Beyond Armageddon: Book 05 - Fusion

by Anthony DeCosmo

“Yes, of course. This we shall do. Come along, right now.”

  She appeared ready to move but stopped as she remembered something. Her eyes glanced around at the now-dead containment cells. Then she became conscious of the notes in her grasp.

  “Wait, Omar, listen to me. I did all this—I did it all for a reason.”

  “I am sure. But let’s talk of this when we get home.”

  She grabbed his arm and said, “Listen, Omar, I understand now. Do you hear me? Trevor has to know. He has to know that we never had a chance. All of the guns and the armies won’t be enough, Omar. We never had a chance!”

  “Anita, come home with me.”

  “All these years down here—these things have gotten inside my head. I’ve studied them under a microscope, in the lab—most of them are just animals like what we have here on Earth—just a little different in how they look. That’s not important. But the others—I have watched them one little piece at a time. It’s been like a puzzle—coming together. No—more like coming into focus. I can’t explain it, but I know now. I know why the others are so different.”

  “I’m sure they are,” he reached under her shoulder as if to lift her to her feet.

  She burst with a shout that caused him to lose his balance and fall backward onto the floor.

  “GODDAMN IT you have to hear me, Omar! You MUST listen to me. Trevor MUST listen. You have to tell him. I can’t go—not like this—but you have to. You must tell him!”

  “Calm down. We will send a message to him.”

  “NO!” Then calmer, “No. You will go to the front and tell him yourself, Omar. You will tell him what I have learned.”

  She stared at him with hard eyes for a long moment, and then collapsed into sobs as the weight of her work, of her life in the dungeon, of the truth she had learned, came falling hard on her shoulders.

  He whispered in her ear, “What has this place done to you?”

  “I know, Omar,” she answered by telling him exactly what the horrors at Red Rock had finally taught her. “I know why the universe is empty.”

  4. Spoilsport

  In the world before Armageddon, Wichita, Kansas earned the nickname “Air Capital of the World” due to the volume of aircraft manufactured in the vicinity as well as McConnell Air Force Base, one-time home to the 22nd Air Refueling Wing.

  A small military contingent of Kansas National Guard and Air Force Combat Controllers kept McConnell operating during that first summer of the initial invasion. They flew re-supply sorties across the country, even topping the tank on Air Force One in late July. Eventually they lost contact with the President after his return to Cheyenne Mountain and the orders—as convoluted as they were—ceased.

  Eventually those who survived faded into the countryside.

  Then The Empire and Trevor Stone swept west, returning life to the Great Plains, reopening the old Union Pacific rail stations, and pumping new life into McConnell AFB.

  The new normal, however, lasted only a few years.

  As Trevor Stone exited Eagle One and walked the tarmac on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 19th, he knew Wichita was dying again. He could see it in the panicked expressions of the soldiers and civilian workers hustling from shuttle buses to commuter jets. He could hear it in the constant roar of outgoing aircraft filled with evacuating equipment and personnel.

  This scene of panic at the air base repeated across Wichita. With rail transportation seized for military use, the civilian population became refugees. Horses and carts and the few cars that could find gasoline formed a snaking line out of the city.

  Many of those civilians belonged to the ‘groupies’ who traveled with the military formations. These were the spouses and children, friends and relatives of the warriors. Now those loved ones were abandoned as the soldiers and airmen left via rail or plane and their families resorted to more perilous modes of escape. As a result, the desertion rate among the armed forces spiked.

  Just as victory after victory during the early days birthed a seemingly insurmountable momentum, defeat after defeat accelerated the downward spiral.

  Trevor led his entourage—two Rottweilers, four heavily-armed soldiers, and Rick Hauser his personal pilot—toward a cluster of buildings including a four-story structure that served as a temporary headquarters. This HQ was a part of a cluster of refurbished buildings that stood in contrast to a neighborhood of the base’s facilities that had been destroyed a decade before and not included in the remodeling plan for McConnell.

  Another jet roared along the runway and took to the sky as the group approached a side entrance. Trevor thought he heard panic in the sound of those engines.

  They moved from the simmering mid-May heat into the cool confines of the building and headed upstairs to the second floor observation lounge where a wide table, metal cabinets, and folding chairs had replaced soft furniture.

  General Casey Fink stood at the table surrounded by his staff and representatives from smaller units. Trevor, dressed in grungy BDU pants, a black shirt, and a dirty black baseball cap over hair that had not seen shampoo in the better part of a week, grabbed everyone’s attention as he walked up to the table where the very fluid “Kansas” front was displayed on a large map.

  “We have some serious problems. I just got back from Great Bend. Enemy scouts have been spotted in that area as recently as this morning. I’m thinking The Order is pushing hard on the north flank to try and cut off the tracks at Peabody.”

  Everyone understood that Trevor’s point revolved around the evacuation of heavy equipment and army units via the railroads, some of which had already been bombed. The only remaining intact routes ran in a north and northeast direction out of Wichita.

  General Fink scratched his head and then timidly—a rare thing for Casey Fink—told Trevor, “2nd Armor is fifty percent loaded. General Rothchild and her command staff have set up shop over at the rail yard. I dispatched a pair of anti-air units for added protection.”

  Trevor ran a hand over the rather thick stubble on his cheeks before finding his nose and pinching. Before he could burst into an angry reminder about the need for speed General Fink added, “We’ve got a strong garrison at Newton. They’ll cover the lines as long as we need. I’m more worried about the Chrysaor.”

  “She’s out of action for a couple of days,” he told Fink. “No dry-dock, but she’s pulled back for weapons repair. Seems the air fight over Amarillo did more damage than we thought.”

  Trevor stared at the maps of Kansas, Missouri, and Wichita. Markers represented friendly units as well as enemy positions.

  “We have time, sir,” Casey said in a cautious tone.

  “I know. That’s what worries me.”

  On the map he saw markers indicating The Order’s legions, but felt greater concern over what he could not see. This sense of paranoia had grown acute in the four days since Voggoth outwitted him at the battle near Wetmore.

  Trevor removed his baseball cap. Dirty hair fell over his ears. Outside, the roar of jet engines announced another flight trying to escape.

  “We haven’t been moving fast enough, but they haven’t caught us, either.”

  “They’ve had to do some farming,” said Fink. “Recon spotted a half-dozen fields just across the Colorado border.”

  “A half-dozen? That’s nothing, you know that. Voggoth has got something up his sleeve.”

  “Maybe he knows where we’re going. Maybe he wants to wait and set up shop closer to where the real battle is going to happen. You know, the Mississippi.”

  The thought had occurred to Trevor.

  “Maybe, yeah. But why let us make it to the barricades? He could hurt us bad right now, but he’s holding off. We’re too busy running to fight, and he still has enough firepower to kick us harder in the ass than he’s been doing. But he hasn’t. Just nitpicks. Bombing runs and a few shock troops here and there. It’s as if he wants us to make it to the Mississippi. Like he’s…”

  Casey followed, “Like he’s stalling f
or time before finishing us off.”

  Trevor nodded but his eyes remained on the map.

  “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what scares me.”

  One of Trevor’s K9 bodyguards sitting by the door growled and stood. Everyone at the table turned and eyed the dog.

  Rick Hauser spoke aloud what everyone thought: “Oh shit.”

  A sound other than engines and shouts filtered in through the glass windows of the observation lounge: the base’s air raid klaxon springing to life in a wail of warning.

  Casey Fink’s dry sense of humor surfaced for the first time in days: “Sounds like another nitpick.”

  Trevor pointed through the big windows and said, “Here they come.”

  A plume of exhaust on the distant perimeter of the base announced the launching of a Patriot missile. More plumes joined the first and reached into the white clouds drifting overhead. Explosions rocked the heavens; the flashes created lightning in a peaceful sky.

  Voggoth’s bombers dipped below the clouds and flew toward the heart of McConnell. Like all of The Order’s weapons of war, these things appeared one part machine, one part animal. In this case the bodies resembled hammerhead sharks but without eyes and several times the size. The gray bodies ended not in a fin but in a point. Openings like gills lined the rear quarter from which slipped streams of white air like a kind of jet engine. Atop the bodies stretched a mechanical frame supporting pinkish fixed wings made from a fleshy material.

  The phalanx of 12 flying abominations made no sound as they swooped over the target at speeds approaching 300 miles per hour.

  Casey said, “Christ, they’re going straight for the air strip.”

  As the lead flyer reached a point above one of the main runways, its entire body bulged like a water balloon filled from a fire hose—and then the entire flying contraption popped into pieces. Flakes of the outer skin and the wings fluttered in the wind while a payload of spherical ordnance—hundreds of black balls—fell from the sky having been released from the innards of the disintegrating thing.

  As they fell, the group of balls spread like shotgun shot. Each impacted and exploded in a blast of concussion. Trevor saw waves of energy ripple through the air. The windows in the lounge bent and wobbled.

  Several hit the runway tearing up concrete and creating impassable holes. Another clipped the wing off a Learjet. Another hit a supply truck flipping it over and causing it to burst into flames.

  More of Voggoth’s suicide bombers arrived. A Patriot missile exploded one before it reached its target, sending its body as well as its explosive cargo raining down on a tree line just outside the base.

  “Where the is the goddamn CAP?”

  Rick Hauser, leaning over a radio technician, answered with one ear still stuck in a headset, “They got hit by Spooks ten miles out. They’re still tangled up out there. That’s why these things got through.”

  A series of large explosions came across the tarmac directly for their building. The first few ripped through a group of pallets holding freight destined for air transport. They erupted, crates went flying, and several personnel were thrown around.

  The last bomb hit 50 paces away. The blast shattered all the windows in the room.

  Everyone in the room dove for cover. The dogs whimpered as the blast and shattering windows overloaded their sensitive ears.

  Rick Hauser grabbed his shoulder. “Sir, we need to get downstairs to better cover!”

  Trevor took a knee before standing. More claps of detonating bombs echoed in through the smashed windows. The air raid siren continued to blare.

  “We have to go,” Hauser repeated and before Trevor could react he felt a second hand on his other shoulder, this one belonging to Casey Fink. Between the two men they managed to ‘encourage’ Trevor into the stairwell. The building trembled again and again as they hurried for the basement shelter.

  Thirty minutes later the last of The Order’s warped kamikaze bombers dropped its load over McConnell. The side door to the communications room burst open as the air raid siren faded. Trevor, Fink, Hauser and the rest emerged from the partially-scarred building to survey the damage.

  Smoke rose across the air strip and from many of the perimeter buildings and hangers. Two large cargo jets lay in pieces across the runway. Several smaller aircraft—all in various states of loading and preparation—had suffered substantial damage. A pool of aviation fuel burned steadily around the remains of a busted tank.

  “Ah, Christ, this is bad,” Fink shook his head.

  Trevor blocked out the screams of the injured scattered around the tarmac and told Casey, “You need to get this air strip up and running again. Fast.”

  As terrible as the damage appeared, the first question revolved around the runways. How badly had they been hit? Trevor spied about a dozen craters pot marking the base’s air strips.

  The second question involved aircraft. Two major planes lost, several more would require significant repair. But most of the reinforced hangers appeared intact. They should be; they had been designed with the B1-B Lance Bomber in mind back in the early 80s. While the B1s had been transferred away long before the invasion, the facilities to protect those Cold War aircraft remained and had certainly protected several aircraft from this strike.

  “Sir,” Fink struggled with a way to phrase what he wanted to say. “Sir, I, well I’ll get on this. But if we’re in bombing range now that means they could hit us with anything. I think, well, I think you need to get out of the hot zone.”

  Trevor did not respond as something caught his eye. More specifically, a flash of white fur moving between some of the left over dead buildings a hundred yards away. There he saw a familiar sight, albeit one he had seen less and less this past year.

  A white wolf.

  He mumbled, “I have to—I have to go,” and started along a path that led beyond the communications center toward the stretch of abandoned and burned buildings. Soldiers tried to follow, but Trevor raised a hand and Hauser reinforced the order by shaking his head. Hauser had come to know that on occasion The Emperor left to convene with unknown forces; a truth rarely spoken aloud but one the inner circle accepted.

  The Rottweilers, however, remained in escort, following their master amid the cluster of buildings that had been destroyed a decade before when the alien forces first came to Earth. He led them through a blasted door frame and followed the wolf as it moved across what had once been an ornate reception area but only broken furniture and decaying walls remained.

  Trevor followed down a corridor and into a wide round conference room. Rows of auditorium chairs arranged in a half circle faced toward an open area; no doubt a one-time briefing room for mission planning or training. The only light filtered in through a bank of partially broken but not completely smashed windows on the east wall that looked out upon a thick tangle of bushes and small trees.

  The wolf sat at the feet of the Old Man who wore a black vest over a plain white shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans while sitting casually upon a dilapidated table that appeared far too weak to hold any weight. As Trevor had come to know, however, the mystical old man with the wrinkled cheeks, thin messy hair, and gray stubble did not exist in his world; not as he might think. Stone guessed him to be projection of a kind, for he left no footprints nor did his footfalls make any sound.

  It had been the Old Man who eleven years prior had met Richard Stone in the woods outside his home and warned of his mission to survive, fight, and sacrifice for the good of mankind. It had been the Old Man who broke Trevor’s heart with the news that he and Nina Forest could not be together and the horrifying revelation that Stone’s mission revolved around one thing: murdering all the alien creatures on his planet.

  Trevor suspected his hand in many things, including helping Trevor return from a parallel Earth and, before that, cluing humanity in on the existence of the runes; strange pillars that shut off alien reinfor
cements and provided a means to return the invaders to their home worlds.

  Indeed, it seemed to Trevor that his benefactor had gone to great lengths to overcome several obstacles—apparently unfair ones—placed in humanity’s path by Voggoth.

  Still, just last year the Old Man had happily suggested that Trevor and The Empire appeared certain to win on this Earth; one of many parallel Earths where each of the major species faced an onslaught. Things changed drastically since then. The Old Man rarely visited and did little more than bark encouragement at Trevor before dismissing him.

  Unlike times past, the sight of the Old Man did not encourage Trevor or fill him with questions. Instead, he found himself annoyed at having been called away for what would certainly be pointless dialogue while a score of his soldiers lay dying on the airfield.

  “Hey, Trevor! About time we had a little powwow, dontchya think?”

  The Old Man’s seemingly jovial tone came as a surprise. Trevor approached between the rows of neglected seats while the Rottweilers remained behind guarding the door.

  “What do you want now?”

  In years past he would have craved a chance to pick the Old Man’s brain, despite being told on numerous occasions not to ask questions. Then, in the years since his return from that alternate Earth, Trevor had found comfort with the old-timer because he might be—whatever his true nature—the only entity in the universe that could understand Trevor’s plight.

  “Now is that a way to go talkin’ to your ol’ pal? C’mon now, Trevvy, let’s sit down and you can tell me all ‘bout your plans to finish up the job you got here.”

  Trevor stopped midway and cocked his head to one side.

  “Huh? Finish up the job? What are you talkin’ about?”

  “You gone crazy or sometin’ since the last time we chatted? Why I’m talkin’ ‘bout you kickin’ all the alien interlopers off this rock. Or have you decided to take an early re-tire-mint?”

  The Old Man might well have suggested Trevor fly to the moon. Talk of kicking the aliens off the Earth sounded equally as out of place, considering the situation. After the invasion of California by The Order’s war machines, thoughts of victory had turned to thoughts of survival. Surely the Old Man knew as much?