Offworld (48 page)

But something wasn't right. Smoke or steam was releasing into
the air here and there, though the blowing fans caught most of it,
redirecting it to the outer peripheral cement walls. A few wild arcs of
electricity moved their way through the inner recesses of the machine
like horizontal lightning. Chris had a feeling they weren't supposed
to be there.

The machine's color palette was mostly gray or chrome, with
a scant few other colors visible in a handful of spots. The support
beams, stairs, and catwalks were all painted black, making them easy
to distinguish from everything else.

The collective effect was like sitting within a humongous creature that was alive. Caged in an underground prison, but living and breathing and trying to understand itself.

But Chris never had any doubt that it was a man-made construct;
it was random and imprecise in the extreme, entirely function over
form.

Chris turned to his friends again, to see their reactions. Mae, who
was on the far end of the row from him, had a strained look on her
face as her gaze moved around the big machine.

"It's going to be okay," whispered Terry, sitting next to her. "Don't
be afraid."

Mae was lost in thought. Slowly, she seemed to hear him, then
turned to face him. "Not afraid."

Chris watched her closely and decided she really wasn't afraid.

The entire room shuddered, and one of the soldiers nearly lost
his balance. The great machine shook with the surge-or was the
machine the cause of it? Chris wasn't sure.

"Magnificent, isn't it?" called out the voice of Mark Roston. He
ascended a set of stairs to their immediate right, and walked to the
end of the row to stand across from Chris. "So what do you think?"

Chris wasn't sure what to say. Truth be told, he was frightened
by the machine, by its scope and power, and the fact that it had been
crafted by the hands of men.

Or was Roston asking about himself, and his plan? Chris couldn't
deny being moved by Roston's story, but the man was still insane to
think he could actually pull something like this off; the people of the
world wouldn't stand for it. And Chris didn't believe for one second
that creating a utopia was his real aim.

Roston wanted revenge. He wanted to show the people in powerwho'd given him his orders that fateful night during the war-that
they were wrong.

He looked up at the parts of the machine that towered over
them, and felt the vibrations in the catwalk that spelled disaster for
this monstrosity.

"I think that this kind of power was never meant to fall into the
hands of mortal men," Chris replied at last. And I don't see how it
can possibly last."

"Oh, come on, Captain!" Roston said, turning sour. "What's done
is clone. What's built is built. When I learned of this incredible device
and what it could do, I realized what an opportunity it offered to
change things for the better! And I took it! Now, I need you to very
carefully consider your next move."

Roston shifted his weight in a very authoritative way, and Chris
felt suddenly uncomfortable. "I'll destroy this entire place before I
let it fall into the hands of anyone else," he announced. "Don't look
so surprised, Captain. It was always part of the plan to destroy the
machine once we were finished here. It's the only way to ensure no
one comes in behind us and uses the machine to undo everything
we've done."

"What have you done?" Chris asked.

Roston took a step forward. "I've placed a network of explosives
throughout this chamber. Dozens of bombs. On a single trigger."

Before Roston could react, before the soldiers could get a bead
on him, Chris rushed Roston, slammed into him, and launched the
two of them over the railing.

Owen knew how to take advantage of a distraction, Trisha had
to give him that.

When Chris toppled Roston and they both went over the edge,
Owen alone didn't stop to see if the two landed. Instead, he launched
himself toward the row of men and executed a blistering number of
close-quarters, hand-to-hand fighting moves.

But there were too many of them, and he was soon overpowered
by three men, holding him back, about to toss him over the edge.

"Go help Chris!" she said to Terry. She threw him a look that told him to keep Mae safe, and the two of them, hand in hand, snuck
away from the fight.

She stood and threw an open palm into the face of one of Owen's
attackers, and the man stumbled backward. She was about to follow
up with another blow, but she froze at the cold touch of metal against
her throat. It was the bayonet from one of the militia's signature rifles,
but this one had been detached from its rifle.

She drew perfectly still, holding her neck high and stiff, away
from the blade. From where she stood, she was directly across from
Owen and the men holding him at bay.

"You know," said a rough voice Trisha recognized as Griffin's,
"Roston told me you were a Marine before you were an astronaut,
but I didn't believe him"

"I'll kill you if you hurt her," said Owen through gritted teeth,
still struggling against the three men holding him down but watching
Griffin with murder in his eyes.

Griffin grabbed her by the hair, pulled her neck back painfully
hard, and whispered in her ear, "I've been Army since I was eighteen.
And I hate Marines."

The blade came away from her throat, she was spun around in
place, and a vicious fist made contact with the side of her face, sending her doubled over, facing away from Griffin.

"I'm going to snap your neck," said Griffin, whispering now. `Just
like I did to your boy Paul."

Trisha made eye contact with Owen in her bent-over position,
and she felt her face burn red.

Paul!

He clicln't ... ?

Griffin grabbed Trisha by the hair again and pulled until she stood
at her full height. She watched as Owen was pulled up to stand tall
as well. A pistol came up against Owen's temple and the soldier's
finger touched the trigger.

"Oh yeah," Griffin went on, smiling. "He was making too much noise on his website about all the crazy stuff the machine made happen around the world. So Roston had me silence him. But he left it
up to me how permanent your boyfriend's silence would be."

Paul didn't leave me.

He did love me.

He never stopped loving me.

Trisha eyed the gunman next to Owen, and forced a smile, even
in her pained state, her hair near the point of being ripped out.

The man ripped off his face mask and glowered at her, savoring
the moment. Griffin twisted her left arm, pressing it into the small
of her back.

Trisha glanced at Griffin and relaxed her expression. "Thing
about living with constant soreness ... it really raises your tolerance
for pain."

She threw her free elbow into Griffin's face. He dropped the knife,
and she snatched it out of the air and flung it straight down. It sliced
through his foot, impaling it and pinning him to the metal catwalk.

Major Griffin yelled and dropped to the ground, trying to pull
the knife free from his foot. One of the soldiers holding Owen suddenly lunged at Trisha, but she cocked her arm back and flung her
sharp elbow up into the man's face. He landed on his back and she
kicked him in the head.

When she pulled around, Owen was standing over the other two
men who'd been holding him. He wasn't even out of breath. But his
eyebrows were raised and he wasn't blinking as he stared at Trisha,
not moving.

She frowned, lopsided, nonplussed at his reaction. "I really was
a Marine!"

Owen's eyebrows were still up as he said, "Ooh-rah."

Thankfully the catwalk had a little give to it, because Chris landed
on his side-ramming his bad shoulder into the catwalk-but the adrenaline took over immediately, enabling him to ignore the pain.
He reached for the pistol he'd seen earlier sticking out of a holster at
Roston's side, but Roston's hand was already on it.

Chris tried to land a punch to the face, but Roston blocked it, so
Chris brought up his other arm into Roston's side. He made contact
that time, probably with the colonel's spleen, he thought, but Roston
didn't take time to rest from the blow. He rolled away and kicked
Chris' bad shoulder as he went.

Chris involuntarily brought up his other hand to guard the place
where the intense pain was surging, and in the process left himself
open for Roston to ram him full-on in the abdomen. Roston charged
at him until Chris was pressed against the catwalk railing. He felt his
upper body bending backward, over the rail, and knew he couldn't
maintain his balance. He did the only thing he could do-he grabbed
Roston by the shirt to try to stay on this side of the rail.

But Roston's momentum carried them both farther on so they
both went tumbling over the rail. Chris caught a single hand on the
railing at the last moment, but Roston was not so lucky. The last Chris
saw of him, the colonel was falling into the murky depths far below
to the bottom of the machine. Chris never heard an impact.

Terry and Mae came running up behind him, soon followed by
Trisha and Owen. The great machine growled and shuddered as
they approached, as if it knew its life was nearing its end and was
protesting.

"You all right?" asked Trisha, eyeing his shoulder, which looked
dislocated again.

"Doesn't matter," he replied. "Roston's out of the picture."

"Here," said Owen, passing out enough radio earpieces for all
five of them. "We took these from Roston's men."

"Good thinking," said Chris. "Look, we're out of time. This thing
is starting to crumble, so we have to do what we came to do, right
now. Terry, I want you to stay here and keep Roston's men from following me as long as you can. Keep Mae with you, make sure she's safe. Trish, find the main data terminal and input the fail-safe code;
call me when it's done. Beech, Roston may have been bluffing about
a bomb-or maybe not. I want you to find it, or find the trigger, and
disarm it if you can. If it's real, then any one of these men could have
the trigger on them, and we need to buy some time."

Chris squared himself, and looked each one of them in the eye
before stating the obvious and inevitable: "I'm going to find the
Box."

"Commander-!" shouted several voices at once over the din of
the machine.

"No arguments!" Chris yelled over them. "You were there, you
heard what my father said-one of us has to send that thing in the
Box back to where it came from, and there's no one but us who can
or will! It was my father who was sent to tell us about it, so the message was meant for me! I'm doing it, and that's final! Now go!"

With reluctance yet with an urgency they couldn't fight, Terry, Owen,
and Mae left. Trisha moved to follow, but hung back momentarily.

Her features were strained as she began, "Chris ... "

"Don't worry about ... what I told you before," he said. "I meant
what I said. But it wasn't meant to be. I have to finish this. And you
have to bring everyone back."

She watched him with confusion, desperation, uncertainty. He
embraced her, and spoke softly into her ear, "It was an honor to serve
with you, but being your friend meant even more. Now please go."

He heard her sniffle from his shoulder, and her embrace tightened. He forced her to pull away, and couldn't bring himself to look
at her again. It was too hard; she was crying, and he wouldn't have
the strength to commit to this if he met her eyes again....

Chris turned and ran.