The Assault

18. CHINA LAKE



CHISNALL FELT A RISING PANIC. HE FORCED IN A DEEP breath and let it out slowly, humming quietly. He shut his eyes for a moment and banished the fear to the recesses of his mind.

If ever there was a time for clear thinking, this was it.

The Bzadians had found their way into the monorail tunnel much faster than he could have anticipated, and that meant their escape route was gone. The platform and entrance were blocked. There was no other way out of the rock. They were trapped.

“Don’t let them in,” he said. “This party is invitation only.”

“Chisnall.” It was Fleming’s voice again.

“Yes?”

“I thought you should know. I’ve armed the warhead.”

“Please confirm your last,” Chisnall said.

“I have armed the warhead.”

“Fleming, disarm it, immediately,” Chisnall said.

There was a pause.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Lieutenant,” Fleming said.

“I am ordering you to disarm it,” Chisnall said.

He watched Brogan’s face as he said it, and her look of horror was unmistakable.

“Lieutenant, your mission was to find out what was inside Uluru. My mission was to destroy it, if I thought it necessary. I think it’s necessary. Your mission authority ran out the moment we got inside this rock.”

Chisnall found his eyes drawn to the faces of the young children in front of him.

“Fleming, this facility is full of humans. Adults and children. If that warhead explodes, they will all be killed.” He added as an afterthought, “And so will we.”

“I know,” Fleming said.

“Then what the heck do you think you’re doing?”

“Millions more people will be killed if the Pukes win this war. Maybe the entire human race, for all we know. If the Pukes manage to infiltrate our society, our military, we won’t stand a chance.”

“Fleming …,” Chisnall began, trying to muster an argument. The problem was, Fleming was right.

“As for you and me,” Fleming said, “we were always expendable.”

“Nothing ever changes,” Price muttered.

“Anyway,” Fleming said, “with half the Bzadian Army just about to batter down the doors, we’re not going to live through this anyway. If I’ve gotta go, I’m taking this place with me.”

“Fleming …” Chisnall hesitated again. “I repeat, there are women and children in here. Human women and children.”

“Collateral damage,” Fleming said.

“Do you have any humanity?” Chisnall seethed.

“Do you have what it takes to be a soldier?” was Fleming’s response.

Chisnall looked around the team. Monster’s face was calm, impassive. Wilton’s face was a tightly controlled mask. Only Price seemed affected, looking around at the faces of the children with horror in her eyes, although she said nothing.

Chisnall flipped his comm off. “I’m going to talk to him. See if I can change his mind.”

“Where’s Brogan?” Wilton asked.

There was only one place Brogan would go. Massed in the tunnel were hordes of Bzadian soldiers. If she let them in, it was all over.

Chisnall ran. Monster ran alongside him.

“Fleming!” Chisnall yelled, but there was no answer. “Fleming, Brogan’s loose. She’s probably heading toward the entrance. Don’t let her get near that door!”

There was no answer.


[1440 hours]

[Uluru Secure Facility, New Bzadia]

Yozi fumed, staring down the tunnel, as if by doing so he could hurry things up.

“What’s keeping them?” Alizza asked. He took off his helmet and felt the bandage that covered his forehead. It was already sodden with blood from his head wound, but he didn’t seem to care as long as it didn’t get into his eyes.

Yozi looked at his big friend and clicked his teeth in frustration. Around them, the heavily armed soldiers of the 2nd Assault Battalion shuffled their feet or checked their weapons. They looked angry.

Movement at last. Light at the far end of the tunnel quickly grew into three PGZ goons carrying flashlights and surrounding a small, frightened-looking technician.

The technician was carrying a black metal briefcase, clutching it in front of him as if his life depended on it. It probably did, Yozi thought. He extended a hand and helped the tech up onto the platform but did not offer the same courtesy to the PGZ.

“How long will it take?” Yozi asked.

“J-just a few minutes,” the technician stammered. “I need to override the locking codes.”

“Then get on with it.”

The technician opened the briefcase to reveal a keyboard and screen. He pulled out a cable that had been coiled on top of the keyboard, then handed the briefcase to Yozi to hold while he flipped up the cover on a computer port in the doors and plugged the cable in.

He pressed a key on the keyboard, and the screen came to life.


[1445 hours]

[Uluru Secure Facility, New Bzadia]

Monster kicked open a door and they bounced and skidded their way through a short tunnel to the atrium.

“How do I disarm it?” they heard Brogan shout.

Somehow she had removed her restraints. Brogan had Fleming on the floor, her knee on his back. She had taken her coil-gun back from him, and it was now firmly planted in his ear.

When she noticed Monster and Chisnall racing for her, she sprang off Fleming and leaped toward the control panel, her hand outstretched to hit the button that would open the doors and release the waiting hordes of Bzadians.

Chisnall hurled himself forward, but there was no way he was ever going to make it in time.

Her index finger was just about to connect with the button when the panel exploded into shards of metal and plastic.

Brogan grunted in pain and snatched her hand back, droplets of blood spraying from her fingers.

Her other hand, the one holding her gun, began to rise toward Chisnall. But he got there first, brushing her arm aside as his body slammed into hers, flattening her up against the wall.

She managed to hang on to her gun and tried again to angle it toward him. He grasped her wrist and smashed it into the wall once, twice, until the gun came loose. She struggled, clawing at him, trying to twist away. Then Monster and Fleming were there. They grabbed her arms and pinned her to the floor.

“Great shot,” Fleming said, looking at the shattered control panel.

“Not so much,” Monster said. “I was aiming at Brogan.”

She gave him an evil look. Chisnall helped hold her while Monster secured her arms behind her back with a metal tie. She wouldn’t wriggle out of that.

“What’s happening outside?” Chisnall asked.

Fleming rolled away from them and stuck his head into the security office.

“They’re still trying to get the door open, as far as I can tell.”

“Okay. Fleming, you have to disarm the warhead.”

“I’m not going to,” Fleming said. “You’re trying to save a few lives. I’m trying to save the human race.”

There was a silence. Chisnall stared at the floor for a moment, then looked up.

“How long till it explodes?”

“I set it for an hour,” Fleming said. He checked his watch. “We have fifty-three mikes left.”

Monster had taken a couple of grenades off his belt. He secured them to the door, linking the safety pins together so that when the doors slid open, it would pull the pins out of the grenades.

“Welcome to Uluru,” he said.

“What are you going to do, Lieutenant?” Fleming asked.

“I don’t know. But for a start, let’s get out of here,” Chisnall said.

He grabbed Brogan by the arm, wrenching her to her feet. She tried to shake him off, but Monster took her other arm and forced her along with them.

Fleming picked up her coil-gun and followed.

“This way.” Chisnall led them into the administration area.

He let go of Brogan’s arm and faced her, staring into her eyes until she dropped her gaze.

“Let her go,” he said.

Monster did and stepped back a pace. Brogan glowered at Chisnall but said nothing.

“Untie her,” Chisnall said.

Monster looked at him carefully. Fleming asked, “Are you sure?”

Chisnall nodded.

Monster reached behind her and cut the metal tie with his knife. She rubbed her wrists where the metal had cut into them.

“Sit down,” Chisnall said.

She sat.

He pulled up a chair and sat opposite her, then pulled out a gauze pad from his medipack and reached for her hand, which was still dripping blood.

“Do we have time for this?” she asked.

“We have all the time in the world,” Chisnall said. “In less than an hour, that warhead is going to turn this place into dust. But we won’t care, because the Pukes will be through that door in a minute, and we won’t survive that. So we may as well just sit here and wait to die.”

“If in a few minutes I’m going to be smeared all over that wall, why bother with my hand?”

“I guess it passes the time,” he said.

She let him clean and bandage her fingers without further resistance and checked his work with a trained medic’s eye when he had finished.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” he said. “About this place. The Pukes are growing their own little humans to infiltrate human society.”

She said nothing.

“We’re about to die,” he said. “You might as well tell me the truth. I get it about Uluru, but I don’t understand you. This facility is, what, maybe ten years old? You’re sixteen. How does that work?”

She shrugged. “I was one of the first. From the original experiments. I was brought here when I was five. I can’t remember anything before that.”

Chisnall thought about that for a moment. “We didn’t see any kids younger than about five,” he said.

“No. Newborn babies are taken out into the community to live with Bzadian families. We all grow up thinking we’re Bzadian. Some don’t even realize they look different. When we turn five, we’re brought back to Uluru for training.”

“Brogan.” Chisnall stopped, unsure how to continue. “You were raised by Pukes, but you’re not a Puke. Does that not register with you at all?”

“We are going to save the planet,” Brogan said. “You humans have been destroying it for centuries. When you’re gone, it will be a cleaner, better place.”

“That’s propaganda your masters have fed you to justify the invasion. The truth is, the Pukes just want the planet for themselves.”

Brogan shook her head.

“You’re a human being,” Chisnall said. “You’ve lived among us. You know we’re not perfect, but are we all that bad? They’ve brainwashed you since the time you were born to think like them. To go against your own species. But now is the time to wake up. Look around you. You’ve seen the baby factory.”

That got a reaction. She stiffened slightly and shut her eyes.

“You grew up here. You must have known what they were doing to those women,” he pressed.

“I didn’t know,” she said. “We were never allowed in that room. Those women are …” Her voice trailed off.

“One of them, or one like them, is your mother,” Chisnall said.

Brogan’s jaw tightened but her eyes opened slowly, awash with unshed tears.

“Holly, I don’t know what they told you about humans, but you know the truth. You know us.” Chisnall paused. “You know me.”

Now the tears fell.

“What’s happening, guys?” It was Wilton’s voice on the comm.

“Hold fast,” Chisnall said. “We’re about to get company.”

“Brogan.” He reached out and took her hand. She resisted at first, but then let him hold it.

“I’m not your friend, Ryan. I’m your enemy,” she said.

“So it was all part of a plan?” he asked. “Get close to the team leader so you could dig up more information?”

“No,” she said, and her face hardened as if she was trying to hold back some strong emotion. “They wouldn’t have allowed that. In case it made it difficult for me to do what I had to do. And it did.”

Chisnall nodded. “You and I are on opposite sides. If I could change your mind, I would. But there’s one thing we agree on: we don’t want to see all those women and children killed when the warhead goes off.”

“They’re innocent. That would be murder,” Brogan whispered.

“I’m not arguing,” Chisnall said. “But I don’t think you’re going to convince Fleming. You grew up in this place. Is there any other way out? Any emergency exits? Anything like that?”

“Promise you’ll take the kids.”

“So there is a way out?”

“All of them, Ryan.”

Fast tears began rolling down her cheeks.

“I promise we’ll try.” Chisnall sat back in the chair and said nothing more. He let go of her hand and let her sit there, alone, suddenly small and vulnerable.

“There’s an air shaft,” she said at last.

“Where?”

“From the plant room. It runs up to the surface. It comes out in the cleft.”

Chisnall tried to visualize that. On top of Uluru was a huge cleft, almost a valley, that ran down to join one of the gaps between the “toes” of the giant foot.

“Is it big enough to get through?”

She nodded. “You can crawl through it.” She stopped and looked at Fleming. “We could crawl through it. A human adult probably not.”

Fleming’s expression did not change.

“There are grilles, air filters, but they can be opened, if you know how,” Brogan said. “I’ve been through it. Me and some of the others. We wanted to see the outside world.”

“Does it run straight up?” Fleming asked. “That would be a hell of a climb.”

“Only part of it,” Brogan said. “And there are rungs. They need to clean the air filters occasionally. Most of it is on a steep angle, but you can crawl it.”

“Will you show us?” Chisnall asked.

She looked at the ground for a moment, then nodded. “You’ve promised you will save those kids, Ryan.”

“I won’t go back on my word,” Chisnall said. “I want to save them as much as you do.”

There was a shout from the entrance and the sound of running boots, followed almost immediately by the twin cracks of Monster’s grenade booby trap.