Here Comes Earth: Emergence (38 page)

With two Noridians guarding
the podium in the same black armor and weapons we’d seen on Larga I wondered
how anyone could stomach the hypocrisy.

Jaki was given a
sickeningly long introduction and then took the podium.

I had Toni hold a hover a
few hundred feet above the press conference and I signaled to Mike,
“Go, Go,
Go!”

ΔΔΔ

Another advantage to the
Coridian technology is that our earpieces came equipped with a fiber optic camera
- a camera that used software stabilization so the picture didn’t bob or shake
and had a viewpoint that had to be several inches above the wearer’s head. From
our shuttle therefor, we had a bird’s-eye view of the boarding action.

Keeping one eye on Jaki
and another on Iron Jaw’s feed, I watched them enter the ship.

In true Marine fashion
Mike was the first to go through the airlock. I watched two surprised Noridians
turn around and then immediately go down from shots to the head. Just as Mike
had taught it - no hesitation, no mercy.

Silva was awaiting my
command to launch their second cyber-attack on the ship; the one to wrest
control of the ship’s engines, weapons, and communications. I was waiting until
the last possible moment to give the order; there’d be no hiding it and the
fewer Noridians left to fight back the better.

Just then I heard Julie
gasp and I switched to her view of Captain Garvais’ feed. He was in a room that
could only be described as a morgue. There were at least a couple of dozen
bodies laid out and I’m pretty sure they were all from the Earth Team. It was a
gruesome sight and just then I realized what had caused Julie’s moan; one of
the first bodies to come into clear focus was Hilbert Sullivan, MD – Julie’s
colleague.

We had hoped beyond hope
that this would be a surgical strike. Just like you see S.W.A.T. teams or urban
infantry clear rooms and halls; swift, silent, and deadly. We had already
‘cleared’ a surprisingly large number of Noridians when all Hell broke loose.

Captain Hiromi and her
civilian teammate entered the shuttle bay and had the misfortune to encounter
three Noridians preparing to go planetside; one of them fully armed and
armored.

Dr. Freida Molander fired
wildly into the compartment as she collapsed with a burning hole in her chest.
Simultaneously Hiromi fired at the armored Noridian and threw herself down
behind some metal crates. Several plasma bolts exploded through the crates; one
of them neatly severing Hiromi’s rifle in two. She reached down to grab her
pistol only to discover that it, along with a small chunk of her thigh, were
gone.

I don’t know if Hiromi
could see as well as us or if we had a better camera angle but Dr. Molander’s
fire had taken out one of the Noridians and the armored one was wounded,
obviously hurting, and leaning back against the side of the shuttle – but he
still had his gun.

Without wasting a moment Captain
Ito Hiromi rose and fluidly pulled the Katana sword from her back. She charged
the enemy.

ΔΔΔ

“Silva, now!” I was
yelling.

“Already on it,” came back
the reply.

Suddenly all our video
feeds with the boarding team went blank.

“Silva, talk to me,” I
said.

“Major, the ship’s shields
just came on; that’s what’s cut off our communications.”

“Why have they put the shields
up?” I asked.

“I’m not… Major, it looks
as if they’re deorbiting. Ok, I’m back in the ships directory… Jaki has ordered
the ship to initiate an emergency controlled decent to a holding position a
thousand feet above your position. That ship is huge Major, I’m not sure if she
wants to intimidate everyone or maybe use it as a missile shield to protect her
position but she caught us off guard. She knows something is going on but I
don’t think she realizes it’s us.”

“Silva, get control of
that ship. Now.”

“Major, you’re going to
want to see this,” said Dr. Decker.

On the view screen Jaki
was sneering at the cameras.

“Are Earthers really this
stupid? We demonstrated our power. You don’t stand a chance against us and
still you resist. Whichever one of your governments is behind this attack on my
ship will pay the price, and if we can’t determine who is responsible we’ll
just destroy a few more cities around…”

She stopped in
mid-sentence as the crowd started screaming, “Look! What is that?”

The entire southern sky
was lighting up as a giant fireball was slowly growing larger.

“Major, we’re fighting
each other for control of the ship… wait, the ship is falling. Major, the ship
is tumbling out of control!”

“Silva, you said you could
do this – I’m counting on you. Get that ship under control!

“Toni,” I said loudly.
“Take us to a hover within about 20 yards from the front of that podium.

“Kamiko, when the side
door opens you take out the armed Noridian on the right and I’ll take out the
one on the left, then we both take out Jaki. Understood?”

The shuttle was actually
very quiet but with all the audio feeds and view screens it felt noisy; maybe
that’s why Kamiko acknowledged with a hand signal.

The crowd was in full
panic mode now. No one knew where to run to but apparently it was an ingrained
reflex.

The fireball kept growing
larger.

Jaki’s two bodyguards had
drawn their weapons while she stood there on the steps behind the podium. All
around her were in panic but Jaki stood silent, staring straight ahead
obviously concentrating and focused.

“Ok Toni, hold us steady
and open this door so we can get a clean shot.”

“When I do that Major,
we’re going to lose our cloak.”

“That’s ok,” I yelled. “Just
do it!”

The door disappeared and
Captain Kamiko and I fired at the same time. We shifted to target Jaki but we
were too late…

ΔΔΔ

Jaki was outraged but well
in control. She didn’t know how these Earthers had gotten aboard her ship or
how they’d managed to overcome her crew but she’d made them pay. She’d neutralized
all of them and was even now wresting control back.

She’d gotten an initial
warning message out to the Noridian Dynasty before she’d lost control of
communications but she was now realizing that there was no way the Earthers
could have pulled this off by themselves. This smelled of Coridia and maybe the
rumors of a secret Coridian enclave on Earth were true after all. All the
better for her to find them and use them as proof to the galactic community
that the peaceful Noridian efforts had been sabotaged.

She had just managed to
slow the falling ship and was striving for a controlled crash when a shuttle
suddenly appeared hovering not 50 feet in front of her. All she could focus on
was a crouching figure in the doorway pointing a rifle right at her. At the
very same moment that she recognized Dr. Julie Schein behind the scope her head
snapped back from the force of a 5.56mm bullet passing through her brain.

ΔΔΔ

Everything seemed to be
moving in slow motion. The ship had crashed just about a mile from the palace.
There was no explosion but we could still see the dust, steam, and smoke from
the re-entry heat.

After Julie shot Jaki we’d
quickly landed but the two bodyguards were dead and there wasn’t a Noridian to
be found. We’d easily secured the area. We had landed first and the very air had
shaken with the roar of the crash landing but I think we were all beyond being
startled by anything.

After a few moments or
minutes I realized that Silva was trying to talk to me.

“Wait a minute Silva, I’m
here. This is Reagan, go ahead.”

“Major, you and your team,
are you ok?”

I noticed Captain Kamiko
setting on the steps with her head down.

“No. Yes… we’re all in one
piece anyway. What happened with the ship?”

“I am sorry Major, I
couldn’t control it. In the end Jaki was locking me out of everything and then…
she was gone from the command circuit but it was too late for me to prevent the
crash.”

“Ok listen. We’re heading
to the crash site now. I need you to get a shuttle down here with some
emergency medical equipment – we’ve got to help the survivors and time could be
critical.”

“Major, to survive a crash
like that…” he said slowly.

“Listen,” I half shouted.
“Those ships have inertial dampeners. It’s very possible that the people on
board didn’t even feel a bump when they hit. But they may need our help. Now
stop arguing with me and get over there!”

“Major, I need you to
listen to me!” he said softly. There was something ominous in his voice that
stopped me cold.

“Almost until the ship
crashed I was still getting biometric data from the ship. You’re right, the
inertial dampeners were still active but when Jaki realized she was boarded and
her people were gone she… evacuated the atmosphere. I’m sorry Major but there
was no one left alive on that ship even before it hit the ground.”

“But, they could have…” my
voice trailed off as the implications sunk in. I felt needles of ice pierce my
chest and flow up through my neck into my head.

“Major I am sending a
shuttle just in case but I don’t want to give you false hope. They’re gone.”

Now I understood why
Kamiko wasn’t moving; she somehow knew.

ΔΔΔ

Everyone had run away from
the steps of the palace. Except for a few bodies we were alone but I knew that
wouldn’t last.

I grabbed everyone and in
some cases I actually shoved them back into the shuttle. Captain Kamiko was
following orders but otherwise not communicating. Dr. Decker seemed stunned and
Dr. Cook was… well, as quiet and self-absorbed as he always was.

Julie was crying. Tears
were slowly running down her face but she was alert and functional.

Toni was taking us back to
the Coridian ship. I hadn’t told her to and we hadn’t planned on it, but it was
obvious we had nowhere else to go.

Everything had moved so
fast. We had known we would need to raid the Noridian ship the moment we
reached Earth orbit but no one had prepared themselves for what we had found
planetside. The United States government appeared decapitated. I had assumed
that once we had removed the Noridian threat we would report to our superiors
and submit ourselves to their orders but who were our superiors now?

We needed a chance to
regroup. We needed a chance to mourn. We needed a chance to think. We needed a
chance to process everything that had happened in the last… had it only taken
35 minutes?

I couldn’t let myself
dwell; I still had a job to do…

“Major Reagan?” I heard
Silva’s voice in my ear.

“Reagan here.”

“Major, it looks like you
stirred up a hornet’s nest down there. Apparently a lot has changed since we’ve
been gone and I’m still trying to make sense of it but it looks like Colonel
Memphis has been promoted to General and is in charge of some kind of global
security or military.

“Everything you guys did
was caught on camera and of course he recognized you. He’s already gone on
record calling you a traitor to Earth and demanding your immediate surrender.”

“Silva, I’d appreciate it
if you’d set up a briefing room for us with some view screens where we can all
watch the feeds and figure out our next move. Please have your people learn as
much as they can about the current political and military structure on Earth so
we can know where to start.”