by Nick Cook
I caught a movement in the corner of my eye. One guy was moving fast to my far right, no doubt an attempt to outflank me. I fired several rounds at the soldier, but he ducked and my shots skimmed over his head. He’d almost reached the barrels when Mike, god bless him, popped up and lobbed a flash bang straight at the guy, quickly ducking back down.
I just had time to turn away from the flash as the grenade exploded. The soldier stumbled to his knees, spraying bullets from his carbine wildly into the air.
I blinked, clearing my vision, aimed and shot a single round. The guy slumped to the ground, clutching his throat where my bullet had found his flesh.
I was in full-blown autopilot combat mode now, not feeling, just doing whatever was necessary to keep us alive.
Bullets ricocheted round the tractor. Straight ahead I spotted Alvarez and one of his mercs behind a mound of earth, a carbine aimed towards me. I managed to duck just as the general emptied a clip that ricocheted off the metalwork above me.
Fucking bastard!
By the time I’d lined up my sight on his hiding position, he’d already dropped back down behind the mound.
I needed to time my shot.
I slowed my breathing and my hunter’s patience was soon rewarded. His face reappeared and my crosshairs were already on his forehead. I pulled the trigger. A clicking sound came from my carbine.
Shit!
Another barrage of rounds slammed into the tractor as I loaded a fresh clip. It was then that I noticed a loud buzzing coming from behind me, like a transformer about to overload.
I glanced back and saw blue light blazing from beneath the tarp on the truck. The micro mind had rebooted!
Flames licked through the ropes holding the micro mind. They snapped as the crystal began to rise into the air.
Immediately, the mercs started shooting at the strobing crystal.
We had to stop them.
Adrenaline blazed through my body as Jack’s machine-gun fire rattled out of the building, forcing the soldiers to duck again. Suddenly the situation wasn’t about winning, only buying the micro mind a last few precious seconds to get airborne and do its stuff. I sprayed bullets at the Overseers soldiers as Mike did his bit by lobbing another flash bang towards them.
The light in the crystal began to strobe faster until it was almost continuous.
Any moment now it would be out of here. Hope had started to rise through me when I spotted a large white winged drone hurtling from the sky. The Reaper, but there were no missiles under its weapon pylons. So what the hell was the pilot flying this thing remotely trying to do?
I caught sight of Alvarez as he peered over his mound and talked rapidly into his radio. He tracked the Reaper with his eyes, as it dived straight at the crystal.
Shit, Alvarez had ordered the pilot to ram the micro mind with the drone.
I shimmied out from beneath the tractor, no longer caring about my own safety. I shot wildly up into the sky at the incoming drone as it closed to less than a kilometre. I was dimly aware of the merc next to Alvarez turning his carbine towards me.
We’d lost and I didn’t care what happened to me any more.
But then a whirring sound came from above.
I glanced up just in time to see a small missile racing up towards the Reaper as it kamikaze-dived towards the micro mind. The missile slammed straight into the drone and an explosion ripped through the craft, sheering one of its wings off. Streaming smoke corkscrewed as the Reaper plummeted to the ground and crashed into scrubland just beyond the border of the town with a loud explosion.
Just for a moment everyone stopped shooting, all stunned by the sudden turn of events.
Then the air rippled as a craft appeared out of thin air. It was like an X101 in design, but easily twice its size and with overlapping armoured plating on its surface – along with a mini-gun mounted under its nose. The weapon swivelled towards Alvarez and his men.
Recognising the threat, the Overseers general was already shouting orders. His soldiers’ fire converged on the craft but bounced harmlessly off it.
With a fury of fire, the newly arrived craft returned the compliment and tracer rounds blazed from its gun. In a scything sweep of death, its bullets sliced the nearest mercs in two, splattering their blood over the ground.
Alvarez was still screaming orders as he and his mercs began to fall back, shooting at the craft as they went. Their bullets continued to spark harmlessly off the fuselage as the craft rotated its wings and came rapidly in to land. With a swirl of rotor wash, it settled on the ground, its rear ramp already dropping.
Niki and his security team exploded out of the craft, weapons already raised to fire at the retreating Overseers.
A woman with a blonde crew cut dropped flat to the ground with a large sniper rifle in her hand. She peered through the rifle’s scope and fired once. One of the fleeing soldiers, at least a hundred metres away, was flung backwards as her bullet found its mark. The woman calmly swivelled her gun towards Alvarez. But any hope of mine that he was about to get what was coming to him was dashed as he disappeared behind a pile of burning rubble. I raced towards Niki and the others.
‘Permission to pursue, Captain?’ the woman asked Niki.
‘Permission denied. We have more pressing priorities,’ Niki replied.
I reached him at the same time as Jack and Mike.
‘I tried to contact you as we were coming in to land, but got no response,’ Niki said.
‘Sorry, but we were just a bit preoccupied, as you probably guessed,’ I replied.
‘Yes, that was quite the firefight.’
A buzzing sound grew louder overhead. We looked up to see the micro mind now hovering a few hundred metres above us.
Static washed over my skin as a huge lance of blue light burst from its tip and shot up into the sky.
Mike pointed upwards. ‘I think that’s some sort of homing beacon…’
Elation surged through me as I spotted another tetrahedron come rushing down the beam of light towards its crystal twin.
‘Lucy?’ Niki asked.
I smiled. ‘It has to be.’
Any sense of euphoria was swept away as I realised Lucy was about to slam straight into the other micro mind. But then, with not so much as a sigh of wind, her micro mind came to a dead stop, just a few metres above the other one.
‘That just broke all the laws of physics,’ the woman who’d fired the sniper rifle said.
Jack raised his shoulders at her. ‘You get used to the madness eventually.’
The two craft started to move slowly towards each other again as if they were being drawn magnetically together. As they finally touched tip to tip, arcs of energy leapt between them.
After the sheer spectacle of what we’d seen so far, I didn’t think any of us expected what happened next. Rather than stopping, Lucy’s micro mind carried on sliding into the other crystal. The two merging micro minds only slowed to a stop when they had reached the halfway point. Now their combined form resembled a three-dimensional six-pointed star. The crystals began to rotate to reveal a seventh star point that had been out of view to us, pointing downwards.
‘Any ideas what’s happening, Mike?’
‘I wish I did, but knowing Lucy I can guarantee it’s going to be interesting.’
He wasn’t wrong.
With a crack of thunder, lightning blazed from the tip of the combined crystals, shooting straight into the ground. The earth began to vibrate beneath our feet. Around us, shimmers of light danced through the air as the electric smell of ozone burned my nose hairs. Then a single harp-like note grew louder until we all had to clamp our hands over our ears. It felt as if every molecule of my body was vibrating to it. The sound started to change, splitting into two, reminding me of the haunting melody of whales singing to each other. The two voices rose and fell in a duet until they gradually became one voice again. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard and I had tears in my eyes as it began to fade
away.
With a shudder, the newly combined micro minds raced up into the sky until they disappeared from view.
We all watched the spot in stunned silence. When a Sky Wire clipped to Niki’s webbing burst into life, we all jumped.
‘We have a new radar contact detected at three hundred miles per hour and closing fast,’ Delphi voice said.
Niki stuck his finger into the air and made a circling gesture. ‘Everyone, time to evacuate – we have an incoming bogey.’
We ran into the belly of their craft. Niki’s security team dropped into bucket seats lining the walls as he escorted us into a sectioned-off cabin at the front. Much like an X101, screens lined the walls, currently relaying a live view of the outskirts of the town outside. Seats had been mounted aft and forward that Niki gestured to us to sit in. But there was one major difference between this and an X101. In the middle of the cabin was a single seat with control panels built into its arm.
‘What’s this aircraft, Niki?’ Jack asked as he sat down.
‘It’s officially known as an X102C, the C standing for a larger combat variant of the X101. However, it’s been nicknamed the Flying Armadillo due to its layered-armour hull design.’
‘It certainly seemed to shrug off those incoming rounds,’ I said.
‘Which is particularly impressive considering it’s just a prototype. This is its first live mission test.’
‘Now you tell us,’ Mike said.
I gestured towards the seat in the middle. ‘So what’s that, the captain’s chair?’
‘No, it’s actually the equivalent of a CIC in a battleship.’ Niki sat down opposite me.
‘A what?’ Mike asked.
‘A combat information centre,’ the woman said with a clear Australian twang as she entered the cabin. She headed for the central chair, dropped down and flipped a switch. Automatic harnesses swivelled over us. With a gentle whine and swirl of dust, the Flying Armadillo took off.
‘Delphi, hand over combat control to the weapons officer, Ruby Jones,’ Niki said.
‘Handing over,’ the AI system replied.
Niki glanced at us. ‘It was Ruby who took down that Reaper drone and laid down suppressing fire as we came in to land. Although the automated systems on the Flying Armadillo are good, Ruby is far better.’
‘Thank Christ you turned up when you did,’ Jack said. ‘It was looking dicey out there for a moment.’
Ruby shrugged. ‘All part of our premium-service package. Air fresheners are extra.’
She punched a button in the arm of her chair and a glass tube descended around her on which a cluster of HUD information was overlaid. Ruby moved a joystick to the side that made her whole chair rotate to face the now closed rear ramp and the view of the town beyond the burning pall of smoke.
‘Bogey is now one hundred and fifty miles out,’ Delphi said.
‘Extreme evac procedure, priority Alpha,’ Niki said.
‘Understood,’ Delphi replied from the cabin’s speakers.
My stomach dropped into my seat as our rate of ascent accelerated. In less than ten seconds Cachora was just a sprawl of buildings in the far distance.
The wings began to rotate back to horizontal and we surged forward.
‘Enemy craft at one seventy-five miles,’ Delphi announced.
‘Just how fast is that damned thing moving?’ Mike said.
‘Mach eight,’ Niki replied with a grim face.
‘What the hell flies that fast?’ I asked.
‘A threat I was worried about but didn’t think the Overseers would dare to deploy.’
‘Delphi, engage self-defence mode,’ Ruby said, in a voice way too calm for the situation.
‘Affirmative,’ the AI replied.
On the screens, the armoured skin of the Flying Armadillo turned the exact cobalt blue as the sky around us.
Ruby moved a joystick in the other arm of her chair. The floor and ceiling monitors switched on as Mike grasped his harness and squeezed his eyes shut. We were now immersed in a 360-degree view of the surrounding landscape. The mini-gun in the nose rotated in its mount to point backwards.
Ruby peered at her HUD. ‘Get ready, everyone, we’re about to have company.’
‘Five miles out…’ Delphi announced. ‘Three…two…one…’
On the rear screens, bordered by a red diamond-shaped HUD marker, a black metallic triangle, like a starship coming out of warp, came to a dead stop less than five miles above the town. From our position slightly below its altitude, we could see three discs of blue light at each corner of the triangular craft.
This was something I’d dreamt about since first coming across it on the UFO forums. To read about it was one thing, but to see it with my own eyes exceeded my wildest expectations.
Mike gawped openly. ‘Is that a bloody UFO?’
‘In a sense, but that’s actually one of ours,’ I replied. ‘It’s a TR-3B Astra, right, Niki?’
He nodded. ‘Yep. You’ve obviously really stirred the hornet’s nest, for the Overseers to risk sending one after you in the middle of the day with so many potential eyewitnesses.’
‘But they can’t see us now you’ve engaged stealth mode, right?’ Jack asked.
Ruby nodded. ‘Let’s hope it stays that way. The US military have been experimenting with rail guns on their Astra fleet. It we get hit by one of those rounds, it will slice straight through our armour like a hot knife through butter. So just in case…’ She flipped a switch and I saw a missiles armed message flash up on her HUD.
‘Oh, fucking hell – out of the frying pan, into the fire,’ Mike said, looking pale with his eyes still closed.
‘I’m detecting a full-spectrum sensor sweep,’ Delphi announced.
An intense column of light flashed out from the TR-3B, zooming through the sky like a lighthouse beam. Within moments it locked on to the region of sky we were flying through.
‘That can’t be good,’ Jack said.
‘Looks as if they are searching for the air vortexes our electric motors are carving through the air,’ Ruby replied.
‘Delphi, initiate silent running,’ Niki said.
At once I felt the craft slowing. ‘Shouldn’t we be going faster, not slower?’
Niki shook his head. ‘Easing back on the power reduces our aircraft’s wake vortex, which they can detect with a Doppler radar. Now it will be much more difficult for them to locate us.’
Just when I thought I might be able to relax, the Astra did its warp thing again. Suddenly it was less than a few hundred metres to our starboard. Its sensor beam began to sweep through the air.
I held my breath as though that might help, then almost jumped out of my skin when Delphi’s voice broke the tense silence.
‘Second contact detected.’
‘As though one Astra isn’t enough to friggin’ finish us off,’ Jack muttered under his breath.
Ruby stared at her HUD display. ‘No, I don’t think it’s another TR-3B. This craft is moving at Mach twelve.’
Niki gave her a surprised look. ‘But that’s considerably quicker than the current generation of Astras.’
Before anyone had a chance to respond, a tubular craft about the size of a fighter jet blurred into existence directly between us and the Astra with not so much as a shudder of a shock wave. The Overseers craft started to bank towards it.
I gawped at the new craft. ‘The Tic Tac I briefly spotted over Choquequirao. Lucy said it had been monitoring us.’
‘In other words, a real-deal UFO has joined the party,’ Niki replied. ‘As incredible as that is, why?’
As if in answer, the Tic Tac jinked round the Astra at incredible speeds, flitting to either side of it like a dragonfly. It kept changing its flight path at impossible right angles that would have smeared any pilot’s brains all over the cockpit in a conventional aircraft. But the Astra was no slouch either and tried to rotate towards the craft.
Something lanced from the TR-3B and a boom rattled the Armadillo�
�s cabin, making me think they’d spotted us and opened fire. But then the aircraft settled and I spotted a bright-burning orange scar had opened up across the surface of the gleaming white UFO. It ducked sideways and zoomed towards the horizon at a mind-bending speed. A split second later, the Astra blurred away after it.
‘Can someone tell me what the hell just happened?’ Jack asked.
‘I think our alien friends just saved our butts,’ Ruby said. ‘The way the TR-3B was flying around the Astra was like it was trying to deliberately draw attention away from us and lure it away.’
‘Will the Tic Tac be OK?’ I asked, thinking we almost certainly owed it our lives.
‘Going by the fact it’s already hit Mach twelve and the Astra can’t keep up, I’d say that it’s more than holding its own.’
‘Oh, thank god.’
Alice’s voice came over the cabin speakers. ‘I wouldn’t have believed that encounter if I hadn’t just seen it for myself on the live feed from the Armadillo’s cameras.’
‘I take it you’ve been monitoring our situation, Alice?’ Niki said.
‘I dialled in a minute ago through the remote uplink when Delphi reported back to me you’d ordered an emergency evacuation,’ she replied.
A large pop-up window opened over the view of surrounding sky. Within it appeared a video feed of Alice sitting in her wheelchair at the desk in her office.
She looked around the cabin as if physically sitting among us. ‘Thank goodness that you’re all OK. You had me worried there for a while.’
‘You and us both,’ Jack replied with a smile.
Alice leant forward in her chair, her hands clasped together. ‘So tell me everything.’
‘You’d better get the coffee on then, because there’s a lot to get through,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘I’ll get a large pot. But you won’t be left out. If you check the compartments under your chairs, you’ll find a thermos for each of you with coffee or tea prepared according to your preferred poison.’
I quickly found an insulated pot of tea, some milk and Earl Grey teabags. ‘You, Alice, are a flipping saint,’ I said.
I noticed from the monitors that we had just crossed over the Peruvian coastline. The Flying Armadillo began to bank gently on a new heading to run parallel to it. A short while later, tea now brewing, I settled back into my seat and started to relax for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, and we began to brief Alice about everything that had happened.