If she only knew… “I know, but that warship could be the key to winning back this planet…It’s a hope.”
“No. We’re hope.” She embraced him.
“Maggie?”
“Hmm?” She looked up into Simon’s eyes.
“You could hear me think of Wind River before.”
“Yes.”
“What else could you hear me think?”
She grinned mischievously, revealing dimples. There was a spark in her shiny gray eyes. “Don’t worry, Simon. I didn’t hear too much. I don’t listen to everything, you know.” The embrace tightened, and she kissed him quickly on the cheek.
Hayes stood motionless, feeling Flynn against him. He never had been good at dealing with awkward situations, especially those awkward situations dealing with women. He eventually put his arms around her and returned her embrace in kind. She looked into his pale blue eyes, and a sly smile came to her face.
“What is it?”
“In your book, in ‘Deus Ex Machina,’ do we win? Do we defeat the aliens?”
He laughed, and sighed. “Rejected twelve times. Each time because it had a negative ending. Humanity falls, the aliens took over, and the stage was set for a sequel about the resistance.”
“Did you ever write the sequel?”
“Maggie, we’re living the sequel.”
The battle was exhausting West.
He and Patra had stepped close to the orb, so close that the light became a burning force. West looked at the light, had to struggle to look away again.
The walls. Aliens everywhere. They were materializing from the walls.
Too many.
Desperation.
Patra was in shock. West couldn’t blame her.
The orb. Heaven.
“We have to go through it! Now!”
She did not understand. She was terrified.
West shifted his arms back down, grabbed the young woman. “We have to jump into the light! We can’t stay here!” Her fiery silver eyes were blank; she was not comprehending. He looked once more around the chamber at the aliens. A voice filled his mind, his soul.
GO THEN. PRAY YOUR GODS, JUDAS. OMEGA IS THE ONLY—
Shielding Patra with his body, they jumped into the light.
NO—
Time stopped.
The spire shattered with force enough to level the crater walls. An inconceivable deluge of light poured from the crater, swept out across the land, consuming everything in its path. Countless patterns dissolved into the landscape, the uploaded dead screaming with sudden freedom in the instant before they dissolved into nothing. In the sky above what had been Chicago, the translucent purple web cracked and the Enemy vessels fell from the sky, suddenly empty of their lifeblood of souls.
The wave of light erupted from the dead upload spire, and nothing could stand in its path. The humans collected at the base of the spire, the Enemy vessels on land and in air, all were cleansed from existence in the pure wave of light. They felt no pain.
West and Patra had entered the orb.
timesweep.
a white place, out of time.
the Whenstream.
“What is it?”
(((tight-beam combeacon; recon front code fourteen-seven.)))
“Fourteen-seven? I thought we’d abandoned that When.”
(((recon galilee matthew, ali report)))
“Run it.”
a pause. eyes widen.
“Convene the Circle. Now.”
(((done.)))
“You’ve been called here because we have a confirmed web breach.”
The meeting chamber of the Judas Command First Circle was filled with shocked silence. Several members looked up suddenly at the announcement. There had not been a web breach in… Well, a long time. Hundreds of years, perhaps thousands. Perhaps longer.
“When?”
“The timesweep waves are emanating from the Fourteen-seven front.”
“How? That When was abandoned—”
“—three weeks ago. Zero-Four, I believe you were there.”
Michael Zero-Four stared at her with a gaze like acid and dust and quiet, accumulating hatred. “Yes.” His voice was quiet, almost a sigh. It was the voice of an ancient and weary traveler. “I piloted Gethsemane Simon into that When.”
“And there was a confrontation.”
He laughed, almost a chuckle. “A confrontation… Yes. There certainly was a confrontation, Hannah. That When was on the verge of being uploaded when we got there. We lost too many in that engagement. Vishnu, Paul, Mohamet…Magdalene. Too many.”
“They are mourned, Zero-Four.”
“I’m sure they are, but we had some concerns about—”
“The Fourteen-seven When was as far as we knew not yet uploaded by the Enemy. Their presence was indeed a shock and surprise to our reconnaissance forces. Magdalene’s loss hurt us all, Michael.
“Did it?”
She looked at Michael Zero-Four with a delicious fury, which thankfully was interrupted by another Judas captain, Okeke from the Judas Seattle Baird.
“How could there be a web breach in an abandoned When? Could the native populace have caused it?”
“Doubtful…We’re sending a recon team to investigate.”
“This could be another trap. My group has tracked them from bubble 7K to bubble 8.5K. They’re definitely on the offensive this time, Hannah. They’ve been attacking our Forts up and down the Stream. Have the Altwhen patrols reported any—”
“There’s been no proof of a link between the destruction of Fort Evans and this web breach.”
Zero-Four frowned, stood. “Wait a minute. Fort Evans was attacked?”
“Michael, you—”
Okeke looked angrily at Hannah. “You haven’t told him? Fort Evans fell while you were floating out there in stasis. The Black seem to have launched a full-scale offensive on our advance positions.”
“Sweet Richter. How many casualties?”
Okeke looked icily at Hannah, then back to Michael. “All was lost. Fort Evans, Fort West, Forts Nixon, Tehran, Hatchet, John Wayne, Kiribati… So many others. They’ve found most of our bubbles and uploaded them.”
Michael’s hands curled to fists, shimmered with the shift.
“What the hell is going on, Hannah? If they’ve found our advance bubbles, they can find us! They probably know our damned position already. With that much activity… Why was Maggie back that far? Did you suspect an Enemy presence?”
“Don’t speak out of turn, Zero-Four. You—”
“Cease with the formalities. The Alpha-Point periphery was swarming with Black. They’re ready to open it up, Hannah. The slaughter of Simon’s fleet is evidence enough. If you knew about their buildup of forces, why was Maggie that far back in the Stream alone?”
“I don’t have to explain my actions to you; needless to say there was an Enemy presence and we needed to investigate. Enough of that for now. We can discuss it further when you return.”
“When I return?”
“Yes, Michael. You have combat experience in the Fourteen-seven When. You’re going back to investigate the web breach.”
“I am? What a pleasant surprise.”
“Where is Simon now?”
“He’s at the dockyards being refitted into a Golgotha-class chassis. He took some major burn escaping that When.”
“Did he? Well, we must send an escort with you, just to make sure you get to the Fourteen-seven When safely.”
“An escort.”
“The new gunships.”
“I see.” Zero-Four was infuriated.
“Good.” Kilbourne smirked.
“Do you think there’s actually a web breach, Hannah? Is there anything else I should expect to find when I get there?”
“Whatever do you mean, Michael?”
Zero-Four looked back at Okeke, who shook his head and placed his index finger to his lips, a gesture that had become very popular lately. Zero-Four stormed from the chamber. The Circle adjourned.
Detach. A quiet humming, the gentle sensation of movement. The transport was empty at this hour. Zero-Four rode alone.
The news of a confirmed web breach disquieted Michael Zero-Four. Everything about this disturbed him at some base level… Judas forts being uploaded by the dozens. Judas Command covert missions to Whens literally thousands of years earlier than any Enemy forces had been tracked. The debacle of Maggie’s death and the massacre in the belt and at Alpha forged an anger within Zero-Four unlike any he had experienced in quite some time. Things had not felt so… so liminal since the changing of command after His death. There was a force within the Judas, a force working behind the scenes. People were disappearing; people were dying. Things were falling apart. And now he had to pilot a mission back into the When they had just left supposedly for dead, with escorts. Gunship escorts. What was Kilbourne planning? Something wasn’t right.