Some blobs, likely pushed down by strong air currents landed early, mostly undetected ahead of the drifting multitude. The emergency alarms of cities around the world were activated and wailed urgently, causing fear and panic.
Above the cities, the drifting lights were being attacked by the world’s air-forces and by constant streaks of surface-to-air missiles and heavy anti-air barrages. It wasn’t long before widespread looting and civilian disorder broke out and began spreading like wildfire. The situation was only getting worse as more and more people, through the chaos, were saying, rather convincingly, that the probability was high that Divine Salvation had finally arrived.
It got even worse, when the Pope himself as well as the leaders of several other major religions quickly appeared on international TV stations, through lines of interference likely caused by the arrival of the lights, and began proclaiming the same, and made passionate pleas for the militaries to stop their attacks and air-defense measures.
The Whitehouse and the rest of the world’s governments issued emergency broadcasts, warning their citizens of an alien invasion, that it was likely not God arriving, and advised everyone to stay inside and lock their doors. But it was too late, the warnings fell on deaf ears and were ignored, the roads became gridlocked mayhem as civilians and some sinners tried to flee the cities, many of them eventually on foot. But many chose to stay and gathered in large crowds around places of worship and city squares, under a festive atmosphere, to welcome the belated arrival of the Divine at long last and the advent of heaven on earth. The President remembered a scene with the Pope addressing a massive, blitz-gathering of people outside the Vatican.
Preliminary analysis determined that the aliens were focusing the bulk of their so called invasion force on the world’s main cities and population centers. They seemed to be impervious to everything humanity had been throwing at them. Now plenty of blobs made landfall, dotting the globe with dots of light, and the world lit up like a Christmas tree, with the world’s militaries attempting to engage the lights.
The interference on the civilian radio and airwaves became too severe; the broadcasts became lost in the noise, effectively removing the means of governments to communicate with their citizens. Not that it mattered as civilian order had already been replaced by complete bedlam.
Then the aliens tightened their grip and all contact with earth’s satellites were lost, blackening out satellite based communications, military GPS, and satellite surveillance. Undersea cables were affected as well, and then finally, the Internet went dead.
But for a time the UEDF still had a tenuous grip on communication with the troops, using military radio, some microwave frequencies and legacy tech land-lines, which weren’t entirely affected by the interference. But things were slipping downhill quickly.
The troops that engaged the enemy reported sightings of weird, swift-moving alien creatures and large mechs emerging from the blobs, and alien troops in some sort of environmental suits, and what looked like lightning striking from the lights. In a matter of minutes, all contact with ground troops, vehicles and aircraft that ventured too close to the lights was lost. It was the same situation on the high seas, with the world losing its most powerful, nuclear armed fleets and carrier groups.
A big loss was the US Pacific carrier group, led by the USS Santaroga, commanded by the President’s long-time friend and trusted advisor, Admiral John O’Neil. A master tactician, warrior and leader of men, O’Neil was initially going to command from the situation room, but convinced the President that he’d be of better use by leading in person at sea.
The Santaroga had attempted to engage a large blob, floating in the ocean near the coast of Japan. However, what they failed to realize, until it was too late, was another large blob rising from the deep depths right underneath them. Shortly afterwards, the entire fleet was lost and thousands of sailors were feared dead.
All around the world, humanity was suffering battlefield defeats. What made matters even worse was that the blobs appeared to be growing in size and in less than two hours after landing, began swallowing entire cities.
The President remembered scenes transmitted from airborne drones of massively large blobs of lights beginning to eclipse large parts of New York City, Washington DC, São Paulo, London, Moscow, Tokyo, Beijing, Johannesburg, Sydney, and a dozen other cities around the world.
So far, the conventional military campaign and weapons were proving completely ineffective and impotent against the aliens. But later, some of the preliminary data from the initial nuke blasts came back, and indicated some success against the lights, creating a glimmer of hope. Backs against the wall, humanity’s desperate leaders finally made the ultimate decision and began nuking its blob affected cities one by one.
The President would never forget the historic first ‘friendly’ nukes that detonated above New York City. The subsequent discovery that EMPs could destroy the lights, was a great but empty breakthrough. Some blob locations were bombed, by EMP tipped missiles dispatched from hidden underground silos and, miraculously, these locations became blob free.
What happened next, unnerved those in charge even more as suddenly UEDF Command began receiving hundreds of calls from commanders that were thought dead. They appeared to have gone mad, and feverishly insisted that the UEDF stop their crazy and foolish aggression against “God” One even screamed “Cease fire! Cease fire! Can’t you see? It’s the Rapture! You idiots! How dare you attack God?”
The EMP bombing continued, and the calls to the UEDF fell silent as quickly as they had started.
But eventually, the limited EMP arsenal was nearing depletion and the rain of lights carried on unabated. It wasn’t long before big blobs were sprouting up again among the ashes.
All of this had happened in a matter of hours, creating one hell-of-a hectic ride, that finally culminated in the UEDF Command feed going black.
President Anderson removed his hands from his face and looked across the room. He asked General Henry Stephens, a chain smoker, for a cigarette.
It was as good a time as any to pick up the old habit again, he figured, and a few seconds later he was puffing away, savoring the old familiar taste.
A part of him wanted to try a Winston Churchill move, some sort of “we’ll fight them in the streets, never surrender” BS speech. Maybe later. But for now, the wind had been completely knocked out humanity’s sails. It was no illusion, the unthinkable had happened: Earth had been properly defeated.
The couple of hundred troops that remained on the surface would not be able to put up an effective resistance. Besides, most of the surface was now shrouded in the fog-of-war, and they had a very limited view of what was going on up there. Shockingly, humanity had lost its grip on its planet. Everyone had to face it: it was game over; for now.
The President took another drag from his smoke. At least there was a plan B. Back in the Cold War days, with the ominous threat of impending nuclear disaster, his predecessors had the remarkable foresight to plan for Armageddon and had constructed a massive underground facility, Redux City, essentially a giant fallout shelter, which would shield and protect a select few hundred thousand people, for what was hoped would be a couple of hundred years, granting them enough time to survive until it was safe to return to the surface again. It had been built deep underground at great expense, as close to the Earth’s core as possible.
The city was an amazing feat of engineering and was entirely self-sufficient, very well stocked with supplies and backup equipment, and had large stores of seeds and genetic material to reboot life on the surface if needed. It even contained large farms, complete with fields with crops and grazing land with livestock, and had access to a near infinite supply of underground water and geothermal energy.
A secret tunnel led from the situation room to the entrance about two hours away, far away from the Capitol, and was the only available access point to the city. The tunnel was rigged to cave-in and would be completely destroyed shortl
y after arrival, leaving no trace and no clue that it once existed. All that was left to do now, was to cut their losses and go.
“Ok, people... I can’t believe I’m actually saying this... but... it’s time”, the President said as he stood up to leave.
Suddenly the door slammed open with a loud bang.
Revealing a man that should be dead and floating in the ocean, seven thousand miles away.
President Anderson thought he was going to have a heart attack. In fact, two generals on the far-side of the table were actually having heart attacks.
Admiral O’Neil stood there, a crazed look on his face.
“Stop what you’re doing! It’s the Rapture you fools!” he yelled, right as what looked like arcs of lightning came arching out of his chest, hitting everybody in the room simultaneously.
Chapter 20: Ascension
It was surprised to not find any humans fiercely defending this Reactor – this most invaluable technology and, suspecting a trap, it had Mark check the device for authenticity and booby traps.
It was all clear.
The creature felt a surge of nervous excitement.
Using brainwashed replicas of Mark, it began constructing slightly modified Reactors in isolated and shielded locations on Praxima and all five colonies in urgent but very careful haste.
Not much later – after it had figured out how to safely siphon energy from the device and after it had made some minor adjustments to increase the device’s output – the creature decided to bring the prototype Reactor online on Earth.
Almost immediately, a limitless stream of the purest, most divine energy came surging in, drenching the creature in glorious ecstasy.
It drank with eager intensity, then it grew and grew and grew, and grew some more.
In an instant, Earth was enveloped in a growing sphere of light that transcended its boundaries, rapidly overflowing into space.
Chapter 21: Pursuit
Just because you say it’s impossible, doesn’t mean that it actually is.
- Professor Ben Franks, lecture at MIT
Helley was on the bridge with Captain Ihram, punching in commands in a console.
The Imperial vessel had appeared out of nowhere on the peripheral boundary of the long range sensors, and was fast gaining speed.
It must’ve been following them for months, but had been out of detection range all this time.
But with Helley’s recent updates to the sensors, the ship eventually moved into range. How did they find them?
Helley was tasked to search for any hidden pings on all broadcast frequencies; and she eventually uncovered a broadcast that ingeniously tried to disguise itself as background space noise. They then traced the signal and found a hidden tracking beacon, hidden deep within a bulk-plate on the lower level.
Captain Ihram had known since the beginning that there was a strong possibility of a spy or spies on board, but had lacked the means until now to flush them out.
When he was notified of the vessel, the news was kept absolutely secret from the rest of the crew. Only he, the ensign that discovered the vessel on sensors and his trusted first-officer, Herlo, knew of it.
He instructed Herlo to install hidden cameras in critical parts of the ship, in the middle of the night, while most people were asleep. The cameras were to be monitored for attempts at sabotage.
Captain Ihram knew his ship like the back of his hand, and knew of a little known vulnerability she had at a small junction near the intake manifolds. One small blast there and it would be enough to disable the ship, leaving her dead in the water for days – presuming the goal was to capture and not destroy. A hidden camera was placed there as well. The Captain selected a few trusted men and they were then organized into four teams, which enabled them to be deployed to critical areas in seconds. When everything was ready, the Captain sounded the alarm.
Then Helley was brought in to try and detect the possible tracking beacon, which they found and destroyed.
It was a bit late as the enemy vessel was already on their scent. Initial scans revealed that it was likely a modern Imperial Navy vessel. Although it was still a distance away, it was gaining quickly. They needed a drastic speed boost and Helley was tasked to try her best to make the engines go faster. And on the second night after the crew was notified about the vessel, the unexpected spy was captured.
He was caught right in the act as he was about to place a small explosive device near the junction of the intake manifold. He was scanned for internal explosives, and other implanted electronics, and then thrown into the brig until it was decided what to do with him later.
When he was asked why, he just laughed and refused to answer.
It was Elzo.
Helley couldn’t believe it, but after she was shown the video of him in the act, she had no choice.
She tried not to think of it as she and the engineering crew had their hands full trying to desperately boost the speed of the old rust-bucket.
At first it seemed that she could not modify the engines while they were still running; in order for her to plug-in her reactor technology, for a cleaner, more efficient source of energy, providing a bit of a boost. In the meantime, she made incremental increases in speed, by optimizing and tweaking the engine configuration wherever she could.
The Captain was also busy; he and Herlo had been placing explosives in key parts of the ship. Should the Imperial vessel ever catch up to them, the Valiant would go out in a big bright flash, and there’d be absolutely nothing left to salvage.
Later, the Valiant blazed past the first planet on their route, and encountered no resistance. The crew didn’t give much thought to the civilization there; which appeared to be pre-warp and primitive.
What occupied their attention most was the sombre realization that their pursuers were rapidly gaining on them, travelling at seemingly insane speed, and would, in all likelihood, catch up to them in a matter of hours.
Unfortunately, nothing that they were doing, even with the brilliant Helley assisting, was yielding anything more than a marginal speed increase and attempts to lose their pursuers was proving near impossible.
They continued monitoring their pursuers. Then, totally unexpectedly, and to the complete surprise and shock of the crew, the vessel came to a halt near the planet. The crew had no idea what to make of this development, but saw it as a chance to somehow make a breakthrough and even though they were already exhausted and over-worked, this gave them a much welcomed boost and a new sense of hope.
Shortly afterwards something strange and disturbing happened with the vessel at the planet – a sequence of events that made them immediately realize that something was completely amiss. The vessel that had been pursuing them for these many months clearly wasn’t from the Imperium. It was something strange, new and alien.
Out of the blue, another vessel just like it had materialized out of thin air right next to it. This cloned vessel immediately continued the pursuit, causing a sudden surge of fear in the crew.
Then, just as they thought things couldn’t get any weirder, another fifty vessels materialized and began what appeared to be an invasion of the planet. The crew was in a complete panic now.
It was during this chaos that Helley finally had a breakthrough. She figured out a way to turbo-boost the warp drive by changing the nature of the warp bubble directly ahead of the Valiant, in real time. In theory – if it didn’t destroy them first – it could provide them with an almost three hundred percent increase in speed.
Plus, as an added bonus, it could, as a side effect, mean a completely new type of warp trail which might result in the alien vessel losing their scent, so to speak.
Modifications to the shields would hopefully keep the crew safe from any additional stresses on the hull and from most unforeseen radiation. But, as no one had travelled this fast before, the consequences and risk of doing so was completely unknown. It would take her a few hours to make the modifications. She set to work immediately.
<
br /> Several hours later, when she was about ninety-five percent complete with her modifications, the Valiant detected the first in a series of massive subspace distortions which appeared to have been caused by a major planet-wide explosion at the planet.
There was some sort of gigantic shockwave rushing towards them and it was travelling too fast to escape it.
The ship’s emergency alarms activated.
The warp field became unstable and the Valiant was thrown out into normal space, hurtling uncontrollably around and around.
The crew braced for impact.
But, unexpectedly, when the shockwave hit the ship moments later like a crashing avalanche, there was no force of an impact, no thunderous sound heard, no explosion felt, just a strange tingling on their skin and an electrical sensation in the air.
In an instant, the hull was glowing an incredible, almost heavenly white.
Helley could swear she was hearing the rumbling of godlike laughter.
“I found you, Helley!” boomed a voice that sounded like God.
Instinct made her try to make a run for it.
But then everything filled with a brilliant white light.
Chapter 22: The Portal
It was endless darkness here as it had been since time immemorial.
A door opened from somewhere and a sliver of sharp, bright light pierced the profound blackness.
Now, a small round scanning device, glowing with multi-colored lights, entered and the door shut behind it.
It floated in place for a while, seemingly completely alone in this vast abyss.
Then the door opened again, this time wider, revealing the silhouette of a female figure in enviro suit and the intense bright glare of an overwhelming, all-powerful, white light beyond.
The Light Page 14