Sullivan Saga 3: Sullivan's Watch (7 page)

“No.”

“Don’t be so sure. When I’m all that you have left, you will see things my way. I do love you, Frank. I know you still hold onto human ideas of love, but I do love you in the way that I can. And it’s a better love than human love.”

Allen shook his head. “No. Whatever you are, you’re not Liz. And she was the only woman I ever loved, the only woman I ever will love.”

“Then consider this, Frank: your body died, but your energy endured.”

“Because you brought me here.”

“Yes. But what if I hadn’t? What if I had done nothing? Have you thought about the possibility that your energy would have still endured? In a different form? In a different place?”

“What are you saying?”

“Just that energy is not so easily destroyed. Even the primitive science of your race knows that. The energy of the woman you loved was not destroyed. Think about that, Frank. What would you do to be with her—with her energy?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Just think about it. If, at the end of everything, I am not enough for you, whether or not you find a way to her could depend on how you behave from now on. It could depend on if you do as you’re told.”

“You’re lying.”

“Perhaps. Even if I’m not, nothing I say will make you believe otherwise. But if energy is not destroyed, where does it go, Frank?” Liz wrapped her energy around him once again, but this time there was no pain, only a sense of sadistic glee. “Where does it go?”

COMMANDER DAVID PICKETT watched the rescue ship as it maneuvered toward him. He’d been floating for two hours, watching the ships as they searched through the wreckage, looking for the sources of the emergency beacons.

The ship came to a stop in front of Pickett and turned. A mechanical arm on the back of the ship reached out and grasped the bottom of his seat. It retracted slightly then released him. The small tug from the arm was all that was necessary. He moved slowly toward the open airlock door. As he reached it, the restraints on his chair released. The chair, being controlled by a computer program that had been initiated aboard the rescue ship, expelled the last bit of propellant that was left over from the braking maneuver after he’d ejected from his fighter. It moved slowly away as he continued on toward the open hatch. It would be the job of other ships to clean up the debris from the battle and recover any useable equipment.

The movements of the robotic arm had aimed him directly at the center of the hatch. He glided through it and into the ship. As soon as he was aboard, the hatch slid shut, and the artificial gravity in the airlock gradually began to rise as the room pressurized.

Pickett lowered his legs and let the pull of the gravity bring him to the floor. He felt his weight increase to Earth normal, and then the light above the hatch leading into the ship changed from red to green.

He released the locks on his helmet and pulled it off. A moment later, the interior hatch slid open and he was greeted by two paramedics with a gurney.

“I’m okay,” he said. “No need.”

“You know we have to examine you either way, sir.”

Pickett sighed and nodded. “All right.” The men helped him out of his flight suit, and he climbed onto the gurney. As one of the paramedics shined a light into his eyes, the other scanned him with the diagnostics equipment.

“Slight dehydration,” said the man with the scanner. “Have you been drinking your water?” he asked.

“Only a little bit. I wasn’t thirsty.”

“Well, no broken bones, no signs of concussion. As soon as we get you hydrated, you should be right as rain.”

“What’s your name?” Pickett asked.

“Lee, sir.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Oh… Arnold.”

“My headset was damaged when my ship was destroyed, Arnold. What do the casualties look like?”

“Aboard the
Artemis
, nearly one hundred percent, sir. On the
Europa
, seventy to seventy-five percent.”

“And the
Vigilant
?”

“About ten percent, sir. Mostly….”

“Mostly what?”

“Mostly the pilots, sir.”

“You don’t need to try and protect me, Arnold. I saw what happened when the alien ship exploded.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything else happening?”

“Increased attacks on Earth by those weird creatures.”

“Any other ships?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

Pickett nodded. The paramedics wheeled him into a long, narrow room lined with beds. Around two thirds of them were occupied, and half a dozen doctors and nurses stood examining patients or studying monitors.

Pickett glanced at each face as he passed them. From their uniforms, he recognized some of them as pilots, but he didn’t see any others from his own ship. “Arnold,” he said.

“Yes, sir?”

“The fighters that took out the alien ship. Were they from the
Vigilant
?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many?”

“Sir?”

“How many pilots from the
Vigilant
have been recovered?”

Arnold Lee tapped on his tablet for a moment. “Just you and one other man, sir.”

“Who?”

“Lieutenant James Kern, sir.”

Pickett nodded. “Thank you.” He swung his legs down off the gurney and climbed into the bed they had stopped next to.

“Is there anything else, sir?” Lee asked.

“No. Thank you.”

Lee nodded. “I’m sorry, sir. Good luck.”

Pickett smiled and shook the hand that Lee held out to him. The paramedics moved to assist one of the doctors, and Pickett closed his eyes and listened to the drone of fans whirring in the various machines throughout the sickbay.

JEFFERSON IVES WAVED Sullivan forward. “Look at that!”

“That’s it,” said Sullivan. “A wormhole.”

“What do we do about it?”

“I told you how Frank and I forced the other one closed, but I have a feeling that wasn’t entirely our doing.”

“How so?”

“I feel like the entities made the aliens decide to close the wormhole. We were just there to give them an excuse.”

“You said they have defenses?”

“Yes. An energy-like weapon was guarding the last one I encountered. This is beyond the two of us. Call it in to the Bureau, and let them know where it is.”

“If it’ll do any good. The military has been chasing these things all over the planet. As soon as any troops close in on a wormhole, it disappears and opens up somewhere else.”

“Well, if we can stop even a few of those creatures from coming through, it’ll be worth it. Call it in. The best thing we can do is to keep evacuating people. Fall back.”

The two men moved back around the corner. “We haven’t cleared this building,” Sullivan said, looking up.

“These are offices,” said Ives. “It was Sunday when the wormholes first started appearing, so there shouldn’t be very many people inside, if any.”

Sullivan pointed through the glass door of the building. “Someone’s inside this one.”

Ives looked in and saw the body of a woman on the floor of the lobby next to what looked like a maintenance cart. “I don’t see any blood. Is she alive?”

“Let’s find out.”

Sullivan walked up to the door and tried the handle. “Locked.” He knocked on it with his fist, but the woman did not stir. He took his energy pistol from his coat pocket and aimed it at the handle. The blast of energy sliced the handle and lock away. Sullivan stepped forward, opened the door and scanned the lobby. “You check that hallway on the left, I’ll go right.”

Ives nodded. Sullivan cleared his hallway then made his way toward the center of the lobby. He kneeled down next to the woman and touched her on the shoulder.

Ives came up beside him. “Well?”

“Dead.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure.” He rolled the woman over onto her back. An expression of terror was frozen on her face. “A heart attack?” He studied the supplies on the top of the cart. “She was a cleaning woman. Probably came down after cleaning the offices and saw one of those creatures go by.” He played with the buttons on the cart’s display screen for a moment.

“Well, the fact that her body hasn’t been attacked probably means this building is secure,” said Ives. “How do you want to proceed?”

Both their heads swung up as the bell above the elevators chimed. They raised their weapons as the doors opened. A low, oval-shaped machine emerged from the elevator. A thin, wand-like arm was folded up along its top. Upon seeing the floor cleaner, they both lowered their weapons.

It rolled toward them, and a door on the side of the cart slid open and lowered a short ramp. The machine rolled in and connected itself to a docking station. The ramp retracted, and the doors slid shut.

Sullivan shook his head. “Sorry. I must have called it back.”

“Did you know those things could hit elevator buttons?”

“No. I always thought that arm on top was just a cleaning tool. Guess it serves a dual purpose.” He stood and walked over to the security desk. A mug of coffee, still half full, sat on the desk. “Where’s the guard?”

“He might have bolted when everything started to happen.”

Sullivan watched the monitors as they cycled through the various cameras throughout the building. He pointed at one of the monitors as Ives came up beside him. “Open door. Someone’s still in here. Or was.”

“Could the cleaning lady have left it open? To let the floor cleaner finish, perhaps?”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. I think she was in the lobby because she was leaving for the day. Probably finishing up down here while the cleaner did its last run of a hallway.”

“The display says it’s the fourth floor. Let’s go check it out.”

Sullivan led the way to the bank of elevators and pressed the button. The doors opened, and they entered then rode up to the fourth floor. As the doors opened again, both men readied their weapons.

From the elevator, they could see the open door. They slowly approached it. Inside, they could hear a rustling sound. Sullivan rounded the doorframe and strode in, surveying the room. It was the waiting room of an office. “Who’s here?”

A noise from an adjoining room made him turn.

“Don’t shoot!” A man in a business suit stepped out into the waiting room, his hands above his head.

“I won’t. Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I had some work to finish up before a big meeting. Had to come in on the weekend. Then all this happened, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Is there anyone else in the building?”

“I don’t think so. There’s… there’s the cleaning woman downstairs.”

Sullivan frowned. “We saw her. What’s your name?”

“Bill Cole.”

“We’re going to get you somewhere safe, Bill.”

“My family… I’ve been trying to call, but I can’t get through to my wife.”

“A lot of communications satellites were destroyed during the battle.”

“Can you help me find them? Please?”

“Bill….”

“My apartment isn’t far. Please… I tried to leave the building to go home a couple of times, but those creatures… I had to run back here.”

Sullivan bit his lip. “All right.” He turned to Ives. “This street is pretty much clear. Might as well move on to another.”

Bill thrust out his hand. “Thank you so much, Mister….?”

“Rick Sullivan. This is Jeff Ives. He’s a Bureau agent.”

“Oh, thank god!”

“Now listen, Bill. We have a ship on the next street. Is there any building with a landing pad near your apartment?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then we’re going to have to land on the street. We’ll be making a lot of noise, and it might draw the attention of the creatures, so when and if things start happening, I’m going to need you to do exactly what I tell you, okay?”

“I understand.”

BILL COLE POINTED at a building on the satellite image of the city. “That’s my building.”

Sullivan gently lifted the ship off the landing pad and turned it. As the freighter moved along, just above the tops of the buildings, he brought the feed from the dorsal camera up on the display and watched for any sign on the aliens.

After a few minutes, Sullivan brought the ship to a stop and hovered over the apartment building Bill had pointed out to him. In the street in front of the building, several bodies could be seen.

Bill covered his mouth with his hand. “Oh, god….”

“Relax, Bill. If your family was inside when all this happened, it’s not likely they would have left the apartment.”

“But what if they weren’t? What if they went out to lunch or to the park or….”

Sullivan put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Bill, listen. I need you to not talk, not think, and just pay attention to me. When we land, I need you to hold it together.”

Bill nodded.

Sullivan turned his attention back to the controls, and the ship descended to street level. He landed it with the side hatch facing the door of Bill’s apartment building.

“We have company,” Ives said, pointing at one of the monitors. “Half a dozen approaching from the rear.”

“I see them. Bill, sit down.”

Sullivan raised the freighter a few inches off the ground and threw it into reverse. From the aft-facing camera, they could see the creatures trying to dive out of the way of the ship, but most of them weren’t quick enough.

Sullivan reversed direction and returned the ship to its position in front of the building. He glanced back at the monitor. Four of the creatures were on the ground, either writhing or still. The other two were loping toward the ship.

“Let’s clean up,” Sullivan said. He powered down the ship and rushed to the side hatch, Ives right behind him.

Sullivan opened the hatch and brought his energy pistol up as the first creature reached the ship. The blast from the gun cleaved a hole in its right hip, severing its leg. It continued crawling toward him, but another shot to its head stopped it.

“Where’s the other one?” asked Ives.

A scraping sound on the top of the ship answered his question. Ives looked up as the creature dropped on him. He had just enough time to bring his arms up to shield his face and chest from the thing’s teeth and claws.