War of the Worlds 2030 (24 page)

“You'll see when we reach my room. They put this collar thing around us. We don't obey, zap. Not much choice. Still in all, I've always said there's some things I'll die before I do.”

“Like?”

“Won't kill my own kind. Won't take a woman who isn't willing. Won't hurt a kid.”

Ji-Yeon looked at him for a long moment. “Come on.”

“What, where?”

“You just won the prize, Andy.”

“The prize?”

“You're an officer now. Let's get to the bridge.”

Andy followed her with a confused expression.

* * * *

“I can explain,” said Beth when Ji-Yeon stepped onto the bridge and saw the muscular seaman who stood beside her.

“No need,” said Ji-Yeon as Andy followed her onto the bridge.

“Fucking liberation day!” said the man beside Beth.

“About time, Rick, about time. Anyone gone to look for the keys?” asked Andy.

“Billy is rifling the captain's quarters. You're the one that did the old bastard aren't you?” Rick was operating a console preparing for the ship to depart and spared Ji-Yeon a glance.

“I'm not proud of it,” said Ji-Yeon

“You did the world a favor.”

The door to the bridge opened and Julia stepped in “I have to tell you…What? oh…” she said as she saw the other two men. A short, wiry man of Asian descent followed her onto the bridge.

“Fucking aces, I'm glad you guys made it,” he said.

“Who can we trust?” asked Ji-Yeon

“The four you've got. The officers were all heart and soul. Promised their own kingdoms when the war was over,” answered Andy. “I'm going to the engine room. If he finds those damn keys let me know. Those men that came with you, they part of your team?”

Ji-Yeon nodded. “Yes.”

“Get them down to me. I'll need hands to get this tub ready to sail.

“I'll tell them. Julia, tell the resistance people we're ready for boarding,” said Ji-Yeon.

* * * *

“Dad, how could you?” said Zane as the figure moved along the corridor towards him. The
Darmuks
huddled against the walls, giving him access.

“How can you ask that? You, all safe and sound behind the lines. I watched Helen die of a simple infection. If only she'd collaborated, they would have given her antibiotics, but she was too proud. I'm a survivor. This foolishness has gone on long enough. Surrender!”

“Stay back!” Zane took up a fighting stance.

“Are you telling me what to do, young man? Politics aside, I am still your father.”

Zane felt something deep inside break. He'd thought he'd lost everything there was to lose. Now he knew he was wrong.

“Dad, I don't know who I'm talking to right now. The father I knew would never have sold out to the
Darmuks
, but I have to say it. You have a grandson.”

“A grandson.” the older man smiled and paused in his advance. A battle-ape shoved him from behind. “What? Oh. You think that makes up for this foolishness?” Zane's father moved closer. Zane pulled back his wrist. A mechanism in the sleeve of his armor clicked and a slender steel blade shot into his hand. He drove it into his father's chest.”

“Son? You…I'm pro—” gasped the dying man.

“Goodbye, Dad,” said Zane. The
Darmuks
surged forward and he emptied the last of his clips. Snatching up Richard's sword he stood against their charge. Grabbing a battle-gorilla with his mechanical left arm he hoisted and threw it into the others. He swung the sword against a giant centipede, while he struck a battle-ape in the chest with his left hand. The beast's chest caved in and Zane's fingers drove into its heart. A creature with pincers, like a scorpion, clamped down on Zane's mechanical arm. It crushed the control feeds for the hand, which snapped into a fist and refused to move. Zane slashed at the beast decapitating it. The sword's electrical charge was gone.

The creatures rushed forward. Zane turned his insensitive left side to the blows, as his armor disintegrated around him.”

* * * *

Janis stood with the resistance cell at the dock's end. People rushed to board the various craft. Several smaller vessels had already put to sea. She had one replacement clip left for her rifle and dragged her left leg when she walked.

“Time?” she demanded.

Mission start plus ninety-two minutes.

“That means Zane and Richard have been in the embassy for nearly an hour. Penny, Bill, Omar, Kuno, Tom. Drop your equipment and board.”

“Yes, Mam,” said the twelve year old. She passed Janis her shotgun and dropped two shells into her hand before joining the group climbing onto the freighter.

“We aren't going, are we?” asked a burly man whose arm was in a sling.

“You saw the truck too?”

“Yup. Today is a good day to die. Always wanted to say that.”

“Pity you got your chance.” Janis stepped off the pier and moved towards the entrance to the marina. Checking that everyone was clear she placed a grenade on the steps and pulled its pin. Five seconds later the only access to the dock was kindling.

“Think they'll write a song about this?” asked a first people's man, who carried a rifle and walked with a pronounced limp, at Janis's left.

“Don't give a shit,” she said. They took position behind a car that was parked in the lot. The first of the trucks carrying the
Darmuk
troops rolled into sight.

“Tis a far far better thing I do,” said Tabatha, the news caster who had interviewed Zane before the war. Her left arm was missing from the elbow down and a tourniquet stanched the flow of blood. She set her pistol on the ground and fumbled out their last grenade.

“Tabs, what?” asked the first people's man.

“Shut up, Tommy, and pull the damn pin for me.”

Tommy complied. Tabatha took a deep breath then bolted for the truck. Shots rang out towards her. She was hit but her momentum carried her under the wheels. The grenade went off.

The second truck entered the parking lot to a hail of gunfire.

* * * *

Zane swung the sword, it connected and snapped. Blood spilled from myriad wounds. He could feel ribs grating every time he moved his right arm.
Darmuks
were heaped around him, but he knew from the high pitched whine that told him his reserve power pack was nearly out, that he had no time left.

“Janis, I'll find you,” he tried to scream, but all he could managed was a croak. He rushed the
Darmuks
, mentally triggering a device buried deep in his chest. The roar that tore up and down the corridor flattened the
Darmuks
left standing. The roof collapsed and the floor followed, sending everything careening into the basement.

Zane saw the light. He looked up and saw Betty smile.

“They tell me you have a choice, Zane. It's up to you. Choose.”

Zane felt incredible pain rack him his head felt like it was going to explode then oblivion.

* * * *

Janis watched the freighter pull away from the dock. Around her the last of the Goleta resistance lay dead. She tried to crawl away. Her empty rifle lay on the ground. The pistol she held had only one bullet left. The pulse monitor reset the timer with each beat of her heart.

A muscular, large-busted collaborator approached. “You know this whole thing has been pointless. In one foolish action you've decimated the Southern California underground. With tacticians like you it's no wonder humans are going to lose the war. My master has ordered me to implant a slaved cerebral symbiont so you can be connected to the bio-mind and any useful information you have extracted.”

“Then do it,” snarled Janis.

“Not so fast. Before the war I was a police officer on the bomb squad. I'm going to disarm that little toy on your chest first. I know about the trip wires around your neck. The ones that are supposed to prevent this very thing. Please don't struggle; the battle-apes really want an excuse to break your arms. I don't want to see you hurt.” The large-busted woman lifted a cerebral symbiont out of the cooler she carried.

Janis inhaled. Forcing protesting wounded muscles to move. She threw herself onto her enemy and fired her final round into her own brain. Her muscles spasmed, locking tight around the woman.

One one-thousand.

“No,” screamed the collaborator.

Two one-thousand.

The large-busted woman pulled free of the arm that clutched her.

Three one-thousand.

She pushed the dead body to one side.

Boom!

Bits of Janis and her foe flew all over the parking lot.

Janis looked on, a strange euphoria filling her. Short fuse. Oh well, it happens. A glowing light appeared and she turned towards it.

“Mother, you have a set of them. Come on, you've done all you can. Zane sends his love. If you hurry you might just pull an Ashley with him.” Betty led the way into the light.

Richard burst into the bio-minds central chamber. She stood in front of her interface couch, staring at an obese corpse on the floor.

“Ashley,” he cried.

“Richard,” she turned.

He'd been braced for the mutilations, but it still took an effort to keep from recoiling. Tubes ran into her skull and a grey blob pulsed over her abdomen. The leach-like cerebral symbiont, that tethered her to the bio-mind, was as big around as her wrist. He thrust the sight aside, ran to her and held her. He didn't care what had been done to her. She was in his arms again.

“I love you,” he whispered, closing his eyes. It was like he held the beauty of three years before.

“I love you too. You came. You came. I knew you would. I always knew you'd come for me.”

“If I had to walk through hell itself.”

He kissed her then forced himself to hold her at arm's length. The mutilations were horrific, but he stared into her eyes and in their emerald depths he saw her and the rest didn't matter.

“Zane?” she asked.

“Holding the door. Are there any other entrances?”

“Only the sewer access.”

“Ashley. I wish—”

She placed her finger over his lips. “We have work to do.”

Richard nodded and shucked the small backpack he wore. “I need a jack in point for the mechanical system.”

“Use Tannal's cyber-chair, the cable should reach the primary computer interface.” Ashley motioned to the chair that had once been her tormentor's. “We have to hurry. Fighting Tannal damaged a lot of the people in the bio-mind. If we want to be sure we take out the whole system we have to insert the virus before the break down isolates elements of it. I'll set up the interface unit for you.” She took the rectangular box from his hand and moved to a piece of equipment.

Richard unclipped his broken armor, throwing the tattered sleeves and legs aside. He laid his breastplate in front of the door and wrapped the handles with a piece of garrote line that spooled from a reel on his belt. He tied this off to a switch on the charge that had rested over his heart.

He moved to Ashley's side, wearing only a sweat-soaked T-shirt and underwear.

“I've thought about it. I know the sectors you need to infect. Richard, our minds will merge. There can't be any holding back. No secrets. I've done things to survive that—”

Richard laid a finger over her lips. “You are my Ashley! You are always beautiful to me. In spirit, mind and body, you are always beautiful to me.”

“I love you, Richard! Let's finish these
Darmuk
bastards!”

“Jacking in.” Richard paused before settling in the interface couch. He looked at her and smiled. “I almost forgot something. Ashley, my love. You will always be that girl I proposed to in Maine.” He grasped a ring that hung from a chain about his neck. With a yank he snapped the chain. He took Ashley's left hand and slid the ring down her ring finger. Ashley looked at it. The band was plain gold, simple, unadorned, pure.

She looked up with tears in her eyes. So much could have been, so much needed to be said, but there was no time. “Let's do this.”

Richard kissed her, and settling in the interface couch, jacked in.”

Data flowed around him. Streams of information translated into virtual simulations his human mind could grasp. A thing that looked like a dragon sped towards him. A blazing shaft of light arced into it and it vanished. Ashley stood below and to one side. Diverting the bio-mind's defensive programs. The landscape shuddered as yet another wounded, human mind died, and the bio-mind shrank.

“Hurry,” called Ashley. She was fighting virtual monsters. She seemed a red haired Diana, firing shafts of death from her bow.

Richard focused his mind following the cyber trail she had marked out for him. A node on the bio-mind opened. He inserted his virus then sped to the next distribution point.

* * * *

Ashley focused on the defensive programs. She flooded the system with trivial viruses, occupying the run time. One of the systems most potent defenders, a quasi consciousness in its own right, reared up before her. It took the form of a hydra, its seven serpentine heads hissing and spitting. She let lose lines of code that took the forms of blazing arrows.

The hydra snapped at her, treating her consciousness as it would a virus.

She leapt back. Concentrating she caused a sword, representing a code buster of her own creation, to form in her hand. She drove it at the beast. A head fell away but was replaced as the program rewrote itself.

* * * *

Richard inserted the virus in the third location. It was already beginning to spread, wiping out the
Darmuk
system. Sickening the cerebral symbionts and any other
Darmuk
form it touched. He started down another cyber trail.

“Two more nodes then the mother ship is sure to get it,” he whispered.

“Then we simply have to stop you from accessing those nodes,” said a masculine voice.

Richard turned to see Kalok. The handsome, human form was tied to a huge blob of tissue, like a giant slug, and he knew these were both the same being.

“I was wondering what happened to the rest of you. Tannal is dead.” Richard could feel the infection behind him spreading.

“As you soon will be. Did you honestly believe we only had one interface in this base?”

“I knew there would be others. I just thought the overwhelming cowardice that is the trademark of
Darmuks
would stop you from entering the system.” Richard searched for ways around the
Darmuk
consciousness.

* * * *

Ashley chopped at the hydra again. Another head fell off and this time she disrupted the regeneration code. The virtual simulation trembled then a new head grew on the hydra, it had Osa's face.

“You,” said Ashley.

“I am using the interface in medical.” The hydra began to dissolve then the code completely vanished and Osa stood in her human form.

“What?” asked Ashley.

“I received the prime units medical skills and knowledge, but I have lived as a human for nearly eight years. Ashley, perhaps my people are wrong. Perhaps things must change. I…I met a human, a man. He speaks to this form in a way I think you might understand. I am sorry.”

“Help us?” asked Ashley.

“I have done all I dare. Go now, your Richard needs you. I must return to my physical form and depart. Forgive us. We were not always as you have seen us. I have shut down the defensive programs. Goodbye.” Osa vanished.

* * * *

Kalok drove a virtual fist into Richard's face.

Richard rolled with the blow then jabbed at Kalok's stomach, but the blow was blocked. The combatants stepped apart. Richard felt bruised. He touched his face and the hand came away red. He knew the programmed allegory for his consciousness was damaged. Brain cells in his body were dying. Behind him the virus continued to expand.

“You cannot win, human.
Darmuks
are superior. We will destroy you!” threatened Kalok.

“What? A big slimy slug. What are you going to do? Sit on us?” demanded Richard.

“Kalok raised his hand and streams of code arched out towards the human mind. Richard un-knit the attack as swiftly as he could, but for all his skill he wasn't born to the
Darmuk
system. The attack struck home and sent him reeling.”

“Such a shame, really. I might have considered sparing you for your daughter's sake. She was a nice, tight piece of tail. Quite the bitch though. Always acted like she was too good for me before the war. I liked the way she screamed when I took her.” Kalok gloated as he moved towards Richard for the killing blow.

“Here,”
a voice whispered in Richard's mind.

He glanced around.

“What?”

“Here,”
repeated the whisper. A young man appeared to Richard's right. He was fuzzy, indistinct. Richard recognized one of Betty's high school friends. The ghost-like figure nodded.

Kalok drew closer.

Focusing all he had left Richard lashed out. Lines of code leapt from him as blue lighting. They struck Kalok, not so much harming him as pushing him back. The
Darmuk
fell against the ghostly figure. Lights flashed in the virtual landscape and a scream ripped through the bio-mind, which shuddered. Kalok and the ghost-like youth vanished.

* * * *

In the real world a gibbeted young man, mutilated in an attempt to squeeze an extra day's service from his exhausted brain, screamed as the cerebral symbiont ripped from his flesh. Another mind fought the release command but it was too late. By the time the other consciousness gained control the symbiont lay limp against the embassy's wall.

Kalok crushed the consciousness that had pulled him into the ram unit then tried to scramble blindly for the disconnected symbiont. He had no arms to reach with. He screamed from a tongue-less mouth. The brain that contained him began to die.

* * * *

“Richard.” Ashley appeared beside him and helped him to stand.

“The nodes. We have to infect them before the mother ship makes contact.”

Ashley nodded. She helped support him as they sped to the remaining node sites. The infection was taking its toll. They had to divert three times to avoid dead and dying sections of the bio-mind. Finally the last node was infected.

* * * *

Richard opened his physical eyes. His body shook. With an effort of will he forced it to still. He looked around the room. Several cerebral symbionts had shriveled and people screamed in agony on the interface couches. One man ran blindly about the room, smashing everything in his path.

The door burst open. A roar ripped through the air as Richard breastplate exploded. A large section of the roof fell, crushing people where they lay.

“I love you, Ashley.” called Richard.

“I love you too. Is there any reason we should stay for this?” Ashley moved to snuggle into the crux of his arm on his interface couch.

Richard was shocked to find he could barely move.

“None.”

They both closed their eyes and took in deep lungfuls of the dusty air. In seconds they sped through the human net.

* * * *

“General, the uploads were finished but the machine is recording. It's, frankly sir. It's like having double vision. Two different sets of memories mingling and merging. I think its Ashley and Doc Green,” explained Major Joans.

“Can it be uploaded into the units?” demanded General Flanders. He stood staring down at the young man who lay on the interface couch.”

“I don't think we can separate it, but I think it should work.”

“Keep recording son. Richard's found a way to give us a debrief on the mission.”

* * * *

It was finished. Richard pulled back his mind then allowed it to merge with his love's. The virtual world resolved around them into a beautiful woodland glade.

Ashley looked as she had in Maine. Beautiful, fresh, unscarred.

Richard no longer looked haggard and exhausted. The broken veins on his nose were gone.

“Together?” said Ashley.

“Always.” Richard looked meaningfully at her left hand. Virtual allegories of both the rings he'd given her rested there.

Ashley nodded and they clasped hands. Richard gasped and shuddered. Ashley did the same. A moment later the virtual world shattered and they floated above their bodies. Rubble fell from the ceiling and the ground shook.

“Hi, Dad, Ash. They tell me you have a choice. I think they're still trying to work out whether they like that or not,” said Betty.

She stood in front of a spiraling tunnel of light.

“A choice?” asked Richard.

“Life or death. It's not as important as it sounds.”

“Together?” asked Ashley.

“Either way. Gods, Ash, it would have been a blast to have a step mom that looked younger than me. You need to choose.”

“Life together,” said Richard.

“Life,” agreed Ashley. She took his hand.

There was a moment of searing pain then oblivion.

* * * *

Edwin sat chained and gagged in his office chair. The wounds had tapered back to a dull throb, and in a sense the tourniquet around his penis was working for him, since the organ had gone numb from a lack of blood. He'd heard explosions and sirens from outside and could smell smoke. The ground shook, throwing him to the floor. His wounds opened, but before he could scream the black bead on the choker Richard had placed on him detonated. His head and upper body were turned into a red paste that splattered against the walls.