“It’s true, I swear…” Ray said. Words eluded him; a stunned look filled his eyes.
Dr. Johnson took the cue and droned on, his voice grave, his craggy face managing a deep frown.
“You see, back at the end of World War Three, in a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide of the war in their favor, the Chinese Air Force staged surprise raids over the three biggest cities of California: San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, using the bulk of their remaining bomber fleets with great success. These raids devastated the cities before the Allied forces finally drove away the Chinese. As they retreated, the enemy implanted special weapons deep within known earthquake fault lines. These weapons triggered targeted explosions that caused massive tremors so powerful they were felt halfway across the world. Much of California itself split off from the rest of the United States. The resulting aftershocks over the next few months quickly sank the rest of California, a factor also hastened by the unexpected explosion of the geologic bombs planted beneath the surface that hadn’t been discovered and deactivated yet.
“Of California’s entire population, one-quarter died in the
Chinese bombing raids and the earthquakes pretty much killed off the rest. Now you should understand why nobody your age could possibly have lived in California. If you still don’t believe me, then you better watch this,” explained Johnson.
The old scientist directed his attention to a large, flat TV screen-like device embedded against a far wall. The scientist gave a command. “Screen, open documentary: World War Three section 18, code Alpha-Delta 984.”
Suddenly the screen began displaying pictures with a near-holographic reality. Ray witnessed the dreadful truth, fully immersed in the sights and sounds that assaulted his senses. The pictures depicted horrible, bloody battles that engulfed the world, waves and waves of warplanes blowing the cities of Europe and Asia into oblivion, throngs of people lying dead among the debris.
At the very end of the documentary, he saw planes bombing what could only be Los Angeles and a rather large bomb dropping on the fault line, causing a massive earthquake. As the screen faded, Ray saw images of California sinking into the ocean, other pictures showing stunned faces of people who knew, in their last conscious moments, there was nothing that could be done to save them.
The sound that accompanied these vivid pictures seemed more realistic than anything Ray had ever heard in a high-tech movie theater. The sounds of bombs, planes and cries of the injured and dying assaulted his ears as he imagined he was in the middle of the huge catastrophe. He looked around, back and forth, fearfully. The immersive experience seemed so authentic he had to constantly reassure himself he wasn’t really being fired upon.
As the documentary ended, Ray exclaimed, “I did live in California, long before all this happened. I’ve been saying that ever since I woke up!”
“Then you should be grateful you weren’t living there during World War Three—if you’re telling the truth.”
Ray stared at Johnson angrily, but the scientist barely seemed to notice.
“It’s so strange, in the wake of such a tragedy, just a few years later, a new area of peace and prosperity would begin on Earth.”
“What do you mean?” Ray asked.
“Four years after the end of the third World War, Earth decided to launch the first craft sent into space in decades. A joint effort by all the nations of the world, the purpose of this craft was to explore Mars as a prelude to its colonization. However, we weren’t prepared for what happened when we reached the Red Planet.”
Johnson paused, as if awaiting a reaction. When Ray just stared at him impassively, he continued as if nothing had happened. “Our whole vision of the universe was shattered in one fell swoop. Our craft encountered a cigar-shaped spaceship, belonging to a race that called themselves Cettians. They said they were part of a galactic government known as the Alliance. They radioed us their response, in English, amazingly enough.
“In just a few days another ship belonging to this Alliance arrived on Earth, and we made contact with these visitors, who were of a half dozen races or so; some similar to humans, some quite different. They had observed our progress in developing space travel since they had first discovered us, years earlier. They had also observed our seemingly endless wars, and it required our best diplomats to persuade the Cettians that we should not be destroyed in the interests of galactic stability.”
Johnson’s patter moved so rapidly from fact to fact, Ray barely had time to absorb the enormity of all the information being rushed at him. He struggled to listen as carefully as possible, hoping he’d have a chance to ask questions later on.
“Over the next century,” Johnson droned on, “the Alliance grew into a loosely knit but powerful confederation consisting of twenty-seven different planetary governments, each residing in separate star systems, along with dozens of colony worlds. Today, petty border conflicts no longer exist on Earth, and we…well, we all live in peace now. We haven’t had a war in years, and that last one was a relatively minor conflict.”
“Minor! Ha!” Gotlieb rolled his eyes in disgust.
“Captain Gotlieb, you’re out of line ….”
“He’s gonna find out about the Jintorian wars sooner or later….”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, David, I don’t think we should trust him completely yet….”
“Damn it, ….sir…”
Gotlieb and Johnson resumed their argument, and it was clear to Ray no love was lost between these two. Ray felt consumed by exhaustion, his mind almost numbed by the onslaught of strange, unfamiliar references and information. Finally he lost his cool.
“For crying out loud, guys, stop this crap right now!” Ray’s face turned red with anger, hands shaking. “This arguing is getting us nowhere. Listen to me, please! Don’t you realize now I’m telling you the truth?”
“That’s the other thing I want to talk to you about,” Johnson said. “As you’ve been talking, we’ve been scanning your brain. See that cerebral scanner on the ceiling—you know, the big light beam shining down on your head?”
Ray got up with a start and tried to escape the insistent beam. He walked from one end of the room to the other, but the beam tracked his every step, no matter how fast he twisted back and forth. He looked at his captors, fearfully, feeling like a caged animal.
“Don’t worry, old man,” Gotlieb spoke in a reassuring fashion. “The cerebral scanner won’t hurt you a bit. It’s programmed for your brain’s electrical patterns and it’s gonna follow you wherever you go in this room.
“I’m almost sounding like a scientist myself,” Gotlieb smiled briefly at Ray, but continued to exhibit obvious rage toward Johnson. “The real use of this device is to determine whether you’re telling us the truth, or at least whether you think you’re telling the truth.”
Ray glared at Gotlieb’s obvious sarcasm, looked up again and checked out the ray of light more closely. Thin and light blue, about a quarter inch in diameter, it was perfectly focused. The device itself looked like a large lens, with strange machinery around it, but only a few recessed controls. He took a closer look at an instrument panel across the room, where Johnson peered on occasion. That was probably the control source.
Johnson seemed to forget his arguments with Gotlieb for the moment. He even managed a craggy sort of smile as he showed off the device. “This scanner does well enough to determine simple truth and belief. We really need to know more about you, though. We have a much more powerful device over at another military installation in Brussels.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Ray interrupted. “You’re asking me question after question. I’ve got a thousand and one questions for you two. When do I get my turn?”
“All in due time, all in due time, Perkins.” Johnson abruptly changed the subject. Ray grimaced, trying to hold his emotions in check.
“We will answer each and every one of your questions. I promise you. Right now, there are things we need to know about you, importan
t things. We can only learn about them in Brussels. We’ve got a laboratory there where we can actually see what your mind sees. We need to explore your dreams further and find out just what’s true about them and what isn’t. We need to know what’s causing them.”
“I feel like a science experiment.”
“You’re quite unique Perkins. We’ve never had a time traveler before.”
For once, Gotlieb seemed to let down his guard long enough to crack a smile.
“We need to know more about you, as much as we can anyway.”
“Oh, great, and will you then take some tissue samples, put me in a cage and charge admission?”
“Please, old man, it’s not like that. We just want to find out what’s going on. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. You have my word on that.” Gotlieb replied.
“That’s reassuring….” Ray remained skeptical.
“I’ll tell you what. We’ll continue your history lesson after we get you to Brussels. If what you say about those Rockoids is even partly true, we need to get that information to the authorities. Maybe we can even dig up some clues about what’s happened to you. You’d want to know that, I guess.” Gotlieb tried to reassure him once again.
“Of course. I’m still not convinced I won’t wake up and find this is all a dream too.”
“It’s real, Perkins, trust me. Now come with us and we’ll take you to Brussels. How’s that sound, old man?” asked Gotlieb.
I always did want to take a trip to Belgium…I wonder if they still make decent beer.
Ray finally smiled, though reluctantly. “All right, Captain Gotlieb. I’ll go. Lead the way!” Ray began to feel a little less hopeless.
As he started to get up, however, Gotlieb pushed him back down into the chair.
“Not so fast! We…well, we have to take a few precautions first.”
“Precautions?”
Dr. Johnson took a strange-looking gun out of his pocket and aimed it at Ray.
Panic-stricken, Ray cried, “Wait! Wait a minute! You’re going to shoot me now! Hold on! Stop…”
His military training helped him concentrate, as he looked for ways to overcome his captors, escape…go somewhere…anywhere…his paranoia, subdued in the last few moments as he began to come to terms with his situation, rose to the surface again. Sweat began pouring down his face, though he didn’t care to wipe it away at the moment.
“Wait, wait. We’re not going to hurt you.” Johnson interjected.
“Yeah, and I suppose you shoot all of your visitors, right? Give me a break!”
“It’s not like that,” Gotlieb reassured him. “Relax, I told you already we’re not going to hurt you. If we wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”
“Yeah, that’s reassuring…”
“Okay, this is a stun gun; it’ll put you to sleep for a short while, that’s all. At worst, you’ll wake up with a little headache, but otherwise it’s totally safe.”
“Why am I not convinced?”
“Please, Captain Perkins, hear me out,” Johnson replied. “When we examine your brain, you’re going to need to remain unconscious or else the process may cause serious damage to the cerebral cortex. Now if you’ll just stand still, it won’t really hurt at all.”
“Now wait a minute! Do you really have to shoot something at me? I mean isn’t there another way, like a sleeping pill, anesthesia or something?”
“I’m sorry, old man,” Gotlieb said with a bit of regret. “We have our procedures, and you know a lot about many things—too much, in fact, and we have to act according to our own rules. I promise you…I assure you…it won’t hurt a bit. You’re just going to have to trust me. The stun gun is much less painful than a drug.”
Ray sighed and stood at attention, closing his eyes to avoid looking at Gotlieb and the weapon. For a second, he almost wondered if they just wanted to kill him and not have to confront the reality of his existence. Out of sight, out of mind, Ray figured. Since he had already been to war, he assumed he could accept his death…
Ray remained lost in thought when the moment came.
Captain Gotlieb fired the gun. A green beam shot out from the weapon and struck Ray square in the head. Ray fainted, falling into the waiting arms of two of Dr. Johnson’s assistants.
As Ray was transported across the world, he had no idea of the strange occurrences taking place in the dark depths of outer space…a series of events that would soon change his life and those of millions of his fellow human beings.
Chapter 6
The massive egg-shaped vessel floated slowly through an uninhabited star system several hundred light-years from Earth. The enormous craft obscured a clear view of the small, grey planet behind it.
Suddenly a large opening appeared in the center of the vessel, conveying a dark, hollow emptiness to the onlooker. Five smaller oval ships, dwarfed into near insignificance compared to the larger ship, drifted slowly out of the opening. The small craft gained power and quickly flew off in the planet’s direction; within seconds, the opening was sealed tight, with no evidence it ever existed.
The great ship that served as the flagship among this small fleet slowed down and finally stopped in space, hovering in a synchronous orbit around the planet. Instructions were sent back and forth among the members of the fleet, and the small spaceships finally landed on the planet’s surface. A number of ground vehicles, circular, with thick wheels consisting of some sort of flexible material, stronger than rubber, spread out from the landed ships. The inhabitants within the vehicles were well protected from the hostile environment as they used various devices to take samples from the ragged surface beneath them.
About two timeframes later, the mineral-collecting fleet returned to the huge oval craft, each mining vessel packed with all sorts of precious natural resources.
The flagship remained in orbit. Finally, after several more timeframes, huge flashes of light appeared out of nowhere, each coalescing into an oval-shaped craft half as large as the flagship. In all there were ten of these cruisers, and as soon as they joined the orbiting craft, all but three, who were to stay behind and serve as backup, departed with courses set toward another uninhabited star system thought to have planets with vital resources.
Meanwhile, inside the flagship, Zanther, Empress of the Rockoid Empire, sat in her tapestry and jewel-bedecked throne room. She tapped her long, thin, delicate fingers on her throne, a large chair made of a shiny, dark red wood-like material that seemed almost absorbent to the touch.
Zanther’s dark mood consumed her, as she paused to consider how her race had suffered at the hands of the evil marauders who killed millions of her people at a far-off colony world several kilo-timeframes ago.
While Zanther was not expected to display her emotions in public, inwardly she still mourned their deaths.
After several Earth years spent in a massive project to expand her race’s war making machine, their sacred mission of vengeance was proceeding as planned, but she didn’t delve upon the mundane issues of the troop and armament complement of her fleet, nor the tactical decisions she would soon have to make.
Instead, Zanther recalled the viewscreen images of powerful weapons systematically obliterating vast cities from existence. She thought of her father, the emperor, and her mother, who had, with her older brothers and sisters, gone to Dorton for a long period of recreation and meditation.
Those barbarians exterminated nearly all of her large family. Zanther and her only surviving brother were now alone, and she, the eldest, had become the ruler of her race, an authority that weighed heavily upon her after having been educated in the healing arts.
At times, Zanther found it difficult to reconcile her former role as a healer with her present role as a military leader who was expected to order the extermination of billions of living beings without passion or prejudice.
Her huge, dark, expressive eyes remained closed, and her hands gripped the armrests of her throne ever more tightly, perhaps hoping the pressure on he
r fingers would make the ache disappear. Zanther resisted the urge to take chemicals to lessen her pain, for she must remain alert and in command of her huge fleet. She took a few deep breaths and slowly started to calm down.
She began to think again, this time dispassionate, logical. Zanther was truly the warrior in heart and soul; she was ready for battle.
She knew it would be a completely unequal battle. The fleet of the humans and their fellow conspirators was not equipped to repel an attack of this magnitude.
It would be a revenge that, in the words of her defense minister, “would be one to savor.” Yet Zanther could not help but fear the inevitable, that many of her own kind would also perish in the upcoming battle.
There were also nagging uncertainties that dulled her expectations of total success. There was little doubt the Alliance had detected the presence of her fleet by now. What sort of countermeasures would they devise?
Time after time, Zanther nearly aborted the campaign, ready to return home and attempt to resolve their differences on the negotiating table. This was the way their ancestors, in ages long past, settled disagreements with the lesser races of the galaxy.
However, that approach was obsolete; it was no longer the Rockoid way. Who was she to turn back? Would she not be regarded as a coward if she chose not to pursue this glorious battle? Would there not be chaos on her home world if its leader could not be depended upon to uphold the traditions of her race and the wishes of her ministers?
Another important variable complicated her decision: the presence aboard her flagship of Xorax, the Rockoid defense minister. Rockoid laws clearly dictated the defense minister must always accompany the emperor or empress during a major campaign.
Xorax was a member of a rival family that once ruled the Rockoid Empire many, many kilo-timeframes ago. There were growing suspicions he desired to usurp the throne and restore the glory of his now very small, but closely-knit family, as well as actively pursue their traditions of conquering other “inferior” races across the galaxy.
Attack of the Rockoids Page 8