by Bob Mayer
Around the town is an array of miniature ecosystems: rainforest, savannah grassland, small copses of trees, a fog desert, and larger patches of agricultural land. A slice along one edge of the dome contained ‘ocean’ complete with a coral reef and a crescent shaped beach. Small waves lapped on the beach.
It is a closed, self-sustaining ecological system, a mimic of the real world, yet completely separate from the world above.
A tall black woman walked through the children surrounding Joseph and stepped onto a bench. Her head was also shaved and covered in similar tattoos. She wore a colorful wrap over khaki slacks and shirt.
Her voice was deep and carried over the crowd. “The Tesla lights use less energy than the displays. They also cover the spectrum needed for plant life to grow and for our health. We anticipated the possibility of some power issues. It is sad we will not have our sunrises and sunsets until we can repair the system, but we continue on.”
One of the older children, a pre-teen girl stepped forward. She had dark skin and long, thick black hair. “Asha, what of the world? What is happening?”
Asha shook her head. “We don’t know, Sofia. And we can’t find out without exposing ourselves to discovery. We must remain hidden. We must remain totally sealed from the outer world.”
Sofia nodded. “Yes, Asha.”
“We will see daylight again,” Asha called out. “We will.”
MARFA, TEXAS
Bobby was still pouting over having shot the television, knowing he’d just given Darlene some hand in the give and take of their relationship. Plus, no more wrestling or MMA fights.
Darlene sat at the half-a-picnic table, one bench missing, smoking. Rex was on top of the table, head resting on her thigh. She only had half a pack left. She supposed she could drive the pick up into town to get more. If anyone was left in town. She imagined most people were running for the mountains, fat lot of good that would do them.
“You gonna say you’re sorry?” Darlene called as she heard Bobby come out of the trailer, the screen door slamming shut behind him, that damn hinge he’d never fixed still not working.
“I told you not to watch that fake news,” Bobby tried, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“Look around, numskull,” Darlene said. “It aint fake. The aliens are really here. See ‘em? Believe it now?”
The Battle Core was north of their location, moving swiftly. Bolts of something flickered down from it every so often.
“Think that’s fake?”
Darlene, after not hearing a reply from Bobby, glanced behind her. He was standing on the top stair to the trailer, sweeping his rifle left and right, level to the ground, peering through the scope. “Don’t you worry, Darlene. I’ll kill any little green motherfucker who gets close.”
Darlene shook her head. “Right, Bobby. You do that.”
Bobby finally lowered the rifle and followed her gaze toward the heavens. “Oh shit!” He swept the barrel of the rifle up and fired, emptying the 30 round magazine as quickly as he could pull the trigger into the sky.
Darlene rolled her eyes. “Really, Bobby?” She was absently biting her lower lip as she watched the Core. “This is one hell of a mess,” she muttered.
FORT HOOD, TEXAS
“Don’t kill him,” the Captain ordered.
First Sergeant Donovan didn’t lower the M-4 rifle. “He’s an officer. A leader. He goes, others will go.”
“Others already have,” the Captain said. “At least no one has taken their vehicle. He’s got a family.”
“A lot of men got families,” Donovan said.
The two were standing in front of their Bradley fighting vehicle, watching a camouflaged figure running away, weaving through the scrub brush and low pecan trees in the Fort Hood training area, north of Cowhouse Creek.
Donovan lowered the rifle and spit some tobacco. The Captain was looking up and to the northwest. The Core was approaching, bringing with it an eclipse along with bright blasts earthward.
“Someone is getting pounded,” Donovan said. His name belied his appearance, as he was a powerfully built black man, of average height, his short dark hair turning grey.
“Corps might issue some dumb orders,” the Captain said, “but radio silence seems smart.”
Their unit, A Company, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division was laggered ten kilometers from the main cantonment area on Fort Hood with the rest of their battalion spread out over several kilometers. The company’s seventeen vehicles were covered with camouflage nets on poles, in a tight circle, the thirteen Bradley Fighting Vehicles formed the perimeter. They’d been here for a week waiting for orders. World War III was so confusing that no one at the Pentagon had figured out where to deploy the First Cav. Then there was the brief peace, but, as usual, orders to go back into garrison hadn’t filtered their way down.
And now there was this.
Fort Hood is the largest Army post in the United States, home to III Corps, the First Cavalry Division, First Army Division West, 13th Sustainment Brigade and a bunch of other units. Over 65,000 soldiers and family members call it home.
Approximately a third of the combat units were deployed around the massive training area, under strange orders to maintain electro-magnetic silence. That meant radios, cell phones, anything that sent out a signal.
“What’s our strength now?” the Captain asked.
“Minus that scum bag lieutenant, forty-six, at last count.”
“Drivers and gunners are the priority,” the Captain said. The company’s full strength was over 130 soldiers, but no one was ever at full strength even under the best of conditions. Under this worst of conditions, desertion had gutted the troop level. They had Bradley fighting vehicles, each armed with a 25mm cannon and TOW missiles.
“What are we going to shoot at?” Donovan asked.
The dark line was approaching. A flash of power streaked down and hit south of them. A few seconds later the sound of the explosion rumbled past. Several more flash lit up the darkness as they went into the eclipse.
“Main post is getting—“ the Captain began when one of the blasts hit close, the shock wave sending both men flying.
They scrambled to their feet.
A kilometer away, the edge of an escarpment had been destroyed.
“That’s battalion HQ,” the Captain said.
“They’re gone,” Donovan said. There were more hits, none quite that close, but in the training area. He was staring at smoking hole where their commanding officer and staff had been set up. “Somebody didn’t follow orders and stay off the radio. I’m going to check on the men, sir.”
Donovan moved out, going from track to track, reassuring the remaining soldiers, bucking them up.
When he got back to the command track, the Captain was nowhere to be seen.
RAVEN ROCK, PENNSYLVANIA
“Space Command in Cheyenne Mountain has gone dark, ma’am.”
Just like all her deployed forces in Europe and Asia. Hawaii had gone off the grid, then the west coast. Now Space Command in Colorado Springs. They’d gone off the air, but had maintained a secure fiber optic link. Apparently that too was picked up by the aliens.
Everyone else should be dark, based on the orders she’d transmitted after seeing what had happened in Russia.
It wouldn’t be long. Even though they weren’t transmitting any more, General Clark was certain the amount of recent electronic traffic coming out of here had been picked up.
She tried to think of something dramatic to say. Something noble. But there would be no one left alive to remember it and pass it down. She didn’t think it was her right to intrude on the last thoughts and prayers of her soldiers.
Strangely, it occurred to her that she wasn’t sure what her own were. What would-- but then the Swarm Battle Core blasted Raven Rock.
WARDENCLYFFE, SHOREHAM, NEW YORK
The three survivors at Tesla’s lab on Long Island stood at a window and watched the Core approach the
east coast.
“What do we do?” one of the techs, Jim, asked Reuben Shear, who was now in charge since Leahy had departed. “We know we can hit it, since we hit the talon in orbit. But—“ what remained unsaid was what difference their Tesla cannon would make on something that big. It had taken several shots to destroy the Airlia talon warship that had only been 200 meters long.
Shear was most knowledgeable person about Tesla technology still on Earth, now that Professor Leahy, his former boss, was gone on the mothership. A tall, black man, he loomed over the two techs who remained, Jim and Linda. They’d made the decision to stay based on the simple logic they had nowhere to go.
The tower that rose above the brick lab had originally been built in the early twentieth century, financed by JP Morgan to send telegraph signals around the world. At least that is what Nikola Tesla had told Morgan. It was actually a plasma cannon, which Tesla had used to shoot down a Swarm scout ship on 30 June 1908. That explosion had become known as the Tunguska explosion.
That had been the second time a Swarm scout had visited the Solar System and the second time one had been destroyed. The first had been in Third Age of Egypt, when the Airlia master guardian, controlled by Excalibur, had shot the first one down.
Although the original tower had been torn down not long afterward, the weapon had been rebuilt several years earlier by the Myrddin. A few days ago it was used to destroy an Airlia talon spaceship that had tried to ram the mothership in an attempt to send the larger ship into orbital decay. But the Core, this massive object approaching around the planet at 20,000 miles orbit, didn’t give rise to optimism the Tesla cannon could do much against it.
TESLA’S LAB, WARDENCLYFFE
The intermittent news since the arrival of the Core indicated the world’s population was in complete panic. Most social media and news platforms had been inundated and then broken down. People were faced with an unanswerable quandary: where to run, when the threat was worldwide? Where would help come from when everyone needed help?
There’d been a rush toward Area 51 when reports of the mothership being readied for off-planet flight leaked, but now that option was gone.
There was nothing left.
Linda and Jim were waiting on his answer. He looked away from the Core and turned to them. “We do nothing for now. Power down. Let it pass by.” He pointed up. “I think this is just the first phase of whatever is going to happen.”
“What do you think is going to happen?” Linda asked.
“Something bad,” Shear said. “Worse than our worst nightmare.”
SS SAROV, STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA
“This is not good,” the Captain muttered to himself in Russian, staring at the image of the Core his communications man had just downloaded from the surface buoy. The communique informed him that all land-based ICBM sites in Russia had been obliterated as the Core passed overhead before they could get their missiles off.
He glanced once more at the message from Command, which had abruptly gone dead, the sign-off terminated mid-word.
“Sever the buoy,” he ordered his executive officer (XO). A moment’s hesitation, then he complied, cutting the Russian submarine from the world.
“Whisper mode,” the Captain said in a normal voice, and the command was relayed from man to man throughout the entire ship. The diesel engines were shuttered and power was drawn from the batteries. The specially designed single propeller silently churned.
The Captain put a comforting hand on the shoulder of the helmsman of Sarov. “Put us on the bottom. Very gently, my friend, very gently. We must be as quiet as a mouse before the time comes for us to roar like a lion.” He removed his hand and walked away.
He whispered to himself: “God help us.”
EARTH ORBIT
Having completed one orbit of the planet and destroying every military post and threat the Core detected over the northern hemisphere, the Core shifted orbit, angling toward the southern hemisphere as it cleared the smoking remains of Europe.
It passed over the Middle East, noting that nuclear weapons had been used to destroy a major city and another nearby location that had once held nuclear materials. Adjustments were made to the First Drop, with those reaping warships that had been designated for Tehran reallocated to the Second Wave.
If the Second Wave was needed, which was a rare event.
Particle beams lashed down, wiping out the remaining nuclear weapons in the country that had nuked Tehran.
Israel was no longer a nuclear power.
The Core crossed over Saudi Arabia.
More adjustments were made to the First Drop as the smoking remains of India and Pakistan were scanned. This was a noticeable reduction to the reaping as this portion of the planet had been one of the most densely populated. On the positive front, north of the largest mountain range on the planet, another densely populated area seemed relatively quiet. No indications of missile launches or military deployments even though intercepted data indicated the country called China had both nuclear capability and a large military force.
Sometimes Scale accepted the inevitable.
The Core went further toward the south polar axis to cross a large island, Australia and a smaller one, New Zealand. There was some military activity noted and quickly wiped out. That was followed by a wide swath of open ocean that was almost completely unpopulated.
A small blip came to the attention of the Swarm as it passed over a lonely island that was far removed from any land mass: an inactive guardian computer was secreted underneath the surface of the island.
Several particle beam weapons fired in concert.
Where Easter Island, and the rudimentary statues honoring the Airlia had stood, there was nothing remaining, just turbulent water.
AREA 51
Turcotte sat on top of the Fynbar staring out at the field of death that Area 51 had become. Thousands of bodies littered the long runway, the surrounding desert and even here, inside Hanger One.
He’d watched the mob overrun the security forces as the mothership lifted off. The uniforms were sprinkled among the civilian bodies. Turcotte didn’t have the heart to search for his friend Colonel Mickell. He’d seen his Green Beret commander get swarmed under and knew no one could have survived that. Humans in a mob were terrifying. Turcotte had seen similar events, at a much smaller scale, during deployments to hot spots around the world during his time in Special Operations. The more people crowded into a place, the more fear, the less human they became and the likelier they revert to their animal instincts of fight or flee.
That is, if one had a proper definition of what ‘human’ was. Kelly Reynolds revelation via the Easter Island guardian computer that humans were a species manufactured by the Airlia to be cannon fodder in their long-running war against the Swarm wasn’t even a week old and sat uneasily in Turcotte’s mind. He wasn’t quite sure what to believe.
Was the appearance of the Swarm Battle Core tied to that? Was the Swarm going to wipe out Earth because it was a part of the Airlia Empire? Or because humans were Scale? Or both?
Turcotte shook his head, weary of coming back to that same fundamental issue. What was the truth? What mattered now?
He had the MK-98 gun next to him, just in case. But the place appeared deserted. With the departure of the mothership, there was nothing to keep people here. Had those who’d survived gone back to Las Vegas? Further out in the desert?
He had the leather briefcase Mrs. Parrish had given him when he’d met her here just a few days ago. He slid the flexpad out. It was dark. Tapped the screen. Nothing. He wasn’t surprised that the Myrddin network was closed. The FM and Satcom radios in the Fynbar were picking up random and intermittent transmissions. Cries for help, some of which had been cut off in mid-transmission as the Core passed by.
The Swarm invasion was strategically playing out with a relentless onslaught that was obviously well-practiced and developed from long experience. Turcotte had picked up enough to know obvious threats, part
icularly nuclear, had been negated. On the secure military Satcom net he’d heard frantic distress calls from various military elements, including an entire aircraft carrier task force. They all ended the same: abruptly cut off.
He stuffed the flexpad into the case. It pushed against a sheaf of papers. The bribe Mrs. Parrish had offered for the Fynbar. Turcotte laughed, the sound echoing in the empty hangar. What was the entire lumber industry of North America worth now? What was anything worth?
He pulled the papers out. Stocks, bonds, worthless crap unless he wanted to start a fire to keep himself warm against the looming night. A slim brown envelope caught his attention. The label indicated it was the accident report on his father’s death. He opened it and slid out the single piece of paper. The blocks on the report were filled in with a thick pen, several misspellings, to be expected at a logging camp in Northern Maine.
It shed no light on the death, simply stating that his father had been crushed when a trailer load of logs tipped over. Also to be expected at a logging camp.
Turcotte scanned the report once more, something bothering him.
Then he noticed it. In the next of kin section. His mother’s name was there. But in the block for children there was a 0.
That didn’t make sense.
Turcotte had been four when his father died. He remembered the men who’d come to the door of their cabin. Somber, long-faced, hard men, speaking in that long accent of the northern woods.
He remembered his mother falling to her knees as if struck by lightning. Her screams. One of the men awkwardly trying to comfort her, but anxious to get back to camp, because you weren’t on the clock for this dark duty.