Afterburn, page 29
At the final stop, he went up through a hub mostly empty of people that led into the desert north of LA. As expected, he was near the Cosmost northeastern border. He accessed his eyeshade filters to dim the bright morning sunlight, then marveled at the ship and its boosters glimmering against the blue horizon of ocean and sky a few miles from where he stood.
Launch wasn’t until evening, but he still didn’t know where to find them, so he hurried down a gravel slope and began to hustle across the flat, cracked basin that stretched to the shore. He passed weathered signs that read Private Property, Danger, and Keep Away before reaching a twelve-foot electrified fence topped with razor wire. Just inside the fence, lay the enormous concrete mouth of the nearest Hydro-channel. Underground, it ran underneath the midlands, the Sierras, all the way back to the Trinities.
Shit, he thought. Even if he could cut through the fence without getting fried, it would probably trigger alarms. He looked around for anything that might give him an advantage, but there was nothing but scrubland and dirt hills. I just need to find a hole, he thought. Somewhere I can slip through into the pipe.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I don’t need to find one. I can make one.”
He went about twenty-five yards north of the fence and revved up his EVs until they blazed crimson and he could feel buzzing in his ears. He realized he should test them first, so he let loose two bolts into the hill behind him, then ducked, shielding himself from the dirt and rock that exploded everywhere. Way too much, he thought and dialed down the power.
He then took a half dozen steps back, then fired a careful, sustained burst into the ground where the pipe would be. He fired again, and then once more, until the soil and rock had blasted away and he could see the top of the aqueduct. He then tried to guide the beam so that it would cut rather than blast and was somewhat successful, sizzling a gash in the top.
He approached to discover that the piece he had lasered was still clinging to life. A swift kick sent it clunking to the bottom. He waited a moment for any residual heat to dissipate, then squatted down onto the lip of the hole and dangled his legs into the abyss, shining a light down to see how far it was.
It was at least twelve feet, too far to drop safely, but he would have to try, hoping he didn’t crack an ankle and that his TALOS afforded him some protection from scrapes and bruises.
As he began to inch forward, he noticed three aircraft buzzing toward Cosmost from the southeast—roughly where Valeria should have been now. There was no way it could be her, he thought. He was just being paranoid. But if it was . . .
Please don’t try to stop us, Val.
As he thought about her, it suddenly occurred to him why she had detested him so much, at least at first.
It wasn’t because he hadn’t embraced his culture or because he was some kind of impostor. It was because he could choose the racial identity that people saw.
While she would always be one thing in the eyes of others, he could pass for white when he wanted, assert his ethnic background when it was convenient, claim privilege with whichever group happened to be in power. He could even join a group of white supremacists.
He had always felt like a second-class citizen, having grown up poor around rich Latinos, having been disowned by his rich Mexican American father. It had never even occurred to him that he possessed this privilege.
But he would have plenty of time to think about that off-world. Now, it was time to go.
He took a deep breath and plunged into some kind of hot mesh. It wrapped him up as he fell, sparks lighting up the dark. He tried to break his fall but couldn’t move his arms, and he thudded against the concrete floor of the pipe, yelping as his forearms smacked against the surface.
He could feel the electricity surging around and through him. Had he jumped into the electric fence somehow? Did it reach underground? He moaned and writhed until he felt something slide underneath him and roll him onto his back. A light blinded him, and he heard a voice he had thought—had hoped—would be lost to him forever.
“Prof?!” the voice exclaimed with its familiar note of sadistic glee.
Alton groaned. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
CHAPTER 55
“Damn! Talk about turning the tables,” Lance snickered. He prodded Alton in the ribs with his boot.
“Stop it, goddamnit. We’re on the same side now.”
“Better wait and see if it’s okay with my supreme leader,” he said, jabbing him again. “You were the one who said I can’t make decisions without him. Remember?”
“How the hell did you get here?” Alton asked.
“I told you in camp that nothing would keep us down,” Lance said. “I was promised a spot on this boat, and I wasn’t about to miss it. ”
“And how many more boys at Gypsum did you sacrifice to make that happen?”
Lance stuck his arm down into Alton’s face. The EVs sizzled a terrifying black-violet, a hue Alton didn’t know they came in.
“They sent me to check out the disturbance,” Lance said. “I could fry you right here and say I thought you were one of them.”
But before Alton could protest, another voice rang through the aqueduct, and Kiara was running toward them, her voice echoing down the tunnel.
“Cut him loose!”
“I’m afraid I need to hear that order from Big Daddy.”
“Now,” Alex commanded. In an instant, the web sizzled out and Kiara was helping Alton up as he rubbed his tender forearms.
“Cutting it really close,” Alex said.
“You destroyed the ship I was using to get out of there,” Alton said, “while I was on it!”
“I had no choice once they had you. Couldn’t risk everything.”
Kiara embraced him, and he felt the anger ebb.
“You’re here now,” she said. “That’s all that matters.”
“We gotta move,” Alex said. “Still prep to do.”
As they approached the mouth of the tunnel that opened out onto the grounds, the faces of Alex’s disciples appeared like wraiths against the dark, curved walls of the pipe. Alton took a good look at their faces, mostly his age or younger, and they stared back. It felt surreal that these strangers would be his only friends and family for the foreseeable future. There were at least fifty of them—some with the forehead mark of the Nibelung, some not—and Alton wondered what would happen to the twenty-odd men and women who wouldn’t make the journey.
“When did you get here?” Alton asked.
“Yesterday,” Alex said. “It took longer than expected to get down from the mountains in those.” He gestured to the four rocket-powered skiffs staged up the tunnel.
“Yeah, and it was fucking miserable too,” Kiara said, rubbing her butt.
“So, what now?”
“Around 6:30, we’ll jet across the basin toward the launchpad,” Alex said. “It’s about three miles from here. The skiffs move fast, and darkness will give us cover, but they will detect us before we get there.”
“What sort of response do you expect?”
“They have a security team at the launch complex and another protecting the viewing area,” Alex said. “We’ll take out Team 1 when we get there, being careful, of course, not to blow up anything we shouldn’t.” He looked at Lance as he said this and the big man smirked.
Alex continued, “Their security will already have cleared the area around the platform of nonessential personnel, which will make things easier for us. By the time they figure out what’s happening, Team 2 probably won’t get to us in time.”
“And if they do?”
“That’s why we are blessed to have true believers with us.” He turned and gestured toward the faithfully assembled. “Some have volunteered to handle any resistance while the rest of us board. And thank you again, my brothers and sisters.”
He bowed toward them, and two dozen or so bowed back, lifting their arms in the Nibelung salute. Ah, so that’s it, Alton thought. If they minded being used as human shields while the others made their escape, they didn’t show it. Alton supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, not after the thorough job of cult indoctrination he had witnessed at camp. Some of the Nibelungs there had never even met Alex and were still willing to die for him.
“And if they decide to blow us up when we’re airborne?” Alton asked.
“As I told you before, we’ll have three of the original crew with us,” Alex said. “We’ll be letting the world know those hostages are on board even before we take off. They’re not going to slaughter their own astronauts, not in front of the whole world.”
“What if that’s countermanded by an executive order?”
“We won’t have to worry about that.”
“You said the same thing back in the mountains. What does that mean?”
“It means I made a deal with the devil a long time ago,” Alex said.
“Not . . .”
“Guerrero?” Alex finished. “No, he thinks of himself as too pure. Anyway, he hates my guts ever since we almost took him out at the Torreses’ house that day.”
Alton flinched, hearing it spoken aloud, pictured Christina beneath the rubble, the hole blown in the back of the house, the steam and acrid smoke.
“But there are others close to him, both in the government and the military, who have been more than happy to keep this war going,” Kiara said. “Without Hagen, there are no camps. There is no martial law. No West Coast White House. He’s a necessary evil for what Guerrero’s people want to achieve.”
“I just had to keep escalating our methods until there was enough public support to make the camps politically viable for him,” Alex said.
“The dirty bomb.”
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ! You risked killing a million people!”
“No. The plan was always for the bomb to go off far from a population center, then pretend like we had made a mistake by detonating it prematurely.”
“People still died!”
“Some. And a few more will die of cancer from the radiation,” Alex said. “But overall, I achieved my aims with a minimum of bloodshed.”
“Just those you deemed necessary to sacrifice.”
“It’s war, Alton.”
“That’s everybody’s excuse! Just admit that you’re a murderer.”
Alex gave him a hard look, and he could feel the tension ripple through the group. “It’s time to leave that kind of thinking behind now,” he said. “Anyway, once the camps were in place, our high-placed contacts agreed to look the other way while pretending to search high and low for us.”
“And how do you know they’re going to continue to look the other way?”
“Because this is the best thing that could happen for them,” Alex said. “Out there, we become the unknown threat. Once this war becomes interplanetary, it gives Guerrero and his people the ultimate excuse to consolidate power in a new and uncertain era.”
“I told you this government was a monstrosity,” Kiara said. “Now, you see why it’s worth revolting against.”
“This was never a revolution,” Alton said. “Just an elaborate means to your ends.”
“Of course it’s a revolution!” Alex roared and his followers murmured their agreement. “This will be the greatest revolution anybody ever achieved! Once I changed our mission from fighting over this wasted world to ruling a new one, it wasn’t hard to convince people to go from being pariahs to princes!”
The group beamed as he spoke.
“We can do a lot more up there to establish our way of life,” Kiara added. “And imagine how inspired our followers on Earth will be to keep up the cause!”
“What about the Chinese?” Alton said. “I’m guessing they won’t feel so inspired.”
“Peaceful Martian coexistence is a possibility, at least at first. But it’s inevitable that East and West will clash again.” He smiled at the thought.
Alton squeezed his EVs lightly, emanating a faint crimson glow. Were the Chinese the reason they had outfitted him with these? Would he end up as one more weapon in some forever war?
As the group readied the skiffs and assembled the weapons and gear, Alton wondered if, despite all his risk and sacrifice, he shouldn’t just bolt. Maybe it was obvious what he was contemplating, because Kiara came up and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“Did anything about what you just learned make you want to stay behind?” she asked him.
She had a point. If everything was shit, he might as well go where there was less of it, where any individual voice of change would have a better chance of resonating.
“Final walk-through,” Alex said, and they gathered round as he powered up a hologram of the launch site that lit up the dark tunnel.
“Soon, the fueling and the oxygen purge will be complete. They’ll transport the crew over and start loading them just before 7:00, at which time they’ll begin the remaining system checks. We’ll intercept them just as they arrive here, grab our three experts, and neutralize the rest with webs.”
Alton was relieved to hear they didn’t plan to kill the remaining crew.
The hologram fizzled out. “Now, get a little rest over the next few hours,” Alex said. “And prepare yourself for destiny.”
CHAPTER 56
When dusk had fallen and it was time to go, they piled into the skiffs with their gear. No one spoke, overwhelmed by the dread or the immensity of what they were about to do. Then Alex gave the signal, and they set off across the cooling desert. The breeze revitalized Alton, as did the blazing lights of the spaceport as they neared. He felt his stomach drop with excitement, and his misgivings were forgotten in an instant. The violet sky reminded him of the fateful night all those years ago at the festival, when he had met Kiara. He remembered seeing the ship departing Cosmost that night and how he dearly wished to be on it. Now a much more powerful rocket loomed right in front of them. Soon, instead of watching it disappear, he would be aboard, and it would be the Earth gradually fading from his view.
And then in an instant the reverie was shattered as the skiff in front of them took a battery of fire. It swerved left into the hard ground, bodies spilling out into the scrubland amid cries of pain and panic. The remaining craft stopped on a dime, and the others leapt out.
Alex barked commands over their internal comms. “Watch your fire!” he yelled. Then he was ordering a flanking position around their attackers and shots were fired back and forth, dropping bodies on both sides.
Alton took cover behind a skiff, looking for an opportunity to enter the fray with his EVs, but he was terrified that he would let loose an errant shot. Even slight damage to the ship’s delicate, interconnected systems array would kill the launch. And if he hit one of the boosters, it would instantly vaporize the entire platform.
But it was a moot point, as the fierce firing wouldn’t even let him get his head up. It seemed as though Alex had underestimated the size of the first security detail. Or maybe Team 2 had already arrived. Kiara came over the comms, voicing those same thoughts. “There’s no way this is one squad,” she said. “Somebody else is here!”
Then Alton knew . . . the ships he had seen earlier. “Everybody hold up a second,” he said.
“Fuck that,” Lance said, loosing a wicked bolt.
“I said hold up, goddamnit! I know who it is.”
“Cease fire,” Alex commanded, and the shooting stopped, the echoes bouncing off the platform before being enveloped by desert and sea.
Alton set his comms for universal reception, then said, “Val.”
There was a beat, and then Valeria’s voice was on their channel. “Made it back to your people, I see.”
He couldn’t deny it this time. Whether he was a white supremacist or not didn’t matter if he had joined up with their cause.
“How’d you know we were here?” he asked.
“What you said when we were in the forest. Somebody kept tipping off Hagen. That’s why they could never catch him. If it was Guerrero, or someone else high up, the White House obviously wouldn’t be the target. The colony ship is the only other target in the region that makes sense.”
“Oooh, she’s good,” Alex crackled over the comms. “Though it sounds like she didn’t figure out the other part.”
“What other part?”
“You want the honors?” Alex asked.
Alton hesitated, then said, “We’re not destroying it. We’re . . . taking it.”
“For what?”
It was Kiara’s turn to speak, and Alton could practically hear her scowl as she said, “What the hell do you think?”
There was another beat before Val’s laughter rang over the channel. “What would you know about surviving up there? You’ll die of exposure in the first week!”
“Maybe,” Alton said. “But all that matters is I get there.”
“That’s not true.” He was surprised to hear that she seemed genuinely disappointed in him. It gave him pause, but not enough.
“You’re way outnumbered,” he said. “Please just back off so that nobody else gets hurt.”
“You know I can’t do that,” she said. “Mission first. Always.”
“Then make it your mission to live for once,” Alton said.
“No time for this,” Alex said. “Light ’em up!”
The Nibelungs designated to stay behind had edged closer during the ceasefire. Their flanking positions in the dark lit up on both sides with savage firing. Some of them were going down as well but they were doing their jobs, giving the colony crew the cover they needed to escape.
Alton leapt out from behind the skiff, skirted the firing, and sprinted towards the platform. But then the shooting stopped almost as soon as it began. Whatever was left of their attackers had been quickly neutralized.
“Everybody that’s coming get to the ship on the double,” Alex said.
“Just one more cockroach to stomp,” Lance said.
Alton pulled up short. “No!” he yelled. “She lives or I’m out.”
