Hiscock looked at her in astonishment.
“Don’t let these glory boys hear that story. I know all about the MK-ULTRA experiments – they’ll have you locked up in a bunker for years.”
She expected the Professor to laugh at that, but he was looking at her gravely.
“We’ll need you along with us,” he said. “In fact, I think we should have both of you, for young Hiscock here has an alternative way of thinking that might come in useful among all the glory boys.”
Both Alice and Hiscock spoke at the same time.
“Along for what?”
The Professor looked at Hiscock.
“I told you before I had a plan. But you’re still not going to like it.”
The Professor filled all three of their coffee mugs before beginning.
“Our habitat is dying,” he said. “Even if the aliens left right now, all that is left of mankind will be gone in less than a year.”
Hiscock snorted.
“Hell, let us down easy Prof, why don’t you?”
The Professor continued.
“The green sludge did too much damage to the ecosystem. The amount of methane being released is going to warm the planet up in weeks to come. The icecaps will melt and all of the forecast global-warming disasters will come, not over the span of a century, but over the course of months. As a species, we are on the verge of extinction – unless we do something about it, and soon.”
Alice laughed.
“I hope it’s a hell of a plan.”
The Professor didn’t smile. He looked tired, almost ready to drop. Alice saw the look, and recognized it in herself. It was something close to despair.
“It’s going to take a nuclear winter, isn’t it?” she whispered.
The Professor had tears in his eyes.
“If only it were that simple. No… the military lost control of most of the nukes some days ago. We just don’t have the necessary arsenal on hand for that job. But there’s another way to cool the planet fast.”
It was Hiscock who made the connection.
“You’re talking about volcanic activity, aren’t you?”
The Professor nodded.
“And not just any volcano. Do either of you know anything about Yellowstone?”
He went on before they had a chance to reply.
“The last full-scale eruption -- the Lava Creek eruption more than half a million years ago, ejected a thousand cubic kilometers of volcanic dust into the atmosphere. I’ve calculated that might be enough to start a cooling process and reverse the damage.”
Alice was in shock.
“You’re suggesting we set off a super-volcano?”
This time the Professor did smile, but it was grim, with little humor in it. He pointed up with his index finger.
“No. I’m suggesting they set off a super-volcano.”
Alice had to admire the old man’s ambition.
“Is that even possible?” she asked.
The Professor nodded.
“We already know that they are drawn by Uranium. There are no equivalent natural isotopes in the Yellowstone area…but we can put some there.”
She saw it in her mind.
“They’ll come for it… and gouge a big hole.”
The Professor nodded again.
“Yes. And in doing so, they’ll burst the magma chamber and blow the whole shebang. All we have to do is get enough Uranium in the right place. That’s where I come in…unfortunately I’m the foremost expert on the Yellowstone Caldera. I’m due to leave on the mission in five hours. Want to join me?”
The question had come from so far out in left field that neither of the others had seen it coming.
“Surely this is a job for the glory boys?” Hiscock said.
The Professor looked Hiscock in the eye.
“They’ll be there. But I need somebody by my side I can trust… and today, that’s you. Want to do your bit to save the world again?”
Hiscock didn’t hesitate.
“I’m getting twitchy amid all this authority. I’m in.”
The Professor turned to Alice.
“And you Ms Noble?”
She was shocked to be asked.
“I don’t know what I can do.”
The Professor smiled.
“I’m sure I can think of something.”
Another thought struck her.
“Prof. Do you happen to know what drives all this?” She waved her hand around the room. “What’s the power source of this boat?”
“She’s nuclear,” the Professor said. The implication hit him seconds later. “Come with me,” he said. “I think our schedule just changed.”
Hiscock followed the other two a few steps behind as they walked, almost ran, through the corridors. He had no idea what he was letting himself in for, but just being on the move felt better than all the sitting and watching he’d been doing lately. He’d barely given a thought to his bunker and what he’d left behind. Instead he felt excited, and eager for what would come next.
Besides, blowing up a super volcano? That’s kinda cool.
He was left in the corridor beside Alice as the Professor talked to the General in his quarters. He could tell the conversation was animated, but could hear no actual words.
Both the Professor and the General came out at a hurry a minute later.
The Professor urged Hiscock and Alice to follow.
“You’re on the team,” the old man said. “But if you want on the mission, you’d better hurry. We move out in ten minutes.”
Hiscock laughed.
“Hell Prof… it’s not as if we need to pack.”
The General led them to a long hold where three teams of soldiers were getting into survival suits. There was enough weaponry on display to start a small war.
“You’ll have two choppers with you as backup,” the General said. “I can’t spare any more. And you’ll all have to refuel en-route.”
The Professor waved him away.
“Yes, yes, I know. What you should be worrying about is the alien craft. If they stick to form, they’ll be coming for you.”
The General stiffened.
“We’re ready.”
No, you’re not.
Hiscock was dismayed to find himself proved right just seconds later. The hull rang as the gun battery up on the deck boomed into action.
The General left at a run.
“Get into a suit,” the Professor said to them. “Looks like we need to get out of here sooner than we thought.”
The next five minutes passed in a blur of chaotic dressing amid ear bursting arms fire from outside. The three of them were given headsets and were led up a flight of stairs to a door leading out onto the main deck.
Three choppers sat some twenty yards away, but it might as well have been two hundred. The air was full of flyers, ranging in size form a few feet to several giants more than ten meters long.
The carrier’s big guns fired constantly, and the attackers were shredded like confetti by their power. But there were just too many of them. Some landed on the deck, and started to tear at the metal with their pincers.
The Professor turned to Alice Noble.
“Can you stop them?”
Alice stared at the huge swarm.
“There’s so many,” she whispered.
But she tried. She scrunched her eyes up again.
The flyers paused in their attack and some seemed to have difficulty staying in flight. The big guns tore them apart. As one the flock swooped and headed off at speed. Alice stumbled and fell against Hiscock. Her nosebleed was back in force.
The soldiers with them all stared at her in amazement, but she was in too much pain to care.
“Move out,” one of the soldiers said. “We might not get another chance.”
Hiscock held Alice up and between him and the Professor they helped her stagger to a chopper.
“In the air in two minutes,” the pilot shouted. “Buckle up.”
They got seated and the rotors started up.
Hiscock was looking straight at Alice when her head jerked up and she looked directly at him.
“It’s too late. They’re here.”
***
Alice felt it grip in her mind. She was just able to turn her head. There was a small window beside her and she saw it coming, sleek and black, hovering just above the deck. It wasn’t the massive craft she’d feared it to be, but one of the smaller foremen vessels. That didn’t stop it taking firm hold in her brain. She was already weakened from the encounter with the flyers, and had no strength for a fight. Once again her mind was rifled.
Images of the carrier flowed, and once again she heard the Professor’s voice.
She’s nuclear.
As quickly as it had come, the grip in her mind lifted. The craft banked and started to move away at speed.
“Stop it!” she screamed. But the soldiers, used to command as they were, were not used to her commands. The craft was already moving off to sea before the soldiers made a move.
She did the only thing she could think of. She pushed, hard. The craft wavered. She found herself looking out over a wide expanse of sea, and realized she was seeing out of the alien pilot’s viewpoint. But she had no power of command. She pushed again, blinked… and was back looking from her own eyes, just in time to catch a small stream of fresh blood that fell from her nose into her cupped hands. But she had gleaned something from the encounter.
She looked up at the Professor.
“If we’re going, it has to be now. They know the boat is nuclear. They’re coming.”
The chopper started to rise. Through her window she saw two others accompany them into the air. As they banked away from the carrier she also saw the thing she most feared. One of the mother ships, a huge sleek egg, came over the horizon at speed.
She heard the General’s voice in her headset.
“Get going. That’s an order. Your mission is the important thing here.”
The alien craft was already almost overhead and the chopper strained as full power was needed to get out from under the shadow. They banked hard, and Alice had the perfect viewpoint to witness the end.
The alien craft started to glow. A blinding beam, wider than the carrier itself, burst from it and the carrier started to come apart – slowly at first. The big guns boomed, but to no effect, and soon they fell silent as metal buckled and tore. The glow from the alien craft intensified and the carrier disintegrated -- huge chunks of metal alongside beds and tables and pipe-work all dragged up by the anti-gravity beam.
Nothing came down but dust.
The chopper continued banking and the view was thankfully lost from sight.
We’re on our own.
PART FOUR
THE DAWNING
Alice’s nose finally stopped bleeding ten minutes into the flight, leaving her with a bloody handkerchief and hands looking like they’d been liberally daubed with red paint.
The old Professor rose and moved to sit beside her. He handed her a clean handkerchief and a bottle of water.
“It’s not much,” he said. “But enough to let you clean up a bit.”
His voice echoed and hissed in the headset, but she heard him well enough. Her head pounded, louder and more painful than her worst hangover.
But I’m still alive… still in better condition than the ones we left on the carrier.
She looked into the old man’s eyes.
“Tell me again why you need me on this trip?”
The old man took her hand and held it gently.
“You’re the wild card up my sleeve,” he said. “I don’t know yet why I need you… I’m just happy to have you here in case I do.”
“But for what?”
The Professor went quiet.
“Do you remember young Hiscock mentioning MK-ULTRA?”
She nodded.
“It was a CIA funded study. It involved testing various so called mind-expanding drugs on subjects, both willing and unwilling. As well as being inadvertently responsible for the popularity of mescaline and LSD in the sixties, they also dabbled into experiments on thought control and mind reading. A lot of nonsense has been published about the experiments – but they did prove one thing. Telepathy is a reality, in a very small number of people.”
He looked Alice in the eye.
“I believe you are one of that number.”
Alice laughed.
“I’m thirty five years old, and never had a hint of anything of that sort.”
The Professor smiled.
“Well now you do.”
Alice stared into space.
“But I’m a liability. I can’t block them. They’ll know everything – all they have to do is come on in and have a look around.”
The Professor was more serious this time.
“And how do you know it doesn’t work both ways?”
He went back to his seat, leaving Alice with much to think about. She was still terrified that she might disclose their position to the alien presence. But what if the Professor was right? Then she might actually be able to gain important intelligence.
Her reverie was interrupted by a crackle in the headset. She hadn’t noticed, but the Professor had moved up to the cockpit.
“Hello? Is this thing on?”
By the way other heads looked up she realized he was speaking to the whole crew.
“I’m sorry we didn’t have the briefing I promised you on the carrier,” he said. “But time is now even shorter than we thought. I know many of you would have preferred to stay and fight, but I need you for a job that might be the most important military mission in history.”
More heads rose at that. There were eight soldiers in the chopper, and now the Professor had all of their attention.
“All I can tell you at the moment is that I have a plan,” the Professor said. “The first stage requires that we pay a visit to the Cardwell Research Unit. As some of you may know, this is in New Jersey. Things have been bad in that area, and no news has come out of there since the very first night when the green rain fell. I’m not going to bullshit you… I don’t know what is waiting for us there. But everyone on board has been chosen because the General thought you were up to the job. I have every faith in you.”
A few seconds later the Professor returned and sat next to her again.
“Nice speech,” she said.
“Thanks,” he replied. “I just hope it’s not my last.”
***
Hiscock still couldn’t get comfortable in the presence of the military. He had started returning to thoughts of the bunker, and everything he had lost.
But the Prof wants me along on this jaunt.
The simple fact that someone needed him gave him a glow he hadn’t felt in years. Despite the fact that the world had come to an abrupt end, Hiscock was, for perhaps the first time in his adult life, happy with his place in it. He was still mulling that over when the pilot spoke in his headset.
“Buckle up,” he said. “Landing in two minutes.”
Looking out the window all he could see was green slime. It covered the land as far as he could see. The upper floors of taller buildings rose up from the sea of green, and, scattered here and there were large patches of tall dark stalks, all ripened and open, the husks swaying in the downdraft from the three choppers.
The Professor spoke in his ear.
“Well lad, do you fancy a stroll?”
Hiscock laughed.
“After you old man,” he said.
The Professor told Alice to stay in the chopper. She looked too tired to argue. Indeed by the time they landed and four marines joined Hiscock and the Professor in disembarking, the woman’s head was already drooping in sleep.
As they jumped to the ground Hiscock expected some give in the green sludge, but it felt rock hard underfoot. He bent and touched it. It was warm under his hand, like stone that had sat all day in the sun and it smelled, thick and meaty, like fruit gone
bad.
“No time for sightseeing son,” the Professor shouted above the sound of the rotors. “We’re working against the clock here.”
They headed out, two marines in front, two behind with Hiscock and the Professor sandwiched in the middle. Hiscock felt naked without a gun, but the men around more than made up for his lack. They were all fully armed with assault rifles, handguns and belts full of stun grenades. They looked mean and focused. Somehow Hiscock didn’t feel much comfort.
Two more four-man crews, one from each chopper, followed along behind them.
The Professor was the one giving the directions. He pointed to a collection of buildings to his right.
“If my bearings are right we’re walking on what used to be the car park. The Research Labs are this way.”
To either side of them tall ripened stalks swayed, but there was no sign of any drones, either diggers or flyers. They crossed the ground quickly and stopped outside a building. Hiscock saw there was no door – only windows. A full floor of the building was embedded under the hardened sludge.
“Okay. We’re going in,” the Professor said. “Keep your eyes open. We have no idea what we might find.”
One of the marines had to show Hiscock how to operate the light on his headset. Another of the soldiers smashed a tall window and, still sandwiched between armed men, Hiscock and the Professor made their way inside.
They stepped into a long office area, full of open-plan cells. And at almost every desk, a corpse lay -- either slumped in the chair, or fallen, hands to throat, to the floor.
“Gas?” Hiscock asked, and the Professor nodded.
“The air conditioning is no help – in fact, it would have speeded the process up. But that’s not why we’re here. Come on. The storage room is three floors down.”
Three floors down? If the windows haven’t held, it’s going to be under the sludge.
The further in they went, the darker it became. Hiscock started to jump at shadows as they entered a stairwell that fell down into a pitch-black hole. The old man seemed unfazed.
“Six sets of stairs,” he said. “Then we should be right outside the vault.”
The Invasion (Extended Version) Page 9
