SECTOR 64: Ambush (34 page)

Her mother nodded.

Sandy took a few quick breaths and then shoved with all of her might. She could feel the boards bowing under her back. The timber shuddered. Sandy took another quick breath and redoubled her efforts. A scream of agony burst from her lips as her injured leg erupted in pain. Clutching the left knee, Sandy rolled onto her right side. Curled up in a ball, she pounded the floor with her right fist. "I can't move it!"

Her mother's soft sobs banished Sandy's self-pity. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Come on Fitzpatrick, pull it together! Think, think!
With a sudden realization, she opened her eyes. "I know what to do!"

Her mother's cries stopped as she looked at Sandy through tear-filled bloodshot eyes. She'd never seen her mom look so frail and vulnerable.

"I'll be right back, Momma. I have to get something out of Daddy's hangar."

She only nodded. Sitting with her husband's limp hand grasped in one hand and the other firmly clamped over the tourniquet knot, her mother looked on the verge of giving up all hope.

Sandy gave a reassuring smile. "He's going to be okay, Momma. I promise. I know what to do now. We'll have him out of there in no time."

"Okay, hun," she said. She gave a wan smile, doing her best to put on a brave front. The quiet desperation lurking in her eyes made Sandy's heart ache.

She pointed toward the closed airfield behind their backyard. "Does Daddy still keep the hangar key in the same spot?"

Her mother nodded.

"Okay." Sandy held up a finger. "I'll be right back."

Watching the last of his dreadnoughts slide into position, Salyth swiped at the blood dribbling from his lower jaw. With great anticipation, he savored the developments. His fangs dripped in expectation of the coming victory. The Argonians will see his fleet's formation as a desperate ploy to guard their damaged command ship. Watching for one wrong move, they'll come in nice and close.

"It's critical we maintain this altitude. Do not allow their ships to draw us higher. Let them approach. No one is to fire!" he growled to his subordinate.

"Yes, Commodore Salyth," the officer replied. Hunching over his console, he forwarded the reminder to the fleet.

Outside, the small Argonian Firebirds encircled his formation. Employing their standard box-in maneuver, the fighters trained their deadly weapons on his ships. Focusing on the larger vessels of the carrier group, Salyth barely noticed. The GDF battlecruisers and their central carrier ship drew closer.

His black tongue flickered, lapping the dripping saliva. Through his bloody maw, he grinned menacingly and growled, "That's right, come into my cave."

Jake's dread mounted. The Argonians were getting too close. However, their biggest ships still hovered outside the range of the Zox weapon.

He keyed the mic. "Vampire Six, how much time before one of the enemy ships can fire that weapon?"

"I was just calculating that. All of the ship's fired their primary weapon at least once … several twice." The colonel's voice cracked, the gravity of the news the words conveyed apparently weighing on him. After a brief pause, he continued. "The ship with the longest time since weapon activation is the one that took out Moscow. That was thirty minutes ago. So, we have fifteen minutes." Colonel Newcastle finished.

Jake's blood ran cold,
More than sixteen of our biggest cities gone. We've lost so much today.

"Look!" Richard said, pointing at the large ships. They had been outside of the enemy's weapon range. Now, the fleet maneuvered to take up a defensive position between the planet and the alien formation.

A crushing realization hit Jake. He checked his watch. "Oh, shit!"

Richard and Victor looked at him.

Jake slammed his hand down on the comm panel and screamed, "Vampire Six, it's been more than an hour since the ship over DC deployed its main weapon! It's an ambush, a coup de main! We have to warn them!"

Jake saw comprehension on Richard's face as his combat wingman leapt to the GDF section of the comm panel. Vic looked confused. Turning to him, Jake said, "These aliens attacked us to lure the Argonians into a trap. It's the only thing that makes sense."

Richard activated the GDF radio. He started shouting into it in the Argonian tongue.

Jake continued. "The unprovoked attack, no demands, just their systematic elimination of city after city, it's all been designed to draw the Galactic Defense Forces. This must be a new weapon. If the Argonians knew of its capabilities, they wouldn't be positioning themselves this close to their fleet."

"Surely they have shields," Vic said.

"Maybe, but if hundreds of feet of earth and rock didn't protect Space Control, I doubt shields will do any better."

Behind him, Jake heard the
Galactic Guardian's
executive officer berate Richard.

Lieutenant Croft's face turned ashen as a powerful shudder racked his body. "If they destroy the Argonians, we'll—"

"We're not going to let that happen!" Richard interrupted. Turning back to the radio, he continued transmitting. "I don't care what you think. I need to talk to your commander! It's imperative. I believe the Zoxyth are drawing you into a trap!"

"Captain Allison," replied a very authoritative voice. "This is Admiral Thoyd Feyhdyak. Let me assure you, there is nothing these Zoxyth have that our weapons and shielding cannot defeat."

Through clenched teeth, Richard said, "Admiral, they've already wiped out several of our cities, totally vaporizing every man woman and child within a hundred miles of their ships!"

"Vaporized?" the admiral responded.

Jake heard the first hint of concern in the Argonian's voice.

Not waiting for a response, the admiral continued. "Aside from a reading over North America's East Coast, we've detected no sign of fission reactions."

Maddeningly, the Argonians continued to mass their forces between the Zoxyth and the planet.

"No, no!" Richard said, pounding the control panel. "No nuclear weapons were used on us. They're using a weapon that only affects humans."

"They've attacked you with chemical or biological weapons?"

"No, sir! Some kind of energy wave bursts from their ship!" Richard said, still pounding on the control panel to emphasize his words. "It vaporizes every human within a hundred miles! It doesn't affect structures or plants or animals. It only kills humans! In case you don't understand a hundred miles, that's
millions
of us vaporized every fucking time they've fired that goddamned weapon!"

After a brief pause, the admiral returned, a tone of pure horror supplanting his condescension. "You're describing a gene disruptor weapon. They've been banned for millennia, the technology is a closely guarded secret. I'll explain more in a moment. Standby."

Space beyond the view-wall burst into brilliant fire. Jake threw a panicked arm over his eyes. For a terrifying moment, he thought the Zoxyth had deployed their weapon.

The
Turtle's
view-wall auto-dimmed, damping the brilliance down to a bearable level.

"Holy shit!" Victor whispered.

Outside, the Zoxyth shields glowed like miniature suns under a tremendous onslaught of brilliant laser beams. The forcefields overlapped like a collection of luminescent soap bubbles, completely obscuring the ships within.

In the face of so much violence, the silence within the
Turtle
was surreal.

The Argonian radio crackled to life. "For now, we need to keep them under attack. A gene disruptor weapon will penetrate a shield, but it cannot be fired by a shielded ship," Admiral Feyhdyak finished.

"Gene disruptor?" Richard asked.

"Yes, it's a focused quantum phase disruptor. They target a single species. Designed to shift all material within their sphere of influence to a higher energy state, they are tuned to a specific DNA strand's sympathetic frequency. Essentially, the targeted bodies are moved into a dimension incompatible with life."

"It's a genocide weapon," Richard replied.

"That's why it's banned technology," Admiral Feyhdyak said.

A pulse caught Jake's attention.

"Look, one of their shields is failing," Vic said.

"Turtle One, this is Vampire Six. What the hell is going on?"

Richard switched radios. "Colonel, I'm on the horn with the Argonian commander. We were right, this is a new weapon, although, apparently not unknown. Their commander says the aliens won't be able to deploy it while under fire."

The strobing shield flashed then failed. A barrage of lasers converged on the unprotected ship. It exploded like a scene from a movie, a radiant shock wave signaling its demise.

Launching through the patio's blown-out rear wall, Sandy hobbled across the backyard. Even limping, she traversed the freshly mown lawn at a respectable pace. Reaching the rear property line, she stepped onto prone cinderblocks. Knocked over by the shockwave, the eight-foot block wall laid on its side. Now only eight inches high, it barely slowed her. Emerging onto the closed airfield, Sandy angled left, heading straight to the old T-shaped hangar.

Seeing the structure elicited a flood of childhood memories. This was where Sandy had grown up, where she'd spent her summer breaks and school holidays. She had loved the sights and sounds, even the smells. Sandy could almost see Tom Flannery's old LTD next to the hangar and smell the ever-present cigar smoke that followed her father's friend and fellow instructor pilot. As if rooted in the man's bushy mustache, a thin stogie always hung from Tom's lips. He, along with a cadre of polyester-clad fellow pilots, had been permanent fixtures at that hangar.

Over the years, her father, with help from the self-proclaimed
Lounge Lizards,
taught her everything from how to change a spark plug to how to recover a spinning airplane. The seed of her love of all things aviation germinated grew and flowered in this very spot.

Carmel Valley Vintage Airport closed over ten years ago. After a decade of neglect, soil and sod partially obscured the derelict runway, though long sections of pavement still spanned the gaps. However, in her mind's eye, Sandy could still see all of it as it had appeared in her childhood.

The rear property lines of the homes on her parent's side of the street ran parallel to the airfield's sole runway. As the neighborhood's southwestern most property, her parent's house sat at the field's southeast corner, less than a hundred yards from Dad's old T-hangar. Having earned their name from an airplane-conforming shape, the T-shaped buildings were the country's most popular type of general aviation hangar.

Limping through knee-high weeds, she continued toward the maroon corrugated metal building. Sandy veered away from the central main doors. Instead, she headed to the front left edge.

Arriving, Sandy leaned on the building's corner. Grimacing against the pain shooting through her left leg, she fought to catch her breath. Dropping her head, she looked down on a dusty flagstone. "There you are." Bending at the waist, Sandy lifted the flat rock, revealing an ancient lozenge tin. Picking it out of the dirt elicited a metallic rattle. Lifting the hinged lid, she grabbed a well-worn bronze key and unceremoniously dropped the small box onto the ground. Reconsidering, she bent over and gently set the tin back in place, then repositioned the flagstone.

Standing, Sandy registered movement at the airfield's northeast corner. A dust cloud expanded behind a vehicle. It appeared to have just entered the field from the subdivision's far north end. When she'd first encountered the asteroid blocking her path, Sandy had considered doubling back to that end of the neighborhood to approach her parent's house from this side. However, that plan had evaporated with the appearance of her mother.

Still a couple of thousand feet away, the vehicle formed a tiny dot at the middle of an expanding ochre dust cloud. An inverted image reflected off the tarmac's shimmering heat waves. Morphing the car into the central disk of a surreal flower, the symmetrical likeness paraded an ever-blossoming halo of rippling pedals. It appeared to head straight toward Sandy. Disquieted by the vehicle's sudden emergence, she studied it for a moment, then shook her head in self-reproach.
Stop being a paranoid jackass. Get what you came for.

Tearing her eyes from the distant car, she crossed to the hangar's side door. Thoughts returning to her father, Sandy grabbed the ancient lock hanging in its rusty hasp. Well maintained, the padlock accepted the key without resistance and easily opened. She removed it and threw open the door.

Morning light burned a hole through the hangar's darkness. Spilling through the opening, the light revealed a white wingtip. It was the right wing of her father's airplane. He'd had the four-seat high-wing Cessna 172 since Sandy had been a toddler. She'd grown up climbing in and on this airplane. It was also the first plane Sandy had ever flown.

Stepping through the opening, she ducked under the wing. Knowing exactly where to find her quarry, she didn't bother with the light switch. Tripping over clutter wasn't a concern. When it came to this hangar and his aircraft, her father was the ultimate perfectionist. Mom often joked that Wikipedia's page on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder featured a picture of her father standing in this hangar.

Reaching the back wall, Sandy dropped to her good knee. Groping in the darkness, her hand immediately fell on the item she sought. "There you are." Grunting under the load, Sandy picked up the heavy floor jack.

The mixed aroma of aviation gasoline, oils, and cleaning supplies reinforced her sense of nostalgia. With no time to reflect, Sandy hurried back to the door. Walking outside, she heard the throaty sound of an idling V-8 engine.

Stepping off the hangar's entry stoop, Sandy froze. Parked a hundred yards away, a familiar dark red Camaro sat along the airfield's eastern boundary. Strung behind it, the ghost of its dust trail still hung in the air.

"Oh shit," Sandy whispered. Without turning, she reversed directions, cautiously extending her foot back, toward the stoop's three-foot-wide concrete pad.