Invasion

by Bob Mayer

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  THE FIRST DAY: ARRIVAL

  THE FIRST DAY: THE CLEARING

  ON THE FIRST DAY: SCOUTS OUT

  ON THE SECOND DAY: INITIAL DROP

  ON THE THIRD DAY: THE WAIT

  ON THE FOURTH DAY: THE WAIT

  ON THE FIFTH DAY: THE DROP.

  ON THE SIXTH DAY: THE REAPING

  ON THE SIXTH DAY: MOPPING UP

  ON THE SEVENTH DAY

  AND LAST DAY

  ON THE LAST DAY

  END GAME

  Author Information; Excerpt; Copyright

  About the Author

  ALL SERIES

  EXCERPT FROM ATLANTIS

  ANGKOR KOL KER: THE DROUGHT AD 800

  Copyright

  AREA 51:

  INVASION

  By

  BOB MAYER

  THE FIRST DAY: ARRIVAL

  MARFA, TEXAS

  “Damn it, Darlene! I told you not to watch that fake news. There aint no such thing as aliens. All of this has been bullshit so the government can come get my guns. Turn it off. And get your damn dog off the couch.”

  “I don’t think so,” Darlene muttered watching the images from Russia and the massive alien spaceship. “That’s a lot of work just to come and get your guns, Bobby.”

  Thin, almost starved-looking, Darlene had badly dyed reddish hair self-cut shaggy short. Her arms scrolled with tattoos. She wore ripped jeans and a red t-shirt with the Marine Corps emblem on the front. She was sitting cross-legged on the nice leather couch, Bobby’s only legacy from his stepmom, peering at the TV. It was all kinda confusing cause some of the feeds would go blank and the news folk were scrambling to figure things out.

  One hand absently scratched Rex’s head. The dog was a mutt, something German Shepherd/Chow/Mexico street fighter. She’d found him wandering about a few months ago and viewed him as a good luck charm and more trustworthy companion than her quasi-boyfriend of expediency.

  Bobby didn’t like bad news, or fake news as he called it. “I told you to turn the damn thing off!” He grabbed his AR-15 off the pegs by the door to the trailer, single-wide, but some day she’d dreamed of double-wide as long as she had to stay here. Looked like that dream wasn’t gonna come. All bad things must end.

  “Don’t you dare!” Darlene yelled as Bobby leveled the rifle at the TV.

  It had a fancy sniper scope that had cost a week and a half of her waitressing tips and initiated a terrible row between the two of them as Darlene didn’t see the need, given Bobby only shot cans, plus he didn’t even know how to zero it in. The fight had been more a drunken brawl, followed by reasonably decent make-up sex. That still didn’t make up for the money, but it didn’t seem that was going to matter now either.

  Bobby fired four rounds, fast as he could pull the trigger, blasting the screen.

  “Great shooting, numb-nuts,” Darlene said. “Shoulda saved your ammo. I think we’re gonna need it.” She didn’t point out he hadn’t needed that damn, stupid scope to hit the TV. Rex growled at Bobby. “Easy,” Darlene said. “Now aint the time for our plan. Gotta wait boy.”

  “That plan thing aint never funny,” Bobby said. “You and that damn dog.”

  “Why do you think it’s a joke?” Darlene stomped out of the trailer in her heavy black boots, Rex at her heel. She stood in the ‘front yard’ comprising of desert and pulled the smokes out of roll on the left arm of her t-shirt.

  “You should quit,” Bobby said from inside the nebulous safety of the ripped screen door, but his voice was a bit subdued, as it always was after he did something stupid, which was much more often than Darlene liked.

  “Don’t matter now,” Darlene said, staring out over the desolate west Texas landscape. “Shoulda bought that double-wide, Bobby, when I told you to. At least we’d have been going out happier.”

  EARTH ORBIT

  While the massive Swarm Battle Core settled into high orbit, 20,000 miles above the Earth’s surface, the results of the Metamorphosis were walking, crawling, swimming, slithering, stalking and winging their way to designated warships for the pending drop on the planet.

  The Core’s orbit was opposite the planet’s rotation. For the first go-around, the Core was traversing the northern hemisphere, just above the Tropic of Capricorn as data indicated it would be the source of most Scale opposition. Weapons systems on the surface of the Core were powered up.

  It was all standing operating procedure for a reaping.

  Even 20,000 miles up, the sphere was massive. Six thousand miles wide at the center and four thousand at the polar axis, it was much larger, and much, much closer, than the moon. As the Core orbited the planet, it began targeting procedures to negate potential threats prior to drop. Numerous sites had already been determined due to intercepts across the array of electromagnetic transmissions from the planet. More would be determined as the Scale life, in this case humans, reacted.

  There was no rush.

  The result was inevitable.

  RAVEN ROCK, PENNSYLVANIA

  “Too high,” Marshal Krasmav complained to General Clark, the Russian’s voice crackling from static. “My missiles do not have the range. And unless my intelligence services have been greatly mistaken all these years, neither do yours.”

  “I have always enjoyed your sense of humor, Sergei,” the American Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs, said. “You maintain it even now, which is admirable. We know we have both violated that treaty. A vertical launch will work. The booster will run out of fuel before reaching the target, but if aimed correctly, inertia will send the warheads onward.”

  “Ah, my dear General,” Krasmav responded, “you know me well. But if we do that, then we have to fire to intercept as the Core comes overheard, in volleys. We will not be able to concentrate our power.”

  “It’s all we have,” Clark responded. “The good news is the detonations should be far enough from the atmosphere to avoid radiation. I’m sending the launch profiles my people have worked out for both of us. Wait one.” She pointed at one of her staff.

  She waited as the information was transmitted. General Clark was one of the first female graduates of the Military Academy so many years ago. Now she was the first female Chief of Staff. She was located in the Pentagon’s emergency command and control bunker deep under Raven Rock Mountain in southeast Pennsylvania, not far from the hallowed ground of Gettysburg.

  Krasmav, the Russian Chief of the General Staff, finally responded. “You seem very knowledgeable on all my launch sites, missile profiles, and the location of my missile submarines. I am glad we never went to war. It appears, how do you say it, that I get first crack at this?”

  “You do,” Clark said. “The Core is on path for intercept to your easternmost missiles in two minutes. Can you launch by then?”

  “Already sent the order, my friend.”

  *****

  The furthest east Russian ICBM cluster was close to the border with the Ukraine. It was equipped with SS-X-30 Satan 2 ICBMs, each with ten heavy nuclear warheads. The Core picked up the signature of the first launch in under two seconds. The response was immediate.

  As the first Satan cleared its silo, a particle beam accelerator on the surface of the Core fired a burst of energy. The bolt traveled at the speed of light, as opposed to the gathering speed of the Satan’s initial rocket booster.

  The missile blew up two hundred feet above the launch silo.

  The Swarm wasn’t content with the lone missile. Additional accelerators fired, obliterating the launch silo and the surrounding terrain for a distance of five miles.

  Now recognizing the signature for this particular threat, the Core reacted faster to subsequent launches, hitting Russian missiles upon initial ignition before they cleared th
e silo.

  Then it hit the main base launching them and the adjacent town, slagging all of it.

  Data gathered from Scale electromagnetic communications were analyzed by the Swarm and the targeting matrix was updated. Russian military posts and units that didn’t have strategic missiles, but could be located due to their broadcasts, were hit as the forward edge of the Battle Core passed overheard.

  Transmitting radio and television broadcast stations were also destroyed as the Swarm didn’t bother to distinguish the contents of the electromagnetic traffic.

  *****

  General Clark watched the Russian feeds go dark. She could also see via her country’s low orbit, spy satellite feeds the destruction on the other side of the globe.

  She had the phone to her ear. “Sergei.”

  “Yes, I am seeing. It’s got everything targeted. Everything we have. I do not think you will have any greater fortune with this plan.”

  Clark checked the main display covering the front wall of the OpCenter. The shadow of the Core was approaching Moscow.

  “Can you get out?” she asked Krasmav.

  “And go where?” Krasmav replied. “This is my duty post.”

  The line reached the suburbs of Moscow.

  “I can hear detonations,” Krasmav said. “I have issued orders for our other facilities to stand down. Perhaps the alien will miss one or two and they can survive this initial onslaught.”

  The static was getting worse. Clark heard a loud sound in the background noise. “Farewell, my friend.”

  “Ah,” Krasmav said. “Perhaps we will meet in Valhalla.”

  Clark gripped the phone tighter. “I never took you for a religious man.”

  “It is not religion,” Krasmav said. “It is the place warriors go after fighting bravely.”

  The line passed over Moscow and the phone went dead.

  With the time she had left, General Clark began issuing new orders as the Core continued its deadly eastward track over Russia.

  AIRSPACE, WORLDWIDE

  Around the world, twenty-six brand new Boeing 777s and 787s originating from Paine Field north of Seattle, began to explode, one by one, as they descended to land at their destinations. The first was over the water on approach to San Francisco International. The second, Denver International. The explosions rippled around the world at major airports, relatively insignificant given the larger issue of the alien Battle Core’s arrival.

  They all had something else in common besides their origin and having only a pilot and co-pilot on board: they carried a tube of the Danse Macabre, a mixture of three extremely lethal viruses. This was all part of a Myrddin plan which had been overwhelmed by recent events. Just a footnote in the apocalypse.

  Not that the unfortunate pilots of those planes had anticipated the explosions, either. They’d thought they were to land and pass the tube to Myrddin agents in the various destinations. However, the Cleansing, part of the original plan to brutally solve issues such as over-population, pollution, climate-change, etcetera in one viral sweep, was no longer important in the big picture.

  The Myrddin were a rogue group of Watchers, a sect of humans that had watched the alien Airlia presence on Earth for millennia, ever since the destruction of Atlantis. Founded by Merlin, the Myrddin had decided that more than watching was needed. Humans needed to act. During the recent rebellion against the Airlia and subsequent World War III, the head of the Myrddin, Mrs. Parrish, had seized the opportunity to implement a plan long in the making called The Strategy. Her plan to load her five thousand Chosen children on the mothership, then spread the Danse around the world, cleansing it, and then repopulating it with the Chosen had been overtaken by events when the Swarm Battle Core appeared.

  Thus the twenty-six explosions, occurring at population centers around the globe, were just one of a myriad of unfolding disasters and the remnant of an already abandoned plan.

  SURVIVAL SILO, KANSAS

  Tremble’s amplified voice broke through the chatter of the rich and fearful: “We’re the safest people on the planet.”

  The forty-six men, women and children, net worth in excess of 200 billion dollars, all turned toward Tremble. He was flanked by an armed guard, an unnecessary thing at the moment, but as important for calming the herd as his words.

  “I promised you,” Tremble continued, “and now I am making good on my promise. You made it here. You are in the safest place on the planet.” Repetition was key; he’d learned that at a night class he’d taken several years ago.

  He was standing at the front of the plush movie theater, on the eighth floor of the Complex, his clients crowded in, all the seats taken and the rest standing. He was a big man, over six and a half feet tall and had played college football, but now most of the muscle had dissolved to fat. Still, his size and confidence impressed this group.

  “This silo was designed to take a direct strike from a thermonuclear bomb.” Which was a lie, but every business is built on lies. Tremble did firmly believe they were in the safest place, so what was a little white lie?

  His assistant stepped up behind, whispering urgently. “The alien ship is attacking Russia from orbit with some sort of ray gun.”

  Tremble whispered his order. “Close the garage doors.”

  “The recovery team is still at the airfield with the Beast,” the assistant reminded him.

  “Close it but be prepared to let the Beast in once it arrives.” He faced the crowd and the microphone. “We are now cutting ourselves off from the outside world.” He smiled with a confidence he actually felt despite his lies. “We are in the safest place in the world.”

  EARTH ORBIT

  Just after the Swarm Core had entered orbit from above, the captured Airlia Mothership did the same from below, after taking off from Area 51. It held the Myrddin vision for mankind’s survival in the form of 4,312 specially selected children in deep sleep tubes in its innermost hold.

  The Chosen. Not quite at the five thousand planned for, but close enough.

  The ruby sphere was in place, powering up the main engine, which would allow the ship to attain Faster Than Light Transit (FTLT).

  However, the Myrddin, in essence Mrs. Parrish, were no longer in charge of the ship. At the controls of the mile long, cigar shaped alien ship was a former member of the Russian version of Majestic-12, Yakov. The co-pilot was a woman who claimed to be Nikola Tesla’s granddaughter, Professor Leahy. The ship was the bounty the human race had taken after defeating the Airlia. And Yakov, Leahy, Nyx and Turcotte had taken it from Mrs. Parrish.

  “Do you know how to activate FTLT?” Yakov asked Leahy.

  “Hold on.” Leahy had her Tesla computer set on the console to the right, her hands on it, eyes closed. The smooth surfaces of the small pyramid shimmered with silver. “It’s linking,” Leahy said. “I’m linking to the ship.”

  “Ask it how to go into FTLT,” Yakov said, “because I have no idea. And, please, quickly.” He looked at the image of the Core rising above the blue-white curvature of the Earth. He tapped the flexpad at his side to call his partner in the war against the aliens. “Mike? Where are you? We can open a hold for you.”

  “Negative,” Mike Turcotte replied over the flexpad from his ship, the Fynbar. “I’m staying. Get those people the hell out of here.”

  A particle beam from the Core hit the mothership. The impact shuddered throughout the craft, the legacy of an alien race, the Airlia, who had been hidden in the Solar System for over ten millennia. The black hull of the mile-long, cigar shaped ship absorbed the hit, but it wouldn’t take many more of them, especially with previous damage hastily patched.

  “A bit more urgency,” Yakov said to Leahy. He leaned toward the flexpad. “Mike? We need you.”

  *****

  Mike Turcotte glanced at one of the monitors lining the front of the small spaceship’s cockpit. At this altitude he could see the forward edge of the Battle Core to the far west, over the eastern Pacific. He knew more weapons would be bro
ught to bear as the Core closed.

  The Fynbar was human designed and built, but not of Earth. It had been brought to Earth by two humans who’d been part of a successful planet-wide revolt against the Airlia. They’d planted the seeds of revolt on Earth and overseen it for over 10,000 years. The male had died at the Battle of Camlann during a battle between Airlia proxies posing as Arthur and Mordred. The female, Lisa Duncan had died just recently, crashing the second mothership into the Airlia communication array on Mars, preventing an emergency signal for help from being sent out.

  Saucer shaped, the Fynbar had a bulge in the forward center and two large pods in the rear, which housed the STL engines. It was dull gray inside and out and designed with two seats inside depressions for pilot and co-pilot in the forward center facing the displays and controls. Turcotte was alone, flying the Fynbar in orbit between the mothership and the approaching Core.

  Turcotte responded to Yakov. “No. You don’t. I’m going back down as soon as you get out of here. What’s the hold up?”

  *****

  “I can do it,” Leahy said, her hands still on the Tesla. She opened her eyes and looked over at Yakov, a bit disoriented from her dual realities, the Tesla link into the mothership’s guardian computer still in her mind. “Where should we jump to?”

  “Anywhere but here,” Yakov said. He glanced at one of the displays, seeing the tiny Fynbar between their location and the massive Core. He whispered a silent prayer.

  Leahy closed her eyes.

  Darkness fell.

  RAVEN ROCK, PENNSYLVANIA

  “’The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the spring of water; the name of the Star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter’.”