Chapter 16
We were in a speed shuttle designed for the select few; out and headed to a nearby port--the Project Cleanse Dispatch. It was still night. The distance between the station and Earth dome seemed much shorter than in one of the clunky shuttles regular citizens used. It was not long before I could see the new settlements below us. Apart from the eerie glow within the dome of the Earth base, across the plateau were some lights in the buildings and a pair of headlights of some vehicle creeping along in the wee night hours.
“There it is,” Martina said.
The automated navigation system was leading us to a port near the front of the Earth base. The shuttle circled around the front of the dome. We were hovering down on ground level and approaching slowly. In front of us was a cylindrical hatch, below the floor level of the base. I could see the dispatch and a few soldiers working on the main floor. The hatch opened to a basement level I hadn't realized even existed.
“Be ready for anything,” I said as the cylindrical hatch opened.
“Easy thing to say,” she answered.
We both had our lasers out, ready to fight. I felt cornered, awaiting danger while trapped in a tiny shuttle. My hand was on the control to open the wing doors.
“Open those doors now Jonz. I want to be ready to hop out.”
I opened the doors and felt the warm wind of Earth’s atmosphere; a warm, pleasant night. The hatch was completely open now and the shuttle passed into a smaller, less impressive room than I had expected. There were video screens all around the sides of the room, monitoring different areas. In the center of the room was a familiar style control panel. It was just like the ones at Svoboda’s main laboratory and at the fake presidential suite. As we entered into the room, the shuttle automatically moored beside another identical shuttle.
Martina and I slipped out of the craft, as silently as possible. Right in front of us, with his back to us, was my father working at the control panel. As we approached my father from behind, the system’s voice announced, “Launch sequence at five minutes. Supplementary dome protection enabled.”
“Svoboda, where were you? You shouldn’t hang up on me in the middle of a transmission. You were supposed to be here over an hour ago,” my father said.
We continued to creep up to him, our guns pointed straight at the small of his back. I noticed his back suddenly become rigid. Losing his relaxed gait, you could see his movements take on an uneasy feel. He quickly entered a few commands into the system and turned around slowly.
“So, you two are still alive.”
“Sorry to disappoint you General Jonz,” Martina said.
“Why are you so calm?” I said, my gun pointed square between his eyes.
He laughed. “If you wanted to just shoot me, you would've done it already. If you want to talk to me first, I may have some things to tell you that might sway you in another direction.”
“You have that smug attitude again,” I said. “The same one you had when I was strapped onto the lab table in the main laboratory.”
“Well, let’s put it this way. You can kill me now, but there's something you should know first.”
“What is that?” Martina said.
“The launch sequence is underway.”
“We’ll stop it,” I said.
“That would require my identification.”
“Don't worry about system access. Your big mouth is going to get you in trouble.”
“My, my,” my father said, “how arrogant of you; giving yourself top security access, a couple of rookies like yourselves. Anyway, that’s not good enough.”
“Whadaya mean?”
“Do you think I would let just anyone control the project? It is only I, not even Svoboda has the proper access. Don’t tell him, he'd be quite angry.”
“Don’t worry,” Martina said. “I don’t think he'd care right now.”
“So, I guess I may have a gun to your heads too, or to everyone on Earth, right Tyler? You wouldn’t want anything to happen to your girlfriend, would you? Or any of your poor buddies from the slums?”
“How dare you talk about people like that! Turn the thing off, or I’ll kill you right here—damn you!”
“Let’s think a second now son,” he said. “Do you really want to do that?”
“Turn it off!” I yelled.
“No, what're you going to do?”
“I’m going to kill you and use your palm scan and eye scan to stop the bomb launch.”
“My, how ruthless. I didn’t think you had it in you, son,” he said. “You’ve improved since we sent you on that experimental mission.”
“Was that it,” I said. “You bastard—the mission—just a psychological test for your fancy experiment?”
“You HAVE to check prototypes in the field, Tyler--both vehicles and genetic creations. We figured we could kill two birds with one stone, both you and the Covert.”
“What’s he talking about Tyler?” Martina asked.
“Now’s not—not the time—Martina,” I said. “That’s crazy? Even if it was true, you could track our coordinates maybe--but how could you monitor us? We were off on an Earth mission.”
He laughed. “Crazy, you say. Don’t label something as crazy just because you don’t understand it.”
“What's he talking about Tyler?” Martina implored.
“You’re a master manipulator, aren’t you?” I said. “A little distraction, is that what this is?”
“It’s just the truth,” he said. “Take it as you wish.”
“It’s impossible, to monitor us would--” I said.
“It’s starting to sink in now,” he said. “If we could fill your brain with circuitry to simulate memories, how hard would it be to put in a tracking device?”
“Be quiet!” I yelled.
“What crap are you spouting?” Martina said.
“How about other things? The eyes are wonderful organs. They transmit visual data most efficiently. Don’t you think if we knew enough about the nervous system, we could maybe be able to intercept that data? Don’t you think that'd be a perfect way to monitor someone?”
“Shut up!” I yelled. “That’s insane!”
“Really,” my father said, pointing to one of the monitors on the wall in back of him. “Does this video feed look familiar?”
I looked at the screen. It was like looking at a thousand mirrors, one inside the other--looking at a screen that was displaying exactly what you saw. Inside the screen was another vision of the surrounding area and that screen itself within. An infinite series of views from my eyes. I looked away for a second. I looked back.
"My eyes, my eyes are the monitors for this, this video feed," I said, looking at Martina's bewildered face.
"That's not pos--," she said, looking back and forth between me and the screen.
“And why not install a positional tracking system right in the body? I mean, we wouldn’t want to rely on you carrying your identification card,” he said.
“Please—father—no,” I said.
“Look at you,” he said. “Are you going to pass out? This is why you're nothing but a failed experiment.”
“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Martina pleaded.
“Please, stop,” I said.
“You see what I mean?” he said. “Some of your performance in the field, it was quite acceptable, but the emotional and mental weaknesses make you virtually useless from a military perspective.”
My father leant on the control panel, touching a control. I felt the control panel swivel.
"The ground is moving," Martina said.
I felt myself lose balance, tumble to the ground.
"He's getting away," Martina cried as she fell beside me. "Pick up your gun!"
"Not so fast General Jonz!" I cried.
"Quick, before he gets into the shuttle," Martina said as she looked around for her weapon.
I fired, but the laser deflected harmlessly off the windshield.
"Damn!" Martina cried. She'd found her weapon and fired; but it also deflected harmlessly off the windshield--sparks flying off a corner of the laboratory wall.
"He's getting away," I said. "The portal is opening!"
Warm night air blew in from the open portal as my father's craft took off into the night.
“Quick, get into the other shuttle,” I cried.
“What about the bomb launch?” Martina said.
We stood over the control panel; feverishly scanning it.
“There it is,” Martina said.
She slammed her open palm down on the button, the mechanical whirring sound, which had been escalating suddenly diminished.
“Done,” I said.
"Getting used to these controls," Martina said, "now let's get him!"
We both jumped into the other shuttle. The last thing I heard as we closed the shuttle’s doors was the system’s voice saying, “Launch sequence aborted.”
We took off into the night sky.
My father’s shuttle could be seen in the distance. The first orange rays of the sun were seeping into the deep black sky; a new dawn was coming.
“There he is,” Martina said.
I could see the red and orange lights of my father's shuttle in the distance. He wasn't moving fast, maybe setting coordinates, maybe not even having any idea where he was headed. Anger built quickly in me as I pulled on the pilot joystick and sped towards his shuttle. We were approaching him from behind when he started accelerating.
“He’s not going to get away that easily,” I said.
“I’m going to prepare the attack system,” Martina said.
“We have to do what we have to do,” I said.
We were getting close enough to see clearly the details of the taillights. His shuttle rose abruptly straight into the air.
“He knows how to fly that thing,” Martina said.
His shuttle disappeared from our view.
“Can you see him on the radar?”
“He’s looping Tyler, right over top of us. He’s coming down from behind."
I turned hard to the right, not to continue in a straight course, not to be an easy target. Good thing I did, because a missile swooshed by the pilot’s side of the craft moments later.
The one thing I had in my head was to keep flying erratically, unpredictably, or we were going to be hit. Another missile zinged by the left side of the shuttle. We were running scared. Military dispatch was trying to make radio contact with us. We ignored it.
“Get me in position,” Martina said, ready at the controls of the attack system.
I pushed the controls down to dive towards the ground.
“What the hell are you dooooiiiiing!” Martina cried as the ground rushed up towards us.
I was trying a loop just like my father, but heading downwards. I remember just concentrating on pushing the controls forward with all my might, trying to get the craft to loop as tightly as possible. We were completely upside down and the ground felt like it was brushing on the top of the vehicle. I heard Martina screaming as we came back around on the loop.
As we came around top again, my father’s craft was in front of us. He was turning sharply to the right. I don’t know whether it was just dumb luck or good strategy, but I managed to turn off to the right at the same time as him, finding ourselves again right on his tail. Seizing the opportunity, Martina fired three times in succession.
“We got him,” she declared as a slight explosion erupted and my father’s craft dropped off sharply to the right.
His craft was reeling out of control, heading back towards where we came from. I could see the craft trying to climb. We were still over the safe zone around the Earth station, not too far from the newly constructed settlements.
“He’s going down for sure,” I said. We turned to follow.
“I think he still has control.”
“Not very much.”
It looked as if he was struggling to land the wounded shuttle in a somewhat successful way. The first lights of dawn were still very faint, so we couldn’t really see. I strained to see what was happening.
"No big explosion, no big impact," I said.
The shuttle's radio suddenly blurted out contact with military dispatch, “Craft 7542, you are performing illegal manoeuvres, please respond immediately.”
“Crap, they keep trying to get involved. What should we say?” I said.
“Absolutely nothing. Let's land,” Martina said.
I flew the shuttle down towards my father’s landing spot. I descended, scoping the landscape for the wounded vehicle. The dawn’s light was increasing with each passing minute as we searched over the shadowy-orange surface of the safe zone’s plateau. There were different tufts of growth and small trees growing everywhere. As I looked around, everything looked like a shuttle for the first millisecond. We were right down on the surface, hovering maybe ten feet above it, scouring around, when Martina said, “its right there!”
My father’s shuttle was nose down into the ground. It had been a rough landing, but the vehicle was still intact.
“The winged doors are open,” I noticed. “He’s on foot.”
We were hovering down beside the vehicle now, on ground level. We both got out of the shuttle, our guns ready.
“Look, footprints on the ground,” Martina said. “There. Leading off in this direction.” Through the increasing light of dawn, we could see the silhouette of the new settlement appearing in the direction that my father had run.
“Let's go get that bastard,” I said.
“Okay,” Martina said. “Let’s get a move on.”
She started off in front of me, heading for the town, ready for action and then she suddenly stopped, remembering. She turned to me and said, “Tyler, what was he talking about? All that business about circuitry to simulate memories, intercepting visual data from the eyes—what was he saying?”
“I was born in one of those cylinders, Martina. I was the first prototype.”
She grabbed my arm and stopped me.
“What? Didn’t you know then?”
“No. I had no idea. They have implanted memory circuitry in my head. I just found out about all the rest, what he said. I can’t explain. I don’t understand it really. They, my father and Svoboda, they seem to be the only ones who know the full story.”
Martina frowned. She looked at me, and then down at the ground.
“You can’t look at me anymore."
Looking up she said, “No, no, it’s just too much to take in.”
“I know, imagine me.”
“We're wasting time. We need to find your father.”
“I’ll go on foot. I don’t think he has a weapon.”
“Don’t assume that. He's a dangerous man. We have to assume he’s armed. Maybe there was something in the shuttle.”
“That’s true. You take the shuttle, patrol around the area. I’m going on foot.”
“Tyler--” she said, but I was already running towards the town.
It was hard to face someone and tell them the dark secrets that I was carrying. Hell, if I was faced with someone like me, I wouldn’t know how I'd react. I had to immerse myself in our new mission—the one we had assigned ourselves—to save the world from tyranny.
It felt good to run.