Terran Tomorrow

CHAPTER 27

Jason lay on the bridge of the Return, in a newly installed “captain’s bed”—Lindy’s term—that he hated and was prepared to leave as soon as possible. Lieutenant Allen was at the controls. Major Duncan was there, and Sergeant Hillson, and Branch Carter, newly awakened and hovering somewhere between fascination and outrage at everything he had missed while in v-coma. Everything that could be tested, had been.

Just before dawn, Jason had traveled on a carry-bot from Monterey Base to the ship. Lindy and Hillson walked beside him, along with three members of J Squad, including Mason Kandiss. Before that, Kandiss had carried him up the stairs to the command post, with Lindy cursing colorfully that the dome had no elevator. Jason had set the necessary controls on a delayed timer. He looked out the clear dome one last time, at the gleam of Lab Dome in the brightening sky, the streaks of gold and pink on the eastern horizon, the forest burned by attacks, the graveyard beside the domes where lay Kayla Rhinehart and Glamet^vor¡’s ashes, the bodies of Dr. Sugiyama and all the troops killed by New America, and the soldiers who had been executed under the rules of war. Then Kandiss, moving more quickly now, had carried him down the steps and through Enclave Dome.

Little was left inside. Sticks of lumber, scrap metal. Everything that could be pried out of both domes, had been. Entire scientific labs, computers, kitchen equipment, furniture, supplies. Wiring had been torn out, partitions taken down, weapons crated, all of it plus the Bradley and quadcopters stowed on the Return. All but one of the FiVees and Bradleys had been given to the evacuees. Jason was carried through a littered but empty dome, a shell, only the alien walls still in place.

They had an hour.

A FiVee waited just outside Enclave for the short trip to the Return. Guarded by what was left of Jason’s battalion, the ship stood in an open space by the river. Jason was carried aboard. The entire vast ship, of course, had been contaminated with RSA. A section, however, had been fitted with a transplanted airlock and decon chamber, sealed off, and decontaminated under Dr. McKay’s direction. This section, which included the bridge, was where everyone who was not an RSA survivor would spend the entire voyage. Cramped, but necessary. Gratefully Jason shed his esuit.

Twenty minutes.

When they arrived at World, the RSA-contaminated ship might have to be left in orbit, although that would be a waste of good living areas. However, Jason was confident that with their virophaged-enhanced intelligence, Worlders would have devised ways to deal with such situations. After all, look what Toni Steffens and Major Farouk had come up with in much less time. Worlders would all have the same enhanced intelligence, and so they would have incredible tech.

“No,” Jane said, “they won’t.” However, Jason wasn’t sure he believed her. Twenty-eight years was a long time, even without v-coma enhancements. Twenty-eight years ago, he had been a child of ten, and the United States had existed as a real country, with real cities and an orderly chain of command and… no, he would not dwell on what had been lost. After all, he could not control the past.

He’d said, “Jane, the human mind is endlessly inventive.”

Jane had merely shrugged, a gesture she must have learned from Colin.

All right—there were unknowns ahead. When hadn’t that been true? As long as the next piece of tech worked…

“Lift the ship,” he ordered, and the Return rose noiselessly straight up into the sky.

On the wall screen, the twin domes of Monterey Base glinted silver-blue in the sun. Then he could see the coastline, the river, the mountains. Colin and his people were down there somewhere, days away from the base, far enough out to be safe. And was that, glimpsed for only a second, a road, with moving vehicles on it? The convoy from Fort Hood?

Impossible to tell.

Fifteen minutes.

The ship, by what magic of physics Jason had no idea, hovered in the upper stratosphere. His hands gripped the arms of his bed, and he forced his fingers to loosen. The day was cloudless over what had been California, a mosaic of blue and brown and green. Jason did something he hadn’t done since he’d been a small boy: He prayed. Let the quantum computer not have been destroyed when I attacked Sierra Base. Let it still be operable, shielded under the rubble. Let the signal get through to the silos.

Was that even a prayer? To pray for such destruction?

He knew enough military history to know he was not the first.

The first explosion, of the consoles in the command post, was too contained by the dome to be visible on the Return’s wall screen. Nor was it visible on the transmitted image from the surveillance camera set a few miles from the domes. Those explosions, however, were mostly backup in case the main effort failed. Jason didn’t know whether conventional explosions would destroy every last virophage spore at Monterey Base. He was taking no chances. Before it was destroyed, the command post had sent the signal to the quantum computer.

Five minutes later, Specialist Martin, seated at the radar console brought from the signal station, said crisply, “Incoming ICBMs from Alaskan silos, sir.” Her voice sounded rich with satisfaction.

But, then, she was young.

Three minutes.

Two.

Please please please…

The transmitted image from the ground camera exploded into smoke and fire, eerily silent, before it disappeared. Images on the wall screen were smaller, no more than gray puffs. Still, Jason thought he glimpsed a mushroom cloud rising to the sky. But even if he hadn’t, the domes—the two unshatterable domes built by unknowable super-aliens—were bursting into cleansing flames. Monterey Base was no more. And the virophage no longer existed on Earth.

On the bridge, no one spoke. The silence spun itself out, so long it became painful. Jason realized it was up to him to speak, not only to give the order but to set the tone for everything human to come. Even though he had no real idea what it would be, even though he could not control what happened, even though the order itself might sound like the cheesiest of clichés.

“Lieutenant Allen, set course for World. We are going to the stars.”