Dean Wesley Smith - Final Fantasy, page 10
“I finished it,” she said.
“Finished what?” Dr. Sid asked.
“The dream,” she said, her smile getting bigger. “I know what it means. I know what the Phantoms really are.”
Gray remembered the dream as well, at least the part he had seen, and he had no idea what she was talking about. The armies had fought and died; the planet had exploded. What was she talking about?
Behind him the operating-room doors burst open and Hein’s men charged in, wearing full battle gear.
Gray turned to see a half dozen weapons covering them.
“Stand down,” Gray ordered his men as Neil started to bring up his rifle.
“Nobody move!” one of the soldiers shouted.
“Nobody’s moving,” Gray said. The last thing he wanted was to lose one of his men stupidly, let alone Aki and Dr. Sid.
“You are all under arrest!” the soldier said as the Deep Eyes all dropped their weapons.
“Well, that’s a surprise,” Dr. Sid said, shaking his head. “I’ll wager this is General Hein’s doing. Just once I’d love to have a military mind have an original thought.”
“Not sure how to take that, Doc,” Gray said.
Dr. Sid laughed. “Present company excluded, of course.”
General Hem sat at his desk. The blinds over the window had been drawn and the room’s ami-bugging equipment was turned on. In front of his desk were Major Elliot and seven other soldiers. They were men he could trust completely. And soon would.
Major Elliot snapped off a small communicator and looked at the general. “We have them, sir.”
The general knew that Elliot was expecting a positive response, but he didn’t bother. There was no doubt that Captain Edwards and the Deep Eyes would be captured. They wouldn’t fight other soldiers. It wasn’t in their nature. And in this city, there really wasn’t any place to run or hide.
“Sir?” Major Elliot said.
Hein looked at the major and the other soldiers and knew it was time to start. “My wife and daughter were killed by Phantoms when the San Francisco barrier city was attacked. Did I ever tell you that?”
Major Elliot looked stunned. He shook his head no.
The other soldiers seemed uneasy learning such personal information about him. But that was what he wanted. He needed them to feel as if he was just like them.
“I try to imagine,” General Hein said, going on with his little speech, “what that must have been like, seeing everyone around you fall over dead for no apparent reason.”
Now the major was really squirming.
“And then, at the end, feeling something next to you, invisible, touching you, reaching inside your body, pulling the life from you and your child.”
He stood and leaned over the desk right into Major Elliot’s face. “You’ve lost family, haven’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Major Elliot said.
The general looked at the other men. All of them were nodding.
He knew they would be. He knew more about each
of them then they thought he knew. He wasn’t going to trust this plan to anyone who wasn’t thinking completely with him.
“Good,” he said. “That’s why I trust all of you. You all know what must be done.”
They all nodded, even though none of them had a clue what he was intending. But they soon would.
He moved around the desk and headed for the door with the men following. Time to put the last part of his plan into action. By the morning, the Council would listen to every word he said. And that would be the start of ending this war.
It took them just under twenty minutes to descend into the Barrier Generator facility. It was a massive complex of heavy machinery and glowing green ovo-energy pipes that lead to the very core of the place.
It was the Barrier Generator, as this complex was called, that kept the city protected from the Phantoms. And right now it was the exact place he needed to be to start what he knew would be the end for the Phantoms.
At the main security door Major Elliot ran his security card through the scanner and punched in the correct code. Inside a nearby booth, the general knew two men were scanning them, seeing who he was.
A moment later the heavy security doors opened.
As his troop got through, he ordered, “Major, arrest these men.”
It took a moment and some complaints from the dozen workers in the facility, but finally they were all rounded up and escorted out the door. Then the door was closed and secured. “No one through,” he said to two of his men. “Period.”
He turned his attention back to the main control room. A massive map of the entire city and all the barrier sectors covered one wall. At the moment everything was green, showing normal ovo-energy flow and activity. Good.
He had his remaining five soldiers take stations around the room. He pointed to the main control and command chair for Major Elliot. He knew that Major Elliot had done a stint of six months in this facility and knew how to operate it all. So did the other five men he had assigned stations.
“Okay,” he said to Major Elliot, “here’s what I need you to do. Reduce power to Sector 31.”
Major Elliot snapped around in the chair and looked at him. “Sir, do you realize that the Phantoms will-“
“What I realize, Major, is that we must force the Council to take action against the enemy. And a little scare in a sparely populated sector will do the job just fine.”
The major nodded and turned back to his panel, issuing orders as he went.
“Reduce flow of alpha pipe?”
“Twenty-five percent of alpha pipe energy flow redirected,” one soldier said.
“Lower output to Sector 31,” Major Elliot ordered.
“Lowering output,” a second soldier repeated.
On the big board a small sector turned bright red. An alarm sounded, filling the room with the whoops of the danger warning.
“Turn that damn thing off,” he ordered.
Major Elliot did as he was ordered, and silence again filled the room.
Another big board filling a second wall came to life. A moment before it had been clear. It was a map of the city as well, only this board showed Phantom activity. And there was activity starting in Sector 31.
Good. A few people would die tonight, but their sacrifice would be worth getting the Council to move and save all of humanity.
“They’re coming through now, General,” the major said.
“Oh, I think we can easily handle a few Phantoms in a contained space,” he said. He had picked Sector 31 for the simple reason that the entire area was easily shut off from the rest of the city. And right now that was being done by the military.
The major glanced up at the big board showing the incursion of Phantoms, then back at the general.
“Relax, Major, when the night’s over, you’re going to be a hero.”
General Hein watched as, on the big board, the opening in the Sector 31 barrier blinked a flashing red.
And on the other wall, the Phantoms were spreading into the sector.
His plan was working perfectly.
Now it was only a matter of time.
chapter 15
The cell block was more comfortable than Aki had imagined it might be. It had high ceilings, white corridors with bright lights chasing any chance of a shadow away, and no other inmates besides them in the cell block. The cells were open onto the corridor, with simple lines in the air. She had been told by Gray that those lines marked pulsonic lasers. There was no getting through them.
Each cell was large, about twenty feet across, with beds, a small desk, a toilet, and a sink, all built into the thick walls. Security cameras dotted the ceiling of the hallway, clearly able to see every inch of every cell.
Aki had no doubt they were being very carefully watched by General Hein’s men at that very moment.
Gray, Aki, and Dr. Sid had all been put together in one cell along the right side of the hallway, while the three members of Deep Eyes had the cell facing them
on the left. Since there was no one else in the cell block at all, they could talk freely.
Since they had arrived and gotten settled, Aki had been telling them about her dream, and about what she thought it meant. At the moment she was sitting cross—legged on the floor in front of her cell door. She could see Neil across the way, lying on his bunk. Jane leaned against one wall of her cell, and Ryan sat on the floor. They seemed relaxed and not at all upset about being tossed in jail.
Gray was leaning against the wall near her, and Dr. Sid was sitting on the bed.
“Aki,” Gray said, “I’m not so sure you’re calling it right.”
“You were in my dream, Gray,” she said, looking into his eyes. “You saw the same things I did.”
“That’s just it,” he said, his voice echoing a little down the empty cell block toward the main door. “I’m not sure what I saw. How can you be?”
“Captain, please,” Dr. Sid said, holding up his hand. “Let her continue.”
Aki smiled as Gray nodded. Then she went on. “All right, let’s come at this a different way,” she said. “Why do you think we’ve never been able to determine a relationship between the human-sized phantoms and the giant Metas roaming the wasteland?”
“Excuse me, Doc,” Neil said from across the corridor, “but what friggin’ relationship?”
“He’s right,” Ryan said. “You have your human-sized Phantoms, your caterpillary Phantoms, and your flying snake-like Phantoms, not to forget my personal favorite, the big giant Metas.”
“Down, boy,” Jane said, laughing. “We know how you really love your job, but don’t go getting excited in here.”
Aki laughed, as did the others. For six people jailed without cause, they were certainly an upbeat bunch.
“He’s right, though,” Neil said. “If you’ve spent as much time in the field as we have, you know there is no relationship between any of them. It’s like a zoo out there.”
“Precisely,” Aki said, glad that Neil had made her point. “I think those giant ones are like our whales or elephants.”
“All right, so tell me,” Neil said, “why would an invading army bring a bunch of whales and elephants along for the ride?”
“Some kind of crazy Noah’s Ark?” Jane asked.
“You know,” Dr. Sid said, breaking into the conversation from his cell, “we have always assumed the meteor was intended as a form of transportation. Perhaps it wasn’t.”
“The meteor is a chunk of their planet,” Aki said, remembering how at the end of her dream the planet was breaking apart, and one large chunk was shooting off into space.
“But how could they survive the trip across outer space on a hunk of rock?” Neil asked.
They didn’t,” Aki said.
There was silence in the cell block as everyone thought about her words.
“You know,” Neil said, “you are starting to make a creepy kind of sense.”
“I agree,” Gray said, his voice soft and firm. “I think
what you are saying explains why we never had a chance when fighting them. All our strategies are based on one assumption: that we were fighting alien invaders.”
“Think of the dream, Gray,” Aki said. Think of how all the aliens in the dream died. Since then all they have known is suffering. They’re not an invading army. They’re ghosts.”
No one had anything at all to say to that.
General Hein leaned in over Major Elliot to check out the board in front of him. It showed the activity of the Phantoms entering Sector 31 on a holographic map. So far, so good. It was just about time to button things up again and then clean up the mess.
Above him, on the massive wall holograph of the entire Barrier system, Sector 31 still showed a flashing red. On the other wall holograph, the entire area of Sector 31 showed solid Phantom infestation.
“How many have entered?” Hein asked.
Major Elliot worked the board in front of him, but no exact number appeared. “Not sure, exactly sir,” Elliot said. “A lot of them, from what I can tell.”
“Excellent,” Hein said. That was exactly what he had wanted. This would give the Council a good scare and get them moving. “Start the procedure to bring back up Sector 31’s barrier. Are there squads moving in to clean up the Phantoms?”
“Yes, sir,” Elliot said.
“Are they being contained?”
“So far they are, sir,” Elliot said.
“Perfect,” General Hein said. “Now we just wait until
it’s all cleaned up. And by tomorrow, the Zeus cannon will have wiped the home nest of these creatures from the face of the planet.”
Hein paced back and forth as his men worked to reestablish the barrier over Sector 31. He knew this plan would work. He had had no doubt at all. And he had been right. It was working like clockwork.
Major Elliot and the others almost had the Sector 31 barrier power back up when things went wrong.
“Sir!” Major Elliot said, panic clear in his voice, “I have numerous Phantom contacts.”
“Of course you do,” he said.
“Outside of Sector 31, sir,” Major Elliot said, without turning away from his control panel. “And they’re moving at incredible speed.”
General Hein glanced up at the big board. It showed Phantom contacts moving out from Sector 31 far faster than possible. He moved over to Major Elliot
“What the hell is going on here? I thought you said they were contained?”
“It’s not a computer error, sir,” he said. “I checked that first. Somehow they are moving in the pipes.”
General Hein shook his head. Major Elliot wasn’t making any sense at all. “What pipes?”
“Sir,” Elliot said, “they’re moving with the bio-etheric energy flow.”
That wasn’t possible. The energy flow was what powered the barriers. Phantoms couldn’t move or even exist in that flow. He glanced up at the holographic map on the wall. What he saw made bis entire body shake. It showed hundreds of Phantoms dispersing at an incredible speed throughout the city.
“That’s impossible!” he shouted. “Nothing living could survive in those pipes.”
“We’ve got a big one heading this way, sir,” one of the men said.
Again he leaned in over the major’s shoulder to study the board. The man was right. There was a large snake-like Phantom headed inbound.
And fast.
General Hein glanced around. None of bis men were armed with any kind of weapon that could fight a Phantom. They only wore their bullet-firing side arms. And never had a bullet stopped a Phantom.
Also, none of these men had any real experience with Phantoms. They had dealt with humans, leaving the Phantom fighting to the likes of Captain Gray and his men.
Through the window the energy in the pipes illuminated the long, massive Phantom as it got closer.
“Oh, my god,” Major Elliot said, staring at it.
Two of the other men started to raise their pistols to fire at the snake inside the energy pipe.
“Hold your fire!” he shouted at them as the snake disappeared through the flooring. “Are you nuts?”
They both looked terrified, but somehow they managed to retake their positions again.
Was he the only one around there who could think? The bullets from their pistols wouldn’t hurt the Phantom, but they might break open the energy pipes, killing them all even faster than the Phantom would.
“Get Sector 31 buttoned up!” he ordered. “Do it fast! We can still keep this under control if we move quickly.”
The men jumped back to work, racing to complete the process they had already started. Suddenly the snake came up out of the floor, its shape vaguely illuminated by the light from the ovo-pipes. It snapped around the man sitting at the energy controls, flowing through him as if he wasn’t there.
The man stiffened and then slumped forward, dead. The Phantom had taken the life out of him instantly.
A soldier to Hein’s right opened fire on the snake with his pistol, and two others did the same.
“Hold your fire!” Hein shouted, ducking as the bullets bounced around the room. The snake turned and headed for the three men and they kept firing, backing up as they went.
The rounds from their guns pounded into the control panels, sending smoke and parts flying, but doing nothing to the snake-like Phantom.
“Cease fire, damn it!” General Hein shouted.
They finally complied as the Phantom dropped down through the floor again, but the damage had been done. One of the main boards had been hit, and the ovo-tank it controlled started to react to the sudden fluctuation.
Suddenly, beyond the window of the control room, in the massive main pumping room, there was a muffled explosion as one of the pipelines burst, causing the next, and then the next to let go.
Red lights started to fill the board as, around the city, sector after sector of the barrier failed.
General Hein watched in horror as the lights flickered and went out, plunging the room into darkness.
Another of his men screamed as the Phantom tore the life force from his body.
A moment later the emergency lights came up. Emergency power flickered back into the panels and the map on the wall lit up again, showing that most of the barrier over the entire city was gone.
Oh, God, what had he done?
Two of the soldiers began to fire at the snake again as Major Elliot worked at the emergency-powered board, trying to do anything to get the barrier up again.
Suddenly one of the bullets bounced off a panel and hit the major squarely in the chest. Hein watched as the major slumped out of the chair, a hand covered in blood pressed to his chest.
“What happened?” the major asked.
“It went wrong,” Hein said. Then, as he watched, the light went out of the major’s eyes.
The Phantom came up out of the flooring and swiped the soldier standing beside General Hein, killing him instantly. The man slumped to the floor on top of the major.
General Hein turned. It was time to get out of here and out of the city. He ran for the door. “Open it and get out!” he shouted to the man inside the booth.
