the Hideaway. Even without the
long-range observation scope, the object outside could now be easily seen

"It's coming up pretty
quick, Jed. What do you want me to do?"

In the weapons chamber, except
for the observation window, the wall area was constructed more from metal than
turbo glass. Barnes' voice reverberated throughout the room.

"Ready the gun, but don't
prime it to fire,” Parker answered him. “That's about as much of a power surge
I want to risk.”

"Copy that, Command
Center," Barnes said while entering access codes into the system and
firing up the rest of the electronics necessary to operate the assault cannon.

"How long again does it
take from charge sequence to fire?"

"Could be ten
minutes," Barnes said walking over to the side of the cannon, one of only
a few components of defense weaponry spread out across the entire ship.
"Could take longer. It’s been down for fifty years. It could actually take
a helluva lot longer to prime it and fire it up."

"Channel as much energy
into the gun as you can. Bleed it in slowly. Put a meter on it if you have to.
Keep it slow. Whomever’s ship it is, it’s still coming."

"Now it’s a ship
again."

"It's coming too fast to be
anything else,” Parker’s transmitted voice answered ominously through Barnes’
headset. "Get to the back and rig the nukes at the rear of the ship for
jettison and detonation. Do everything manually. Keep as much equipment
activity down as possible. Makes it harder for them to get a reading on
us."

"If it's still coming this
way, chances are they know we're here, no matter what we do,” Barnes responded.
“I say we fire up the ship, Captain, and take our chances. That way everything
will be ready. The gun and nukes will all be primed in plenty of time for an
armed attack."

"Can you see the Defenders
from where you’re at?" Parker asked.

Barnes stepped closer to the
view window. Holding the tip of his transmitter to his lip, he pressed his head
against its surface. Beneath the main portion of the Hideaway structure he
could see the two small Defender-class fighter crafts attached by metallic
cylindrical tentacles to its surface.

"They’re there. I can see
them."

"Can you see any structural
or surface damage from meteors or space debris?"

"From here they look pretty
good, Parker." Barnes said taking his head from the window and moving back
to the larger observation area.

Further out in space, the speck
was now the size of his hand and quickly growing in size.

“Whoever it is, it sure looks
like they're coming this way now."

"Let as much of the
pre-generated energy as you can seep into the Defenders," Parker still
barked orders into Barnes’ ear. "Better make sure they’re good and warm
too."

"So what happens, Jed, if
we don’t figure out who the hell they are until it’s way too late? We figure
out to late that it’s not one of ours."

"As soon as we start
bouncing sensors off them, they're going to know we're here. And then they're
going to be on us. Just give me a bit to identify the ship. Go get the defense
ships ready…and the nukes…just in case."

"Copy that Command
Center," Barnes said walking from the weapons room on the far left side of
the Hideaway. "You never answered my question, though Captain. What do we
do, if we find out it’s a hostile ship?"

"I'm hoping we can
establish identification before it’s too close. If its intentions are hostile,
we can go after it with the fighters."

"And if you can't establish
identification in time? It's been fifty years, Jed. What if you can't do it. We
need to make a decision now."

Barnes walked angrily down the
corridor with a steady and determined gait.

"I think we should go after
them first. Make them try to contact us and talk us down."