The Armageddon Directive

by Dayton Ward

  Movement near one of the consoles caught his attention and Tanner ducked lower behind the seed bags. A figure had walked into view, pausing before the equipment. He was tall and thin, and was wearing some kind of form-fitting greenish garment, that Tanner at first guessed be a flight suit—complete with an oversized transparent helmet connected to a unit or device worn on his back—of the sort Tanner thought might be worn by a military pilot or even an astronaut. That idea was shot to hell when he got a look at the person’s face.

  Oh my god. . . .

  The figure’s head was essentially an enlarged skull, with recessed white eyes and a bulbous cranium that appeared to leave exposed the upper portion of an oversized brain. Moving to stand before one of the odd, futuristic consoles, the figure reached with long, thin fingers to a bank of multicolored controls and began flipping switches and pushing buttons. In apparent response to his actions, the tape drives along the wall began spinning at an increased rate, and rows of status lights on the unfamiliar console blinked in rapid succession. In short order they were joined by the other, more conventional computer equipment coming to life, and streams of green text beginning to scroll across the display screens.

  “I’m dreaming,” Tanner said, feeling his breathing quicken. “Holy shit, this has to be a dream.” He clenched his empty fist, willing himself to maintain his composure even as every muscle and nerve in his body was screaming at him to run like hell.

  “Tanner,” said Sutherland. “You okay?”

  It’s true. Everything she suspected, and more. Dear god, it’s all true.

  He looked at her and saw the horrific realization in her own eyes. Despite her work and what she’d said, Tanner had to wonder if she had harbored at least some doubts as to whether this was all just crap. Despite her expression, there was something else in the way Sutherland looked back at him; the set of her jaw as she nodded at him in understanding.

  Validation.

  “You were right,” he said. “This whole time, you and the others who believed this stuff were right.”

  Her gaze shifted between him and the mysterious figure. “Yeah.”

  Who where they? Where had they come from? How many of them were here, and how many more might be coming? Tanner thought of every silly space invasion movie he’d ever seen and dismissed as harmless entertainment. Had they been mere fluff, or prophecy, or even cover stories put out by the government, as magazines like Sutherland’s had claimed? Had the air force and their Project Blue Book known the truth all along?

  After another moment, the voice over the speakers said, “All stations alert. Bogeys on approach via northern vectors. Course heading two four five degrees, speed six five zero miles per hour. Where the hell did they come from?”

  Bogeys? Tanner knew that was military jargon for unidentified and possibly hostile aircraft. Were they using this equipment to track plane movements? If so, whose?

  “This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “How did these . . . things, whatever they are . . . get their hands on all this gear? It can’t just be for keeping tabs on the air force, or whoever. Something’s not adding up.”

  “Delta Charlie Zero Eight, this is NORAD,” replied another voice. “We’re also tracking your bogeys. We’re confirming whether this might be a leftover from your earlier system malfunction. Secure your location and stand by for further instructions.”

  “Acknowledged,” replied the first voice. “We’re sealing the doors. Delta Charlie Zero Eight is on lockdown.”

  There was more being said, but Tanner’s attention was once more riveted by the sight of the figure standing before the alien control console. He’d been joined by another such being, dressed in similar attire and exhibiting similar facial and cranial features. They could almost be twins, Tanner thought as he and Sutherland pulled themselves deeper into the darkened corner. From their hiding place, they watched the two figures interacting with each other, and Tanner frowned as he tried to make sense of the high-pitched gibberish coming from each of their mouths. He had no chance of understanding whatever language they were using, but there was no mistaking the way they pointed to the consoles.

  “Whatever’s going on,” he said, “these guys are really interested in it.”

  Sutherland asked, “Do you think they’re trying to get into the radar system? If they could disable it, our guys wouldn’t be able to track incoming missiles.”

  “Whose missiles? The Russians?” That didn’t make sense. Even with tensions so high between America and the Soviet Union, neither side was really serious about annihilating the entire damned planet in order to make some half-assed point about supremacy. “As for these . . . aliens,” Tanner paused. He was still having trouble processing what he was seeing. “If these guys are from some other world, wouldn’t they just destroy whatever defenses we had? That’s how it goes in all those movies. Why would they care if we saw them coming?”

  “They wouldn’t,” conceded Sutherland.

  “NORAD,” said the voice on the speaker, “this is Delta Charlie Zero Eight. What’s your status?”

  Another voice replied, “Be advised, other stations are starting to track inbound bogeys. Vectors are consistent with Ivan missile launch. Repeat: vectors are consistent with Soviet launch predictions. Response scenarios are underway. Stand by.”

  “Dear god,” said Tanner. “That means what I think it means, right?”

  Sutherland nodded. “Yeah.”

  End of the world, Tanner realized. The end of the whole damned world.

  The two aliens appeared pleased with these reports, and one began tapping more of the controls on the consoles in front of him while his companion chattered in an excited fashion.

  “It’s them,” Tanner said. He scowled, trying to piece it together. “Somehow, they’ve gotten into our systems and are making us think we’re seeing Russian missiles. Otherwise our radar lines in Alaska and on the west coast would’ve seen this first, right? It has to be these guys.”

  “Even if that’s true,” replied Sutherland, “what do we do about it?”

  Tanner drew a deep breath. “We find a way to stop them.”

  Whatever thoughts he may have had about accomplishing that goal were stalled when another figure stepped into view. It was human woman, blonde and beautiful and dressed in a form-hugging, yellow dress. She was gorgeous, so much so that it took Tanner an extra second to realize she was staring directly at him.

  Chapter 11

  Despite his being cloaked in darkness, the woman’s gaze had locked on Tanner, as evidenced by her call of alarm. At least, that’s what he thought it was, though he was unable to decipher the high-pitched shrieking that made her sound like one of the aliens. There was no time to process the significance of this woman speaking the aliens’ language before her companions reacted.

  “Damn it,” he hissed. “Move. Move!”

  One of the aliens had turned and was bounding across the barn toward them, moving with tremendous speed. Within heartbeats it was climbing over the stockpiled seed bags. Its wide, white eyes stared out through its helmet’s transparent faceplate, boring into Tanner with angry, blazing red pupils, and its large, white skeletal teeth seemed eager to tear into his flesh.

  Tanner pointed his .45 at the alien’s face and fired.

  The pistol kicked in his hand, its muzzle flash pushing aside the darkness as the bullets shattered the alien’s helmet. Bright red blood exploded inside the remains of the protective bubble as Tanner fired twice more. The rounds drilled through the creature’s head and it staggered backward before falling against the barn’s wooden wall and slumping to the floor.

  Sutherland was firing, too. She gripped her Walther pistol with both hands and was shooting at the other alien, which Tanner saw was scrambling for cover. As for the woman in the yellow dress, Tanner had lost sight of her.

  “We c
an’t stay here,” she said between her second and third shots.

  “No kidding.” With his .45 held out before him, Tanner moved to get a better look at the center of the barn, and saw a figure moving on the room’s far side, ducking behind a stack of lumber and heading for the structure’s far corner. “But we can’t leave yet, either.” He glanced over his shoulder at Sutherland, who nodded in understanding. “Any ideas?”

  “Kill the power?” Sutherland nodded to where they thought the generator might be located. “Maybe interrupt the signal? Something?”

  Before Tanner could reply, something moved on the other side of the barn. It was the woman in the yellow dress, carrying what was obviously some kind of weapon. He ducked an instant before harsh, white-blue energy lit up the darkened alcove and something slammed into the pile of seed. The bags stacked on top were blasted inward, one of them landing across Tanner’s back, and he grunted more from surprise than pain, and shrugged off the bag before regaining his feet.

  “You okay?” asked Sutherland.

  Tanner mumbled a reply, wrinkling his nose at the smell of burning burlap and the seeds inside the bags. Shifting his position, he aimed his pistol in the woman’s direction in time to see her ducking behind one of the control consoles. When she poked her head above the station’s radar monitor, Tanner fired twice, the pair of bullets hitting the console and shattering its display screen. His third shot also missed her, at which point the .45’s slide locked open. Cursing, he withdrew to momentary safety in order to reload. He reached under his jacket for the spare magazine on his shoulder holster, but his fingers found only the empty pouch under his right arm.

  You just used the spare. Remember this morning?

  He’d forgotten to reload or replace the magazine he’d used during the shoot-out at the warehouse.

  Dummy.

  “I’m out,” he snapped, lunging for cover as another beam of white energy screamed over the top of the stacked seed, scorching more of the bags and sending them tumbling to the ground. Their protection, meager as it was, wouldn’t hold out much longer. Sutherland knew this, too, as she fired three more shots into the barn before crouching low and replacing her pistol’s spent magazine.

  “Last one,” she said.

  Tanner’s gaze fell on the dead alien and what had to be a weapon in a holster on its hip. Scrambling across the barn’s dirt floor, he yanked the odd, oversized pistol from its holster and examined it.

  “Just your average ray gun, I guess,” said Sutherland. “I want one.”

  “Come on,” he said, rising to his feet. “Time to move.” No longer content to be a sitting duck, Tanner stepped forward and aimed the alien pistol at the closest console. The weapon’s kick was less than his .45 as it unleashed a burst of energy that slammed into the console, smashing its monitor to fragments and frying its banks of buttons and gauges. A massive hole bored into the workstation’s outer shell, giving Tanner an unobstructed view of the equipment’s innards. He repeated the shot on the adjacent console and achieved similar results.

  I could get used to this.

  Using both hands to hold the ray gun, or whatever the aliens called it, Tanner moved farther into the barn. The woman and the other alien were not in view, and listening for signs of movement offered no clues. He nodded toward the sound of the generator, and saw Sutherland moving in that direction while he backpedaled toward her, providing cover. Every second exposed them to danger now that they were out in the open, but Tanner preferred this to hiding and hoping to defend a position while their enemy had freedom of movement.

  “Come on, you ugly bastards,” he said, under his breath. “Stick those butt faces out here.”

  The sound of the generator became louder and Tanner glanced over his shoulder to see that Sutherland had pulled open a wooden door. A battered metal box sat inside, belts and gears turning, and an aluminum pipe directed the generator’s exhaust up to a hole in the barn’s ceiling.

  “Tanner!”

  He heard Sutherland’s warning at the same time that he sensed movement to his right, and whirled to see the other alien emerging from cover less than ten feet away. From this distance the creature’s face looked enormous inside its bulbous helmet. Its eyes drilled into him, channeling anger and determination. He wielded a gun just like the one Tanner had taken from the other alien, and Tanner saw its muzzle aiming in his direction an instant before the weapon fired.

  Lunging to his left, Tanner felt heat and displaced air whoosh past him, the ray chewing through the barn wall to his right. With no time to think, he aimed his odd pistol and fired, wincing at the release of light and energy that struck the alien high in the chest. Brilliant white light washed over the creature’s body, and Tanner was sure he saw the bones beneath its clothing and skin before the alien disappeared. A cloud of dull, gray ash exploded outward from where the thing had been, scattering across the barn’s interior.

  “Jesus.” Tanner stared at the spot where the alien had been before his eyes fell upon the weapon that had caused its destruction. All that power, in his hand. What might an army of these things do? What about alien ships, each carrying even larger or more powerful weapons? How much damage could they inflict? How could Earth defend itself?

  It can’t. We wouldn’t have a chance.

  As quickly as the notion of utter helplessness taunted him, it was gone. Tanner pushed it away, unwilling to accept such a finality. There had to be a way to fight these things, whatever they were or wherever they came from. Whatever that answer was, humans would find it.

  And that starts right now.

  “Danny, watch out.” Tanner turned toward the generator shed as Sutherland bolted out of the way. Once she was clear, he leveled the alien gun’s considerable muzzle at the droning, oversized engine, and fired.

  “No!”

  Beloss Bel snarled in rage as the barn’s lights flickered at the same moment that Rajan Dar’s weapon fired. Then the sound of the generator faded and the lights went out altogether, followed by the bulk of the assembled computer and radar monitoring equipment. But only the human-engineered components, now deprived of power from the crude energy source Dar had configured for his makeshift base of operations, had deactivated. The equipment and other interfaces taken from their scout ship, each harboring its own independent power supply, continued to function. Feeble illumination from their individual control panels provided the only source of light inside the barn. Were they still of use without the rest of the purloined equipment Dar had employed to interact with the humans’ radar network? With the engineer having fallen victim to the human trespassers, there was no way for Bel to ascertain the impact of this interference, and no time to perform his own assessment.

  That reality was punctuated by the beam from a proton flux disruptor screaming past him to strike one of the barn’s support columns. The salvo sliced through the heavy wood pillar, and Bel looked up to see the barn’s ceiling buckle as everything above the column’s damaged section sagged inward. Having already discarded the high-heeled shoes that completed the ensemble for his Veronica Lincoln disguise, he ran barefoot toward the nearby wall, fearful that the roof would collapse and bring the barn down on top of them.

  Pausing, Bel braced himself against the wall and, looking down at himself, realized for the first time that he could recall no discernible reason why he had put himself through the process of transforming once more into Veronica Lincoln. Why had he done it? What had he forgotten? Was he supposed to be meeting someone? Another target who possessed information of value? Was he late?

  There was no one, Bel realized. There was no meeting, or anything else requiring him to assume the human disguise. He had gone through all of this . . . for nothing.

  “What is wrong with me?”

  Bel thought of the medical kit and the remnants of the injection he had recently taken. It had to be the drugs, he conc
luded. No other explanation made sense. If he was smart, he would stop taking them, but the parameters of his mission here did not afford him such luxury, and the current situation allowed no time to consider other options.

  The humans! This was all their doing. How had they found this place? How much did they know? If they were here, then where was Lijak Xen? Was she dead as well? These other questions burned in Bel’s mind, but there was no time to seek answers. Now, there was only salvaging what was left of her mission, even if that meant abandoning the immediate effort under way here in order to protect what he could about the Martian presence on Earth. This included the human interlopers, who had to be eliminated.

  Bel caught sight of the humans running from whatever remained of the generator, using the wall to guide them to an exit in the near-total darkness. He knew that humans needed time for their eyes to adjust to sudden changes in light density, but Martian eyes adapted much more quickly. Because of that, he was able to see that the humans were making their way toward the part of the barn where fuel drums for the generator and other supplies were stored. The reconnaissance team’s scout craft was stored near the structure’s opposite corner, closer to Bel.

  There might still be options, after all.

  The inside of the barn was almost as dark as a politician’s heart, Tanner decided. Almost, but not quite.

  Losing the lights had been a natural consequence of destroying the generator, which the alien weapon he still carried had handled with great efficiency. Now all Tanner wanted was to get the hell out of here. So far they had seen only the two aliens and the woman. Was that it? The woman was definitely still in somewhere in the barn. He’d seen her seconds earlier and had taken a shot, but he’d missed and the mysterious woman had scurried somewhere out of sight. Whoever she was, she was in league with the aliens. Was she a spy, or even a traitor?

  I don’t care. Not right now.

  The only light in the barn came from some of the equipment, which seemed not to have lost power even with the generator gone. Like the pistol in his hand, those components still glowed with an energy that was distinctly not of this world.