Final Battle (5 page)

“General, with all due respect to Tyce Sanders,” one reporter said, “we can plainly see he is in a wheelchair. Was this a result of the nuclear plant accident? Did anything go wrong during his handling of the robot? Was he injured as a result?”

“No, it wasn't the result of the nuclear plant accident,” Cannon stated. “No, nothing went wrong during his robot control. And no, he wasn't injured as a result.”

That was true in one way. But in another way, I
was
in a wheelchair because of robot control. For when the pioneer operation had been done to my spine to allow the computer hookup to my nervous system, something had gone wrong. And because it took place on Mars, the doctor didn't have access to the specialized equipment he needed to fix the mistake immediately. That mistake left me in my wheelchair. I couldn't remember ever walking or running. It used to make me angry. But I was slowly learning how to live with it.

“Yet we heard he was hurt,” another reporter said. Her white-blonde hair and red dress stood out from the pack. “We heard he's been in a hospital and—”

“Recovering from an exhausting rescue effort,” Cannon said. “Tyce is in perfect health. Just tired.”

“General,” a taller man said, “I would guess until today this has been top secret. How much money has been spent on this robot-control research?” He chewed on his pencil while waiting for a response.

“It's in the report.”

“Did the Federation approve this money, and if so, why wasn't it subject to public debate?” the man threw in quickly.

Cannon had warned me this type of question would arise. He took it without flinching. “Surely you understand that every government has issues of national security. This was one of them.”

“Did Tyce Sanders have a choice in the operation?” the pencil chewer asked.

For a moment, Cannon paused. It was a moment too long. Because his brief silence said everything. I had not had a choice.

“The operation that allows the spinal hookup to a computer must be done before the child is three years old,” Cannon said slowly. “Otherwise the neuron connections won't grow into place. We had the consent of his mother, who is involved in the Mars Project.”

I coughed discreetly. Cannon looked at me.

“May I answer?” I whispered.

The general nodded.

Barely enough moisture remained in my mouth to swallow back my nervousness. What would I say in my first words to the world?

“Because of the operation,” I said, “I'm able to see and hear worlds that no human has ever been able to explore. Outer space. The surface of Mars. I don't think there's a person alive who wouldn't want to have the chances I've been given as a result.”

There was more to say, but I kept it to myself, because it was private. Dad had been off on a flight to Earth when my mom had to make the decision. Because the Mars Project hadn't counted on babies in its early stages, my mom was given a choice. Either she could send me back to Earth on a spaceship and risk what the g-forces would do to a baby, or she could allow me to have the operation and stay with her on Mars. So she made the best choice she could. No one guessed that something would go wrong during the surgery and that my legs would be paralyzed as a result. What's helped me deal with it is knowing that there's a God and that even when things look bad, he's still in control. He can make good things happen from bad things. Like the ability to travel the universe through controlling a robot with my brain… .

“General! General!” an African-American woman in black pants and a black sweater interrupted.

“Yes, Ms. Borris?”

Ms. Borris! Earlier Cannon had told me that Ms. Evangeline Borris was the most feared reporter in New York City. As a young reporter, she'd broken a story that overthrew a presidency. She was a legend now and not even that old, Cannon had said grimly. But Cannon had not described her to me. And when I saw her now, I gripped the arms of my wheelchair and tried to hold back my surprise.

It was her! Put on the platinum wig, smear lipstick across the lower part of her face, and it was the mysterious nurse who had visited me in the hospital! Only now she was the picture of dignity.

She spoke calmly. “If this young man can control a robot capable of going places humans can't, wouldn't he make an ideal soldier?”

A hush fell on the reporters. They all looked at the general.

“He is not a soldier, Ms. Borris,” Cannon answered.

“Are there others like him?” she asked.

“Ms. Borris,” he said firmly, “for reasons of national security, I cannot—”

“Can you tell us about an incident on 04.01.2040 at the World United Federation Summit of Governors?” she persisted.

My guess was that only someone like Ms. Borris dared interrupt the general, for he didn't give her the same cold, hard stare he'd given the man who had been escorted out. Instead he seemed to squirm.

“And can you confirm or deny rumors that robot soldiers were involved in an assassination attempt?”

“Unlike you,” Cannon said, biting back his anger, “I am not in the business of selling rumors to the public. Again, for reasons of national security, I cannot confirm or deny.”

Muttering grew rapidly through the crowd, moving like a wave of water. Cannon had not denied it. And I guessed Ms. Borris was not known for asking questions unless she had a good source. To all the reporters, then, the general's refusal to answer said a lot.

“And lastly!” Ms. Borris now had to shout to be heard. When the others realized she wasn't finished, they quieted instantly. “General, is it true that children have been forced into robot control as slaves in a tantalum mine on the Moon?”

“Ms. Borris,” the general said, the intensity of his voice like the crack of a whip, “I thought a respected reporter like you would not have to stoop to creating your own headlines to sell newspapers.”

“Yes or no, General,” she insisted. “Child slavery? If a child like Tyce Sanders is able to control a robot, who controls the child? And who controls those who control the child? Especially if the interests of national security make it so possible to keep this secret?”

The general drew a deep breath. “Interesting speculation, Ms. Borris. Perhaps you might be on the verge of a new career as a fiction author?”

“Hardly,” she snapped back. “Not when this is far more bizarre than fiction. My sources tell me—” She didn't get a chance to finish.

Without warning, four soldiers stampeded through the middle of the crowd, shoving reporters in all directions. Without hesitation those soldiers leaped upon the stage. Two of them grabbed me out of my wheelchair. The other two yanked the wheelchair away and began running with it.

I watched helplessly as they sprinted toward the nearest exit with my wheelchair, leaving me behind. My feet dangled off the ground as the two soldiers held me by the arms.

“Hey,” I said to the nearest soldier. “What's the—?”

“Not a word in front of the cameras,” the soldier growled. He leaned forward and whispered in my ear. “There's a bomb. In your wheelchair.”

The wheelchair they had run with.

Ten seconds later a loud boom from outside shook the entire room.

CHAPTER 7

“Tyce, what do you think we're up against?”

This came from Cannon. He and I were in a huge Combat Force helicopter, skimming along the Atlantic shoreline as we flew from New York City to Washington, D.C., where I was supposed to meet with Ashley before we moved to a Moon shuttle launch site in Florida. The roar of the engines was far too loud for us to talk without help of the headsets both of us wore. The vibrations of the helicopter engines rumbled through my body as I answered the general's question.

“We're up against someone wanting me dead,” I said. Only a half hour had passed since soldiers had whisked all of us out of the media conference center. I was still shaky. I sat in a new wheelchair, taken from a hospital. It had no electric motor. And it seemed far too heavy with Earth gravity.

“What else?” Cannon said.

“There's your son,” I answered. “He's still missing. I know you want to find him.”

Cannon nodded. Beyond his large, square head, I saw the endless blue of the ocean through the window of the helicopter. All I had to do was turn the other way to see the green and brown of the shoreline, with the ribbons of highway and an occasional inland city.

“I want my son,” the general said. There was a catch in his voice. “Nothing is truer than that. Just like the robot kids want to find their parents.”

It hadn't been that long since Cannon had discovered his son was still alive. Although it appeared he'd drowned in a boating accident, Chad's body had never been found. Then one day a stranger had walked up to the general on the street and told him that Chad was alive and being held hostage. Once Cannon found out about the robot control, he assumed the robot-control operation had been done to his son too. Just like it had been done to hundreds of other kids across the world, all kidnapped in situations that made it look like deaths where the bodies couldn't be found. And each of those kids was a child of a high-ranking politician, World United Federation official, or Combat Force general.

Twenty-four kids made up each group, called a
pod
, and there were 10 pods total. Nine of the pods of kids had been rescued. But when they arrived at the location of the 10th pod, the jelly tubes were empty. Those were the kids who were probably on the Moon, held hostage to do tantalum mining.

“Yet,” Cannon said, interrupting my thoughts, “this is even bigger than what matters to you or me. Or for that matter, to all the other robot-control kids.”

The nine pods of rescued kids were now safe in the mountain retreat in Parker, Arizona. There the Combat Force was conducting DNA tests on their blood samples to help match them to their parents. Most of the kids were still in shock, for it was only recently they'd found out their parents were alive. They'd assumed they were orphans. Ashley too. She could have had the DNA test in D.C. but wanted the chance to be with some of her pod brothers and sisters before she went to the Moon with me to look for the last pod.

As I was thinking this, Cannon stopped speaking, as if he, too, were lost in thought.

I let my gaze drift to the horizon of endless ocean. It fascinated me. All that water, when on Mars there was nothing. No water. Which meant no life. Why was it that Earth had that one-in-a-hundred-billion-billion-billion chance that led to the right combination of sunlight and water and oxygen that allowed life? Most of my life involved science of one sort or another, so I thought about this a lot. Some people believe this happened through random chance. But for me, the more I learned about science, the more it pointed me toward God.

“Tyce.”

I looked at Cannon.

“I wish I could tell you more of what's happening,” he said.

“What's happening?”

He looked sad, tired. “There's some unfair stuff that I …” He took a breath. “Look, about the bomb. Don't worry. All right?”

“But it was a big bomb. Bad bomb. Like blow-up-and-make-lots-of-noise bomb. I—”

“Don't worry. That's all I can say.”

This is what he'd been thinking about? That I shouldn't be afraid of bombs? Before I could say anything else, our pilot interrupted.

“Sir.” Our pilot tapped his own headset. “There's an incoming call for you to take.”

“Excuse me,” Cannon said. Then he switched to a different channel and began speaking into his headset.

I thought of Ms. Borris. How did she know what she did? And that led me to thinking about her question about kids as slaves. Of anyone in the world, Ashley and I knew what that meant, for we'd seen it firsthand in the kids in the jelly tubes in Parker, Arizona. Even more than that, Ashley herself had been part of the Arizona pod before Dr. Jordan forced her to go with him to Mars for the deadly Hammerhead torpedo mission.

Suddenly the roar of the helicopter's engines seemed to drop.
Strange
, I thought.
We're still above the water.
The D.C. base wasn't anywhere in sight.

Then my stomach rose to my throat. The helicopter had just pitched straight sideways!

Wind hit my face.

I looked away from the general and saw that the pilot's door was wide open. With the pilot gone!

Then the roar of the engines stopped completely.

With all the power off, the helicopter began to fall toward the ocean!

CHAPTER 8

There it was. Our helicopter. Tumbling. Tumbling. And at the last minute, just above the water, straightening. And leveling.

On television, it didn't look real. But seeing it—even from the safety of my wheelchair in a secure room on the D.C. Combat Force base—brought back to me the horror of thinking we were about to hit the water at well over 100 miles an hour.

“Wow,” Ashley said from her chair beside me. “Heaven's going to be a great place. But let me be selfish here. I'm just glad you're not there yet.”

It
was
good to be alive. And good to be with the only friend my age I had. Ashley was a year younger than me, nearly 14. With her short, straight black hair and almond-shaped eyes that squinted when she grinned, she looked like a tomboy. But when her face was serious, she could have been a model from the cover of a magazine.

Although Ashley and I had only met a little over nine months ago when she'd arrived on my dad's shuttle to Mars, we had become close friends quickly. We'd been through a lot together in that short amount of time. I could really trust her, and she trusted me.

“Wow is right,” I agreed. Even though it was the next morning, I could still feel the sensation of falling toward death.

The television announcer's voice broke in as the clip of the tumbling helicopter ran twice more. “Although General Jeb McNamee, known as Cannon by his military comrades, had not been behind the controls of a helicopter for more than 20 years, he was able to avoid what would have been certain death for himself and Tyce Sanders. It is speculated that the pilot who abandoned the helicopter parachuted to a waiting boat. Neither the pilot nor the boat has been found, but authorities are certain this assassination attempt is linked to the Terratakers, the worldwide terrorist group that reflects much of the world's opposition to outer space expansion. This was the second attempt in one day to assassinate Tyce Sanders.”