Machines of the Gods

by William B Lyons

  “I know, but there are no better options,” Steve replied. “Just do it, okay!”

  “Yes, sir!” Eddie snapped and started punching computer keys again. “The dish is properly aligned.”

  “Okay, start uploading. Move that thing away from the Earth as fast as it will go. I believe Diamond Jack will go after the sphere from where ever he is.”

  “It’s as good as done.” Eddie punched the computer keys one more time and started uploading information to the sphere.

  Minutes later, the sphere started moving away from the Earth—and moving fast. Within just a few moments, the device was beyond the upper atmosphere and into space.

  ***

  Diamond Jack’s eyes looked out at the world. The craft was moving so fast that from the ground it looked like a shooting star. From his view point, no objects on the ground could be seen either. Blurry images were the only visible things. However, the third target was only minutes away. Soon the fun would start again. However, the vehicle’s warning light came on yet again.

  Diamond Jack smiled and looked at the view screen. He’d grown accustomed to aircraft and missiles being shot at him. That was nothing new. However, this was something different. The image on his view screen was that of the sphere heading into space. “No!” he screamed in rage. “How is this happening?”

  His instruments showed that the sphere was out of Earth’s orbit and headed deeper into space. In fact the huge device’s speed was increasing the further out it went.

  Diamond Jack’s fists gripped the joystick tightly. “You’ll not steal my ultimate weapon! That will not happen!” He pivoted the craft around and pulled back on the throddle. The craft shot forward at super speed yet again. “I will finish all of you this time!”

  ***

  “Steve, I’m picking up an object moving toward the sphere at an impossible speed.” Eddie gazed into the monitor. “It was over a chemical facility in Longview, Texas, but it is headed this way fast. It’ll be back here in a few minutes at its current speed.”

  “Good, he’s going for the bait.”

  “I just hope that he does not gain control of the sphere before it gets near to the sun. This is going to be close. I’ll have to—”

  Steve looked up, puzzled as to why Eddie had suddenly stopped talking. “What?”

  “I’m moving that sphere away from the sun and into deep space,” Eddie muttered. “I have an idea.”

  Steve looked up with apprehension. “Are you crazy? If he regains control of that sphere, this stuff will start up all over again.”

  “I know, but he might regain control before that sphere hits the sun anyway. My plan will get rid of Diamond Jack and the sphere too. Just trust me!”

  Steve looked down and sighed. “Okay, do what you do best.”

  “Thank you.” Eddie’s fingers started punching keys again. A memory had suddenly come back to him. Just a day before, he’d been looking at the blueprints of that space sphere and realized something important. The device had not been designed as a weapon at all. Its primary purpose had been to propel that ark between dimensions by creating massive amounts of energy through a super fusion process. In order to accomplish this, the sphere would generate gravity on a super-massive scale and create a wormhole. In other words, there may have been a way to trap that craft and pull it into another realm. At least the process worked in theory. It was risky, but was the only shot they really had.

  ***

  The alien craft was zipping across the early morning skies like a shooting star. From inside, Diamond Jack’s eyes were focused straight ahead. His mind was locked on the vengeful mission ahead. His enemies would not steal his ultimate weapon. No, every person in the USG would surely die as well. He’d make sure of this. With this thought in mind, he pulled back on the throttle and gritted his teeth.

  The craft’s speed increased even more. It was now moving so fast that heat-friction fire was blowing back into the cockpit lid, and the entire front of the craft glowed red. The internal instruments were indicating that the sphere had moved out of Earth’s atmosphere and was headed for deep space.

  Diamond Jack pulled back on the joystick and pivoted the craft upward. Outside, the blue sky quickly grew black as millions of new stars became visible as well. Still, the craft climbed. Below, the entire Earth could be seen.

  Jack reached down and flicked on the internal mic. It was time to taunt Steve one last time. “Agent Miller!” he barked into the alien console. He leaned back into the seat and gazed out into space at the sea of stars ahead. “Agent Miller, I know that you can hear me. Don’t you want to know my final plan?”

  There was nothing but silence for about fifteen seconds before Steve finally spoke. His voice was crisp over the internal speakers in the craft.

  “Okay, you’ve proven your point,” Steve broadcasted. “I know what they did to you was wrong. I get that, but you cannot kill millions of innocent people because of a few individuals in one organization.”

  “Why not?” Diamond Jack blurted. “I’ve killed before, lots of times. The police never suspected me of anything—not even when I poisioned my own father for giving my puppy away when I was a boy. And it didn’t stop there either. I’ve secretly buried many people—anyone who got in my way. Killing is nothing new for me.”

  “You can’t escape. There are multiple broadcasts being sent out on every continent in the world about you. There is no place that you can land. If you stop all of this and surrender, I can promise that you’ll live—nothing more.”

  Jack’s teeth gritted again. “I must still have my revenge!”

  “You don’t understand, there is no way—”

  “No!” Jack hissed, slamming his fists together. “It is you who do not understand. This has been a suicide mission for me since the very beginning. All I’ve ever wanted was to destroy the USG, nothing else. I don’t care if I take the rest of the world with me. Hear that, I don’t care!”

  ***

  Steve sat back down next to Jenny and looked at Eddie. “There is no reasoning with that maniac. Whatever you have planned, it better be something fantastic.”

  Eddie nodded and looked back. “It will be, I can promise you that.” His fingers raced over the keyboard yet again. “Let Diamond Jack get a little closer.” He pressed the “enter” key and leaned back in his chair. “Once this process starts, it’ll be hard to stop.”

  Steve looked over at Eddie again. “What are you about to do? What’s about to happen out there in space?”

  “Just watch!” Eddie replied. “I’m going to send him straight to hell.”

  Steve gazed into the large monitor on the wall. “I certainly hope so.”

  The alien sphere was over a hundred miles above the Earth and starting to spin very fast. At first, it was rotating at a few revolutions per second. This quickly increased to forty revolutions per second. The sphere’s speed still kept increasing exponentially. Within a few moments, its speed was at a thousand revolutions per second and still getting even faster. The space around the sphere was beginning to glow red as the nearby elements started to fuse together. The sphere vanished and was replaced by a fading white light. Things around this area looked like a hurricane in space. Suddenly, the hurricane-like mass inverted and formed a hole in space.

  ***

  Diamond Jack could see the strange hole as his craft rapidly approached this area. “Where is my ultimate weapon? Where in the hell is it?” He slowed the craft to a snail’s pace as he slowly got closer to the swirling hole in space. “What in the hell is going on here?” he whispered to himself. “This can’t be real.”

  The large hole was expanding as an energy tube could now be seen at its center. Large space rocks and dust seemed to have been falling into this hole and vanishing. Suddenly, everything around the craft seemed to have been being pulled into this void.

  Then, a
white swirling vortex emerged from the center of that hole in space and gripped his craft. The ship then started being pulled toward the hole too.

  Jack’s eyes widened as he gripped the joystick, turned the craft around, and pulled back on the throttle. However, the craft still moved backwards toward the gaping hole. He increased the power to the craft. Still, it kept moving backward at an even faster rate.

  He then engaged the warp-drive engine. The craft started vibrating very hard, but it was still moving backwards toward the hole. The super thrusters kicked in and the hard vibration got even worse, but the craft still moved toward the hole.

  In panic, he gripped the craft’s internal mic. “Eddie, what have you done? Look, let me go and you can have the world. I even know someone who can give you everlasting life. Just let me go. I am the future!”

  “No, my friend, you are part of my past!” Eddie blurted and then turned off the mic.

  “No!” Diamond Jack yelled, while violently beating his hands against the vehicle’s control panel. “I must have my revenge!” He looked up and saw the vast hole directly ahead. “Damn you all to hell!”

  The alien craft then started tumbling as it fell further into the vortex. Its engines were at maximum, but they were no match for the super forces of this gigantic whirlpool. Finally, the craft was then sucked into the hole and vanished completely.

  However, the vortex continued stretching out and was heading toward Earth. It soon ripped through the atmosphere and hit the ground. Then, it started moving across the landscape like an intergalactic tornado. It plowed through an abandoned scrap yard. Rusty cars, steel pipes, and various other debris were swept up in the spinning mass like dry leaves before being sucked into the gaping hole far above the world.

  Next, the funnel crossed a section of I-20—ripping up concrete and asfault—before plowing into a grove of trees. Almost instantly, they were also pulled up by the roots and went tumbling toward the sky.

  ***

  Steve gazed into the monitor with disbelief and outright horror. “Good God, what’s happening out there.”

  “Time and space are folding around that sphere,” Eddie explained. “It has created a small black hole. Everything is being pulled inside. Once things are inside, they are then shot out at another place in the universe. The center of that vortex forms a wormhole or portal to another place. That’s how these beings traveled from one star system to another.”

  Steve was no expert on high-tech physics or science fiction, but he could clearly see the danger here. “Okay, I believe you!” he shouted, looking into the monitor again at the swirling funnel swallowing up an office building and part of a school stadium. “Now shut that thing off!”

  Eddie pressed the “enter” key again. “This will take a few minutes because time moves at a different rate of speed near the event horizon of the vortex.”

  “The event horizon?” Steve questioned. “What the hell is that?”

  “It will take a while, okay?” Eddie replied in a frustrated tone.

  “I don’t care, just make sure that thing shuts off!” Steve stammered.

  Eddie turned back toward the computer’s monitor. “We have another problem. Those space bugs are loose!” he yelled. “Just look!”

  Steve snatched around and gazed back into the large monitor ahead. He could clearly see those things had flown out of the hanger chimney and were swarming above the complex in a rotating formation. In fact, thousands of them looked like a black rain cloud which constantly changed its shape. “The amplifier must have completely shut off,” Steve yelled.

  “Come on!” Eddie begged, standing up and moving away from the computer workstation. “We have to get going now.” He pointed at the corner of the monitor. “The bomber is almost here. They’ll be dropping the Termicide in less than a minute.”

  Steve could see that the large bomber on the screen was fast approaching from the east. However, off to the left was that swirling vortex. It seemed that both objects of death were headed in his direction. “Why is that vortex coming this way?”

  Eddie looked puzzled and then spoke. “Some signals from that sphere must still be getting through from where ever it is. It’s somehow aiming the vortex back at this location. Diamond Jack must have originally programmed that thing to destroy this base. As long as the vortex is open, signals can get through. The vortex will eventually collapse, but that will take time—time we do not have much of.”

  Steve lifted Jenny in his arms and followed Eddie to the rear elevator door. “The armored vehicle is in the covered parking lot above. It is air-tight as well. All we have to do is get to it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The elevator door opened to an almost empty parking lot. The only vehicle that was still workable was the armored car straight ahead. The other AV that Steve had used earlier was still on its side and had oil leaking from underneath. That killer robot was stretched out next to a concrete pillar, and the emergency workers had taken the bodies away. Above, that loud buzzing sound was like a roaring hum. Thousands of space bugs were swarming just overhead. The wind being pulled into the vortex was high as well, like tornado.

  Eddie ran toward the armored vehicle and opened its door. Steve climbed in and stretched Jenny out on the back seat. The door closed and sealed shut while Eddie started the engine.

  “How is she?” Eddie asked as he pulled the vehicle out of the parking structure and guided it down the empty road.

  Steve looked up with sorrow in his eyes. “Not good, I don’t think she’s going to make it.” He again held her in his arms, hoping that some of his life force would spill over into her. “I’m just glad that there is a hospital not too far from here.”

  From above, hundreds of those flying beasts detected movement and came down on the armored vehicle with a vengeance. They clustered over the entire machine in just a matter of seconds. Even the windshield was completely covered.

  “Why are we slowing down?” Steve asked. “The death radius of that Termicide is over twenty miles. We’re not even close to that.”

  “You said that this vehicle is sealed, remember?” Eddie replied. “We should be safe from the gas in here. Besides, I can’t go any faster because I can no longer see out of the windshield. It’s covered with those freaking bugs. I don’t want to run off the road.”

  “Okay!” Steve yelled in frustration. “I’m thinking about Jenny. Also, that jet will be dropping the Termicide at any moment . We have to clear this area fast! Turn on the windshield wipers!”

  “Okay…” Eddie whispered, clicked on the wiper button, and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The vehicle lurched forward. He hoped that the sudden wind would blow the creatures off the windshield. However, they held on tightly. Even the windshield wipers could not move the stubborn creatures.

  “Speed up!” Steve demanded. “There shouldn’t be anyone else on the road. This entire area has been evacuated. Just don’t run off the highway.”

  “That’s easier said than done,” Eddie replied.

  Three miles behind them, the military bomber fired a stinger missile straight into the ground just below the swarming space bugs. The device exploded with tremendous force. Then, a black mushroom cloud appeared over the horizon. The dark wall of flaming mist washed over the landscape like a blanket of death. Leaves on the trees instantly wilted as the super-harsh chemical burned into the earth, igniting the grass and other living plants. Birds in the sky burst into flames as the acid-like chemical desolved their tiny bodies down to just goo that dripped onto the ground. The force of the explosion also blew out windows, bent trees, and scattered debris.

  Eddie fought desperately to keep the vehicle on the road as the first wave of blast- driven winds hit them. The force of the disturbance lifted the vehicle off its wheels and turned it sideways. “Hold on, I’m going to floor this thing.” He wrestled with the steering wheel and straighte
ned the armored car up. He then pressed down on the gas pedal again. “I hope that nothing is on the road ahead for us to run into.”

  “I agree!” Steve yelled.

  The black mist washed over the van, the road, the fields, and the entire landscape. It was like a giant wave of dark air. Everything that was not made of glass, stone, concrete, metal, or thick wood either burned or melted. Even the plastic road cones dissolved into jelly as the chemical washed over.

  Steve closed his eyes in silent prayer as the vehicle lurched forward. Hopefully there was nothing on the road ahead for them to run into. When he opened his eyes again, his first blessing had come. The windshield was no longer matted with those things. Hundreds of those creatures had fallen to the pavement and were squirming as the Termicide quickly killed them. “Yes, it’s working. We’re going to make it!”

  The second shockwave hit. The armored vehicle was blown sideways again. This time, the engine threatened to stall, but Eddie rapidly pumped the gas pedal. The black mist created a dry ocean of death as well. The engine came back to life as Eddie wrestled with the steering wheel again to keep the vehicle on the road.

  “Come on,” Steve said, “get moving.”

  “I’m trying,” Eddie replied. “Wow, look at what that stuff has already done.”

  Steve glanced through the deadly mist and saw skeletons of cattle—still standing—that had been dissolved down to the bone in just seconds. “That’s why we must get at least twenty miles out before we step out of this vehicle.”

  Outside, the dark chemical was rapidly eating the paint off the road signs. Even the concrete freeway ahead was turning black. Grass was burning too.

  “Oh no!” Eddie yelled, looking at the road ahead. “That vortex is headed this way too, moving straight down the highway. The sphere’s signal must still be coming through!”