Post-Human Trilogy (45 page)

28

In mere seconds, the androids on the hull exponentially increased. Every moment, hundreds more landed on the hull, until finally, they covered every inch of it.

Meanwhile, Rich was surrounded, and his muscles ached from exhaustion. He was spinning wildly and blasting at his attackers, but even with the nans helping him to recoup his energy, the fatigue was about to overwhelm him.

Djanet’s attack made the difference—she cleared a path for Rich toward the ship. She knocked out several of Rich’s attackers and left a hole just big enough for Rich to squeak through. When Rich reached her, he nearly passed out, and Djanet enveloped him into to her magnetic field. He grabbed her, and gasped for air as he held on.

“I got you!” she shouted to him. His clothes were soaked with sweat, and she could feel the thunderous beat of his heart against her back.

“You just saved my life...again!” he replied as Djanet flew back toward the Purist ship as it streaked upward, toward the sun. The darkness of space was beginning to become visible as the stratosphere came into sight.

“They’re alive, James,” Old-timer delivered the news.

Thel sighed a heavy sigh of relief. “Tell them to get inside!”

“No!” James interjected. “If they open a door now, we’ll be overwhelmed by those things!”

“James!” Thel shouted, shocked at his line of thinking. “We can’t leave them out there! If the androids get in, we’ll fight them!”

“We’d be putting the Purists at risk, Thel! Too many of them have already died!”

“Are you willing to sacrifice Rich and Djanet?” Thel asked, appalled.

“
It’s up to you, James,
” the A.I. spoke. “
The humane thing to do would be to open the doors, but it’s virtually guaranteed that the ship would be overwhelmed, and you’d lose everyone onboard.
”

James sighed and bowed his head. “Thel, I’ve analyzed the situation and, believe me, if we open that door, we all die.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Thel reacted after she heard James’s words. “You sound like a computer.”

James clenched his teeth—it was becoming increasingly difficult to delineate a line between his consciousness and that of the A.I.

“I think we have to trust James,” Old-timer said, attempting, as was his custom, to be the voice of reason. As much as he wanted to save Rich and Djanet, as his eyes moved toward Alejandra, he knew he couldn’t risk their lives. “At least Djanet and Rich can defend themselves.”

“We’re willing to fight, Craig,” Alejandra retorted.

“Agreed,” Lieutenant Patrick chimed in. “You shouldn’t sacrifice your people”

“You need more than willingness,” Old-timer replied.

“Enough,” James asserted. “Old-timer, tell them they’re our only chance of getting out of here alive. Keep an eye on that hull and a close watch on the doors and the engine.”

“They’ll die because of that decision,” Thel insisted.

“Not if you follow my lead, Thel. Find a way to electrify the hull.”

Outside, Djanet continued blasting as Rich felt he was ready to separate. “I’m okay now. Thanks!” He let go of Djanet and reengaged his own magnetic field as he started firing at any androids in his path.

“Old-timer!” Djanet shouted as she opened communication, “We need you to open the starboard airlock!”

“That’s a negative,” Old-timer replied.

“What?” Djanet asked, stunned.

“James analyzed the situation and, if we open the doors, the chances of the ship being overwhelmed are too great.”

“Old-timer!” Rich shouted as he continued blasting, “Open the damn door!”

“We need you to clear the androids off the doors and away from the engines first!” Old-timer shouted back.

James entered the communication at that moment to plead for Rich’s and Djanet’s understanding. “Guys, we’re not going to make it unless you help us from out there. I’m sorry, but we have no choice. You’re our only hope!”

Rich continued desperately shooting as he and Djanet reached the starboard side of the vessel, still coated with androids that were clawing at the titanium frame of the ship like wolves attacking a bloody piece of meat. “There are too many of them, Commander!”

“You don’t have to destroy them all! Just give us the time we need to set up an electromagnetic charge to get rid of the rest of them!”

“How long do you need?” Djanet asked through gasps as, like Rich before her, she neared exhaustion.

“Three minutes,” James shouted back——the number was random. In actuality, he had no idea.

“Better speed it up! We’ll be dead in thirty seconds!” Rich shouted back.

29

“We’ve got our first hull breach!” Old-timer shouted as he scrolled through the ship map to see where the breach was located. “The engines!”

“Of course,” James growled. “Djanet, Rich! One of those things has breached the hull next to the engines! We need you to knock it off there, or this is going to be a short ride!”

“Copy that!” Djanet answered as she and Rich worked their way to the back of the ship. They were immediately caught in the wake of the massive magnetic engines, tossed around like cotton balls on a windy Chicago day.

“Well...isn’t this just a walk in the park!” Rich grunted as he struggled to stay on course.

“The good news is that it’s tough for the androids too!” Djanet replied. “They can’t get to us while we’re in here! It might just buy James the time he needs to ready the electromagnetic pulse.”

“Not if we can’t get those alien freaks off the engines!” Rich shouted back. “Do you see them?”

Djanet peered through the brilliant azure distortions created by the engines until she could make out a large group of androids who’d peeled back a small portion of the titanium casing surrounding the engines. The small portion was threatening to become a large portion, as nearly a dozen of the androids had grabbed a hold of it and were tugging at it violently, thrashing it. “Yes, I see them!”

“Can you get a shot?”

“It’s hard to hold steady, but I think so!” she responded. It was like holding on to the rope after falling while waterskiing, waves throwing you around violently until you didn’t know if you were facing up or down. She tried to stay steady and, when she thought she was in as good a position as she was going to get, she fired. Unfortunately, the blast got caught in the distortion of the engines and boomeranged back in an arc, glancing off of Rich’s magnetic cocoon and temporarily driving him out of the engine’s wake and back into danger—there were still millions of androids in the vicinity. “Sorry!”

“I’m okay!” Rich shouted back as he zipped up into the protection of the distortion once again. “I don’t want to be, you know,
that guy,
but that was not a very good shot! I’m sorry to be so critical!”

“I can’t possibly hit them from here!”

“We’re going to have to get out of the wake to get a clear shot!” Rich concluded.

Meanwhile, the ship finally left the stratosphere and entered space. “Okay, the autopilot’s engaged now,” James announced. “Thel, how is it coming?”

Thel shook her head in frustration. “It’s not. Nothing I try leads anywhere. I’ve tried rerouting power from the engines to the hull insulation, but it’s simply not enough voltage to do any damage.”

James examined the data quickly. “You’re right, damn it. I should’ve built an EMP into the design of the ship. I was so fixated on the minutia of the design that I couldn’t see the big picture.”

“Then you need to start looking at the big picture, boss,” Old-timer said. “Rich and Djanet aren’t going to make it much longer.”

“
Might I make an ‘outside-the-box’ suggestion?
” the A.I. said to James.

“Yes,” James replied.

“
Perhaps your friend Nikola Tesla could be of help?
”

James’s eyes opened wide, and a faint smile crossed his lips. “That’s actually a hell of an idea!”

“What?” Thel asked.

“I’ve got it! I know how to save Rich and Djanet!”

30

“Of course, you’ll need to build a tower,” the A.I. said as he calmly strolled by James back at the mainframe.

James was still in the operator’s position. “I’m on to you,” he replied.

“What?” The A.I. smiled, placing a hand on his chest as he mockingly feigned sincerity. “I’m only trying to help.”

“You’re
trying
to give away our position, which you will accomplish, and you know it.”

“My heavens. That was never part of my thinking,” the A.I. replied, amused.

“The androids have already reached the mainframe in Seattle and know it was abandoned. They’ll be looking for you—
us
—and tracing signals. The nans are working based on preprogramming now, but building the Tesla-designed tower will require me to send millions of instructions—
traceable
instructions.”

A continent away, in a place called Shoreham, Long Island, about sixty miles from Manhattan, the nans began to swirl in tiny wisps along the muddy ground. They multiplied at an exponential rate, and what had been wisps soon became a hurricane of activity. In just a few minutes, a Tesla tower, a magnificent metal structure stretching 180 feet into the air, stood triumphantly in the field. It exactly matched the designs and dimensions that the world’s greatest inventor had implemented but had never had the chance to complete.

“The aliens, no doubt, will have already traced the command signals back to us,” the A.I. began, “and you can’t run—they would be able to trace that too. You disappoint me, James. Just when I thought you were becoming an admirable computer, you had to go and ruin it with your pathetic human feelings of compassion.”

“I have a few more tricks up my sleeve yet,” James replied. The tower began to whir as James brought it to life. “You’re witnessing history here—something that should have happened hundreds of years ago—the human species is about to go truly wireless.”

“A little late, don’t you think?”

“Better late than never,” James replied.

31

H
igh above the Earth’s atmosphere, Rich and Djanet were about to put a hastily formulated plan into action. “Okay. Let’s do this!” Rich shouted as the two post-humans exited the wake of the magnetic engines on opposite sides and then shot simultaneously at the androids who were tearing apart the engine casing. Both blasts hit their mark, knocking several of the androids unconscious and off the hull. However, the blasts also caught the attention of dozens more machines, and they reacted with fury, lifting off the hull and pursuing Rich and Djanet. The post-humans quickly darted back inside the relative safety of the engine’s wake. Rich watched as android after android tried to enter the wake, only to be blasted away by its force, like a person trying to walk unprotected into a raging waterfall. “I think we made them angry!’ Rich observed.

Meanwhile, in the cockpit, James excitedly monitored the progress of the Tesla tower. “Old-timer, remember what I told you about the ionosphere of Venus?”

“Yes,” Old-timer replied, his brows knitted at first, until he realized the significance of James’s words. Suddenly, his eyes opened wide, and a slight smile emerged on his face. “You’re going to create the electromagnetic surge we need with the ionosphere!”

When Thel realized what that meant, her mouth formed a wide and relieved smile; at least temporarily, her fears that James’s thinking was becoming too machine-like abated. “That’s brilliant, James! I knew you wouldn’t let them die!”

“We’re not out of the woods yet, but in another thirty seconds, once our coordinates are linked to the tower, we’ll—”

James didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. An android ripped a hole in the ceiling of the cockpit and lunged into the room, smashing into James in a sickening meeting of metal with meat and bone.

32

“J
ames!” Thel screamed as she blasted the android, instantly rendering it unconscious and sending it into the wall with enough force to leave a sizable dent.

An automatic magnetic field went up to stop the cockpit from depressurizing, but, unlike the magnetic cocoons of the post-humans, it wasn’t impregnable. As a result, more androids began crawling through the small hole in the ceiling. Old-timer blasted the first one and scrambled to get across the room to protect the Purists. “You have to get out of here!” Old-timer shouted to Alejandra as she grabbed General Wong and began to pull him out of the room, aided by Lieutenant Patrick.

Their efforts were too little, too late. The third android to enter the room was immediately followed by a fourth and a fifth. Thel, who had sprawled over James’s badly broken body to form a protective shield, twisted her body around to shoot one of the androids, while Old-timer managed to shoot another, but the last one made it to Alejandra and stuck an instrument into her neck, instantly rendering her unconscious.

“No!” Lieutenant Patrick shouted as he pulled his gun out of his holster and unloaded into the back of the android. One of the bullets ricocheted off the titanium frame of the mechanical monster and hit Old-timer in the shoulder, spinning him around. He fell against the android and, in turn, it stabbed him with the same instrument it had used on Alejandra, rendering him unconscious. It grabbed him roughly under the arm and pulled his limp body with it, back out the hole and into space, killing the post-human almost instantly.

“Old-timer!” Thel cried out as, still draped over James’s badly crushed and bloodied body, she watched Old-timer die.