The Harvest (37 page)

“Go team,” Steve added, a growl in his
voice.

They broke, and Shane nodded for Laura to
input the code into the screen next to the door. The thick hatch
slid into the wall, and a low roar poured through the opening.

“Let’s do this,” Jake said with forced
enthusiasm.

They stepped through the hatch into the
massive chamber. It was shaped like a pill standing on its end, a
cylinder with a curved top and bottom. The reactor core, a column
of bright white light, stood before him. It operated at near-full
capacity, providing power for the control of the slave soldiers and
for the resource extraction processes happening through the Great
Pyramid under the ship. The excess of power would send the core
well beyond Earth’s atmosphere before it exploded. Shane looked
left and found the main control panel. About thirty engineers were
scattered around the reactor compartment. It was less than he had
to deal with in any of the simulations.

His confidence soared—this might be way
easier than expected. He made a beeline for the control panel,
Laura beside him. The engineers were preoccupied with their jobs,
and no one seemed to notice the Shock Troops marching into their
space. Stepping onto the elevated platform, he drew the attention
of the engineer working at the control panel. Looking over his
shoulder, his eyes grew wide at Shane’s approach. He leapt to his
feet, put his fist over his chest, and bowed his head.

The alien would sound the alarm if they tried
to touch the control panel. There was no other choice. Before the
engineer could stand upright, he drove the butt of his plasma rifle
down on his skull. A splatter of blood defacing the back of his
white jumpsuit, the engineer was flattened onto the floor. Shane
hadn’t intended to kill unless there was no other choice, but the
adrenaline and the amplified strength the suit gave him caused him
to strike too hard.

Stepping over the body, he knew he’d better
get used to taking lives again. He was about to help execute
everyone in this chamber.

Laura sat down at the controls and pulled off
her gloves. She rested her hands over the backlit surface, and they
immediately started dancing across the screen. Long and complex
sequences of codes flowed through her fingers like she’d done this
a thousand times.

Shane knew the gist of what she was doing but
had lost some of the details provided in the neural upload. If she
failed, he had to hope someone else on his team retained
everything. Sweat ran down his face into his eyes, and he realized
he was panting like he was running a marathon. He took a deep
breath of the cool air the suit blew in his face and tried to
relax. This was going to work. He’d get everyone out alive.

Glancing up, he saw the other engineers
approaching, confused looks on their faces.

“Just finished the first stage,” Laura said,
confidence growing in her voice.

Five metallic clanks came in quick succession
from the domed ceiling high overhead. It was the upper hatch,
through which the explosion would be directed. Above the reactor
chamber, a thick ring around the coliseum floor was rising to the
peak of the golden pyramid. It would form a barrel designed to
project the blast out and not destroy the rest of the ship. Shane
had an intimate knowledge of what was going to happen to the
reactor. What he couldn’t predict was how fast the Anunnaki would
react. Warning lights flashed, and an alarm sounded.

The shouting engineers rushed toward the
reactor control station, waving their hands. Laura looked up from
her work.

“We got them,” Shane shouted. “Stay
focused!”

He stood next to her, Steve on the other
side. The lightning thwack of a plasma rifle firing made him look
over at Jake. Two engineers with charred holes in their bodies
collapsed to the floor.

He expected to feel sorry for them and get
angry with the Aussie for shooting too soon, but he felt a surge of
rage and sensed the same anger growing in his friends. Liam fired
the next shot, and the engineers fled.

“Second stage completed—two more series to
input,” Laura reported. Her hands flew over the control screen even
faster.

The ship Kelly, Jules, and the Australians
attacked was smaller. They should’ve made it to the reactor
controls by now. Perhaps they’d already destroyed it and were
joining the fight for control of the ship.

“Better hurry up,” Steve shouted to Laura.
“This just got real!”

Anunnaki soldiers spilled into the reactor
compartment, genuine Shock Troops leading them.

“I finished stage three, we’re almost
there!”

Brilliant pulses from a plasma rifle passed
between Shane’s shoulder and Laura’s elbow, melting through the
guardrail on the other side of the control panel. He cringed,
expecting the next shot to sear through his skull. He turned his
rifle on the soldier who’d fired at him and dropped him to the
floor.

A yelp came from his left, and one of his
friends fell at Shane’s feet. Firing on the charging enemy, he
couldn’t look down to see who it was.

“Liam!” Jake shouted, answering the
question.

“Damn it,” Shane snarled, taking aim at the
closest Shock Troop. He and Liam had become good friends over the
last month, and it tore him up that the cheerful Australian now lay
dead at his feet. He couldn’t lose anyone else. They had to finish
so he could get his team out of here. Anunnaki soldiers kept
spilling into the compartment, and they were closing in.

Glancing over his shoulder while firing, he
saw Laura was working as fast as humanly possible. But it didn’t
seem fast enough. He was afraid to accept it, but it was starting
to look like there was no way they’d make it out alive, whether
they destroyed the reactor or not. He suddenly felt cold in spite
of his nervous sweats, and then a debilitating realization coursed
through him. They were all meant to die from the beginning. The
rebels had hinted at the fact enough times, but he’d always
believed they’d find a way to make it. It wasn’t his imminent death
that grieved him. It was Kelly’s. Keeping her safe had been his
singular motivation since all this started. He’d failed her. Damn
the rebels. He wouldn’t have backed out if he knew this was a
suicide mission, but he would’ve done everything in his power to
keep her from going, regardless of whether it made her hate him or
not.

Laura screamed. Shane spun right and fired a
shot at an Anunnaki soldier who’d slipped around the reactor core
so close it had to be cooking him. Killed by the blast, the alien
fell off the platform into the column of light. His body was burned
so fast it looked like a shadow for an instant, and then it was
gone.

Shane turned to Laura. She was moaning in
agony, and everything below her left elbow was gone. The plasma
shot was so hot that it cauterized the wound, so she wasn’t
bleeding.

“Get up, let someone else take over,” he
yelled urgently, reaching to help her.

“No,” she groaned, sounding like she might
pass out. “I’m almost done.”

The armor’s first aid system must have
delivered a dose of some heavy-duty painkillers. The stub of her
arm hung beside her, and she kept her head faced forward, her visor
focused on the controls. Her remaining hand continued its dance
across the screen, though not quite as fast as before.

Any doubt he had about the reason the rebels
chose her vanished, though he feared she might succumb to her
injuries before she finished. He had to leave her to it. It would
take too long to relay where she was to one of the others, and he
wasn’t sure any of them could do what she was doing anyway.

“Done,” she shouted.

“Let’s go!”

Keeping his gun leveled at the enemy and
firing, he put his other hand around her good arm to help her
stand. Laura shrugged him off and grabbed her weapon.

“Where?” Maurice yelled desperately.

A blast of white light hit him in the chest.
It melted through his armor and flesh, and came out of the other
side without shifting his body off its balance. He stood motionless
for a second, a hole the size of a baseball through him and his gun
still aimed at his assassin. Already too dead to pull the trigger,
the gentle preacher’s son collapsed to the floor.

“Maurice!” Steve shouted.

Overcome with a flash of anger, Shane swung
his weapon toward the soldier who’d shot his friend and fired.
Steve reached down and grabbed Maurice’s limp arm, dragging him
back with them. Worried he’d get shot, he almost yelled for his
friend to leave the body. But what if Maurice wasn’t quite dead?
Dr. Blain could patch up just about anything, could bring the
gentle kid back from the edge if he still clung to life. He
suddenly felt guilty for leaving Liam behind at the reactor
controls, but the enemy was between them and the Aussie now.

The Anunnaki charged with a ferocity that
made him think they might believe he and his friends were part of
the rebellion they had so viciously crushed. Shane pulled the
trigger down and held it, plasma bursts erupting from his rifle so
close together they looked like one solid beam. There was no place
for cover, no place for them to hide from his enraged reprisal. Ten
of the enemy dropped to the floor, smoking holes through their
bodies. Twenty more stepped in to replace them. The charge
indicator for his weapon was dropping fast. The reactor core glowed
brighter, and his visor became shaded to keep it from blinding him.
Even if the enemy didn’t kill the rest of the team, the reactor
explosion soon would.

Laura was in trouble. The red helmet covered
her face and its mechanical muscles made it possible to fight to
her last breath, but she stumbled, and he guessed she was barely
hanging on. He had to do something. Continuing to fire his weapon,
he stole a glance around the chamber. The enemy was almost
surrounding them, blocking all exits he remembered using during the
simulations. A line of small, round hatches on the bulkhead to
their right was all they could get to.

“The escape pods,” he yelled.

“They won’t work… ” Jake replied, pausing to
fire a shot, “… on the planet’s surface.” His voice was ripe with
anger and grief.

He was right. The pods were designed for
escaping from a ship flying in a planet’s atmosphere or in space.
They could be killed if they used them, but death was certain if
they didn’t try.

“No choice!” Shane yelled firmly, determined
to get someone out alive.

Slipping his free arm around her waist, he
steadied Laura, and they backed toward the hatches. Even though she
had to be in a world of hurt, her aim was impeccable. Every shot
met with alien flesh before finding a home in the thick walls
encasing the reactor.

“You took everything from me!” she screamed
with agony in Anunnaki and shot the two who were closest to her
through their chests.

She resisted him, as if wanting to pull out
of his grasp and charge the enemy instead of escaping. Knowing she
might be losing it, he tugged at her to encourage her along. She
relented, seeming too weak to struggle free. Continuing with him
toward the bulkhead, she fired her weapon with lethal results the
entire way.

The alarm warned the end was near, the rhythm
of its threatening notes becoming faster. Some Anunnaki soldiers
retreated, shouting frantically as they pushed their way through
the hatches that led out of the chamber. A few of the Shock Troops
persisted, advancing on Shane and his friends.

The team made it to the escape pods, and
Shane grabbed a handle on the first one he came to and jerked it
down. The five-foot in diameter hatch opened, and he pushed Laura
through it.

“Get in!” he yelled to the rest.

Steve took another shot, killing one of the
three Anunnaki left. Then he hoisted Maurice’s limp body up and
into the escape pod. The second Anunnaki gave up and raced toward
the closing hatch where his comrades had fled. Shane took a couple
of wild shots at the last Anunnaki, who ran toward him like she’d
decided there was a better chance of survival joining his team in
the escape pod. Or she was determined to go with them just so she
could kill them all. There was no way she’d make it—she was too far
away. Spinning around, he dove into the pod after Jake.

“Here we go,” Steve shouted, sitting up at
the controls.

The controls to the hatch had been hit by a
plasma blast, and it couldn’t be closed. He braced himself for the
pod’s launch, wrapping his arms around a seat near the back.

At the exact moment the pod detached from the
reactor chamber and accelerated toward the surface of the ship, a
blinding light poured from the reactor’s core. It lifted the last
Shock Troop, slamming her through the open hatch and over Shane’s
head. A white-hot fireball filled the passenger compartment, and
even through the protection of his armor, he could feel the heat of
the explosion. It threatened to cook him like a lobster in its
shell.

The pod shot out of the ship into the air,
and the fire was sucked out of the rear hatch. Shane’s eyes were
glued to the fireball erupting through the golden pyramid’s hull
after them, afraid it would catch the tiny craft and burn them all
to a crisp.

After rising up away from the ship for a long
instant, the pod tumbled. His body slammed against the floor,
ceiling, and walls, the craft trying to buck him out. In one of his
airborne moments, he saw two of the passengers slide past him in
flashes of red. The centripetal force flung them out of the open
rear hatch, and then smashed him down onto the metal floor.