Archangel Down: Archangel Project. Book One (33 page)

“You’re not Dan,” said Manuel.

The necklace dimmed, and there was the slightly pudgy face that James remembered.

“I prefer to go by Ghost,” he said, lifting his nose.

Noa rolled her eyes over to James. He mouthed “ebatteru.” It was Japanese, but translated roughly into “arrogant” with implications of “attention seeker.” He saw her chest heave, and she abruptly coughed. But there was no rasp to it. His jaw only shifted, but internally he smiled.

“Ghost?” said Manuel, his voice dropping an octave.

“Humor him,” said Noa.

Ghost’s beady eyes darted in her direction, but he didn’t respond. Instead his eyes went to the others in the room. His lip curled up. “I suppose these are passengers you used to raise money for my services … but where is your crew?”

There was a short silence. Noa stood a little straighter. “These are the crew.”

Ghost’s mouth gaped. His eyes fell on the engineering students. “Is this a joke?” he whispered.

Noa took a step toward Ghost. “A deal is a deal, Ghost. They’ll do, especially if you can generate one of your stellar holograms to introduce them to the Ark’s engine rooms and to review my plans.”

Ghost stared at the engineering students. His eyes passed over James, lingered on Chavez, then went to Eliza and 6T9, and stopped at Hisha and Oliver. Staring at the boy, he demanded, “What is that?”

James felt his neurons spark. That … denoted something less than human. James didn’t feel the way Noa felt about children, but he felt annoyance sparking like static beneath his skin at Ghost’s wording.

Hisha drew the child tighter to herself. “My son.”

Ghost shook his head; lip trembling, he looked away. “They’ll have to do.” And then his eyes went to Noa. “We have to leave soon. There have been crackdowns, more arrests.”

Noa said, “We put that together.”

“I had to mortar up the other exit,” Ghost said, lip still trembling. “There are too many Guards in the alleys. I think your disappearance has made them nervous.”

“We are all ready to leave as quickly as possible,” Noa replied.

Ghost began to pace. His eyes went up to James’s and then down to the peanuts. “You’re eating my peanuts?”

He didn’t sound angry; he sounded surprised.

“What else would I do with them?” James said.

Ghost’s eyes flicked to the peanuts and back to James. “You’ve got nerve.”

James shrugged. “And an appetite.”

Ghost ground his jaw. His eyes fell to James’s arms. “Interesting tattoos.”

“They are amazing,” said Chavez. “Where did you get them?”

James was saved having to answer by a sudden hum and click from 6T9. “Oh, look, it is one of the XTC 100 models.”

All eyes turned to 6T9, whose focus was on the dismembered female ‘bot on the chair.

“Don’t let it distress you, dear!” Eliza said.

Ghost snorted.

“Why would it distress me?” 6T9 said, turning his eyes to Eliza.

“Because it’s a ‘bot like you and it’s chopped to bits?” said Bo.

6T9 tilted his head. “Only the health of humans matters.” He smiled at Eliza. “And yours more than all others, my love.”

Ghost snorted again. One of the students choked out a strangled, “Blech.”

James’s eyes went to the empty eyes of the dismembered ‘bot on the chair. He found himself rolling his sleeves down to cover the tattoos on his arms.

A
semi-transparent
holographic image of the Tri-Center and the sewers beneath it floated in Ghost’s lair. The team gathered around it. Everyone was standing except Eliza and Oliver. Eliza was sitting in a chair. Oliver was on Ghost’s bed, sleeping off the remainder of the sedative he’d received. Carl Sagan was curled up in a ball beside him.

The team had long since gotten past the “how is this possible?” questions about the hologram. James had again asked, “You’re really not using quantum entanglement to pull data from the Luddeccean mainframe?” He had a snippy response from Ghost about frequencies beyond the scope of Luddeccean devices’ ability to detect, that were “beyond your understanding.” Now they were reviewing the final details of the plan.

Noa asked, “Can we get a close-up of the Ark?”

The holo of the ship expanded to fill the tiny room. Designed to take off upright and to glide to a water landing, it looked almost like the old space shuttles of the twentieth century, or like a submarine. Its nose was currently pointed to the sky. From this perspective, they were facing the bottom, the rounded surface that would slide into the water, gracefully slipping across waves, or potentially submerging in inclement weather, and then bobbing up to the surface to float to the nearest shore. The other side, just out of view, was flat and would be the top side if it were horizontal. Unlike the space shuttles of old Earth, the Ark didn’t have bulky external rockets. Instead it had four small rockets at its base. Silver “timefield generator bands” encircled the full 78.5 meter circumference of its exterior hull and short wings. The bands were only a hand’s width wide and were set at intervals of half a meter apart on the Ark’s eighty-meter length. The Ark’s computer didn’t have enough computing power to create a stable bubble in time. Instead, the bands created an unstable bubble that had to be continuously regenerated, similar to antigrav engines. Unlike antigrav engines, the time space “bubble” would encompass the entire ship and allow the Ark to escape gravity when in orbit. Once it reached zero G, the timefield bands would allow the vessel to achieve
effective
light speed. As the Ark moved into and out of that shifting time space, the vessel would be flung through space as though from a slingshot.

“We’ll be moving at a different time from our folks back home, won’t we?” said the female engineering student who Noa now knew as Kara. Her tone was mournful.

“Yes,” Noa responded. Unlike ships that passed through time gates, the Ark with its timefield generators would experience the time paradoxes of light speed travel theorized by early physicists. Time would move faster aboard the Ark than it would planetside. The difference would fluctuate with the efficiency of the ship’s timefield bands, and hopefully wouldn’t be more than double, but even at optimal efficiency, if they had to make it all the way to Time Gate 7 … she banished the thought.

She heard a few gulps among the assembled team.

Noa took a step toward the hologram. “Rotate it,” Noa said. The portion of the craft that would be top-side during landing appeared. This side was flattened. There were doors set into it, but the view of those was blocked by an elevator shaft. The elevator was not native to the craft; it had been built to take tourists to the various decks of the vessel. The Ark’s original grav generators had depended on acceleration. Those had since been replaced so that the vessel could have gravity even while stationary; however, the design of the vessel still hadn’t changed. Instead of having decks set longitudinally in the long vessel, they were set horizontally. On board, “down” would be the tail, and “up” would be the nose.

Noa pointed to the first door, twenty meters above the ground. “This is the door that leads to the main engineering deck. We’ll get out of the elevator here. It’s possible we’ll be receiving fire at this point, and it would be best if we took cover.”

“The Ark’s hull should be more than sufficient to protect us from ordinary laser fire and bullets,” Gunny said.

“Agreed,” said Noa. Even the more delicate timefield generating bands had been designed to survive for decades in deep space. The forward guns could prevent collision with large asteroids—the hull was designed to withstand the impact of asteroid fragments, should the forward guns be used.

Pointing at the vessel, Noa said, “Gunny, Chavez, James, and I will head to the bridge. Manuel, you’ll lead the team including Ghost to the engineering deck.”

Ghost snorted and the hairs on the back of Noa’s neck prickled. Of course, he expected to be the “leader.” Keeping her voice level, she said, “Ghost, show them what they’ll be dealing with while
you’re
busy shutting down the defense grid.”

No snort followed that command. Instead, he projected the engineering room. Noa resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He was such a genius that he couldn’t foresee the need for Manuel to lead the team while his brain was busy with the much bigger task of keeping them from being shot out of the sky.

She followed along as the engineers went over exactly what they’d need to do to get the engines ready for lift-off, and then to gear up for light speed. Then she walked the bridge team through their tasks.

At the very end of the meeting, Gunny said, “You know, I think this just might work.”

Noa felt muscles that she hadn’t even realized were tight loosen in her back and neck. Gunny’s opinion meant more to her than Manuel’s, Ghost’s, or James’s. Gunny was the only one in the room with extensive ground combat experience.

“After we get to light speed, it should be a piece of cake,” Noa agreed.

The older man nodded. “The time paradox will make their weapons useless, and we’ll be nearly untraceable.”

Noa actually smiled. If Gunny believed it, she could believe it. She felt her hopes rise and saw several tentative smiles around the hologram.

Scratching his stubble, Gunny said, “And no one will expect us to try to steal this old hunk of junk.”

Chavez made the sign of the cross, and Kara echoed it. Noa’s smile dropped. That hadn’t been the most encouraging way to put it.

Oliver chose that moment to raise his head and cry, “Spaceshit!”

Gunny choked. “Sort of.”

Hisha ran through the holo toward Oliver. “He can’t say ship,” she said apologetically.

Hopping from the bed, Oliver dashed toward the holographic controls. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Sitting up suddenly in her chair, Eliza shouted, “I just remembered. Sometimes when the timefield generators stalled, engineer Rodriguez would hit the transformer box with a hammer!”

Ghost snorted, “Crazy old woman.”

James said, “It could be true … every ship has eccentricities. Even I know that.”

Jun, one of the engineering students, said, “In our case, all the eccentricities will be aboard.”

Bo laughed as all eyes in the room shifted to Jun. Jun shrugged. “You gotta admit, we’re all pretty crazy to be planning this.” Noa raised an eyebrow at him. Rocking back on his feet, he held up his hands. “Not that it’s worse than staying here and waiting to be picked up by the Guard.”

“Well, as long as we’re clear on that,” said Noa, sensing a chance to repair the mood of optimism.

“Hey, get away from that!” Ghost shouted as Oliver, evading his mother, activated one of Ghost’s holographic necklaces.

The hologram of the Ark dissipated, and Ghost ripped the necklace from Oliver’s hands, prompting the child to wail. Hisha picked him up and began consoling him. Oliver still screamed.

“I think we need more fire power,” Gunny said to Noa, somehow ignoring Oliver’s screams.

James, evidently hearing the comment over the screaming Oliver, said, “Ghost has some empty bottles here—maybe we could scrounge together the makings of Molotov cocktails, maybe even IEDs.”

“How did you come up with that idea?” Ghost said, his tone oddly accusatory.

Noa blinked. It was true that Molotovs were an ancient technology normally only encountered in military history classes, but ... “He’s a history professor.”

Ghost’s eyes narrowed at James. “Huh,” was all he said. Noa found herself biting her lower lip. Her fingers bit into her palms. Ghost’s distrust almost made her trust James more, as illogical as that was, maybe because Ghost’s judgment of character was about as reliable as a lizzar’s.

“Molotov cocktails sound like a good idea to me,” said Gunny, nodding his head at James.

Noa almost sighed with relief at the slight sign of cooperation … and the dropping decibel level of Oliver’s cries.

Ghost muttered, “Next we’ll be using flint arrows.”

“Well, you seem to think we aren’t capable of understanding more sophisticated technologies,” James snipped back. Noa glared at him and Ghost. She took a deep breath, prepared to scold them both—and felt a sting in her lungs.

On cue, Hisha said, “Commander, you need to take your treatment.”

Before Noa could get a word in edgewise, a plastic mask was slapped over her face.

A few minutes later she sat in a corner, plastic mask still on, the acrid smell of treatment in her nose. Her eyes were on James’s back as he began assembling Molotov cocktails next to Gunny. The two men were working companionably, which gave her some hope. This might work; this really might work.

Her eyes slid down James’s back. He’d stripped down to only a short-sleeved undershirt, and his tattoos were standing out in sharp relief on the pale skin of his well-muscled arms. She shook her head and reminded herself that those shapely muscles were probably bought. She tilted her head—they didn’t look oversized, though—some augmented men looked as though they’d stuffed balloons in their biceps.

Chavez sat down next to Noa abruptly. “I think something came loose in my left leg’s connectors,” the other woman muttered. The ensign began ripping duct tape off her left limb. “How did this get in here?” Chavez wondered aloud. Noa’s eyes flitted over briefly, and she saw the ensign holding up a single pebble. The ensign tossed it aside, grabbed another roll of tape, and began re-taping the joint of her artificial limb. Noa looked away.

“Errr … ” said Chavez. “Ummmm … Commander … so I didn’t realize that you and Professor Sinclair were a thing.”

It was at that moment that Noa realized her eyes had roamed back to James’s back. Averting her gaze quickly, Noa blinked over her mask at the young woman. She almost pulled the mask off—but there was Hisha again. “Oh, no you don’t,” Hisha said, putting her hand over the plastic.

The ensign continued, “I never would have flirted with him if I’d known.”

Noa took another deep breath of acrid vapors. She’d missed that flirtation and felt a bit annoyed. She told herself it was because they didn’t need that sort of drama this early in the game. Her brows drew together … and what made the ensign think that discussing this right now was a good idea? Or discussing it ever? Although it didn’t break any rules per se, it was just not done. The young woman had no sense of proprietary and … Noa’s shoulders fell. This woman was part of her crew.