Haywire (43 page)

When he’d first seen what Zeus did to the Titans, he’d been horrified. Armor that had once been massive and adaptive quickly became brittle, and like machines left too long in the elements they fell apart, piece by piece, screaming and crumbling to dust as they went. That was nothing, though, compared to the flesh the degenerating nanites left behind. Scarred by years of battle and pale from being hidden behind armor for so long, their bodies flopped around as though their bones were mush and their muscles were useless hunks of flapping meat, showing just how far the nanites had integrated into their bodies over the decades. When he considered what they would do to Artemis, and possibly to Shawn, he shuddered. No one deserved to die the way these Titans were dying. But he had no choice. He had to keep going.

The team stumbled into a T-junction, and from memory Alex knew they had to turn right. Roe was right next to him, slapping a fresh energy pack into her rifle, while two other agents covered them.

“
Do we have much further to go?” Roe asked.

Alex shook his head. “No, just a few more–”

A hot spray of blood splashed across his face, silencing him. Roe’s chest had eight glistening spikes sticking out of it, and over her shoulder was a dark face split in a mad grin. A high-pitched laugh followed the agent as her body slumped to the floor. The Titan then reached for Alex, its claws sinking into his right pectoral muscle. He cried out and stumbled backward, blood spurting from the open wounds.

After that Alex’s world turned into one long moment of chaos. Three more Titans scurried in from the left, and the other agents turned their weapons on them, trying to push them back, but they were ripped to shreds before the barrels of their rifles could get warm. The only thing that stopped Alex from joining them was the canister in his hands. He hadn’t made it where he needed to go, but he knew he never would if he didn’t do something, so he opened the valve and sprayed the kill switch right at the Titans that came for him, then shuffled backward as quickly as he could, his chest screaming in pain the entire way. Shrieks and howls followed him down the corridor, and Titans degenerated as they tried to fight through the cloud and get to him, but he kept spraying. When he finally stumbled into the environmental control room and set the canister next to the air intake vents, he closed the hatch. A Titan on the other side hit the hatch a few times, but the blows were weak, barely denting the metal before they eventually stopped.

Knowing he had bad news to deliver, Alex sat down next to the canister and opened a radio channel.

“
Shawn and Artemis, Hutchins didn’t make it, and he opened his canisters early. They might drift into a vent and circulate. I don’t know.
I
made it, but I only have one canister with me, and it’s half empty. I’m sorry. Hopefully it’ll be enough.”

Without waiting for a reply, Alex closed the channel, hit the button on the control panel next to him that Artemis had instructed him to, and then sighed in relief as the air intake vent increased its power and sucked the Zeus in like a giant drawing breath.

Satisfied that he’d done all he could, he pulled out a small med kit from his left thigh pocket and withdrew a can of medifoam. The thick white gel burned as it rushed into the holes in his chest, but then painkillers hit his bloodstream and the flow of blood out of his body thankfully stopped.

Now all he could do was wait to hear how the battle on the bridge went. Exhaustion pulled at him, but he knew he wouldn’t rest until the fate of humanity had been settled, one way or the other. He just hoped it wasn’t long.

“
Oh my god,” Shawn said as Alex’s message passed through his radio. He looked behind him, sure the vent was filling with Zeus nanites. It wasn’t, but his sensors had noted that the air in the vent was suddenly moving faster, so it was only a matter of time.

Artemis, who was moving on her own power, didn’t stop or look back. “It do-o-oesn’t matter. We’re here.”

Shawn didn’t know what she meant until he saw a thick grate in the floor ahead. It was barely wide enough to get through, so they would have to move fast if they wanted to get on the bridge and maintain surprise.

“
Okay, let me go first,” he said.

Looking at him over her shoulder, Artemis shook her head, and then clawed open the vent floor beneath her feet. She fell through the opening like a bolt of lightning.

A weight pressed down on Shawn’s shoulders as he realized they’d reached the end, but he took a deep breath, flexed his muscles, and followed after her before he could think more about it.

The bridge was monstrous, far larger than any he’d seen before. The deck stretched out for what seemed like kilometers, flanked by walls that curved upward to a multicolored dome above them. He was reminded of a room in Westminster Abbey he’d seen as a small kid. It felt like a holy place, but the shadows and red lighting made it a cathedral for a god that held no love for man or light or life.

“
So our-r-r-r Judas returns,” a voice said from a deep well of shadows near the front end of the bridge. “Co-o-ome to ask for my-y-y forgiveness?”

To Shawn’s surprise, Artemis laughed. “The list of my-my sins is long, but you wo-wo-won’t be the one to judge me. You’re no-no god. You’ve used that name for s-so long you’ve actually started believing it. What a-a-a joke.”

Heavy footsteps approached from the direction of Thanatos’s voice. More movement came from the other shadows ahead of them. It was hard to tell how many Titans were with them on the bridge, but it sounded like a small army. Beneath their footsteps they gibbered, whispering mad words.

“
Tha-that’s where you’re wrong,” Thanatos said. “When Groesbeck… argh… trans-s-sformed me, he made me into an an-angel of death, but the Hezrin raised me to godhood. I-I-I will enjoy showing you the li-light before I end your existence.”

A warning light blinked in Shawn’s vision. Daring to divert his attention, he looked up, and above him a fog started rolling down from the vent. He didn’t need his sensors to tell him what it was though. Had his skin not been covered in armor it would have broken out in gooseflesh.

“
You’re al-l-lready dead,” Artemis said, pointing up. “You ju-u-ust don’t know it yet.”

Thanatos stepped into the light, his body a hulking mass of black spikes and gray armor plating. His thick arms were bent, with giant blades curving over his hands, and his eyes were shimmering red pits. But, as he followed Artemis’s hand, he stopped.

“
So, not o-o-only are you a traitor,” he said as he stepped back, rejoining the shadows, “but now you-you’re also a coward. I sh-sh-should have known. There is-is no army of Titans, is there, Artemis?”

She shook her head and stepped forward. “No-o-o. You’ll die here, o-o-on this ship, and if it is-s-sn’t by my hands, then the cloud of death flo-o-oating down behind me will finish the job.”

A great laugh bellowed from the darkness, and Thanatos sounded farther away than ever. “If you th-think I’ll be stopped here, then you-u-u really don’t understand the de-epth of my desire to drink the last dro-o-op of blood from humanity’s corpse. Come, my Titans! Our battle is-s-s elsewhere!”

When Shawn glanced at Artemis she looked more confused than he was, but a moment later she gasped and shouted, “No!” Like a bullet she was off and running, her feet hitting the deck with enough force to leave dents in her wake. Shawn followed after her, wishing he understood what was going on. Behind them Zeus filtered to the ground and billowed into the bridge.

From the darkness swung blades and talons, but Artemis didn’t slow down to engage them, instead jumping and sliding past them, so Shawn did the same, following her into the black depths of the bridge. Howls surrounded him on either side, and Zeus flowed after them. He’d thought they were nearing the end, but now he felt like it was slipping from his fingers, even if he didn’t know why or how.

“
What’s happening?” he asked as he ran.

“
Escape pods!” she replied. “Thanatos is going for–”

The floor rumbled and suddenly a flash of light lit the bridge as bright as day. Twenty meters ahead on the right, a large escape pod blasted away from the ship, the fleeing vessel visible through the windows that lined the bridge.

Screams filled the space around Shawn, from Artemis as she stared at the escape pod slipping away, and from the Titans they’d run past who were now dying in the expanding Zeus cloud. In the midst of their pain, he dropped to his knees. They’d failed. Despite everything they’d done, everything they’d suffered and lost, they’d failed. He couldn’t believe how close they’d come to finally ending Thanatos’s threat, only to have him slip away. If he hadn’t been so tired he would have wept.

“
Not again!” Artemis shouted. “I had my victory taken from me once, and I won’t let it happen again!”

Shawn didn’t have the strength to look up at her. “I’m sorry, Artemis. We tried. We–”

“
No, this isn’t over until I say it is,” she said as she ran over and lifted him up. When he looked in her eyes, they were burning white. “So long as we’re alive, this isn’t over. Come on, let’s go.”

Before he could ask what she meant, she turned and ran for the windows that still showed the escape pod, though the vessel was now hard to see and getting further with every second. Her body hit the thick glass and burst through it in a savage display of strength, flying forward like a rocket.

Alarms and alerts flashed in Shawn’s eyes, but he ignored them all and followed Artemis into space, enclosing his head in a helmet and leaping as she’d done, hoping against hope he had enough distance on the ship before the cloud of Zeus was sucked out after him. He did, but only barely. When the cloud dispersed behind him, he shook with relief. Now all he had to worry about was how she planned on chasing Thanatos down.

“
I don’t believe it,” Crowe said, the oil stains on his cheeks making his face look more pale than usual. “Would you look at that?”

Gimble looked up as he closed the panel beneath the cockpit controls and resumed his seat. Next to him, Crowe pointed at a display directly between them. On it, two armored figures floated through space away from the bridge of the giant alien ship. Gimble didn’t know who the Titan in the rear was, but he would have recognized the red, gold, and yellow armor of the one in front anywhere. A moment later a voice called out over their radio.

“
To whoever’s o-o-out there, I-I-I need your help. Thanatos i-is escaping, and if he ge-e-ets away it’ll mean the deaths of... I don’t kn-n-now how many. I can stop him, but I need he-help. If anyone can he-e-ear me, l-l-lock onto my signal. Time is short, so-o-o please... move fast.”

The voice stopped, but the channel stayed open.

“
She has courage,” Crowe said with a shake of his head, “I’ll give her that. Too bad it’s not matched with a bit of sense. All alone in the night like that.”

Gimble watched as Artemis tumbled through space, and he felt small in the face of her bravery. She didn’t give up, no matter what, and that shook him. His wife hadn’t wanted to give up either, but in the end the pain had been too much, and he’d let her go rather than see her fight it any longer. But out there, floating in the black, was a woman who wanted to fight, who hadn’t given up, and he knew he couldn’t let her down. Not while he had a chance to redeem himself.

“
You’re wrong, Mr. Crowe,” he said as he hit a button and powered up the
Lady
’s engines. “She’s not alone.”

Before his crewmate could object, Gimble ignited the drive core and shoved the throttle forward, then steered the
Lady
toward the distant dreadnaught. The engines responded with a proper roar of power. Gimble was proud of how quickly they’d been able to repair the ship.

“
Artemis,” he said as he tilted the radio microphone his direction. “I don’t know if you remember me, but once I did you a disservice, and now I aim to make up for it. I’ll be right there.”

Crowe looked at him in amazement, but didn’t make a move to stop him. Instead he nodded and patted him on the shoulder. “I didn’t want to say nothing before because... well, the old wounds that weren’t mine to open, but she does look like Marie. I understand.”

A tear trembled beneath Gimble’s eyes, and not just because he finally had a chance to do something worthwhile with his life. People often underestimated Crowe, but he never would.

“
Thanks, mate,” he said.

Crowe nodded, then coughed loudly and pulled up a radar image of the surrounding space. Hygeia was to starboard, the dreadnaught was dead ahead, and between then was a strange looking escape pod headed for the conduit that lead to Earth. Further back were the floating bodies of two Titans. Within minutes they crossed the distance, and two loud thumps signaled that the Titans had clambered onto the ship and were holding on from the outside. He marveled once again at their bravery and strength.

“
Hygeia is-is where we’d planned o-o-on ending this,” Artemis said through the open radio channel, “and it’s as go-o-ood a place as any. Force tha-at escape pod to land there. We’ll do th-the rest. And thanks. I remem-em-ember you, Gimble, and I tha-a-ank you for hel-l-lping me now.”

Gimble blushed, but he didn’t trust himself to speak, so instead he turned the
Lady
about and charged after the escape pod. The alien vessel was a good ways out, but its engines were nothing compared to his. As they closed on it, he swooped around to the starboard side and then steered directly into it. The
Lady
shimmied at the impact, but her hull held. He hit the pod a second time, then angled his thrusters and increased power.