Jason Stoneman and Amanda Kurstow leaped to their feet so quickly their chairs fell over backward. They each felt for the MA ray pistol normally belted at their waist, but not a single human was armed, there being no need within the safe confines of the Nevada base. Alex Fields sat very still, shifting his eyes back and forth, trying to locate some kind of weapon he might be able to use to wound or kill the Chrik. Only Major Becky Chang remained calm following her initial, startled reaction. General Blunt sat very still with a slightly amused look on his face.
Suddenly, the illusion of the Chrysallaman soldier faded away, leaving in its place a smiling Colonel Douglas Jenson.
"I thought I recognized your thought patterns!" Chang smiled.
"Are you fricking kidding me?!" Alex Fields gushed.
Righting their chairs and reseating themselves, Stoneman and Kurstow smiled sheepishly.
"Your illusion was completely convincing," Stoneman said. "I still have the willies from the experience!"
"You'd think after the walrus trick General Blunt pulled on me, I'd get used to this kind of stuff," Kurstow admitted grumpily.
General Blunt explained, "The real key on our new mission to capture a mother ship will be selling the illusion to her crewmen. That's why Whatsit will be accompanying the assigned team. There has to be an element of realism in the overall hallucination."
"Have you decided on the mother ship we want?" Kurstow asked.
"Yes," Whatsit replied. "The mother ship that made the initial exploratory trip to Earth back in 1947. The VrrSilliac Xur captained by Fleet General Hisspat Zeck. It just happens to be located right here in North America."
"How convenient!" Stoneman grinned.
***
Rasshur Grr had taken special pains to preserve a building the human animals called the Minsk-Arena. The structure appeared to have been designed by a Chrysallaman. Its circular shape and size resembled a mother ship. Even its gray color and shiny silver highlights pleased the eyes of the Chrysallaman sub-commander. The Arena was located in an area of planet HG-281 called Belarus, and Grr had liked the building's appearance so much, he gave strict orders to all his soldiers not to harm it in any way.
The story of Fleet General Hisspat Zeck's humiliating encounter with the paint ball throwing youngsters had made its way through the ranks of the fleet. Rasshur Grr couldn't help chuckling about the way he imagined Hisspat Zeck's face must have appeared as the lime green and orange paints defaced his royal robe.
Growing weary of sitting in his mother ship's master control room with nothing to do except direct the routine extermination of humans, Grr decided he'd join his ground troops for some fresh air and hands-on mayhem. Slipping on his combat vest, he strutted confidently out of his mother ship onto the plaza surrounding the Minsk-Arena. Sensing no human anywhere nearby and feeling an emptiness gnawing at his stomach, he strode toward a multi-story apartment building just north of the Arena hoping he could flush out some humans just begging to be his next meal.
Quietly moving into the apartment building, he heard intermittent sounds of laughter coming from a large atrium in the center of the ground floor. The atrium had lush green plants growing in various sized pots placed randomly about an indoor plaza, and benches with adjoining tables covered by colorful umbrellas sat in locations carefully chosen for comfort and ambience. Pushing through a double door of glass into the open area, Grr spied some 20 odd children playing with an inflated, multi-colored plastic ball. The young humans were trying their best to keep the ball in the air and were running back and forth in the uncluttered central area of the atrium, swatting the ball upward with their hands. The Chrysallaman commander had to admit the youngsters exhibited amazing hand-eye coordination and stamina.
A dark haired female, who might have been 8 years old, seemed to be the most athletic of the group. Grr noticed how aggressive and focused she was as her team worked tirelessly to keep the ball from falling to the floor. Relishing her smooth skin and supple musculature accented by a thin sheen of sweat coating her body, the Chrysallaman decided he'd found his next meal. Suddenly, one of the boys noticed Grr standing in the shadows near the doorway and shouted a warning to the others. The playing stopped immediately, and the ball dropped to the floor, rolling to a stop against a concrete bench near a tall, potted tree.
Surprisingly, the children didn't try to run away from him. Instead, they stood staring at Rasshur Grr with an insolence that began to anger the big Chrysallaman. There was one thing he wouldn't tolerate and that was defiance. He had once killed an insubordinate crewman for perceived defiance, and he wasn't about to allow an inferior race of humans, especially children, exhibit the same behavior towards him.
Stepping from the shadowed doorway and approaching them, Grr sent the telepathic series of commands giving him complete control over the minds of all the children. Ordering all of them to stand completely still, he strode over to the dark haired girl he had selected as his next meal. Gazing down at her with hungry eyes, saliva from his mouth dripped onto the concrete at her feet as he imagined the savory flavor of her meat. At 6 feet, 7 inches in height, easily the tallest and heaviest Chrysallaman in the invading fleet, Rasshur Grr towered over the 4 foot, 4 inch young female.
Reaching casually with his right hand for her arm in order to walk her out of the building, Grr was amazed when the girl suddenly frowned and grasped his descending right forearm with her left hand. Surprised momentarily she had the ability to ignore his telepathic control, the heavyset lizard nevertheless tried to continue the movement to grab her. To his complete astonishment, he couldn't move his right arm. It felt like it was clamped in a steel vise. Wide-eyed, Grr reached for the offending human with his left hand, only to have his left forearm similarly caught by the child's right hand.
Struggling with all his might to break the child's grip on his arms, Grr rose up to his full height, carrying the girl into the air when she refused to release her hold on his forearms with her steel-like little fingers. Panic began to set into his mind as he tried without success to shake the tiny harridan off him. He felt a brief telepathic thought impinge on his brain.
"Mom told me never to let strangers touch me, you lousy lizard!"
And with that thought and an assertive look in her eyes, the little girl snapped her wrists in a quick 90 degree angle instantly breaking both of Rasshur Grr's forearms with an audible, bony crack. Releasing her hold on his broken arms, the girl landed on her feet, backed a couple of steps away from the giant alien and insolently stuck her tongue out at him. Turning toward the other children who had watched the entire spectacle play out, she ran to rejoin them, and they all scampered from the room.
Mind numbing pain engulfed the Chrysallaman commander. Mewling in agony as his hands hung down from his forearms like limp dish rags, Grr turned hastily toward the double door of glass and shouldered his way through them. Cradling his broken arms as best he could as he stumbled from the building, he ran back toward his mother ship.
"Something's bad wrong," his pain fogged brain screamed. "Must report!"
***
As Captain Carlos Chi Canul crept through the forested foothills near Bilbao, in northern Spain, he kept his eyes and ears focused on the shipping pier overlooking the Bay of Biscay where a mother ship and its five scout saucers had landed. Captain Canul was a 5 foot, 6 inch Spaniard with a Mayan heritage from his mother's side of the family. He had a very round head with dark eyes and coal black hair. His body was wide-set and strongly muscled. The little finger on his right hand was crooked, and his mother had always told him the finger proved he was descended from a princely bloodline of Mayan royalty. Right now, Carlos didn't feel much like a Mayan prince. He felt like a dirty, sweat drenched FORCE commando on a mission to destroy the Chrysallaman mother ship he and his team were silently approaching with their special artillery piece.
His team of fellow FORCE soldiers had maneuvered their MA cannon to its current position through a half kilometer of thick brush and grov
es of trees. Hidden beneath camouflage netting, the cannon looked like a WWII M-30 howitzer with a shortened barrel. The MA cannon was a modest 5 feet in height. Two large rubber tires supporting the 6 foot wide carriage were powered by a quiet electric motor energized by a Heinbaum Kinetic Generator. Moving the cannon was simple. A soldier would pick up the end of the trail structure, activate the powered wheels and steer the carriage like a rickshaw. Quietly clearing away impeding brush and trees was the most difficult task in moving the cannon into position.
Klotators glued to the skin of the mother ship and its five attendant scout saucers had led his team of commandos unerringly to the hillock overlooking the Chrik spacecraft. Pulling a tablet computer from a large pouch slung over his shoulder, Captain Canul linked into the automated controls of the MA Cannon and watched with satisfaction as he tested the electric motors governing rotation and elevation of the cannon barrel. Locking the tablet's targeting software onto the Klotator signals emanating from the mother ship and its five attendant scout saucers, Canul waited patiently for the signal authorizing him to open fire.
***
Tuurket Axxdo was unsettled, and he didn't know why. Usually, he could calm his nerves by simply hovering his mother ship over a colony of humans and raying them out of existence, but lately even that distinct pleasure was unsatisfying. The conquest of planet HG-281 just seemed too easy despite the clear advantage of Chrysallaman technology and brain power. Thinking back about the genesis of his uneasiness, Tuurket considered it was linked to the obstinance of humans to any form of control, no matter how benevolent the control happened to be. Humans didn't easily accept authority. In fact, the harsher the punishment for disobedience, the more unruly the blasted creatures became.
The latest example of human obstinance had occurred less than two days ago. A scout saucer captained by one of his best soldiers, Burrtl Jaccz, had landed in a city square near the center of a large urban area called Venice, Italy. The mission had been quite simple. Secure ten humans for a holiday feast celebrating the end of the second week of occupation of planet HG-281 by the compassionate Chrysallamans. Burrtl Jaccz had selected ten of the younger humans for the honor and was trying to herd them into his saucer when scores of adult humans began menacing him.
The unfortunate captain had suffered grievous injuries before his crewmen used their cutter rays to mow down the miscreant humans. One of the crewman claimed he had witnessed a young male child, selected for the feast by Burrtl Jaccz, kick the captain in his shin so hard the leg bone had shattered. Axxdo discounted the story as the irrational imaginings of a soldier under combat stress, but nonetheless, the disturbance was troubling. None of the humans had succumbed to the telepathic commands of the Chrysallamans. None of them. Something was not right about these humans.
A sudden multi-ping from his master control board shook Axxdo from his reverie. Looking at his view screen, he saw a red, blinking icon on the right-hand end of the screen moving toward his position at an astounding velocity. The ship's sensors indicated the blip was 750 miles away and closing rapidly. Fascinated by the audacity of the human attempts to fight back against Chrysallaman occupation of their planet, Axxdo signaled for his scout ship, Orripazz, to engage the human aircraft and blow it from the sky.
***
Twerrit Eedrr, captain of the Orripazz, smiled delightedly as he received the orders from Tuurket Axxdo to terminate the human aircraft. One of the more adept pilots in the Chrysallaman fleet, Eedrr spent his leisure time in flight simulation games, and his winning percentage against fellow pilots had grown to an impressive level. Preferring to use manual controls in the operation of his saucer, he grasped his control yoke and twirled the guidance ball on his view screen to an intercept vector. Activating his gravity drive, he flicked into a combat position just 200 feet above and slightly to the rear of the human aircraft.
The silver colored craft had the usual lines of the primitively designed human military jets except for a couple of oddly different features. A thin wire-like structure encircled the aircraft from nose to wingtip to tail. The purpose of the design feature was indeterminable. Further, there was no visible engine or rocket exhaust port in the construction.
"Very strange design," Eedrr thought. "But then again, these humans are very strange."
Grinning as he locked his cutter ray onto the craft, Eedrr was just about to energize the beam when the silvery craft suddenly came to a complete halt in mid-air. The Chrysallaman captain was momentarily shocked by the aerial maneuver, and his saucer's speed was such it traveled 30 miles past the human craft before Eedrr reversed course and arrived back to float just one mile from the hovering machine.
Considering the odd behavior of the humans operating the aircraft, Eedrr decided it would be prudent for him to activate his defensive navigation computer. His forethought saved his life, for without warning, a strange white beam of energy with odd swirls and blinking sparkles snapped out from the silvery aircraft directly through the spot the Orripazz had been occupying just a moment before. The defensive computers he had just activated had twitched the Orripazz out of the path of the white beam, saving it by mere inches.
Incensed by the audacity of the human pilot, Eedrr activated his offensive weaponry and sent the combined powers of his cutter and heat rays at the aircraft. Nothing happened. Bathed in the combined, intensely destructive cutter and heat ray beams, the human machine appeared to be encircled by a clear bubble of protection. It remained completely unharmed by the tremendous energy flooding across it.
"What the Hell?" Eedrr thought with alarm.
Pushing the ship-to-ship communicator, Twerrit Eedrr contacted his commander, Tuurket Axxdo, and described what had just occurred.
"My combined cutter and heat rays are ineffectual, Sir!" Eedrr explained. "My only advantages are my saucer's speed and maneuverability."
"I'm sending the Luxxtunn to back you up," Axxdo replied. "Let's see if the thing can withstand the combined might of two Chrysallaman saucers."
Regarding his view screen, Eedrr watched as a glowing blue dot representing the Luxxtunn sped across the screen to a point directly adjacent to his saucer.
Switching his communicator to the saucer radio frequency, Eedrr was just about to warn the captain of the Luxxtunn to activate his defensive navigation computer when another white beam flicked out of the human aircraft and sliced through the gravity drive envelope of the Luxxtunn, utterly destroying the scout saucer in a single blinding explosion.
Stunned in disbelief, Eedrr felt his ship take evasive action as a second white beam speared through the airspace his Orripazz had just occupied. Again, without his navigation computer and speed, Twerrit Eedrr would be dead.
Stabbing at the ship-to-ship communicator on his combat vest, Eedrr frantically told Tuurket Axxdo what had just happened. A lengthy silence ensued and twice during the silence, Eedrr felt his ship evade the white beam of death spewing from the human aircraft.
At last, Axxdo growled his orders, "Ram the human aircraft and destroy it."
Eedrr couldn't believe he heard the order correctly so he replied, "Repeat Sir, your message must have been garbled. I thought you said to ram the human."
"You have your orders. Ram the human aircraft and destroy it!" Axxdo thundered.
"Sir, begging your pardon but such an action will destroy my saucer as well. Surely there must be another method to try!" Eedrr asked quietly.
"You have your orders, Captain," came the flat response.
Slumping his shoulders dejectedly as he keyed the commands into his navigation computer, Twerrit Eedrr pressed the Enter key. At a speed of one quarter that of light, the Orripazz rammed the F-35 Lightning and destroyed it. The tremendous explosion brightening the sky for miles around came from the ruptured fusion reactor of the Orripazz as it flashed into its constituent atoms.
***
Hobbled by the throbbing pain from his broken arms, Rasshur Grr stumbled across the broad plaza toward his mother ship. Throwing a g
lance back over his shoulder, fear bubbled up in his mind as he saw several adult humans leave their hiding places near the multi-story building, gesturing at him and shouting loudly. Knowing he had to reach the safety of his ship before the mob caught up with him, the big lizard renewed his efforts to run faster despite the throbbing pain as the sharp edges of his broken bones scrapped against nerve and muscle tissues in his arms.
Suddenly, a thundering sonic boom reverberated across the broad plaza of the Minsk-Arena. Looking up quickly, Grr saw a blur whiz across the sky at an elevation of perhaps 1,000 feet. The speed of the object was astounding, but what happened next was utterly devastating.
A white beam of coherent light filled with sparkles and dazzling swirls swept across his mother ship squatting on the plaza. The white beam sliced the mother ship completely in half so quickly, Rasshur Grr blinked his eyes in disbelief and horror. The beam was so powerful it left a trench in the plaza 8 feet wide and 30 feet deep. Curving to the left in a streak almost defying Rasshur Grr's ability to follow it with his eyes, the object seemed to pause over a spot about half a mile south of the Arena. Two white beams of light shot out of the object, and the resulting explosions left no doubt in Grr's mind that two of his scout saucers had just been destroyed.
With his mother ship in ruins, the Chrysallaman's combat vest communications capabilities were non-functional. It was impossible for him to warn the fleet. Standing alone near his demolished mother ship, Rasshur Grr forgot the throbbing pain of his broken arms as he gazed at the horizon and saw 5 pillars of black smoke rising into the air. Somehow, the humans had found a way to destroy what had once been invincible scout saucers.
Hearing a scruff in the pavement behind him, the big Chrysallaman turned to discover a group of human adults walking toward him from the multi-story building he had just left. A few of the humans were armed with clubs and knives, but most of them were empty-handed. All of them had looks of deadly determination on their faces.
The Origin of F.O.R.C.E. Page 33
