End Game (Chapter 7)
One of this story's chapters has the usual don't own it disclaimer. Good enough.
Zane, Allison, Fargo and Holly arrived in Astraeus' main control room in time to hear part of a conversation between Grace and Henry.
"Your nephew really misses you. He's been counting down the minutes until you give him that catcher's mitt you promised him," Henry said. Zane, Fargo and Holly looked confused, but Allison exchanged a knowing look with Grace. Henry wasn't talking about baseball, he was referring to Eureka's Bosun Cloud Exciter, the device intended to capture Astraeus on its return from faster than light travel. "He's been asking for it—I'm surprised he hasn't snuck through the back door to snatch it."
Fargo looked anxiously at Zane and whispered, "Can you still get that open?" He'd caught on-Henry was telling them they had to give GD access to the Astraeus nav system through the back door that Zane had been coding before everyone had assumed it was the bots doing the work. Through the door, GD could link the FTL modules there to those on the ship and pull it home, catching it in the BCE.
"Already did," Zane answered, not looking at Fargo. "You said you forgot the rest of the code!," Fargo hissed in return. Zane gave him a shushing gesture. "I lied. So sue me—I was pissed off." "How-" Fargo started, but stopped when Zane punched his arm in warning. "Ow!" He finally quieted down.
"How touching," Beverly's voice broke into the conversation. "Henry, can we please get to the point? I believe you're all aware that less than 6 hours remain before Astraeus crashes into Los Angeles if we don't have confirmation of Eureka's imminent and permanent closure before then." She paused to let that sink in. "Is Zane Donovan there?"
All heads swiveled to Zane. His fists clenched as he answered. "I'm here." At GD, Jo gasped at the sound of his voice.
"Excellent. I believe you were interrupted in programming the navigation system to ensure that our plan could be fully executed. I'd like you to finish that work now," she said.
"Fuck you," answered Zane in an almost conversational tone.
"Tsk," Beverly responded. "We've talked about that potty mouth of yours, remember?" Stumbling forward, Zane doubled over in pain. He groaned as sweat broke out across his forehead. Allison reached for him, but he waved her off. "Careful—without me, you won't have anyone who has a clue how to do what you want. In fact, there's an idea-go right ahead, take me out. Then we're both screwed," he growled.
"Yes, that is a problem. Fortunately, we have other…motivations." The room was silent for a moment before a muffled shriek came over the audio feed. "Jo!" Carter's voice rang over the line. Zane stiffened. "You see, creating those little beasts you have in your blood was costly. We thought it best to leverage that investment by using them more than once. So, your…girlfriend, is it? Whatever…at least you and she now have something in common, you're both sharing our little bugs. So, if you don't want us to take her out, I suggest you get started on the nav system and finish what we had you begin."
As if anticipating his compliance, several people onboard the ship stepped forward to block Zane from going to the nav console. As another moan from Jo came across the audio feed, he looked pleadingly toward Grace. When she didn't respond, he started at the people closest to him, only to have the guard and two others leap forward to hold him in place. He closed his eyes.
Grace stepped up to him and put her mouth against his ear, speaking almost too softly to be heard. "Do whatever you have to do to make it seem you're doing what they want. But we need the FTL connection to GD. If you can't do both, Jo would be the first to tell you to stop the ship from crashing, no matter what. Many more lives are at stake than hers or yours."
Zane nodded. When he opened his eyes again, he seemed to have aged several years. "Let him go," ordered Grace. A murmur of protest rose up around the room, but no one moved. Challenging Zane was one thing, mutiny something else altogether. By unspoken agreement, the crew seemed to be willing to put their trust in Grace and let the situation play out, at least for a while longer.
The room was utterly silent as Zane walked to the nav console. He sat, took a deep breath, and started to type. He pulled up the database for the fail-safe codes. Grimly, he began to disable the first of the six remaining barriers to the Consortium's control over the ship. He figured that if he dove straight into coding a connection to the FTL modules at GD through the back door he'd opened earlier, they'd catch him immediately.
"Zane." The thought tickled at the back of his mind. An image of Jo's face rose up, her eyes soft, hands around his shoulders. She was smiling, looking as she had when she'd learned that he'd been selected to go to Titan. "I'll be fine, do whatever is necessary to save them." The words flitted across his consciousness like the sound of a distant radio.
His fingers moved faster. Two fail-safes down. He hoped that if he moved fast enough, the FTL connections he entered would be lost from view in the data stream.
When he reached the section for the fourth fail-safe, he felt another kind of tickle in his mind. His eyes unfocused slightly. The code seemed to swim in front of him as he tried to focus on completing the FTL connections. When his vision cleared, he was jolted by the realization that he was already well into disabling the fifth fail-safe. His body tensed against the relentless push he'd begun to feel. He barely noticed when Fargo sat down next to him.
"Dude," Fargo said softly. "You're bleeding again." Without turning or slowing his typing, Zane muttered, "They're working against me. If I get to the next of these," he nodded his head toward the screen, where the words "FAIL SAFE 5.0" appeared. "Stop me. I'd rather it come from you than Deputy Dawg back there." Zane took a second to look at Fargo. Their eyes met, and a look of resigned determination came over Fargo's face. He nodded.
Zane jumped back and forth between the fifth fail-safe and the FTL connection, entering bits of data at a time to disable the former and activate the latter. Sensations competed in his head—moments of blankness broken up by the whisper of Jo's voice. "It will be fine," he heard her say. "We'll be fine. Just come home. I need you." He could almost feel her lips on his before losing all awareness again.
This went on until, with a jerk of horror, Zane realized that he was into the sixth and last fail-safe code. He swung toward Fargo, who had looked away toward Holly. When Fargo turned back, his eyes widened. At first, he did nothing. Zane's eyes lost focus and he turned back to the keyboard, starting to type again. "Oh, shit," groaned Fargo.
He seemed to be waging an internal war with himself for several long seconds before jumping to his feet and spinning toward the security guard. "Give me that," he demanded in a firm voice, gesturing to the gun. Startled, the guard responded instinctually to a direct order from the man he knew as the Director of GD and handed over the weapon.
Suddenly, the room was filled with the sound of screaming engines. Astraeus shuddered then tilted downward, picking up speed as it fell. Beverly's voice came over the audio.
"We told you what the consequences would be if you tried to intervene. But you didn't listen. Military teams have broken into our facility." The audio crackled. "We will survive…but you won't. It's on your heads…" Her voice cut off. A gunshot echoed over the line.
In the mission control room at GD, people were frozen in place. The sounds of screaming engines and voices from Astraeus filled the room.
"Oh, my god, oh, my god…" babbled Senator Wen, who was standing behind Carter, Henry and Jo. "This wasn't supposed to happen."
Carter wheeled around. "What the hell do you mean, this wasn't supposed to happen? Do you know something about this?"
He reached out and began to shake her. Her head swung back and forth like a rag doll's. "It was just supposed to be a threat, something I could use to divert Eureka's funding. We spend so much money on this place, all so a bunch of scientists can play mind games…".
She lapsed into incoherence as Carter released her with a push, pulling his handcuffs out. Before he could move, however, Jo stepped up and punched Wen in the face with a hard right hook. The woman fell to the floor, out cold. Jo looked at Carter, who nodded in grim satisfaction.
Behind them, Henry was shouting orders at the ground crew, who were frantically pounding keyboards all around the room. "Get the FTL connected and activate the BCE, now!" he yelled. A nearby scientist looked up, voice shaking as he said, "Sir, we don't know yet if the FTL is connected with the ship!"
Henry spoke deliberately, leaving no room for argument. "I don't give a good goddamn if we know whether it's connected or not—TURN IT ON!" The man and his co-workers complied. All other eyes in the room were fixed on the tracking screen, which showed the ship's altitude dropping precipitously. 100,000 feet. 75,000 feet. 45,000 feet. 20,000 feet…the audio feed had gone horribly quiet, except for a sound terrifyingly like ripping metal.
Then the numbers vanished. Astraeus was gone from the sky.
A/N: Yeah, I know…I'd be mad at me too for stopping here if I didn't already know what comes next, or at least….I think I do. *insert evil laugh here*