CHAPTER 31

2237

Titan II Space Station

Earth’s Orbit

Nine hundred kilometers above the surface of the earth, near the Titan II Space Station, a glowing tear appeared in the fabric of space, pulsating rapidly as light bled from it. From the light emerged the Vindex in Machina armor, and beside it was another armor, almost identical, except that it was slimmer.

“Where the hell are we?” Bethany asked, gazing around in the blackness as the tear closed behind them. She turned to her left as she felt her legs growing cold.

Riley spun around until the shrinking remains of the Earth came into view. He felt an intense knot in his stomach. Riley had heard about his home planet being consumed by the vilis, but he never imagined it would look how it did. He looked to his left and saw the Titan II space station, about seventy kilometers away.

“Riley, where are we?” Bethany asked again.

Riley sighed. He turned his body to face the space station. Whenever he turned, Bethany’s armor turned too. Riley opened five holes on his armor’s back and they lit up, propelling him toward the station. The same thrusters opened on Bethany’s armor’s back and she flew after Riley. Bethany struggled with the fact that they were in space. She gazed around at the endless void around them.

It was a relatively short trip to the station. As they approached it, at about a hundred meters away, the thrusters on their backs shut off and the holes closed. Seven new thrusters opened on the fronts of the armors, shooting out short burns of energy. As the thrusters burned, the armors slowed until they came to a stop just a few feet from the hull. Riley turned until his feet were pointing at the hull, then he used a slight thrust and touched down with his boots gravitating to the hull. Bethany landed next to him. Riley lowered onto one knee and opened his hand. A yellow beam of light shot from his palm and he used it to cut a hole in the hull. He looked inside.

“Where will this take us?” Bethany asked, breathing audibly through the comms.

Riley paused, looked at her, grunted, then stepped aside and gestured at Bethany to step into the hole he cut.

“You could just answer, you know,” Bethany said. She walked toward the hole and dropped inside. Riley dropped in after her. He took the floating chunk he cut from the hull, put it back in place, and welded it together again.

Bethany approached Riley as he finished welding. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

Riley looked up. It was barely audible, but he could hear it. The echoes of countless screams were reverberating off the walls of the station. The alarm was blaring and the entire area was flashing orange.

“We’re too late,” Bethany said.

Riley held his hand out to Bethany. Her armor dissolved into tiny nanite particles and flowed to him, merging with his armor. With the armor gone, Bethany was wearing form-fitting gear with pads on her knees, elbows, and other spots, making her appear bulkier than she was. On her back was the handle of a sword without a blade. On her left side hung a sidearm, and there was a sheathed combat knife attached to her thigh. Riley’s armor dissolved into his band. He wore the same suit as Bethany, except he carried no weapons; he didn’t need them. Bethany looked around, trying to find her bearings.

“We’re on the maintenance floor,” she said.

“Lead the way,” Riley responded.

Bethany took off, running toward the engine room with Riley close behind. They came into the hallway leading to the elevator. The elevator door was open. Bethany jumped in and hit the buttons several times before realizing the lights were off. Riley turned from the elevator and sprinted along the hallway. Bethany cursed under her breath as she chased him, struggling to keep up after his head start.

At the end of the hallway, Riley went through a blue doorway, leading him to the stairs. He charged up the stairs like a wrecking ball, without looking back or giving a thought to how well Bethany was doing behind him. He finally reached the top of the stairs and ran through the door, leading to another hallway. Embedded in the wall to his left was a screen showing a map of the station. Riley studied the map for a moment, trying to figure out where he was. A moment later, Bethany arrived, panting heavily with her hands on her knees.

“I know you’re enjoying this,” she wheezed.

Riley smirked but he kept his focus on the screen, pretending to ignore her.

“We’re at the highest level of the resource management section,” Bethany said. Directly above us is where the residential section begins.”

Riley looked down the hallway, glanced at Bethany, then started running along the corridor.

“For fuck’s sake…” Bethany muttered. She took a few seconds to catch her breath before chasing after him.

Riley stopped at the elevator door and looked back at Bethany as she sprinted toward him. She stopped beside him and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that this elevator’s lights were on. Bethany entered the elevator and Riley followed. She hit the button marked ‘C’. The door hissed closed and started moving with a low hum. They had barely climbed seven levels when they heard the roar of a vilis echo through the hollow elevator shaft. Riley and Bethany’s eyes met, and she smiled. She had been looking forward to this for a long time. Riley shook his head. He understood her eagerness to go one on one against a vilis, and while he was confident she would be able to hold her own, he was less confident that she would survive the fight.

The elevator stopped and the doors parted. Bethany was the first to get out.

“Focus on the mission, Beth,” Riley said.

“This is the mission,” she replied with a menacing grin. She took the sword handle from her back and as she brought it to the front, black particles flowed from it and formed a large blade. The further they went, the louder the sounds of the vilis became. They turned a corner and finally saw the vilis, blocking the hallway and repeatedly ramming its head against the steel wall. Bethany assumed a fighting stance, clenching her teeth. She had trained for three years for this. She had battled every type of vilis in the realistic simulations Sky helped her set up, until she could single-handedly take down two vilis with nothing but the light armor she was now wearing, her sword, and explosive projectiles. Despite the countless hours of training, Bethany had never fought a real vilis. Even with the realism of the simulations, which sometimes left her with life-threatening injuries, Riley always reminded her that the real thing would never be identical. Even so, as far as Bethany was concerned, she was ready for it.

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Bethany charged toward the creature and slid underneath it, slicing down its chest with her sword. She emerged behind it and immediately hopped onto its back, unloading several rounds of explosive bullets into its head before she jumped off and rolled back to her feet. She turned around with her sword in one hand and her semi-automatic handgun in the other. Bethany felt something she could only describe as euphoria. The vilis was trying to close its wounds as it normally would but, this time, the wound would not be closing. The sword was not any sword, and the bullets were not just explosive rounds. They were small molecular bombs that continued to annihilate any molecule they touched until there was nothing left to destroy. Bethany stared at the monster, counting the seconds until it dropped dead, never to rise again. With each second that passed, she became more impatient. She charged at the creature, firing more bullets into its face. Once she was close enough, she raised her sword and jumped at it, aiming to slice its head off. The vilis sprouted an extra arm from its side and grabbed Bethany, slamming her into the steel ceiling. It released her and she fell on her face, groaning in intense pain as her sword and gun dropped onto the floor. Bethany looked up and saw the vilis’ forelegs coming down at her. She had no means of fighting back.

Riley watched Bethany going it alone. He sighed and launched himself toward the creature at the speed of sound. The vilis fell on its back. Riley glared at Bethany, who was panting for breath on the floor. He pulled a grenade from his suit, pressed the button, and dropped it in the creature’s open belly. The grenade exploded quietly, turning the vilis into a crumbling statue of dry ash. Riley held his hand out to Bethany. She took it and he pulled her up. As soon as Bethany was back on her feet, Riley turned and continued along the hallway. Bethany picked up her weapons, cursed under her breath, and followed Riley.

Riley and Bethany crossed into the next level of the section and finally reached the command area. Bethany took point, leading them to the bridge. People were running along the corridors in a panic and paid little notice to the two strangely outfitted people running in the opposite direction. With a loud thud, the floor shook and people fell around them. A roar could be heard in the near distance. Riley gave Bethany a disapproving look. She nodded back. The floor stopped shaking and there was another roar. Bethany drew her sword again and followed Riley along the hallway. She suddenly stopped and grabbed Riley’s wrist. He turned to look at her.

“We should go back,” Bethany said.

Riley stared at her for a moment, then turned around and darted along the hallway. Bethany huffed and followed. Another thud rocked the floor again. Riley and Bethany slammed against the wall and hit the ground. They quickly got back up and continued around the bend. They approached a door, which slid open when they got close, then turned another corner and emerged into a long corridor. They heard another thud and saw that the wall ahead of them was bent inward. Something was trying to break through. On the far side of the bump, some soldiers were running toward them.

There was another thud and a vilis’ head tore through the wall. It roared and forced itself through the narrow gap, landing hard on the hallway floor. It quickly stood up as the soldiers opened fire, but the bullets had little effect. The vilis moved toward them. Bethany was ready to charge it from behind but, as she took her first step, another vilis burst from the opposite wall. Riley thrust his hand forward and a grappling hook flew out of his suit and grabbed Bethany. He yanked her back, narrowly avoiding getting crushed by the much larger vilis. The vilis disappeared into the opposite hole, then reappeared and charged at them with its mouth open, snarling. Riley raised his hand and the band dissolved, then spread over his body until it covered him with metallic armor. Riley hovered and was about to attack the creature when the floor collapsed beneath them and Bethany fell. Without hesitating, he dived after her. Riley grabbed her, then executed impulsive teleportation. He and Bethany vanished in an instant. The vilis stood at the edge of the collapse and looked down, but there was no one there.

Riley and Bethany reappeared in a room.

“What just happened?” Bethany asked, breathless.

“SDIT,” he answered. “Short Distance Impulsive Teleportation. It moved us to the nearest safe location.” He looked around. “We’re nearby.”

Bethany frowned. “We can’t fail.”

Riley reached out to Bethany and a stream of nanites formed armor around her. “You have the reins,” he said and flew up, straight through the solid steel ceiling.

Bethany raised her hands to her face. Riley had never allowed her to pilot the armor, but she was no stranger to the controls. She had done it too many times to count in her training simulations. Bethany slowly hovered off the ground, the airflow from the armor pushing everything away. She looked up at the hole Riley left in the ceiling and flew through it, chasing him.

Riley emerged into an open room but didn’t know where to go. He pulled up the station’s blueprint on the display.

“That blueprint is no good,” Sky said. “The station has undergone seven generations of reconstruction since that layout was accurate.”

Riley grunted as he hovered, not moving an inch. “Can you help me find Isaac?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do. His chip isn’t returning my ping. Hold on a second while I tap into the camera feeds.”

A black and white camera feed appeared on Riley’s display.

“It’s not an actual feed,” Sky explained. “It’s what I’m able to interpret from the residual electromagnetic waves in the surrounding environment.”

Bethany’s armor whooshed in, bumping against the wall in front of her. She was seeing the same feed as Riley. “They’re in the hangar,” she wheezed, “but I don’t know how to get there.”

“Sky…” Riley started.

“Three levels up, then go right,” Sky said, using her knowledge of the station to estimate where the hanger was from their current location.

Sky had barely finished when Riley flew through three levels of solid steel, then turned right and continued in a straight line, ripping through the walls. Each time he rammed into a wall, Riley felt a sharp pain from the back of his head to his lower back. He could feel the nanites that made up his armor exerting themselves as he pummeled through each wall. Riley wouldn’t let it deter him from doing whatever was necessary to complete the mission. After bursting through twenty-seven walls, Riley finally reached the hangar. He crashed and slid on his face for a few feet before stopping.

Bethany landed on a knee beside him. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Riley grunted and pushed himself up, more slowly than Bethany had ever seen him move in his armor. They looked up and saw the superluminal ship, Keravnos, powered up with its hatch open and Isaac, Bethany, and the others running toward it. The evacuees heard the sound of Riley bursting through the wall and looked over, only to see two strange-looking people in slim body armor.

A roar echoed along the steel walls of the station. It was close. The sound of gunshots filled the hangar. Riley retracted the suit down to his waist and Bethany did the same. When Bethany and Isaac saw Riley and another Bethany watching them, they slowed down and stopped, staring with wide eyes and gaping mouths. The armored Bethany took a few steps forward, her eyes glued to Isaac. She held her hand out for him to take it. Anderson and the others were yelling at the younger Bethany and Isaac to get on the ship, but they couldn’t hear them.

The gunshots grew louder and closer. A vilis crashed through the small door, bursting into the hangar to chase the soldiers. Isaac started walking toward the armored Bethany, but the younger Bethany grabbed him and pulled him toward the ship. Isaac followed.

Riley looked at the armored Bethany. “Slow it down,” he said.

Bethany nodded and drew her sword and gun, then armored up and ran at the vilis, shooting at it. Riley turned toward Isaac and darted at him with lightning speed. He ripped him out of Bethany’s hands, grew a cocoon around him, and vanished. The armored Bethany was slashing her sword down at the head of the vilis when she vanished too.

At first, the younger Bethany didn’t realize Isaac was no longer in their midst. When she turned around and couldn’t find him, she screamed his name and tried to run out of the ship. Ethan grabbed her by the waist and dragged her back inside as she screamed and thrashed, trying to escape.