Enemy (32 page)

     Flynn and Hayes looked at the massive metal bulkhead. Hayes pointed down, indicating the perhaps-freshly-made boot tracks that led to and from the airlock.

     “Well, Ms. Flynn, shall we go in?” Hayes inquired, studying the face of his traveling companion as memories from years past flooded her senses.

     “Call me Maggie,” she said, distracted. Her hand shifted as she reached for the lock. “We’ve come this far—” She paused, alerted.

     A noise from behind them. The other elevator creaked to a halt.

     “Someone’s back there.” She turned from the door, shifting both of her arms...

     “Are you sure it’s not—”

     “I’m sure.”

     She flashed into the shift. Hayes followed her example. They would be ready.

     Malachi reluctantly faded from view to track the fleeing Enemy. Shiva departed to round up any of the Black who had remained in solar orbit, where sensors showed a rather large disturbance of phase space as the Enemy frantically gathered every last bit of energy from the system they could before they departed. Simon was left alone in the midst of several dozen Enemy.

     Simon did not fear the Enemy. These were the creatures that had killed Maggie. These were the creatures upon which he would release the fury of centuries.

     He watched the departure of his gunship escorts with a mixture of trepidation and admiration. Where had Command gotten that level of wartech? The gunships were of a prototype class, unnamed as of yet. With such a new generation of vessels, perhaps the Judas could yet retake eternity. But still...

     {commander kilbourne specifically said.......

     Kilbourne would have some questions to answer if Simon ever made it out of this. Now down to business.

     The fearless Enemy began their charge once again. Simon almost pitied these mindless slaves of the web mind-essence, determined to carry out their orders even if it meant certain death. Purpose be. Who had they been before they had been uploaded? He wondered if he had known any of the people he was about to kill in the past, and he forced the thought quickly from his mind. They were not people. They were the Enemy.

     This Enemy and their damned Purpose.

     Simon remembered the countless dead.

     He remembered his dear, sweet Maggie.

     In an ecstasy of the purest rage, he began the kill.

     Ember.

     Hayes looked at her stony, determined eyes.

     They had fallen in love while traveling through the wastes of a dead America. There could be no more denial. He knew that he would gladly give his life for her. She stood, her eyes suddenly burning with an inner, mercurial fire.

     “Who’s there?”

     A man emerged from the shadows, shifting from the darkness.

     Hayes stood silently. Ember’s face brightened in recognition.

     “Richter,” she said, almost inaudibly. “I didn’t know if you would make it.”

     Richter came closer, gazed at them with eyes that were completely silver. Chillingly silver.

     “Ember Flynn.” A voice like darkness. “It’s been a long time.”

     Michael Zero-Four floated in the virtual reality battle chamber, seemingly suspended in the midst of the battle. From various ports along the spherical expanse wires snaked from the walls and attached to his flesh. He thrust his arms into the interface gauntlets that merged his essence with Simon’s. He felt Simon access his bioneural energy to focus the fury of the Shadow. He began to shift...

     Zero-Four became one with Simon, and he was lost in the game of eternity, the bliss of the kill.

     The power of the neural attachments tore through his being, and he fought to contain the control of the massive Golgotha warship.

     He spun in the blackness, his eyes blazing with the fire of the Shadow, and his hand, encompassed by miniscule neurowires, thrust outward at the virtual image of an approaching Enemy.

     The kill was good.

     Hayes looked warily at Flynn. “You know him?”

     “James Richter. We were deployed to Quebec and Chicago together.”

     Richter looked from Ember to Hayes, judging him.

     “He’s the only L-level Styx left.”

     “Why?”

     “...In Chicago,” she chose her words carefully, “something happened. Several Styx went—Several Styx got out of control. We had to—”

     “We killed them.” Richter whispered. “They started killing civilians, so we hunted them down and killed them. I eliminated the other L.” His voice echoed in the darkness.

     The locking mechanism of the inner door activated, and it began to swing outward. Flynn and Hayes spun around, ready to confront anything. Richter stood calmly.

     West.

     Flynn shifted back down, solidified.

     “Flynn. Richter.” West looked from one to the other. “It’s good to see you, given the circumstances. Who’s this?”

     “Simon Hayes,” Flynn answered. “He’s with me. He’s one of us now.”

     Richter shook his head. “That explosion, a few weeks ago. You shifted into him to save him? Jesus Christ, Flynn, you know we aren’t supposed to—”

     “Stay the hell out of my mind, Richter.” She regarded him with a raw fury.

     The earth shook below them.

     “What was that?” Flynn braced herself on the airlock.

     “They’ve collapsed the sun.” Richter spoke gravely. “The planet’s being pulled in. Everything’s being pulled in... We have to get out of here.”

     “How do you—”

     “Can’t you hear them? They’re so close… West, the orb?”

     “It’s still there.”

     A woman stood within the vessel, a woman who was not entirely a woman. From under the fatigue jacket she wore, a metallic mesh stretched across her skin, encompassing parts of her body completely. She gazed upon them with silver eyes.

     Flynn gasped in disbelief. “Patra Jennings?”

     They entered the vessel in the earth.

     Zero-Four worked in silence in the battle chamber of Judas Golgotha Simon, aided by his neural links into the vessel’s weapon system. Simon targeted each Enemy vessel, harnessed it and drew it intimately close before puncturing its hull with focused Shadow energy, releasing the phase energy and killing that particular extension of the Enemy mind-essence, erasing that particular line of code from the Omega pattern. From all directions, Simon’s prey flew at him, and he snared them mercilessly. Simon passed judgment on the damned. After all of the eternities lost, after all of the friends he had seen killed, after all of the impossibilities had been realized, the time had come to loose his wrath upon the Enemy.

     They followed West down the slightly canted corridor, weaving in and out of destroyed areas and remnants of the military team’s equipment left from the initial investigation, so long ago.

     “It’s fading, but it’s still operating.” West motioned.

     They entered the spherical orb chamber. It hung in the center of the room, a dying onyx jewel.

     THEY WILL PAY FOR THIS.

    
THE INTERCEPTION TEAM((?))

     MASSACRED. A TRAP. THE VERMIN UTILIZE NEW, POWERFUL WEAPONS. THEY HAVE ACQUIRED NEW CODE FROM SOMEWHERE. THEY HAVE HARNESSED UNBELIEVABLE POWERS—

    
IT DOES NOT MATTER. THAT WHEN HAS ALREADY BEEN HARVESTED. WHAT MATTERS NOW IS THE NEXT WHEN. WE WILL JUMP FURTHER THIS TIME. WE WILL THROW THEM OFF OUR TRAIL.

     DON’T YOU SEE((?)) THEY WILL COME—

    
SILENCE. WE WILL OVERCOME. THE VIRUS WILL BE CONTAINED AND PURGED FROM THE SYSTEM. OMEGA WILL BE COMPLETED. WE WILL BE VICTORIOUS.

     WILL WE((?))

     fury, tempered with the inception of fear. the black closes

     The vessel around them was shaking disturbingly.

     “Not long now,” Richter whispered.

     West had informed them about how he and Patra had arrived. Ever since, Richter had been studying the orb, thinking to himself. Contemplating.

     He looked at Patra. “What was it like, to be one with them?”

     “It was hell. Billions of souls, trapped in hell.”

     “When you two went in, it hurt the aliens. Badly.”

     “Yeah.”

     “It’s eternity in there. It’s heaven in there.”

     “What do you mean?”

     Richter outstretched his hand. “I could destroy them.”

     “No. You don’t know where you’d end up. You don’t know what would happen—”

     “For ten years, each day of my life since I was pulled out of there, I’ve wanted to return. You have no idea... I know where to go. I know how to stop this. Don’t you see that one of us has to go? One of us has to end this.”

     The shaking was becoming unbearable. So close...

     West rushed at Richter. “I don’t—How? You could be killed. Don’t—”

     Richter laughed, smiled a smile that in no way looked like a smile. “One of us has to begin this so that we can end their plan. If you only knew… You’re safer here, for now, but in time, you’ll come, too.”

     “Come where? You can’t just go back in, Richter. You don’t know what’ll happen.”

     “I do know. We’re all dead already. This isn’t living. I know what I have to do. I’ve known for years. They told me what I have to do.”

     “Richter, don’t—”

     Richter’s form suddenly illuminated the room with a silvery brilliance, and fire tore from his eyes into the orb. In a flash, he was gone, and the orb faded considerably, blackened.

     A beam of nothingness, a pillar of phase energy tore from the orb, a vertical hole forming in the threads of existence, up, up through the chamber’s ceiling, up through the solid rock, through the atmosphere, through the void between the stars.

     The four people remaining in the chamber put their hands to their heads, screaming in the waves of non-existence.

     ((michael, i detect a shadow drive on the planet surface.))

     “What the—? That’s—Simon, take us down.”

    
A SHADOW ON THE PLANET SURFACE((?))

     THE JUDAS—

    
REROUTE RESOURCES FROM NEXTWHEN TRANSIT, DOWNLOAD FORCES FOR JUDAS ENGAGEMENT...

     SURFACE FORCES CONVERGING ON SHADOW POINT. REINFORCEMENTS DOWNLOADED, GENERATED.