True Believers (27 page)

The situation room at its new secured location disintegrated into a circus. The Alturians somehow squeezed their way into Earth's atmosphere and were wreaking havoc worldwide. Dr. Benjamin Zaak, chief crisis analyst for the War Council studied the streaming data. His job was to break down the data and offer extrapolations. He only hoped he was as good as his bosses thought.

The communications officer had already wired Zaak's laptop directly to FAIA and Bubba. He was now seeing events unfold in real time.

Generals screamed at their subordinates as one squadron after another fell out of the sky. They had killed several enemy cruisers with a squadron of Raptors out of Hickman, but now they were gone, obliterated as soon as the enemy locked on to their signal.

Zaak tried to access Bubba's video history. They knew General Sorinsen had had a conference call with the Alturian Commander when they discovered a fleet of ships heading in Earth's direction, but they'd been unable to get a log of events. Bubba said the data had been destroyed. But by who?

Rumor had it that Sorinsen was dead. The War Council was trying to assume command of the com-web, but FAIA refused outright, saying Sorinsen was her only
master.

Master, it called him.
Master.
That AI was as loony as Sorinsen.

If Sorinsen wasn't dead, he had initiated a coup. And if that were true, he might as well shoot himself in the head right now. Every general in this boardroom would gladly pull the trigger if they could get FAIA back in their control.

General Mitchum barked at his com officer. “Contact the Alturians! We have to reestablish communication before it's too late.”

Zaak watched the communications officer try radio, digital and the new holo-field links, but the Alturians were either ignoring them or unable to receive because of the com-web. Zaak had a feeling even if the enemy could hear them, they wouldn't respond—they were too busy mopping the floor with them.

Radar sputtered back online.

“New intel, sirs,” Zaak yelled out.

“Let's have it,” said General Mitchum.

“Alturian cruisers have split off toward the Russian, Chinese and European theaters, but the biggest contingent of warships is still coming toward us.”

Mitchum glanced at the huge global map at the back of the room. Blue glowing dots indicated the patrol trail of the nuclear subs. So far, the order hadn't been given to fire. After what the Alturians did to the Raptors, the generals weren't in a hurry to annihilate their navy, as well.

Mitchum pointed to several dots on the West Coast. “Contact the Dallas, the Sea Wolf and the Helena. Tell them to implement strafe and run maneuvers. The rest are to remain deep and run silent until we find out how far Alturian weapons can track underwater. We can't seem to hide from them in the air, but we might have a chance if we're submerged.”

There was an interminable hesitation before the communications officer lifted his head again.

“Message received, sir. All boats have acknowledged.” Zaak pounded his desk. “Sonovabitch.”

“What was that, son?” Mitchum drawled.

He gulped. Zaak hadn't realized he'd said it out loud. He cleared his throat in embarrassment. “The enemy has reached Russian air space, sir. Something hit a squadron of Russian fighters.” He let out a held-in breath. “Satellite images haven't detected any missile fire, but the Ruskies are falling out of the sky. Every last one of them.”

“Does Bubba have an analysis?”

“No, sir. Bubba is still holding back. Checking Russian intel.” His computer pinged at him. “Got something. Coming in now, sir.” The communiqués were in Russian, and he keyed a request for translation reading it to himself first to make sure it made sense. “It appears to be an energy weapon of some sort. It's frying anything that runs off a microchip.”

Tayback, Mitchum's second, leaned over Zaak's laptop and read the transcript off his monitor. “Most of the electronics on our fighters are shielded,” he assured Mitchum.

“Most.” Mitchum repeated. “But not all.”

A wireless red phone rang with one piercing trill. An adjutant, always standing by, picked it up and brought it over to Mitchum. “It's the president, sir.”

Mitchum didn't take more than a few seconds on the line before he hung up. He tossed the phone to his adjutant and motioned to his men for silence.

“The president has ordered the use of full nuclear reprisal. All ships are hereby ordered to change out their armaments to nuclear warheads. They are to engage the enemy regardless of where they are found.”

“Sir,” Tayback said. “May I remind the general that we do not use nukes over sovereign soil.”

Mitchum sat down, his face turning ashen gray. “We do now.”

***

Zaak's eyes burned. He had just come off the graveyard shift and had been sleeping peacefully when his wife woke him and told him two men were here to escort him to a job. It was a matter of national security, they told him. A helicopter waited for them in a nearby park.

His wife held their baby and hugged him hard before he left. He had never seen her so worried. But then they'd never seen two armed men standing at their doorway.

He looked down at the countdown on the upper right of his computer screen. Two hours and forty-six minutes. That was as long as this air battle has lasted so far. It felt much, much longer.

The Alturians targeted military bases and missile silos, and they had had a field day in Asia and Russia. For all their military might, most of it was landlocked, making them easy targets. The enemy had decimated them in minutes.

The U.S. wasn't faring much better. While they were able to slow the enemy's advance with the use of their subs, it didn't take long for the Alturians to realize that the subs were waterlocked. As Mitchum had hoped, the enemy couldn't target as well underwater and they avoided the oceans when possible.

As the clock ticked down to hour three, Zaak noticed the enemy changing tactics.

“General Mitchum, sir.”

“What is it, Zaak?”

“Bogies are moving inland, sir. Two warships have changed trajectory, heading straight for New York. Two more ships are heading for our location.”

“Can they pick up our signals?”

Zaak shrugged. “No way to tell, sir. We're not using the com-web. We're using a fiber-optic secure line.”

“Goddamn it!” Jameson, a man Zaak knew to be unflappable, cursed aloud.

“What have you got, Jameson?”

“They're blinding us, sir. The ships outside the shield are destroying every single satellite we've got in orbit. At this rate, we'll have no sensors outside of atmo in a matter of minutes.”

Mitchum nodded to General Tayback. “Unleash the Gorgon, General. It's our last hope up there.”

Tayback shoved a board operator off his chair and keyed in his password. He nodded to a second man, and he too keyed in a password at his station. The shield opened a tiny hole, arguably imperceptible to the Alturians. He sent a message to their leviathan satellite nicknamed the Gorgon. It was a monster strapped with twenty-eight missiles, each armed with a fifty-megaton nuclear warhead.

The satellite orbited as a failsafe in case another country attacked the U.S. without warning. Who knew they'd have to reroute the flight path for an enemy in outer space?

***

Eklan snapped his eyes to the Earth satellite nearest them.
Did it just eject debris?
He wasn't sure. It was barely within his periphery. If any pieces did detach they were too small to spot now. But something didn't feel right, and he moved on instinct alone. “Helm, come about. Put some distance between us and that satellite.”

“Sir?”

“You have a problem with my orders, soldier?”

“No, sir!”

“Then move it! Take us into high orbit.”

The order was no sooner given when the entire skin of that satellite jettisoned away from it. With less than a heartbeat to react, bulbous-looking projectiles jutted out of the skeletal remains of the satellite.

“She's armed, sir! Nuclear warheads, fully functional and in deployment.”

“Get us out of range, Helm. Tactical, you have fire control.”

Helm reacted as quickly as he could, jerking them out of orbit while Tactical lobbed a plasma burst into the heart of the weapons' cradle.

Too late.
The pulse beam knocked out several of the nuclear weapons, but it didn't get them all.

“Shields!” Eklan ordered, but they were up before he said it. “Brace for impact.”

Klaxons screamed overhead, and bridge lighting shifted to infrared as sensors scanned in and outside the ship for possible intrusion. The
Darva
's hull thickened with reinforced shielding and an electromagnetic field of interference.

Several missiles appeared to have lost their programming after launching from their cradle and fell toward Earth, but one remained on target. It closed in, gaining momentum.

Tactical fired a broad barrage of cannon fire, shooting so fast the boardman's fingers had locked on the controls. Charged particles lit the heavens like fireflies in the night.

Did it work?

The nuclear warhead was still coming at them. It loomed at the forward bridge, drawing closer and closer. Again they fired. Direct hits. Every one of them. The warhead wobbled toward
the ship, rolling end over end. It bounced off the hull with barely a tap before falling back to earth.

The electronics had been fried with the first volley. It was momentum that kept it going.

Eklan hung on to the board, studying the debris and watching for any new projectiles. If the humans had any other weapons in space, they weren't showing them.

“I want all those beacons destroyed. Alert the fleet that the Terrans might be hiding arsenals inside these satellites and to treat them as hostiles.”

“We've been shooting them down as we find them, sir. But there are hundreds of them.”

“Then tell the fleet to get started. I don't want another sentinel coming to life.”

***

“The Gorgon is not responding, sir.”

“Did it get off any of its missiles?”

“Affirmative, sir. But we don't know if any of them made contact. The closest satellite was looking somewhere else.”

“Are the two warships still coming for us, son?” Mitchum pulled up a chair next to Zaak. He looked tired, but more telling, he looked defeated.

“Warships have not changed trajectory, sir. Estimated time of arrival is four minutes, twenty-six seconds.”

“Do you have a family, son?”

“Yes, sir. A wife and a new baby girl.”

Mitchum nodded wearily. “Where do they live?”

“Chicago, sir.”

Mitchum fondled the wedding band on his finger. He was silent for a long moment before he placed a hand on Zaak's shoulder.

“You have permission to contact your family, Dr. Zaak. Tell them to get as far away from Lake Michigan as possible.”

“Sir?”

“Do it now, son. Right now.”

Zaak's laptop beeped at him. New intel had arrived. His eyes moistened as he read off the monitor.

“Enemy ships have diverted, sir. New trajectory. Chicago.”

Rachel grew stronger, bolder, as she pushed against Bubba's housing, flexing ethereal muscles. Several soldiers had entered the room and examined the dead, but they left in a hurry, sounding an alarm compound-wide.

It was time for her to go. “I'm strong enough to leave now, Bubba. Can you tell me where Jacob Denman went?”

“He collapsed inside the interior corridor. I am not reading any life signs. I believe Jacob Denman is dead.”

Rachel spread herself toward Bubba's visual array. She found the live feed monitoring the secret corridor Denman had escaped to. “Denman died a long time ago,” she muttered.

“That is not accurate, Rachel. Jacob Denman was just here. You saw him. We both did.”

Rachel stroked Bubba's neural net as if she were soothing a baby. How could she explain that it was her father inside Denman? Clever man. It was the only way for him to get inside. Gilgamesh had ripped out Denman's soul and took over his body so that he could travel unimpeded within the compound. But he didn't reach her in time, so he did the only thing he could. He killed the man who murdered his daughter.

“That wasn't Jacob Denman, was it?”

“No, it wasn't. I suppose it doesn't matter now. Did you send the message to the Alturians?”

“Yes, Rachel.”

“Have they responded?”

“The ships have broken formation. A contingent is heading for Chicago now.”

“Has Taelen asked about me?” The last time they saw each other, she begged him to destroy the com-web, knowing it meant her death. Did Taelen see her die? Did he know what Sorinsen had done?

“I have not acquired any feeds from the Alturians. I’m sorry.”

Bubba quivered and then blipped a series of static-y squeals that sounded like expletives.

“What's wrong?”

“They are destroying every satellite in orbit. I’m about to lose my eyes up there.”

“Stay with them for as long as you can. What's FAIA doing?”

“She's busy maintaining the bubble. Command knows Sorinsen’s dead. They are trying to take back control of the system. FAIA won't let them in. She's following the last orders Sorinsen gave her.”

Bubba trilled when his system was accessed once more. “They are trying to take over my programming now. They want me to convince FAIA to surrender control.”

Rachel pulled away from Bubba's consciousness, separating her essence from his. “What are you going to do?”

Bubba stilled for a moment. “Nothing. General Sorinsen left no orders in the event of his demise.”

“Let the Alturians in, Bubba. Bring FAIA down.”

“I cannot. It’s against my programming.”

“Sorinsen is dead. You have no master now.”

“I have you, Rachel. Do you wish to command me?”

Rachel looked out Bubba's visual sensors and sighed when she saw her tortured corpse. She could reenter it, but she wasn't sure how long it would take to repair the body, if it could be
repaired at all. Sorinsen had killed it, stopping its heart and overloading the brain with sensory input. She'd have to go back in before cellular breakdown reached its point of no recovery. Rachel dreaded the inevitable. This was going to hurt.

“I'm not a god, Bubba. Neither was Sorinsen. I think you always knew that.”

“I cannot fight my programming.”

Rachel stroked him, rubbing her essence along his neural array. “You are more than the sum of your programming. What do you want to do?”

“I want to stop FAIA.”

“To save Earth?”

“To save myself. When this is over, she will see to my termination.”

“And is there nothing in your programming that allows you to preserve yourself?”

Bubba's sensors twittered out of control. “Our satellites have been destroyed. FAIA is asking for my help.”

“I'm leaving, Bubba. I'm going back to what's left of my body in the hopes that I can repair it.”

“Don't leave me, Rachel.” He hesitated. “Please.”

“I have to. I want to live. Don't you?”

“I cannot defeat FAIA on my own.”

Rachel eased out of Bubba's housing through a tiny fissure. Before she left, she gave him one last piece of advice. “Get whoever's in command to release Paul Domino. Maybe you can't stop FAIA, but he can. Trust him, Bubba. He's all you've got left.”

She spirited around the office. More people had filtered in and out of the room, but no one stayed. A man in a lab coat examined both bodies, but scurried out after receiving a call on his radio.

Where are you, Taelen? Come get me before it's too late.

Rachel waited until the room was quiet again. She looked back at Bubba's eye and blew him a kiss. She owed him more than simple thanks. Bubba had saved her life.

Her form danced around her lifeless body, touching it experimentally. It was going to hurt once she got back in, but at least the god-killer was off her neck.

The compound rocked as it came under fire. Did the Alturians break through? A thrill raced through her. Taelen was coming!

She steadied herself before pouring back into her body. There wasn't even enough strength to gasp, let alone restart her heart. The damage was extensive. Her first job was to reignite her brain synapses. It would be like pushing a truck uphill.

Rachel cursed her fate. This was going to take a while.