New Vegas: Sheason's Story - Chapter 155: Express Elevator

Good morning, wasteland! It’s your host, Three Dog, BOW WOW! And I know it’s gonna be a great day out there. Just make sure to keep your eyes to the skies today, kiddies. I promise, you’re gonna be in for one hell of a lightshow! Now, some music. It’s the Ink Spots, with their timeless classic, “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire,” right here… only on Galaxy News Radio.

“ATTENTION IDIOTS!” A voice boomed and echoed somewhere above my head, jolting me awake.

“Mnh wh-huh?” Cass muttered blearily, coughing into my neck. I was too groggy to vocalize.

“At our current speed, we are approximately half an hour away from initial firing range. Give or take,” the voice buzzed, a little more clearly this time. It sounded like… was that Sally? It could’ve been Moira. I couldn’t tell who it was beyond ‘female.’ “All combat personnel are to report to action stations immediately. That includes all wastelanders, Enclave assassins, and dumbass Vault boys. I repeat: get your asses up here, now. This shit is about to get real!”

“Mnnf…” I grunted out, trying to get up. However, Cass was passed out on top of me, making that prospect very difficult. I patted her on the shoulder several times to try and encourage her to move. “C’mon, Cass. Geddup. S’time to go to work.”

“F’ve m’r m’nuzzz…” Cass burbled incoherently beneath a mass of tangled red hair. I sighed, kissed her forehead, and gently shoved her off me. She rolled onto the bed and just kept snoring. I shook my head and sighed.

“It’s gonna be a long day, innit?”

“Fuck, I’m lost, aren’t I?”

After I grabbed all my weapons and armor, gearing myself up for the imminent violence ahead, I started walking in the direction that I thought would lead to the bridge. I realized pretty quickly that none of what I was seeing around me looked familiar, so I started to try and backtrack. But trying to go back the way I came didn’t work, because it didn’t take long for me to end up somewhere that I really didn’t recognize.

It wasn’t until I turned a corner and ended up in exactly the same spot where I’d been ten seconds ago – like I hadn’t even gone anywhere – that I was finally certain: this ship is deliberately fucking with me now.

“Oh, great,” I sighed, running my hand over my helmet. “Now I’m hearing voices. I swear, if the walls start leaking blood…” I trailed off when I realized these sounds weren’t actually in my mind. I cocked my head to the side, and that was a definite recording of a man’s voice I was hearing. I followed the sound, and it eventually led me to an open door.

“…I can’t tell you why I left or where I’m going. I don’t want you to follow me. God knows life in the Vault isn’t perfect, but at least you’ll be safe. Just knowing that will be enough to keep me going.” The voice on the recording paused, and a second voice spoke up. It sounded muted, like he was speaking several feet away from the mic.

“Don’t mean to rush you, Doc, but I’d feel better if we got this over with.”

“Okay, go ahead.” the first voice spoke up again, muffled a bit. There was a loud hissing, and the grinding of metal on metal somewhere in the background of the recording, and the man continued, speaking directly into the mic this time. “Goodbye. I love you.”

I found the source of the noise just as the recording clicked off. Chris was hunched over and sitting on a large crate, right in the middle of a room that looked like a small warehouse. For a few seconds after the playback ended, I elected to stay at the edge of the room, and didn’t move or say anything. Chris sat there in silence as well, cradling his Pip Boy. And then:

“It’s alright,” he said aloud. “You can come in. It’s no big deal.” I laughed nervously, making my way into the room.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Got lost on the way to the Bridge.” Chris gave me a very knowing nod; clearly, this sort of thing was par for the course on Zeta. “So, uh… what was that?”

“Just a little tradition of mine,” Chris said, leaning back against one of the crates and smiling up at me. “I always listen to that message from my dad before I know I’m going to fight the Enclave.” He looked down and let out a heavy sigh; his façade of cocky good-humor faltered slightly, and he very briefly looked incredibly tired. “It reminds me how my adventure started… where I came from… and what I’m fighting for.”

“Keeps you grounded,” I nodded approvingly at him, and he looked back up with that same familiar grin.

“Well, as grounded as guys like us can be, anyway!” My first instinct was to try and arguer, but in the end I just shrugged.

“Fair enough. So, I got a question.”

“Shoot.”

“You mentioned earlier that your dad used to travel with Marcus, right?” Chris nodded. “How do you know?”

“After I left the Vault, I started searching for my old man, like I told you,” Chris began. “I looked all over, trying to find clues to where he went, or what he’d been doing… but it wasn’t until long after he died that I learned who my father really was.” I raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling like I was missing quite a few important details from that story. At first, Chris didn’t say anything; he just pointed at the wall he was facing. I walked around a stack of boxes to get a good look.

Mounted on the wall was a filthy, tattered, and generally beaten-to-hell Vault suit. The way the arms were positioned as it hung from the wall, it almost looked like the suit was being crucified. A pair of lights mounted on the ceiling illuminated the suit with two bright beams, and both of them were focused directly on the large number on the back of the suit: 13.

“What is…” I trailed off, mesmerized by it for some reason. This is… why does this seem so familiar?

“I found that in one of my dad’s old safehouses in West Virginia, about a year after he died. It was an underground bunker, deep in the hills, secluded and locked up from the world. I found that suit, and so much else besides. Notes, holotapes, pictures… even an old Pip Boy 2000,” Chris explained. “That suit belonged to David, the original Vault Dweller from Vault 13. He wore it when he started walking the wasteland in 2161. He wore it when he defeated the Master. He wore it when he founded the village of Arroyo. And he left that suit behind when he left Arroyo behind. The elders kept hold of it until they gave it to David’s grandson, James. My father.”

“The Chosen One…” I laughed and shook my head. “Hell of a thing, you going on crazy adventures like the two of them.” Chris nodded, smiling up at me.

“Well, this kind of thing runs in the family, I suppose,” Chris got up, and slapped me on the back. “Oh! By the way, I’ve got a present for you.” Immediately, he dashed off to the other side of the warehouse, and started rifling through one of the boxes.

“Should I be scared?” In response, Chris pulled out a chromed metal device, and tossed it at me. I caught it with my cybernetic hand, and took a closer look. It was a small half-sphere that fit snugly in the palm of my hand, with a strange pattern of indentations and buttons on the flat part. It felt warm in my palm for a few seconds, a few dim blue lights flickered, and then it cooled down. “What is it?”

“It’s an emergency teleport homer,” Chris said with a nod. I just kept looking at him questioningly.

“What, like the Transportalponder! I have?” Chris shook his head.

“Not quite. That one you have probably won’t work on the Moon, because we’re out of range of any of your satellites. But that one is linked to the systems on Zeta. It has a much greater range. Think of it like a last resort, ‘take me anywhere but here’ button.” Chris grabbed me by the shoulder and leaned down, to get eye-to-eye with me. “You and I both know that our exit strategy once we finish the plan is gonna be a crap shoot. That right there will allow you – and a passenger – a guaranteed way out if things go as tits-up as I think they’re going to go.”

“But I thought teleporters didn’t work with more than one person?” I asked, remembering some of the horrible side effects Jeeves’ had mentioned when I built the first teleporter in the Big Empty.

“Yours have that limitation, sure, because I’m fairly certain the designs were based off damaged technology,” Chris said. “I think the scientists who designed it failed to factor in the Dark Energy equations needed to make it work properly, so they weren’t able to compensate for the effects of quantum superposition…”

I stared at him blankly as he kept talking. Not because I didn’t understand – but because I did, and that was making me all manner of confused. Was this something my brain had studied while sitting in the Mentats-laced bath in Mobius’ Forbidden Zone? Was all this talk helping me remember this?

“… and then the quantum tunnel slips between the 10th and 11th dimensions by using a Calabi-Yau manifold, allowing it to return to the home dimension without incident. You get it?”

“This is a way off the Moon if I get stuck?” I held up the device, and decided not to make myself any more confused than I already was.

“For you and a friend, yes,” Chris nodded.

“You could’ve just said that,” I deadpanned. Chris laughed again.

“Well, where’s the fun in that?” he laughed, and gave me a thumbs-up. “Word of warning, though: make sure you don’t activate it until you’ve used up every other escape option. It’ll definitely get you off the Moon and back to Earth… but it’ll select coordinates from your Pip Boy at random. Depending on where you’ve been while wearing that thing, you could end up somewhere just as dangerous.” Chris paused, scratching his chin. “Probably not, though!”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I pocketed the device and nodded at him. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it! Us Vault kids gotta stick together, you know?” Again, I was confused. Why did he think I was a Vault – and then it hit me.

“Oh, right, the Pip Boy! Yeah, I’m not… I’m not actually from a Vault. I only got this two months ago.”

Chris stared at me for a long time. It was hard to get a read on exactly what he was thinking, given the sunglasses he was still wearing (does he ever take them off?), but he just smiled and nodded.

“My mistake,” Chris said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Now come on, I’ll help you find the Bridge.”

Chris and I materialized at the back of the bridge, and I was presented with a bustle of activity. I saw Moira, RL-3, a blonde guy I didn’t recognize (presumably that Elliott Tercorien person), and several strange robots all manning various consoles. I was expecting the pale white sphere of the Moon to dominate the windows in front, but most of it was cast in shadow, and all I could see was a relatively tiny sliver of the horizon. Several holographic screens were winking in and out of existence in the space between the windows and the platform. Sally, Cass, and Tuera were all standing in the middle of the room.

“Finally. There you guys are,” Sally said, greeting the two of us. “What, did you two get lost on the way here?” Chris nudged me forward.

“He did.” I tried glaring at him in annoyance, but the effect was lessened somewhat by my helmet. “I’m gonna head below decks, and prep the saucer for drop. Enjoy the show!” He nodded at me and walked back onto the platform; he vanished with barely a shimmer, just an orange glow from the platform underneath. Sally practically started skipping as she made her way to the big captain’s chair.

“Wait, hang on. How did you get up here before me?” I asked Cass. She looked confused.

“I just followed th’ signs, wasn’t difficult.”

“Me too,” Tuera added with a curt nod.

“Signs?” I didn’t get an answer, because Sally – now sitting in the big captain’s chair – had suddenly gotten very loud.

“Ops, status report! Tercorien, do we have a visual?” Yeah, that had definitely been her on the intercom, earlier.

“Aye, Captain,” Elliott responded from his console. “We are currently holding steady, in geosynchronous orbit directly above the Eratosthenes Crater.”

“Onscreen,” Sally ordered, slouching in the chair and leaning on her elbow. The air directly in front of the windows buzzed, and all of the holographic screens disappeared, replaced with a large monitor that winked into existence. It was an overhead view of the lunar surface, on a side that was definitely cast in shadow.

I almost laughed out loud. We were going to the Dark Side of the Moon. Oh, I can’t wait to tell Veronica about this! I could almost hear the Pink Floyd in my head.

The image changed scale several times, zooming in on a bright light coming from the surface. It took five jumps, but eventually we saw what it was: a large crater on the surface, lit from within by all the lights and windows on a massive structure in the center. At least, I assumed it was massive. I couldn’t really tell, but it seemed like a safe bet that the place was huge.

“Why does it look like a W?” Cass asked. And then she tilted her head. “OH! I get it! It’s supposed to be a giant ‘E’ isn’t it? For Enclave! Clever…”

“S’not that clever. Narcissistic fucks,” I muttered. Tuera glanced over her shoulder at me. “Uh… no offense.” She shrugged.

“None taken.”

“Conn, have they spotted us?” Sally swiveled in the chair, facing Moira. She had something in her ear, connected to a jury-rigged panel on one of the consoles by a long coiling wire.

“I don’t think so…” Moira paused, tapping the thing in her ear. “Wait, no, scratch that! They’ve definitely spotted us! Look!” She pointed at the screen, and there was a faint green shimmer – a disk like transparent plastic appearing at the lip of the crater. “Looks like they’ve closed off the whole crater with that plasma shield of theirs!” I was honestly half expecting to hear a “Vzmm!” noise when the shield went up, but it didn’t.

“Captain!” RL-3 swiveled in midair, keeping one of his robotic eyes and one of his arms focused on his console. “I’m detecting multiple missile launches and several energy buildups on the surface!” Sure enough, several lights on the screen seemed to be getting bigger. And yet, despite this, there was still no sound to accompany it. Perhaps my expectations have been colored somewhat by too many sci fi holotapes?

“Divert auxiliary power to shields! Keep them fully charged!” Sally barked. “Sergeant, ready a return salvo. Let’s keep them on their toes!”

“Ha-HA!” The Gutsy robot focused all three of his arms on the console and started furiously tapping buttons. “You just made my day, Captain! Readying the Death Laser!”

The bright lights on the screen got bigger; spears of energy started shooting up from the surface of the Moon and were coming straight at us. Suddenly, the holographic monitor started to wobble… because the whole ship started shaking under our feet. There was a dull roar coming from below, and beyond the window was a faint blue shimmer. The screen came back into focus just long enough for a cluster of half a dozen missiles to silently scream past the camera. They must have hit the shield, because that blue shimmer beyond the window looking outside was constant, accompanied by a series of dull thuds and thumps which kept shaking the deck.

“Death Laser is charged, Captain!” RL-3 barked. Sally nodded at the robot, grinning wildly.

“Fire!”

Have you ever hooked a bass guitar up to an amplifier, turned the settings all the way up, and just wailed on the heaviest strings until the feedback shakes your teeth loose, and it feels like your ears are going to bleed? That was the sensation that ran through me when they fired the Death Laser. A low frequency bellow echoed through every surface, shaking me to the core. The holographic screen was briefly filled with a bright green glow, and the laser slammed into the plasma shield. There was another bright flash, and when everything dimmed and things went silent… the shield was still glowing, and the structure beneath the crater was still intact.

“Well, that worked about as well as I expected,” Sally shrugged, spinning around in the captain’s chair to face us. She started fiddling with the alien Pip Boy on her arm. “But it was worth a shot! You guys better head down to the hangar. We’ll keep them distracted while you guys make the drop.” There was a hum from behind us, and the teleport pad started glowing again.

“Are you sure you’re going to be fine up here?” I asked; as Tuera and Cass exited through the teleport, the whole ship started shaking again from another weapon impact (presumably). Shortly after, the Death Laser fired again, causing my ears to pop.

“If those laser pointers and butterfly kisses they call weapons could get through our shield at even half strength, then they deserve to knock us out of the sky,” Sally grinned. “Don’t worry about us, we’ll be fine.” I nodded at her and stepped on the teleport pad.

There was a brief shimmer, and suddenly I found myself in a massive, cavernous chamber. The first thing that immediately drew my eye were all the large metal pylons arranged in a circle underneath an equally large glowing metal disk in the ceiling… and hovering in the center of those pylons was an alien spacecraft. Cass and Tuera were staring at the ship a few paces ahead of me when I arrived; Cass looked over her shoulder and nodded when I arrived.

“Hey, Shea? That looks familiar, don’t it?” Cass asked, pointing at the craft. “Like that flying saucer that crashed couple months ago?” I nodded.

“It does seem to resemble it, yeah…”

“It’s one of the alien picket ships,” Chris said from somewhere behind us, grabbing the attention of all three of us. “It used to be a recon craft, designed for a single pilot. I’ve modified it over the last few years, so it can carry passengers. Now, it’s like a dropship!”

I turned to look at Chris, who was wearing his Winterized T-51b… and immediately my jaw dropped at the weapon he was holding.

“What the fuck is that?!” I asked, staring at the massive gun. It was honestly huge. He was holding the damn thing like a rifle, but it was bigger than a gatling laser. Hell, it was bigger than a Fat Man! The thing must have been as long as my torso, and twice as broad; it looked like it weighed about a zillion pounds. Probably some kind of plasma weapon, because green smoke was pouring out of vents in the side, and there was definitely something green was glowing inside the gun itself.

“That is a big fuckin’ gun, is what it is!” Cass said, equally enraptured by the weapon. Even Tuera seemed to be staring!

“Lady, you don’t know the half of it,” Chris walked past us, each power armored footfall thundering against the deckplates… or was Zeta shaking from all the weapons fire? “C’mon, saddle up! It’s time to get this show on the road!”

He walked over to the ship, and two sets of metal stairs seemed to build themselves in midair out of nothing as he walked. One set of stairs led to the glass bubble in front of the ship (which I assumed was the cockpit, because that’s where Chris was going), and another was leading to the side of the flying saucer, where a hatch leading to the interior suddenly opened. I made my way to the stairs, and as soon as I passed the pylons, I made the mistake of looking down.

“HOLY FUCK!” I came to a screeching halt, because I suddenly realized the ship wasn’t just hovering in midair… it was hovering over a pit that exited to deep space! “That… is one hell of a fall.” I could see the darkened surface of the Moon in the distance, and the faint flashes of weapons fire at the edges of the pit. The deck shook again, and I reflexively held my arms out on either side to try and keep my balance.

“What are you worried about?” Chris called from the cockpit. “It’s a dropship, so it needs to drop! Now c’mon, get inside and get strapped in! We’ve gotta go!”

Welp. Time to nut up or shut up.

I tried not to look down. Like the ship itself, the steps were just floating in midair… but they didn’t so much as move when I stepped on them. The interior of the ship seemed pretty cramped, and yet somehow there were enough seats for eight people. One by one, the three of us sat down; only Tuera grabbed for the harness to strap herself in straight away. The ship rumbled, and a speaker in the ceiling buzzed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is, uh, your captain speaking,” Chris said, affecting a hilarious Chuck Yeager impersonation. “Welcome aboard Recon Craft Theta with nonstop service to the Enclave Lunar Base. Please note I’ve, uh, turned on the fasten seat belt sign. Forecast predicts rough air ahead. We’re in for some chop.” Cass and I looked at each other, and the two of us quickly reached for our harnesses.

The ceiling buzzed again, and I looked up just in time to see some built-in monitors activate. They flashed with static, then some flashing code, and suddenly we could see the ceiling of the room outside.

“At least we’ll have a nice view for the trip…” I muttered. Cass and Sue both chuckled. Tuera just kept silent.

“Confirm cross-lock and drop station secure,” Chris said calmly; the ship started shaking and the view above us started to swivel. “Stand by to initiate release sequencer on my mark. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark.”

Everything fell away. The ship dropped through the pit like it was shot through a gun, and it was like all my internal organs were trying to force their way up my neck into my head. The whole ship was shaking, and before I knew it, we’d cleared the tube and were in space; from the outside, Mothership Zeta just looked like a really big flying saucer. Once we were clear, things started to calm down, and the ship was no longer shaking violently… just a dull roar and a subtle vibration running through everything. Through the monitors in the ceiling, I could see the flashes of explosions, missiles, lasers, and the plastic iridescent shimmer of the shield bubble surrounding the mothership…

But there was no sound, except the rumble of our own engines.

“We’re in the pipe, five-by-five,” Chris maintained his calm demeanor while the ship spun around, and started diving nose-first for the lunar surface. A pair of blue lasers passed by the ship soundlessly, missing us by what couldn’t have been more than a few feet. There was barely a shudder from our ship. “Releasing ECM pods… now.”

A series of muffled thumps reverberated through the metal surrounding us, and I tried to focus on what that meant. We’d gone over this part when we were planning this thing in the War Room. Almost all of the Enclave’s anti-air defenses are automated, and even the ones that are manned still rely on sophisticated electronic targeting to fire. But no matter how sophisticated, if you fill the air with targets – or make the computers think the air is filled with targets – they won’t be able to cope. So Chris had rigged up about two-dozen pods filled with various electronic countermeasures: chaff, flares, dummy transponders, munitions that rocketed sideways or corkscrewed, bombs that would explode and create dozens more radar ghosts, you name it. Create enough chaos, and it’s impossible for those computers to filter through the noise to track the right target.

“Y’know… I got… one question…” I gripped the harness tighter as the ship jerked and spun around, flying through the mass of incoming fire. Maybe the G-forces were affecting me more than I thought. “If Zeta’s laser can’t… get through that shield…” I paused just as a green beam dominated the monitor above my head. Our ship was buffeted from the proximity to the energy beam, and it impacted the shield above the Enclave base in a shower of glowing, white-hot plasma. It briefly looked like a volcano spewing out blue-green lava. “Yeah, like that… how are we… getting through?”

“I never said we were going through the shield…” Chris responded through the speaker in the ceiling. The recon craft continued to dive, and I suddenly realized: we could still see the plasma shield, because we weren’t aiming for it. The ship shuddered again, and the view changed; based on the stars and the bright speck of Zeta above us (not to mention all the colorful explosions from weapons fire and laser beams), we must have been flying parallel to the lunar surface.

“Hold tight,” Chris spoke up again, and the ship started to shudder and weave again. “Launching missiles in five…”

“Wait, missiles?” Cass sounded worried. “What missiles?”

“Two… One… Fire.”

Two loud bangs echoed from the front of the ship. The ship kept shaking, and ahead of us, there was a bright green flash… and then suddenly we were shrouded in darkness. There were more thumps followed by more flashes, but the lights were so brief it didn’t help us figure out what was going on…

“Th’ fuck?!” Cass looked around. “What just happened?”

“We’re going through the crater wall.” Tuera said calmly, unaffected by all the madness around us. “The only way through the shield is under it.”

The darkness vanished, and the ceiling was dominated by a bright blue light. My eyes adjusted, and sure enough, we were underneath the plasma shield – which was still being hammered by Zeta.

“I see a hangar ahead, bearing zero-one-four,” Chris said, finally dropping the Chuck Yeager act. He spun the ship in a barrel roll, just as a pair of lasers missed the ship by inches. “It looks like they’re trying to close the blast doors on us. Hold on – this is gonna be tight…”

The ship started shaking more and more violently as we sped up. The engines got louder and louder. The massive Enclave structure appeared at the outer edge of the screens above us and started to slowly get bigger as we got closer. And then…

I’m pretty sure we must have crashed. For the first time since we launched, I could hear sounds from the outside. In the brief seconds where I could actually look (and my head wasn’t being tossed around by all the shaking) the screens above our heads were filled with static and digital snow. A huge sound of metal grinding against metal from underneath us started overpowering every other sound. There was one last violent shake, a thunderous boom, and everything started slowing down. The thrum of the engines started dying down, and the screens above our heads winked one last time and cut to black.

Ding.

“End of the line!” Chris yelled happily. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

“Everyone out!” Tuera barked like a movie drill sergeant; she was already out of her harness, rifle in hand. I followed suit, uncoupling myself from the seat and helping Cass do the same. Muffled explosions rocked the outside, and the three of us readied our weapons and gathered by the exit hatch.

“Ready,” I said, gripping the Jury-Rigger and nodding at Cass and Tuera.

“Ready,” Cass responded.

“Go! Go! Go!” Tuera slammed her hand onto the button; the hatch popped open with a hiss and a bang, and I was the first one out, scanning for targets. But I didn’t find any… because it seemed like Chris had already taken care of that job for us.

We were inside a large, brightly lit hangar, just like Chris said. But everything was on fire. There was a wreck of some kind of unrecognizable craft, belching blue-green smoke out of the twisted metal hulk. Several bodies – both in power armor and without – were scattered around the exploded vehicle. Alarm klaxons were echoing through the chamber.

“Damn,” Cass whistled, leaping out of the ship behind me. “This ship ain’t goin’ anywhere anytime soon…” I looked back, and sure enough, the alien saucer was really beat to shit. We had crashed in a bad way.

“We always knew we’d have to find another way out,” Tuera growled. Behind us, we could hear the thump-thump-thump of Chris’ heavy footfalls.

“Everyone in one piece?” he asked, the barrel of his big gun belching green smoke. “Fantastic! Guess we can move on to phase two of –”

One of the blast doors opened at the far end of the hangar, and we all turned with our guns drawn. A squad of power armored soldiers flooded into the room.

“There they are!” The one in the lead barked, pointing at us. “Ope–”

He was cut short (figuratively and literally) when Chris fired his big fucking gun. A green ball of plasma exploded out of the end, shooting spears of bright green lightning arcing off in every direction as it passed. Those unfortunate enough to get hit by the ball of plasma were turned into piles of goo. The lightning, on the other hand ripped the soldiers apart, sending dismembered body parts flying. Within seconds, everything in front of Chris started to explode or melt – including the door (and the wall!) behind the squad of evaporating Enclave troops.

Not bad for a gun that sounds like a million bouncy balls hitting the ground at once.

“Hot damn!” Cass yelled, shaking her head. “I gotta get me one’ve those!”

“Guys?” I asked, looking around.

“Sorry,” Chris nodded at Cass. “Blazko only had the one.”

“Guys…” I said louder.

“We need to keep moving,” Tuera said, still scanning the room down the barrel of her rifle.

“Seriously! Guys!” I finally shouted, and everyone turned to look. I pointed at the ceiling. “Do you hear that?” For a few seconds, everyone was silent, and Cass shrugged. “The alarms have stopped.”

A dark bellowing laughter echoed throughout the hangar.

“Oh, this is rich, isn’t it?” The disembodied voice kept laughing. “When we spotted the Zetan mothership approaching, I thought the day had finally arrived. I thought the aliens had finally come to conquer our little world…”

“Who is that?” I asked, trying to find the source. It was definitely an intercom, but were there cameras somewhere?

“But no!” The voice continued. “It was you, Christopher. It was always you, wasn’t it? How fitting…”

“Wait a minute…” Chris paused, staring at the ceiling and lowering his big gun. “I recognize that voice… but that’s… that’s not possible! Didn’t I kill you?”

“Who is this?” I asked, looking from Tuera to Chris and back to Tuera. Both of them seemed like they recognized whoever this voice belonged to.

“It certainly has been a long time, hasn’t it, Christopher?” The voice continued. “I was hoping we could have a little heart-to-heart…”

“Didn’t I blow you up with a logic bomb?” Chris asked, still staring at the ceiling. He snapped his fingers. “Wait, no. That’s not right. It was the self-destruct code, wasn’t it?” Chris paused. “How did I kill you, anyway? I honestly can’t remember!”

“Wait, y’know this guy?” Cass asked.

“Well, of course he does, of course!” The voice started chuckling menacingly. “I would be truly disappointed if he didn’t recognize me. After all… I am the voice of your President… John Henry Eden!”