Sightless: The Survivors Series #2 Page 18

  Still, the hornet’s nest he was flying into compelled him to try it for the sake of creating a diversion that would allow him to get by. He locked onto the nearest Detonan fighter and was soon operating it with his left hand while his right was tasked with executing a deep dive to draw their attention downwards.

  It caught them by surprise when the Detonan fighter began firing straight at them, punching holes in hull after hull. But Loris was forced to cut too many corners flying the Cortes, which took a few hard hits that consumed the remainder of his shields.

  The hijacked fighter continued firing, forcing the Silica ships to react, but Loris continued to bear down on them until he sent his pawn colliding with the largest vessel in the cluster. The resulting explosion snapped the dampening ring in half and caused the engine to ignite, leaving the ship in pieces by the time it was all over.

  Taking a fresh look at what waited ahead, Loris got his first good glimpse of the red dwarf and the triangular apparatus slowly spinning around it. A glance at the scanners told him that the entirety of the enemy fleet was trained on his ship, even as they were mercilessly butchered by Zero Cadence. He’d managed to outrun a great many of them, but running would be of no use when everything gathered at this one central point.

  “The Detonans believed that they were the culmination of life in the galaxy, and that everything else was brought into existence for the sole purpose of furthering their will. They are discovering too late that assuming dominance can come at an incredible cost. Their population has been decimated, they are under siege from an enemy they cannot ascertain, and their greatest achievement is being exposed as their gravest peril,” the boy said.

  “That sounds like us not too long ago,” Loris said. “At least the shoe is on the other foot now.”

  “What they could never understand is that controlling the present has no predictive value on the future.”

  Loris pressed on even as the damage to the Cortes continued to increase. The engines were flagging and its responsiveness dulled.

  A sharp jolt accompanied a shot to the ship that knocked Loris off course and caused sparks to rain down in the back. He struggled to regain control as the dark star drifted upwards along the windshield. One of the cruiser turrets had hit him.

  “Hold on. We just have to make it there in one piece,” Loris said, hitting the controls hard.

  The ship jerked again as he hastily rerouted power to the engines from the ship’s life support systems. He took a quick glance at the boy, who wasn’t wearing a space suit, and wondered if he could tell that his time was coming to an end. The amount of oxygen in the ship would dwindle, lasting maybe ten or fifteen more minutes depending on their rate of breathing.

  He was nearing the armada’s rear, and Zero Cadence had shifted their attention from the cruisers to the countless small fighters, crisscrossing back in forth in Loris’s wake and taking them out in bunches like someone brushing away ants. If it weren’t for them, he knew he would’ve been blown apart long ago. As it was, the ship’s weakened state and his pounding heart left him capable of doing little more than watching his target as he approached.

  He came around the side of another cruiser’s large rear fin and suddenly found himself entering an area of empty space in front of the weapon. The three reactors spun slowly around the star, which looked like a tiny moon or a big meteor. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he felt like he could sense the strong forces pulsing through space.

  A flurry of enemy fire rattled the Cortes again, forcing Loris to take even more drastic measures. He decided to conserve energy for later by powering down the engines and letting the gravitational force do most of the work of bringing them in. He tried to angle their approach to coincide with the spinning satellite reactors, targeting one in particular that would arrive in the lower left quadrant.

  Loris closed his eyes as he pulled his hands away from the console. Trusting his friends to clear the way for him to get there wasn’t easy for him.

  “You still glad you came along for the ride?” Loris asked his unlikely companion, who absently glanced around the cockpit without any visible concern for the danger. The boy used his finger to pick at a screw protruding from some of the interior lining.

  “They know now what will happen if you succeed,” the boy said. “They expect that the red dwarf will suddenly expand, unleashing a wave of energy that will pulverize every ship in the area. If that doesn’t do them in, crashing against the surface will. As for me, it’s not this body that I’m protective of. The things that I know are beyond their ability to assail. Knowledge is its own kind of invincibility.”

  It sounded nice, but the boy’s knowledge wouldn’t be enough to block a photon or missile from tearing the Cortes in half. They were still in once piece, though, and all they could do was press on under the power of gravity and momentum.

  Taking a look at the scanners, Loris began to get a sense of the anti-ballistic shields protecting the reactors. The particles were attuned to repel incoming objects traveling at high velocities, meaning that reactivating the Cortes’s engines and inching through should be possible. Once inside, it was just a matter of finding a way to destabilize the reactor.

  “Getting close. Just a little further,” Loris said.

  “We’ve been there all along,” the boy said.

  The one satellite they were approaching had a triangular shape but seemed solid as a rock, without any kind of windows or exhaust ports. The section facing the star had the appearance of an engine with countless long, bright orange panels directing energy inward. The rest of the exterior was thick enough that simply firing shots at it may not be enough to do the trick.

  More fire crackled against the hull as Loris nervously reactivated the engines. They came on without a hitch, but swinging the ship around to slowly descend toward the satellite was going to give him a bird’s eye view of every Detonan and Silica fighter trying to blow him up. Now that they were approaching the shield barrier, the satellite seemed even larger than the Magellan.

  “Once we sneak through, the satellite’s shield should protect us from the fighters,” Loris said to himself.

  Pushing the engines harder to slow momentum, Loris backed the Cortes closer to the satellite while watching through the screen as the dark matter fighters swept through the hundreds of fighters that had been tailing him. Just beyond were the larger cruisers, which weren’t giving up on him, either, even though many were badly damaged or weaponless.

  As they sunk beneath the barrier, Loris continued to scan the satellite’s surface for an ideal point of attack. There were ridges and grooves, but nothing resembling a port, duct, or vent promising a conduit into the interior. An x-ray revealed that there were a few nodes located near the surface that would suffice as targets.

  Loris took a deep breath and hit the trigger to fire photons at the node, expecting the impact to send him and everything around up in smoke. Instead, the exterior merely crumpled slightly as it absorbed the projectile. He fired more to the same effect. Photons were not going to be strong enough to get through.

  The ship shook as another blast ripped into a wing, startling Loris since he thought he was safe inside the shield. Checking again, he discovered to his horror that the shield had been completely deactivated, leaving him exposed to all of the fire from the attacking swarm. Zero Cadence was fighting as furiously as they could, but there were simply too many enemies to ward off.

  Inside the Cortes, sparks were flying everywhere. Paneling was breaking and the ship’s shaking seemed like it could only end in the walls breaking off. Something got caught in his throat as an idea came to him.

  He needed to buy time and get something between himself and the multitude of enemy fighters. Little was left for him to give, except for the ship he’d gone through so much with. He reached out to caress the edge of the console before activating an autopilot feature and punching in a few commands along with a thirty-second delay.

  As Loris unstrapped hims
elf from the seat and got up, he looked over at the boy, who was starting to seem a little pale from the reduced oxygen. He may yet have been right. The Detonan’s greatest weapon could be their undoing. It was all he had to bank on now.

  “Goodbye,” he said, causing the boy to turn his head. But the clear, soft voice manifested directly in his mind.

  “Haven’t you been listening, Loris? There is no such thing as goodbye.”

  Moving toward the rear of the ship, he quickly grabbed a torch and a line with a grappling end, hooking them to his belt. Loris continued on and slid down the ladder to the lower level. Nearby was a hatch with a red X over it. This was where the charges were loaded. Spinning the wheel, he popped it open and used both hands to lug out an explosive device roughly the size of a briefcase.

  Loris hurried to the rear of the ship and the airlock port, awkwardly resting the charge against his hip while double checking that his helmet was secure. He’d been through a lot with the Cortes, and now he was taking his final glances at it as he hit the code to pop the airlock. A chime signaled his success, and he quickly reached for the handle on the line, pointing it directly ahead.

  The doors behind closed a moment before the ones in front opened, revealing the surface of the satellite about a dozen meters below and the vastness of space all around. He immediately noticed the heat radiating from the star, too. Even though red dwarfs were relatively cool, being this close was going to be more than the best thermal space suit Unified ever made could handle. He wouldn’t have more than a few minutes before he would cook inside of it.

  He fired the line’s adhesive end and watched it shoot across the gap, become fixed to the metallic surface, and pull tight. Not a moment later, the engines on the Cortes picked up and the ship began to ascend, jerking him off of the platform. It caught him by surprise, and he fumbled with the charge as the ship moved away. Before it could slip away, Loris held it close to his chest and breathed deeply.

  The line drew him all the way against the surface in just a few moments. He struggled to match his location with what he remembered from the schematics, since all he could see in front of him were ridges in the metal. Arching his back, he managed to spot one of the bulging nodes a short distance away. It was the one he’d fired at, and the area was damaged but unbroken.

  It was difficult to find a foothold he could push off from that would send him in the correct direction, and when he tried, it spun him around to give him a glimpse of what was behind him. The Cortes was supposed to distract the enemy fighters by leaving the area, but its engines were already dead and the rest of the ship was full of holes. One cannon continued to fire aimlessly. He spotted a few exploding fighters, the handiwork of his dark matter allies.

  Finally getting ahold of himself, he was forced to draw himself back to his original location and make another attempt at it. This time he used the line’s fixed end to jump off from and sailed along the surface toward the node. His toes and the fingers of one hand were just enough to steady himself in place near the bulge, which was withered from previous damage.

  Taking the torch, he pressed the searing, bright red point into the exterior and began to cut a hole in the surface. A crevasse grew that would give him access to a gap running parallel to the conduit between the node and the reactor. Hitting that nerve with the charge would leave the entire satellite and thus the entire weapon apparatus in pieces.

  Each second he spent carving out that section of metal felt like a lifetime. He turned a corner, wishing there was some way he could simply tear the rest off and toss the charge inside. But bending or folding this material wasn’t possible. All he could do was round another corner and hope that he’d have a little more time to finish his task.

  As his square came close to completion, he noticed bits of something bouncing off of the surface around him. Little pieces floated in front of him. He turned his head a little and there was a reflection of something in his visor. The explosion of the Cortes. He hadn’t even noticed it.

  Breathing frantically, feeling burning hot, and unable to keep his hands from shaking, Loris used the torch to pry off the severed section. Once the gap was there, he turned his attention to the charge, which had a panel for manual activation consisting of a series of switches.

  It felt like he was watching himself from above as he flipped them and pushed the device inside the satellite. Lights came on as it prepared to detonate, drifting deeper and deeper toward the nerve of the reactor.

  Loris was left with a single moment of stillness before it all went away in which he pondered why something so obvious had never before occurred to him. He would be the last casualty stemming from the destruction of Earth.

  CHAPTER 15

  He woke up in a bright but enclosed space, his head throbbing and nothing making sense. It took so much work to process a thought or recall the names of anything, the shape of the room, the color of the oily liquid covering his bare skin, or the action that made his chest rise and fall so quickly.

  The answers started to come to him from nowhere. The room was a gray square with several large, clear containers in it. The yellow liquid dripped from his elbows onto the cold floor. He was breathing, alive. That much he knew, but so much was still missing.

  A young woman with brown hair and a bulging middle came around from somewhere behind him. As she placed a scratchy blanket over his body, she searched his face for an interminable amount of time. Her fingers brushed some hair away from his face, finally cupping her cheek and chin.

  “Is that you, Loris? Seventh time’s the charm,” she said.

  The sounds came so quickly that he could barely hold onto them long enough to distinguish them. His breathing moderated and he glanced over his shoulder at an empty container and a tall man with glasses. When he returned his attention to the woman in front of him, he saw that her lips were pursed and her shoulders had slouched. She was disappointed.

  He opened his mouth to say something to her—it felt right that he should, because they had some kind of connection he could grasp—but his mouth couldn’t make any sounds, not to mention he couldn’t formulate anything to say.

  The young woman turned her attention to the other man in the room.

  “I really thought I’d gotten it this time. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Guess I’ll take him down to the other failures and get started on the next one,” she said.

  The words were making more sense to him now and it wasn’t such a strain to listen. He could grasp the meaning out of thin air even though it seemed like he’d never heard the sounds before.

  “You’re not going to stop, are you? Maybe the technology just doesn’t work the way we thought it did. This cloning might produce a perfect replica of his body, but it’ll never really be him. It might not be possible.”

  The woman’s eyebrows furrowed as she snapped back angrily at him.

  “You’re the last person who can say anything about what is and isn’t possible with this technology. I’m beginning to think you’re sabotaging the project on purpose because you don’t want him to come back. Then you can play out your dreams of power up here without anyone interfering.”

  She took him by the arm and struggled to lift him up. It took him a while to figure out she wanted him to stand, and by then the other man had come over to assist them. His legs felt weak and he struggled to maintain his balance, but they grew firm after a few minutes of leaning against them.

  “I give credit where it’s due,” he said to her even though she was turning away from him toward an open door. “None of us would be alive if it weren’t for Loris. I’m not holding anything back. We can go at this as long as you want, but sooner or later we’ll have to accept that the hair of his you have doesn’t contain his mind and personality.”

  “Just reset the tank for when I get back. I’ll tinker with the system more, see if I can find a way to boost their cognitive capabilities. We’re not going to give up.”

  His legs took halting, unsteady steps
as she pulled him through the doorway and into a long hallway that was just as gray and dreary as the room. He noticed she wouldn’t look at him the same way now. Her posture and mood had shifted. When she glanced back to make sure he hadn’t fallen, her smiles were thin and forced.

  But his attachment to her only grew. Images flashed in his mind with accompanying sensations of the feel of her lips, the pressure of a squeezed hand, and looks of shared determination. He didn’t know where they came from, whether they were imagined or real. Sometimes there were sounds, things they might’ve said to each other. None of it squared with the reality that he was beginning to understand. He had been made in that room and he was taking his first steps in the universe. Memories, feelings, and attachments didn’t fit.

  They stopped in another room to trade his blanket for robes of a similar material. His skin was finally drying off, but he still felt uncomfortable and sore. Despite the discomfort, his mind was becoming more alert than ever. He recognized the shuttle when they reached it and he didn’t hesitate to follow her into the small vessel.

  She buckled him into a seat and then gingerly slid into the pilot’s seat, which seemed strange to him. Since when did she know how to fly anything? How much time was missing between the present and these fuzzy recollections? The windshield looked out over a yellowish green planet, and he leaned forward to take in its full breadth.

  “This is the planet behind the sun, our home. We’re calling it Rodera, for the Rodericks,” she said without looking at him. “It was stressful when we first got here because there was little food on the planet, and everyone was so desperate to get off the Incubator, but we finally got it under control. You’ll be taken care of, no matter what your faculties are.”