by E. R. Torre
“Asshole,” she muttered before realizing Samantha was right beside her. “Sorry. I knew he was your—”
“You get no argument from me,” Samantha said.
General Spradlin and Jennie Light were the last to sit up. The group surveyed the Mess Hall. With the exception of Frank Masters, most of the chameleons remained in place, erect but blackened to a crisp. A couple toward the back tried to flee. Another pair were on their knees while a third lay on the floor. The agony of the chameleons’ last moments was etched on each and every one of their frozen faces. The blade Frank removed from his chest and threw to the floor, likewise, had roasted in the electric blast. It was nothing more than ash.
“This place looks like some kind of God damned museum,” Jennie said.
Samantha stood up. She stepped past the remains of Frank Masters and walked to that of Warren. Despite the dark features, she recognized her lover’s face. The memory of cuddling up in his arms flashed through her mind and she shivered. A deep, angry frown filled her sweaty face. She spat at him.
“Fuck you all,” she raged. But her anger didn’t last. A single tear streamed down her face. Samantha wiped the tear away and again stared at Warren. She caressed his black cheek, tracing her fingertips over his lips and nose. Her hand settled on its cheek. The smooth surface turned to dust under his hand, spilling down and drifting to the floor.
“Fuck you all,” she whispered.
Jennie Light helped General Spradlin to his feet. They ignored the other figures and examined the remains of Doctor Evans. As with the other creatures, his body was blackened. It too roasted in the electrical storm that emanated from his body.
General Spradlin pulled his injured arm across his chest.
“Thank you,” he said to Evans’s remains.
The figure of Doctor Evans moved slightly.
Jennie gasped.
“Easy,” General Spradlin said. Almost all at once, the Doctor’s figure crumbled. Pieces both large and small fell in chunks on the Mess Hall floor, leaving behind a pile of dark ash.
“What…what exactly happened?” Samantha asked.
“Don't look at me,” Becky said. “I’m just a grunt who came along for the ride.”
“Help me with the General,” Jennie Light said.
Becky, Samantha, and Jennie stepped past the ashes of the creatures. Samantha grabbed a chair and slid it to General Spradlin’s side. He sat down.
“They're all gone?” General Spradlin asked. His face was very pale.
“As far as I can tell, yes,” Becky said.
General Spradlin nodded. Despite the intense pain he felt, a look of genuine relief flicked over his face.
“We...we better get to the control tower,” Spradlin muttered. “Quick.”
“Why?”
“We need to call off...the bombing...”
“You told us we had an hour,” Samantha said.
General Spradlin managed a very weak smile.
“I lied,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
The four survivors of the Little Charlie found a gore filled Humvee with its key still in the ignition abandoned on the main road some two hundred feet south of the Mess Hall. Unlike the Humvee they found earlier, this one’s engine was intact.
“They didn’t expect us to make it any farther than the Mess Hall,” General Spradlin said.
Samantha and Jennie helped General Spradlin into the passenger side seat of the vehicle while Becky Waters covered their movements. They didn’t expect resistance or another attack, but weren’t about to assume all their troubles were over. The three women mounted the vehicle, Becky last, with Samantha in the driver’s seat. She headed directly south, hurrying past the administrative buildings that made up the remainder of the base. All that was left, beyond the forest, was the landing pad.
On the way, Samantha stopped at the base’s only four way stop. Her action, she realized belatedly, was automatic and pointless. There would be no vehicle coming from the other side. There would be no pedestrians who had the right of way. Her gaze drifted off to the side, toward the rusted tool shed. The occupants of the vehicle stared in that direction as well, for there was much to see.
The structure looked like it had exploded. Its sheet metal walls were peeled back like torn flesh. A faint black smoke rose from the shed’s center.
After a few seconds, General Spradlin gently tapped Samantha’s shoulder.
“Let’s go,” he said.
It took them a couple more minutes to reach their destination. When they did, they were shocked by what they found. Little remained of the security station Samantha Aron drove through the previous evening. The metal and wood structure was in pieces. They drove past it and to the pad’s parking lot. There they found Samantha’s Humvee, the one she used to get to the landing pad the evening before, lying on its side.
Beyond the parking lot, the tower looked like it was the victim of a brutal raid. Every one of the building’s windows was shattered, leaving crumpled vertical blinds fluttering in the morning breeze. Within the tower was utter darkness.
The group wearily eyed that darkness, wondering what lay inside. Samantha shut the Humvee off and slid out of the vehicle. Becky and Jennie exited as well. They opened the passenger door and helped General Spradlin out. By now, his features were deathly pale, his breathing shallow. He was covered in sweat.
“Is it possible…could there be more of them?” Samantha asked.
General Spradlin shook his head.
“They’re gone.”
General Spradlin examined his fellow survivors. Becky and Samantha were hesitant to enter the control tower. Sweat shimmered on their foreheads. Jennie Light, on the other hand, carried herself well in the morning heat. She stood the closest to the structure, her lean figure tense.
“What if Frank lied?” Samantha said. “What if there are more of them?”
“He could have lied, but why?” General Spradlin said. “He was certain we were finished. There would be no reason to spread any disinformation. Not at that point.”
“Yeah but—”
“He knows those things better than all of us,” Jennie intruded. “I’m guessing he’s right.”
She walked to the door leading into the control tower. It was smashed open and its metal frame was twisted. Jennie Light stepped into the building and disappeared into the darkness.
Outside, the remaining three survivors watched. A few seconds passed. Finally, Jennie Light stepped out and waved.
“Come on in,” she said. “The water’s fine.”
Becky and Samantha helped General Spradlin into the building. The entire floor was very dark. Jennie pulled at several vertical blinds, snapping them from their places. Light streamed inside the control tower, revealing a floor littered with shattered electronic equipment and documents.
“They’ve destroyed everything,” Jennie Light said. She walked to the opposite end of the room and removed more vertical blinds from a window. Before her were the remains of the base’s radio.
Jennie Light turned and let out a laugh. Sitting in the corner a few feet away was a coffee machine. It too was shattered to pieces.
“Absolutely everything,” she said.
“What about the communication jammer?” Becky Waters asked. “Did you see anything—?”
In the corner of the room, just a few feet from the shattered coffee maker and on a wood table lay a black metal box. The table and the box were the only things within the room in one piece.
“Do you think?” Samantha said.
“What else could it be?” Becky said.
Samantha helped General Spradlin to the box. He took a few precious minutes to look it over. He could feel the stares from the women behind him.
We’re about to be bombed! Hurry up!
General Spradlin nonetheless took his time to examine the featureless box. There were no buttons or any indentations. There was no indication of any way to open it. As General Spradlin got close
r, he could feel heat emanating from within it.
“The good news, if you could we could call it that, is I think this is the jammer,” General Spradlin said.
“The bad news?” Jennie Light asked.
“I haven’t a clue what to do with it.”
“You’ve never encountered a device like this?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen devices like it. All of them, each and every one, had a trap. Our alien friends don’t much care for us getting hold of any of their technology. For all I know, if we so much as touch it, it’ll blow.”
General Spradlin motioned for Samantha to help him step back.
“It’s too risky to do anything with it,” General Spradlin said.
“But if we don’t disable it…”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” General Spradlin said. “Even if we were to somehow, miraculously, figure out how to turn the device off, we still have to signal the subs. Have you taken a good look at the radio equipment?”
“There must be some way to fix it,” Samantha said. She gave the equipment a quick examination. “Maybe we can—”
Her voice faded as she looked at the mangled radio equipment. General Spradlin was right. The radio was beyond any help.
“How long do we have?” Becky asked.
“Thirty six minutes, give or take,” General Spradlin said.
The women around him were silent. Jennie Light approached the metal box. She took a deep breath and, like General Spradlin, looked it over.
“One thing’s for sure,” she said. “We need to get rid of this before we can communicate with anyone out there.”
“Don’t touch it!” General Spradlin said.
It was too late. Jennie Light closed her eyes, reached down, and picked the device up.
Nothing happened.
“That’s a relief,” she said.
The others approached Jennie Light. On the bottom of the box were several indentations.
“What could they mean?” Becky asked.
“They have to be controls,” General Spradlin said. “But there’s no way to know what they do.”
Jennie Light shook her head.
“Then we’ll have to use trial and error.”
“You played the odds and survived one incredibly foolish risk,” General Spradlin said. “Don’t push it.”
“Even if I don’t, we’re dead anyway.”
General Spradlin had no reply to that.
“Be careful,” Samantha said.
Jennie Light laughed.
“I’ll try my best.”
She pressed a button. When she did, an inner green light came on. She pressed another. This time, the light was red.
“A code?”
“Could be,” General Spradlin said.
She pressed another button. Green again.
“This thing is getting warmer,” Jennie Light said.
“It’s also starting to…squeal,” Samantha said.
Jennie Light pressed a third button. Green again.
“It’s getting really hot.”
General Spradlin bit his upper lip but said nothing. Jennie Light pressed another button. Green yet again.
“The noise…” Samantha said.
The whine had turned into a wail.
“Throw it out the window!” General Spradlin yelled.
Jennie Light did as told. She heaved the box with all her might through one of the shattered windows in the front of the control tower. The box landed next to the Humvee they drove into the landing pad.
“Get down!”
The four survivors of the Little Charlie fell to the floor and covered themselves. The electronic whine from the box became an earth shattering scream. The box lit up from the inside until it looked like it was melting. The scream reached a fever pitch.
And then the box exploded.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
The explosion shook the control tower and sent debris flying in all directions. The structure held, but barely. Whatever was left of the windows erupted and embedded itself in the wall above the four soldiers. For their part, they were thrown back by the shockwave and also slammed against the building’s inner wall.
A fireball filled the parking area. It rose into the sky before leaving behind a heavy black cloud.
Afterwards, the soldiers painfully got to their knees. They looked in the direction of the explosion.
There was little left of the Humvee they used to get to the control tower.
“Looks…looks like the jammer’s done,” Jennie Light said. She brushed dust from her clothing.
General Spradlin coughed. Samantha and Becky helped him to his feet.
“That was a…a very stupid thing you did,” General Spradlin said.
“Stupid or not, the jammer’s gone,” Jennie said. “We can send out signals now.”
“With what?” General Spradlin said. “We’ve got no other radio.”
“There has to be something,” Jennie Light said. She thought about it for a few seconds. “Those creatures took good care to destroy every personal communication device on the base. But what about cell phones?”
“You know they aren’t permitted on the base,” Becky Waters said.
“You mean us grunts aren’t permitted to have them on the base,” Jennie Light countered. “I’ll bet some of the officers in this place didn’t follow that particular order.”
“You might be right,” General Spradlin said.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Jennie said. “Let’s find a cell phone!”
Jennie Light headed to the back of the control tower. She hastily pushed aside destroyed equipment and file cabinets and searched through the debris. Samantha and Becky did the same at opposite sides of the room. General Spradlin could do little but watch their progress.
For several long minutes, the trio of soldiers sorted through the wreckage. Jennie Light noted General Spradlin sitting limp on his chair. His eyes were half-closed.
“Don’t leave us just yet,” Jennie said.
General Spradlin’s eyes opened wider. He shook his head and straightened in his chair.
“Feeling week,” he mumbled.
“Talk to us,” Samantha said.
“About what?”
“Tell us about Doctor Evans,” Jennie said. “What the hell was he? Another one of them?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Spradlin replied. He rubbed his face and wiped sweat from his forehead.
“Don’t tell me you're going to get cryptic on us now?” Jennie said. “Not after all we've been through?”
Samantha and Becky’s attention, like that of Jennie, had shifted to the General. From the looks on their faces, it was obvious they feared he was fading away.
“Keep searching,” Spradlin said.
“We will,” Jennie said. “While you us about Doctor Evans.”
General Spradlin considered her request. Presently, he spoke.
“Everything I said about the Armada was true. But there's more...much more we know about them.”
“Like?”
“Their most recent home world revolves around a yellow star our scientists designated A-43169,” General Spradlin said. “We say it is their most ‘recent’ home world because they are a race of travelers with no permanent home. They jump from planet to planet in search of resources. When they reach their new planet, they become a hoard of locusts. They ravage the planet’s resources, a process that may take a hundred years to fully accomplish. When they’re done, they leave behind the withered husk of the planet. Then they lift of and head for greener pastures.”
“How did they find us?” Becky asked.
“Given the distances they travel between worlds, they spend plenty of time and energy analyzing their course and potential ripe targets,” General Spradlin said. “We had the bad luck of being the closest system with the most abundant resources from where they were. Their deep space probes first discovered us some twenty thousand years ago. Perhaps longer. Data on our p
lanet suggested it was perfect for their needs. They sent more sophisticated probes our way, anticipating the eventual path they’d take. These probes touched down in what would eventually become known as North America some ten thousand years ago. The aliens were…delighted…by what the probes found. Earth had a hospitable atmosphere, temperature, and, most importantly, ecology. Earth was designated their next target after they were done on A-43169. Their arrival was scheduled for many thousands of years into the future. In the meantime, they conducted further examinations to make sure all remained as it should be and prepared our planet for their arrival.”
General Spradlin stared out a shattered window.
“We plan our lives around tomorrow or next week,” Spradlin continued. “Some of us, when we’re young, plan for careers and some far thinkers even plan for their retirement. These creatures think along the lines of millennia. They have to. Their trip from A-43169 to Earth, in the end, will take over nine thousand years and exhaust almost all their fuel and supplies. When they arrive, they have little option but to land and immediately begin ravaging our world. This is when they are at their most vulnerable. Their greatest danger is arriving here after all these years only to find that some disaster has rendered their new world unusable.”
“Disaster?”
“Such a thing happened some sixty-five million years ago on Earth. Back then, our planet had a thriving environment, ecosystem, and population of reptiles. Dinosaurs were Earth’s predominant life form. Then, just like that, they were wiped out. Scientists call it the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. The cause of this event is still somewhat in dispute. One thing we do know is that an asteroid hit this planet around that time and what was once a very habitable place became very inhospitable for many, many years. If our visitors arrived here at that point, they might not have found the resources they needed. That being the case, they could well have faced extinction.”
“So they continued their observations on our planet. They realized this world was in a most fortunate place. In orbit behind us lie the largest planets of this solar system: Neptune, Uranus, and, especially, Jupiter and Saturn. Those planets are like our big brothers in that they defend us from cosmic bullies. Countless asteroids which may have threatened our existence have either been deflected or eaten up by these giants. This was certainly the case back in 1994 when the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comets hit Jupiter. Had they struck Earth, mankind would have been wiped out.”