Orbs II: Stranded (14 page)

Emanuel stood and paced over to Sophie. He patted her shoulder before continuing where she had left off. “The human farms appear to be a secondary source of fuel. It’s fascinating, really, because—”

“Can we cut to the chase?” Kiel asked. “Tell us about that thing you used on the Spiders. How’d you knock them all out like that?”

Emanuel cleared his throat. “As you know, I’m calling the weapon an RVAMP. When I discovered their shields are powered by the surge, I realized that was also the key to defeating them. As we all know, without their shields, they quickly succumb to Earth’s atmospheric pressure and die. Designing the weapon was quite simple. I added a high-yield channel to the RVM device that we’ve been using to block their signals. Then I included two electronic conductors. When activated, both of the electrostatic discharges come into contact and the
channel triangulates a pulse of energy that has the same effect on them that the surge had on our technology. It renders their shields useless and evens the playing field.”

Overton leaned back in his chair. “I’m impressed, Doctor. It worked pretty well out there in the field. How soon can you get it up and running again?”

“Don’t get too excited. We were lucky it worked as well as it did.”

“Can’t we just nuke the bastards?” Kiel replied.

Overton let out a condescending laugh. “You’ve been in the field way too long, kid. Even if we had access to nukes, the operating systems are locked down and the men and women that had the access codes are probably dissolving in orbs as we speak.”

Kiel frowned and folded his hands together again.

“What about the mother ships? Even if you’re able to use the weapon on a larger scale, we’ll still be left with the threat of intelligent Organics. They’re just hovering up there, sucking our world dry. If we kill their armies, do you think they’ll just leave?” Holly said.

“She’s got a point. That’s where nukes would really come in handy,” replied Overton. “But our first priority should be to do some more recon and rescue more survivors. There are men and women out there. We can’t just sit around and watch.”

Sophie shook her head. “No, no, no. I say this with all due respect, Sergeant, but you’re lucky to have returned from your last mission. I’m not about to authorize another trip out there so soon. There has to be another way.”

Overton stood, sliding his metal chair across the concrete. The sound was reminiscent of the Spiders, and Sophie couldn’t help but cringe.

“Listen, I get that you’re in charge of this fish tank, but I’m not about to let people rot outside. With Emanuel’s weapon, we can finally fight back.” Overton didn’t look to his men for support, and they remained silent, their eyes downcast.

Sophie knew she was once again being challenged by the overzealous marine. And while she couldn’t deny the fact he had saved her and the others on multiple occasions, she also knew he was becoming unstable.
If he would risk another mission without letting his team recover from the last one, then he was losing his edge. He was getting desperate—he was getting dangerous.

Before she could shut him down, Emanuel said, “I agree with Overton.” Sophie’s face immediately grew red. How could he? How could he possibly stand against her?

“If I can figure a way to triangulate this pulse farther than a few miles, then it should be safe to go outside. Why not compromise, Sophie?”

Sophie gritted her teeth. “What about the team, Emanuel? Have you forgotten about the rest of us? If Overton gets killed, then what? Who’s going to protect us?”

Overton crossed his arms and snorted. Then, turning to face Sophie, he said, “You want to stand by and watch the world waste away outside? Go ahead. I know I don’t. I’d rather die. And frankly, Sophie, I thought that you would want to save the human race, being a scientist and all.”

The words struck Sophie like a brisk slap to the face. She was stunned. Had he really questioned her commitment to science? How could he? After all they had been through? After she had saved his life? He was either becoming more of an asshole, or he knew exactly where to bite.

Sophie locked eyes with him, but he held strong, his jaw clenched tightly shut. Overton’s dark stare was filled with emptiness. She’d seen the look only once before—her grandmother had had a similar stare the months before her death, when she had lost her will to live. Overton might not have lost his, but he had fixated on a mission that would likely end in his death and the deaths of everyone else that went with him.

Sophie turned back to her team, looking for support. They weren’t staring at Overton. They were staring at her.

No
, she thought.
They can’t honestly think I
’m the crazy one
. She scanned the team one by one. When she came to Holly, the doctor looked at the floor, nervously brushing a strand of blond hair out of her face.

The lump in Sophie’s throat grew. She could see Emanuel studying
her out of the corner of her eye. It took all her courage to face him. When she did, she saw his normally chipper smile had faded into a frown. He looked . . .

Embarrassed.

Sophie felt a tear forming in her right eye.

No, you need to stay strong
, she thought.
You need to keep control
. She sucked in a breath, closed her eyes, and forced a smile.

When she opened her eyes, something had changed in Emanuel’s expression. He no longer looked embarrassed. He looked disheartened.

The click of Kiel’s coffee mug against the table broke the silence, and Sophie stepped away from the team. Slowly, the rage inside her calmed. She hated to admit it, but maybe Overton had a point. Maybe Emanuel was right. Maybe, just maybe, he could get the weapon to work on a larger scale and they could save more people.

With a sigh, Sophie sat on one of the metal benches. She looked at Overton, who stared back, his eyes pleading with her.

Shit
, Sophie thought. There were no easy answers at the end of the world, and now she wasn’t sure whom she could trust. Sophie was humble enough to admit when she was wrong, or at least when she was outvoted. “Fine,” she finally said, turning back to Emanuel. “If—and only if—you can increase the weapon’s range, I will authorize a recon mission. Otherwise no one leaves the safety of the Biosphere. Do I make myself clear?” She scanned the team’s faces one by one until she got to Overton.

The man nodded but remained silent. She knew he wanted to respond, to argue with her, but he finally looked away.

She reached back and pulled her hair into a ponytail before continuing. “It’s settled, then. Emanuel will work on his device. For the rest of you, well, I have a surprise. We have some harvesting to do. Alexia says the garden is ready.”

The team got up and filed out of the mess hall, leaving Sophie alone.

She stood in silence, wishing she could curl up in her quarters and hibernate until the Organics left. She’d felt increasingly isolated for weeks. Even with Emanuel back, loneliness still followed her. She didn’t need a mirror to see the bags under her eyes or how much weight she’d
lost.

Her decisions affected everyone, not only within these walls but outside, too. And she knew their recent luck was just that. She could feel the fear sneaking up on her, reminding her that something was bound to go wrong—that something was brewing outside. She could almost hear the scratching and scraping of the Spiders’ claws.

The memory of the black ship slipped into her mind as she got up to leave. Her instincts were right—there was definitely something worse outside the safety of the Biosphere. There were the intelligent Organics, hovering far above them: waiting, planning, and harvesting the world’s most important resource.

CHAPTER 21

A
FTER
waking up in the infirmary, Alex had been led into a tiny conference room and sandwiched between two longtime enemies. A wooden table was all that separated the two sides, and the stale air reeked of uncertainty. Alex could see it in every stern face and clenched jaw. Captain Noble paced back and forth in his small corner of the room, his shoulders high and stiff.

Noble was faced with a potentially hostile enemy, an enemy that had spent years hiding from the rest of the world, and years harboring anti-American resentment. Alex knew whatever the captain said or did could be easily misconstrued by the Chinese. The tension in the room lingered like humidity.

Alex felt his cheeks turning red as he held his breath.

Finally, Noble stopped pacing and crossed his arms. “Captain Quan, again, I’d like to welcome you aboard our ship. I know it must have taken a great deal of trust to leave the safety of your boat. I can assure you that your trust was well placed.”

Alex studied Quan for a reaction. The man was one of the last artifacts of what had once been the most powerful military in the world. He wore a neatly pressed gray uniform and, like Noble, sported a chest full of medals. He seemed oblivious to his country’s destruction decades earlier, staring ahead blankly, his bald head reflecting the bright LEDs. But Alex knew this was just an act. Like the Organics, Quan was just waiting for the perfect time to strike.

The NTC crew didn’t have to wait long.

With the tiniest of nods, Quan spoke in near perfect English.

“We appreciate your invitation, but we aren’t here as your friends, Captain Noble. We are here to figure out what is going on outside.”

“I understand, Captain,” Noble said politely.

“We were off the coast of Puerto Rico when we lost all contact with the outside world. For the past month we’ve been drifting in silence. As you know, nothing digital works.”

“And . . . you mentioned you are all that’s left of the Chinese military?”

With his eyes slightly downcast, Captain Quan’s voice drifted into a slow whisper. “There were two other vessels left after we lost contact with the mainland. We had been communicating by a secure channel, but after one of them docked in Morocco for recon, we never heard from them again. Same thing happened to the other sub.” The man glanced to his left and right, as if he were waiting for his subordinates to speak up.

Alex noticed the move immediately. Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t a soldier or a psychologist—hell, he wasn’t even good at poker—but his gut told him things were about to get heated.

It had been a decade since NTC hired mercenaries to set off EMPs in China. The attack had put an end to China’s unquenchable thirst for resources, and even if they had wanted to retaliate, they couldn’t—their entire infrastructure was shot and their submarine fleet had disappeared.

Until now.

What if they were about to get their revenge? Alex slid uncomfortably in his chair, his head still pounding. He watched Captain Noble unfold his arms and step up to the table.

“I’m sorry to hear that, but it doesn’t surprise me. We’ve had a similar experience with the United States Navy and other NTC vessels. Before I get into the details, I need to know exactly what you know.”

Quan looked at him as if he had been insulted. “We know virtually nothing, Captain. I told you, we were in the dark until we picked up your messages via Morse code. For all we know, NTC is behind this.”

Captain Noble’s features froze. His typically friendly demeanor disappeared in a flash. “You think NTC is doing this? Irene, let’s show
Captain Quan what’s going on up there!”

The lights in the room dimmed, and a blue light shimmered over the table. A hologram shot out of the center of the table. It was hazy at first, but after a few moments the image came into focus.

Alex forced himself to look away from the hologram. The hologram showed human farms—the poles lining a beach he didn’t recognize. It was the same sight that had made him faint earlier. He swallowed when he saw the human prisoners hanging limply from the poles.

“What is that?” Captain Quan asked, the smallest hint of fear in his voice.

Noble grabbed his tablet off the metal table and flicked the screen. “That is what happened outside,” he said. “And this is what did it.”

A new image materialized. It was an all-too-familiar pack of Spiders, their claws scratching across the surface of a parking lot. One of them tore into an orb, revealing the distorted face of a woman.

Captain Quan stood abruptly. “Do you really think us fools? That we would believe this . . .” he paused, the thought escaping him before he spat out three words. “This science fiction?” His subordinates quickly rose around him. They had been disarmed before boarding the ship, but one of them was reaching for something inside his jacket.

The NTC guard at the doorway leveled his pulse rifle at the Chinese soldiers. Alex froze. He watched Noble hold up his hands and motion the NTC guard to back off.

“Listen, Quan,” he said. “You’re a rational man, a military man. I knew you wouldn’t believe a story about an alien invasion unless you saw it for yourself.” Noble tapped his tablet and called up another set of graphics over the table. “When I first saw these images, I didn’t believe them either. I didn’t want to believe them.” Pausing, Noble ran a finger through his mustache and turned to the AI console. “Irene, can you explain what we are looking at?”

The AI’s avatar emerged over the metal console a few feet away. “Certainly, sir. This is a field of orbs. They contain the remains of humans or animals and are used by the aliens as fuel.”

“What do you mean, fuel?” Captain Quan said, slowly sitting back down in his chair.

“Show him the other images,” Noble requested.

One by one, more images of the Organics’ destruction appeared above the table: a dry lakebed, an empty river with boats scattered along its empty shores, a city park covered in dazzling spheres.

“As you can see, they are feeding their armies with the water of humans, animals, rivers, lakes, and . . .” Captain Noble paused again.

Captain Quan raised his eyebrow, his face still stern. Alex could see the man was growing angrier by the second.

Good, maybe it will compel him to help NTC
, Alex thought.

Noble snapped from his trance, crossed his arms, and took a step farther away from the table. “They are draining the oceans. Irene, next graphic please.”

Alex recognized the waterfall climbing into the sky.

“This is their attempt at removing our oceans. We believe that the sheer size of the ocean is what’s slowing them down. Time is the one advantage we have,” Noble continued.

Quan raised a hand, stopping Noble in midsentence. “You will have to forgive me, Captain. This is all very hard to believe. Boarding this sub was a very difficult decision. After all, we know NTC was behind the destruction of our country’s infrastructure.”

Noble uncrossed his arms and smiled. “Frankly, I’m amazed you did come aboard, Captain. That took a lot of balls. But what NTC did happened in a different world.”

“Indeed. And if what you say is true, then the future of the planet rests in the hands of the men and women in this room.”

Alex stirred in his seat. He’d been outside; he knew what they were up against. He knew that the human race had no chance against the Organics.

“Exactly. But we’re not completely alone in this. There are others who survived.” Noble turned and looked at Alex.

With all eyes on him, he smiled sheepishly and felt his face grow red. Alex had assumed there was a reason Noble had asked him to come, but was still uncertain as to what that reason would be. Now he knew. His experiences made him the perfect person to explain how bad things really were above the surface.

“Alex was part of a very secret Biosphere project that NTC put into motion. You see, some officials in NTC knew the invasion was coming years ago. Doctor Hoffman sold the idea of Biosphere projects to the company under the guise of research, saying they would help prepare for the colonization of Mars. But the Biospheres were really set up to help a few key people survive after the invasion. What Hoffman obviously didn’t know was that the aliens had a way to penetrate the buried bunkers and silos across the planet. Only a few of the original fifty Biospheres remain.”

“NTC knew about this but didn’t warn the world?” Quan interjected.

“Very few people knew, Captain,” Noble said. “In fact, we were deployed months ago with no idea of what our actual mission was. On invasion day our orders became very clear. We were to monitor the Biospheres from afar. We learned later that a select group of individuals, including Doctor Hoffman, left the planet for Mars in a ship called
Secundo Casu
.”

Quan frowned but kept silent.

“Each Biosphere was equipped with one radio. They are all on the same frequency that we are able to monitor. That’s how we found Alex here,” he said pointing to him. “Alex, I’d like you to tell them what you told me earlier, about the Biosphere on Cheyenne Mountain.”

Sliding his chair back, Alex stood and locked eyes with Captain Quan. The soldier was older than Alex had originally thought. Quan’s face was lined with creases, and his thin eyebrows were completely white. Alex was looking at the last captain of the once infamous Chinese Navy.

“We sent out an SOS on this radio before the aliens invaded our bunker,” Alex finally said, holding up the device. “Cheyenne Mountain’s Biosphere answered.”

Captain Noble gestured for him to continue with a nod.

Alex took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure if the information was legitimate, if Dr. Rodriguez really had a weapon, but it didn’t really matter. Alex said, “They said they were working on a new weapon. I don’t know much about it, but I think they’ve found a way to disguise themselves from the aliens and a way to fight back.”

The room grew silent for a few moments before Captain Noble stepped back to the table. “Thank you, Alex,” he said politely.

“Obviously, the first objective is to get in touch with Cheyenne Mountain. To see if what they have told Alex is true. But to do that we will need to surface. The signal simply won’t work this deep. The second objective would be to plan an attack ourselves, just in case the Biosphere is compromised. Which brings me to my next request.”

He took a few cautious steps closer to Captain Quan.

“I would be honored if you would consider collaborating with us on a counterattack. Whatever your country did to the United States in the past, and whatever NTC did in retaliation, needs to be buried. We need to move forward. Together. For the sake of humanity.”

Captain Quan seemed to consider the offer for several seconds. “Aliens.” He laughed sourly. “I never thought I would live to see the day. But you are right, Captain Noble. We need to work together.” He glanced at a burly soldier next to him.

“This is Lieutenant Commander Le. He will be serving as my liaison. I presume you have room at a station for him?”

“Absolutely. Lin, where are you?”

“Here, sir.”

“I’m appointing you as NTC’s liaison. Captain Quan, I hope you too will allow some of my crew onto your ship?”

“Yes,” Quan replied, acknowledging Lin with quick glance.

Alex couldn’t help but smile. If there were still hard feelings about what had happened a decade ago, Lin was just the officer to smooth things over.

“Very well, Captain Noble. Please show First Officer Le to his station. I will send a small team to your ship later today, after I have given my crew a full debriefing. That way if either of our subs is compromised, we can continue to function.”

Quan departed the room and the rest of his staff followed him out in silence. Remaining at the table was Le, whose uniform looked like it was two sizes too small. His cropped hair stuck to his head like a helmet, and his dark brown eyes stared ahead, expressionless. To Alex, the man was more intimidating than Captain Quan.

Folding his tablet under his arm, Captain Noble motioned for Le to follow him. Alex watched the entire NTC crew vanish from the room before trying to stand. His foot had fallen asleep, and the numb pain shot through his leg. He massaged his foot and stared at the hologram still hovering above the table. Saltwater cascaded into the sky. There was something mesmerizing about it.

As the pain in his leg faded, he forced himself away from the image. Captain Noble wasn’t just wrong about fighting back. He was wrong about how much time the human race really had left.