Chapter 38
Alice
She had made it to the spire. It was the one section of the docking ring that was not protected by a weather field. She knew enough about the technology to understand that the weather field would interrupt the engine core’s systems.
So as Alice stood there, pressed close to the spire, but not touching it, not wanting to press her skin against the shifting, confusing mix of color that shot up and laced around the thin slip of metal, the winds buffeted against her.
They pulled and tugged at her hair, and it snapped around her face, whipping into her cheeks and nose with enough force to cut flesh. Had she not been an Old One, no doubt blood would have spluttered from every blow.
But she was an Old One. And as the gale pulled into her, tugging at the loose and badly damaged rags that were her clothes, she stared up at the sky. Not down at the docking ring below her, but up, past the atmosphere, past that faint dark blue glow and into space itself. Only a few stars could be seen, but she locked her gaze on them and she did not shift once.
‘It is my suggestion that we wait here until they send their forces. Once they have, we will engage them in minimal combat, but in doing so we will create a distraction. Then we will be able to slip away, steal a ship, and leave this planet.’
It sounded like a painfully simple plan. It sounded like the kind of plan that could never work, but Alice was not that stupid. Because she knew that Helper wasn’t stupid. While he could rattle off simple statements about what they would do next, he could support them with this remarkable and vast abilities.
Backed up by her of course.
Suddenly the floor below her gave a shake, and though it did not shift Alice too far off her feet, she snapped her gaze down to it.
‘They will soon send their forces; they are currently cutting a hole through the hull, they will appear around us at three points,’ Helper explained quickly.
She nodded her head.
Then she got ready.
She planted her hands onto her legs, spreading her fingers wide, ensuring that the grip of her feet was hard and steady, despite the frantic wind.
She made herself as heavy as she could. She redirected that special energy of her people until her body became as solid and dense as she could manage to make it.
He would be there.
That thought suddenly swelled within.
John Doe. No doubt he would be leading the assault, right? Because no doubt that man was not going to give up. Short of actually dying, it seemed that he would be on her tail for the rest of her life.
It was a thought that served to kindle the latent paranoia that always lived within Alice. It followed her around like a black shadow or a stifling blanket.
Shaking her head, her hair whipping free again and plastering across her face as a frantic gust of wind blew against her, there was suddenly three loud bangs.
And Helper had been right. In under a second security forces began to stream from the holes, right towards her.
‘They are unlikely to shoot this close to the spire. Doing so may send feedback down to the engine cores and cause a disruption in the anti-gravitational feed,’ Helper chimed by her side.
She knew that. She just hoped that they did.
‘In approximately three seconds, they will be close enough for us to instigate our distraction, allowing us to finally escape,’ Helper informed her needlessly again.
She knew the plan. Maybe he just kept on repeating it to reassure her. After all, it was never a pretty sight when Alice lost control of her fear.
But she wasn’t going to do that.
Curling her fingers into tight fists, she waited. But as she did she darted her gaze out.
She wanted to see him.
And finally she did.
He was not the one in the lead though. And the security forces were not behaving as Helper had suggested they would.
Helper had been sure that they would spring upon Alice, choosing brute force in order to catch her and drag her away.
What they did instead was immediately set up turrets and blocking force fields around the holes they had cut in the hull.
A blocking force field was exactly what it sounded like. A short, small, but sturdy shield that a soldier could bring into place with the touch of a button. He could hide behind it, hell, it was big enough that you could hide a rock warrior behind it. It allowed for immediate protection against projectiles, and if you had enough of them, you could create a barrier.
Which was exactly what they were doing.
As she stared out at the frantic activity, noting the various different uniforms and armors, Alice practically stopped breathing.
Her eyes darted around so quickly as her mind tried to catch up to the situation.
What were they doing?
‘Security forces seem to have initiated an unpredicted plan,’ Helper pointed out, mirroring her own confusion as his tone was quick and tight. ‘Adjusting for this, computing new possibilities. A new plan has been selected, we will now,’ he began.
But Helper did not finish.
Because in that moment he sprang forward. He shot right from her side, as fast as he could move, towards one of the barriers.
‘What are you doing?’ Alice practically screamed.
The sight of him moving from her side was a powerful shock, and she had to stop herself from leaping forward to grab a hand on him, lest she move too far away from the spire and become an easy target for the security forces’ guns.
That did not stop her eyes from pressing open wide, her mouth jolting closed in a snap.
And then she felt it.
Her cloak.
Somebody was trying to interfere with it.
But just as it lost integrity, Alice snapped a hand forward.
She grabbed her cloak. And as she did, her fingers crackled with energy. Channels opened up through them, forming a direct path to the power she held within.
She charged her cloak in an instant, and it sat back perfectly against her face.
She dropped her hand.
Then she pulled her head back up.
She looked straight over to where Helper had shot to. She could see John Doe huddled behind a barrier, and right next to him was a woman. In her hand was Helper. She had caught the little orb and was now prying and poking at it.
She was also doing something more.
Alice could feel it. Reaching out with her mind, that woman, whoever she was, was trying to control Helper.
But Alice did not suddenly run forward, her arms held open wide, filled with the incredible prospect that she had just met another one of her kind. Because it was only the Old Ones, after all, who could interact directly with their own technology.
This woman was not an Old One. And the way she interacted with Helper felt wrong. It was twisted, obscured, and it made Alice’s skin crawl.
In that moment Alice closed her eyes.
She pushed her senses right out. Beyond the sound of the wind, beyond the interference from the anti-gravitational field below her, Alice put everything she had into her hearing.
And then she heard it.
Out of all of the voices, she locked on to his. The one that she recognized. John Doe’s.
‘The cloak, the cloak, disengage the cloak,’ John kept on saying, his voice tight and high.
‘I’m trying, I thought I had a lock on it, but I think I need to get closer,’ the woman beside him, the one who now held Helper, stumbled over her words.
‘Have you got control of the ball yet?’ John asked as he shifted this way and that, no doubt using the sophisticated sensors of his armor in order to keep track of Alice.
As Alice stood there, her hands still tightly held into fists by her side now that she felt free in letting her cloak go, she narrowed her eyes.
‘I’m trying, but it is not responding, God, my hands are just so cold up here. Is the weather field thinner here?’ The woman kept on stuttering over her words.
r /> ‘Take it down, we’ll go down,’ John snapped back at her.
Then Alice watched as the two of them, still huddled behind the barrier, made their way back to the hole in the hull and dropped out of sight.
That just left Alice with the security forces.
But they would not attack; they just stood there and held position behind those barriers, putting out more turrets, laying more traps, and getting ready for a fight.
Maybe they were waiting for the woman, whoever she was, to gain full control of Helper. Then, no doubt, they would choose to send him after Alice, reasoning that his power would be unmatched.
It wasn’t every day, after all, that the Union got their hands on functioning Old Tech.
They did not have their hands on Helper though.
And they would not hack through his systems.
Because Alice closed her eyes.
She was still connected to him.
He was not held in her hands, but that did not mean that she had let go of him. And she would not let go. No matter how hard that woman tried, she was no Old One, and she was up against a force she could not imagine.
Closing her mind off to the situation around her, Alice opened up to Helper. She integrated with him, pushing more of her energy into his systems, sending it out of her own skin, letting it travel in a white-blue line from her feet, over the hull, down, down until it connected to Helper.
And as it connected, so did she. She heard what Helper heard, she saw what he saw. And she watched and listened.