Hank glanced in that direction, but still couldn’t pinpoint which building the energy source might be in.
“The three still with us?” Malone asked.
“Stopped on the other side of that pile,” Waters said.
Again, Malone only nodded.
“Feels like a guarded fort, doesn’t it?” Hank asked, staring at the massive wall of debris.
“It does,” Malone said.
“So someone, or something, doesn’t want us in there,” Bogle said. “Piled up tons of debris to keep folks like us out.”
“Seems that way,” Hank said.
“But why?” Stephanie asked.
“Maybe because they live there,” Stanton said. “Why else build a fort?”
“To protect something,” Lee said.
“That too,” Stanton said.
Malone was about to speak, then stopped and glanced around.
It took Hank a moment to realize what was happening as the ground under him began to shake slightly. Then the trembling grew in intensity until he had no doubt what it was.
Earthquake.
A good-sized one.
And they were standing between crumbling old ruins of very tall buildings. The worst possible place to be.
But inside the buildings would be even worse.
“Center of the intersection!” Hank shouted.
He grabbed Stephanie’s arm and they tried staggering that way as the ground moved beneath their feet and pebbles started to rain down around them. Hank only hoped pebbles were the worst that would hit them.
The roar seemed to build, as if the entire city was angry. Dust filled the air, and the sounds of hunks of buildings crashing to the ground surrounded them like thunder.
Hank stumbled and fell, but quickly scrambled up with Stephanie’s help, his rifle tight in his hand.
“Center of the street! Everyone!” Malone ordered her troops. “Move it! Move it! Move it!” She grabbed the energy-sensing equipment and sheltered it against her stomach as she moved surefootedly away from the wall.
Bogle grabbed Stanton’s arm and dragged him away from the building as the others joined Stephanie and Hank.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over.
Hank couldn’t believe it. He and Stephanie hadn’t even reached the center of the intersection.
White dust billowed in the still air like slow-moving clouds in the sky.
Hunks of a building smashed down just to the east of them. Small, pebble-sized pieces of the buildings continued to rain down on them.
But nothing big.
Hank wanted to look up, but didn’t dare. Instead, he kept one arm over his head and waited.
Slowly everything settled, and the falling pebbles stopped.
As best as Hank could see in the dust, no one was hurt.
Bogle and Edaro started coughing, as if they were choking. Lee patted Bogle on the back and he finally stopped.
“Return to your cover posts,” Malone ordered her men. “And report in. Injuries?”
She listened for a moment as Hank watched, trying to take shallow breaths of the dust so he wouldn’t choke.
Finally, the sergeant said, “Good. Stay alert, people.”
Waters was already on one knee checking the motion detector.
“Three still with us to the west,” he said. “Nothing else moving.”
“Except the ground,” Bogle said.
Malone glanced around the group, checking to see if everyone was all right. Hank did the same.
Bogle, who was tall and normally very straight-backed, was slightly stooped from the coughing, but slowly seemed to be getting his breath back.
Lee now looked much older, his golden brown hair turned nearly white by the dust. And he wasn’t smiling at the moment, which added to the effect.
Edaro seemed fine, the golf ball still in his hand as he worked at something in his pack.
Stanton’s eyes were wide in his dirt-covered face, the fear obvious in his every movement.
Stephanie looked frightened, too, but seemed to be hanging in there. The dust had covered her hair, too.
The dust slowly settled around them, and the air gradually cleared. Hank kept breathing slowly, not wanting to take too much of the alien material into his lungs.
Malone gave base a quick rundown of what had just happened, then turned to look at the pile of debris.
“All your men all right?” Hank asked as he brushed off the arms of his jacket.
Malone nodded. “No injuries.”
“We were lucky,” Stephanie said.
“Boy, you aren’t kidding.” Bogle spat out more dust, then began to cough again.
Lee simply dusted off his jacket and said nothing.
Hank had to agree with Stephanie, looking at all the massive hunks of alien rock that had fallen in the past. They were damn lucky.
“We’ve got more problems,” Edaro said, but broke off with another fit of coughing.
Hank turned to see him kneeling in the middle of the street, studying an instrument he was trying to keep clean of dust by sheltering it with his body and a back pack. His trademark golf ball was gone for the moment.
Jeff Edaro was a specialist in molecular science, which had made him a natural to investigate the molecular structure of this island and the stuff on it. That made sense to Hank. Anything that could just appear somewhere had to be doing weird things on a molecular level.
The instrument Edaro knelt over was the size of a laptop computer, with a dozen silver prongs pointing off the back of it. It was making a slight beeping sound as it worked. On the screen it seemed to be scrolling graphs of different types and configurations.
Hank, Bogle, and Malone went over to see what Edaro was up to.
“What are you talking about?” Bogle asked.
“That wasn’t just a standard earthquake,” Edaro said.
“Felt like one,” Bogle said. “I’d guess about a six-point-five on the scale.”
Edaro shook his head. “Sure it was an earthquake, but it was caused by a molecular phase—a time-space event that covered the size of this entire island.”
Hank had an idea what molecular phasing meant, and he didn’t like the way Edaro used the term time-space at all. He didn’t know that anyone studied it outside of theoretical physics, but at the moment there was nothing theoretical about their situation.
Edaro glanced up at Hank, then over at Sergeant Malone. Then he took a shallow breath, coughed once, and went on. “We all know this island didn’t just travel here. It appeared here.”
Hank nodded.
“So it didn’t happen with fairy dust,” Edaro said. “And no one hit it here with a five iron. Something objective had to have occurred. Since the middle 1990s, there have been experiments in molecular phasing.”
“Transporting one object instantly from one location to another?” Stephanie asked.
Edaro nodded. “The first success was in Australia in 1996, with only a single atom. My guess is that this entire island, every molecule of it, including the buildings, sort of phases out of this space and transports to some other time and place. Maybe the way Earth got taken into the Maelstrom. Only we don’t know that for sure by any means.”
“How do you know all of this?” Malone asked, staring at Edaro.
“It’s my field of study, Sergeant,” Edaro said, laughing, his teeth looking extra white against the dirt on his face. “I’ve been working on something similar on a much smaller scale for the Union for the past five years, but so far without much success. Actually, a lot of us are working this area, both as weapons research and as a possible way to escape the Maelstrom and return to normal space.”
“You’re saying this island almost left with us aboard?” Bogle asked.
“No, not that time,” Edaro said. “Not a strong enough molecular phase to shift everything. But close, like a car engine turning over, but not starting, I’d say.”
“Not this time,” Hank said. “But m
aybe next time we go for a ride? Is that what you’re saying?”
Edaro nodded. “Exactly what I’m saying. Right now, on a molecular level, this place is as stable as anywhere else on Earth. But I’d bet anything it won’t remain that way.”
“Wonderful,” Bogle said. “What a great place for a vacation. Aliens on one end, who knows what the hell is lurking over that debris, and now the entire island might leave with us aboard. I’ve got to talk to my travel agent when we get back.”
Lee laughed. “Part of the package, remember?”
Bogle nodded. “Oh, I remember. I’ve just changed my mind is all.”
Hank ignored Bogle’s attempt at humor and asked, “Any way of telling when the next phase event will occur?”
Edaro shook his head. “None that I’m aware of. It’s been almost eleven hours since the island appeared here. My guess, and it would only be a guess, is that the next event will happen before the next eleven hours have elapsed. Maybe considerably less.”
“Why do you say that, Doctor?” Sergeant Malone asked.
“Simple,” Bogle said. “From the looks of what we’ve seen so far—the watermarks on the walls, the debris—this city has been jumping around the Maelstrom for a long, long time.”
Lee and Edaro both nodded. Hank had come to the same conclusion.
“Which means the aliens have been tracking it,” Stanton said.
“What?” Hank asked. Stanton’s statement made no sense at all.
“The aliens in that ship, whoever they are, almost beat us here, and we were only a few kilometers away. So somehow they must have known the location of the island’s next jump. Or had a way of tracking the jump when it happened. That would explain why the first place on Earth they landed was this island. There must be something here that they want pretty badly.”
“Possible,” Edaro said. “But way, way beyond what we’ve been working on over the last few years. Though I suppose it would still be theoretically possible to track a molecular phase.”
Hank watched as Edaro seemed to go off into his own thoughts for a moment.
Malone knelt down beside where Edaro was staring at the strange-looking instrument. “Can you tell what caused the last event?”
Edaro laughed. “Not even close. But there’s something about this island that causes the phasing to another location. My guess, again just a guess, is that the pressure of some sort of ‘energy’ builds until finally the entire city shifts to a new location.”
“Like a fault line building up pressure, then releasing?” Stephanie asked.
“Or a battery gathering a charge,” Bogle said.
“Either one would be a good way of looking at it,” Edaro said. “But please understand, I’m really only speculating based on my research over the past few years. One thing I can tell you for sure—that last earthquake was no fluke. The island tried to phase out of here, but there wasn’t enough energy for it to happen.”
“Yet,” Bogle said.
“Yet,” Edaro agreed.
Hank didn’t like the sound of that word any more than the rest of them did.
10
Time: 12:40 P . M . Pacific Time
11 hours, 09 minutes after Arrival
The dust that had choked the air had just finished settling when Waters said, “They’re coming.”
Those were not the words Malone wanted to hear, but they were the ones she’d been expecting. Because they had stopped for so long, it gave whoever or whatever was on the other side of that debris barrier in the street time to decide to come after them.
“How many?”
“Just the three,” Waters said.
“Move back,” she ordered into her commlink. “Form up. Defensive positions around this intersection.”
“What’s coming?” Downer asked. He and Bogle were standing beside her.
She held up her hand for them to wait a moment, then asked Waters, “Where are they coming through?”
“Two through the building to our left,” Waters said. “One from the right. And now there’s a fourth, a new one, coming in from the south along the same street we came down.”
That meant they weren’t surrounded. A good sign at this point, especially in dealing with an unknown enemy.
Malone turned and pointed to a large pile of rubble near a far wall. There was a small hole in the building there, a defensible position if needed.
“Vasquez. Marva. Get the civilians inside that hole.” She pointed, and Waters nodded.
“Clear the interior first,” she ordered. “On the double.”
She glanced down at the private watching the motion sensor. “Waters, take cover with the civilians and stay on that. I want a running report on their movement. I need you to be our eyes.”
“They’re going to be coming through soon, Sergeant,” Waters said, grabbing the motion detector and following Vasquez at a run.
Malone turned to Downer. “Get your people into that hole and fast. Be ready to fight.”
Downer nodded and without a word shoved Dr. Peters and Stanton at a run across the street toward their cover. Dr. Edaro had his equipment under his arm and was also running just ahead of Dr. Bogle and Dr. Lee.
“Okay, people,” she said into her commlink, “I want to meet them head-on. Fire from cover and make each shot count on my orders. Do not, I repeat, do not let them get close to you for any reason. Fall back if you have to.”
She had no idea what they were facing, but staying away from them was the best strategy under the circumstances.
Malone eased down behind a large chunk of stone that had fallen near the corner of the intersection. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Downer making sure the last of his people were inside, then duck in behind them himself. A moment later Vasquez took up position in the debris in front of the hole, Pitbull rifle out and at the ready.
Three of her men inside, five out on the street, plus her. Six against the four coming, with Vasquez from the hole if needed. Good odds, depending on the fighting ability of whatever, or whoever, was coming.
It looked as if she was just about to get some firsthand information about aliens.
“Two moving toward an opening in the building on the right, near the debris wall,” Waters said over the commlink. “One coming into the open now from the left.”
“Easy now,” she said. “I want clear shots. Wait until I give the order. Clean and simple.”
From the building on the left a figure appeared. In the remains of the floating white dust and the gloom of the street, she couldn’t see it well. But it seemed tall, with a flowing black robe that swirled around it much as the dust swirled in the street between them.
It didn’t seem to be carrying a weapon, but that didn’t mean one wasn’t hidden in the black robe.
Two more of them appeared to the right, coming through the hole in the wall and seeming to float down over the piled debris, as if they had no feet. For all she knew, they didn’t. Only robes and hoods over their heads, hiding their faces in dark shadows.
Maybe they didn’t even have faces. Tall, thin, and flowing-robed humanoid shapes. No other details were visible.
Weird.
Just flat weird. In all her career, she’d never had to fight an enemy completely unknown to her. She didn’t like this one bit.
As the creature came into the open it was as if the temperature of the street dropped twenty degrees. She could feel the chill coming off of them.
Cold.
Deadly cold, she would wager.
The alien city already had a cold feel about it, but now it had gone completely arctic.
“Two more coming in from the right down the street,” Waters said in her earpiece. “Another from the left, also on the street.”
That made seven total creatures. The odds were evening up a little.
The Bulldog felt good in her hands as she laid it across the top of the rock and took aim on the robed figure on the left. She couldn’t see a face in the shadow of the hood
. But she wasn’t going for a head shot anyway.
Around her the air temperature kept dropping, as if the creature was sucking all the heat out of it. Suddenly her gun felt like ice in her hands.
The three creatures in the open moved purposefully, flowing like water directly at the three men nearest them. It was as if they had no fear.
Or any idea what they were walking into.
The cold seemed to have become intense, like a weapon. She could feel it biting at her skin, numbing her joints, draining the life right out of her.
“Fire,” she ordered, her voice almost choked off by the sudden strange cold. Her breath froze in front of her.
The canyons of the alien city instantly filled with the roar of gunfire as they all opened up on the three creatures moving out in the open.
Her rifle kicked in its familiar way in her hand as she sent the creature she was aiming at tumbling backward into a pile of black robes. But the cold made the kick painful. Had she waited another few seconds, she might not have been able to squeeze the trigger.
Too close.
She caught a glimpse of blackened skin under the robe of one creature, but nothing else to tell her what they really looked like.
All three creatures were down.
The firing stopped as quickly as it started.
And around them the air seemed to warm almost instantly.
But the creatures weren’t staying still.
Malone watched the one she had shot as it simply dissolved into a pile, the robe seeming to vanish until there was nothing left but what looked like a mound of very black sand.
Sand as black as their robes.
Then, above the pile the wind started to swirl around and around, a small twister coming out of the center of the pile, picking up a few grains of the black sand at first, then slowly getting bigger and bigger, drawing in more and more of the black sand as it gained power.
Within seconds the area of the intersection was filled with three large tornadoes, growing in force, swirling not only the sand into the air, but clouds of white dust and debris with it.
The cold was still intense, as if the wind was blowing off an iceberg.
Malone could feel the force of the winds pulling at her, at the rifle in her hands. It was as if the sand things were trying to disarm her after they were dead.
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