Critical Path

Gregor reached out and took them.

“You will be my tool of vengeance and justice. You will bathe in the blood of my enemies and rise with me as we remake this world in my vision. But know this. I will not tolerate failure. For now, my guard will get you out of here and will give you directions to Hagellan’s hideout. This is your chance to be someone.”

Gregor smiled and followed the guard who had entered the room.

“We’ll go out the secret exit. Just be quiet and follow me,” he said to Gregor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Mike heard birdsong from beyond the farm facility. In the past, he’d hear a single bird whistling a solo, but a chorus joined the individual this time.

He leaned back in his repaired Adirondack lounger and took a sip of tea and rum as the cool evening breeze brought the scent of pinesap. The air no longer had that metallic tang of the root in it.

For a moment, with Mai sitting by his side, both enjoying the silence and stillness, he felt like the world was getting back to normal. But the colossal harvester parked just out of view in the courtyard reminded him just how different things were.

Even the revelation that Charlie was still alive didn’t change matters. If anything, it added to their woes. There was no way they could leave them out there with those others. Everyone owed Charlie a debt of gratitude for what he did. Sighing, and realizing he had ruined his own moment of relaxation, he leaned over to his wife lounging next to him.

“Mai,” he began.

“I know,” she said without opening her eyes. “We should get to work. It’s been all of what… five minutes? We can’t laze around all day, love.” A smile crept onto her thin lips. She turned to face him, opening her eyes, the wrinkles gathering by their edges.

“Aye, we ought to get back to it. We don’t want to be accused of slacking when Charlie’s out there, needing our help.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Mai said, sitting up and throwing her legs over the side of the lounger. Her farm uniform, in gray and orange, hung loose on her frame. “We’re old; we’re not like the others. We won’t be any use to them working ourselves into exhaustion.”

“You’re right, as ever, my love,” Mike said, returning the smile.

He knew he was truly blessed to have found Mai during the ice age. They had hit it off immediately. She had an infectious curiosity and sharp mind that attracted Mike like iron filings to a magnet. Without her, he doubted he would have survived this long.

Mai stood and held out her hand to him. “Come on. Let’s get back to analyzing that video I found in the harvester.”

Taking her hand, Mike stood and brought her in for a hug. He couldn’t help but admire her spirit. The harvester they had found was of an old design. Only Mai had noticed that when she and her group of engineer students came upon it abandoned in one of the northern harvesting territories.

On initial inspection it appeared similar to all the other harvesters, but Mai had spotted that some of the construction and layout had a different design. When they entered and checked the computers for power, she knew instantly that this one was an old design. Whereas all the others had alien encryption on the systems that so far Mike and the others hadn’t been able to crack, this one didn’t. Mai got into the system and managed to access the solid state drives.

The drives stored petabytes of data and information on the harvester’s operations. Everything from maintenance reports to harvesting quotas and GPS locations, but that wasn’t all. Mai had found hours upon hours of video footage both from the external cameras and the internal ones used to monitor the staff inside.

After copying over the data, they wanted to wait for it to be backed up before they started to analyze the video.

Mike and Mai gathered their flasks and cups and turned back toward the Freetown lab. Before they could reach the doors, they turned at the sudden cessation of bird song. The whine of a hover-bike’s engine soon followed. Squinting into the low evening sun, Mike held his hand above his eyes to see who was coming. Mai’s body stiffened beside him. He pulled her close as they waited for the bike to come into view.

The hover-bike descended into the clearing from above the tree line in a graceful arc. There were two people on there. Was that…? Mike’s eyesight wasn’t as sharp as it used to be, but he recognized the driver and rider.

“Layla, Maria!” he called. “You have news?”

The two women waved back as they got off the bike and hurried over to him, their hair wild and swept back. The two of them looked like they’d been dragged backwards through a hedge. He couldn’t tell if they were scared or excited, but they rushed over and eventually, gathering her breath, Layla informed them of what had happened. For a full ten minutes, she and Maria told him about Gregor, Denver, Khan, the aliens, the town, Aimee, and finally the mission.