James didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. An android ripped a hole in the ceiling of the cockpit and lunged into the room, smashing into James in a sickening meeting of metal with meat and bone.
32
“James!” Thel screamed as she blasted the android, instantly rendering it unconscious and sending it into the wall with enough force to leave a sizable dent.
An automatic magnetic field went up to stop the cockpit from depressurizing, but, unlike the magnetic cocoons of the post-humans, it wasn’t impregnable. As a result, more androids began crawling through the small hole in the ceiling. Old-timer blasted the first one and scrambled to get across the room to protect the Purists. “You have to get out of here!” Old-timer shouted to Alejandra as she grabbed General Wong and began to pull him out of the room, aided by Lieutenant Patrick.
Their efforts were too little, too late. The third android to enter the room was immediately followed by a fourth and a fifth. Thel, who had sprawled over James’s badly broken body to form a protective shield, twisted her body around to shoot one of the androids, while Old-timer managed to shoot another, but the last one made it to Alejandra and stuck an instrument into her neck, instantly rendering her unconscious.
“No!” Lieutenant Patrick shouted as he pulled his gun out of his holster and unloaded into the back of the android. One of the bullets ricocheted off the titanium frame of the mechanical monster and hit Old-timer in the shoulder, spinning him around. He fell against the android and, in turn, it stabbed him with the same instrument it had used on Alejandra, rendering him unconscious. It grabbed him roughly under the arm and pulled his limp body with it, back out the hole and into space, killing the post-human almost instantly.
“Old-timer!” Thel cried out as, still draped over James’s badly crushed and bloodied body, she watched Old-timer die.
33
“Are you seeing that?” Rich asked Djanet as his eye caught a glimpse of one of the androids pulling a limp body with him out into the blackness of space like a hawk carrying a mouse back to its nest.
“Yes!” Djanet shouted in distress. She immediately tried to patch into Old-timer’s mind’s eye, but there was no response. She followed that by attempting to contact James—again, there was no response. “I can’t get a hold of the cockpit! Something bad has happened!” Finally, she reached Thel, who was too distraught and too caught up in a firefight to respond. “The cockpit’s been compromised!”
“We’ve got to save whoever that is!” Rich shouted as he darted out of the safety of the wake and into pursuit of the fleeing android.
Suddenly, at that very instant, the Tesla tower came to life, connecting to the almost limitless energy of the Earth’s ionosphere and channeling a massive electromagnetic pulse to the hull of the Purist ship. In the blink of an eye, thousands of androids were suddenly rendered unconscious and blasted off the hull, scattering in all directions and forming, ever so briefly, the shape of a dark metallic flower, the petals floating into space. The escaping android was instantaneously obscured from view.
“Damn! I lost sight of him!” Rich shouted. “You got a visual?” Rich asked Djanet desperately.
“No,” she shook her head as she tried to see past the flood of unconscious android bodies. She craned her neck, and her eyes darted from focal point to focal point, but it was a wasted effort. “We lost him,” she finally said after a long, desperate minute.
In the cockpit, Thel blasted the last of the androids that had entered the room before the electrification of the hull, then collapsed on the floor next to James. Her face was streaked with tears, and her mouth was twisted into an expression of agony as the vision of Old-timer being murdered in front of her eyes replayed itself in a loop.
“Thel?” Djanet’s voice broke in on her mind’s eye. “What’s happening?”
“You better get in here,” Thel said through tears. “James is hurt badly, and they took Old-timer!”
There was a long pause.
“Can you repeat that?” Djanet asked, disbelieving.
“Old-timer is dead,” Thel repeated.
PART 2
1
James flashed into Thel’s mind’s eye. “Thel?”
“James!” Thel shouted in reply, her expression still agonized.
“What happened? My body’s… unconscious.”
“An android broke into the cockpit, James!” Thel related, distraught. “It crushed your body and then it attacked the Purists and…and…” Her voice broke before she could say the words, but she struggled and managed to whisper, “they got Old-timer.”
In the mainframe, James was silent. The A.I. stood nearby, drinking in the anguish of his foe. “This is where we see the fallibility of human emotion. Even though you are here in cyberspace, your consciousness remains the same pathetic, predictable human pattern, and therefore subject to your pathetic, predictable human thoughts. The death of your friend clouds your judgment. Your situation is dire, and time is your utmost asset, and yet you waste it—unable to act.”
James turned to the A.I. and sneered. “I’ll kill you for this—and this time, there will be no coming back.”
The A.I. shook his head. “You can’t kill part of yourself, James—and you’re still wasting time.”
James addressed Thel. “Thel, how bad are the injuries to my body?”
Thel interfaced with James’s nans and downloaded a detailed physical diagnostic. “It’s bad, James. You’re body is in full recovery mode—it’s essentially dead and being rebuilt. You’re spine is broken in—oh my God—seven places. The list of injuries to the rest of your body is too long to go through. The nans are working on repairing it but—it may not be salvageable.”
James absorbed the information and instantly realized the repercussions. “That’s a problem, Thel.” James replied. “That stunt with the Tesla tower may have cleared away the androids and allowed you to escape, but I’ve also compromised the mainframe’s position.”
“What does that mean?” Thel asked. “Are you saying the aliens know where you are now?”
“Yes, and I can’t run anymore. I need to have a body to put my consciousness back into, or else I’m…” James didn’t finish his sentence.
“Can’t you just create another body, James?” Thel asked, confused.
James shook his head. “No. The planet is completely overwhelmed. I’d never be able to get off the surface.”
Thel’s concern steadily increased as she tried to think of a solution. “Could we make another body for you here?”
James shook his head again. “The nans onboard aren’t programmed to create a human body—the ones inside my body aren’t equipped for that either—and I can’t reprogram them because any signals with that much information would be blocked now by the alien A.I.” James sighed. “Thel, get my body to sick bay and do whatever you can to facilitate a recovery. I’ll try to buy time down here, but that body is my only chance.”
Thel nodded as the horror began to sink in. She looked up and saw Alejandra’s unconscious body being carted on a stretcher by medical staff as Governor Wong and Lieutenant Patrick looked on. “This man needs your help also,” she said.
A medic bounded over the unconscious body of an android and grimaced when he saw James. “Um, ma’am—he’s dead.”
“He’s not dead,” she retorted calmly. “He needs to be in sick bay. Get a stretcher.”