The Glorious Becoming (44 page)

Archer’s head swung the man’s direction.
“What?”

“Sir,” another operator said, “I’m getting a comm from
Novosibirsk
Command requesting clarification on orange alert.”

Archer pointed back to him firmly. “Deny them! Cut them off!” He looked at the first operator. “How could they possibly know about these transports?”

The operator shook his head. “I have no idea, sir. No one’s sent a word to them.”

“What’s their time to intercept?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“And our Superwolves?”

“Thirteen.”

Archer’s eyes narrowed. “I want those transports blown out of the sky before Thoor’s ships are within a thousand kilometers!”

* * *

T
RAVIS WAS RUNNING
full speed towardNovCom. Shortly after getting off line with General Thoor,NovCom had demanded his presence. With his beloved ship in the equation, he wasn’t about to argue. On his own accord, he had commed Max to tell him the news. Upon Max’s own insistence, the technician was en route toNovCom himself, whether The Machine wanted it or not. This was something big.

A sentry was waiting for Travis when he arrived, and they hurriedly escorted him through the security door and to the top of the control tower. It was the pilot’s first time ever being there, asNovCom was all but off-limits to standard personnel. It was exclusively Nightman territory.

The control room bustled furiously, with multiple operators on multiple consoles. On one of the displays, the
Pariah
and its airborne companions were being tracked. But another display caught his attention, too. On it was a squadron of Superwolves just over the Sahara Desert.

“Who’s that?” Travis asked, pointing.

TheNovCom shift supervisor turned Travis’s way. “Are you Navarro?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me.” The man rushed acrossNovCom, directing Travis to a seat by a radio panel. “Queue up the comm from the
Pariah
on this panel. I want the woman on loudspeaker.”

Without argument, Travis set up the comm’s signature.

One of the security guards approached the supervisor. “I have a Lieutenant Axen on ground level requesting access toNovCom. Did you request him?”

Turning around quickly, Travis answered before the supervisor could. “I requested him. He knows the
Pariah
as well as I do. He needs to be here.”

The supervisor seemed to deliberate before nodding his head. “Let him up.”

Moments later, Tiffany’s channel was queued. “Tiffany, can you hear me?” asked Travis.

Her voice emerged. “Yes, I hear you!” Her heart rate echoed in her voice.

Travis opened his mouth to speak on, but the supervisor cut him off. “American pilot, this is
Novosibirsk
Command. A squadron of Superwolves is currently on an intercept course for your aircraft. We believe its intention is to destroy you.”

Travis’s jaw dropped.

“We are dispatching a wing of our own to escort you to
Novosibirsk,
but the Superwolves will reach you first. Your orders are to alter your course for Madrid, Spain. You are to use the city as cover from assault until we arrive to escort you. The Superwolves will not fire while you are near heavy populations.”

“I can’t!” Tiffany screamed. “I already told you, I can’t get back manual control!”

The supervisor nodded calmly. “We know.” Then he looked at Travis. “We have someone troubleshooting your problem now.”

Blinking, Travis turned. “Wait, you’re talking about
me
?”

“The
Pariah
has always been a unique ship. Who better to fix it than its pilot? The Superwolves will reach her in eleven minutes.” He motioned to his sidearm. “You have six.”

The door acrossNovCom opened; Max rushed inside. Scanning for Travis, he stopped when he found him. “Trav! What in the—”

“No time to explain!” Travis said. “We need to figure out how to disable an autopilot override lock!”

“Wait,
what
?”

Travis turned to the radio. “Tiffany, you still there?”

“Yes!”

“Tell us everything you’ve tried to do.”

A
BOARD THE
P
ARIAH
, the blonde was frantic. “Okay, I tried disengaging, and it didn’t work. I pulled the breaker, and that didn’t work either!”

“T
HE
BREAKER
DIDN’T
even work?” asked Max. “How is that even possible? The breaker should go right to the source.”

NovCom’s elevator door opened again as General Thoor marched inside. Visor cap veiling his eyes, the Terror’s glare swept the room, settling on Travis and Max. Looking away, he approached the supervisor.

Max nor Travis had time to care. “Okay,” Travis said, “what would cause a circuit breaker not to work?”

“This is the
Pariah
we’re talking about, now.”

“I know, but has that ever been a problem before?”

“I don’t even know if it
can
be,” Max said. “It’s like unplugging something from an electrical outlet. It should work without fail.”

The supervisor looked their way. “Five minutes.”

Glancing at the supervisor, Max turned back to Travis. “Five minutes until what?”

“Until he has two less bullets,” he answered.

“
Veck
! Okay. The way the breaker’s designed, failure shouldn’t be possible. Is the control mode working?”

Travis got on the comm. “Tiffany, is the control mode working?”

She answered quickly. “Completely dead.”

Travis and Max looked at each other. They spoke at exactly the same time. “A second autopilot!”

“T
IFFANY
,” T
RAVIS
said over the comm, “we think they might have installed a secondary autopilot somewhere on the ship.”

She blinked. “Like, you’re kidding, right?”

“It makes sense to a degree. If this was a crucial mission, they would have wanted something more dedicated than what was already on board. What we’ve got to do is find out where they put it.”

Kneeling below the seat, Tiffany began opening panels. “Why wouldn’t they replace the system that’s already in place?”

“If I had to guess, because there was too much damage to the main systems. Rather than overhaul everything, it was probably easier to attach the processor to a secondary system.”

Tiffany nodded. “Processor, right.” Abandoning the pilot’s seat, she scrambled back to the troop bay and knelt next to a floor grate. “Processor’s where it should be, right?”

“If it’s not, we’ve got a whole new set of problems.”

Removing the grate, Tiffany shoved it aside and laid down on the floor, sticking her head into the cavity.

T
HE SUPERVISOR LOOKED
at Travis and tapped on his watch. The pilot nodded aggravatingly. “Talk to me, Tiff. Are you in the mainframe?”

“Oh my God,” she said breathlessly. “I have never seen a bigger mess in my life.”

Max smirked. “She’s in the mainframe.”

“Just look for the processor,” Travis said to her. “Forget everything else.”

Her voice was despondent. “Words cannot convey how utterly hopeless I feel now that I’ve seen this thing’s innards.”

“Okay, okay! She needs some TLC, I know. Just freakin’ focus.”

She grunted over the comm, presumably from the mainframe’s tight fit. “All right, I think I...I’ve got it! I’ve found the processor. Do I even need to follow the wires?”

“No,” answered Max. “Just rip ’em out.”

“Rip ’em out!” echoed Travis.

Several seconds passed before Tiffany’s voice reemerged. “They’re out. Hang on, lemme check the controls.”

Fingers crossed, Max and Travis held their breaths.

S
LIDING BACK INTO
the pilot’s seat, Tiffany grabbed the joystick, easing sideways just slightly. The ship complied. “I’ve got control!”

The voice she heard next wasn’t Travis’s or Max’s. It was one she’d never heard before. “This is General Ignatius van Thoor. Take cover in Madrid immediately. Our Vindicators are en route.”

* * *

“J
UDGE
A
RCHER
!”
SHOUTED
one of the radar operators, “one of the transports just broke formation!”

“What do you mean, broke formation?” Archer asked.

The operator looked horrified. “I mean someone took manual control. Someone’s on board!”

In the same moment that Archer’s face lost its color, the door to the War Room opened. Pauling, wearing his presidential garb, rushed into the room. “What the hell happened?” he asked frantically. Blake followed in behind him.

“Mr. President!” shouted Archer, blatantly loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “Thank God you’re here!” Several of the room’s occupants eyed one another warily.

As soon as he saw Archer, Pauling rushed to him. “Benjamin, what happened?”

“We’re still gathering information, but apparently a false dispatch was sent out to a unit from
Richmond
, Falcon Platoon.”

“A false dispatch?” asked Blake, playing his role.

Archer nodded. “Yes. The unit was intercepted mid-flight by another squadron.” His focus shifted to Pauling, his tone lowering. “The ships were
Novosibirsk
’s.”

Several other judges hurried into the War Room, Torokin included.

“Sir,” Archer went on, “Falcon Platoon was Strom Faerber’s unit.”

At mention of Strom’s name, Torokin’s ears perked. “Strom? What happened to Strom?”

Blake raised a hand of silence to Torokin as he and the others continued to listen.

“We’re sending transports to the crash site now to look for survivors,” Archer said, “and we have Superwolves on an intercept course with the
Novosibirsk
ships.” He eyed Blake tellingly while speaking to everyone. “However, it seems Thoor is trying to beat us to the intercept. He’s dispatched ships of his own on an intercept course.” Blake couldn’t hide his look of genuine shock. Archer went on anyway. “We should intercept the culprits before Thoor’s Vindicators arrive, though one of the transports has broken formation.” He looked back at the radar operator. “Do we have a bead on that rogue transport?”

The operator nodded. “Madrid, sir.”

Archer looked at the president. “We’ve tried on numerous occasions to contact
Novosibirsk
and Thoor. They haven’t responded.”

“If that really was Strom Faerber’s unit,” Blake said, “I think Thoor’s motivation is clear.”

Nodding, Archer finished the statement. “He wanted to hit us where it hurts.” He looked at Pauling. “I think he just declared war.”

Pauling’s eyes narrowed. Walking past the others, he rested his hands on the guardrail that surrounded the holographic globe. He stared at the blips and their intercept courses. When he spoke, his voice was low. “Well, now he’s got one.”

* * *

T
RAVIS AND
M
AX
stood behind Thoor as the general and his staff observed their radar screens. The
Pariah
had put clear separation between itself and its pack, making a beeline for Madrid, where Gagarin Wing would meet it. The Superwolves from EDEN Command had apparently caught onto this, as a pair of them had also broken off their intercept course for a direct route into Spain.

Despite the Superwolves’ speed advantage, the
Pariah
was too close to Madrid to be intercepted beforehand. So long as Tiffany adhered to the plan and remained low amid the buildings of the city, EDEN would have no choice but to hold their fire.
Novosibirsk
was sending well over three dozen aircraft into the fight. Even with their superiority, if the Superwolves decided to pick a fight with Gagarin Wing, they were risking being wiped out by sheer numbers.

It was a foregone conclusion that the other transports in Tiffany’s autopilot-led squadron would be lost, intercepted by the Superwolves before any of Thoor’s Vindicators could even get close. Being that all of those aircraft were presumed to be unmanned, Thoor didn’t seem overly concerned. His focus was solely on the one aircraft that mattered. The
Pariah
needed to be retrieved. This was made abundantly clear to Tiffany, personally, by the general. It was as encouraging as Max or Travis had ever heard the man dubbed the “Terror.” In talking to Tiffany, Thoor used phrases such as “do not be afraid,” and “we will not let them harm you.” It was an indicator of one of two things: either Thoor was growing soft in his old age, or this was a situation that caught him completely unprepared. There was little doubt it was the latter.

The bigger mystery was why this was happening in the first place. There were several unlikely possibilities, and one frighteningly likely one. This could have been a bona fide mistake on multiple fronts—a miscommunication for the ages. Or it was some sort of renegade act, and Tiffany was not only a mastermind, but an actress to be praised. Those were the
unlikely
answers.

What was likely was that this was a setup. The
Pariah
had originally been dubbed “unsalvageable” by EDEN, only to mysteriously appear now and attack another EDEN unit. The pilot of the aircraft, frantic, described soldiers in EDEN uniforms assaulting her friends on the ground. A preprogrammed autopilot had pointed her straight for
Novosibirsk
—the perfect “evidence” that
Novosibirsk
had set up the assault. The global network at orange alert, yet apparently cutting itself off from
Novosibirsk
’s communication. And what was left in the wake of all this? A very guilty looking Nightman base.

The next forty minutes played out exactly asNovCom had anticipated. The main squadron of Superwolves intercepted and destroyed the unmanned aircraft. The pair that went after the
Pariah
threatened but never engaged the cursed transport in Madrid, finally retreating when Gagarin Wing arrived. Global news outlets began reporting an incident involving
Novosibirsk
and an undisclosed unit from
Richmond
, with only the promise that more news would come “as the situation develops.” The world was watching the largest city in Siberia.