300 Miles to Galveston (15 page)

The away boat was about 200 feet to stern. They would need to pass through the mess hall and contractor quarters before entering the stern hold and launching the boat, with an untrained man and child. Well, untrained but not
unskilled
. They got across the ruins of Texas, and she’d seen Sophie’s predatory instincts.

Nicole cursed. This was still too much territory with too many variables. She wasn’t a SEAL. She was a doctor and a decent shot.

She closed her eyes and thought for a moment.

“OK. Let’s only shoot to wound, if possible. Every time we kill one, his controller takes over a new body, and he can tell the others. We wound and get past. We don’t kill unless there’s no other choice. Agreed?”

“Yeah,” said Kurt. Sophie nodded.

“Past that bulkhead is the mess. Another bulkhead is opposite, in about 30 feet. Sophie, you’re the fastest, so I want you to open that hatch, leave it open, and run to the next hatch. Your dad and I will flank the door, and as soon as we see anyone coming toward you, we’ll shoot them – in the legs if we can. If that fails, we’ll charge in.”

“How are we going to avoid shooting Sophie in the back?”

“You and I are going to flank and form an X line of fire, like this,” she said, crossing her index fingers. “This will give us cover against the ones we’re not shooting at, in case they’re armed. So far, that hasn’t been an issue. The armory isn’t in this direction, and I haven’t seen anyone but us with a gun yet.”

“What if someone in the mess is armed?”

“If Sophie runs low and fast, she’ll be below the stainless steel counters. But I won’t lie. There is no risk-free way to take this next room. If you want me to run through, I’ll do it... but she’s faster, and I’m a better shot.”

“Sophie?”

She said, “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Sophie turned the bulkhead lever, opened the hatch wide, and ran. The other bulkhead was straight ahead, just as Nicole had said.

So was Paul.

He stared at Sophie, not with an Angel’s face, nor with the look of someone under control. He had the face she’d seen in Huntsville, chin down, eyes flaring, feet wide, as if nothing else existed but his desire to make her suffer.

She stumbled, but couldn’t quickly stop or change direction – she had launched into the room like a racetrack rabbit. Neither did she have time to fish out her knife or the gun. She acted like she was going to tackle him, and at the last instant dropped to her knees, sliding forward and punching him in the testicles.

Paul’s lips curled and he reached for her, grabbing her hair with one hand.

Two other contractors who had been in the mess ran towards the open hatch, where they saw Kurt. He fired three times, finally hitting one in the knee. As the other closed, Nicole shot him center mass, and he lost his balance and slammed into the hinge. Both were still alive.

Paul lifted Sophie by her hair with one hand and punched her in the eye, then the throat, then the mouth. Kurt took aim, but had no clear shot. Nicole lowered her head and squeezed the trigger, exploding his right foot. He howled and dropped Sophie as his knee came to the floor. Sophie staggered backward, blind with stars and blood, and ran into a counter.

Kurt fired four rounds. Two hit, and Paul fell forward, onto his face, gurgling.

Kurt stepped through the hatch, put his arm around Sophie, and helped her across the room as Nicole opened the second hatch.

Safely on the other side, Kurt checked his daughter’s face. Her nose was broken, and her right eye was swelling shut. As she put her back to the wall, he could tell her feet weren’t really under her. He took her gun, ejected both clips, and loaded one clip to 15 rounds, handing the extras to Nicole, who added them to a spare clip. Then he handed Sophie’s gun to Nicole.

“You take both. I’ll help her, and keep one.”

Ahead lay the contractors quarters, then the stern hold.

“I should grab a med kit,” said Kurt.

“There’ll be one on the away boat,” said Nicole.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she hissed, but he wasn’t sure. When they passed the room with his bunk, he stole inside, looking for the pink and light blue crossed boxes. His was at the foot of his bed. Sophie’s was wedged between her mattress and the wall. As he slid back down, he found another contractor was behind him.

He walked around him, and he did nothing. Two more were in the room, a teenage boy and a middle-aged man. They looked like they were waiting. Their expressions did not change when two shots came from the hallway. He ran out, and saw Phoebe holding a Beretta. Sophie had slid to the floor, a smear of blood pointing to her from the grey wall, and Nicole had dropped one of her guns to clutch her leg.

Kurt cursed and pulled Sophie to his shoulder, shoving the first aid kits under his shirt. Phoebe aimed at Kurt, but Nicole returned fire, dropping Phoebe with a perfect head shot. Two more female contractors came up behind her, one with a wrench, the other with a steak knife.

“Run!” said Nicole.

They bolted through engineering. Whether the men there were Angels or Devils, they could not tell. Nicole started to hobble, and Kurt saw the bullet hole in her leg.

“The away boat,” she said, pointing with her Beretta.

They clomped to the boat, which was suspended by four cables about two feet off the lower deck. Kurt poured Sophie in, and helped Nicole climb over.

“How do I do this?”

“There’s an automatic button there, square, and yellow. Press it and jump in.”

He did. The starboard hull next to the boat opened. The boat was moved over the water by hydraulics, lowered, then both cables released, dropping it about one feet to the water. The
USS Fort Worth
was traveling at 15 knots. They grunted as the boat splashed down and the bow pushed into the water.

Kurt watched the ship speed away to the east.

Sophie had a bullet hole in her left side, and was unconscious. Nicole had a hole that went through her right thigh, thankfully missing the bone and artery.

“Get it above your heart,” he said. She looked at him like he was crazy.

“I’m the doctor.”

“And, you’re shot.” He took a folded raincoat and used it to prop her right knee up. “Lay flat.” He took a length of nylon rope and tied off her right thigh. “I need two minutes. Just lay there and don’t bleed so much.”

He rolled Sophie on to her right side, atop a blue plastic tarp. The blood burped out in dark jets, and part of a broken rib was visible.
Spleen?
He cursed.

“Don’t try to dig it out,” said Nicole. “You’ll just do more damage.”

He shook his head. “I don’t need to do anything. Our nanites are activated, remember? They’ll repair her. They fixed her knee overnight.”

That was a knee, Nicole thought. And she doesn’t have 12 hours.

“Bandage up my leg,” said Nicole, “and I’ll do my best to stabilize her.”

Kurt ran the motor wide open as they headed towards shore. Nicole knew of a state of the art medical facility at Port Arthur, if they could find the inlet to Sabine Lake. Sophie had lost too much blood. Without a transfusion, she would die in an hour or two.

Nicole explained that nanites can’t repair what isn’t there, can’t make blood cells out of other tissue. “They just patch holes” she said. “They don’t fill them.”

He wasn’t listening.

“Do you see it?”

She shook her head. The Southeast Texas coast was a long band of green grasses with no landmarks.

He noticed the water was darker to the right, and pointed. “I think that’s silt!”

She nodded. “Looks about right. Go!”

He saw the land divide as he raced east, revealing the outlet of the Sabine Lake into the Gulf, and let out a long, desperate breath.

Sabine Lake divided Texas from Louisiana at their southernmost mutual point. The Medical Center of Southeast Texas was four miles inland, going northwest up Memorial Boulevard.

As Kurt hopped out of the boat and dragged it to shore, Nicole did not follow him.

“Is your leg worse than I thought?” said Kurt.

“No. She is.”

Blood had covered half the blue tarp. Nicole touched Sophie’s round face.

“I need to – maybe I can find a motorcycle that’s still working,” he said, looking around.

“Kurt. She’s not going to make it.”

“What do I do?”

“Stay with her.”

He stared as ripples from the lake slapped the shore. Then he climbed back into the boat, sat cross-legged, and held his daughter’s head. He told her how proud he was of her, and how much he loved her, until she died.

Chapter 16: Manifest

The motor whined as Kurt and Nicole pulled away from shore, leaving the blue tarp wrapped tight and held to the shore grass with smooth stones. He steered the away boat through the channel, back out to sea, and ran it south for half a mile.

Then he stopped the boat.

Nicole had seen that look before, during the Mindanao-Malaysia War. She gave him time.

South, until it runs out of gas, then jump into the ocean.

East, and bring death to everyone on that ship until they cut me down.

He restarted the motor, and continued south. I deserve to die. I am a failure as a father and a man. Let the fish find me useful.

The wind blew his tears and blinded him as the boat bounced against the sea. He found himself thinking about an interdisciplinary college class from many years ago, when life was a light and hopeful thing, instead of an invisible ogre that had beaten him into his current shape.

Time was not an isolated thing. It was part of something bigger. When you stand still, those observing you who are also standing still see time flowing at the same rate. But when you move, their perception of your time slows down. It’s an infinitesimal difference at human speeds, but the principle is true.

And yet, human minds perceive time in the opposite manner. When we do nothing, time creeps; when we act, time races.

He came out of his reverie and realized the sun was behind him. He had turned the boat east. A part of him had grown bigger, and no longer listened to the tiny part filled with despair.

“Where are we going?” said Nicole.

“I’m going to kill every drone on that boat until they cut me down. You wanna come?”

She stabbed a disposable morphine shot into her wounded leg and checked her ammo. “Yes,” she said.

From a distance they could see the hydraulic lift was still out, ready to receive the away boat.

“Looks like they’ve figured out how to lower an anchor and stop the engines, but it doesn’t look like they’ve absorbed Navy protocol. This could play to our advantage. The armory is on the lower level, at the middle of the ship. We could... she stopped. Are you listening?”

“I’m not here to be tactical.”

“You’re just here to die?”

“No. I’m here to kill as many of them as I can before I die.”

“Well, can we cut a killing path towards the middle of the ship?”

“We’ll see. If I run out of guys on this end of the ship, I guess I’ll head that way. No promises.”

“Kurt, I know you’re upset,” she said, touching his shoulder. “I’m here to help.”

“I’m here to die. If you’re just going to help, stay on the boat.”

The cables had not been retracted. Kurt attached the first two to the boat’s bow, and Nicole attached the other two to the stern. There was a yellow button on Kurt’s cable which looked the same as the one he’d pressed to release the boat the first time. He pressed it, and they were lifted into the ship.

She said, “Tulad ng isang ibon na malayang lumilipad.”

He looked towards her.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said.

He climbed out of the boat, a Beretta in his right hand, and a Gerber knife in his left, advanced to the nearest drone, cut his throat and heel-kicked him in the chest, knocking him ten feet across the floor.

He turned, went to the next closest one, whose back was to him, kicked out one knee and stabbed him in the throat. Blood fountained to the grey floor as the drone grasped at his neck, coughing.

Looking to the next one, he yelled, “Come on!”

The drone did nothing.

He trudged towards him, kicked his knee in, and as he fell forward, slid the blade across the side of his neck.

Kurt’s curse echoed across the loading bay. He paused to wipe his bloody hand onto his pants. Nicole was behind him, two Berettas raised, saving her bullets. They climbed the stairs and entered the hatch, still open.

Blood flew and shots rang out as they harvested the drones that fell, spun, and coughed, throwing their red spray in all directions. By the time Kurt and got to the C-and-C, they were so wet with it they looked like they had just been born.

There were six of them, some in contractor bodies, some in sailor bodies, but they all had a look of calm intelligence about them. The one standing near the ship’s steering looked at Kurt and Sophie and said, “Banak kas huruluth. Cho inik manama?” His palms were raised, as if offering them something.

Kurt shot him dead center in the mouth as he formed his last syllable. He coughed, hands flailing, and fell.

Nicole opened fire on the two closest to her, and Kurt fired on the next to his left, then the next. They didn’t run. It was easy.

Then, the one Kurt had shot in the mouth whispered something from the floor.

“You have no chance. Why do you do this?”

Kurt walked over to finish him off. Nicole yelled, “Wait!”

“Five seconds,” said Kurt.

“What do you want?” she said to the corpse.

“The oceans. You stay on the land.”

Kurt shot him in the forehead, and his brains flowered onto the black floor mat.

“The oceans? Then why use us like this, destroy everything...”

“Don’t care. Still got four bullets and a knife.” Kurt left the C-and-C, heading downstairs, yelling, “Next!”

He turned the corner and his chest exploded. He saw the ceiling, and a drone sailor standing over him with a shotgun. The barrel came down, but the top of drone’s head snapped back, like it had been hit with a hammer. The drone collapsed on top of Kurt, spitting hot blood from the crown of his head.