Ghost of Mind Episode One (26 page)

‘
Where is she?’ John snapped
out.

Yes, he had just snapped at an admiral, but
who cared, considering the situation? They were all stressed and on
their toes, it was not the time for niceties.

‘
Up top near the spire. For now she is
holding position. Now that we have blocked off this room and can
ensure that she can’t come in to destroy the engine cores, we are
going to send up troops to engage her,’ the Admiral snapped
back.

‘
I really don’t suggest that, sir,’ John
said through a quick breath, one of his hands curling into a fist
by his side of its own accord, ‘she has an Old Tech cloak and I can
now confirm from analysis of the scans of my armor that she is also
in possession of a hacker ball.’

The Admiral’s expression soured even
further.’ I know.’

‘
We have no idea if she has more Old Tech
with her. Plus, I have seen her in action,’ John began.

‘
We have to do something. And nobody, no
matter how well-equipped, is going to get past me. It doesn’t
matter that she has Old Technology,’ the Admiral suddenly turned,
his eyes darting through the crowd around them until they settled
on someone near the far wall.

John half turned until he found were the
Admiral was staring at. Evelyn.

‘
If we can get her close enough, she will
be able to disengage the Old Tech,’ the Admiral turned back to
John.

John stopped himself from laughing, from
making any kind of derisive noise at all.

That sounded frankly fantastic. He understood
that the Admiral had a lot of faith in the Aurora Project, being
the head of it and all, but this was a critical situation. And
bluster would get them nowhere.

‘
You have not seen her in the field, and
maybe this is the perfect opportunity,’ the Admiral fixed John with
a strict and steady look. ‘Evelyn is a good soldier,
Commander.’

John’s teeth ground together. She was not a
soldier. She was, as bad as it sounded, an experiment. She was a
woman that had been allocated to the project, someone that had
lived her whole life under its sway.

No doubt she had never been in a combat
situation, no doubt she had never been forced to put her life on
the line, and no doubt she shouldn’t have too.

But these were sentiments John could not
share with the Admiral.

‘
Still, Admiral, I don’t think it’s safe to
send anyone up there but me; that woman turned off the localized
weather field for a 20 meter radius,’ he said, voice ringing with
surprise. ‘And now I think of it, that’s what she must have done
back on Orion Minor too. Those systems are impossible to hack,’
John didn’t try to control his voice at all, and it wobbled and
waivered the more he thought about how impossible it should be to
interfere with a system as complicated and well-secured as the
weather fields of the Orion system.

‘
The hacker ball would have done it,’ the
Admiral snapped immediately. ‘Not the woman. And if Evelyn gets
close enough, she will turn the hacker ball off. In fact, she will
be able to interact directly with its systems, and utilize it to
trap the woman. Commander, there will be no discussion of this
plan; I have decided what we’re going to do.’

John forced himself to snap a salute. Even
though that was absolutely the last thing he wanted to do at that
point. He was ready to fight the Admiral toe-to-toe on this one.
Because it was suicide.

Yet John had no evidence to support his
claims. Of course it made sense to think that the hacker ball had
been the one to infiltrate and shut down the weather systems. But
still, John just didn’t seem to be able to get across his full
suspicions about this woman.

‘
Your orders are to protect Evelyn,’ the
Admiral snapped.

It was as simple as that, was it?

Well John had been in combat long enough to
know that nothing ever ran that easy. And he had seen that
mysterious woman enough times to realize that where she was
involved, only the incredible would occur.

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.

‘
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.