Critical Path (The Critical Series Book2) (33 page)

“Two seconds. I figured you needed a quick option.”

Smart planning from Mike. If things went downhill rapidly, Charlie didn’t want to give anyone a chance to deactivate the bomb.

Footsteps banged against the metal floor below, and the stair rungs clinked as somebody ascended. Hagellan’s bulbous head poked through the hatch. “Time to say goodbye to your friends. I’ll prepare for launch.”

It climbed into the cockpit and strapped itself into one of the pilot chairs.

Mike shuffled past Charlie and descended. He looked down the hatch at his old friend wheezing to the bottom. Over three decades and he hadn’t let him down once. Always carried out the work with a smile.

Mike glanced up. “You coming or what?”

“I’ve never been one for goodbyes. You know that. Just tell them I’ll be back.”

Mike leaned around the door and looked back up. “Aimee’s here. You should say farewell to Mai at least?”

Aimee meant nothing to Charlie. Mai did, but he’d said all he wanted to say to people on the ground. “You haven’t seen the last of me, Mike. Count on it.”

Mike smiled and shook his head. He climbed a few rungs up and extended his hand. Charlie leaned down and gave it a firm shake. “I don’t doubt it. You’re like a cat with nine lives,” Mike said.

A whirring noise distracted Charlie, and he looked over his shoulder. A podium smoothly rose from the floor in front of Hagellan, and high-definition screens around the cockpit flickered into life.

He glanced back down at Mike. “Looks like the show’s on the road. Tell the others to get their asses up here.”

Mike stared up at Charlie but didn’t say a word. He wiped his left eye. This was one of the reasons Charlie hated the farewells. Outside, this was probably happening on a larger scale. Two croatoans in gleaming uniforms nudged against Mike. One pointed to the ladder and clicked.

“Keep yourself out of trouble, Mike,” Charlie said.

Mike squeezed between the two aliens and peered up from the doorway. He opened his mouth to say something, paused, lowered his head, and slipped back through the entrance.

The two aliens, visors glinting in the thin blue light, climbed the ladder. Charlie went back to his stool and tried to work out the harness.

“You would have made a good croatoan,” Hagellan said.

“And you would have made a good suitcase,” Charlie replied. The mere suggestion disgusted him and also told him that Hagellan didn’t have a clue about human thought process.

The first alien joined Hagellan by the controls and strapped itself in. The other approached Charlie and went to sit on the stool next to him.

Charlie pushed it away. “Sorry. That one’s reserved for Denver.”

It maintained its position and tried to sit down again. Hagellan let out a few rapid clicks, and all three aliens made a strange grunting noise. Were they laughing at him? Charlie wished he had a translation device. The croatoan in front of him shuffled across to the far stool, fastened its harness, and turned to look at him.

A green holographic cube appeared above the podium. Hagellan maneuvered it around and tapped its gloved hand against some of the symbols. The screens fizzed and cleared to show a brilliant two-hundred-and-seventy-degree view of the sky. The engines rumbled into life, and Charlie felt his whole body vibrate.

Denver appeared through the hatch. “What the hell is that?” He stared at the cube and glanced across to Charlie.

“Must be how he controls the thing. Everyone okay outside?”

Denver heaved himself up and sat next to Charlie. “I thought you might not come back out. Seemed to put Aimee’s nose out of joint.”

“Does she expect me to kiss her feet?”

“She said we were welcome back if we found a way home from Tredeya.”

Layla climbed through the hatch and looked at the final free stool between Denver and the croatoan.

“Thought I’d save you the seat next to the turtle,” Charlie said.

“Whatever, Charlie,” Layla said.

She gave Denver a disapproving look. He shrugged and gestured to the stool. “Looks like we’re going any minute now. Better buckle up.”

The engine noise grew louder. The ship shuddered. Out of the corner of his eye, Charlie saw Layla grasp Denver’s hand.

Hagellan twisted in his chair. “Now we go.”

It spun the holocube around and pressed several symbols. Charlie looked at the high-definition display on his right, showing a starboard view of outside. The ship jerked, like a plane hitting a spot of turbulence, and lifted from the ground. Seconds later, it picked up speed and powered toward the sky.

The g-force pinned Charlie in his seat. He watched through the window. Unity became a speck on the landscape.

As they climbed higher and higher, he viewed more of the continent. Huge areas of dark brown smoke covered hundreds of square miles. Hopefully where the remaining population had started burning the root fields. He still needed it to remain agile, but wouldn’t mourn its passing if it meant a planet clear of croatoans.

The ship violently rocked.

“Preparing to leave the atmosphere,” Hagellan said. “I’ll engage the jump drive to activate as soon as we get through.”

The rocking grew fierce. Charlie felt like he was inside a tennis ball being dragged quickly through a sack of stones. The force pulled his cheeks back, and a bolt of pain shot through his skull.

Denver and Layla both had their eyes tightly shut and clung to their harnesses.

Outside he could see the curvature of the Earth.

The planet looked like a giant blue and green marble smeared with thin light orange streaks. Charlie had seen footage from space and pictures on the Internet, but he never dreamed he would be here. He never wanted to be here. But now, he had to be here.

Just as he thought the ship would break up, for no other reason than their size compared to the violence of their ride, the rocking quickly subsided, replaced with a feeling of weightlessness and near silence, apart from the moaning engines.

Denver comforted Layla. The ordeal looked like it had nearly broken her.

“Still no communication with the gate on Tredeya, but systems are working,” Hagellan said. It clicked a few times, probably relaying the situation to its two cohorts.

“What does that mean?” Charlie said.

“We still go if you are ready?”

“What does it feel like?” Denver said.

Hagellan fiddled with the cube and held a stumpy thick finger over a circular symbol. “You won’t feel a thing. We’ll be there in five seconds.”

Charlie nodded. “Go for it.”

Hagellan swiped its finger across the button, and the holocube flashed three times.

A blinding flash of light filled the cockpit, accompanied with an almighty bang, like somebody had just thrown in a thunderflash grenade the size of a garbage can.

CHAPTER FORTY

Augustus leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, wallowing in the feeling of a root high as the compound replenished his body and cured his aches and pains.

While he enjoyed the numb feeling, his thoughts entered a kind of meditative state, allowing him to put into logical place the events of the last month and all of their ramifications.

A smile stretched across his face as he thought about the time at Unity.

For a moment, he had got caught up in their pathetic games, nearly lost oversight.

Despite Charlie Jackson’s attempts, Augustus was still here, still on plan, albeit in a more circuitous route than he had intended.

While the remaining croatoans were rounded up, thinking they were going to be part of a glorious colonization and defeat of their enemies to the north, he would have time to go back to his original orders.

His original plan.

With the original allies.

A laugh escaped from him now as he thought back to all the time he had spent with Hagellan and the council, learning their secrets, gaining their trust. At no point had they ever known. Pride washed over him at a job done well. Painting himself as this loyal but bumbling ex-emperor had worked perfectly.

The croatoans had proved as easy to manipulate as humans.

Just like his real masters said they would be.

His right hand reached to the three-inch-tall, black prism-shaped object in his pocket. He leaned forward, the smile easing from his face. With object in hand, he stood up and locked the door. From the window he saw Zoe busying about the paddocks, organizing the ranks of croatoans. How easy it had been to inspire confidence.

That was one of the croatoans major flaws: without their strong council leadership, the average alien had little mind of its own and little conviction. Which, of course, made them good drones, good fodder.

And easily defeatable with the right approach.

With his Rambo-esque antics, Charlie Jackson had actually done Augustus a favor by killing all but one of the council in the explosion. Although there were more councils presiding over other planets and other galactic territories, this one had the most to lose, the oldest members, and Earth was the most prized of all of their colonies.

The only downside to Charlie’s premature actions was that Earth hadn’t been terraformed. But for Augustus’ masters, that was but a minor issue.

The intel he had recovered was of more use.

Augustus closed the blinds, bringing the room into darkness. He sat behind the desk and placed the prism on the top and squeezed the sides until it clicked. A small motor inside whirred. The point of the prism rose up half an inch, exposing a shimmering crystal-like cube inside.

A beam of light came from the crystal, creating a holographic keyboard with alien characters on the keys upon the wooden surface of the desk.

From the drawer, Augustus removed one of the farm’s communication radios. Although the croatoan system was down, it would still transmit, and the signals weren’t intended for an earthly recipient anyway.

Augustus tuned the radio to the given frequency and placed the transceiver next to the prism device. The transceiver crackled as the prism paired to its electronics. The creators of the prism had told him that a true life force existed inside, hence why it could connect to almost any electronic device. The damned thing was intelligent.

Given what he had seen in those early days, he didn’t doubt it.

The hairs on his arms and neck tingled as he brought his hands to the keys. It had been so many years since he had last done this. They had been waiting for him as they had done for hundreds of years before. Every time Hagellan took him out of stasis for education, he’d connect and send a report.

The scale of his masters’ plan blew his mind.

Their foresight planned thousands of years ahead, and so far, from what he had learned, they had never failed.

Even now, their prediction of the council’s demise on Earth had come true. Though he doubted they realized it would come from a single man called Charlie Jackson, but somehow, they had divined it with their algorithms and knew the Order of Things, even if they did not know the specifics.

And here Augustus was, in the middle of it all, part of the Order of Things.

Part of their algorithms and plans.

He tapped out the initiating sequence and waited. A minute later the crystal turned to a royal purple, reminding him of his imperial robes back in the day. A cone of holographic purple light flickered up from above the device, creating an inverse pyramid about a meter tall.

Lines of binary code flowed down the new display until a new form appeared.

His handler.

Drone 21.

These aliens, who called themselves the Scion, were a great binary hive mind, as much as Augustus could work out. He had first ‘met’ Drone 21 when Hagellan had first taken Augustus into the fold. The Scion had an inside croatoan agent working for them, and it was that agent who had handed Augustus the prism, and thus handed over his responsibility. It was Augustus’ job to end that particular agent’s life, having come to the end of his designated algorithm.

Drone 21 had promised the Augustus’ algorithm had no end.

That he would be until the end of time. If he did as they requested.

“Agent 3982, you have a report?” Drone 21 said.

“I do. I have the schematics and data you wanted. I’m uploading now.”

“No need, 3982, I’m transferring now.”

The crystal cube flickered as the data on the device was uploaded to Drone 21’s consciousness.

A few seconds later the holograph of the binary image stopped flickering. An almost-human-looking face turned its attention to Augustus. “You’ve done well, as the Order of Things had predicted,” it said. “Do you have additional information?”

“Indeed,” Augustus said. He summarized Jackson’s escapades and the events at Unity, finishing up with Hagellan’s plans to get to the jump gate.

“We will handle the destroyer,” Drone 21 said, “and Hagellan’s allies.”

“What are my new orders?” Augustus asked.

“Continue with your current plans. Extinguish the threat at Unity and await our arrival. If the Order of Things change, we’ll send you updated information.”

“And…” Augustus was going to ask about his future, his rewards, their promise to give him Earth entirely, but the image on the holographic display had already gone, and the crystal grew dark, cutting off both display and projected keyboard. With a whir, the top of the prism lowered and it became a trinket once more.

A knock came from the door.

Augustus pocketed the prism and picked up the radio.

“Yes?” he called.

The door opened and Zoe entered the room. Her eyes squinted as she looked around. “I thought you were talking to someone.”

He held up the radio. “Just giving orders to a nearby farm. There are a few survivors there,” he said. “What’s the status of those out there?”

“Inspired, sir. United. You’ve brought us all new purpose. With your leadership, we’re confident we can handle the threat you spoke of.”

“That’s good, Zoe. You’ll make a good officer.”

He smiled, not hiding away his face, enjoying how uncomfortable it made her.

Soon, it wouldn’t be his inspiration that would hold people in line. It would be fear.