The seeker turned and sprinted past Beckman, so close he felt the press of air as it passed. It charged straight at the scientist who, taken by surprise, stumbled backwards and fell. Before any of them could react, the seeker snatched the metal cube from Dr McInness’ hand without touching him. The sleek metal robot added the cube to its membrane container, then dashed away at high speed toward the crumpled marsupial house. Just before it reached the shattered wood pile, it leapt into the air, toward the tree tops. For several seconds, they saw a metallic blur glinting in the brilliant afternoon sunshine, then it vanished beyond the trees.
“What the hell was that?” Nuke declared, slowly rising from behind the ruins of the lab.
“Man!” Timer exclaimed beside him. “That mother can run!”
From beside the ruins of Laura’s house, Tucker switched his machine gun’s safety on. He glanced at Steamer, who lay a few meters away with his M16 ready. “I had it! I could have taken it any time.”
Steamer grinned, “Argh, you always say that!”
“It’s ‘cause it’s true!” Tucker said with a grin.
From her hiding position behind the burnt out machine shed, Vamp watched the marker representing the seeker slide across the crystal ball’s tiny view area. Each leap swallowed hundreds of meters, forcing her to keep scrolling the scale until she reached maximum resolution, and the seeker slid of the edge of the view area. “It’s out of range!”
Dr McInness climbed to his feet, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he dusted himself off. “Sorry,” he said meekly, “Its speed surprised me. I thought it was–”
“Forget it,” Beckman cut in. “You were right. It wasn’t an attack, just a cleanup.”
“They don’t want us seeing their technology,” Markus observed dryly.
“Can you blame them?” Beckman asked.
“Imagine fighting an army of those things,” Timer said as he started toward the aviary, continuing his sweep of the left side of the sanctuary.
Nuke scanned the trees beside him, remembering the speed of the seeker. “How the hell are we supposed to shoot something that’s faster than a freaking bullet?”
“You wait until it takes a crap,” Hooper barked, “Then you shoot it in the ass!”
“Those things don’t take craps, Sarge!” Nuke said, “They’re machines!”
Hooper exchanged a knowing look with Beckman. They’d both encountered extraterrestrial technology in the field before, back when they were still in Delta. They’d been sent in to recover a short range scout craft that had gone down in the Andes. The pilot had been wounded, protected in the wreck by a single automated weapon. It held them off for two days, until other craft arrived to rescue the pilot and remove the wreckage. Thirty men had gone in, only two had walked out. It was why Beckman and Hooper had been selected for this duty. They’d been there before, and survived.
Xeno’s voice sounded in Beckman’s earpiece. She and Virus had worked their way around to the northwest side of the compound, just inside the tree line. “Someone walked out of here, Major, heading west.”
Beckman clicked his mike, “How long ago?”
“The tracks are fresh. Maybe a few hours old.”
Dr McInness spread his hands in triumph. “Looks like these aliens don’t take human specimens after all.”
Markus thumbed his mike, “How many tracks?”
“One set,” Vamp replied.
“One specimen, one survivor,” Markus corrected.
“We’ll follow the tracks while they’re heading west, see if we can catch whoever it is, and find out what happened here.” When Beckman clicked off his mike, he noticed Markus was staring thoughtfully toward the western sky apprehensively.
When he sensed Beckman’s gaze, he said, “They know we’re here now. They’ll be waiting for us.”
“I know.”
“So what’s going to happen when we get close to their ship?”
Beckman rested his hand on his recovered weapon. “They’ll underestimate us.”
* * * *
The team hiked along an overgrown track toward a rocky escarpment until the light began to fail. They camped near the foot of the cliffs, ate cold rations and cleaned their weapons, finding little relief from the heat, even at night. After eating, Virus listened to the signals his recovered communicator was picking up. His headphones were connected to a tiny crescent shaped device too small for the human ear. The engineers at Groom Lake had mounted the device in a small rectangular housing which fed the communicator’s output into the headphones, and provided a means of operating the device’s tiny control surface.
No one had figured out what medium the device used, only that it didn’t receive electromagnetic waves like a normal radio. It had long been assumed only a specialist research unit observing Earth would have primitive radio equipment, which was another reason why the risk of detection of the team’s tactical radios was deemed low. What was unknown was whether the tiny device could send, as well as receive. Several Groom Lake scientists suggested it picked up the wearer’s brain waves, converting them directly into audible messages, negating the need for a microphone. If true, it wasn’t calibrated to interact with the human brain, because no transmission had ever been made with the device. Signals from nonterrestrial vehicles keeping watch on the Groom Lake facility had been detected, and some intercepts had even been partially translated, but they were routine navigational communications which provided little worthwhile intelligence.
Virus was so absorbed in tweaking his tiny toy, he didn’t notice Beckman approach.
“Anything?”
Virus glanced up. “Maybe. I’ve been channel surfing this thing since we came ashore. I heard two short, high pitched sounds, then nothing for hours. I figured it was static, nothing like the intercepts we’ve picked up before.” He looked puzzled. “Now I’m not so sure.”
He passed Beckman the headphones, along with the black cigarette box housing the recovered communicator. Almost immediately, Beckman heard a few seconds of high pitched sound, followed by a momentary silence and a second shorter series of sounds.
“I hear it.”
“They’re coming in once or twice a minute now, regular as clockwork.”
“What do you make of it?”
“I don’t know what they’re saying, but their comms traffic is increasing.”
Beckman motioned for Xeno to join them, then another duet of signals sounded in his ears. “Are there always two bursts?”
“Always,” Virus said. “The first is always longer.”
“Order and acknowledgment,” Beckman suggested. He passed the headset to Xeno. “What do you make of this?”
She pressed one of the speakers to her ear. After she’d heard several transmissions, she said, “If it’s a language, it’s unlike anything I’ve heard. I doubt there’s enough information here to form meaningful sentences.”
“May I?” Markus asked, extending a hand.
Xeno gave Beckman a questioning look. He nodded, then she passed the communicator to Markus. who listened intently to several sequences before handing the communicator back. “Sounds like encrypted bursts, short in duration, high in content. Shorter signals are harder to decode.”
Dr McInness sat on his pack nearby, staring at his notebook computer. His camping equipment and several instrument cases lay scattered around him, awaiting his attention. Without looking up, he said, “I realize it’s the job of soldiers and spies to be suspicious, but there are other explanations. It’s probably nothing more than telemetry from scientific instruments; soil analyses, weather reports, pictures of gum trees and koala bears. Maybe they’re warning their sample collecting machines not to get eaten by giant lizards.”
“How do you explain the increase in traffic?” Beckman asked.
“It takes time to deploy their data collectors.” He looked up from his computer. “Twice we’ve been close to their equipment, once at the borehole and once at the research station. Both time
s they fled to avoid contact with us. If they were hostile, don’t you think they’d have attacked by now?”
“They have attacked,” Markus said. “They destroyed the patrol boat, and shot down aircraft and satellites. I’d call that hostile.”
“Maybe they saw them as threats.”
Beckman turned to Virus. “Record it. Analyze what you can. Save the rest. Even if we can’t make anything out of it, the eggheads back at Groom might crack it.”
“I’ve got several hours on disk already. I was going to run a decrypt later tonight.” Virus said, indicating the notebook computer sitting on his pack. It was loaded with a vast array of decryption and sound analysis tools for just such a purpose.
Before Beckman could endorse Virus’ plan, Steamer clambered to his feet and pointed to the western sky. “Yo, what’s that?”
A sphere of brilliant red light floated low in the sky, so bright, no detail of the craft itself was visible. It glided silently to the north for a few seconds, then descended into the forest and vanished.
“It was on fire!” Timer declared. “It must have crashed!”
Dr McInness stood up, holding his computer under his arm, looking after the vanished light. “It wasn’t on fire. The red light was a photoelectric effect caused by its propulsion field.”
“Say what?” Steamer said, giving the scientist a confused look.
“It’s basic physics,” Dr McInness explained. “Einstein worked out the formulas for it over a hundred years ago. Their vehicles emit fields which ionize and excite the air particles around them. That generates a plasma which gives off photons, which is the light we saw. The stronger the field, the higher the photon energy, the more the color of the light shifts toward the blue end of the spectrum.
“It was red, not blue,” Nuke said.
“Yes, but it was hovering. That’s a low power maneuver. The photon energy was low, so the color was down at the red end of the spectrum. For high power maneuvers like take offs, the photon energy is much higher. That’s when the light shifts to blue or white. The more power it uses, the greater the effect the vehicle has on the surrounding air particles, the more the color shifts toward the blue end of the spectrum. It’s a bit like a jet getting louder the faster it goes because of its impact on the air.”
“So it made a controlled landing?” Beckman asked.
“No doubt about it,” Dr McInness replied. “I should go over there and try to make peaceful contact with them.”
“We’ll all go.” Beckman turned to Cougar. “Distance?”
Cougar winced, trying to gauge the range in the darkness. “Four hundred meters.”
“Close enough.” Beckman nodded to Hooper, who had already pulled his pack on in anticipation of the next order.
“All right, people, mount up!” Hooper barked. “We’re advancing to contact!”
“Contact?” Dr McInness said alarmed. “You can’t attack it!”
“Take it easy, Doc,” Beckman reassured him. “We’re just going to take a look.”
Cougar jogged off into the forest, pulling his pack on as he went. In the campsite, the team threw their gear into their packs, ready to move in seconds. Beckman started after Cougar as the others fanned out either side of him. Markus took up position a short distance behind Beckman, where he could observe without getting in the way.
Dr McInness blinked, still holding his computer in one hand, surprised at how quickly they had moved out. “Wait!” he yelled, glancing after them, then running back and frantically pushing his equipment into his pack. Without waiting to strap his pack up, he started after them, the metal instrument cases and his computer jangling together discordantly, then he tripped and spilt the contents of his backpack.
“Major, wait!”
Beckman glanced back, seeing Dr McInness bent over his pack, hurriedly stuffing displaced items back into it.
Hooper followed his gaze and gave Beckman a doubtful look. “Want me to shoot him?”
Beckman was tempted by the thought. “Waste of a bullet. Just keep an eye on him.”
They moved forward through the trees quickly, with Dr McInness stumbling after them in the dark, the sound of loose metal cases clinking together marking his position. Halfway along the skirmish line to Beckman’s right, Vamp glanced back at Dr McInness and smiled, amused. She drew the recovered tracking device from her pocket and scrolled out slowly until she had the target on screen.
“Tracking,” she radioed. “There are contacts all around it. Looks like a sightseeing party.”
“Roger that,” Beckman replied, as Dr McInness’ metallic jangle came closer, and louder. Beckman turned to Hooper. “Shut him up.”
Hooper grinned, then turned and waited. When the scientist reached him, Hooper raised a finger to his lips. “Shh!”
“You didn’t wait for me.”
“You weren’t ready. Now, slow and quiet.”
“Right, slow and quiet. Like a commando!”
“Or a librarian,” Hooper suggested with a crooked smile.
Dr McInness put his arms around his noisy backpack, and started creeping after the team, trying his best to be silent. Occasionally, his pack would emit a metal clang, and he’d freeze, looking apologetically at the scowling sergeant beside him.
Ahead of the team, Cougar crouched behind some ferns. “I’ve got a visual,” he radioed, raising his sniper scope and focusing on the craft.
It was octagonal, made of highly reflective silver metal, five meters high and more than twenty across, with a smoothly curved upper hull. The red spherical light that had sheathed the vehicle while it was airborne was gone, while a narrow beam of brilliant yellow light blasted down from beneath the vehicle into the ground. A cloud of white steam boiled up around the beam, while tiny compressed black droplets periodically rose through the center of the beam into the ship.
Beckman took cover a few meters from Cougar’s position, raising his binoculars. The steam partially enveloped the vehicle, although he thought he detected several small round windows near the top of the craft. He heard movement to his left as Markus stopped beside him.
The intelligence officer scanned the area ahead. “If they have the same technology as Vamp’s tracking device, they know we’re here.”
“Maybe they’re ready to talk,” Beckman said as he shrugged off his pack.
“Or maybe they’ll just kill anyone who gets too close.”
“Or that,” Beckman conceded as a solitary clink sounded behind them as Dr McInness crept up, with Hooper two steps behind.
Beckman started to rise, “Stay here.”
Dr McInness looked alarmed. “Major, as the representative of the scientific community, I should accompany you–”
“Once I determine it’s safe, you can study that thing until your head explodes. Until then, stay put.” He nodded toward Hooper, crouched behind the scientist. “Sergeant Hooper will ensure you obey my orders.”
Dr McInness glanced uncomfortably at the grizzled veteran, whose fixed expression left him in no doubt the order would be followed.
Beckman started towards the craft, knowing if the occupants were tracking them, they’d see the team had gone to ground. He hoped they’d interpret that as a nonaggressive gesture, rather than a prelude to attack, and that Dr McInness was right, that they were indeed a gaggle of sightseeing scientists. When he passed Cougar, he saw the craft was noticeably darker on top, except for tiny green and yellow running lights spaced at the octagonal corners, while the glow from beneath the craft lit the underside and the surrounding area.
“No movement,” Cougar whispered.
Beckman thumbed his mike. “Vamp, you still tracking contacts outside the vehicle?”
“Affirmative, multiple contacts.”
Beckman glanced at Cougar. “Maybe they’re waiting for me.”
Cougar readied his sniper rifle, quietly easing a depleted uranium tipped, armor-piercing round into the chamber. “I’ve got your six.”
Beckman crawl
ed toward the vehicle, cradling his rifle on his forearms. As he approached the landing site, the brilliant light beneath the vehicle overpowered his night vision, while the hiss of steam billowing up out of the ground from beneath the craft grew louder. When he reached a thicket of ferns with an unobstructed view, he paused to study the vehicle. He was not surprised to discover it appeared to be a single piece of metal from top to bottom, with no welds or seams. Molecular bonding was a trait shared by all of the recovered vehicles at Groom Lake and was one of the reasons why the reverse engineering teams found it so difficult to disassemble them.
Beckman decided the time had come to approach the craft openly. He went to stand when something clamped firmly on his arm. Startled, he rolled onto his side, tearing free of the grip and bringing his rifle around to face his attacker. A dirt-smeared elfin face crowned by short red hair stared back at him over the barrel of his M16. Laura McKay raised a forefinger to her lips, advising silence, then nodded toward a stand of trees to the left.
“It’s over there,” she whispered.
“Major!” Vamp’s voice sounded urgently in his earpiece. “I have a contact right on top of you.”
“I’m OK. Standby,” he whispered as he stared in the direction Laura had indicated. Five meters away, the glassy black sensor disk of a seeker protruded above a thicket of ferns. The slender, quad-armed machine was crouched and motionless, although Beckman heard something moving through the undergrowth beyond. Suddenly, the silence was shattered by a series of terrified animal shrieks.
Ten meters back, Steamer swung his rifle toward the sound, whispering, “What the hell was that?”
Beside him, Tucker pulled on his night vision goggles. A green blur appeared, revealing a dark shape through the trees. “I can see it,” he said as animal shrieks continued to drift through the forest.
Nuke lay a few meters beyond Tucker, his eyes flitting apprehensively into the dark. “What’s it look like, Tuck?”
“Oh man,” Tucker said ominously. “It’s horrible!”
“What?” Nuke demanded in a nervous whisper.
“Its fangs are huge!”
The Mothership Page 9
