Final Assault Read Free Page A

identify.
    He went to the main doors as Brittany Archer came out.
    She was thin—too thin now—and tall. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore no makeup. Her clothing was baggy. Her shirt fell off her shoulder, revealing one of the five tattoos she had gotten as a teenager and now regretted. She simply hadn’t had the time, or so she claimed, to have them removed.
    She was the head of the Institute and a member of the Tenth Planet Project, just like he was. She was also his lover. Their relationship was one of the few good things to have come out of the last year.
    She smiled when she saw him and he felt himself smile back. No matter what happened, Britt could always draw a smile from him.
    “How bad are the roads?” she asked.
    “I shut off the autopilot,” Cross said.
    She grimaced at him. She had reprogrammed his car’s autopilot just last month when she had gotten frustrated with his driving. “I could fix it for you.”
    He shook his head. “We don’t have time.”
    “I can do it as we drive.”
    “Britt,” he said softly, “don’t you know what’s going on out here?”
    She had come up beside him and he caught a whiff of shampoo and coffee. “I heard about the riots.”
    She sounded almost defensive. That meant she heard about them, but hadn’t paid much attention to the news. He understood: she had been using the telescopes to monitor the tenth planet. She’d been dealing up close and personal with the very cause of the riots—the launching of the alien ships.
    “The riots are bad, aren’t they?” she said into his silence.
    He shrugged. “They’re pretty isolated. The problem is that they’re unpredictable. An area is stable one minute and the next some kids or idiots or someone comes in and start looting stores. Edwin and I were forced onto several back roads to get here. That’s why it took longer than I expected.”
    She blinked, then looked away, and he realized that she had even been too preoccupied to notice that he was late.
    He took her into his arms and pulled her close. Her body felt frailer than it had even six months ago. This work was eating her from the inside. If he had been surviving on four hours sleep, she’d been surviving on two.
    “I wish we could take one day,” he whispered into her hair.
    She leaned into him. “I wish we didn’t have to think about the aliens at all. I wish we were back to the way we were two years ago, when I had to write proposals explaining to Congress why continuing to fund the telescopes was important.”
    He put his finger under her chin and raised her head so that he could look into her tired eyes. Then he smoothed his hands over her cheeks and kissed her.
    “A promise,” he said. “For the future.”
    She smiled. “You’re such an optimist, Dr. Cross”
    “That’s why you’re with me,” he said, and he wasn’t joking.
    He knew that they all—the entire human race—had to survive this, because he couldn’t allow himself to think of the alternative. He was an archaeologist by training. He had delved into all of human history, had literally touched it with his hands. He knew how deep it went, how old the species was, how inventive and miraculous human culture could be.
    He didn’t want it to end. Not in thirty days. Not in thirty million days. Not ever.
    “I thought we were late,” Britt said.
    “We are.” He let her go. She stepped away from him and the loss of her warmth made him feel odd. Maybe the back of his brain was counting the seconds left after all. Maybe deep down inside he knew that the world was in its final innings.
    While he was waiting for them, Bradshaw had climbed into the back of the car. Cross smiled. It was just the kind of nice gesture that Bradshaw usually made.
    When his initial tasks on the Tenth Planet Project had been completed, Bradshaw had taken it on himself to become the volunteer grandfather of Portia Groopman, the nanotechnology whiz kid who, Cross hoped, would help with