David interrupted. “Your doctor seems a little paranoid.”
“She’ll be fine. Maybe we should all be a little paranoid. What do things look like outside? Any change since the device powered up?”
He shook his head. “We have a fifteen hundred foot perimeter. Anything gets close, and you’ll see those lights on the wall fire up. Amber for a minimum threat, like a dog or a cat, and red for anything big enough to be human.”
“Not exactly fool proof.”
“Enough to keep the squiddy slaves and snooping kids out. At least know where they are before they get to any entrances. Then we pop ‘em with a trank, and drag them inside. Might be better than mice.”
The sopping of Jacobs steps grew louder. “Speaking of.”
He shook the white plastic mouse house as he jogged across the bay, jostling it enough to make any ASPCA employee cringe. He slowed while nearing the device, and placed the cumbersome object beside it on the ground. The top was plexiglass, and the inside was partitioned into eight individual cells forming two rows. The squeaks in each partition moused around the corners, searching for an escape from his mishandling.
“She said one row is infected and the other is a control group. So four of each.”
“Which ones are infected?” asked David.
“We’ll find out in a second,” said the colonel. “Reyes. Make ‘em dance.”
The tiny blonde tapped one of the glowing icons on the device. Everyone watched the rats carefully. There was no change. They clawed at the corners, just as before, and the colonel couldn’t spot any characteristic difference from one side to the other.
“That should have put them to sleep,” she said.
Jacob started. “Guess you don’t understand alien symbols as good as you thought. Maybe the machine just doesn’t want to listen to a. . .”
“To a what?” She glared.
“Reyes,” commanded the colonel. “Try another button.”
When he looked back at the cage, all eight of the mice had calmed down. Each of them nosed about its tiny rectangular prison, sniffing at the bedding material, tasting the miniature water droppers, and being very mousy. Even without a degree from MIT, he could tell that Jacob’s antenna was ineffective.
“Let me try,” said Jacob.
“No! Don’t touch it.”
He hammered one of the lit symbols. Still nothing from the mice.
“It might take a while for the infection to invade their system enough to control them,” said David. “And we aren’t drawing any attention from outside. We should probably keep it running like the doctor said. Eight hours?”
“In eight hours,” said the colonel, “the whole world is going to come looking for us, and you know it.”
“The antenna works,” said Jacob. “We know it works. We tested the signal against that silly black box. They’re both on the same frequencies. When paired with the personal box, pushing buttons on this thing influenced the response. It works. I’m telling you.”
“So that’s it?” asked the colonel.
“That’s it,” replied Dr. Savage. “Every last person accounted for. No sign of infection.
The colonel laid back in a chair while she put away cleaned glassware and sample trays. “I don’t suppose you brought the bottle night cap with you?”
“Everything happened so fast I didn’t have time to think about it. I hope John isn’t tearing into it right now.”
“He’s probably sleeping it off for whatever this big operation is that you have planned in the morning.”
“Not my operation, it’s on them.”
“Them who?” Her dark eyebrows exaggerated the twisted expression. She approached the long bench extending from the back of the cargo container where the colonel was seated. “I guess you can’t tell me about it.”
“The people I trust are in this building, at our compound in the desert, and one guy that I’ve known forever waiting to cash in on a big sale the moment he hits a launch button. There are no secrets left to hide. The intelligence team intercepted a transmission from Space Command that something very large was dropping from a polar orbit. Best they can tell, the mother ship will remain over a hundred miles above the surface, but coupled with dozens of other message fragments, it looks like they will be dropping their assault team. Their infection team. Whatever they want to call it.”
“I don’t understand,” said Nicole. She plucked the rubber band from her ponytail and flicked it on a random countertop. “The aliens told someone that they would be dropping in?”
“The orbit reaches it’s lowest point just north of Amarillo, Texas. If they are planning to start there, they are positioned perfectly for it. I told Mark to blast them out of the sky. There’s still a good chance that even they don’t know about his secret arsenal.”
“What’s the catch?”
“The catch is nuclear fallout, irradiation of the upper atmosphere, and possibly an EMP that will shut down North America. But if it hits, it’ll take out the bulk of the threat. Those suits seem convinced that this is the big tamale. I hope they’re right. We can’t afford to make a mistake like that, as it’ll render both sides pretty helpless. If we don’t act, then they will carry out their plans anyway.”
She sat beside him on the bench, stretching to pop her back, which highlighted the few loose buttons at the top of her lab coat with little underneath. Her legs crossed toward him, and he wondered for the dozenth time how a doctor, on her feet most of the day, put up with tall heeled boots. Most women complained about things like that.
“An attack,” she said. “So either they land ground troops, or we explode their ship, with I assume a nuclear arsenal? End of the world either way?”
“I don’t think the blast will shut down the grid from that altitude, but anything is possible.”
“And we won’t know if Jacob’s antenna is really working for several more hours, or if there is any point treating the virus.”
“I suppose we could go tap some more buttons.” He was dog tired, as ragged out as he could remember being, and she stared from the dark almond eyes directly into his own, causing his heart to pulse quicker.
The breath from her words was warm against his neck, however faint. “Could be the last morning we see.”
“On the upside, we got to meet each other, work together, and share a few drinks. Don’t think I would have chanced by the CDC to meet you otherwise.”
Another button came loose at the end of her slender fingers. “How long until the attack? It’ll only take a minute to check on the mice.”
“Two or three hours.”
“And everything could go wrong after that?”
Her eyes carried an air of natural determination. The amber rings of her irises carried a subtle sparkle. The touch of her fingertips electrified his arm.
“It’s possible everything could go to hell real quick.” He cradled her hand in his, and watched her eyes close softly as she leaned forward. Another chance to pursue this relationship might never come. If the missiles failed, if the device failed, if the plan went to hell, the next could be their last moments alive. She knew it, and the perimeter guards around his heart stood down. His gaze glided from the corner of her eye toward the loose strands now grazing his canvas coveralls. His free hand drifted toward her soft cheek, guiding her in.
As lips touched skin from both sides, small nips and kisses found their way slowly toward each other. Hers drifted north from his neck while his touched her temple first, then her cheek, and then met the sweet electric fire of her luscious lips. Her arms tightened around his torso with the force of a giant python, pulling them inseparably together. The front zipper of his coveralls came free while his fingers found button after button on her lab-coat.
She was strong, sensible, smart, and the only person in his recent life that understood and accepted his angst about the nature of the world. Under the white canvas coat was a black bra with pink lacy swirls of embroidery, like she had been planning
this from day one. A sexy body to match her stimulating conversations. If they did manage to survive, this was one person he wouldn’t mind sharing the rest of his life with, and there wasn’t a doubt in his mind.
Sparks flew from south of the equator as the two of them merged into one mind and one body. The end of the world could wait.
“Jacob,” said the colonel. “Wake up and get out to the bay. Your machine is working.” He slammed the door shut and headed back to the cages.
As ragged out as he should have been, he felt refreshed and renewed, as if he had zapped all the energy out of Dr. Savage to keep for himself, but she was just as alert as he while sticking four of the mice with various germ-killing agents. The critters lay completely still, even as the needle point stabbed into their skin.
“Apparently,” said Nicole, “the little alien symbol that looks like a capital ‘H’ puts them down. I remember Jennifer saying that she was pretty sure that symbol meant downtime.”
“How did she figure that out?”
“I don’t know, but she’s been fiddling with the cypher on their written language analysis. She’s got it down to an art, even if she still hasn’t figured it all out. When she gets out here, she’ll be happy to know that she was right about that one.”
“And we’re sure that the machine is working?”
“Watch.” She shook the plastic box holding the vermin. One row of them began immediately moving and scratching at the walls while the others remained laying down. They almost appeared to be sleeping, if not for those wide red eyes staring back.”
“I’m taking tissue samples from various parts of their bodies to see if the virus is selective in what kind of cells it attacks with the transmitter active. Maybe it only invades the rest of the body after losing the connection.”
David approached from the door leading downstairs. “It’s working, is it?”
“It is,” said the colonel.
“And you’re doing more tests?”
“We have to be sure,” said the colonel. “Believe me, I know how you feel. I’ve been battling with these guys and their lengthy testing for months. All I can say is they do the job right, and that takes time.”
“Well, we’re out of time. The ship is approaching.”
“We better get downstairs then. Dr. Savage, keep me posted.”
“Oh, I’ll keep you posted alright.”
They shared a smile before the colonel turned to follow David below.
“Is your guy ready to launch?”
“It’ll take him about fifteen minutes to fuel the missiles. I’m more concerned that the aliens might be waiting for the attack.”
“They’ll never see it coming. If we can’t find your friend’s missiles, there’s no chance that they will find them. Trust me. They’ve done everything they can to disable our nuclear armament. I’m pretty sure that they don’t have defenses in place, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered. Thank God there are some things that humans still keep secret.”
A series of hallways and stairs led to a dimly lit room with a bright screen on one wall. On it was a pictorial of the planet Earth. A red line traced an ellipse from the gray circle representing the orbit of the moon, skimming around the planet. A red square on the line represented the mother ship.
“You have good coordinates on the orbit?”
“I do, right here.” He tapped some keystrokes into a control pad, presenting an overlay on the image that looked like a table of latitudes, longitudes, altitudes, and corresponding times. “The data is ready to transfer. I know you’re guarding the identity of your terrorist friends, so I’ll let you transmit it with whatever encryption you guys are using.”
The colonel popped open a new laptop and logged in. Despite their best efforts to make him feel secure about his transmissions, he knew all too well their tactics. They had probably already turned his machine into a roach motel for spy bugs before giving it to him. He’d have to ditch it before returning to the compound. If nothing else, everything passing over their private network was being monitored, and it didn’t matter what kind of encryption he used. Luckily, the other end was a private network with unmonitored access. Mark would be able to log in, download the file, and launch the missiles without giving them too much information.
“Everything comes down to today. From the plotted course, we’ll probably be going to full attack mode in about an hour?”
“And so will they.”
Someone rushed in from a side room. “Sir, you need to see this.”
“What?”
The young spook jogged toward the computer controlling the wall display and brought up a view of the outside cameras.
“Lower left. Right in front of that shop. The guy was on his way to work this morning and collapsed. He just fell asleep.”
The colonel chuckled. “Looks like Jacob’s device has a pretty good range. Congratulations, gentlemen. This base is now impenetrable to the alien threat. Their dumb soldiers can’t advance on us without the programming being overridden.”
“We need to find a radius,” said David. “Deploy a strike team to comb the area. See if we can spot anyone else sleeping in the street.”
He turned back to the colonel. “I wonder if your boy could boost the power on that thing to cover the whole city.”
“I just hope this contact you have is actually the mother ship and not a bombing run.”
“We can’t track their bombers until they enter the atmosphere. Telescope satellite recon confirms that whatever this thing is, it’s big. Too big to drop into the atmosphere without burning up.”
The program appeared in front of the colonel. He typed a short message to Mark ordering him to attack, and uploaded the coordinate file. “You guys are covering the costs.”
“Money is already wired, as per your instructions.”
“Let’s hope that your accounting nerds typed in the account code correctly.”
“Indeed.”
Hundreds of miles above the surface of the planet, something large and heavy was ripping through the Van Allen belts and making quite a wake on every ground-based radar station covering the North American sky. As it crossed over the Great Lakes, several new contacts appeared from the south in a collision orbit, lofted from the ground. These were much smaller, only detected by the most advanced tracking stations, and they were on a collision course for the object at a relative speed of over forty thousand miles per hour.
Thrusters fired from the object. Sunlight glared off the metallic skin. From the ground, any amateur telescope could spot it as a long cylinder, or a horizontal stack of dishes. Tiny lights scattered away from it like miniature meteors. While the lights continued south, they did so slower than the large object itself, appearing to drop back from it. Each flared for only a few seconds before disappearing into the slowly brightening sky.
The colonel, his team, and the crew of the Special Collection Service facility watched the feed from such a telescope.
“Countermeasures?” asked the colonel.
“Not likely,” said David. “That’s a landing team.”
“They must be scattering themselves out as much as possible.”
“Sir,” said one of the men manning the radio scan data from a hacked connection to Space Command. “Aspect change in target. They’re trying to turn or slow down or something.”
“Time to intercept?” asked David.
“Thirty seconds, sir.”
“You think that’s going to be enough to get them clear, colonel?”
He smirked. “Not a chance in hell. Mark launched a cluster. No matter what direction they go, they’ll be close enough for the detonation to do the job. I just hope that we don’t knock out our own resources in the process. EMP gets a little sketchy at higher altitudes. The magnetic belts should protect us, but there’s always a chance that a sufficiently large explosion could disrupt the EM field of the entire planet. I don’t think the nukes are big enough, but still.”
“We’ll f
ind out in twenty seconds if it does or not. These feeds go dead, then we’re going to be in a world of trouble. All those zombies out there are going to wake up. And no doubt, the aliens know where we are by now. They’re probably pissed that we started putting their minions to sleep.”
“What about the protesters? Still active?”
“Active and ripping Los Angeles apart, the last I heard. What do you think the odds are that we’ll knock out their power supplies too?”
“Probably won’t. Ten seconds. Still on target, or at least close enough. A ship that big can’t turn on a dime, especially at orbital velocities.”
Any background chatter, whether Jacob’s team discussing strategies to boost the signal, the recon guys mapping out the area of influence, or the scientists watching the test mice carefully, fell silent. Every eye in the bay was focused on the large display with the plotted trajectories. Tiny yellow dots formed a miniature constellation on the map, drifting toward the large red square. Three more seconds. Two. One. The yellow dots disappeared.
The neighboring screen was the view from the roof-mounted telescope, which flashed brightly. Magnifying the explosions at that level made the screen blank white, and when darkness returned, nothing was visible on the display. A moment later, a meteor shower started from the same direction, but the colonel knew it wasn’t debris. It was the alien landers that got away before the blast. He hoped that they were disabled and out of control.
The course plotter continued with the single red dot. A moment later, it shattered into hundreds of red squares, slowly drifting away from each other.
“Multiple contacts, sir. I think we did it. The craft is breaking up. After it passes the equator, it’ll be headed back out into deep space. Hopefully all this debris doesn’t kill too many of our satellites. Confirmed. There’s debris everywhere. Radio signals look like a fish finder.”
“We did it, colonel. Good work.”
“Now we just need to deal with the remaining threat planet-side. Whatever got away before the explosion, and whatever squiddy bases are already entrenched.”
Invasion Page 7