Enoa was on her feet, the staff returned to its full length, by the time the android took its second step into the Aesir. She pulled her cloak shut around her and jumped through the ship’s front seats. This android’s chameleon ability shifted faster than those that had opened the garage. The intruder could not be seen.
“Enoa,” Jaleel said. “Sit back down! Can anybody see it? Enoa, what are you doing?”
“Not now.” Enoa stepped toward the door and toward the intruder. “Jim, your master wants me. He wants me safe. Come here and get me.” She planted the base of the staff against the floor of the Aesir.
“Enoa,” Dr. Stan said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m listening.” Enoa closed her eyes. She heard Teddy’s feet and April’s, as he stood and she tried to reach him, heard the continued cries from Wesley and the cats, heard a sudden volley of energy blasts outside. Cathy’s pistols sounded. Orson cried out, in rage and pain and fear.
And Enoa heard the android take another step toward her. She felt it too – the same way she’d first sensed the Jim androids arrive, by the pressure they’d placed on the snow. Her eyes couldn’t see the green skeleton or the chameleon body, but she could see it through its effects on the world. She could infer it from the force of its step, as if the rippling echo of the machine’s footfall sent a miniscule but measurable seismic wave through the hull of the ship.
“I’m coming with you,” Jaleel said. Enoa heard his seatbelt click open. “You need me and Orson…”
“I know what I’m doing,” Enoa said. “Jaleel, we need you driving. It’s okay.” She didn’t turn her head as she spoke, didn’t move at all, still facing the invisible android. Jaleel’s seatbelt clicked again.
“I’m right here, Jim.” She felt another step against the floor, as it approached her with caution. And as it moved, her sense expanded. Suddenly, she could see it fully, feel it from its displacement of the air. She felt the atmosphere of the ship moving around the thing, the individual molecules parting for its passing.
In her mind, she saw the android watching her, head quizzically tilted. It didn’t know, didn’t understand what she was doing. And she saw the android’s arms stretching toward her, fingers stretching too. She knew their impossible strength, knew it from the way the artificial arms’ tensed their artificial muscles, firm against the air. The ripples from the android’s presence on the air and the floor painted a picture in her mind, truer than sight.
The figure’s unseen arm and hand extended further. She felt the motion, knew the arm’s growth, knew the fingers as they reached for her. She ignored everything else, ignored all but the growing fingers as they inched closer and closer, the android waiting for its moment to seize her.
Then Enoa lashed out with the staff. She stabbed it into the underside of the android’s elbow. An explosion blossomed in the air and crumpled the strange mechanical arm like tinfoil. The android’s camouflage flickered, revealing its spindly, gray form, its face turned toward Enoa. The extended arm went limp, stretched longer than its torso and legs combined. The useless appendage flopped to the floor, its fingers still twitching and grasping at the decking.
“Yes!” Teddy charged back across the Aesir’s floor. He was nimble on his feet, even as his heavy steps felt like thunder to Enoa. The android’s head turned all the way backward, a full one-eighty degrees, to look at Teddy. It twisted its unbroken arm around, but there was no time to fire.
Teddy drove his shoulder and chain mail into the android and sent it tumbling back out of the Aesir, long arm trailing after it. Teddy jumped from the ship after it, ignoring the cries from April and Dr. Stan and Jaleel. He landed on top of the fallen android, both feet planted on its chest.
Enoa jumped out too. The android stirred as Teddy stepped away, but before it could do more than lift its head, Enoa pressed the end of her staff into its forehead and jabbed it back against the concrete.
A concentrated explosion bloomed from the staff and tore the head open, sending a spurt of licorice all across the floor where it began to writhe and coil. The android lay still.
“Orson!” Teddy yelled.
Enoa found Orson on his knees, fighting with another unseen attacker. At least two dismembered androids lay around him, pieces leaking the black licorice. Orson’s left hand was pinned against his bandana and his cheek. The other was clenched against the sword’s hilt, as some invisible force pulled the flaming blade back toward Orson’s own face.
Cathy crouched nearby, firing at a mass of writhing shapes, severed arms – propelled only by fingers, and headless bodies, all still firing at her. The discarded pieces had come alive again. Their aim was poor but the volume of fire left her pinned. Her blue armor was carbon-scored, blackened and burned, like the floor around her.
“Let him go!” Teddy rushed to Orson, and he drew the dagger from its sheath.
It burned with blue fire – the same as Orson’s sword. Enoa saw a physical, metal blade attached to the weapon’s hilt. Unlike the sword, this dagger had a solid core that glistened at the center of the identical sapphire flame.
Teddy grabbed at Orson’s sword hand, searched through the air until he reached the unseen figure grasping for the blade. He drove the dagger into another android’s wrist. Licorice poured from the wound, onto Teddy’s sleeve and Orson’s coat and into the blue fire of both blades, where it burned away.
The android’s camouflage reverted back to neutral gray. Its now-visible fingers each almost a foot long, curled against Orson’s left gauntlet. The fingers tried to worm their way between Orson’s bandana and his goggles, tried to reach his face and his eyes.
Orson howled, loud enough to hurt Enoa’s ears. She winced away from the sound and from his fury. Orson cut the remaining arm from the android in a surgical strike to its shoulder. The hand fell away before the dismembered arm could regain its grip. He sliced the hand from that writhing arm. The pieces stopped moving. Then Orson rose back to his feet. He cleaved the android’s head from its shoulders and cut its torso in half, as it fell to the floor.
A small slit in his coat’s left sleeve leaked smoke. Was it a mark from one of the many scattered energy bolts or had he clipped himself in dismembering his attacker? Enoa didn’t know, but Orson saw it too. He switched the sword to his left hand and patted the sleeve until the smoking ceased.
“Thank you.” Orson gasped out the words. He clasped Teddy’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said again. Teddy returned the gesture, also short of breath. They sagged into each other.
Cathy took her moment. She rose back to her feet and returned fire toward the mass of severed Jim pieces. She kept firing until nothing moved.
When silence returned, Enoa listened again, trying to feel the air for more unseen androids. She felt none – no more hidden shapes, but she saw how they’d come at them unseen.
The door between the garage and the rest of the Earth Ship was open, only inches, but inches were enough for the androids and their bizarre physiology to squeeze through.
“Is everyone okay?” April called from the ship.
“What’s happening?” Jaleel yelled. “I can’t see anything.”
“We’re all okay, Jaleel.” Orson said. “April, your boyfriend might’ve just saved my life for about the fourth time. I had an idea or two but that thing would’ve at least broken my hand before I managed them.” He patted Teddy on the arm.
“There are more of them coming!” April yelled. “More coming through the house. I see four.”
“Ruby.” Orson took a deep, steadying breath. “My HUD needs whatever motion sensitive shit you’ve got for these things. Can you help me out? I don’t want to use the whole targeting system.”
“You will need a patch,” Ruby said. “Or full targeting may be necessary for consistent use.”
“I can send you what I’m seeing,” Dr. Stan called. “Let me know when you see them.”
“I can see them now too.” Enoa felt them enter the open door. They passed into the garage: one, two, three. “Or… I can feel them if they’re close. But I only feel three of them.” She sensed them flatten to fit through the slim opening at the door. Even their heads elongated, stretched out twice their normal size to wriggle their way into the garage.
“I think I got it now, Doc.” Orson tapped at his visor. “Thanks. That’s great, Enoa. You can use your new power and let me know if I get them all.” He fired his repulsor and leaped across the room.
This time, he could see them. This time, he decimated them, reduced them to another squirming lump of parts before they could take more than a few steps into the garage.
“Is that all of them?” Orson asked. “Enoa, you feel anything?”
She did. She felt it and she saw it with her eyes. A fourth android stepped into the doorway, but this one was visible. It pushed the door wide and entered without any effort to conceal itself. Its gray head flicked between all of them, watchful and wary.
“Orson Gregory.” The voice of Baron Helmont spoke from the android. “You are even less than I expected.”
“Pretty rich coming from a mannequin,” Orson said. “So much for the legend of ole Buick Jim. If this is what the original Jim was like, I don’t see why he got so famous. Without the camo gimmick, I don’t see what the big deal is at all. Or are these copies just shit because the Liberty Corps is making them now?”
“Petulance I did expect,” Helmont continued. Enoa could see no motion from its mouth. “But arming your friend with the Covenant Flame? You gave away a Kindling from Thousand Destiny as if it burns with a common hearth fire. But I should not be surprised. A magpie knows nothing of the true value of its treasures.”
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“Listen, man,” Teddy said. “We won that sword together, the two of us. And Orson used that thing to beat Calder and Ruhland and a hundred other dudes. I don’t see you Liberty Corps doing anything but hurting people just trying to live.”
“Defeat Ruhland?” The Baron laughed with mirth, real and truly humored. “You believe that? That does surprise me.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Orson asked. Enoa noticed a change in his stance. He returned his free hand to the sword’s hilt.
“For a decade our stories have moved in parallel, Orson Gregory.” Helmont ignored the question.
“I am done hearing this man’s voice.” Cathy fired both pistols. A bolt from her blaster took the Jim in the chest. The energy refracted across the android’s body like water on glass. The bullet struck the Jim’s shoulder, but fell free with no visible harm to the gray form.
Enoa’s eyes stayed on the android, until the light of the blaster’s fire faded, waiting for some sign of harm or damage. Cathy did not wait. She fired again, unloading three more energy bolts and three more bullets. All failed.
Orson raised his hand. “He sent his deluxe-edition, durable Jim to talk to us,” he said. “So let’s talk. What do you want, Baron? What do you need to say that your Jim Choir can’t all scream from outside?”
“Orson Gregory, it is truly my pleasure to meet you at the final reckoning for your crimes,” Helmont said. “I know them well. I witnessed them. I was among the force mustered against the Blitzkrieg. I was in Nation’s tower while your compatriots ignored direct IHSA edict and engaged with terrorist leadership – and they were honored for it, decorated for it. If Congress weren’t so weak, if the League of Nations weren’t so weak, you and all your former crew would still be behind bars.”
“I watched as you trespassed on IHSA property at Isla de Manos, as you defied the Engulfment Protocol and stopped our best hope to avert the technological theft. I was a hair’s breadth from winning League of Nations support then. I was a hair’s breadth from killing you, your friends, your lover, and properly destroying the island and the stolen fleet. If I had not waited for permission, you would have died that day.”
“I stood on the last IHSA frigate at Norlenheim, while you and the turncoat Enigma Guard fought both Thunderworks and us, fought as a force of anarchy. If my numbers were better you would have met your doom then.”
“If you were at all those places,” Orson said. “And I still only heard of you a couple weeks ago, how important can you be?”
“We nearly crossed paths several times in recent months,” Helmont said. “I considered seeking clearance to apprehend your current crew personally. I could have caught you at any time during your stop aboard the Solar Saver’s stolen crawler. I could have directly intervened in Littlefield, but politics are a delicate matter in this era.”
“Politics, huh?” Orson asked. “Talk’s cheap. It sounds more like you’re scared of the Pacific Alliance or your Liberty Corps Grand Poobah. What’s his name – Hawthorne? Or are you scared of me and my crew? Scared we’d embarrass you, so you had to wait until we were out in the middle of nowhere?”
“But now.” Helmont continued.
“You can’t answer me?” Orson asked. “What, you’ll forget your little speech if you don’t recite it in order? How long have you been working on this? I’m almost flattered.”
“Now.” Helmont’s voice remained even and steady, but there was an edge to his words, nearly as manic as the voices of the Jims who fought for him. “Now, finally, our stories intersect. And now, finally, your story ends.”
“My story ends?” Orson asked. “You think your camo dolls are about to kill us? Enough!” He swung the sword through the android’s neck, then bisected its body from neck to groin. The body discharged licorice, but the severed head did not.
“Perhaps you will not die tonight.” Helmont’s voice continued speaking, the head looking up at Orson from the floor. “But the Groom Lake Neighborhood Watch is only one asset at our disposal. The Liberty Corps holds the power of the hidden worlds on this planet and all the worlds beyond.”
“Pretty rich coming from a lopped-off head,” Orson said.
“Joke all you like,” Helmont answered. “I think you’re beginning to see the truth, Gregory. There is no safe harbor awaiting you. There is no one who can hide you without peril. How long can you survive before your friends turn you away for their own safety, before they recognize that we are law?”
“That will never happen!” Teddy yelled. “I will never abandon Orson.”
“Perilous to speak that way when you hold a Kindling from Thousand Destiny,” Helmont said. “Even your name offers only so much protection. And no name offers protection to those who would steal the Dreamside Road. I know you still seek it, Gregory. I know you’re still searching for an abandoned IHSA terminal to gain the location of Knightschurch. Or did you think I wouldn’t peruse what my informant helped deliver to you? I know. There is no way to find what you seek. Those who lived with the knowledge are all dead. I control where it is recorded. You have no chance to fight. No chance to run. Soon, your Dreamside Road keys and the priceless fire you carry will fall into my possession. But you can still die with dignity.”
“You want the sword?” Orson stepped above the head. “Fight me in person. I’ll give you a real close look at it.”
“I will have…” Helmont began.
Orson seized the head by its cheeks, tossed it into the air, and sliced it in two before Helmont could say more. The pieces fell back to the floor and only then began to leak the licorice discharge.
Orson watched the wreckage in silence, maybe waiting for more androids to arrive from the house or for more words from the Baron, projecting from another severed body part. Neither came.
“We’ll open the door,” Orson called. “Then we gun it out of here.” He shrugged and turned back toward the ship. But before he reached the door, something struck the bulkhead from above.
An explosion burst against the metal. The ceiling shook. April and Dr. Stan yelled. Teddy jumped back into the Aesir.
Enoa joined him inside. She ran to the co-pilot’s seat and the tri-cannon’s controls. She trained the weapon toward the still-shaking bulkhead and looked at her display. She saw nothing but the Aesir’s own signature.
“Maybe we better fire an I.F. first,” Orson said. Enoa heard him jump into the ship too, Cathy right behind him. “Jaleel, we’ll have to set back down. We don’t need to smack ourselves with our own…”
Another blast rocked the bulkhead. The garage shook longer around them. A thin piece of paneling fell from the wall. Teddy returned to his armchair. Cathy ran to the couch. Orson stood where he was, rooted to the spot by his repulsor boot.
“How secure is this place?” Orson asked. “Ted, what kinda attack did you expect this place to take?”
“HELLO!” The combined voices of the gathered androids all spoke at once, silencing all of them. “YOU ARE SURROUNDED. BARON HELMONT HAS A PARTING MESSAGE. PLEASE LISTEN CAREFULLY.”
Helmont spoke immediately, his voice again projecting from all androids and all directions.
“This is your final warning,” he said. “Your hosts have lost my offer of mercy and clemency, and Miss Cloud is too small a prize to risk the rest of you escaping. Accept the law of the Liberty Corps or die now.”
He gave no chance to respond. The third burst struck before anyone could speak, strong enough to rattle the floor as well. Enoa turned fully away from the windshield and the dizzying vision of the whole world wobbling around the floating Aesir.
“Jaleel,” Orson said. “Maybe we better switch seats.” Jaleel stood. Enoa saw in the corner of her eye that there was a tremor in his hands, fear or exhausted from gripping the Aesir’s wheel.
“Are we…” Jaleel began.
“We’re just fine,” Orson said. Jaleel gripped at Enoa’s arm as he walked past her toward the open passenger seat. She gave his shaking hand a squeeze.
“I’m gonna get the I.F. to shoot full blast.” Orson sat. “Then we fly. We’ll balance between shields and speed. I’ll go straight ascent. I won’t give much to the Inertials so make sure all your restraints are good and tight. Jaleel, are the pets all secure?”
Jaleel could not answer. The fourth round bowed the bulkhead doors, bent them inward, warped them. A full chunk of ceiling dislodged and shattered to the floor beside the Aesir, loud from the external microphone. The ground shook again too, not just the building, but the deep earth beneath them.
“April, Teddy, with the look of that bulkhead, I think we’ll need to blast it open,” Orson said. “I’d like to have your permission to do that.”
“Do what you need to do, man,” Teddy said.
“I…” April stammered. “I got the camera online from outside the house and… And…” Dr. Stan gasped.
“Orson,” Dr. Stan said. “You might need to see this. They’re everywhere. We are totally surrounded. I think more have been coming here all the time. There could be hundreds of those androids.”
“I don’t need to see it,” Orson said. “It doesn’t change the plan.” But Enoa turned back. April saw her looking and lifted her small datapad. The view of the external Earthship camera was distorted by the distance across the cabin but all she saw was a swarm of moving green, filling the land in all directions. The breath caught in her throat.
“That’s why I didn’t want to look at it,” Orson said. “Jaleel, I need your answer. Wesley and the cats. Once I start this thing, there won’t be time to check or help anybody.”
“They’re as safe as we are,” Jaleel said. “Are we…”
Helmont’s voice again blasted from all directions. “Death in ignominy is fitting. But I didn’t expect this from all of you. Very well. You will not survive another…”
But Helmont too was interrupted. There came a new sound, intense and electrical, an uninterrupted, sustained whine. There was a shrill, piercing quality to the noise, so intense Enoa could almost feel it vibrating inside her ears and brain. It sounded digital, like nothing either tactile machinery or living biology could produce.
The ground didn’t shake, but even the overhead lights flickered. Enoa’s monitor winked out. She felt the weight let go beneath her, like falling. The Aesir drifted back to the ground.
“Ion Warhead detected,” Ruby said. “Distance sufficient for countermeasures. Automatic shutdown. No burnout.”
“Warhead?” Jaleel asked. He was answered by the distant sound of moving keys – a message through the Typewriter.
“Please tell me that means what I hope it does,” April said.
“Yeah, I’m hoping it’s not a new problem,” Orson answered.
“You’re thinking Frank did something, man?” Teddy asked. The sound of the Typewriter persisted.
“I’ll go check.” Jaleel rose from his seat and ran back to the nearest locker where they’d stored it. Before he got there, a thumping started on the bowed bulkhead. Was someone knocking at the door?
“Hello, down there!” A distant voice called. “Is everyone alive? We figured if that Baron was still bombing you, there has to be someone still around to save.”
“Is that your friend Franklin?” Enoa asked.
“No,” Orson said. “I don’t know that voice.” He moved a slider on the console. “Let me see if I can still get the mic working.”
“It sounds like Royce!” Teddy yelled from his chair. “Orson, you don’t know Sebastian Royce?”
“Who?” Orson said. “No, I never heard of him.”
“He’s worked with the Evergreen crew for years.” Teddy cheered and stomped his feet. April yelled with him, and the two of them seemed to begin singing. Enoa could not recognize the tune or distinguish the shouted lyrics.
Then a low rumbling began, growing noise that descended from the sky. Enoa wished for her usual sensor screen. She imagined something the size of the Liberty Corps Starbird outside, looming over them. She imagined it was all some elaborate fakeout, just one more plot from Helmont.
“It’s your friend, Franklin.” Jaleel spoke when the rumbling stopped. He found his seat. “He says he gave the Jims a blast from some kind of bomb, and all the androids outside should be cooked, at least for now.”
“Let’s see if this works,” Orson said. “This is Wayfarer One to Wayfarer Classic. We’ve got seven alive down here. We’re all rattled, but we’re all in one piece.” The microphone projected his voice. Enoa could hear it again, an echo outside the ship.
“Is that you, Royce?” Teddy yelled. “How are you?” He cheered again, April and Jaleel with him. The man outside answered them.
“It’s me,” Royce yelled. “I’m a little cold and a little hungry, but once we’ve got you up in the barge and maybe break out some of your cooking, we’ll all be good to go.” He said more, his voice softer and not directed at them. “I’ve found them. Repeat, I’ve found them.”
There came another thud beside the garage door and then more knocking. Another voice called down from the bulkhead.
“Hi everybody,” the newcomer said. “This is Franklin West and my co-pilot Sebastian Royce. We’ll be rescuing you, this morning. Let’s get this door open and get outta here.”
“Nice of you guys to drop by,” Jaleel yelled, laughing.
“Franklin,” Orson said. “You guys really saved us.”
“Orson!” Franklin called. “How are you, Kid? I see you’re still getting into trouble.”
“I’m the same as always,” Orson said. “Relieved we got through another one, thanks to you. I’d love to catch up, but we need to send Teddy and April on your ship, before the rest of us go back to the local Shoshone Council. That Baron Helmont threatened them too.”
“Cathy still with you?” Franklin asked.
“That’s right,” Cathy answered. “Thank you for your help, Franklin. I’ve heard nothing from my crew or the Council since the Baron’s threat, but I’m afraid I will provoke a response by sending them a message, even now.”
“Glad to help,” Franklin answered. “Okay. Well, Royce and me, we don’t need to be back until tomorrow, and we’re having way too much fun. So why don’t we get this busted door open. Then we’ll all check on your Council together. Maybe we can break more of this Baron’s shit. What do you say?”