Dark Dragons (64 page)

Carruthers looked back at the group of his fallen brothers,
their dog tags being silently claimed by their solemn comrades. 
“Granted.  Let’s just hurry it up.  We have to double time it back to
the rendezvous.”

Vanessa found a hidden niche next to one of the life support
machines to suit up.  Darren found only two AIEAS suits out of three that
were fairly intact.  One guy looked too big, but the other dead operative
Darren guessed to be close to Vanessa’s height . . . the name on the chest
plate said
STEINBERG
.  Except for
the golfball-size hole in the chest and the bloody bodystocking underneath, the
man’s suit was acceptable.  The helmet fit fine, but the suit was a little
too big for her frame, and the pieces just kind of hung off her; still, the
boron-carbide armor would offer modest protection.  Vanessa stuck a finger
in the ragged hole in the torso plate and the bodystocking, whimpering
something to herself.

Darren unholstered his needle pistol and handed it to
her.  “Here.  This will make you feel better.”

She put both gloved hands under her armpits and stared at
Darren’s sidearm as if it were a freshly laid turd.  “Are you kidding me?”

“No, I’m not.  You have to protect yourself.”

Vanessa thought about his offer for a moment before taking
the pistol and rolling it over in her hands.  “It’s light.”

“Shoots armor-piercing flechettes, no recoil.  Ever
fired a gun before?”

“No.”

“Just point and pull the trigger.  As soon as we take
down a bad guy, you can use his laser rifle.”

Vanessa looked up at him sharply with an incredulous look.

“You’ll be able to protect yourself better with a heavier
weapon.”

In the distance, much further away now, the Guardian
creature bellowed again.

Vanessa turned away from the sound and closed her
eyes.  “Tell me what is going on.  What happened to me?”

“The aliens captured you.  We’re aboard their
moonship.  And we’re now on our way out.  These commandos
are——were——here to blow up the ship with a nuke . . . well, before it got
zapped.”

“How did you know I was here?”

Because the aliens were spying on me spying on you
outside your house.
  He wanted to tell her the truth, but that would
mean revealing his embarrassing “stalker in the bushes” episode from last
Monday night.  He would tell half the truth for now.  “Marcus Lutze
came to my house.  They must have thought he was me and captured
him.  And they used him to get to you . . . so to get to me.”

“Marcus?”  She glanced over at Nate and Tony who were
both smoking cigarettes, Nate practically choking on his first one.  Jorge
was doing serious work on his rosary beads nearby.  “Is anyone else from
school here?”

Darren smiled.  “No, just the five of us.”

“Why do your suits look . . . alien?  They’re different
than these ones.”

“That’s because they
are
alien.”

Vanessa just stared at him.

“I promise you I will explain everything later.  Jorge,
I need you to get Brutus to start a sensor fix on the moonship’s bridge and
uploaded it to our maps.”

“All right . . . but why are we looking for the bridge?”

“I’ll let you know when everyone’s together.”

*

Carruthers had only fourteen men remaining.  None of
the SAWDOG’s was in obvious rosy spirits.  Darren learned that one of the
standing orders devised in their tight group long ago was to “collect dog tags
only.”  It would be near impossible to retrieve and haul their dead in the
kind of environments they operated in, so it kind of made sense, but it was
antithetical to every soldier’s unwritten edict and solemn respect to
bring
their bros home dead or alive
.  The men of the Space Warfare
Development Operations Group understood this, but they didn’t have to like
it.  There were three dead and five missing, likely due to the hover
knights’ horrifying sonic weapons that atomized everything.  The
bitterness showed on the men’s faces, and Darren could see it stung like a
mother fucker.

He stole several glances at Vanessa, Tony, Nate and Jorge,
and knew he would feel the same acrimony in his heart if any one of them
fell.  The apprehension of losing the people he cared about rose up inside
him again.  Strange——Darren had never considered himself to be strongly
religious, but that was changing now.  After what he had witnessed in the
Invicid’s life chamber and feeling an ulcerous dread taking up space in his
gut, Darren could understand why Jorge had his blue wreath of rosary beads out
and was silently moving his lips in silent prayer.  No atheists in
foxholes.

“All right, Mr. Seymour, what are your plans?” Carruthers
asked.  He had taken off his helmet to let the cool air dry the sweat from
his short crop afro.  His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like he
needed four days sleep.  They all did.  “I hope they’re good.”

Upon hearing his question, everyone moved in closer to hear
the answer.

Darren rubbed his eyes and took a sip of cool water. 
“As soon as Brutus pins down the location of the bridge . . . we’re going in
guns blazing . . . and find the scuttle switch to blow up the ship.  If
there isn’t one, then we’re going to overtake the helm . . . and autopilot this
bastard right into the sun.”

His bold declaration was met with a long, uncomfortable
silence and just a few looks of anxiety.

“With plenty of time to escape, right?”  Nate asked.

Darren nodded, shrugged.  “My optimism is based on the
hope of some kind of timer.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tony murmured, turning away to light another
cigarette.

“You got a better idea?  Then spit it out!”

Carruthers turned away to stare at nothing in particular in
the distance for a moment.  Then he gave Captain Middleton a look, who
nodded back, both men apparently reading each other’s thoughts.  “It’s so
crazy, it just might work,” he finally barked with a sharp laugh.  “I’m
diggin’ your style, Darren.  You like to think big.”

“Brutus found the bridge,” Jorge said. “Uploading the
position now . . . but it looks like we may have a problem.”

“Of course,” Darren said.  “Tell it to me straight.”

“There’re actually five bridges . . . one main and four
auxiliaries.  Brutus can’t hack in because the bridges’ control systems
and VI servers are on a separate network from the rest of the ship with over a
million firewalls.  So much for Brutus doing anything by remote. 
He’ll have to access navigation and propulsion controls from the main
bridge.  That is
if
he can.”

“‘If’?”

Jorge shrugged.  “He may not be able to operate the
scuttle or fly the ship.  The VI systems may function totally different
than the rest of the ship.  We won’t know until we reach the main bridge
and plug Brutus in.”

“Is there any way he can isolate the auxiliary bridges and
prevent the enemy from overriding his commands from them?”  Middleton
asked.

“Like I said, it’s on a different network.  We won’t
know until we get there. 
If
we get there.”

“Ye of little faith,” Darren said.  He pulled up the
schematic map on his visor.  A superstructure resembling a vertical, flat
mushroom approximately seven miles in diameter contained the main bridge. 
The superstructure was exposed to space, constructed into the side of the core
ship which secured the northern and southern hemispheres together, and it did
not lay far, just over fifty miles away.

They would have to demo into another air duct on the other
side of the stasis cell chamber and walk several thousand feet to another
tri-rail tunnel.  A short walk along an electrical conduit would bring
them to another platform station.  Brutus could set up another bogus fire
alarm to clear out any toads waiting to catch a ride, and everyone would be off
toward the bridge.  One ominous issue that Darren predicted was that the
tri-rail tunnel was the only way in or out of the superstructure containing the
main bridge.  Their op would have to be silent and executed flawlessly or
the Vorvons would trap them there, bottlenecking the tunnel and prevent their
escape back to the Andromeda transport six hundred miles above them.

Darren gave themselves four-to-one odds.

*

Still mimicking the dead squid drone, Brutus was
electronically brushing their tracks as they moved through the ship.  No
alarms or approaching alien troops hounded them as everyone boarded the
tri-rail vehicle.  This short tunnel was not vacuumed, and their speed
would only be around two hundred mph.  Still, Darren wasn’t feeling cozy
about their too-easy infiltration.

He sat down in one of the acceleration chairs next to
Vanessa before the machine whisked them down the tunnel.  Her scared face
was gone.  In fact she looked a little pissed.  “You okay?”

“Sure.”

Uh-oh.
  He turned away.  Even with never
having a girlfriend, he knew that female reaction.  That look. 
Darren’s mind raced with a hundred different responses but couldn’t come up with
anything consoling or wise.  As a result, his stupid man-brain
inadvertently went into defensive mode.

“Did I say something to piss you off?”

Vanessa didn’t respond right away.  Her eyes darted
back and forth, then, “How did Marcus use me to get to you?  What’s our
connection?”

Shit.
  “Okay . . . I was . . . damn it . . . I
was in the bush——I was outside your house Monday night . . . and the bad guys
must have followed me.”

“In the bushes?” Vanessa spat.  “Todd was with me that
night!”

Tony snorted.  “Jesus, Seymour.  The bushes?”

“It wasn’t like that!  I had . . . there . . . goddamn
it!  I was——”

“Were you the one who called my dad home?”

Darren swallowed hard, but he had no spit to swallow. 
“Yeah, I pretended to be a cop.”

“Oh my god,” Vanessa groaned.

Tony, Jorge and Middleton began to crack up.

“Wow,” Nate said.

“Hey, I saved you from a bad decision!” Darren said. 
“Todd Lutze is a dipshit who unintentionally lowers the I.Q. of anyone standing
around him, and he would have absolutely lobotomized you if you had slept with
him.  So you’re welcome.”

“How do you know I haven’t already slept with him?”

“Because your still upright and talking sense.”

Vanessa shook her head, rolled her eyes.  “So why did
you come over to my house?”

“Whack off in the bushes,” Tony said.

Darren checked himself before he could bring his pulse rifle
down on Tony’s head.  Black clouds swirled in his head.  Here they
were talking about something so inconsequential, it pumped unholy fury into his
heart.  He didn’t know what to think, how to feel.  “I guess I just
wanted to talk.”

“About what?”

“About the Lakers’ chances in the playoffs this year. 
What do you think?  You!  Me!  My promise to rock your world
every minute you’re around me . . . a promise to listen to you when you have
something important to say——even though I may not agree with you all the time .
. . to . . . to not get jealous or start drama just to get attention . . .
picking you up in a piece of shit car and taking you to a dinner and a movie I
can hardly afford . . . to talk to someone who might understand how scared
shitless I was and still am.”  Darren felt his world spiraling every which
way, and his eyes grew wet.  He didn’t give a shit any more.  “Sorry
if I inconvenienced you Monday night.  I’m sure Todd misses you.”

Silence.  Darren did not turn to check Vanessa’s
expression.  He didn’t care if she was still pissed or not.  Even
Tony had clammed up, unusual for him.

“What kind of piece of shit car?” Vanessa asked after a
lengthy pause.

“A rusty 1997 Cutlass Supreme with a coat hanger holding the
muffler up,” Darren said.

“And oil leaking from the heads?”

“A lot of it.”

“Where are we going to eat?”

“Bubba’s Greasy Spoon over in the Valley.”

“Sweet, I can’t wait.”

Middleton placed his right hand over his chest.  “Ahhh,
‘This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower
when next we meet.’”

“
Taming of the Shrew
?” Darren asked.

“Ha ha,” Vanessa said.

“No,
Romeo and Juliet
, mate.”

*

Everyone in the air duct stopped as Darren crawled forward
and took a quick peek through a grate in the side of the duct.  “Yeah,
here we go.  This is definitely it.”

The bridge’s ceiling was perhaps a fifty feet high, and a
giant tower like a metal mesa stood in the center of the room where it almost
touched the ceiling.  The tower had four levels and a pair of elevator
pads at the rear of the structure.  All around the bridge and up in the
tower, medium-size Vorvons wearing green bodysuits worked, carrying out the
duties demanded of them like honest little worker bees.  Some sat at
consoles, operating their strange machinery, while others walked around
monitoring the activity going on.  Just like humans, he thought. 
Unlike bridges of navy ships, however, there were no windows to outside space.

These Vorvons were not as big as the soldiers——of which he
could see two standing guard on the bridge——but considerably larger than the
red aliens which Darren guessed where engineers or scientists.  The color
of the suit seemed to denote rank or caste.  Darren took no further
interest in their social structure.  He wasn’t here to observe and take
notes like an anthropologist in the field.

“Captain Middleton,” he whispered down the air duct. 
“Can you come take a peek?”

Sock moved forward and knelt next to Darren.

“See anything that might look like a helm?”

“Are you kidding?”

“You’re the astronautical engineer specializing in advanced
propulsion, right?”

“Your robot friend might do a better job, mate.” 
Middleton let out a little huff of air and peered into the bridge.