Gunfire sounded as our snipers on the ice fired. I didn’t hear any shouts of glee from them indicating hits.

  The fires burned. Some of the clothing of the dead burst into flames. The stink of their cooking flesh—adrenaline coursed through me, igniting hated. Damn Krekelens were killing humans, my humans.

  I drew my phasor as I felt my face stiffen with determination. This felt like Bhutan, like the subterranean chamber on Chaunt Two when I’d slain the Accelerationists.

  I took careful aim—

  “Move!” Livi shouted.

  I saw ’em. Two missiles streaked for me.

  The special glasses made the difference. They could track impossibly fast objects like that. I let the glasses guide my aim. Twice, the phasor hissed. Twice, enemy warheads dissolved under the harsh beam.

  Someone laughed. It might have been me. It had an unhinged quality.

  I targeted one of the fast skiers. He tucked low to the ice, using his jetpack. He must have been going sixty or seventy miles an hour at least.

  The phasor beamed, reaching out, burning the skier, cutting into his upper torso.

  Yells broke out among the snipers. I think they got one, maybe two of the bastards.

  More missiles streaked in. My phasor took out one of them. Anti-missile shells took out two more. Then, another 206 blew up.

  Luckily, it didn’t kill any more people.

  “They’re coming in,” someone shouted.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  A high-stakes battle unfolded across the desolate landscape, with harsh wind howling around us. It whipped up icy particles that partly obscured our view.

  Did the Krekelen bastards do that? Did they have a wind machine?

  No. That was crazy thinking.

  The harsh wind blew against me, buffeting all of us as the enemy ski patrol zigzagged between ice formations and launched more missiles in a desperate attempt to gain the upper hand.

  That was a mistake on their part. I don’t know what caused it, and it made me rethink the situation. Krekelens were never suicidal. That meant these were humans, likely programmed by the psi-masters under Krekelen control. Were these SAS Brits or Army Ranger Americans? I didn’t want to think that.

  They kept coming, reloading and firing. We continued to use our anti-missile countermeasures as our sniper teams took down one more at a time.

  The wind and harsh terrain conspired against the enemy, with icy crevasses and treacherous snowdrifts slowing their progress. These were suicide teams then.

  I stowed the phasor, conserving its power, and let the riflemen take out the last of the ski patrol.

  Shortly after that, we loaded up and left the burning wreckage of the ruined 206s. We’d lost five people and three 206s in the skirmish but continued to head south for the subterranean base.

  The conflict had ended, but the journey might be moot now. The victory, though hard-fought, was merely a small triumph in a much larger struggle. The enemy surely realized our destination.

  That meant, despite our determination, we might not be able to set up camp without anyone knowing. That would negate the purpose of the mission.

  The idea was to hold the subterranean base. We couldn’t do that if the Krekelens sent the nations of the world on our heads.

  “What do we do now?” Livi asked.

  We were back in the cab, traveling south, our diminished caravan following us. Thirty days we’d gone without trouble. Now, it felt as if we’d have to fight the entire way there. Maybe Qiang had had the right idea about turning back.

  McPherson, why did you have to go nuts like that?

  I knew the answer: because the psi-masters down in the underwater base had screwed with her mind when I’d left for the Chaunt System.

  I looked at Livi. “We go to the distance.”

  “To set up a secret base?”

  By the look in Livi’s eyes, I knew she already knew the answer. No, so the two of us could get the hell off the Earth to somewhere safe, maybe taking the others with us if we had to.

  -5-

  The day passed. We took turns driving, pushing our 206s. I woke up groggy the next morning with Livi looking exhausted behind the wheel.

  “There are only two vehicles left,” Livi said.

  I was drinking water, and spilled some as I spewed it to ask, “What did you say?”

  She told me only two other vehicles remained with us. The others had turned tail while I’d been asleep. She hadn’t noticed their leaving until they were long gone.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” I asked.

  “I just told you. They were long gone and it was snowing hard. What could you have done?”

  “How many others are left?” I asked. “People, I mean?”

  “Three,” she said.

  “Maybe I should tell them to leave, too.”

  “We might need them.”

  Livi was right. We might.

  Our tiny caravan of three 206s delved deeper into the icy expanse. Maybe two hours later we caught sight of other tracked vehicles. They teetered on the edge of our binocular-assisted vision, staying behind.

  Hank informed me of them.

  We held our breath, hoping against hope that they were friendly, or maybe some of the others had reconsidered, returning.

  “Should we try to contact them?” Hank asked.

  I was still feeling groggy from a troubled and too little sleep. Livi looked exhausted. I needed hot coffee, several cups at least before I could make a decision.

  “Let’s stop first,” I said. “If it is the others returning, we need to let them catch up.”

  Hank agreed with that.

  Livi braked. The other two 206s braked nearby.

  “The other tracked vehicles out there have stopped, too,” Hank said.

  “Can you see them clearly?” I asked. “Are they ours? Are they 206s?”

  “I can’t quite make them out. I don’t know.”

  I didn’t feel like getting out or putting on my special glasses. That made the decision for me—and without coffee to kick-start my brain.

  “See if you can contact them,” I said.

  “Roger that,” Hank said.

  Francine launched a small aerial drone, which headed toward them.

  I waited for my first cup of coffee to heat up, having traded Livi spots. I now was sitting behind the wheel.

  She’d picked up her slate and was fiddling with it.

  “Anything interesting?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said, remaining silent after that.

  There was a ping. I twisted and reached back into the microwave and pulled out a steaming hot mug of coffee. The first sip was the best. It made everything seem better. It gave me hope.

  “I don’t know,” Livi said.

  “Hmm,” I said, cradling the hot mug.

  “What is this?” she asked herself.

  After taking another swallow of coffee, I leaned over to look at Livi’s slate.

  There was a weird bundle of objects against a starry background.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked.

  “Orbital space above us,” she said.

  As I watched, some sort of jets moved the bundle—it looked like objects wrapped in Styrofoam. Several of the Styrofoam-coated objects slid away from the bundle of them. These shed their Styrofoam coating. In their place—

  “Those look like crowbars.” I frowned. “Crowbars with blunt noses.”

  The crowbars had pods on the sides. Those emitted jets of air or white hydrogen particles. The blunt noses oriented down, it seemed like.

  Then I remembered reading about the THOR project. It had been a science fiction idea from my youth. Once released, a THOR object would come down to Earth, assisted by good-old gravity. That meant there wouldn’t be any exhaust to track. The missiles or brilliant pebbles would be meteors, guided meteors. The ones with blunt noses might have sand in them. When they hit, the sand would act as an antipersonnel device.

  I looked at Livi. “Are those targeted at us?”

  “I’m thinking definitely yes.”

  I gulped. The THOR project was reality then. I wondered who had put them up there. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Krekelens had done so for a time just like this. Had Elon Musk been their pasty, using his rockets to put the bundles into orbit? I doubted the Russians had done this, or they’d have used the THOR projectiles in the Ukraine.

  Did the other tracked vehicles staying out there help them pinpoint our location? Why would they need that if they had global tracking devices up there?

  I had a bad feeling about all this. My gut was starting to hurt.

  “Hank,” I said over the radio.

  “What’s wrong, Jake?”

  “They’re launching THOR projectiles at us.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Move, move,” I shouted. “They’re launching orbital meteors at us.”

  I floored our 206 so snow flew as we swerved back and forth. After that, I zigzagged across icy terrain.

  “Are the others following us?” I shouted at Livi.

  She looked outside and then at her slate, back and forth.

  “They’ve definitely launched the space missiles at us,” she said.

  “Shit,” I said, hunkered over the steering wheel. McPherson had brought down Armageddon by unleashing her Poseidon torpedo. Now, the other side was openly using its super-weapons.

  I kept driving like a maniac.

  Then, the haunting quietude of the Antarctic was abruptly broken by a spine-chilling sound from the heavens.

  I stared up through the front windshield. I saw them. Twin THOR projectiles, unleashed from the cold vacuum of space, raced across the azure sky, their harrowing trajectory unmistakably aimed at our vulnerable mini-convoy.

  I wanted to rage. How dare they use something like that against us? Maybe the other side felt that way when I’d used the phasor or when McPherson had unleashed a Poseidon torpedo.

  The two projectiles came fast. Before the others could fully comprehend the danger, the space projectiles struck with unfathomable force. The blast was like nothing I’d ever seen. It reduced the other two vehicles to smoldering wreckage in a deafening explosion.

  The others were surely dead.

  The concussive force of the detonations sent tremors through the ice. That created a spider-web of fissures that grew and radiated outward. One raced for us.

  “Turn, turn,” Livi cried.

  I cranked the steering wheel and floored the 206. It felt as if we crawled. The fissure grew and threatened to swallow us whole. The ground beneath us convulsed violently, as if the very ice itself were rebelling against the devastation.

  Fear pulsed through me, igniting a primal instinct for survival. Blindly, I raced away, my heart pounding.

  Livi and I escaped the THOR projectiles. We also managed to evade the fissures the projectiles had created. Clearly, they’d carried more than sand in their blunt noses.

  Minutes ticked by. Without a word, Livi handed me my mug of coffee. I’d dropped it in my haste to flee. The cover had kept any from spilling. I sipped, but I couldn’t taste a damn thing.

  “They certainly mean to stop us,” Livi said.

  I looked at her.

  I don’t know what she saw in my face, but she turned away.

  Livi and I raced across the frosty terrain. We were alone. The others—we didn’t dare try the radio to see who’d been shadowing us.

  Despite all that had happened—or maybe because of it—I couldn’t help but notice the surreal beauty of our surroundings. The towering icebergs seemed to defy gravity, their crystalline peaks shimmering in the sunlight. The icy surface beneath our tracks glistened like a million diamonds, a stark contrast to the chaos that had unfolded a mere few moments before.

  Despite the relentless cold and the overwhelming sense of isolation, there was an undeniable allure to the Antarctic wilderness. It captivated me even as we raced to escape its deadly grasp and that of our enemies.

  Was that madness? Was that a deranged outlook because this was all too much to handle?

  I became calm several miles later. I stopped and climbed out, and used my special glasses, searching for the others or any tracked vehicles.

  When I climbed back in, Livi was studying her slate.

  “Are they going to launch more THOR projectiles at us?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you see any jets or other craft in the air?”

  Livi shook her head.

  “Ski teams, THOR projectiles, sowing disunity among us,” I said. “I wonder what’s next.”

  Livi frowned, and then her beautiful eyes widened as she stared at me.

  “You know?” I asked.

  “They must be waiting for us,” she said. “We’re Travelers. They want to capture instead of kill you and me.”

  I thought about that. I thought how they had all the advantages. I thought about the fact that it seemed like the Krekelens wanted to capture me personally.

  I pondered on the possibilities.

  “Do we turn back?” Livi asked.

  “No,” I said. “We’re too close. It’s just you and me now.” I nodded then, as I had an idea about how to do this.

  -6-

  Livi and I continued driving for days in the amazingly beautiful, deadly, and freezing terrain. We used our GPS tracker, and I recalled my previous expeditions up here, each one unique and filled with its own challenges.

  Staying awake, driving the 206—what a little workhorse it was indeed.

  We took stock of the food and fuel we had left. It was a good thing we’d decided early on to divvy up the extra fuel and not just have a few vehicles carrying the bulk of it. Thus, even though we were alone with our two hitched boxes, we had enough to make it, if we were careful.

  That meant, of course, that we didn’t have enough food and fuel to leave the Antarctic interior and head for the coast. We had to reach the subterranean obelisk and Travel elsewhere, as in, another planet in a different star system.

  Livi and I talked about where we should go. She urged me to come to Vega with her. I’d be a valued guest, and I could meet her father and the Star Council. Together, we could all decide on the best way to help Earth.

  Did I hear deception in Livi’s voice when she made her promises? If I didn’t, what was wrong? Was the harshly beautiful landscape corrupting my mind? Had the harrowing escapes upset my equilibrium?

  Maybe the loneliness was slowly driving me mad. Can you imagine being in a lone, tracked vehicle crossing a great wilderness of whiteness? Everywhere I looked, it was white, stark and intensely bright.

  Maybe knowing that my enemies could rain projectiles from the heavens had turned me batty. Or the idea of more jetpack-propelled ski teams had made my skin crawl and mind become numb.

  Why wouldn’t they use flying jetpack guys next? Did the Krekelens have such?

  McPherson, McPherson, what had you started by launching the Poseidon torpedo? What had the Russians been thinking inventing such a weapon?

  I reconsidered the last idea. Surely, my own country America had constructed things as deadly. Mankind knew how to fight and how to make weapons. Did we know how to get along with each other, though?

  Livi and I took turns driving. We were seldom awake at the same time as we both slept too much. Was fear sapping our strength, the desolation of this horrid place or the sense of a doom that had fallen upon us?

  I don’t know.

  I do know that as the days slipped by and I found Livi awake, she was hunched over her slate. I noticed she’d plugged a small box-device to it. She worked on the slate, fiddled, cursed and laughed a few times.

  Whenever I asked her what it was, she looked at me and smiled or she pecked me on the cheek and said, “I have no time to talk. Jake Bayard, you drive and let me work. Our lives may depend upon it.”

  I trusted Livi. If nothing else, our lives were linked. Whatever happened to one would happen to the other.

  That meant I drove and drove. We didn’t see or hear anyone else during those final days. We headed for where the Draconians had left their pit in their flying saucer.

  Did a Krekelen hit team wait there? Would psi-master-run humans try to stop us? We were going to find out soon. According to my odometer, we had ten miles to go and then we’d see.

  If they tried to capture me—I saw what had happened to McPherson. I wasn’t going to let the mind manipulators reprogram Jake Bayard, not on your life. I was going to be my own person or I’d die in the attempt.

  Livi gave a cry of delight.

  I glanced at her.

  She held the slate and smiled.

  “You solve whatever you’re working on?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  I glanced at her again.

  “We’re going to make it, Jake.”

  “Why’s that? What have you done?”

  “Use your special glasses.”

  I did as she suggested and turned up the magnification. “What the heck?” I said.

  I saw three big cargo planes—C-130s—out there. Around them were bulldozers, big huts and anti-air gun emplacements. There was a long icy runway. It was a regular convention out there, with parka-clad soldiers milling about.

  I turned and slowed the 206. “We don’t stand a chance,” I said.

  “You’re wrong,” Livi said. “We have every chance. Stop here.”

  I did, parking the 206. It made no sense going closer than that.

  I didn’t shut the 206 down, though. It was too cold outside for that. I wanted the heater on, feeling the heat blowing on my face and hands.

  Livi began to speak into her slate. Afterward, she set it on her lap and began to manipulate with her fingers.

  I leaned over, looking at the screen. I saw the Styrofoam-coated bundles in space that we’d seen earlier. Three of them detached from the main bundle in low orbital space. Red lights flashed on the main bundle.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “Shut up, Jake. They’re trying to stop me, to get me. I need to concentrate.”

  She touched the screen: tap-tap-tap.

  It dawned on me that the Styrofoam coating was coming off of the three. That revealed crowbars in space. Pod jets maneuvered the three until they started down…toward a vast white continent on Earth.