“Air Force Base?” The middle-aged man’s eyes flickered.
“Yeah, but it’s closed to us civvies, especially since the wars and all. Mostly they use it to fly in supplies for the Containment Line. Some people say they have B-4s stored there…Say, are you guys Feds? I mean, all dressed up like secret undercover agents and stuff…”
The man in black grinned. “Hardly.”
Ray felt terror grip him. “You’re Styx, aren’t you?”
Confusion. “What?”
“You guys are some of those Styxies who escaped, right? Mister, I promise I won’t tell no one about this. You’re secret’s safe with me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
One of the men in the doorway tapped his wrist.
The man in black looked Ray in the eyes. “You’re going to take us to this air force base. Sawyer.”
“Now listen, I—“
“Bring him.”
The two younger strangers grappled with Ray and led him out the door, to the disbelief of the frozen people on the dance floor.
Vessels screaming through the fabric of time.
((okay, listen up. first and second assault groups continue on alpha-direct trajectory. we were alerted to an enemy on purpose transit. this might be it. we didn’t know that they were this far back, and we have no idea how much energy they’ve collected at alpha. we don’t know how much of the pattern they’ve recovered already. if they’ve started to synthesize the upload generators, we have to move fast… we’ll engage the enemy in transit and then investigate the alpha point to see how far they’ve gotten. second assault group star one comes with me. maggie is out there somewhere, and she’s been hurt badly. we’re going to pick her up.))
((no time for questions. I’ll see you at the point.))
Simon opened a singularity and began the search for Magdalene’s beacon, transmitting weakly through the fluid fabric of the past.
The vessels split into two groups and faded into the night.
Magdalene:
A RUSE; A TRAP. THE JUDAS FALL TO THEIR END.
The words tore through her mind without warning. The Enemy mind-essence revealed itself to her for an instant, then was gone.
A trap? She had to alert Simon. The Enemy somehow knew that she had summoned the Judas. Had her beacon been intercepted by the damned? They would be preparing to engage them. It was a trap.
She felt a presence caress her mind. ((maggie?))
Confusion. Terror.
(simon!?)
((it’s me, maggie. don’t worry; we’re close. we’re coming to get you.))
(your fleet?)
((second assault, star one. First assault and the rest of second are pursuing the enemy in transit—))
(no! it’s a trap!)
((what do you mean?))
(there are more enemy here than i’d anticipated. simon, i don’t know how many. there may be a larger force than this at alpha point already. they must have intercepted my beacon. they’ll be waiting at alpha! they’re luring us to the point. it’s a trap.)
despair.
((but this is an uncharted when. how could we have missed this much enemy activity?))
(it’s command.)
((command? what do you mean?))
(simon, kilbourne’s—)
should she tell him? what if they were listening?
(that can wait. can your forces be recalled from the point before they—)
((you know it’s too late. if the enemy found your last beacon, they’d find this one, too. it’d never get through.))
(i’m so sorry.)
((it’s not your fault, maggie. this isn’t the first time we’ve been deceived by the enemy. i’ll be there soon, and we’ll get you back to command.))
command…
should she tell him? she decided not to, for the time being.
(may their deaths serve a purpose.)
(((first assault, do you see anything out there?)))
(((it’d better show up pretty fucking fast. we’re going to be out of the tube in three decems.)))
(((it’s not engaging it in the bubble that worries me… it’s his friends that could be waiting for him there.)))
(((there could be an infinity of them.)))
The statement was bold, but it was true. How many enemy were out there, watching?
(((he’s not here. either maggie was wrong, or he whendropped and we didn’t see him.)))
(((here goes nothing.)))
The Alpha Point:
The Enemy floated in the blackness, waiting.
The black was pure, the absence of light. The Enemy thrived here, basking in the primordial waves of nothingness.
This was Alpha, a place and time beyond definition, beyond the light, beyond sanity. To be at the Alpha Point was to be at both the beginning and the end of the universe. It was, is, and will be the beginning and end point of the cycle of existence.
In the nothing, there was anticipation.
Silence. A shimmering.
The peaceful strata of void was torn apart by a sphere of expanding, fiery white brilliance.
The universe had begun again.
Just instants into the past, on a different plane of phase space, the Enemy activity was frantic. A sea of black forms, scurrying, placing the offerings from infinite futures before the altar of the Alpha god, layering the bioneural pattern energy around the singularity. Souls by the trillions, waiting for upload into the Omega Point, screamed into the dead night. When the time of the Purpose had come, the planes would be opened to one another and the souls would be uploaded into the Point. The Pattern would again be complete, after billions upon billions of lifetimes.
But it was not yet time… It was time to deal with the Judas threat.
The Enemy vessels that lay in wait were placed in stark silhouette by the blazing point of hell as it swept outward at them.
The beginning was silent in its fury.
The Enemy faded into the past once more, to await their quarry.
The Judas fell backwards through time, and they emerged from the Whenstream just minutes before Alpha in a stark flash of white.
This was a Black place.
(((and we’re clear. sound off, people.)))
Voices, hundreds. Minds touched one another in reassurance.
[assault two ready.]
(((keep it tight. alpha point emergence in two-dot-five decems.)))
There was no sign of the Enemy yet, but it had to be here…There had been no sign of it in the Stream, even though Magdalene had said that there was an Enemy on Purpose-transit. They would destroy it before it could attempt to infuse the pattern load it bore. And when it did not report back, there would be more Enemy coming. This could be the last stand…
Simon’s fleet held their positions, blind in the innate blackness that was non-existence. There was no light in a place where there were no stars.
(((this is it. let’s end it right here, right now.)))
The Enemy had a surprise coming.
The Alpha Point.
A slipping of matter; the ignition of infinity: the adversary of Omega.
A childlike future civilization would name it the Big Bang. It was hardly a fitting name. The fury of the Alpha singularity was as silent as the void that had preceded it.
In the pure white, the countless
Judas were thrown into stark contrast, each casting a long black shadow into the harsh, palpable light.
In the spaces between the Judas, where there should only have been the white light of the Point, a seemingly infinite horde of writhing, black shadows faded into existence.
The Enemy.
black
laughter like so many tortured pleas resonates
satisfaction of the kill
They flew to their ends.
The Enemy cut through the Judas as a pack of wolfs cuts through a herd of sleeping ewes. Simon’s fleet was caught completely unaware. Those who had been staging an ambush were themselves ambushed.
Many Judas fell immediately to the wrath of the fierce beams of light emerging from the Enemy vessels. Their hulls punctured and pierced, rended apart, they flashed from this realm of reality in tiny white explosions. The Enemy bathed the fleet in a paralyzing phase disruption, snapping the Judas’ tether to the Stream and making them vulnerable to physical destruction.
Coming to their senses after the immediate shock had worn off, other Judas began to maneuver between the flailing Enemy forces and the derelict Judas vessels. The ravenous horde webbed the dead Judas and fed upon them voraciously. The Judas wielded the Shadows against the Enemy horde, but severed from the Stream, they had little effect on the lumbering, shapeless number of the Enemy. The Enemy moved as a fluid, deftly avoiding the fury of the Shadows. So many…
The waves of existence the Point had set into motion were closing in upon the site of the battle at an incomprehensible rate.
The Enemy struck down upon the Judas with the god-like power of their webs. Engulfed in the silver strands of phase energy, the Judas died and became one with the Black. Only a few Judas left…
The Enemy suddenly halted their pursuit of the remaining Judas. They converged from all sides and merged into one massive concentration, throwing a haunting shadow over the dazed remnants of the Judas fleet.
The hideous Enemy began to fade, furtively carrying with it the webbed and patterned remains of the Judas it had captured. Where its shadow had been, a wall of pure white energy approached at a speed beyond speed: the Alpha Point wave.
The remaining Judas, still reeling from the terror of the ambush and the paralyzing effect of the phase energy, were torn from this level of existence as the Point wave smashed into, within, and throughout them.
The victorious Enemy smiled.
Simon’s fleet had been destroyed. They would serve the Purpose well. They would help to complete Omega.
Magdalene.
She arose from her slumber, feeling the terror of her compatriots as they became no more. There was an emptiness to the Judas pattern where before there had been none.
She wept, as only a machine can.
Harkness.
The Marines had landed.
They set up roadblocks and barricades on the roads leading into and out of Harkness, U.S. Route 41 and the old Eagle Road.
The citizens of Harkness were unaware of the invasion of their town by several thousand heavily-armed Marines.
A veritable armada of Navy and Coast Guard helicopters converged on the impact area, the site where the Indomitable had gone down.
The Marine troop transports kept coming and coming.
The Harkness situation would soon be under control.
5:30 A.M.
The sun rose over Sawyer Air Force Base.
The eight men in black stood at the main gate to the electrified fence. One went into the small booth beside the gate and pushed the dead body of a soldier out of his chair. The man leaned over and pushed a button. The gate quietly slid open on concealed bearings.
The men strode through the open gate. The man in the guardhouse remained behind. He took the fatigues off the dead guard and put them on. It was a tight fit, but it would have to do.
No one was going into or out of Sawyer Air Force Base.
Around 5:45 A.M. a Michigan state trooper spotted Ray Shore’s pickup truck on the shoulder of U.S. Route 41, several miles from Sawyer, on the southbound lane from Marquette.
After calling in the truck’s description and license plate number, the trooper got out of his cruiser and went to investigate.
He could see the silhouette of the driver in the front seat as he approached from the rear. He drew his weapon, walked slowly up to the driver’s side window, tapped on the glass.
“Sir, please open your window.”
Silence… He knew what he would find already. The driver was too slumped over in his seat to be anything but dead.
Weapon still drawn, the trooper opened the unlocked driver’s door and felt Ray Shore’s neck for signs of life. He immediately pulled his hand back. The flesh was cold. Very cold.
Ray’s eyelids were closed. Suspicious, the trooper reached in and opened Ray’s left eye. A pupil-less, impossibly gray eye stared lifelessly back at him.
Styx…
Jesus Christ. That’s impossible.
The trooper walked slowly back to his vehicle, unsure of how to describe what he had just seen to the dispatcher. If this were true… He picked up his radio.
“Dispatch? You read me?”
“That’s an affirmative. Go ahead.”
“You’d better contact Milicom. They’ll want to see this.”
Magdalene.
Dreams of cold water and gray skies and little little bathing suits that Mum disapproved of and hands-on boys whom Da disapproved of and warm cozy nights of fireplaces and rainstorms and none of the terror that her later teenage years had descended into. None of the terror at all.
She snapped awake at the gentle nudge of an alarm. Where? When?
Trapped beneath an ocean, energy fading…
She sensed three vessels floating above her at the surface of the water, and she also sensed when a fourth vessel emerged from one of the three and began a descent to her.
They had found her after all.
Barbarians at the gate.
Magdalene prepared to greet them.
Mariana Trench, 200 miles from Guam.
The tiny submersible XJ disembarked from his fathership, the Jonah. Within the submarine, two sailors reclined at their controls, preparing for the twenty-five thousand-foot drop into the Trench. They both wore bulky pressure suits to prevent their bodies’ implosion from the weight of countless billions of gallons of ocean water.
“XJ to Jonah. Prep completed. We’re ready for the dive. Drop us, Jonah.”
“Affirmative, XJ. Happy trails.”
The two docking clamps that held the XJ to the Jonah’s docking arm released, and the sub was free.
The XJ plummeted into the void, the frigid, black water, pulled by the weight of twenty tons of ballast. External lights flickered to life.
The pilots of the XJ, even in their advanced pressure suits, still felt some discomfort. Ear pain, eye pain as their eyes struggled to focus with compressed lenses.
At twenty thousand feet below sea level the XJ began to vent ballast to slow its descent. The external lights brightened, and sensors and cameras began to roll.
The Geiger counters revealed a surprising lack of radiation in the impact area.
Five hundred feet to the ocean floor.
She saw their annoyingly bright lights and felt them vent the ballast. She had been found.
She was sorry the she would have to have to eliminate them. They had done nothing to her, except discover her precious hiding place. She could not allow them to alert others to her presence at the ocean floor.
Hidden servomechanisms opened weapons hatches.
“Jonah, are you picking this up?”
“Affirmative, XJ. Remain on reconnaissance vector.”
Below them, resting on the floor of the trench, was not a meteor, not a nuclear submarine, not a crashed derelict spacestation.
Below them rested an unidentified object. A spaceship. A big one.
The XJ’s searchlights and cameras revealed a huge, matte black vessel. It was without a doubt not from the ocean, a foreign country, or even Earth. It was alien.
The vessel’s top surface laid below the XJ, stretching away into the utter darkness of the Trench. It was intact, almost beautiful in its symmetry, but it was obvious that it had not had a controlled landing. The hull was scarred and covered with small surface dents. The vessel lay placidly at the bottom of this gouge in the planet. It reflected no light at all. It was as if light were pulled into its hull and not released. The vessel was shaped as two halves, joined together by a central hub. It was beautiful; it was terrifying.
“Jonah, this is scary shit. Requesting permission to—.” He stopped speaking abruptly.
Movement.
A small panel slid open on the surface of the vessel. Something glinted within.
“XJ? Please respond.”
“Jonah, I—”
Heat. A fierce beam of white light lashed out of the hub of the vessel and sliced the XJ in half. Both pilots died instantly as the boiling water ate through their pressure suits’ valves and twenty-five thousand vertical feet of ocean pressure crushed them.
The light swept back and forth until the XJ was no more. The primary threat taken care of, the light intensified and focused upward, upward, to the surface of the ocean. It cut the three surface vessels apart, and in a hail of searing white radiance and steamy, evaporated ocean water, it ended the lives of hundreds of humans. Caught off-guard, there was no time for anyone to escape the burning hot, sinking ships. None of the ships had been able to send a distress signal, much less any information about the vessel at the ocean floor.
Magdalene was safe.
For now.
Sawyer AFB had been practically empty, except for a skeleton crew of security personnel that had been quickly, efficiently, and quietly dispatched by the men in black.
The man who sat in the dead soldier’s chair in the guardhouse next to the main gate sat up suddenly, stiffly, alerted to movement from the corner of his eye.
A car was coming down the path to the gate, a dark blue armored sedan, with a silver insignia on the driver’s door.
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