CHAPTER 20: The Present
TRIPLER ARMY MEDICAL CENTER,
OAHU, HAWAII
Kelly Reynolds opened her eyes and immediately shut them, finding the bright glint of sunlight coming through her room's windows unbearable. She heard someone shutting the blinds and tried to open her eyes once more.
"Take it slowly," a woman's voice said in a whisper.
Kelly opened her mouth to say something, but only a hoarse croak would come out.
Someone used a spoon to put some crushed ice in her mouth and Kelly allowed the chips to melt. The water felt wonderful sliding down her throat. She could see now. A nurse hovered over her, another spoonful of ice ready. Kelly gave a slight nod and the nurse put it in her mouth. She savored the coolness. Then she tried to speak again.
"Mike?"
"Who?"
"Mike Turcotte. I need to talk to him."
"You mean the fellow on the news? The one on board that spaceship going to Mars?"
Kelly weakly nodded. "I've got to talk to him. I know the truth. And he needs to know it too."
" 'The truth' ?" Cummings asked.
"Who we are."
MARS
The cruise missiles were lined up along the edge of the cargo bay, pointing forward. Kincaid had done the calculations and was now standing next to Yakov in the control room, giving him slight adjustments to their course as they closed on Mars.
Turcotte and half the Space Command team were crowded inside Duncan's ship, which was still inside the bay. They had their TASC suits on, weapons ready. The armorer had done a quick patch job on Turcotte's suit. Good enough for a seal. They'd off-loaded the two tubes in order to make room. Duncan was at the controls, programming in their course.
"Ready to put the brakes on," Yakov announced over their tactical net.
Duncan stood up.
"What are you doing?" Turcotte asked.
"You don't need me here," Duncan said. "I've programmed the ship it's called the Fynbar, by the way, after one of the leaders on my planet in the revolt against the Airlia to do what you want. I'm more useful on the mothership."
"That's not the plan," Turcotte argued, as she headed for the hatch.
"Trust me on this," Duncan said. She paused looking up at him. "This is the end. I am sorry about what I did to you, but it was necessary. I hope you'll understand that one day." She reached up and touched the front of the black helmet, as if she could reach through and touch his face. "Good luck."
Then she was out of the ship, the hatch shutting behind her and sealing.
"We've got the Talon on screen," Yakov announced, startling Turcotte. "It's closing on us fast." "Do it," Turcotte ordered.
Outside the ship, Duncan went into the main corridor, shutting the door behind her. As soon as it was shut, the outer cargo bay door opened. The ship lifted and exited.
In the control room, Yakov saw the ship depart, then hit the controls. The mothership slowed abruptly and halted. Maintaining the momentum, and no longer attached to their cradles, the cruise missiles kept going, exiting the bay and spreading out in the pattern that Kincaid had programmed.
Inside the Talon, Artad watched his tactical display. The mothership had halted and ten objects were still coming forward from it. A craft also had exited the mothership and was descending toward the planet.
He issued orders to his crew quickly.
Once the cargo door sealed behind her ship and pressure was restored, Duncan reentered the bay. She ran over to the empty tube and hit the keys on the side as she slid her ka into its slot. The top swung up and she climbed in, lying down. She put a thin metal band around her head. Her right arm had regenerated to the wrist so far. The top closed and the metal band sent microfilaments into her brain.
The machine powered up and removed the memory blocks she had installed.
It took all of twenty seconds. The machine shut down, the lid opened, and Duncan exited. She stood still in the cargo bay for several moments, absorbing the impact of the complete truth. It did not surprise her, given what she had allowed herself to know. It all made sense.
This was the end for her, the end of a millennia-old mission. A mission her partner had given his life for over a thousand years earlier. She went to his tube, leaned over, and kissed the clear covering. She was glad she had buried the real body on Earth.
Then she left the cargo bay and headed for the control room.
"Everyone sealed?" Turcotte asked.
He received positive responses from the other commandos as he stared at the display monitor. They were descending quickly toward Mons Olympus, the Fynbar's engines supplemented by the gravitational pull of the planet.
"Open the hatch," Turcotte ordered.
The Airlia in the control center for the array had the incoming spacecraft locked in. The leader of the survivors hit the hexagonal buttons in front of him, building up power in the array.
Turcotte saw the glow intensify in the center of the array. "Go!" he screamed. They were moving too fast but there was no time to wait.
Instead of a message, the first thing projected outward by the array was a broad pulse of power toward the Fynbar.
Turcotte had done several hundred parachute drops during his time in Special Operations. From almost every type of aircraft the military owned from Blackhawk helicopters through massive C-5 cargo planes. But shooting out of the open hatch of the Fynbar as it descended toward Mars was a new experience. He was the last one out of the hatch and as he cleared it, he kicked in the jets attached at the base of each leg, keeping himself oriented head down toward the planet at a slight angle from straight descent.
It almost wasn't enough as the pulse of power shot up from the array. It caught one of the commandos as it passed.
The blast ripped open his suit and pulverized the body inside. He didn't even have a chance to scream.
It hit the spacecraft, knocking it off its trajectory and sending it tumbling toward the planet below.
On his display, Artad saw the spacecraft knocked aside. Then he turned his attention to the incoming warheads, which were getting very close. A puny attempt by the humans to attack, but one that had to be dealt with immediately nevertheless. They were on a fixed trajectory with apparently no maneuvering capability.
A golden beam shot out from the tip of the Talon, hitting one missile after another.
The damaged, unmanned Fynbar tumbled toward Mars. It hit the edge of Mons Olympus about two kilometers from the array, producing a large puff of red dirt. It bounced, flipped, and skidded along the edge, then down the side, gouging out a three-meter-deep trench in the soft soil until coming to a halt a kilometer from the summit.
Turcotte cursed as he tried to reorient himself. He was coming in very fast. Too fast in his estimation. He got legs down and burned the solid fuel rockets attached to the ends, trying to slow. A small number displayed on the screen in front of him indicated altitude and it was clicking down at an alarming rate. He was slowing, but would it be enough before impact?
"There's an escape pod through there." Duncan was pointing to the left, where a door slid open at her command.
Yakov, Leahy, Quinn, and Kincaid looked at her dumbly for a few seconds. The screen was filled with the sight of warheads exploding just short of the Talon.
"What do " Yakov began, but Duncan shoved him in the shoulder.
"Go now! It is better to get down to the surface and have half a chance, than stay here, where you will have no chance at all."
Yakov stared at her, the shove moving him not in the slightest. He looked into her eyes for several seconds. Then he nodded. "Let's go."
As they rushed through the hatch, Duncan sat down in the command seat.
The first commando who'd exited the spaceship hit the array, smashed through a panel, and hit the surface of Mars at such velocity that the suit, with man inside, went four feet into the ground. Blood and oxygen poured out of the resulting tears.
The second and third fared little better, their screams just before impact echoing to those still descending. Turcotte realized there was no way he would be able to decelerate quickly enough and he would share their fate.
The fourth man slammed in and died.
Turcotte used a small side jet to change his trajectory slightly.
The fifth jumper, Captain Manning, hit the array, passed through, and died.
Turcotte hit the top of one of the pylons at an angle, the impact jarring him hard inside the suit. He slid along the curving outer edge at high speed. With his free hand he jabbed the tip of Excalibur at the metal. It cut in and was almost wrenched from his grip. Only the power multipliers built into the arm allowed him to hold on to the handle.
The sixth jumper died.
Turcotte's jets were still firing as he continued downward, with Excalibur tearing a gouge along the side of the pylon.
TRIPLER ARMY MEDICAL CENTER,
OAHU, HAWAII
The communications specialist from Fort Shafter seemed uncertain about why exactly he was here. Kelly Reynolds didn't find that surprising. She'd had Nurse Cummings hold up a mirror so she could see herself, and she knew she looked like hell. Breathing took a major effort.
"Move the microphone closer," Reynolds whispered, unable to make her withered vocal cords produce anything louder.
The specialist slid the mike nearer to her.
"Are you sure they'll get this?" Reynolds asked.
"It's on the guard frequency they were monitoring, relayed through their site outside Fort Bragg," the man replied. "There is, however, the issue of time lag."
"What?"
"It takes over two and a half minutes for a radio wave to go from Earth to Mars. The same for return. So it will take five minutes before we find out if anyone hears you."
Reynolds weakly nodded. "Turn it on."
The specialist flipped a switch.
"Mike. Mike Turcotte. This is Kelly Reynolds. Acknowledge if you can hear me. I know the truth now. I know it all. I know who we are. Who humans are."
She let her head fall back on the pillow and waited.
SPACE
Duncan hit one of the hexagonal buttons, and the escape pod was shot out of the side of the mothership, arcing toward the planet below.
She looked forward. The Talon was coming in fast. She knew the shields and weapons had been deactivated on the mothership, which left her essentially defenseless against the incoming ship. She also knew Artad was coming to recapture the mothership, not destroy it. Which was just fine with her.
Turcotte had the wind knocked out of him as he hit at the base of the pylon, and for that he was grateful, given the fate of the other seven men. Excalibur had left a three-inch-deep gouge down the entire length of the pylon, but it had slowed him enough for him to survive.
He hefted the arm holding the MK-98. He put Excalibur back into its sheath, then reached to the large pack on his back and made sure the tactical nuclear warhead they'd cannibalized from the Tomahawks was still in place. When he'd been in Special Forces Turcotte had served briefly on a SADM Strategic Atomic Demolitions Munitions team. He'd supervised the removal of seven of the ten warheads and their preparation.
Unfortunately, once removed from the missile casing, there had been no way to rig them for detonation on impact, only manual activation. Catching his breath, Turcotte looked about. The base of the pylon was about fifty meters from the top edge of the bowl that held the array. He saw no sign of the Airlia.
He moved toward the dish.
Duncan heard the thud as the Talon bumped into the side of the mothership next to the airlocks. She checked the exterior view as the lean ship came into place, exactly where it had left. She hit the control panel and more thuds reverberated through the ship as the clamps locked onto the Talon. Then she sealed the locks with a password so that the Talon couldn't escape.
She tapped a few more commands into the panel. Satisfied, she turned around and waited, facing the entry way.
How close was close enough? Turcotte roughly knew the blast radius of the bomb he was carrying at least on Earth. He wasn't sure if the effects would be any different here on Mars. It had been a large issue of contention when he'd been on the SADM team because while half the team were the bomb handlers, the other half were snipers whose job was to keep the bomb under what the army termed "positive control with firepower" until detonation. Baby-sitting a nuclear weapon was not anyone's idea of a fun time. Team members had pretty much agreed that despite the assurances of the experts about blast effects, the protective snipers were dead men. In fact, they had assumed that the delay that they were told was built into the bomb to give those placing it time to escape didn't exist.
Turcotte had accepted the same fate when he'd come up with his plan.
He'd also decided that the green glowing component held by the wires had to be the critical node for the array. That was what he needed to destroy in order to ensure that any Airlia survivors could not rebuild the system.
Close enough would be right below the center, Turcotte decided.
The escape pod automatically slowed as it neared the surface of Mars. It still hit at a high rate of speed and rolled for over a mile before coming to a halt. Those inside were strapped in tight to oversize seats, but as the craft rolled, they were spun about in a dizzying fashion.
The interior became a mixture of strapped-in, bruised people and vomit. When the pod finally came to a halt, the four occupants looked at each other. Leahy, the newest member of the Area 51 team, was the first to break the silence. "What do we do now?"
Yakov unbuckled from the seat and wiped off the front of his shirt. He shrugged. "We wait. There is nothing else to do."
"Wait for who?" Leahy demanded. "For what?"
"Those are both very good questions," Yakov acknowledged. "Most likely we are waiting to die."
"Mike."
Turcotte paused on the lip of the array as he heard Duncan's voice. "Yes?"
"The Talon is here. I've locked it to the mothership so it can't get away. I can see them boarding through the airlock on the display. Artad is with them."
"He's there?" Turcotte had hoped that Artad would try to regain the mothership before sending a message. That's what most generals would do improve their situation before reporting back to higher command.
"Yes. I recognize him."
"Are you pulling him out of orbit and away?"
"No."
Turcotte frowned. The plan was for Duncan to get Artad away while the drop team now down to just him destroyed the array. Turcotte could see several large-tracked vehicles off to his right along with some prefab structures, which he assumed currently contained the Airlia who had finished the array. Along with the controls for the transmitter.
"What are you going to do?" Turcotte checked the upward view. He couldn't see the mothership against the dark sky, although he knew it had to be getting closer.
"Where are you?" Duncan asked instead of answering.
"On the lip of the array."
"Move away. Fast."
"Why? I'm supposed " "Do it."
Then it came to him. What she planned to do. He choked back the words of protest because as soon as he understood her plan, he also knew it was the best course of action. Turcotte turned away from the array and activated the jets, leaning forward and moving away quickly.
"Mike?"
"Yes?"
"The others are on the surface. In an escape pod. About five kilometers from the array." She rattled off some grid coordinates.
"I've got it. But "
"The Fynbar was shot down by Artad's Talon. It's damaged but I think it will still fly." She quickly gave him some instructions as he bounded away from the array.
When she was done there was a moment of silence. "Lisa."
"Yes?" She sounded distracted. "I'm sorry it had to go this way." "It's for the best." "I know."
"What I did to you was wrong. But I was so lonely after so many years. And I needed help."
Turcotte was heading down Mons Olympus, although the grade was so gentle there was very little angle of descent. "It's all right."
"I have to go now. They're cutting into the control room door."
Turcotte paused, checking the upward view. "What is the truth behind all this, Lisa?"
"Kelly Reynolds is transmitting from Hawaii," Duncan said. "She knows. She'll tell you. Then you need to decide
what to do with that knowledge. Good luck." There was the sound of an explosion and the link went dead.
A piece of shrapnel from the breached door hit Lisa Duncan in the shoulder and ripped through her body and the seat she was in, smacking the wall behind her. She hardly noticed the pain after all she had been through recently.
A seven-foot-tall Airlia strode through the hole. He paused when he saw her sitting in the command seat. She knew he was searching his memory and she saw the expression cross his face as he recognized her.
Duncan smiled and hit a red hexagonal button in the arm of the chair. Everyone staggered as the mothership abruptly accelerated.
Artad dashed forward, ignoring her and running his six-fingered hands over the control console. To no avail.
Lisa Duncan closed her eyes and thought of her husband and son. Of her planet. Of her people.
Turcotte saw the mothership a black form flashing through the sky. Coming straight down and accelerating so fast he almost lost sight of it as it went into the array.
The concussion from the impact hit him with a tidal wave of red dirt, rock, and Martian air. Turcotte was lifted from the ground and "rode" the front of the wave over two kilometers, before being unceremoniously deposited on the surface.
He scrambled to his feet and looked up. Where the mothership had crashed into the array there was nothing but a huge gaping hole in the side of Mons Olympus.