Not more than 20 feet away, smoke filled with burning red embers rose from the ground. He looked up and watched them fade into the sky. He remembered that just over the hilltop which they were next to had been several fenced tennis courts. He made his way around the fallen tree, climbed to the hilltop and stopped.
The courts and fences were gone. Through the burning embers, he could just make out the huge gash in the ground. It was 50 to 60 feet across. He could not see how far down it went. He considered making his way to the edge to look down into it, but the heat prevented him from moving closer.
The beam had come down almost on top of them. The furrow started only 20 feet away and stretched off in the other direction in a straight line for as far as he could see. The sides were glowing and he could smell the hair on his face and arms being singed.
The zinging sounds came again much louder and he turned toward them. In the distance, the alien ship raced toward them. He could see it would pass to the side of them. He realized it was traveling between the beam strikes, taking out what the beams had not destroyed. He estimated that it was traveling about 50 feet above the ground. It was shaped like a giant black staple. That’s why HQ was calling them staple ships, he thought. It jerked and turned, shooting sheets of green energy from the insides of its downward prongs.
He backtracked and scrambled back down into the ditch. Frank and Doug had managed to right the laser cannon. Oscar hurriedly climbed into the seat and checked the readouts. It looked ready. “The alien ships are almost here,” he hollered. “Raise and load her.”
Frank grabbed a belt of energy cells from one of the boxes and clipped them into the gun. Oscar fingered controls and the cells loaded.
He looked over to the pipe where Rachel and the children were. She was looking out of the pipe, staring up at him. She smiled and mouthed “Good luck.” He winked at her, started to wish her good luck as well, but was interrupted— Doug had hit the elevation switch and, with a jerk, the gun assembly started to rise.
Oscar looked into the targeting sight. The seat and Oscar stopped raising, but the laser cannon continued to elevate another six feet. Oscar rotated the gun until he could see the alien ship.
The ship was now rotating and jerking so fast, it was a blur. Sheets of green energy shot from it so fast it looked like a spinning strobe light. He could see other gun emplacements firing at the alien staple-shaped ship. Bluish-white laser beams and projectile weapons were hammering it to no apparent affect. The sounds of zings, zips, shell discharges and explosions were deafening.
With a start, he realized the alien was surgically taking out their weapons emplacements. The scene was repeated in the distance with other alien ships racing through the undestroyed sections between other evenly spaced gorges.
He locked on and began firing.
To the left he noticed another emplacement firing—it was very close to the edge of the same furrow they were next to.
The staple ship was knocking out their weapon emplacements with incredible accuracy and speed, never missing. Green sheets of energy flew at the other emplacement, then right at him. For whatever reason, it missed him going high.
He noticed that the other emplacement was still firing—the alien had missed it as well—yet the emplacements away from the gorge were being hit dead on, but he had no time to think about this.
As he rotated following the alien ship, he noticed yet another emplacement in the other direction further down the edge of the furrow. The staple ship fired at it and again the sheet of green energy was aimed too high.
Then the aliens were past and moving away. The booms, explosions and zinging sounds receded.
It was over—for them anyway.
---
The large gas giant had a massive swirling red spot on it. Adamarus stood on it—in the dream there was apparently no problem with him doing this. Nor was there a problem with the other person standing next to him. He knew who she was even though, for some reason, he could never turn to look at her.
The terrible black spheres, billions of them, were coming. They had destroyed entire galaxies, so many of them but, as always, only spiral galaxies.
Why? Why did they do it? Why only spirals?
The first of the spheres was close now. In some way, he knew he was dreaming and he knew he’d had this dream before. He had never been able to turn and look at her. Once again, he tried.
Evelyn?
However, there just wasn’t time—the Blackships were upon them. The first one came flying at him. He ducked—turned away.
Whap! Whap!
“Adamarus, can you hear me?”
Another was upon him.
Whap! Whap!
“Adamarus?”
He opened his eyes. There were people and lights in the darkness. His head hurt.
“Adamarus? Can you hear me?” The voice was near to him.
“Yes,” Adamarus croaked. His voice was guttural and hoarse.
Another voice within the darkness and lights said, “Admiral, he’s got a couple of broken ribs.” This voice was further away. “His head is the worst—been banged up pretty bad—several times in several places. He definitely has a concussion. A good one, too.”
“Okay,” said the nearer voice.
“We need to get him out of here,” yet another voice.
“Adamarus, can you move?” Adamarus realized the nearer voice was Patrick Leewood. “We need to get you out of here.”
“Patrick…” Adamarus managed to say.
“Yes, it’s me, Adamarus. You’re going to be okay.” Leewood paused, then, “Listen to me…Grace…Isabella…”
Pain, panic and horror surged through Adamarus as memories returned. He closed his eyes…opened them.
“Adamarus…”
“Gone,” Adamarus managed to whisper.
Leewood gripped his shoulder. “God…I’m…sorry.” He leaned in. “The rest of your crew?”
“Gone. All gone.”
People with lights had gone still in the darkness, then they moved and twisted again. Above, something was being lowered.
“Here, help me with this…” more voices and movement.
Leewood leaned in again, Adamarus could just see his face, “We’re going to get you on a stretcher. You have to put this on.”
He saw something come toward him—it was a mask. Leewood fitted it to his face. Then Leewood put goggles on his face. “You okay?”
Adamarus managed a nod.
Hands reached in and took his arms and legs. He was moved…around him shadows and lights turned. They secured him on the stretcher.
Leewood again, “We’re going to hoist you up into the ship. Just be still.”
Adamarus didn’t try to respond. Then he was being raised into the air through darkness toward lights above. The roar of the hovering craft came to him, the lights became blinding. He turned away from them and suddenly he could see the city. In the distance, fires burned. And, it was snowing…snowing quite hard. He noticed that everything was covered with snow. He looked down…saw the roof, the broken skylight…snow was everywhere.
No, he realized. Not snow…ash.
---
Harrington let the tears come down—tears for her planet and her people, tears for Adamarus’ family and for Wicker’s family and for all those who had died on the ark ships. But, there were also tears of a different kind—for her husband who, thank God, was still alive. The two kinds of tears mixed and made her hands shake and her heart break.
Enough, she sniffled and splashed cold water hard on her face. There was work…hopeless work, but work.
She dried her face, took a deep breath, which made her shudder and then exited the restroom.
Like her, Woodworth, Jan and the rest of the crew were badly shaken.
And they were still working, she thought.
Floyd moved to the second Tachyon scope, which switched between Aster and Serena. She walked up behind him, “How are the gas giants?”
; He spoke without turning, “Aster is gone.”
“Gone?”
“There’s a black hole there now. Serena has shrunk more than fifty percent. I guess on the bright side, the com-sats are still working and I think they should continue to.”
She remembered there were three gas giants. “What about Farnom?”
“Seems they left it alone. Too far away, I guess.”
She nodded. Didn’t ask about Amular and the Blackship. Didn’t need to. It had been attacking Amular for 14 hours now. Over half of the planet had been destroyed. The 12 remaining battleships coming from Echo Charlie Seven were still 14 hours away and what could they hope to do anyway.
---
Leewood took a last look at Adamarus. He was out cold, lying in a hospital bed. If given the chance, he’d make a full recovery.
The hospital at Trinity City had survived the city’s destruction mostly intact and now the injured were coming in. Some cities had been lucky, many more had not. Trinity City was isolated. Still, the facility was a blessing for Hackamore and Briner 200 miles to the west.
Three hundred miles to the east, those places the Slayers had not yet attacked but would presumably hit over the next 12 hours, people were rushing into the wastelands to the cities already hit.
Leewood had heard that General Whitehall had redeployed to help aid the stricken cities as well as evacuate those the battlefront had not yet reached.
He walked over to the bed and squeezed Adamarus’ arm. Then he turned and left. He was flying back to Dark Mountain to help evacuate it before the battlefront reached it.
---
The planetary capital Axis, fourteen hours into the attack…
First Lieutenant Matt Dolton did not remember being scared during the attack on the Trinity compound. Receiving only cuts and scratches despite being inside a bunker that had been destroyed by a rocket, he had survived, saved many lives and gone on to lead his men to overcome the main enemy force.
For his actions, he had won the Silver Star and been promoted. People had called him a hero. Well, right now this hero was scared—scared shitless. And to him, it seemed obvious why—the goddamn waiting.
The Trinity attack had been upon them in an instant. However, this time, it was not like that at all. For hour upon hour, they had just waited, watching it come toward them. Hurry up and wait—the SOP or standard operating procedure of war.
The huge pale moon was lit unnaturally by the maelstrom below it and it was far too large, far too close. It had a small black dot on its lower edge that they understood to be the enormous sphere of the Blackship.
Below this—coming from it—its long thin arms, normally so thin they were invisible, were waving back and forth so fast that they were just a blur of motion. The only reason they could be seen was the dancing iridescent energy that flowed down them to where the impossibly large arc shown like an elongated pale white sun that curved completely across the sky.
Falling from this arc was the flickering green curtain made up from down-pouring energy beams. It stretched from north to south as far as the eye could see. They knew these beams were spaced about five miles apart, ripping gashes 50 feet wide and four to five miles long, but from a distance it looked like a solid wall. The beams were burrowing deep into the planet—they had heard that, in some places, lava had erupted from the gashes.
All of this was relentlessly driving a huge unstable weather front before it, constantly pushing it around the entire planet. The black clouds were strangely broken so you could still see the whitish-yellow arc and the green wall of energy. The clouds were accompanied by high winds, lightening and sometimes rain.
Behind the battlefront, a matching storm spread the smoke, ash and death to the east.
And everyone knew that precisely at sunset, this alien battle line would arrive on top of them.
The ridiculous frustrating redeployments had actually helped by keeping them busy, Dolton thought. After carefully setting up their weapon emplacements, word had come from HQ that the energy beams where coming down in a repeating pattern that was predictable. Therefore, they had had to tear everything down and redeploy to areas HQ said would be between the falling beams.
They had repositioned and reset everything up.
Then word had come down that the second wave—the staple ships—could not seem to hone in on emplacements located near the edge of the deep furrows from the energy beams. The surrounding heat or something made them unable to target correctly and miss…sometimes.
So again, they had had to tear everything down so that they could be ready to move the weapon emplacements to the edge of the furrows after the energy beams had passed, and with luck, before the staple ships arrived.
It was getting ridiculous, but since this last change, no more orders had come down and so they had been just waiting…checking weapons, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and watching the unbelievable horror approach them.
Rumors spread among the soldiers. It was said that over half the planet was now destroyed. In space, they had heard that the fortresses and battleships were having no effect against the alien. They were also saying that many of their space assets had been destroyed, and indeed, the orbital fortresses could not be seen anywhere in the sky. No one seemed to know if Battle Group Four was still being held in reserve on the opposite side of the planet or if they had already been deployed against the alien.
They were saying that the alien staple ships they were about to engage could not be destroyed. At the same time, it was said that the new powerful maser cannons that Dolton’s group had had not yet been tried against the ships.
At two hours before sunset, the distant booms of the energy beams reached them, then at about one hour before, they started feeling the vibrations through the ground.
The black clouds forming before the flickering green curtain had started covering the sky above them and now a strong wind was blowing toward the oncoming battle line.
Soon the booms were deafening, the wind became a gale with gusts up to 60 miles per hour and the ground shook and jumped.
“Thirty minutes to go,” someone hollered.
The weapons teams had all found cover in the industrial area of the deserted capital, taking shelter inside buildings, ditches or behind walls. Their large guns and crates of ammo or power cells were all packed up and ready to be carried or rolled to the edge of the nearest of the gorges the energy beams would carve out.
They would not have much time to set up. The staple ships trailed the beams by only a few minutes. But…they’d definitely had practice moving and setting up their emplacements.
Dolton watched it approach—it was coming fast. It seemed to accelerate toward them at impossible speed.
The wind at their backs changed to chaotic buffeting swirls. The booms became impossibly loud and the ground jerked and heaved.
Then it was upon them and everything went crazy. They were all thrown into the air then the ground came up and hit them and then what felt like tons of dirt and debris rained down on them.
They had been buried by only about a foot of dirt, rocks and debris. They dug themselves out, coughing and gagging as the ground spasmodically jumped and heaved. It was raining dirt and the only light coming through the downpour and smoke was a sickly green.
At first, visibility was less than five feet, however, a powerful gale was sucking the smoke straight up and above them, the air cleared somewhat.
Dolton looked up, the green curtain was behind them and receding. HQ had been right; the energy beams had missed them.
“Move, move, move,” Dolton yelled.
They dug around searching for their equipment, extracted it and heaved it up. Two men carried the maser cannon and one carried the weapon’s tripod while Dolton shouldered a duffle of energy cells.
The ground rocked while swirling gusts whipped the smoke around them. The surrounding area they could see was covered with debris. They were completely disorientated.
“Which way
?” someone asked.
Dolton looked up, locating the receding energy beams through the smoke, but was the closest trench left or right? He turned, and above the smoke, spotted a cloud of burning embers rising into the air. “This way,” he yelled, and began running.
The heaving ground settled down to a slight rocking and the booms weren’t as loud as the green curtain raced away. Visibility was now about 20 feet. Still, the going was slow as they dodged around upended vehicles, power poles and rubble.
They came upon a thick pile of ruins that climbed before them. Through the smoke and ash, they could make out a wall of rising embers beyond. They started climbing over the pile.
The temperature started rising and the wind changed. It was pushing the heat radiating from the burning embers right into them. It burned their faces and made forward progress more difficult. They started seeing scattered fires, the smoke and ash thickened and visibility dropped.
They moved forward until the heat became unbearable. Although they could not tell how close to the edge of the furrow they were, the rising embers they could see looked close.
Dolton looked around and, in the growing darkness, spotted a collapsed wall of a building rising from the rubble. “There!” he yelled.
They made their way to it. It would offer shelter from the heat as well as the oncoming alien ships. They found a comparatively level area and started setting up.
While they worked, another sound came to them, a zinging sound that was growing louder.
“Hurry,” he hollered.
---
The fighter jets raced low over the capital toward the glowing green curtain that was speeding across the city. As they neared, the fighters slowed and the seemingly solid wall resolved into individual energy beams. The green wall and the fighters were now closing in on each other at incredible speed.
“Spread out,” the leader ordered. He knew without consulting his radar that, unseen to the left and right, other fighter groups were doing the same. “Remember, stay close to the energy beams.”
Then they were passing through the wall of falling energy. They had a five-mile space between the falling beams but the beams were coming down at an angle, and because of the speed that they were moving, it was still very dangerous.
Countdown Amageddon (The Spiral Slayers Book 2) Page 41
