Dave slept, or pretended to, while Jefferson went back to talk nervously but earnestly with the two Marines. Olivia got up to use the bathroom, then she returned to her seat and remained quiet, lost in her thoughts. Ethan once did penetrate Olivia’s mind to see what was there and found the image of a lean, handsome, and sun-browned man with a gray goatee smiling as she opened a present at a party. There were many other happy people in the room, where flames crackled in the fireplace and the furniture was fine but not ostentatious. A birthday cake with pink icing sat on a table, next to the cameo of a horse’s head carved into a piece of white stone. When Olivia finished opening the present—not tearing the gold-colored wrapping but being as careful with it and the white ribbon as if those too were part of the gift—she opened a box and withdrew a black sphere with the number eight on it in a white circle.
“Just what I need!” Olivia said. “A ball full of answers to every question!” She was much younger-looking and fifteen pounds healthily heavier than her current condition. She held the Magic Eight Ball up for everyone to see, and Vincent raised a glass of wine and started to make a toast and that was when the moment crumbled because Olivia was losing the memory of what his voice had exactly sounded like. So in Olivia’s silent distress, Ethan had left her mind as she jumped ahead and was blowing out five white candles on a strawberry cake, her favorite.
The President returned to his seat. He had been occupying himself by trading dirty jokes with the pilots. He knew a million of them. Ethan saw that he was pallid, and his eyes were still dark-circled, but he moved with a purpose and resolve that had been reawakened by this mission; the risk actually had energized him. Ethan calculated another half hour of flight time. His body was relaxed, everything was progressing as he’d hoped. Then within the next minute, he sat up straighter in his seat and all his alarms were going off because one of the Cypher ships had left its formation and was speeding toward them to intercept.
It was coming from the southwest. The peacekeeper felt it as a human might feel a storm cloud passing before the sun. He could not hold back what he knew. He stood up so abruptly, the two Marines changed their grips on their rifles and came to full alert. Leaning toward Derryman’s ear, he said, “A Cypher ship is coming. Very fast from the southwest. It’s going to be here before—”
I can finish speaking, he was going to say.
But this time he had miscalculated.
A terrible bright red light filled the cabin from the right side, making the drawn curtains seem like flimsy, porous paper. Ethan’s vision saw waves of darker red, nearly violet energy in it that made the air spark and tremble. The walls of the Kestral creaked and popped. Then a massive jolt took Ethan off his feet and threw him forward to crash against the cockpit door. He tasted blood, saw stars not of this universe, and felt a crushing pain in his left shoulder and along the ribs on that side. As he fought against his brain malfunctioning and sliding into darkness, he realized in an instant that the helicopter had been seized as if by a gigantic hand to slow its progress. Everyone else was buckled in except for one of the Marines, who had unsnapped himself when Ethan had stood up; he too was thrown forward along the aisle like a boneless doll and hit the far bulkhead, collapsing in a broken heap beside Ethan.
The lamp went flying like a deadly weapon and so did everything else that wasn’t fastened down by government-issued screws and bolts. Cans of soft drinks were flung out of the bar and would’ve beheaded people like cannonshot if the bar had been facing the other way; as it was they smashed into the bulkhead four feet away and exploded. Olivia had the sensation of being sawed in half by her seatbelt. Dave lost his breath and a burst of panic made him feel as if he were drowning underwater. Jefferson cried out as he was jerked forward and then back again, the pain making him think his bones had jumped from their sockets.
The interior of Marine One was a scene of chaos for about six seconds as everyone went through their own little experience of hell. Then, in the stunned silence that followed, the body of the helicopter was slowed to half speed…slowed half again…and then held fast by the bright red beam though both main and tail rotors continued to spin. The turboshafts screamed and cracks began snaking up the walls as the Kestrel’s engines started shuddering themselves to pieces.
Ethan was on his knees. He was no longer all together. Some of the bones of this body were broken. His left shoulder burned with pain and would not obey a command for movement. His lower lip was gashed by his own teeth and bleeding. Around him the air blazed with fiery waves of energy only the alien-transformed eyes could see. Then he felt the helicopter vibrate from its nosecone sensor array to its tail rotor blade, the engines shrieked their ragged notes of despair, and the Kestrel began to be pulled sideways through the sky.
Ethan knew it was what the humans would call a tractor beam. He tried to stand up and failed. The helicopter sounded like a thousand fingernails being scraped across a hundred-foot-long chalkboard. Alarms were gonging and chiming beyond the cockpit door, and Ethan could hear a woman’s mechanical voice repeating “Warning…warning…warning” but even the machine seemed not to know what the warning was about. Were the pilots conscious, or even still alive?
He staggered to his feet, lurched to the right side of the Kestrel and tore the curtains away from the nearest window. The beam was blinding. He had to sense rather than see the huge black Cypher battlecraft out there, maybe two hundred yards away, itself motionless and dragging them into its belly. Sweat had burst out upon Ethan’s face and the peacekeeper was again nearly pulled down into a dark pool. His back…was something broken there too? He could hardly stand up. He had to act fast, before either he passed out, the helicopter shook itself to pieces or the Cypher ship engulfed them.
He flicked the index finger of his right hand at the window. What appeared to him to be a small white-glowing ball-bearing left the finger at blurred speed and smashed the glass into dust. Then there was nothing between him and the Cypher ship but the tractor beam and a hundred and eighty yards of night.
The pain was taking his attention. The left arm of this body was useless, broken at the elbow, the shoulder also broken. It was more than the human boy could ever have endured, but the peacekeeper would not fall.
Now, he thought, his teeth clenched and beads of sweat on his face. Now.
You want destruction? Now you’ll get it.
He spread his fingers and formed a vision of what he needed to do. Instantly five glowing white marbles left the tips of fingers and thumb and shot away along the path of the tractor beam. He could follow them if he liked; he could be in any one of them. Any weapon he created came from him as its source of power, and so he was these five small glowing balls that now grew larger and glowed brighter and seethed and pulsed with the anger that he was feeling, the rage at the stupidity of these creatures who thought they owned Eternity, and now…now they were going to get their full measure.
The balls were each ten feet in diameter when they struck, and they glowed so brightly with destructive energy that if a human eye had been able to see these it would have been burned to a cinder, but fortunately their fierce intensity was beyond the spectrum of human vision.
They hit exactly in the places where Ethan had envisioned them striking, and they hit exactly in unison, not a millisecond apart, at a speed of over 60 million feet a second.
If an Earth scientist had calculated the effect, he might have been interested to know that a result equal to the power of a two-megaton atomic explosion had just been achieved without flame, radiation, or a blast radius. One instant the Cypher warship was hovering in place, steady as a black stone, eight hundred feet across its shiny metallic back, and the next instant, it was not there. It had been torn to pieces, dissolved, and liquified with only the noise of a high wind passing through. The tractor beam was gone. The Kestrel kicked forward again at a quarter of its cruising speed, its damaged engines still howling for mercy. A newly poisonous rain fell toward the earth. The liquid was ebony in col
or but carried a strong smell of the brown fluid grasshoppers shot out when disturbed by the rude fingers of boys on hot summer days. It sizzled upon the red rocks and was absorbed by the sand and low shrubs that for centuries had covered the New Mexican desert between Santa Fe and Roswell.
THIRTY-THREE.
THE KESTREL MADE TWO RAGGED CIRCLES IN THE AIR, FIRST FALLING in altitude and then rising again. On its third revolution, Garrett got his machine and his heartbeat under control once more and secretly thanked God for the simulator. Neilsen turned off all alarms and checked the systems. The electrics were okay, but he saw the fuel and hydraulic leaks indicated on the control panel. The rotors felt like they would hold up. Maybe. The ride had turned as rough as a buckboard over a cobblestoned road.
Their destination was about forty miles ahead. They were going to have to creep to it, but the two pilots were the kind of men who kept flying even when the vibration shook the fillings out of their teeth, and unless the ’copter went down hard and fast, they intended to reach the appointed place. It wasn’t all bravery; where else were they going to set down, out here in this nightmare world?
“Take her,” Garrett told Neilsen, and he went back to check on his passengers. He found the cabin in shambles, a Marine dead with a broken neck, the alien boy with a broken left arm and shoulder and probably more. The alien was being supported between the man with the baseball cap and the Hispanic woman. The President was all right, though he was sucking on a cylinder of oxygen through a plastic mask. Derryman and the general were ashen-faced, and from the way Winslett’s eyes darted around, he looked ready to squeeze himself out the broken window. The other man, whom he’d heard was a televangelist of some fame, was sitting in his seat with his eyes shut looking like he was communing with Jesus. The second Marine was okay, he was twenty-three years old and a tough little fireplug of a guy and thought everybody in the world would die before it was his turn, so his attitude carried him through.
Garrett opened a compartment and slid the med kit out. A packet of pain pills was in there amid items such as antiseptic hand cleanser, a roll of elastic bandages, scissors, and insect bite swabs. The alien shook his head—no, no, he didn’t want to ingest chemicals—but the man and the woman convinced him, and he swallowed two with a cup of water. Winslett asked for a couple, though it didn’t appear he was injured anywhere, and Garrett complied. When Garrett asked the President if he needed any, he got back a “Hell, no, just fly this fucker.”
Garrett decided he could help the boy—what looked like a boy—a little further, and he quickly fashioned a sling out of the elastic bandages. He didn’t know whether the alien would be in more discomfort with the sling than without it, but at least that broken arm wouldn’t be dangling. “Let’s try this out,” he said, and to the man with the baseball cap: “Help me with this. Easy with his arm…easy, easy.”
They got Ethan’s arm into the sling. The breath hissed out from between Ethan’s teeth. The pain was severe but he would deal with it, as long as he could hold onto consciousness. It occurred to him how much of the human life involved pain; it was part of their existence, either physical pain or pain of the soul. They were strong, to inhabit such fragile bodies; to be sure, they were stronger than their bodies, for those who appeared to be weak could be the strongest in will and heart. That was why he was attracted to this body, because the boy had fought so hard to live. Now, though, Ethan realized quite certainly that the damage this body had sustained was severe, and he was running out of time. He could keep injured systems going, injured lungs breathing, and the heart pumping blood through dead tissues, but he could not repair the fractures; his left arm was useless.
And there was another thing, alarming even to him.
“They’re coming again,” he said, to anyone who would listen.
“How many?” Dave asked.
“The other four. And…the Gorgon ships are coming in too, very fast. The Cyphers will be here in…they’re here now,” he said. “Two on each side.”
With a start of terror, Jefferson tore his curtain aside to look out. There was no movement in the dark, no lights, nothing. The helicopter juddered along on its southwesterly course.
“Let me go!” Ethan told Dave and the pilot. “Let me get to a window! They’re about to open—”
The warships opened fire.
But it was not the Cyphers who began firing, it was the Gorgons, and their targets were the Cypher ships. Suddenly hundreds of burning blue streaks came from the clouds and hit the Cyphers on both sides of the helicopter. Blue explosions and bursts of shimmering flame shot up. An instant later hundreds of red streaks showed the return fire from the Cyphers, and caught in the midst of the battle was Marine One.
Fiery red spheres and bolts of blue lightning crisscrossed the sky. Blasts echoed through the night, which was no longer dark. Clearly seen in the leaping light of the explosions were the massive Cypher ships, but the Gorgons were up in the clouds and out of sight. Neilsen was dancing the Kestrel through the turbulence of alien fire. Through the window that Jefferson had uncurtained, Ethan saw a red sphere that had missed its original target coming right at the helicopter. It was going to cut them in two. He had an instant to react, and in that instant he shattered the window glass outward with the thrust of an index finger and with the twist of his hand turned the sphere aside so it sizzled past just above the helicopter’s tail rotor.
“Land it! Land it!” Derryman was shouting, but there was no place to land down there.
Some of the spheres and energy bolts were hitting the earth beneath them, punching blackened craters into the ground, and throwing into the air slabs of rock the size of trucks. Hillsides either convulsed or collapsed and storms of dust plumed up. Though terrified, Jefferson was transfixed by the sight of the hundreds of glowing trails and spears of alien firepower; the battle held a mesmerizing beauty, like the most gaudy and expensive fireworks show that had ever blazed the night over New Eden. The sight of pieces of a Cypher warship burning with blue fire and spinning down two thousand feet to the ground broke the spell, but still Jefferson was held in awe.
Suddenly the remaining three Cypher ships levitated themselves straight up into the clouds, moving silently and with a speed that made mockery of any earthly aircraft. The battle continued with bursts of flame back and forth, but the crippled helicopter was out of the line of fire. Neilsen put the landing gear down and headed them toward the ground, their destination only a few miles away.
Garrett had done all he could. He returned to the cockpit, while Dave helped Ethan into a seat and buckled him up.
“Hang on!” Dave had to shout over the shriek of the engines through the broken windows. He knew it was a weak statement, but he had no idea what else to say; Ethan was sweating and shivering and obviously in a lot of pain, so—
“Yes I am,” the peacekeeper answered, “but I will hang on.”
Dave and Olivia both buckled up. The Kestrel shuddered and groaned as it neared the ground, stirring up whirlwinds of dust. Jefferson thought that there was no way this busted bird could get back to the White Mansion; whenever and wherever this thing touched down, that was where they were planted for a long time to come unless there was another ’copter or a plane they could use. But he didn’t want to think about that right now. He was part of the team, and he wasn’t giving up on Ethan.
“Touchdown coming up!” Garrett said over the intercom, which had been cranked to full volume. “Don’t know how we’ll land, so brace yourselves!”
The Kestrel went in, its rotors blowing dust in all directions. The pilot showed his mettle by touching down with hardly a thump.
“Easy-peasey,” Garrett said, with what was maybe an audible exhalation of breath. “Right on target, Mr. President.”
The engines were cut, the rotors whined down, the exit door was opened and the stairs lowered. First out into the dusty dark was the remaining soldier, who scanned all around through a pair of night-vision goggles and then took up a positio
n where he could open fire on any threat. Before anyone else descended the stairs, Dave paused to retrieve the dead Marine’s rifle and slide the pistol into the waistband of his jeans. Derryman, pale and shaken from the flight, started to protest but Beale said, “Tell Corporal Suarez this man is coming off the ’copter armed, and I’ve given my approval.” The President’s facial tic had returned, and he too was shaky, but his voice was surprisingly strong. Derryman went off to obey the command, and Winslett followed him.
“Lean on me,” Dave said to Ethan, but the peacekeeper answered, “I can move on my own, thank you.” He had to, though the pain was gnawing at him from a dozen places. He could walk but only at a slow hobble. Going down the stairs, Olivia offered him her arm, and he took it just for the sake of balance.
Then all of them—Ethan, Dave, Olivia, Jefferson, the President, Derryman, Winslett, and Corporal Suarez—stood on a flat plain that rose to rugged foothills, discernible by the flare of explosions and streaks of flame through the clouds above. Ethan noted that more Cypher and Gorgon ships were converging to the battle. Fleets of them were coming in at high speed from all directions. A blast with the noise of a dozen sonic booms crackled across the sky and made everyone in the group wince. They saw, miles away across the plain, an injured Gorgon ship punctured by red-glowing wounds drop down beneath the clouds. It was hit by a dozen more spheres and wobbled to the northwest on an uncertain and likely short course.
The President began to stride away from the helicopter. Everyone else followed. The two pilots remained with the Kestrel. Ethan doubted that they would be able to make suitable repairs, but maybe they were going to try their best. He followed along, moving like the aged human he suddenly felt himself to be, between Dave and Olivia with Jefferson walking behind him and to the left.