“It’s activating!” Rush cried, his voice breaking. “My God, it’s become sentient!”
He looked hard at Nora and Tappan for a moment—and in that moment, Nora saw fear, desperation, and fury. Then he pivoted and dashed toward the entrance. For a moment, Nora thought he was running away. But then she saw he was headed toward something mounted on the hangar wall.
“Sir! Wait!”
Rush’s abrupt move took the guards by surprise. They seemed suddenly alarmed—more by him, almost, than by the alien craft. “Sir!” one of them yelled. “Hold on!” He ran to intercept the colonel. “Not yet!”
Rush was headed for a red lever fastened to the wall inside a wire cage, a large orange warning sign above it. Reaching it, he flung the protective cage away, ripped off a striped piece of warning tape, placed a thumb briefly against a scanner, then yanked a cotter pin out from the lever’s handle.
“No!” The closest soldier reached him and tried to grab his arm, but Rush yanked out his sidearm and fired point-blank into the man’s face.
“Don’t do it!” the other soldier cried, hesitating as his comrade fell. “We need to follow protocols!”
“No time!” Rush yelled back. As the second soldier began to raise his rifle, the colonel pulled the lever.
For a moment, all was silent, except for the squeal of tires and distant gunfire. Then a siren sounded, and red lights began flashing in the ceiling.
“Five minutes to omega,” a mechanical feminine voice boomed from everywhere and nowhere, echoing crazily in the confined space. “Evacuate now.”
A small knot of soldiers ran into the vault. “He did it!” the one holding his weapon yelled at them. “He fucking pulled the lever!”
“He can’t do that!” one yelled back. “Not without the checklist!”
“Don’t you understand? He used the base commander’s panel—with an abbreviated countdown!”
At this, the soldiers ran for their lives, many abandoning their weapons. Only Rush remained. The warring emotions on his face had cleared, leaving only resignation in their wake. He saw Nora and Tappan staring at him. In the background, Nora heard a sudden spike in the gunfire outside.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Rush said to them. “You had a purpose in coming here after all. I just didn’t recognize what it was. All along, at some level, I’ve known there was ever only one course of action. I was just too blind—or too weak—to see it.” Now, as he stood by the lever, he straightened his uniform, assumed an erect posture. “This thing was, is, too dangerous to remain intact. It must be destroyed. And now my mission is complete.”
“Four minutes and forty seconds to omega,” the voice boomed. “Evacuate now.”
There was a beat as the three—Tappan, Nora, and the colonel—looked at each other. “Don’t forget,” Rush said, with the stoic expression of a captain going down with his ship. “Servandae vitae mendacium.”
More shooting in the hall, and a moment later a jeep, torn up and ragged with bullet holes, careened into the room and slewed to a stop. Corrie, at the wheel, stood up.
“Get in!” she cried. “We’re out of here!”
65
NORA GRABBED TAPPAN and shoved him into the jeep, jumping in herself as he sprawled on the back seat atop Skip and Watts.
Corrie dumped the transmission into reverse and then, accelerating to full speed, she grabbed the hand brake and twisted the wheel simultaneously, spinning the jeep around and then flooring it, executing a perfect reverse 180 and sending them back the way they’d come. The gravitational forces of the J-turn whipped the burnt cowboy hat from Watts’s head. He clutched for it wildly, but it went spinning off behind them. Red lights flashed along the corridor and the doomsday voice informed them in a measured cadence that there were four minutes to omega.
Numerous soldiers and staff were sprinting at top speed, most fleeing in a panic but a few still firing at the jeep as it tore down the now-seething corridors.
“We’re being chased!” Watts cried.
Glancing over her shoulder—the rearview mirror was long gone—Corrie could see another jeep accelerating behind them, two soldiers within. Skip raised his gun to fire, but Watts grabbed the barrel. “Not yet.”
The jeep caught up and tried to ram them from behind. One of the soldiers stood up to fire his weapon, but Watts hit him with a short burst and sent him tumbling back onto the concrete.
“Three minutes to omega,” came the voice, with a surreal calm.