Redemption: Area 51, #10

by Bob Mayer

  The order was passed from soldier to civilian caretaker and the work began.

  Over 400,000 seed samples began to be retrieved from the Vault and loaded onto the aircraft, which had a long flight ahead of them to deliver their cargo.

  TESLA LAB, CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN, COLORADO

  “Got an azimuth?” Turcotte asked Yakov.

  The Russian was looking at the GPS. “Due south, my friend. I will be more specific when we get to Texas.”

  “That won’t take long,” Turcotte said as he accelerated the Fynbar above the foothills of the Rockies.

  It didn’t. Turcotte was flying at high altitude since he wasn’t worried about being picked up on radar. Someone on the ground would see a dark blip moving very fast, if they happened to catch it at all.

  As they crossed I-10, he dove, following Yakov’s general directions, slowing, then Leahy’s more specific ones. When they landed, he turned to her. “This is it? You sure?”

  “This is it. If one of you can give me a hand?” She climbed the ladder and opened the hatch. Nosferatu easily lifted the case with the Tesla computer to her. She paused, looking down.

  “I suppose this is the time to say something dramatic and inspiring but—“

  “Spare us,” Turcotte said. “We’ve been through enough drama. Let’s get the job done.”’

  Leahy nodded. “Good luck.” Then she shut the hatch.

  Once she was clear, Turcotte lifted off. Glancing down, he saw her rolling the case across the desolate West Texas terrain toward a mountain.

  “Azimuth?” he asked Yakov.

  He set course for Nevada.

  The distinct sound of a round being chambered cut through the quiet inside the Fynbar as Mickell loaded his rifle.

  “You might need this back,” Yakov said, offering the pistol.

  “Thanks,” Mickell said. “I hope Leahy’s right or I’m going to get pretty hot out there.”

  Turcotte was tempted to fly over Area 51, just to see, but he curved north, out of sight of the base.

  Yakov replied to Mickell. “She said Kaong’s suicide was a murder sanctioned by Mrs. Parrish.”

  “She was telling the truth,” Nosferatu said.

  “A walking lie detector,” Turcotte muttered.

  Nekhbet took offense. “He is Nosferatu, born in the First Age of Egypt, before the dawn of what you pitiful humans call recorded history. He is the child of Horus and a High Consort. He has lived for over ten millennia. Who are you to question him?”

  “I didn’t question,” Turcotte said. He saw the pitted and cratered landscape of the Nevada Test Site directly ahead. “What a mess.” He slowed down, dropping altitude. “The drill tower is there, like she said.” He turned toward IceCap. He halted the Fynbar at a hover. “Check the radio,” he suggested to Mickell. “See if they’re there. I’m not going to dump you in this place without confirmation. We’re line of sight for FM and out of range of Area 51.”

  Mickell keyed the FM radio on the frequency Leahy had given him.

  “UNAOC security forces, this is US Army Delta,” Mickell radioed. “En route to your location. Confirm you are located at IceCap, over.”

  There was a hiss of static as he let go of the transmit and silence.

  “I don’t—“ Turcotte began, but then the radio crackled.

  “US Army Delta, this is Lieutenant Colonel Rennie of the Fourth Battalion, New Zealand Infantry Regiment. What is your intent? We are armed and consider all intruders to be hostile unless proven otherwise. Over.”

  “Sounds pissed,” Yakov noted.

  “Why wouldn’t he be?” Turcotte said.

  Mickell keyed the radio. “This is Colonel Mickell of the US Army. Major Turcotte will be dropping me off at IceCap tower. Alone. He will then depart. Do we have your permission? Over.”

  Several seconds of silence. “Roger. You have my permission. Out.”

  Turcotte landed the Fynbar at the base of the drill tower. “Good luck,” he offered as Mickell climbed up and opened the hatch.

  “You’re going to need it more than me, Mike.” He nodded. “Yakov. Prince. Princess. See you on the flip side.”

  The hatch slammed shut and Turcotte took off. Yakov fed him the new heading before he could ask: north-north-west. Then flew across desolate western Nevada, bisecting Oregon, into Washington, over the Cascade Mountains and down toward Puget Sound.

  “My dear,” Nosferatu extended his hand to Nekhbet as Turcotte landed in front of Vampyr’s mansion. “Perhaps we will meet again, gentlemen,” he said to Turcotte and Yakov.

  Yakov got out of the co-pilot’s seat and stuck out his hand. “Thank you for saving me in Colorado.”

  Nosferatu stared at the hand for a second, then shook. “You are welcome.”

  The two ‘Undead’ climbed out.

  Turcotte turned the Fynbar skyward and accelerated into orbit. Yakov didn’t say a word through the atmosphere, until he informed Turcotte they were at the proper altitude in space.

  “Do you have the transponder fix from the flexpad?” Turcotte asked. “And what is wrong with you?”

  Yakov read off the heading for rendezvous. “I am thinking.”

  “Care to share?”

  “I no longer know what or who to believe.”

  “Took you long enough,” Turcotte said.

  “It’s more than what is going on now,” Yakov said. “I am thinking back to what we learned battling the Airlia. What I learned at Section IV and you from Area 51 and Majestic. What Leahy says. What Kelly Reynolds said. What Lisa Duncan wrote in her note. Your implant which she says she put in you from her partner, but did not know what it does.” Yakov shook his head. “Even the story of the Airlia Civil War and the destruction of Atlantis has different versions. Duncan wrote that the Airlia aren’t aware of the ‘truth’, whatever that is.”

  “I agree,” Turcotte said, “except we’re past that point. Swarm trumps all. Rennie was where Leahy said he’d be. No clue what she’s doing in Texas or what Nosferatu is supposed to do in Seattle. But let’s focus on our mission.” He nodded at the forward display. “There it is. All ready for us. Mrs. Parrish thinks of everything.”

  The pod was a cylinder, basically the payload section for the Niviane heavy lift rocket. TASC-suited figures were at four points of a large mesh harness. Turcotte maneuvered the Fynbar between the mesh and the pod. The four cinched it down, then jetted back to an airlock and disappeared inside the pod.

  “You think those lines will hold?” Yakov asked.

  “I’m sure they’ll hold,” Turcotte said. “Mrs. Parrish wouldn’t have had this ready if she wasn’t sure. How the men inside will fare as we accelerate is another question.”

  “We need them intact,” Yakov said.

  “Yeah, I know. Heading for intercept with Mars?”

  Yakov gave him the directions. Turcotte adjusted the Fynbar, then began accelerating, not quite as quickly as he would have liked. Because Yakov was right. They were going to need the mercenary firepower once they arrived at Mars.

  CYDONIA, MARS

  Nyx scrolled through the instructions to destroy the base, which were not as simple and straightforward as she’d expected. There was an immediate destruct process, but because the Cydonia guardian did not assess the threat as imminent, some smart Airlia higher in the chain of command had decided to make maximum use of the tactical loss of this base for the overall strategic battle against the Swarm.

  Nyx vaguely remembered some line from human war movies: about don’t shoot until you see the pupils of their eyes or some such. This was akin to that approach. Don’t blow yourself up until you can take some of the enemy with you.

  She was to disengage the power source, bring it to the surface, reconfigure the system, and wait until the Swarm were, well, swarming the base, and then detonate and take as many of them with her as possible.

  It seemed stupid to her. Killing a handful of Swarm when there were billions if not trillions of them? Of course, most thing
s in the regulations had always seemed stupid to her, so why shouldn’t her demise?

  “Want to come?” she asked Labby.

  Labby wagged her tail.

  “Don’t be too eager,” Nyx warned as she headed for the lift. “This is the end of you too.”

  YEVPATORIA, CRIMEA

  It was just by luck, whether bad or good is debatable, that the second deep space radar that picked up the Swarm Battle Core was located in Crimea. That part of the planet was facing in the right direction and the seventy-meter antenna just happened to be pointing at the correct azimuth.

  The astronomers had no idea what they were seeing, just that it wasn’t natural, it was very, very big and it was coming this way. The information was sent up the Russian chain of command, which was a very leaky one. So the Kremlin got the news the same time a bootleg copy of the image was released by a Ukrainian news outlet and promptly spread around the world via social media.

  ENTERING THE MAIN ASTEROID BELT

  The Battle Core was approaching the Main Asteroid Belt, which lies between Mars and Jupiter, at a distance from 2.2 to 3.2 AU.

  While there are billions of asteroids in the Belt, most are quite small. They are also very spread out, so that while depictions make the Belt appear crowded, it isn’t. The Swarm’s problem, however, was velocity. A tiny asteroid hitting a scout ship would be devastating. For the Battle Core, the only items of concern would be the four largest asteroids, such as Ceres, which combined, contained half the material of the entire belt. Those could easily be avoided and the bow shield and outer hull would handle the impact of the rest.

  THE ASTEROID BELT

  The scout ships heading toward Mars and Earth were in the Belt, and two had already been holed by small asteroids, the crews killed.

  The composition of the Belt was analyzed by the scouts passing through and the arrays on the Core. There were some elements that were of interest, especially water, carbon and phosphorous. There were also heavy metals, which the Kuiper Belt was lacking.

  The Swarm, with millennia of experience invading and reaping star systems, had a variety of methods for accomplishing its mission. While it could actually ‘mine’ Earth, the target planet, data indicated that would be difficult and that many of the heavy metals had already been extracted from the easiest lodes by the native species.

  There were easier ways.

  Deep inside, in a number of large bays, the spectrum of the Metamorphosis continued in preparation for the reaping.

  THE STRATEGY

  DREAMLAND, TEXAS

  “Maria?” Mrs. Parrish called out.

  Her assistant, and George, approached. “Yes, ma’am?”

  Mrs. Parrish tapped the command and the isolation cone slid down. Maria had hold of George’s collar to keep him from fleeing the descending partition.

  Mrs. Parrish tapped the left flexpad. Voices echoed out:

  Asha: “Do you want to see Sofia one last time?”

  Maria: “How? Do your duty.”

  Asha: “The hell with you, you cold-hearted bitch. You’re not who I thought you were.”

  Mrs. Parrish cut it off. “I understand Asha’s—“ she paused, searching for the right word—“emotions in summoning you regarding Sofia. I am truly sorry about your granddaughter. If there were more time, if the Swarm were not inbound, yes, we could take a chance on curing this new crop of metabols. But there is not time. You understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “As for Asha,” Mrs. Parrish began, but Maria quickly interjected.

  “She was only being nice.”

  “Yes. Nice.” Mrs. Parrish drummed the fingers of her right hand on the arm of her chair, just below the flexpad where the Strategy was pulsing on the screen. “You didn’t answer when she asked if you would report her. And you didn’t.”

  “I did not think it was significant,” Maria said. “Asha was being considerate. That is not a violation of the Strategy.”

  “It isn’t integral to the Strategy,” Mrs. Parrish pointed out. “The problem isn’t just this incident. It’s Asha’s overall inefficiency. Given the data from the original biosphere, the metabol rate has been too high.”

  “The Facility is unprecedented in scale compared to the previous biospheres,” Maria pointed out. “There have been unforeseen problems increasing the population and size. We have been very stringent in keeping the Facility a closed environmental loop and allowing nothing from the outside. Given the supplies being loaded on the mothership, it will actually be a more viable environment than the Facility.”

  The fingers stopped drumming. “I know that. But the original plan was for us to survive on the mothership for two years. That’s changed. Now, we don’t know how long it will take us to find a habitable planet. We need to err on the side of conservation. The seeds are en route and that will make colonization of another planet, along with the other equipment, a tantalizing opportunity.”

  “It is the future of humanity,” Maria said.

  Mrs. Parrish moved on. “Anything further on Leahy?”

  “A recon team landed at the old lab outside Colorado Springs. Empty. She was there very recently. I believe she departed with Major Turcotte, Yakov, Nosferatu and Nekhbet.”

  “Going to Mars again?” Mrs. Parrish chuckled. “She has to come back. And when she does, I will deal with her. Why do you think Leahy contacted Nosferatu?”

  “The same reason we tried to kill Nosferatu and Nekhbet,” Maria said. “They are a loose variable. Unpredictable. Particularly Nekhbet.” She paused. “Should we be bringing in our overseas cells?”

  “You know that is not Strategy,” Mrs. Parrish chided her. “We cannot deviate.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Parrish glanced at the right flexpad. “Turcotte has the pod and is en route to Mars. Mothership load is at fifty-six percent. The seeds are en route. Danse is in our hands.”

  “What about Asha?” Maria asked.

  Mrs. Parrish glanced at the Strategy. “We’re going to execute the Canaan option of Exodus. Facility load protocol will be initiated in less than an hour. It’s too important to be making changes, so we need her for the time being. Don’t worry. I will punish her for causing you this unnecessary pain. I appreciate your loyalty more than I can express, Maria.”

  EARTH

  Twitter was the first social media platform to crash. The ostensible reason was overload. There were some who wondered if one or more governments cut it off to stem worldwide panic.

  It was too little, too late.

  The image of the Battle Core and rumors about the Swarm, the Ancient Enemy, the Airlia, aliens, monsters, and more legends, facts, lies and myths, burned around the globe. Mostly unsubstantiated lies. It was unprecedented in history and completely out of control.

  Someone in the FSB, the former KGB, with access to top secret Section IV data, released images of the corpse of what had been labeled Okpashnyi by the Russians; a Swarm body floating in preservative, taken from Nazi secret archives after the Second World War. It had originally been recovered from the Tunguska crash site.

  The hideous image of the orb, the many eyes, and particularly the arms/tentacles that appeared snake-like, exploded many humans’ worst fears.

  Since no one understood the entire Airlia, Swarm, Human equation, there was no one to put out any valid information. Not that it would be any more believable than the rumors. Or better. The fact the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nation in charge of the Alien Oversight Committee had thrown himself out a window didn’t help matters.

  Chaos ruled as law and order collapsed across the planet.

  Which made it a ripe time for India and Pakistan to finally do what both militaries (and many of the populace in both) had been itching to do ever since the most recent of the four wars between the two countries: release their nuclear arsenals. With each side having over 100 warheads, the command and control structure breaking down, and a slathering desire to get at each other, it was a nuclea
r weapon free-for-all on the subcontinent.

  Ballistic missiles, bombers and two Indian submarines let loose.

  Ominously, the ‘nuclear triangle’ meant there was a third nuclear power with stakes in the region. China has 260 nuclear weapons and something the other two countries didn’t have: the ICBMs to send them anywhere in the world.

  As nuclear detonations blossomed across the subcontinent, China’s grasp on its own military and weapons began to become strained.

  The world’s other nuclear powers went to the highest alerts levels, while their commands argued among themselves who was the enemy: other countries or this approaching spaceship?

  DAVIS MOUNTAINS, TEXAS

  It wasn’t easy rolling the Tesla computer over the rough Texas countryside. The sun was low in the western horizon and the temperature at altitude was beginning to drop. Leahy supposed she could have had Turcotte drop her off closer to the destination but her instinct was to protect this refuge at all cost. He’d learn about it when he needed to; and if he successfully returned from Mars.

  Of course if he didn’t . . . .

  A flash of light to her right caught her attention: the setting sun reflecting off the silver dome at the McDonald Observatory, housing the 9.2 meter Hobby-Eberly telescope; one of the largest in the world. Mrs. Parrish had absorbed the VLBA into her empire and this older, optical facility had also been included.

  Leahy crested a ridge. The valley was uninhabited. No roads, no buildings, not a telephone or power line. At least going down was easier. Reaching the bottom, Leahy took a moment to get oriented in the fading light. She spotted what she was searching for. She walked between two large boulders and turned right, into a cleft in the ridge. She paused and tapped her wrist pad. A door opened at the end of the cleft, directly ahead. She was hit with a strong puff of air from over-pressurization.