by D F Capps
Sergeant Henderson raised his hand. “That looks to be about the size of a flashlight. Is it?”
McHenry turned to look at the screen. “Yes, it is.”
“Does it come with or without batteries?” Henderson asked.
Everyone chuckled. McHenry smiled. “No batteries.”
Henderson nodded. “So how long before it needs to be recharged?”
McHenry shook his head. “We don’t know. Because of our counterparts in Fighter Squadron One, we have approximately eleven-hundred flash guns available for our use. Right now, we have no idea how long they will last or how they can be recharged when they stop working, so make every shot count.”
Novak stepped forward. “Known enemy weaknesses?”
McHenry nodded, glanced at the floor, and continued. “The Zeta Greys have a hard time in bright lights and they have poor hearing. Each soldier will be issued a high intensity tactical flashlight, two flash guns, and an ultrasound-based communications set, plus one of these.” He held up a camo-painted helmet with a hinged gold-colored face shield. “The helmet is not bullet resistant, but it will protect you from Zeta Grey telepathic influence and position detection.”
“Where are these flash guns?” Henderson asked.
Admiral Hollis stepped forward. “The flash guns are stored in the armory. You can check them out for on-duty patrols and return them when your shift ends.”
“With all due respect, Admiral,” Novak said. “My understanding is that we are at war. Is that not the case?”
Hollis turned to face him, stunned by the question. “That is correct. We are at war.”
Novak nodded. “Then what possible good is a weapon in the armory? What are we supposed to do during an attack? Line up at the armory and wait to get a weapon? In our line of business, we have our weapons with us at all times, loaded and ready to use. Anything short of that is suicidal, sir.”
Hollis paused, apparently thinking.
“Colonel Novak is right, Admiral,” McHenry said. “You placed me in charge of defending the base, and that means every soldier, pilot, and support person needs to be armed and trained in basic combat skills.”
Hollis’s eyes grew wide. “These flash guns don’t have a safety on them. An accidental discharge could be deadly.”
“Combat training skills, sir,” McHenry replied.
Hollis looked around at the men in the room and took a deep breath. “All right. Our pilots already have some experience with them, and your men should be fine. Arm everyone else as soon as they complete your combat training. Anything else?”
“Do you have an update on compartmentalization and containment to slow down an attack on the base?” Novak asked.
Hollis nodded. “I have discussed your requirements with the Seabees and they are working it into their schedule.”
“Again, with all due respect, Admiral,” Novak said, “we can’t wait. My men are fully capable of installing communication and security systems quickly. I can have the equipment we need in six hours and have it all installed in another six.”
“Very well,” Hollis said. “I have resources that can get what you need here in an hour or less. You’re in charge of making that happen. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Novak said. “My men are more accustomed to a rifle configuration than a hand-held weapon. Do you have a resource available that can make a rifle-stock adapter for the flash guns? Preferably today?”
Hollis pursed his lips in thought. “I do, actually. If you could sketch up what you have in mind, I can get thirty of them to you by tonight.”
* * *
“You ready to go for a ride, General?”
General McHenry turned in surprise. An attractive woman with short brown hair and brown eyes walked over to him. He grinned as he recognized the swagger that combat pilots seem to have. “And you would be?”
“Lieutenant Commander Zadanski,” she said. “Commanding officer of Squadron One, U.S. Space Command.”
McHenry nodded. He glanced over at the fighter craft sitting on the stone floor. The fighter didn’t have the sharp angles he was used to. It was more oval in shape and looked more like something from a Hollywood science fiction movie than a real space craft. He held his arm out to the craft.
“At your convenience.”
She led him over to a fighter craft, climbed into the rear seat, started up the fighter’s power system, climbed out, and motioned for him to get in.
“Careful what you touch,” she said.
He lowered himself slowly into the padded seat. “What in particular shouldn’t I touch?”
She grinned. “No buttons, no switches, no levers.”
He smiled. “No problem.” The only thing that looked safe to touch was the clear canopy.
She put an over-sized helmet on his head and pushed it back into the foam padding. He turned his head from side to side and looked up. The entire head restraint system moved. The only thing he couldn’t do was tip his head. She buckled the five-point harness around him and cinched it tight.
“Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be one of those experiences?” he asked.
She just smiled at him and climbed into the front seat.
There was no whining of an engine, no rushing sound—nothing. The outside of the craft started to glow bright white and he felt like the bottom had dropped out. He braced his hands against the canopy. The sensation was of being in freefall, but he wasn’t moving. Slowly the craft lifted above the stone floor, drifted over to an open vertical shaft, and zipped quickly up to the flight deck where she gave a quick salute to Admiral Hollis and the fighter craft bolted out into the air.
McHenry expected to be pinned to the back of the seat with the rapid acceleration, but there was no sensation of motion at all. The outside scenery streaked past him as if he was in the center of a three-dimensional surround screen.
“You can let go of the canopy, General. It’s not going anywhere.”
He smiled and lowered his arms. “How fast are we going?”
“We don’t have anything that measures our speed, we go by thrust. Right now we’re at forty percent.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And at one hundred percent thrust?”
“That would place us beyond the speed of light,” she said. “Haven’t been there yet. Eighty percent is about as fast as we can keep track of here in the atmosphere. Full thrust is reserved for outer space.”
He looked out at the mountains passing below him and frowned. “Where are we?”
“Just passing to the west of Denver,” she replied.
“But we’ve been in the air for . . .”
“Forty, forty-two seconds,” she said.
He looked to his right. The mountains stopped in the distance with nothing but flat land beyond that. The feeling of weightlessness was getting to him. Bouncing around in a tank he could handle, but this?
“I don’t suppose we could swing by Vegas?” he asked.
“Sure,” she replied. “As long as we don’t pick up a Zeta Grey scout saucer.”
He opened his eyes wide. “They’re still out here, aren’t they?”
“Afraid so.”
He thought about it as she swung to the southwest. His stomach was getting queasy. He wasn’t sure if it was the weightlessness or the speed at which the outside view moved. Whatever it was, it was unsettling.
“You know,” he said, “we’re probably better off heading back to the base.”
“True,” she said. “Back to the base is a good choice, sir.”
“Okay,” he replied. “I think I’ve got the hang of it. Take us home.”
* * *
General McHenry stood on the flight deck, fascinated by the glowing fighter crafts as they swept into the flight deck, landed, then unloaded boxes of parts from the rear seats. Within seconds they were flying away for another load. The flight in the Osprey from Washington, D.C. to Peregrine Base had taken six hours. That distance was being covered in less than ten minu
tes by these amazing machines.
In his experience, main battle tanks were the deadly front line in combat, protected by aircraft and supplied from the rear by thousands of trucks full of ammunition, food, fuel, spare parts, and all the supplies a modern army needed. The problem was—all of that was now hopelessly obsolete. The question he now had to focus on was how to successfully approach and take down a hardened underground base. He had reviewed the reports from several people who had been inside the alien underground base in northern New Mexico. Traditional approaches and strategies were not going to work. He needed something new: something spectacular and brilliant, something totally unexpected. And for that, at least for the moment, he didn’t have a clue.
Chapter 13
Diane!
Diane Zadanski woke just before 2:00 a.m. She heard her name called, but no one else was in her room. She looked around, puzzled. Then she heard it again.
Diane!
It was Charlie’s voice, in her mind.
What is it? she thought back to the telepathic half-Earth human, half-Tau Cetian human that had helped her before.
Something’s not right. Check your base security.
She jumped out of bed and dressed quickly, buckling the holster containing the flash gun around her waist. The hall was empty as she emerged from her room. She paused, forcing herself to breathe deeply and slow her pounding heart. She turned to the right, closed her eyes, and calmed her mind as best she could. Projecting her mind in front of her, she tried to sense whatever danger there might be in that direction.
Nothing.
She turned around, projecting the awareness of her mind ahead of her down the hall. Something was there: vague, diffuse, and unsettled. She walked to the end of the hall and stepped into the stairwell. Up, or down? She turned her face up, but felt nothing, so she looked down.
Something was down there. She followed the stairs to the lower levels, floor-by-floor, stopping at each access door, extending her awareness to see if the disturbing feeling was there. So far, it wasn’t. When she reached the last door, she entered a vacant hallway. The entire level was still under construction. It smelled of pine and drywall compound. The floor was covered in bare plywood.
“Can I help you?”
She turned quickly. A sergeant in the new army unit was walking toward her in the hallway. He was dressed in his battle uniform complete with helmet and flash gun in its new rifle configuration.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I was concerned about security.”
The man smiled. “We’re here, ma’am. This is my sector. I’m Sergeant Henderson. Everything’s quiet.”
Diane still felt the faint fluttering in her chest. “Mind if I look around?”
He grinned. “Not at all, ma’am. Let me guess, you heard a noise in the dark?”
She grinned in return. “Something like that, yeah.”
He nodded. “Well, it beats walking around here alone. I wouldn’t object to a little conversation.”
She turned away from him, closed her eyes, and focused her awareness into the distance ahead of her.
“Down this way,” she said.
Henderson’s grin faded. “Yes, ma’am. With all due respect, ma’am, I was down there a few minutes ago, it’s fine.”
Great, she thought. Now he’s going to humor me. “We need to check it again.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“And stop calling me ma’am. I don’t like it.”
He opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it. They walked together to the end of the hall.
“You’re a lieutenant commander. What is it you do in the Space Command?”
“I command Fighter Squadron One,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “You fly one of those new spacecraft?”
“I do,” she said as she looked around.
“That has to be pretty amazing. Now fast does it go?
She noticed none of the rooms had any doors installed. “Faster than the speed of light.”
He stopped and looked at her. “Seriously?”
She turned to face him. “Very much so, yes.”
The hall branched to both the left and the right. She faced left and closed her eyes again. Whatever it was, it was at the end of this hall. She started walking toward the dead end.
“I’ll wait here for you. Just remember, I’ve got your back,” Henderson said.
She glanced back at him. He was smiling. Is he joking, or is he serious? she wondered.
Diane walked to the end of the hall. The end wall was metal with a stout steel door in the middle. She tried the door handle. It was locked. She was about to turn around when she noticed a slight odor. Musty? Something from the tunnel beyond? She sniffed around, trying to locate the source of the odor. It was faint and elusive, vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t identify it exactly. She had smelled it before, but where, and when? She stretched up, walked from side-to-side, sniffing the air. Then she bent down. The odor seemed to be a little stronger closer to the floor. She got down on all fours and sniffed at the base of the door.
Panic gripped her heart as her mind zeroed in on the smell. Zeta Greys! Her mind clouded. She felt disoriented and confused. She stood slowly, trying to think of what to do next. She fought the spacey feeling, trying to clear her mind, but nothing was working.
Poetry, she heard in Charlie’s voice.
She struggled to think, but her mind still wandered, uncontrolled. Her body refused to move.
Poetry!
She knew only one poem, something her mother taught her when she was a child. It was part of what drove her to learn how to fly. What were the first words?
She closed her eyes again. Oh!
Say it out loud! came Charlie’s voice.
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.” She felt the mind control of the Zeta Greys weaken. She could move again. “Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds.”
Now run!
She bolted away from the door and straight at Henderson.
Henderson looked completely confused as she raced in his direction. Her mind cleared as the poem broke the spell of the alien mind control.
“Zeta Greys are inside the base,” she shouted. “Sound the alarm!”
He grabbed his communicator and spoke as he moved quickly to the corner where the halls met. He raised his rifle as she swung close to the opposite wall to allow him to fire past her as she ran. Her mind started to cloud again.
“And done a hundred things you have not dreamed of.”
She heard a loud crash behind her as Henderson opened fire on the hoard of Zeta Greys pouring into the hall.
“Wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.”
The rapid strobes from his flash gun almost blinded her as she dived to the floor, rolled into the hall behind him, and slammed into the wall.
He curled back from the corner, grabbed a flash-bang from his vest, pulled the pin, and dropped it next to the wall. He held out his hand, grabbed her, and yanked her to a standing position. He ripped another flash-bang from his vest, activated it, and tossed it next to the wall on his right. Both of them sprinted as hard as they could down the long hall to the stairwell. Henderson activated another flash-bang and heaved it behind him without looking.
The first flash-bang exploded as they reached the stairwell door. Diane yanked the door open as he turned and fired into the swarm of Zeta Greys rounding the corner. The second explosion rocked through the hall. He fired three more times, then jumped through the open doorway. Diane slammed the door closed.
“This is Henderson. We’re in the northeast stairwell. Lock down the lowest level. I confirm Zeta Greys are inside the base.”
The door locked with a heavy clunk.
“Thanks,” she said as they raced up the stairs.
“I told you I had your back.”
Chapter 14
The blare of t
he alarm jolted Colonel Novak awake. He dressed quickly, knowing his men were already in motion. He raced down the corridor to the conference room where he found Captain Connors bent over a map of the underground base spread out on a large table.
“Where are they?”
“Lowest level, northeast section.”
“How many?”
“Unknown at this point. Henderson estimates thirty to fifty Zeta Greys came in from the closed end of this hall. Doors have locked. So far, no further breach.”
Novak shook his head. “What are they waiting for? They should have vaporized the door and taken over the next two floors before we could react.”
“Yeah,” Connors said. “Something didn’t go according to plan.”
Novak scratched his head. “What about the vibration sensors? If they tunneled in, we should have picked it up.”
Connors shook his head. “Nothing. System check shows the sensors functioning normally. Whatever they did, it didn’t make any noise.”
“Okay. Let’s use what little time we have. I want Claymore anti-personnel mines set up where the halls turn, backed up with sand bags. Start with the lowest level we can get to safely. Grab every construction flood light you can find and aim them down the hall from behind the Claymores. How is the base electrical distribution set up?”
Connors pulled the electrical system drawing from the pile of blueprints. “Each floor has its own trunk line with a master panel in the center of each level.”
Novak nodded. “So they can’t shut down the entire base and leave us in the dark from where they are?”
“No, sir. Power generation and master distribution is under the OPS Center.”
Novak took a deep breath. “Okay, at least they did that right. Booby trap everything we can. Just because we have advanced flash guns doesn’t mean we abandon our old standbys. Get creative, mix it up, keep ’em guessing.”
“Got it, sir.”
* * *
