by Ric Dawson
“Over northern China on a southeasterly track. Scrambled military jets is the biggest concern,” Jim said as he pointed towards a data pad in a holder on the dashboard. “Can you check that pad and see if anything is blinking? May as well put you to work!” he said.
I pulled the pad from its holder. The pad came to life and showed a colored terrain map slowly moving across the screen.
“It’s got a five-hundred-mile sensor zone. Anything?”
“Nothing at all. Just terrain scrolling by,” I responded.
“This is very weird.”
We flew in silence. The sun peeked out and light cloud cover mingled light with the haze. The smog thickened as we cruised over heavy industrial complexes.
Twenty-four hours is a long time to stare into a bleary sky. I crashed after fourteen hours. Sven had taken over flight control after eight hours and Jim hit the sack. Cities and industrial centers rolled by far below us.
AOGASHIMA
I woke and pulled the tarp aside. The dash console cast amber glows over the sled and pushed back the inky darkness. Melissa was on the pilot’s stool, while Kane looked at the terrain data pad. I edged through a narrow corridor between crates as Kane looked up and waved towards the remaining stool.
“Glad you’re up. We’re flying over Japan and could use some eyes-in-the-psi. That’s Tokyo ahead.”
“I swear. I’ve never seen Kane this happy.”
It’s a bit disconcerting and doesn’t fit my previous emotional model for him.
“I even think he tried a joke there. Hey, wait. You have emotional models for people?”
Of course. How else am I to gauge their intentions. I have a repository of visual and physical clues to further understanding motives.
“What about me?”
I already know your intentions.
“Oh. Right. That was stupid.”
Yup.
“I hate that you’re in my head … a lot.”
At least you had a choice.
I got into a cross-legged position. Getting comfortable, I extended myself into the astral. With ease, I floated up over the craft and angled down while picking up speed on the glide path.
Tokyo loomed ahead and below me. The city’s vortex spanned out like an galactic spiral of light in slow rotation. Large eddies and fast swirls mingled with the large rotating thought typhoon. The colors reminded me of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”
Dark swaths slithered through a quarter of the colorful spiral.
“That must be Tokyo Bay.”
I sense defensive fields around the Minato district.
Impressions appeared as soft whispers: joy, fear, lust, greed. The full gamut of human experience contended for astral expression. Drifting down towards the bay, I could see several blocks of the city were enveloped in a dense fog. Moving closer, chills ran down my ethereal spine. Wraith.
“I see the field.”
Yes. Caution.
I remembered what happened last time I probed a Wraith fog cloud in the astral. I got a team member possessed and another shot up. I still wanted to dive in guns blazing.
“Audam.”
Yes.
“Can you reconfigure the blaster components to fire at entities other than Shadow related?”
The blaster, as you call it, disassociates thought congregates and it’s keyed to Shadow impact energy, eh.
“Can you modify the device or algorithm or whatever makes it work so that it has a selector switch?”
I’m talking to an idiot. No. I cannot change the key. If you will allow me to isolate a section of your brain to use as a laboratory, then maybe, with luck, and the everlasting blessings of dead gods.
“You’re so melodramatic. Is it dangerous?”
Yes. Brain tissue damage is possible should impact junctioning from neuropaths to astral injection become overloaded.
“Right. You know, I don’t know what you just said.”
My point exactly. Should I proceed?
“Not yet.”
The sled passed far above me and headed south. Angling towards the sled, I shot up and reentered my body.
Opening my eyes, I saw that Jim and Sven were up.
“Find anything useful?” Jim asked while slipping into a silvery body suit. It looked like something firefighters might wear for high temperature work.
“Yes. I found the Wraith building in Tokyo. It’s down near the waterfront in Minato. It had an astral fog zone around it so I decided to regroup rather than take a look.”
“Smart. Well, if nothing else we know exactly where they are. We can roll in some local assault guys to see if they can breach the facility or at least soften it up some. We will hook that up on the way back.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” I said.
“These are high-temperature-resistant suits. Between the BHLs and things exploding, we figured they would be good to breach in.” He winked. I shook my head and laughed. These guys were serious slash and burn types, I was seeing now, more burn than slash.
I found my suit and began contorting myself into it.
A few hours more and we approached Aogashima Island from the north.
Jim dropped us down to just above the waves. The Milky Way sparkled full of stars in the clear ocean air and provided enough light to navigate by. Soon the barest hints of daybreak would diffuse the night sky. Aogashima Island’s volcanic cone rose from the sea like a blackened leviathan.
“We’re coming up on the island. What have we got, Sven?” Jim asked.
Sven looked up from his data pad. “It’s four square miles of jutting ridges and sunken caldera by the look of it. Lush vegetation fills the caldera, and there’s a small cone in the middle of it. Several more calderas are below the current one. Looks like this unge has blown up many times. It has a few hundred occupants, not counting Wraith,” Sven said.
“Where do you think the base is?”
“You got me,” Sven said. “It hardly seems large enough to house a base at all. Oh, and did I mention it’s an active volcano? Last eruption in 1785.”
“Look at those cliffs. It looks like a fortress.” Melissa pursed her lips, whistling softly. The cliffs rose straight up out of the water. Black and sinister.
Jim slowed as we got closer. “I’ll circle the island, then take us above it. Best bring the shield up, Sven,” he said.
Sven grunted and manipulated the shield controls on the dashboard.
On the south side of the island we found a small dock and a wide cement pier that jutted out into the sea. A road wound partway up the cone then entered a rock-blasted tunnel. The northern part of the island was comprised of lava flows that had built up to tower hundreds of meters over the ocean.
There were no beaches around the entire island, with the only interior access either through the tunnel above the pier or by helicopter.
Sven only brought up part of the shield so we could hear the crash of ocean swell endlessly smashing the basalt behemoth. Fingers of yellow streaked through the sky from the east amid an orange bloom of color around the horizon.
“Let’s get a look from on top,” Jim said.
We surged upward, the ocean breeze salty with the tang of spray. We swung back over the dock and cleared the highest point on the island at the southern edge of the cone. A brilliant green beam burst through the morning dew from the secondary cone in the middle of the caldera. The beam leapt straight at the rising sun and vanished out of sight as it shot into space.
“Helvete! I think we found them,” Sven said grimly.
“That beam looks larger than our sled,” Kane noted.
“Yep, I’d say closer to three times as large.” Jim frowned.
“You think that’s what they are using to ignite a CME?” I asked.
Jim nodded. “Gotta be. Your Sun-Gun.” Everyone else murmured agreement as Jim navigated back over the wall, dropping behind the southern ridge line.
“Lane, see if you can get a fix on what we are up against here
,” Jim said.
I nodded, found a comfortable spot, and relaxed. I lifted out of my body and was immediately surrounded by dense fog. Only by extending the psi shield could I even see the sled I was on. An enormous shield enveloped the astral around this island in the same dense fog as in Tokyo. I was pretty useless to the team if I couldn’t see anything, but I didn’t move from the sled, afraid I’d never make my way back to it.
I stood up.
“That was fast,” Kane remarked.
“I can’t see anything including the sled once it’s out of my psi shield range.”
“I thought we might run into that,” Jim said.
“Guys, guess we do this the easy way. While I would love to just drop a nuke on them, it’s time for Plan R. Let’s roast ‘em,” Kane said.
Sven snorted as both men hustled over to a large chest that hadn’t been offloaded at Lake Baikal.
Melissa piped up. “I think they know we are here, boys!” She pointed to a swarm of drones coming around the edge of the volcano cone just above the ridgeline.
“Jim, there’s an awful lot of them.” Melissa sounded nervous as red beams of light zipped by in increasing numbers.
“As long as they don’t hit the projection frame we’re fine. If the frame degrades, the shield disappears,” Jim said.
There were over thirty beams trying to get a lock on us. They struck our shield then appeared on the other side. It was bizarre.
Kane and Sven pulled a tubular contraption out of the chest along with a tripod mounting. It vaguely resembled the BHL handgun. Gun mounts allowed the cannons to extend out from the platform, giving them the ability to shoot straight down and to the sides.
I blinked for a second then realized what they had in mind.
“We’re going to lase an active volcano.”
Brilliant. I suppose it’s too late to request a different host.
Jim took us up twenty thousand feet in an instant. We could barely see the volcano below. The two laser cannons were mounted and charged. Sven and Kane each maned one remotely using a handheld device that looked like a Game Boy with a screen.
“Shield and Laser 1 synced and ready,” Sven yelled.
“Shield and Laser 2 synced and ready,” Kane yelled with a broad smile.
Grinning as well, Jim said, “Payback time!” He hit a button on the dashboard and Wagner spewed forth from speakers under the dash.
Melissa just shook her head while running some calculations on another data pad.
“Ride of the Valkyries, nice.”
“We’ve been planning this a long time!” Kane yelled.
The sled spun through a descending arc and began a high-speed pass over the volcano. We weren’t being subtle anymore. The laser cannons looked like four black melons skewered by a silver tube with dials, and rectangular stock.
We came over the island into a storm of green tracer beams from plasma tanks. Drones spun wildly as they tried to track our fast-moving silhouette. More plasma tanks boiled out of hidden hangars under the surface of the caldera as we roared by. Something else came up as well: large, man-sized spheres. Missile launchers popped up on the ridges around the caldera, belching forth clouds of light missiles.
“They looked pissed. Those look like Jobaria missile systems; each pod, two hundred and forty missiles.” Mel grinned. “Cook those bastards,” she said.
With a loud pop, the megawatt lasers roared to life. The first target was the green beam tearing into the sky. Jim closed the distance on the Sun-Gun. It sat on an elevated platform surrounded by a large observatory dome. Sven and Kane tilted the guns like the old chopper crews in ‘Nam. The laser beams struck the dome in a cascade of sparks and burned a streak through the surface. Molten slag vaporized under the high-beam power. Since the Wraith beam was directed at a slant towards the sun, Jim pulled directly over it and came to an instant stop. Then pushed the sled straight up, maintaining the dome under us. Sven and Kane were able to burn straight down onto the beam gun and into its support structure. Pulling back up to our starting altitude, Jim prepared for another run at a different angle of approach.
“One more pass should do it,” Melissa said.
Jim dropped down to five thousand feet and flew in a descending “S” pattern, turning each gun towards the target on each swath of the “S.” While only one gun could fire at a time, it allowed the other gun to cool. Ordinance came at us in a constant stream, only to go through us and fly off. The plasma tanks were the biggest threat. However, more and more the missiles started to explode in our vicinity.
“Looks like they are adjusting to proximity,” Melissa said.
Jim nodded, flying directly at the beam’s dome again and going vertical over it as before. This time the Wraith beam winked out as the dome sagged and collapsed, smoke pouring from the platform.
“They are pulling what’s left of the dome back into a cavern,” Jim said.
A cheer went up! Then I noticed Melissa wasn’t cheering. She was screaming and holding her head with both hands.
A sudden chill raced up my spine. On instinct, I popped the psi shield. A faint blue sphere enclosed the sled. Even in the bright of day, the crackling energy around the psi shield was visible.
The boiling blackness in the psi around us vaporized as it struck the shield. An immense pressure tried to crush my mind, squeezing with inhuman energy. Melissa collapsed. Unconscious.
“Audam.”
Yes.
“What is that.”
Shadow.
“From where?”
The base. Someone powerful is in there.
The pressure was relentless. “Lane, you okay?” Kane was yelling at me. I began to sweat as beads ran down my brow. I couldn’t answer.
Kane hollered at Jim, “Do another pass, something’s attacking Lane.”
I was only partly aware as the sled moved again. Through half-closed eyes I saw the laser cannons spring to life again and again, voracious beams slamming into targets in the caldera. The hot lasers punched through solid rock and metal in tens of meters a second. The grav field generators channeled the massive heat into the blacklight void.
The heat venting from the lasers was not one-hundred-percent efficient. The air was getting hot. Though we were protected by our fire suits, our faces were still open to the atmosphere.
The pressure on my mind lessened. Looking up, I saw that the sled dropped into a cavernous hole as we followed the gun elevator down the lift shaft. We dropped below the lip of the hole leading into the cavern and the plasma bolts stopped.
Small arms fire erupted all around us.
Pain exploded in my head and an iron fist clenched my heart. Blood spurted between the contracting fingers. I gasped for breath. My heart beats slowed as relentless pressure squeezed. I tried to pull the invisible fingers apart. Slowly the pain lessened. I sensed him. The Asian! The cavern faded to grey mist. Fog filled the near-psi. Tendrils whipped out of the shadows and ripped flesh from my arm.
I focused on the medallion and drew power. The fog blasted away from me and the shield reformed. I gulped air and willed more power from the amulet. A ball of fire appeared in front of me and flew into the mist. Then five more in quick succession. I could see the walls of the cavern as the dissonance thinned.
“Audam, you there?”
Decision rule invalid.
“What?”
Data overflow.
Gestalt tainted.
Holonomic fragmented.
The laser cannons blasted chunks out of the walls of the cavern and swept over wall-sized monitors that burst into showers of sparks. People in black and red uniforms leapt from a falling scaffold severed from the wall. The lasers sliced through a group of technicians, splattering boiling blood against slagged equipment.
The heat would have dropped us all without the protection of the fire suits.
The sled bucked then tilted to the side. A row of man-sized spheres poured into the cavern from a side tunnel. Lightning snapped f
rom twin gun ports on each sphere and caused the air around the sled to crackle with energy. While impressive to see, the lightning wasn’t getting through the shield.
I heard the unmistakable sound of electronics sizzle and spark. Then the spheres exploded, sending shrapnel flying through the air in all directions.
“EMP! “ Kane swung the laser cannon in a line across another row of spheres entering the cavern and melted the tops off them. Screams and shouts mixed with the sizzle of the lasers. The heat penetrated the suit and sweat glistened on my face. More spheres piled in behind the melted ones and knocked the sparking debris aside. They lined up in a row to fire. The sled dropped several feet to the floor with a crunching sound.
“I’ve lost flight control!” Jim yelled over the din. Mel rose slowly and pulled a BHL rifle from the sled deck. She opened fire on the spheres. Jim reached under the dashboard, opened a panel, and flipped a switch.
“I’ve set the self-destruct. We have ten minutes to get the hell out of here, folks! Let’s get to that dock. We need a boat!” Jim said.
The shield dropped as sparks flew from the dashboard. The ground rolled underneath our feet in a long, slow shudder. A deep underground rumble followed and rocks fell from the ceiling.
“Odin’s Balls. The volcano’s awake,” Sven said.
“Thank you for that reassuring input, sweet cheeks,” Mel said as she jumped to the floor.
“You sex kitten. You need some of Sven’s massiveness.” Sven grinned and he jumped to the floor next to Mel.
“You know just the right things to tell a girl.” Mel smirked.
Kane made a last sweep with the laser cannon and jumped off the sled with a BHL rifle. “Move your asses, rookies,” he yelled.
I pointed to a nearby tunnel. It seemed the way to go. “That way!” I yelled. Everyone bolted for the tunnel. Sporadic gunfire pelted the ground around us. All the spheres in the room were smoking and melted, but we could hear the metallic scrapes of more rolling towards us from the tunnels.
The grip on my mind stopped. We rounded the tunnel wall and put solid rock between us and the metal onslaught of the sphere swarm.
“Lane, you know where you’re going, honcho?” Jim asked.