Breakers (39 page)

He dangled from a smooth metal bar, legs penduluming in the gap. The balloon skittered away, sinking behind a drop in the ship's hull. Walt strained his arms, lifting one elbow onto the slippery surface, but his other hand slipped loose, dangling him from one awkward wing.

A rough, heavy hand grabbed his upper arm. Another took hold of his collar. Otto hauled him bodily to solid ground. Behind him, a rift yawned across the deck.

"You son of a bitch," Otto panted. "You trying to leave me all alone up here?"

"Just impatient to get inside."

"Well, on your feet, then. We got a bread trail to follow."

The hull extended to all corners of the compass, a flat black range interrupted without earthly reason by open gaps and fat, ten-foot-high triangles that may have housed delicate equipment or may have been bolted on just to look scary as hell. Not that there were any visible bolts. There were hardly any seams, either, as if the whole goddamn half-mile vessel had been poured into a single mold. Otto stooped for a cloud-sodden canvas bundle of C-4. Another rested in the gloom twenty feet on. They found five of the six packages and spent fruitless minutes circling for the last before Otto pulled up and gazed over the metallic horizon.

"We could spend all day up here, kid. What we've got will either dunk this bird or it won't."

Walt tapped his toe against the solid hull. "Having my doubts on that front."

"Yeah, well, that ain't all we got in store for these assholes, is it?"

"I've got my doubts about that one, too. Any clue which way the engines are?"

"Figure we walk far enough in one direction, we'll learn soon enough."

The ship vrummed up through the soles of his shoes. He saw no windows or portals of any kind. A blustery wind came and went, misting his jeans and jacket. He would have said it felt like the surface of the moon, but as far as he knew the moon didn't make a rubbery clank if you stepped down too hard. Moonside visibility wasn't restricted to thirty feet in front of you, either. They shuffled forward, skirting the holes and unclimbable rises. Massive cupolas cast blue towers of light into the skies, spaced widely enough to leave whole sections in near-total darkness.

The wail of an incoming flier cut over the ship's organ-rattling hum. Walt shrank against a house-sized black block. His fingers were stiff with cold; he kept one hand in his pocket for warmth while keeping the other out to ward against falls, switching them every few minutes. After a while, his mind gave up any notion of trying to make sense of where he was or what he was doing, settling into an alert blankness. He walked.

Without warning, he stood on the edge of a steep downward arc. Beaded mist trickled down the slope.

"Fifty/fifty," Otto said, jerking his chin right and left. "Bet you that's the best odds we see from here on out."

Walt cupped his hand over one ear, then the other. "I can't tell."

"Well, don't look at me to hear the way. I've logged a few thousand too many hours behind a black powder pistol."

"Okay." It felt and sounded like there were engines to all sides, but in another sense, that made his choice all the easier, because what did it matter if he was wrong? "I never much liked the left, anyway."

Walt started right, skirting the abrupt curve into blackness. The going was smoother along the rim, less fraught with sudden pits, but the clouds stopped him from any sense of how far they'd gone and how much might remain. One step after another, rubber squeaking on metal. They stopped to catch their breath and sip bottles of water. They hadn't brought any food. Walt hadn't expected to eat again, and he began to regret he hadn't taken along what would once have been a simple treat, a bag of M&Ms or a Peanut Butter Cup, as a sugary memento of everything that had been lost. He could have sat down on the hull with it and eaten it and for a moment he wouldn't have felt so cold or forlorn.

He carried on. A steep ridge peaked from the surface, forcing them inland. Had he already seen that trio of bulges off to the right? The ship was circular; could they have already have completed a full revolution?

The hull's thrumming swelled. Ahead, the mist glowed like moonlight. The steep curve led down to round nozzles jutting from the ship's side, monstrously wide, steam boiling in their glaring light. Walt laughed.

"Those things are volcanoes. We'd need to be supervillains to take them down."

Otto swabbed moisture from his brow. "I know a crank like you's popped a balloon or two in his day. You put a crack in the side of something that big and nasty, it'll do the rest of the work for you."

"Balloons," Walt said. "Thanks for putting it in a language I can understand."

He walked on. Once the first engine was directly downslope, Walt stepped out of his shoes and lined them neatly on the edge. He unshouldered his pack, unzipped his coat, peeled off his shirt.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Walt squeaked his bare foot against the damp metal. "If I start to slip, my skin's going to stick to this a lot better than my clothes."

He dropped his pants and, down to his threadbare black jockey shorts, laced his shoes back on; his clothes might not have much stick, but against the wet surface, his rubber soles clung like a terrorized cat. Otto knotted the slender rope. Walt slid it over his shoulders and tightened it around his waist. The cord was light, thinner than his pinky.

"If I slip, this thing is just going to tear me in half, isn't it?"

"Naw." Otto gestured at the featureless metal plain, void of anything to hitch the other end of the rope to. "You fall hard enough to do that, you'll just pull me right off the edge." He plunked down. "Good thing I'm fat."

Walt emptied his pack of everything but a heavy bundle of C-4. "Just slap it right on?"

"Just slap it right on."

"If anything goes wrong..."

"Yup."

Walt exhaled and lowered himself to the surface. It was witheringly cold, a sharp metal bite against his skin. He crawled feetfirst down the slope, lowering himself on his side whenever he threatened to slip, stabilizing himself with the full surface area of his arm and side and legs and shoes. He could support his own weight until halfway down the curving slope. Welcome warmth rose from the engines. The rope strained around his hips. As the hull steepened, he slid down on his butt until it bumped against his heels, then lay flat and stretched down his legs for another scoot. It was exhausting and freezing and painful and slow, but it worked, and he wormed his way down, two feet at a time, until he stood on top of the giant nozzle's base, heat rolling over him in drowsy waves. He unwrapped the explosives and mashed the white, clay-like material into the crease where the engine protruded from the hull. Once his hands were halfway warm, he started the climb back up.

"Get it?" Otto said when he emerged minutes later.

"Got it."

"Wish someone could see this," the old man grinned. "Doesn't much matter, I suppose. Homer himself wouldn't have words."

Walt caught his breath, then jogged in place until the feeling returned to his hands and knees. The remaining engines were a monotony of scooting down cold, clammy metal. When he finally finished, he flopped down on the hull, his ribs swelling like a landed dolphin's. Otto draped his clothes and jacket over him. His hands and shoulderblades burned where the skin had rubbed away. His toes were soaked and stiff and his left pinky toe pulsed like it might be broken. His head was too heavy to lift from the metal.

"You got it in you?" Otto said softly some minutes later. "I can head in myself. Leave you with the detonators."

The very question brought him back, marshaling his anger, his defiance, his existential need for revenge. Within a minute, he was sitting upright. He stood to put back on his clothes. They were nearly as clammy as his skin, but the leather jacket felt like steel mail on his shoulders.

"Waiting on you," he croaked.

Otto's groundside sketches of the ship made it easy business to reach the metal spire that marked the spot below which the landing bay doors took in and let out the jets, fliers, and dropships. Walt expected another grueling descent from the top of the hull to the bays, but Otto's crude maps didn't show the spiral ladder that led straight down to a platform clinging to the ship's dark side. They got out their pistols and entered a manual door. The well-lit tunnel led to a scaffold high inside the quiet bays. Below, landing strips led out to the cold and misty air. They huddled on the scaffold, watching. Walt didn't know the time—2 AM, 5—but the bays were empty as a midnight alley, and in the course of five minutes of waiting, a single crewman had strolled across the dim runways.

"Any further in, we're liable to take a laser to the noggin," Otto said.

Walt nodded. "Fuck these guys."

Otto dug out the detonator, clicked a home-built cap off the simple switch. "Fifteen minutes." He laughed, deep chuckles that bunched his sides. "For all the good that will do us."

He flipped the switch.

33

Anna advanced on Raymond, all fear of him forgotten. "You brought them."

"How the fuck did I do that?"

"They weren't here until you went outside."

"Neither were the clouds. Did I bring those, too?"

David turned from his computer, eyes darting between them. "Did they follow the radio signal? Is the radio still on?"

Anna's eyes widened. "Of course not."

"We must have tripped a tracking device. We have to find it!"

"David!" Raymond shouted. The gaunt man spun to face him. "It's too late for that. How long until the nukes are ready?"

"I'm trying to refine the target coordinates. Hypothetically, they can be launched at any time."

Raymond crossed to the south face of the sprawling room and pried open the blinds. The blue lights blinked beneath the clouds, tracking closer.

"Keep working. We'll try to hold them off as long as we can."

The wild light receded from David's brown eyes. "Sir."

Anna shook her head hard. "You have to launch now."

"We have a single opportunity for success! If I miss by a fraction of a mile, all will be lost."

"What if they bomb us?" She pointed repeatedly at the alien vessels closing on the base. "What then?"

"That depends on where their bombs detonate. If it's on the building itself, we will be vaporized. If it's an air burst—"

"Then we're stupid fucking corpses, and stupid fucking corpses can't launch missiles. Now turn those keys."

Raymond started back across the room, hand dangling near his gun. "Wait. Keep working. If we see their missiles launch, if they start circling, you turn those keys."

David rolled his lower lip between his teeth, gaze flicking between Raymond and Anna. He nodded. "If you see anything at all—"

"I'll say the word."

Anna's face blanked. She wandered to the southern windows. The jets careered closer, lights brightening, then swung out to sea, slowing until Raymond could hardly believe they could stay aloft. David's fingers clattered over the keys. The two jets turned straight for the base. Raymond held his breath. Rather than the blue triangles of the fighter jets, these two craft were fatter, almost lumbering, flattened ovals nearly the size of passenger jets. The vessels sunk lower and lower, glided past the shore, hung in the air above the far end of the landing strip, and began to descend in a dark swirl of dust.

"I'm going downstairs," Anna said. "I'll fortify the doors."

Raymond exhaled. "Good luck."

"Lock the doors behind me."

He nodded. She drew her pistol and ran down the stairwell. Raymond clicked the lock, wedging an office chair beneath the door handle. Anna's footfalls faded away. He bent his knees and grabbed hold of a filing cabinet. Metal squealed across the tile. David glanced sideways, annoyed, then returned to his monitor. Raymond shouldered the cabinet in front of the doors, swept a desk clean, then flipped it on its edge and shoved it some twenty feet from the entry, broad side facing the doors.

Out the window, white lights flooded the tarmac. Dust blustered away from the grounded vessels. Aliens descended short ramps, waggling claws and tentacles in the pale spotlights.

Straight below, a dark figure raced from the base of the command center, hunched down in the night. Anna rushed into the lee of an outbuilding, paused to peer at the aliens, then bolted north for the open fields.

"God damn it," Raymond murmured.

"What's wrong?"

"Get ready to wrap it up. We don't have long."

An open buggy bounced down the broad ramp. It hit the pavement and peeled out, veering north. Four aliens jounced from its back. A fifth manned a spindly turret mounted at the nose. Raymond pressed his face against the cold window, breath fogging the thick glass. A floodlight spilled from the buggy's front, silhouetting Anna as she sprinted across a dirt road bordering the airfield. Her tiny figure stumbled. She picked herself up, firing a spray of blue lines over her shoulder. The buggy's turret opened fire. Thick, strobing light seared across the cold field. Anna's upper body tumbled away from her churning legs.

The buggy swung to a halt, dust whirling in its floodlight. The grounds were still. An alien leapt down, padded over the dirt, and fired three blasts from a hand laser into the dark grass. It remounted the vehicle. The buggy circled back, rendezvousing with a squad of creatures just beyond the nearest outbuilding.

Raymond resumed piling chairs, desks, and computers against the doors. With the room's furniture all but completely rearranged, he bunkered up behind the upturned desk, sweating, chest heaving. Several stories below, a loud bang rattled through the building.

David stood, cracking his knuckles. "I suppose that's my cue."

"Is the missile locked on?"

"Well, you have to ask yourself, exactly where is their ship? Right over the bay, yes, but we can't say for sure. I checked with the network's satellites, but they're all dark." David rubbed his nose. At the bottom of the stairwell, the doors burst in with a metallic clang. "I decided to get creative. Why launch one missile when we've been graced with three? Assigned each a different airburst coordinate, varying the heights and X-Y plots of the bursts, should allow us to cover quite a lot of ground. Or air, as it were."