Felix asserted control and came to a halt, then ducked into a deeply shadowed overhang.
“What are we doing?” Lisa asked.
“Not sure,” Jack replied, “but for right now, just have a little faith.”
And they waited for the tiny flyer to make its move.
Armed resistance thickened the closer Kai got to the heart of the reactor complex. The cunning bastards had figured out his destination, and fell back behind barricades to wait for him. Every new tunnel was a trap filled with hot lead, and they were taking their toll.
Kai had done an admirable job avoiding their shots, but he could only do so much in tight confines, and now had several bullets lodged in his flesh. His muscles were adaptive, able to reroute around damaged areas and retain functionality, but every bullet also tore swaths out of his uniform, ruining his camouflage. He was becoming an easier target.
Running at maximum output was wearing on him, too. His body temperature hit dangerous levels, and his muscles were cannibalizing themselves for fuel. He was nearing his breaking point, and oddly glad for the challenge.
The deep red lights in this section strobed, and geysers of steam sprayed out from bundles of thick pipes. Kai sprinted down the tunnel, listening to the muffled sound of his feet hitting the floor. A junction loomed up ahead, and his cheerful mission computer was confident the turn led to the control room.
“So I should expect another barricade?”
“But of course, Sinit,” the computer replied. “How exciting!”
“Yes, terribly,” Kai said. “No easy way past.”
As he approached, the fingers of both hands keyed command sequences into his palms, then he curled his left hand into a fist. That hand’s knuckle-guard crackled with energy, while his camouflage faded and began to glow white. It grew brighter until even the light reflecting off the walls was almost too bright to look at.
He ran straight by the corridor and stopped on the other side, out of sight. The rhythmic bark of automatic weapons started and didn’t stop, while shouts of confusion and panic sounded over the roar.
When there was a lull, Kai went back. They were reloading. He jumped at the far wall, planted his heels and thrust against it, rocketing back down the opposite hall like a missile. Blind fire whizzed by and ricocheted around, but little of it came anywhere near him.
He struck the barricade fist first, and his knuckle-guard discharged into the metal. What was solid before became molten liquid spraying out in every direction. The super-heated steel coated the blinded soldiers, and they screamed as they fell to the ground.
Kai landed on the far side sprinted on, whispering an apology to Jack and his noble cause.
The cuttlefish hunted in erratic patterns, trying to figure out where its target had slipped off to. All the while, Felix shadowed its every move, hidden just a few meters behind and below. The cuttlefish had a blind spot, and Felix knew exactly how to exploit it.
After a few minutes of fruitless searching, the larger Yuon Kwon broke off and headed back toward the center of the city, apparently satisfied that his target had been destroyed. Jack and Felix followed.
“You’re much more clever than I suspected,” Jack whispered, and Felix purred at his approval.
The fact that the cuttlefish was headed toward the nerve center was a little too lucky in Jack’s opinion, though. The last time he encountered luck like that, things didn’t work out very well, and he wondered what sort of curve ball the universe was about throw him.
The cuttlefish led them right up to the nerve center and then inside, where it finally disappeared into a darkened tunnel while Jack and Felix continued toward the heart. The inside of the nerve bundle was quiet and calm. There was no hint of the distant battle, or buzzing from the Sey Chen as charmed the miniature stars outside. It was peaceful there, and in the midst of mortal combat, that was even more alien.
They came to the core of the Yuon Kwon in no time at all. It was a round chamber shaped like a pumpkin, with bulbous alcoves along the outer wall. At the center of the room was a cradle like those found in every Yuon Kwon, but regal and ornate like a medieval throne. It was set into the floor, and surrounded by a ring of outgrowths shaped like kneeling worshipers.
Felix set down and released his grip on Jack, who stepped out with the others and walked cautiously across the floor.
The silence was deafening.
The others followed behind as he approached the cradle, step by shaking step. The pilot within was very old, his skin hanging loose and wrinkled, and covered with twisting tattoos and strange writing.
Jack had a feeling like when he accidentally walked in on his parents as a kid. He was somewhere he didn’t belong, interrupting something he wasn’t supposed to see.
He stepped between the outgrowths in the floor, reached out and placed his hand on the pilot’s shoulder. It craned its head back from the cradle and looked at him with it’s single, monstrous eye. There was no fear in that eye, only hatred.
“-Remove yourself or be removed,-” Jack said in their language.
The pilot spat on him. At the same time, the room’s defenses moved into position and targeted the group at its center. Jack raised his .45 and put a round in the pilot’s head with one quick motion, and the defenses fell limp.
He didn’t relish it, but it had to be done. There were lives to save.
The cradle relaxed and the pilot’s lifeless body slid free. Dojer dragged the corpse away with a grimace on his face, while Jack stepped forward and prepared to link up.
“Are you sure about this?” Charlie asked.
“Not at all,” Jack said, “but it’s a little too late to change my mind.”
He wiped the pilots green blood from the cradle, then hunkered down into it and pressed his arms into the gaping orifices. The apparatus tightened around him, and his world disappeared.
The reactor control room was full of workers when Kai arrived, but the sight of him riddled with bullet-holes and covered in blood was enough to send them running. He sealed the door behind them and went to work.
He reached behind a terminal and grabbed hold of a shielded cable. He scraped its insulation away to reveal the bare wire within, then lifted a tiny probe from his wrist computer and placed it on the metal.
“Alright, I’m analyzing the network traffic,” the mission computer said. “This will take a moment, Sinit.”
“That’s fine,” he said, “no rush or anything.”
While the AI did its work, Kai slumped down against the wall and tried to catch his breath. His body was on fire and he couldn’t focus his eyes.
“Got it. I’m simulating the client interface and probing their network architecture. How interesting. There are nodes here that were definitely not designed by humans. No matter. I’ve finished mapping the network topology and have acquired root access. Shall I initiate self-destruct, Sinit?”
“Yes,” he said. “Set it for twenty minutes, and revoke all client credentials except your own.”
Emergency klaxons rang throughout the Ark. The computer went on, “Done and done, Sinit. I feel as though I should mention that I’ve calculated Jack Hernandez’s probability of success, and it is vanishingly small. Yet I notice you’re not moving.”
Kai laughed. “Good observation.”
“The foreign hardware has substantially increased their thermonuclear device’s yield. My estimates show that the detonation will annihilate everything inside of this base and for some distance beyond.”
“And?”
“Ahem. That includes you, Sinit.”
“It does.”
“So, you intend to die here?”
“I believe so.”
“You swore to fight the Nefrem to the last drop of your blood, did you not?”
“I did, but look where that got me. I’m responsible for the death of eight billion humans. I’ve done the Nefrem’s work for them.”
