From Above - A Novella Read online

  With most of up-town reduced to atoms there isn’t anyone left to report to. Hell, I might be the highest ranking cop in town. All city-bound lines of communication are inoperable, so I turn to the next best source of information. The dashboard sat-link blinks on and is instantly filled with the image of a screaming woman. She appears to be reporting on the wave of destruction that just ravaged my city, but she’s incoherent. Useless.

  “Channels one through fifty, news filter priority one.” The sat-link responds to my voice like an obedient dog, filling the screen with twenty three thumbnail feeds. I scan the images and listen to the mix of voices.

  “English only.” One by one, images disappear. Only five remain when it’s done. Three screens show women reporters crying their guts out. Another displays a man wailing like a stuck pig—embarrassing. The fifth shows an aerial shot of the carnage, something had carved a clean, perfectly round hole in the center of the city, miles wide and countless fathoms deep. Millions of lives have been lost.

  Rehna gasps. “My God.”

  Women...

  The kid is sitting in Rehna’s lap, staring intently at the screen, eyes wide. Kid’s taking it all in stride. Probably not old enough to be an emotional wreck yet.

  “Track five, audio only. Enlarge.” The image of the destruction fills the screen.

  The voice of a reporter speaks calmly over the feed. “Once again, as it did a year ago, a sinister force from orbit has struck the Earth. The source of the devastation is still unknown and with The Authority headquarters destroyed, chances are, we will never know where and when this evil force might strike again. Scientists studying the clean-cut hole of last year’s attack could not identify what kind of weapon was used, only that it is far more advanced than anything in the World District’s arsenal. Could technology finally be turning on—”

  Before I have time to react, the kid reaches out and messes with the sat-link controls. We lose the feed.

  “What the hell, kid? Don’t touch this shit,” I say, while attempting to readjust the controls.

  “Move your damn hand,” the kid barks at me.

  I stop and give her the coldest stare I can muster—sends most mutts running scared. But the kid just gives it back to me.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Well, it ain’t kid.”

  I wait.

  “Gawyn.”

  “Well, Gawyn. I ain’t letting no simp mess with my mobile unit.”

  “Good. Cause I ain’t no simp, old man.”

  Old man? Kid’s looking to get a close up look at my knuckles talking like that. I clench my left fist. Then I feel a squeeze on my shoulder. Rehna’s glaring at me. “Let her play with the freakin sat-link, Priest.”

  I smile. “There you go talking dirty to me again.”

  Gawyn goes to work. Her fingers are a blur on the screen, working the controls masterfully, faster than I could even with the synth-arm. My eyes widen with every half second, cause that’s all it takes for her to access The Authority’s satellite mainframe. She’s no simp. She’s a damn cyber-genius.

  “What are you doin, kid?”

  “The anti-matter pulse came from orbit.”

  “Anti-matter pulse?” Rehna’s as confused as I am.

  “That’s just what I call it. I detected its energy field twenty minutes before the pulse. That’s how I got out of the target area in time, but just barely.”

  “You can detect it?” I ask, knowing it’s a dumb question.

  “Duh. Any kid with an old 40-Gig system and a sat-link could detect it. But you have to look for it. Auto detection won’t pick it up as more than a temporary heat-spike.”

  “And you were looking for it?”

  “Since last year.” The kid’s fingers continue across the controls. She breaches several protected servers and accesses classified surveillance systems. “It’s the most kick-ass weapon since the beginning of time.”

  The kid looks me in the eyes. “You’re must be lucky or something. Missed you twice now.”

  Rehna and I look at each other. “You know who I am?”

  “Who doesn’t. Your wrinkly face was pasted to every sat-link transmission for a month... Of course, not everyone has been tracking you for the last year. You know, for all your research, you didn’t find much.”

  I look the kid in the eyes and try not to blink. “You’ve been spying on me for a year?”

  “It’s not like it’s hard, you know.” The kid smiles. I have one of the most secure systems in the city. She probably sees it as a playground. Damn kids today. “You’ve been trying to find out what happened that day...what took your arm, and your Tac-suit. You’re obsessed with Tac-suits.”

  I’m losing patience. “Get to the point.”

  “When I detected the heat spike, I came to find you. The anti-matter pulse cut the engines off my hyper-scooter. Almost got me too, and I crashed just outside the target area. That’s when I found you. I knew that you, more than anyone else, would take action once I told you what I know.”

  I raise an eyebrow. It’s all I’m willing to give.

  Gawyn taps one last button on the sat-link. A diagram of Earth orbit and every piece of space junk currently above the city blinks onto the screen. One of the objects is highlighted with a red circle.

  “And this is?”

  “How’d you ever become a cop?”

  Kid’s a wise ass. I like her.

  Gawyn rolls her neck and speaks quickly. “I figured that if the antimatter pulse fired on this city again that it was probably in a geosynchronous orbit above us.”

  “Okay...”

  “This cuts out bazillions of other possible suspect satellites.”

  Rehna leans forward. “Meaning we’re left with the millions of orbiting objects currently over the city.

  “Right, but not everything up there is geosynchronous and the fact that nothing in orbit was destroyed means that what we’re looking for is on the bottom layer of a half mile of junk.”

  Damn kid is smart. Not even the tech-boys could have figured this out. Good thing too, now that they’re all dead.

  “Now we’re left with only a few thousand targets.”

  “And you’ve narrowed it down to one?” Rehna asks.

  Gawyn nods.

  “How?”

  “It’s hot,” I say, finally catching up with the kid.

  “Right, but not for long. It’s already cooling off.”

  I activate the hatch and it seals down over us. “What are you doing?” Rehna asks.

  “Buckle up,” I tell them.

  Gawyn looks nervous. “I don’t have a seatbelt!”

  I smile. “Better double up then.”

  Rehna and Gawyn wrap a belt around the two of them, and I gun the throttle to the max, pulling more G’s than a Disney Universe shuttle pod. I aim for the sky, swerving in and out of airborne traffic—most of it fleeing the city. Three minutes later, we clear ten thousand feet and leave most of the traffic behind.

  “Priest, what are you planning to do?” Rehna asks. I can tell she’s afraid of the answer. I try to go easy on her.

  “Even been in space?” I ask.

  Rehna and Gawyn stare at me blankly. The kid explodes, “Bring me back! Bring me back down!”

  “I can’t,” I say as calmly as possible.

  “Why not?” Gawyn shouts.

  “Cause, kid, I might need you.”

  Gawyn stares at me. I can feel her trying to gauge my seriousness. Her eyes narrow. “You’re right, old man. You do need me.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Priest, but mobile units aren’t rated for space travel.” Rehna is trying to remain calm. I’m pretty sure that if the kid weren’t on her lap, she might fight me for the controls.

  “Actually, that’s not entirely true. Up-town might not have let me change the color, but they did let me make a few modifications.” I can’t help but smile.

  “Priest...What modifications?”

  I respond by
opening a panel next to my right knee. After flipping a switch, the mobile unit beings to shake as loud whirs and clacks emanate from the back. Sounds like we’re falling to pieces, but I know better. Rehna screams as we lose power and our ascent slows.

  Just as our forward momentum ceases and gravity reclaims its pull on our mobile unit at twenty-five thousand feet, the secondary propulsion unit kicks in, slowly at first, but building in power with each passing nanosecond. Suddenly with a burst of speed, we’re flattened against our seats, skin stretching back as we enter Earth’s crowded orbit.