Colliding Worlds Trilogy 03 - Explosion (21 page)

Four and a half minutes later, Jax was in his room, safe from prying ears. He dialed the number to his CO.

“Jerrick,” Colonel Sommers said when his face appeared on the small screen.

The wrist-coms were handy in how they tied to smart phones. “Colonel,” Jax said. “Tell me you skipped the facial scans.”

“Check, as well as everyone left in my battalion who hadn’t been scanned already. Thanks for the intel. But we nearly had a war on our hands in doing so.”

“I can imagine,” Jax replied drily. “Something’s up, Six. They’re scanning our faces to tie each of us to the antitoxin pill we took. I don’t get it yet, but I plan to find out.”

“Keep me posted. And, Jax?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry about your father. We’d hoped he’d hang on in time for the antitoxin.”

“That’s what I figured,” Jax said quietly.

There was a brief silence before Sommers spoke. “I have to go. The General of the Army has a videoconference with Otas Olnek right now, and I need to be there.”

His suspicion went on full alert. “Why is Otas meeting with him?” Jax asked.

“Don’t know,” Sommers replied. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Wilco, Six.” Jax sat down on the low-back sofa. What the hell was Otas up to? There was no way Roden and Nalea knew what that Draeken was doing. First the scanning, now the meetings.

Jumping to his feet, Jax headed out of his room. He typed in Roden’s name and placed the call.

“What do you need, Captain?” Roden asked.

“Did you get my message?”

“Yes. I’ve already sent the word out. Come to my room. I’ll give Nalea a call to let her know you’re on your way.”

Jax hit the disconnect button and headed through the hallways and elevators. Roden was several floors away, and it took him nearly ten minutes to reach his quadrant. Before he turned the corner to Roden’s hallway, his wrist-com buzzed. He glanced down. Frowning, he answered. “What’s up? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.”

Sommers’s features were as hard and stoic as a statue. “The General of the Army has just dropped dead.”

The air in Jax’s lungs hardened. “Had he been scanned?”

“Yes.”

By the time Talla reached the command room for the unscheduled briefing, the room was already at maximum capacity. Jax was standing up front with Fayel, the senior Sephian doctor on Earthside. She took the seat next to Laze, relieved to find him healing … at least physically. His faraway look said something completely different about his emotional health.

“Is this about the scanning?” she asked her brother in a whispered hush.

He shrugged. “No idea.”

She leaned back, letting her wings relax out to the sides of the chair. Talking with Meyt had brought her little new information, aside from the fact that he was still interested in being more than friends. While they had a long history and remained on good terms, Talla just didn’t have the interest in Meyt that she once had, and she placed the blame squarely on one particular human male. Her body still craved Jax, and until she got him out of her system, no one man could satiate her desires the way Jax could.

As for information she could use, she’d learned that Meyt wasn’t happy with his current predicament. Even though he refused to share any details about how he’d come to serve Otas or why he continued to serve him still, it was clear that there was something forcing his hand.

A human officer entered, and she nodded in his direction, not trying to hide her surprise at his presence. Colonel Sommers had been one of the commanding officers at the Etzee, but he’d always been fair with the residents. Still, she’d never expected to see him on the
Striga
. Despite his fairness, he’d always made it clear that he’d side with the humans each and every time.

Roden stood. “Now that everyone’s here, we have some disturbing news.” He motioned to the golden-skinned man to his left. “Fayel, if you would, please … ”

The older Sephian man cleared his throat. “Yes, well, it seems that Otas Olnek hasn’t been entirely forthright about the antitoxin.”

“It doesn’t work?” someone asked from across the room.

Fayel shook his head. “Oh, it works fine. It prevents infection and can reverse infection if taken within the first twenty hours of exposure. The issue is that it seems there is a secondary programming underneath the antitoxin. We missed it in our analysis. We’d thought the antitoxin was more complex than it needed to be, but we didn’t think much of it at the time. It wasn’t until Captain Jerrick and Colonel Sommers brought to light recent events.”

Sommers came to his feet. “Otas Olnek has been meeting with leaders across the world. He met with the General of the Army this morning to discuss an alliance with the United States.”

Talla’s mouth opened in shock. The nerve! First, Otas took over the
Grax
. Now, he was going after Earth. “He does not represent the Draeken people,” she stated boldly.

Sommers held up a hand. “I know that, and the General knew that. He rejected Otas’s offer, and one instant later he was lying dead on the floor.”

“Evidently Otas doesn’t take rejection very well,” Jax said.

Talla tensed, her heart pounding in her chest. The scanning was beginning to make sense, and she dreaded where this was headed.

“The secondary programming works much like a
pika
tablet,” Fayel explained. “Only instead of running immediately, it waits for a signal to begin.”

“
Pika
?” one of the humans asked.

“Oh, yes,” Fayel replied. “
Pika
roughly translates to ‘mercy’. The tablets bring instant, pain-free euthanasia to patients with no hope. I’ve never seen them used as a form of biological warfare before, since each recipient would have to be connected to a detonation system. Linking a
pika
tablet’s programming to an individual using a simple facial and DNA scan for a targeted release is really quite brilliant.”

“You make it sound easy,” Jax replied. “Then why you didn’t catch it before?”

Fayel lowered his eyes, as though ashamed.

Jax was right. They should have analyzed the antitoxin further before release. They’d been so desperate to stop Omega’s spread that they’d bypassed protocols they would never have done otherwise. Talla had pressed Meyt about the facial scanning, but he’d refused to say. Now, anyone who’d been scanned … Talla’s eyes widened.
Jax!
A gasp escaped her, and her hand flew to her mouth. Jax glanced in her direction with a questioning look, but then turned back to the discussion.

Jax was scanned.

There’s nothing to stop Otas …

Goose bumps rose across her skin as she stared at the stoic man sitting across the room, wondering what was going on in that mind of his. Was he scared? Worried? Angry? Talla sucked in a deep breath and looked at her brother. He was watching her, frowning. She nodded and stared straight ahead, formulating a plan to protect Jax.
I won’t allow you to be ‘unplugged’.

“We were in a hurry and got sloppy,” Roden said, slamming her fist onto the table. “We thought Omega was bad. It was just Otas’s way of setting up the rest of the population to live at his disposal. We tapped into human computers before we neared Earth to learn the languages and customs. It would be nearly instantaneous to link a scan to an identity stored on human networks.” He looked at the doctor. “How many humans had facial scans?”

Fayel visibly swallowed. “We estimate nearly eighty percent of the remaining human population. As soon as Captain Jerrick notified Roden and Nalea, we sent out warnings. Otas’s med-tecs had already been directed to pull the remaining antitoxin, but fortunately they refused his orders and continued to administer the antitoxin, withholding facial scanning.”

“At least we know he doesn’t have unlimited control over the
Grax
,” she said, though the relief was small compared to the humans now facing a deadlier risk than Omega.

“No wonder Otas recommended all Sephians and Draeken take the antitoxin,” Roden said. “It would have placed everyone, even his own people, at his mercy. Exactly how many have the
pika
now and are linked to Otas’s detonation system?”

“Over two billion out of the estimated three billion survivors.” Fayel’s voice was quiet, squeaky.

Otas could kill over two billion with the push of a button.

Talla glanced at Jax, and she couldn’t breathe. Strange that two billion meant nothing when faced with the loss of one.

“How about the remaining twenty percent?” Laze asked, bringing her attention back to the room. “The ones who took the antitoxin but didn’t get scanned?”

“As long as they remain decoupled from the system, we believe they are safe,” Fayel said.

Not the most convincing response. It would be far too easy to scan someone without their knowledge. A person could get scanned while on an elevator or walking down the hallway. Talla’s jaw clenched. She came to her feet and leaned on the table, directing a hard look at Roden and Nalea. They had to put an end to the madness now. They’d let a madman go on unrestrained for too long. “Where’s Otas now?”

“He’s on the
Grax
,” Roden said. “We’ve put up a force barrier around the core ship so he’s not going anywhere.”

“A force barrier can’t prevent him from killing over two billion innocent people with the push of a button,” Sommers said, his expression hard. Something vibrated, giving off a plastic hum, and he glanced down at the phone in his hand. “Excuse me.” He stepped out of the room.

Jax said. “We can’t just sit on our asses when Otas has got his finger on the trigger.”

“We aren’t,” Roden said. “That
fregee
can’t leave the
Grax
, and — ”

“If we do nothing, he will take over the world,” Jax interrupted, his words heavy with sarcasm. “Don’t think he’ll stop with just my kind.”

Roden’s lips thinned. “If we go in, he could get trigger-happy. We need to think through our options.”

Sommers had returned while Roden spoke, and he looked none too pleased.

“Otas must be stopped,” Jax said. “The future of the Earth is at stake.”

“And we will,” Roden said, sounding exasperated. “But we need to be smart about it.”

“It’s already too late,” Sommers muttered.

Talla’s blood ran cold. She gripped the table. “What do you mean?”

Just like everyone else in the room, Roden narrowed his eyes on the Colonel. “What have you done, Sommers?”

Sommers went to answer, but was thrown down when a massive blast rocked the ship.

Talla fell onto the table as the entire core ship felt like it was being lifted from the ground. The blast was worse than anything she’d ever felt on the
Striga
, even worse than a meteor storm. Alarms blared, and the lights switched to emergency mode. No one yelled or screamed, a tribute to their military discipline.

After the initial blast, the ship tilted and heavy gravity sent her tumbling onto the floor. Once the ship righted itself, she looked up to see Jax pull Sommers to his feet and punch him. Laze and Talla jumped to their feet and each took a step forward, but didn’t intervene.

Sommers grimaced but didn’t strike back. Jax looked seriously pissed as he held the other man in place by his lapels. “I can’t believe you fucking nuked us.”

Jax finally let Sommers go. The man looked as crestfallen as Jax felt. “Do you know how much collateral damage is lying dead outside? People who’d just survived Omega to be murdered by a warhead courtesy of their own fucking government?”

Sommers winced and looked pleadingly into Jax’s eyes. “I didn’t order it. The President ordered first strike. He had a shot at Otas and took it. He thought if we could take out Otas, we could prevent him from killing eighty percent of what’s left of this world. Can you blame him from trying?”

“A nuclear bomb can’t damage these ships,” Roden said, helping Nalea back into her chair. He knelt before her for a moment, concern in his eyes, until she batted him away. He stood. “It’s no worse than a strong solar flare. Bombing a core ship is like dropping a grain of sand on a boulder and hoping it will break. Already the power fluctuations on board are leveling out.”

“Except the cat’s out of the bag. With the attack, Otas is going to put two and two together. By now, he knows that we’re aware of the
pika
pills,” Jax said.

The door banged open, and Jax spun to find one of his team barging into the room. “What are you doing here, Tanel?” he asked.

Tanel glanced at him as his fingers flew over his wrist-com. The large screen in the center of the room lit up. “I think you need to see this.”

Filling the screen was Otas Olnek, healthy and not a silver hair out of place.

“He’s broadcasting on all television and radio stations worldwide, even on the Draeken channels,” Tanel said, backing up a step.

Jax, and every other pair of eyes in the room, were fixed upon the screen. By the looks of things, Otas was already well into his speech.

“I am disappointed in you,”
Otas said as though chiding a young child.
“I gave you the cure for the Omega virus, asking for no payment in return, only for the chance to live alongside you on this wonderful planet. How do you repay me? You drop a nuclear warhead on my ship. Fortunately, no damage was done to my ship or crew. But, take a look at what you did to your own land and people.”

Otas’s face was replaced by a video of utter desolation. Where trees and fields stood before, now was a barren landscape, with slivered stumps spotting the monotone ground. A toxic haze clouded the pictures. Seconds of exposure to that poisoned air guaranteed death. The camera must have been on a small ship, like an aggressor. There was no music or words accompanying the video, just the eerie sound of wind and silence. As it moved further from ground zero, the stumps grew larger and debris could be seen. Some of the debris was the size of people. Countless gnarled limbs and misshapen torsos came into view.

Bile rose in Jax’s throat, but he refused to look away. Color crept into what had been a shadeless brown before. A dust covered the grass, and trees still stood, though many were broken. Movement off in the distance brought the camera closer. People, dozens of them, still by their cars, stood on the interstate. They were waving at the camera as if it would bring help. Instead, it zoomed in on blistered faces. Cries and moans filtered through the sound of wind. Some victims were throwing up already, others simply lying on the ground.