It also helped that I was soon invulnerable, at least for almost fifteen minutes.
I mowed through groups of soldiers like a bowling ball, with bullets and knives unable to slow me down in the slightest. If a few soldiers managed to hold me, stop me temporarily, I would use my limited martial arts skills to put them down, but I mostly counted on my Olympic-level sprinting speed to get away until I ran headlong into the next group.
I considered calling Nick to have him reposition soldiers in front of me, but this would take too long, and I was making great progress.
The real trick was to throw a head fake near the end, so the enemy suspected I had a destination other than the hangar in mind. I made sure I was seen heading back to the east, only to double back and use a stealth approach this time to traverse the remaining distance to my destination.
All in all, it worked like a dream. If Tessa wasn’t in jeopardy, I’d have been ecstatic. As it was, though, I was feeling the opposite emotion. I was haunted by a never-ending waking nightmare of the footlocker being thrown open and Tessa being machine-gunned into bloody pulp at point-blank range. This video had played over and over again in my mind’s eye, driving my panic and adrenaline through the roof and fueling my desperate blitzkrieg as I blasted through enemy lines.
When I finally entered the hangar, I pulled out the phone I had used to call Nick and lowered my head, appearing to be engrossed by whatever was on the screen. I meandered over to the nearest ship as if I had all the time in the world, which was as difficult as anything I’d ever done, as my every instinct demanded that I race there, well aware that Tessa could be dead at any moment.
“Open Says Me,” I said when I reached the ship, and an opening magically appeared in the middle of the craft with a ramp already extended, one that appeared to be made of a sparkling material that caught the light like diamond.
I entered the ship, and it sealed itself up once again. I took a deep breath, praying that Nick’s position as second-in-command would ensure that his orders to the AI were carried out to the letter.
The interior was identical to the one the Swarm had made me believe I’d been in, and the real one I had taken with Nick to tour the zip-craft factory. Cold and utilitarian, as usual, with six swiveling captains’ chairs arranged in a circle in the center of the craft, and multiple monitors hanging down from the ceiling.
“Where are you with the password?” I asked the nanites anxiously as I dropped into one of the chairs, which promptly contoured to my form in a way that maximized comfort.
“Still working on it, but we believe we’re getting very close.”
“Close isn’t good enough!” I bellowed with my thoughts, taking out my fears about Tessa on the poor servants who had done nothing but help me.
Three minutes later my personal shield switched off, having hit the point that would cause irreversible damage to me, even with the tiny MDs patrolling my bloodstream. I felt completely naked and exposed, but this was irrational. If the ship had given away my location, I’d be surrounded already.
Finally, six minutes later, Nick Nicola walked calmly through the southernmost hangar entrance wheeling a stainless-steel gurney in front of him. The patient on the gurney was completely covered so that even his face wasn’t exposed, but it had to be Kussmann. Had to be.
The captain had done it!
The base’s second-in-command was about the only person who could wheel a covered man into the hangar and not have to answer any questions. Less than a minute later he and the gurney had joined me inside the ship. Nick pulled back on the blanket covering Kussmann’s face, and I felt an immediate relief. Just knowing the Swarm was unable to dictate the base commander’s actions boosted my morale in a big way.
I asked Nick for the dart gun and revival agent, and he handed them to me without question, and then took a seat facing me.
“I can’t thank you enough,” I said. “For everything. I feel like giving you a giant bear hug right now.”
The captain grinned. “Way to make this awkward, mate,” he said in amusement.
I winced. “Unfortunately, it’s about to get more awkward.”
Saying this, I raised the dart gun and shot him twice in one smooth motion.
“I’m really sorry, Nick,” I said to his collapsed body. “But I had no choice.”
And I didn’t. He was too brainwashed, there was too much going on, and I had no time to properly explain. And when I went to herculean efforts to rescue Brad and Tessa, he would know that I had lied to him, and would actively work against me.
Not that I could blame him, given the misinformation he’d been fed.
Still, a little uninterrupted sleep might do him good. And I needed to keep him out of my hair until I was either triumphant—or dead.
50
“We have the thought-sequence password,” announced the nanites four minutes later, causing me to almost jump out of my seat. It seemed as if I’d been holding my breath since I had shot Nick with the darts.
“Transmit it to the ship’s AI now. Let me know when it’s been accepted and you’ve breached the backdoor entrance.”
This time I only had to wait ten seconds. “Password accepted. We have full control.”
“Have the ship use this password to breach all other ships and Swarm-designed AIs.”
“Done,” said the nanite AI immediately.
“Change the command password for all ships and AIs to something you deem impossible to crack and implant it in my memory. Seal up all of their backdoor entrances so no one can ever use them again. Quickly!”
“Done,” said the nanite AI almost before I had finished giving the order.