Resistance (28 page)

He had been funny in high school, and it was his quirky sense of humor that had attracted her to him in the first place. He had a serious side, though, which had included big plans for the future, and their life together.

“We have to defeat the Chimera,” he used to say. “That comes first. But then, after I get out of the service, I'm going back to school. I want to start a company, a
big
company that will build houses for everyone who lost their homes during the war. And then I'm going to build a huge home for you, Hannah, and buy you everything you could possibly want, and we'll live happily ever after. What do you think?”

“I think I'd be happy with
half
of your dream, or a quarter of your dream, as long as I have you,” Hannah had answered. And she had meant every word of it.

But that future had been buried, along with what she'd been told were her husband's remains, and Hannah had been forced to go on without Jordan. Something she had still been trying to adjust to when Dentweiler showed up at her door.

Now Jordan was alive, except in a different form, which Dentweiler described as “more Chimeran than human.”
Could
she look at him? And still feel what she had before?

There was no way to know, so Hannah kept her face
to the window as the engines droned monotonously, and occasional groupings of lights passed below. They were like islands in a sea of blackness—visible at the moment, but for how long?

Sheridan, Wyoming, was far enough north that it was subject to occasional Chimeran air raids, so the airport remained blacked out until the DC-3 was on final approach. That was when two parallel lines of lights snapped on, the transport lost altitude, and Hannah felt the sudden jolt as the airplane's fat tires touched down.

Then the lights went out as the DC-3 taxied off the main runway and over to a hangar that was partially lit by the wash from a pair of half-taped headlights. A ramp was pushed into place as the copilot opened the door and cold air pushed its way into the cabin.

Dentweiler was on his feet by then, and waited while Hannah released her seat belt and slid out into the aisle. A couple of minutes later they were outside and entering a car as luggage was loaded into the trunk.

“It will be a short drive,” Dentweiler informed her. “Then you can get some sleep. The program will get underway in the morning.”

Once they left the airport it was pitch black outside so Hannah had no way to know where they were going. The car followed a two-lane highway for what seemed like about five miles before turning off onto a gravel road which twisted and turned between rocky hillsides, and eventually arrived at a gate guarded by a squad of Army Rangers.

IDs were checked, the gate swung open, and the car drove through. The gate swung shut with a sharp
clang
.

Hannah Shepherd felt like a prisoner.

*  *  *

There was pain.

Not personal-pain, originating from the swollen body in which Daedalus was trapped, but
other-pain
being experienced by someone else. And Daedalus was an expert where pain was concerned. It had been a simple thing once, a signal that something had gone wrong with his body, and should be corrected.

But during the months they had experimented on him, Daedalus had learned there were different
types
of pain. Flavors really, like ice cream, each having its own individual taste, texture, and consistency.

Since his escape from the facility in Iceland, Daedalus had been free to deepen his understanding of pain by inflicting it on others, and vicariously experiencing what
they
felt, as both their real and telepathic screams echoed through the ether.

So as the first tendril of fear-laced emotion made contact with his mind, Daedalus sampled it in much the same way a wine connoisseur might try a new vintage, and wondered why this particular anguish was somehow associated with him. Especially since the world was so awash in pain that it constituted little more than emotional static.

Then he had it, because this particular cry of pain was not only “addressed” to him, but had originated from one of the shadow people who populated his previous existence. A time when he had been a part without a whole. A poor cast-off creature forever doomed to live alone, rather than within the comforting embrace of the vast virus-guided oneness that provided each and every Chimera with both a place and a purpose.

For the most part shadow people were to be ignored, and Daedalus would have ignored
this
searching tentacle of pain, had it not been for one thing: It was from Hannah. Something was causing her voice to be heard
more loudly—and with greater intensity than all the other voices on the planet. Hannah was the one shadow person Daedalus still cared about, the woman he had promised to “cherish in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, and forsaking all others.”

There were no orders as such. Just desires that originated with Daedalus and were immediately translated into concrete actions by lesser forms who, had they been asked, would have been unable to distinguish between his objectives and their own.

The initiative amounted to wasted energy, insofar as the Chimeran virus was concerned, but the virus didn't have an individual persona, and was reliant on the overall success of its various forms to conquer Earth.

And
that
effort was going very well.

Dentweiler was expecting an attack, so when three Chimeran fighters swept in from the north followed by a shuttle loaded with Hybrids, only the officers around him were surprised. They had been openly cynical regarding the mechanics of the plan, especially the part related to mental telepathy, but were ready nevertheless. So everyone took cover as the fighters shot up the base, and even went so far as to fire back, although that was mostly for show. Because Dentweiler
wanted
the stinks to achieve their purpose, which was why Hannah Shepherd stood at the very center of a natural depression, where she had been tied to what had once been a telephone pole.

Hannah had been systematically tortured over the last thirty-six hours, and was only barely conscious as the Chimeran attack began. She stood facing the pole, her arms wrapped around it as in a lover's embrace, supported by the eyebolt to which her wrists were tied. Her
bare back was covered with red welts where she had been whipped, no matter how much she pleaded for mercy. There had been periods of unconsciousness—albeit brief ones, because each time the merciful darkness claimed her a bucket of cold water had been used to bring her back.

“I'm sorry about this, Hannah,” Dentweiler had said as the stinging water ran down her bare legs. “But Daedalus isn't likely to respond to anything other than genuine pain.” Hannah told him to fuck himself, which produced an appreciative chuckle from the agent in charge of whipping her.

She didn't know how long ago that had been—she had lost all sense of time. All she knew was that she was alone now, and there was a roaring—as if some sort of machine was approaching, greeted by light small-arms fire. Two sets of hands roughly cut her free, and there was a horrible smell that made her want to retch.

Moments later, she was aboard a strange aircraft, and felt it lurch off the ground.

Dentweiler witnessed the raid from the safety of an underground bunker, and watched the shuttle take off and bank toward the north. “We're tracking it?”

It was a stupid question, since that was the whole point of the exercise, but the major who was standing next to Dentweiler understood.

“Yes, sir … The tracking device woven into her hair is working, a Sabre Jet is following the shuttle north,
and
we have it on radar.”

“Good,” Dentweiler said grimly. “Notify the recovery team. Let's grab that bastard.”

Hannah was terrified and with good reason. The stench inside the shuttle was incredible; she was surrounded
by heavily armed Hybrids, and they were even more hideous than they appeared in photographs. And the fact that most, if not all, of them would have been happy to eat her made the situation even worse.

But they didn't, which left her to sit with arms crossed over her bare breasts, shivering from both fear and the cold air. Her badly lacerated back felt as if it was on fire, and if she survived, Hannah knew she would be forever scarred.

The flight was mercifully short, and if Dentweiler was correct, Jordan would be waiting for her. Hannah felt something like liquid lead trickle into the pit of her stomach as the shuttle put down, machinery whined, and a ramp slid down to touch the ground.

One of the ′brids growled menacingly, which Hannah took as a signal to deplane, so she rose to make her way down onto the landing pad. The motion opened some of her wounds, and caused her to wince as blood began to flow.

The landing pad was located at the center of an enormous cylinder and was large enough to handle at least three aircraft. The purpose of the surrounding facility wasn't clear to Hannah, but as she looked up she could see circular galleries, free-floating drones, and the half-visible sun, which was split by the structure's curving rim. She “heard” Jordan's “voice” a fraction of a second before his considerable shadow fell over her.
Hannah
.

The single word flooded her mind. It was heavily freighted with love, sorrow, and anger.
They hurt you
.

As she continued to look up, an airborne grotesquerie appeared. Jordan, or the thing he had become, was about twenty times larger than she was. Its body consisted of overlapping lobes of translucent flesh, all bisected by spiny ridges that flared away from a tiny
human head, to stream back and form a long whiplike tail.

Jordan.

Just below the head and a cluster of glowing yellow eyes were two tentaclelike tool-arms and, farther back, four spiderlike legs dangled, ready to support the monster's weight should it decide to land. The creature was breathtakingly horrible, yet some aspect of the presence that had invaded her head was recognizably her husband, and Hannah reacted accordingly. “Yes,” she responded, too numb and too weary to feel the fear she knew she should have been experiencing. “They tortured me in order to get at
you.”
At that point she wondered who the real monsters were.

“You're safe now,” the disembodied voice assured her. But rather than feel better, the way she might have, Hannah experienced a sudden stab of terror as Daedalus pumped what she perceived as gibberish into her mind. Was Jordan communicating in Chimeran? To her or someone else? Yes, Hannah believed he was still talking to her, and began to suspect that the man she had married was no longer sane. Not in the human sense anyway, as the thing farted internally produced hydrogen, and began to lose altitude.

As Daedalus loomed above her, Hannah could see the last vestige of her husband's form staring down at her. It appeared that Jordan's head was slowly being absorbed into his tumorlike body, and she guessed that it would eventually disappear. The skin covering his scabrous skull was drum-tight, and his eye sockets were deep caverns from which he peered out at her. “Jordan?” she inquired. Can you hear me? They're using me as bait … They followed me here, and they're going to attack you.”

At that moment explosions shook the ground and a
specially rigged VTOL appeared overhead. Men were visible at the doors, crouched behind a pair of harpoon guns—both loaded with what looked like huge spears.

The VTOL had been equipped with harpoon guns capable of firing specially fabricated darts, each carrying 2,000 cc of a fast-acting sedative. A potion developed by SRPA, tested on captured Chimera, and proven to be effective.

The starboard gunner saw his shot, took it, and sent a huge dart into the airborne creature that was floating below.

Daedalus “screamed” as the harpoon entered his flesh, and the woman below him was driven to her knees as the “sound” echoed through her brain, and the brains of everyone in the vicinity.

The VTOL's pilot was incapacitated, and when he took his hands off the controls to slap them over his ears, the aircraft ran into the curved wall that loomed in front of him.

There was an enormous explosion, followed by a momentary ball of flame, and a series of crashes as chunks of flaming debris fell onto the landing pad below. Some of the smaller pieces hit Daedalus, as he struggled to remain conscious, but was ultimately unable to do so.

Daedalus hit the landing pad with a loud
thump
not ten feet from the spot where Hannah was kneeling.

And as unseen troops battled with one another outside the massive cylinder,
another
VTOL appeared above. It, too, was armed with harpoon guns, plus a specially designed harness, which was slung below the aircraft's tubby fuselage.

Hannah's hair whipped from side to side as she stood and the VTOL lowered itself down to a point twenty feet off the ground. That was when a team of Rangers
slid down ropes and immediately went to work passing straps beneath Daedalus's form.

Hannah, no longer conscious of her nudity, knew it was time to do something. But
what?
The problem was solved for her when a sergeant appeared at her side, threw a jacket over her shoulders, and pointed at the bosun's chair that dangled below the aircraft. He had to shout in order to make himself heard over the roar of the VTOL's engines.

“All you have to do is sit on it, ma'am … They'll pull you up.”

Hannah wanted to thank him, was
determined
to thank him, but that was when she fainted.

There was light. But in order to reach it Daedalus knew he would have to make the long difficult journey up out of the black hole he found himself in. So he
willed
himself upward, and the light grew gradually brighter, until it was all around him and he could open his many eyes.

That was when it came back to him.

Hannah's pain, her warning, and the attack. Which—as he took a long slow look around—Daedalus knew had been conceived to recapture him.

A silly notion really, since it didn't matter where his physical body was located, so long as his mind was free to roam. The meat people didn't know that, of course, because they were captives of their own limited capabilities, and therefore unable to grasp the truth of the matter.