Sullivan Saga 3: Sullivan's Watch (17 page)

He didn’t hear anything, but he felt a change in the energy behind him. He turned. A third entity had appeared. It rushed toward him, waving its tendrils. Three of the tendrils sank into Sullivan’s chest, and he felt a pain unlike any he had ever experienced. It was even worse than when the Liz entity had stuck her hand into his heart, and he never thought pain like that could be rendered insignificant by comparison.

Sullivan lurched his body back to try and pull himself away from the tendrils. He fell against the front console, slid down it and landed on the floor. He watched this new entity approach the alien device and study it for a moment.

After apparently deciding that it hadn’t been armed, it turned back to Sullivan and stretched itself over him.

Sullivan knew he had to move or he was going to die. He had no weapons to fight this thing, but if he could just get away from it there was a chance Allen would be able to come to his rescue.

Sullivan pushed back the pain and willed himself into action. He crawled to his left, jumped up to his feet and grabbed the alien device. He bolted past the entity threatening him. He felt a tendril lick his calf, but it was a glancing blow and added little to the pain he was already suffering. He darted out of the way of Allen and the Liz entity as their struggle sent them back and forth across the rear of the cockpit and finally reached the hatchway leading aft.

He ran down the short corridor where the crew cabins and galley were located and into the large cargo hold of the ship. An entity—he didn’t know if it was the same one or not—was already waiting for him.

Sullivan stepped back. He took the alien device out from under his arm and held it in front of him. He circled around the entity as he began entering the arming code. The entity lunged forward. Sullivan had enough space to avoid the attack, but now his back was against a wall.

Sullivan looked back down at the device to finish entering the code, but the entity struck again, forcing him to abandon the sequence so he could jump out of the way and cross to the far side of the cargo hold.

He typed in the last part of the code and hit the large button. Nothing happened. At least now he knew the arming code did reset itself if there was too long a pause between entries.

The distraction required to make this discovery had cost him, however. He felt an icy pain in his ankles, and the next thing he knew he was on his back. The device rolled away from him, and the entity quickly batted it to the far side of the cargo hold.

Sullivan knew he had missed his chance. Unless Allen managed to do something to help him, Sullivan would never get to the device before the entity finished him off. Still, he would go down fighting.

Sullivan got to his feet and brought up his fists. He knew punching this creature would do no good, but it felt wrong to die with his hands at his sides. The black mass vibrated slightly and charged forward. Sullivan jumped out of the way, but another tendril grazed his ear. The cold pain radiated from his ear and into his brain, but he kept his feet beneath him and his fists up as the entity prepared for another strike.

He pictured Kate in his mind one last time as he readied himself for death.

A LARGE EXPLOSION lit up Commander Pickett’s cockpit. He looked up from his controls. The
Izumo
was gone. He and the other remaining fighters from the
Vigilant
had been battling wave after wave of alien fighters. The large alien ship had been sending them out without restraint now that their enemy was too scattered to be able to organize an attack every time the shield went down.

Even so, a few odd missiles had managed to sneak their way through, and the hull of the alien ship showed light damage. It hadn’t seemed to slow them down, however, and the losses to the defenders had been severe. Pickett knew Lieutenant Kern had bailed out of his damaged F-66, but he didn’t know of the man’s fate beyond that.

He looked back down at his display. His F-66’s computer was tracking just thirteen friendly fighters but twenty-two alien fighters. The battle seemed all but lost.

Pickett banked his ship to engage the nearest enemy. He had only a handful of missiles remaining, but his thirty-millimeter cannons still had a couple hundred rounds left.

He fired a half-second-long burst at the enemy fighter. The small explosive rounds didn’t need to score a direct hit to damage a ship, and this time that feature proved decisive. The alien fighter swerved out of the way and would have missed the rounds by half a meter if they hadn’t exploded, sending shrapnel flying into the side of the enemy ship. It damaged the alien fighter enough to affect its maneuverability, and Pickett swept back around to finish it off.

Another alien ship dropped down from above Pickett and executed an elaborate maneuver that put it behind Pickett’s F-66. Pickett banked left into the wreckage of the exploded fighter, hoping to miss any significant debris but also put some distance between him and his pursuer.

The alien pilot didn’t blink, however, and stayed with Pickett, risking hits from the wreckage. A warning light began flashing, and Pickett looked down at his console. His canopy’s structural integrity had been compromised. He had avoided a full breach, but another hit by even a small piece of debris would crack it. In his pressurized flight suit, he was safe from a small crack or hole, but anything larger would force his ship to automatically eject him.

Pickett didn’t have time to worry about it, though, as the enemy fighter behind him launched two missiles. His fuel was getting low, but Pickett doubled his thrust, leaving the missiles behind. He watched them explode harmlessly then fired the upward-facing burners on the nose of his ship and flipped around to face his enemy.

Upside down relative to the alien fighter, he fired his main engines again. This stopped him momentum, and the alien fighter rapidly closed on him.

Pickett fired his cannons at the oncoming ship. Firing from an almost stationary position allowed him to aim more carefully than usual, and the explosive rounds tore through the front of the alien craft and detonated inside it. The ship exploded, but its momentum kept it coming toward Pickett. He fired his nose burners to flip his ship again so his cockpit canopy wouldn’t take a direct hit from the wreckage.

The debris of the enemy ship hit the back of his F-66 and sent him spinning. The alert sounded again. Despite his efforts, the canopy had been breached. Fortunately, it was a small crack, and he would be able to stay in the fight.

Pickett checked his console. His flight from the enemy fighter’s missiles had taken him away from the main battle area. He reoriented his fighter and fired a short burst from his main engines. It’d take him a while to get back into the fight at that low acceleration, but he’d burned a lot of fuel and needed to save what he had left for an engagement.

Pickett carefully tracked the battle as he made his way back into the fray. His fellow pilots seemed to have rallied, and there now appeared to be nine friendly ships to fourteen enemy fighters. There was a chance Pickett’s side would come out of the dogfight victorious, but with the large alien ship still intact and able to launch more fighters and missiles, the ultimate outcome was certain.

SULLIVAN SCREAMED OUT in agony as the entity repeatedly stabbed its tendrils into him. It seemed like it had been going on for hours, but he knew it couldn’t have been more than half a minute.

Abruptly, the attack stopped. Sullivan looked up; the entity was gone. Barely able to move, he flipped himself onto his stomach and crawled toward the alien device on the far side of the cargo hold. He didn’t know what had happened but suspected Allen had managed to overpower the Liz entity.

This suspicion was confirmed as he crawled within sight of the open hatchway. Two black masses were entangled in the corridor, and he felt from the energy coming off of them that one of them was Frank Allen.

Sullivan reached the alien device, and one of the masses stretched toward him. In its features he could see the vague outline of Allen’s face. “Now, Rick!” it said.

Sullivan pulled himself to his knees and leaned over the device. He quickly entered the arming code, repeated it and mashed his finger down on the central button.

Nothing happened at first, but after a few seconds the blue dome on the end of the cylinder began to glow more brightly and pulsate.

Sullivan backed away from it and looked up at the entities in the corridor. They had stopped fighting and were both still. The nearer one shifted in appearance, took on a human shape and resolved into the image of Frank Allen.

“You did it, Rick,” he said quietly. “It’s over.”

“What’s happening, Frank?”

“It feels… I can’t describe it. It feels like I’m just kind of fading away, like a fog when the sun comes out. I think I’m dying.”

“I’m sorry, Frank. I’m sorry it had to be like this.”

Allen and the other entity both seemed to grow less solid.

“No. It’s okay, Rick,” Allen said. “There’s no pain. Goodbye, my friend. It’s been a real pleasure.”

Sullivan nodded. “Goodbye, Frank.”

“Stay out of trouble, okay?”

Sullivan smiled and wiped a tear from his eye. “No promises.”

Allen and the entity continued to fade, and after several more seconds they were both gone. Sullivan was alone.

He got to his feet. With the entities dead, the frigid pain in his body subsided. He had still been battered and bruised, but the internal pain was gone.

He started walking toward the front of the ship when the freighter began to shake violently. He was thrown against the wall of the corridor where he grabbed onto one of the railings and held on. From the open hatchway leading into the cockpit, he saw a flash of blue light. As soon as the light faded, the ship fell silent.

He walked the rest of the way into the cockpit and checked the instruments. He was out of hyperspace. His sensors were picking up the battle between the Earth defenses and the aliens, but as before, he could do nothing but watch. In his slow, unarmed freighter, he wouldn’t stand a chance if he tried to get back to Earth now. He’d have to wait for the battle to end.

Sullivan sat back in the seat. As long as he was waiting, he wanted to try an experiment. He put the freighter in motion and tried to enter hyperspace. Nothing happened. He brought the freighter to a stop again and walked back to the cargo hold. He picked up the alien device and turned it over in his hands. The dome no longer glowed, and there was no power to the control screen. It was inert.

He cradled it under his arm and took it back to the cockpit. There were now thousands stranded in interstellar space, and billions on the other inhabited planets who would have no idea what had happened, only that hyperspace was gone. They were forever cut off from the rest of humanity.

Those stuck in space would be able to last a few months on their stored supplies. Sullivan imagined a great deal of fighting and negotiation as their stores ran low and they tried to decide who would live and who would die.

Those on planets could live on, though. Some non-independent planets like Abilene, who had to have massive amounts of food imported, would undergo drastic changes as they adjusted to the situation. Sullivan figured his old ally Eugene Brain would do just fine as he scrambled to control the few food resources the planet did have.

And Kate was on Faris. It at least had significant agriculture and was mostly independent. She could live a good life. Sullivan saw no reason why people would stop using Stellar Assembly credits, and Kate certainly had a great deal of wealth at her disposal. He was grateful most of her credits had already been transferred from Silvanus to Faris before all this happened. They’d put that in motion even before they’d moved, anticipating the possibility that the Bureau would freeze her assets in an attempt to force Sullivan to surrender.

She would be okay, but he would miss her. He would have to build a new life on Earth without her, and the thought of that seemed almost too much to bear.

For a little while he could keep himself busy helping to clear out the remaining aliens on the surface, but eventually that job would be done, and he’d be left to mourn the loss of Frank Allen and his separation from Kate.

That assumed, of course, that the alien threat was defeated. If it wasn’t, he supposed he could try one of the small outposts farther out in the solar system. It’d take him months to get there, but the freighter had enough supplies to make the journey possible. If that happened, he’d have to deal with his losses much sooner, as he’d have a lot of time alone to go over what he could have done to bring about a different outcome. He didn’t know if he could deal with that.

But for now he had to wait. He had to hope Earth would find a way to defeat the alien mothership and come back from this crisis. He had to hope there was still something good that could come out of it. If not, everything he had done had been in vain.

V: FRAGMENTS

THE ALIENS, IT seemed, had identified Ives’s position as a major point of resistance. There was no doubt there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of such strong points across the planet where military or determined civilians had put up a fight. Ives wondered if the fact that they were now coming after civilians in an apartment building meant all the major military positions had already been defeated. Ives hoped that wasn’t the case. Even with the advanced alien weapons they’d taken off dead soldiers, they wouldn’t last long against a sustained assault.

His other hypothesis at least left a little hope for humanity. New York was the capital of not just Earth but the capital of the Stellar Assembly. It was possible the aliens were focusing extra attention here to bring down the power structure. They would no doubt want any threats in the city, no matter how minor, eliminated.

Ultimately, he supposed it didn’t matter. Alien soldiers had been advancing on their position for the past couple of hours. They had barricaded the street and, with the alien weapons, been able to fight them off. But when a wormhole opened directly in front of the building, Ives knew the tide was about to turn.