Caroline, Haven, Matt, Jack, and Jeremy were at the campsite next to the dome, waiting for Steve and Jesse to return.
Slatel came out of the ground and sat next to Jeremy.
They saw a flicker on the surface of the dome. The pale blue shield was flickering off and on. Mostly on.
~~~
“What’s happening?!” Torron screeched.
The screens were flickering.
“It’s just a power interruption,” Jensen said. “We have backup power. Don’t worry.”
“Drake recruited you from MIT. He said you were the top of your class.” Torron walked across the room and stood nose to nose with Jensen. “Did my son make a mistake bringing you on board?”
“No, Your Highness,” Jensen said. “The technology we have here is solid. Don’t worry. I’ll go check the core to be sure.” He turned and left.
As Jensen ran across to the center of the dome, the flickering got worse. Now the shield was off as much as it was on.
“Have you checked the core?” he yelled as he entered the room.
“We’ve called them with no answer,” a technician said. “The core is locked from the inside. We can’t get in.”
“Break it down, now!” Jensen paced nervously as two Humongers began kicking in the door. He went into the control room and hurried up the stairs to the core. He opened the door. “No, no, no! How could this happen?”
The tubes running from the pods to the core were no longer pale blue. They were pale orange.
He hurried down the stairs to the control room. By now the flickering was mostly off. He rushed to a control panel and put his thumb on a fingerprint identifier. A drawer opened in front of him. In the drawer were switches, gauges, and buttons. He pulled a lever identified as Core Emergency Shutdown. All flickering stopped.
~~~
“It worked!” Jeremy exclaimed. “The shield is down. Get the general on the line and let him know. The others will be down as soon as the liquid gets to the other domes.”
~~~
“Look!” Jesse exclaimed. “The shield just came down.”
“Not all the way,” Steve said as he pointed at three Oar-7s leaving through the open slit in the dome wall. “The shield is still up on the aircraft leaving and the soldiers. They must be on a different system than the domes. I’ll be right back.”
~~~
Jensen flipped several switches and turned a few knobs, then pulled down a handle labeled RF System On. It took almost five minutes for the pale blue shield to come back up.
~~~
The invisible Steve went around the inside of the dome, tipping over Oar_7s and upending equipment and supplies and generally making a nuisance of himself. After a couple of minutes of complete havoc, he stood next to Jesse. “Hop on.”
Jesse climbed onto Steve’s back, and they followed an Oar-7 through the slit in the dome. Jesse looked back at the dome as the shield turned back on.
~~~
In the middle of Caroline’s message to the general, the shield came back on.
Chapter 34
The Shields Are Down
Jensen was meeting with the queen in her private quarters. “I’ve already sent word to Gandoral. The backup tanks will be on their way here within the hour. We’ll get them in three days. It’s not clear exactly what happened, but the Alliance must have poisoned the Y2L and XR1 tanks. Once we get the replacement tanks, it’ll take only a couple of hours to get the systems back in place.”
“If there’s a delay, what happens?” Torron was not in a good mood.
Quite nervous, Jensen didn’t answer right away. “Well, Your Highness, worst case?” he finally said. “Worse case is, the domes begin to fail eighty-four hours from when they stopped getting the mixture. In our case, the clock started two hours ago.”
Furious, Torron turned to Smalik. “Gather all my priests and generals to the control room,” she demanded. “Have all of the generals in the other domes on video. The strategy must change now.” The look in Torron’s eyes gave no doubt she meant business. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Be ready!”
~~~
Jesse and Steve landed at the campsite and reappeared.
“Well, it almost worked,” Haven signed.
“What did she say?” Jeremy asked Caroline.
“She said it almost worked,” Caroline said. “There was a delay of about five minutes between when it went off and when it came back on.”
“We could do a lot of damage in five minutes if we were ready,” Jack said.
“The closest domes are Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver,” Caroline said as she picked up the radio. “General Wisecoff, General Wisecoff . . .”
“Yes?” the general answered.
“The shields in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver will be down in the next few minutes,” Caroline said. “When they go down, you’ll have about five minutes before they come back up. Do as much damage as possible while they’re down. Give the orders now and call me back ASAP.”
~~~
Portland
The shield protecting the Portland dome was already down by the time the US Air Force got the orders to attack. They were able to do some damage, but it was minimal. The Torron Oar-7s devastated the air force jets. A few incoming missiles from offshore navy ships hit the target before the shield came back up. The remainder of the missiles hit the shields and exploded on the surface.
Seattle
The air force jets were already in the area when the message came through. They scrambled to the dome and found the shield already down. They attacked with everything they had. As soon as they did, the Oar-7s that had been concentrating on the city destruction turned back toward the dome and engaged the air force jets. A fierce battle ensued. The air force was able to inflict major damage to the dome structure and some damage to the interior before being confronted by the Oar-7s. Once the Oar-7s attacked, all but one of the air force planes was shot down. Seven parachutes floated to the ground.
Vancouver
The Canadian Air Force had been keeping their distance when the call came in. They flew toward the dome, and from a distance of several miles, witnessed the pale blue shield come down. They immediately launched all of their missiles and hit the dome from all sides before the Oar-7s knew what had happened. The hit on the dome was so devastating, the complete dome structure failed, and the dome collapsed. The mother ship stationed two miles above the dome began to wobble. Then it went out of control and crashed into the ground several miles away from the dome. The instant the mother ship hit the ground, all of the shields protecting the Oar-7s and soldiers came down. A fierce battle ensued in the air and on the ground.
~~~
There was panic in the room as Torron entered. She looked at the Mega-Crystal and could see the fighting taking place in Vancouver. “What’s happening?” she demanded.
“The dome collapsed and the mother ship was destroyed, causing all the shields to come down in that area,” General Haflyf said.
“Once the shield came down on the dome, they attacked,” Jensen said. “They were ready. They knew the shield was coming down.”
“Why is there a delay?” Torron asked. “Have the new shield come up as soon as the old one goes down. You have to protect the domes at all cost.” She sat on her throne with her knee bouncing up and down as her rage continued to rise. Her black eyes stared at Jensen through her eyebrows, making her already wrinkled and pocked face even more sinister-looking.
“Your Highness, we cannot start the RF System up before the Chem System goes completely down,” Jensen said. “There’s a two hundred seventy-five second delay between the shutdown of the Chem System and restoring of the shield by the RF System. That’s about four and a half minutes. The domes are vulnerable during that time.”
“Don’t you think it would have been wise to tell us that?” Torron yelled as she stood up and pointed her staff at Jensen.
Before she could pronounce a curse, Smalik stepped in between t
hem. “I know you’re angry, as you should be,” he said in a controlled voice, “but you must not get rid of Jensen. We need him.”
“We need to focus on the issue at hand,” General Haflyf said. He turned to the rest of the military officers in the control room. “Cease all current operations at the rest of the domes and have the Oar-7s surround the domes and protect them during the power transition.”
The word went out, and the Oar-7s began to create protective formations around the remaining nine domes.
~~~
“Did you ask the general if they knew what time the shield came down on the Vancouver dome?” Jesse asked.
“Yes, he told me it went down at one nineteen,” Caroline confirmed.
“Vancouver is about two hundred miles from here,” Jesse said. “Therefore, the liquid travels about twenty-eight or twenty-nine miles per minute. It will hit the San Francisco Bay Area around one thirty-three, Los Angeles around one forty-four, and San Diego around one forty-seven. You should send that to the general.” She reached into her knapsack for an apple.
Jeremy had a questioning look on his face. “Okay,” he said to Jesse, “I should know by now not to be surprised, but I am every time you do that.”
“I don’t know, Jeremy. Things are popping into my head. The distances from here to the cities and the velocity of the liquid seemed to be second nature to me.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s simply one of my powers.”
“What, to know everything?” Jeremy said. “That’s one of your powers?”
“Why not? Are you threatened by it?” Jesse smiled.
“I would think that the most logical one would get that kind of power, and that would be me,” Jeremy said.
Steve had been listening in on the conversation. “Because you’re the smart one in the Alliance?” he said sarcastically. “He’s not threatened. He’s jealous.” Steve laughed.
~~~
San Francisco Bay Area
“The shields will be coming down at any time,” the pilot said. “Once they come down, launch everything we have.”
The shield over the Oakland dome dropped first. Within seconds, the San Francisco shield came down, and the San Jose shield fell right after that. Missiles were launched from fighter aircraft and ships offshore. There were so many incoming missiles, the Oar-7s were swamped. Even though they were able to shoot down most of the incoming missiles, enough got through to do major damage. The San Jose dome completely collapsed, bringing down the mother ship with it. The other two domes, even though damaged, still stood, and the shields came back up. All aircraft and soldiers from the San Jose dome were left vulnerable. The US military took advantage of that, and a fierce battle ensued south of the Bay Area.
~~~
Los Angeles
Ten minutes after the shields went down in the San Francisco Bay Area, the shields at Bob Hope, Ontario, Los Angeles, and John Wayne airports all started falling. Because there was a little more time before the shields came down, the military was a little better prepared. As the shields came down, the fighters and offshore ships and submarines launched the same attack as was done in the Bay Area. However, four B-1 Lancer long-range strategic bombers delivered eight cruise missiles each. All twenty-four cruise missiles were targeted at the four mother ships.
All but one of the cruise missiles were shot down by the Oar-7s. The one that got through hit the mother ship over Ontario. It plunged straight down, collapsing the center of the dome. When the shields on LAX, Bob Hope, and John Wayne airports returned, the Ontario shield failed to do so. The battle in the Ontario area was fierce.
~~~
San Diego
Both the US military and the Torron forces had learned lessons from the previous attacks. A navy ship ten miles offshore took a chance and launched five cruise missiles, one minute apart, at the mother ship. The first two hit the shield before it dropped. The third and fourth were shot down by Oar-7s. The fifth made it through and took down the mother ship. It fell straight down, crushing the dome over Miramar. The dome and mother ship over San Diego survived.
Chapter 35
Fifty-Mile Limit
“Yes, sir,” the soldier said to General Wisecoff. “From the three damaged helmet buttons, we were able to piece together one operating button. Take a look.”
He reached out and plugged the button into the top of the helmet he had placed on a table. A blue shield covered the helmet and the table below it.
“You can safely touch the shield,” he said. He put his hand on the helmet. “But you can’t damage the helmet. Here’s one of the others that I hit with this ax.” He laid a badly damaged helmet on the table, then took the ax in hand. With as much force as he could muster, he hit the helmet just in front of the button. The helmet didn’t move, and the ax bounced off. The soldier next took a baseball bat and hit the helmet on the side with enough force to hit a long ball home run. The bat broke, and the helmet didn’t move. The soldier picked up the helmet and tossed it up and down in his hand. “This is what we’re up against.”
Gary picked up the damaged helmet and inspected it. “Did you learn anything about how they work?”
“We haven’t learned much yet,” the soldier said. “It looks like the cloaking mechanism is actually buried in the outer skin of the helmet. The helmet is communicated with and powered up by the button. We’re sending the three helmets and buttons to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.”
“Not a good idea,” Gary said. “That’s too close to the Ontario and Bob Hope airports. We’re in Las Vegas at Nellis Air Force Base. Send it to RTW Aerospace. They’re right here in Las Vegas. They create advanced weapon systems and are leaders in the innovation of advanced electronic systems. The number one engineer there is John Handy. Tell him Master Sergeant Gary Hyatt sent you.”
The general looked at Gary for a second and then nodded and motioned for the soldier to leave. The soldier pulled the button off the top of the helmet, picked up the two helmets, and left.
~~~
“Vancouver, Ontario, Miramar, and San Jose domes are down,” a technician reported. “Portland and Seattle sustained major damage but are functioning. San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Bob Hope, John Wayne, and San Diego are fully operational.”
“We have nine functioning domes, including the one we’re in,” General Haflyf reported.
“Is the crisis over?” the queen asked, in no mood for more bad news.
“Yes, Your Highness,” Smalik said. “All of your priests and military commanders are either here or on the video feed, as you requested.”
Torron turned toward her throne and then back to Smalik. “I thought I told you to go after Hagred and Margot. Why are you still here?”
“I was about to leave with two Humongers when the crisis hit,” Smalik answered. “I came back to help.”
“Get out of here! I don’t want to see you ever again unless you have Hagred and Margot with you. Go, go!” Torron sat on her throne. “Now that the Alliance is back in play and there remains a possibility the shields could go down again, I want no mercy. Devastate every city. Level them all. I want nothing left standing. Go directly after their military. Take no prisoners. No prisoners! We were going to take it one step at a time. Given the crisis we just experienced, we can no longer gamble with time. I want the battle for the West Coast wrapped up in the next forty-eight hours. By three p.m. on Friday, I want Hagred and Margot at my feet, dead or alive, and the battle ended.” Torron motioned for Jensen to follow her to her quarters.
“Yes, Your Highness?” Jensen asked. “What can I do for you?”
“Our clock started at around one, right?” Torron said.
“Yes, we need the new tanks in place by midnight on Saturday,” Jensen said. “This dome will start deteriorating around one a.m. on Sunday morning. The fix will be in place before the deterioration starts.”
Torron shook her head. “You had better be right.” She had a look in her eyes of mistrust as she waved for him to
leave.
~~~
“General, you have to hear what is going on in the San Diego area,” Colonel Smith said as he burst into General Wisecoff’s office.
They went to the command center to watch the monitors and listen to the chatter.
“The Top Gun pilots are luring the alien aircraft out over the Cleveland National Forest and over Whale Peak,” the colonel said. “Once the alien craft crosses over the peak, its shield drops. Other planes lie in wait, and as the alien ship’s shield goes down, they’re destroyed. It looks like the distance is about fifty miles when the shield fails.”
“Okay, move all assets out past fifty miles from the closest dome,” General Wisecoff said. “Have teams of fighters lure what they can and have others organized to shoot down the alien ships as the shields go down.” He continued to watch and listen to the action.
~~~
Alpha-6 had moved from the camp to a place where they could watch the main doors to the dome.
Slatel’s hand came up out of the ground and grabbed Steve by the ankle. Steve jumped so high that he took Slatel with him, up about forty feet. Slatel let go, and they both came back to the ground.
“You little gravel head,” Steve said. “You almost made me pee my pants. You’ve gotta stop with the surprise attacks. They’re not funny anymore.” He pounded Slatel over the head and drove him into the ground.
Slatel smiled and shrugged at Jesse as he sank into the ground, then popped right back out. “That was worth it,” he said to Steve.
They heard rustling in the bushes and instantly readied themselves for a fight. Matt had pulled White Lightning all the way back and was ready to kill whatever came out of the bushes when two hands appeared.
“It’s only me,” T-Bone said. “It’s T-Bone. Don’t shoot.”
“How did you find us?” Jeremy asked.
“Drones,” T-Bone said. “Remember, I have drones. I’ve been watching you ever since you left.”
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