Surge Together (Book 3 of the Sheffield Chronicles)

by Nate Castle

  “Get the President, shit could potentially hit the fan anytime now,” Christina said to Cade.

  A sidebar had popped up on her computer screen which notified her that something was amuck outside. She clicked the popup menu and saw a realtime video feed, courtesy of the new cameras installed throughout the White House campus. A flying object was on target to land on campus. The object had a parachute attached to it, leading Christina to conclude that it wasn’t an alien craft. Curious, but also a bit scared, Christina decided to not wait for the President and just go out there.

  When she got outside, many others were already there. The object landed as predicted and the parachute automatically retracted itself into a casing on the object.

  “The work of aliens right?” someone in the audience said.

  “Anyone else have a stupid question?” another person responded.

  It was quite obvious that the object was the work of aliens. It was approximately 10ft x 10ft, octagonal in shape. Rays of pink light shot from it in all directions, but the rays were varying in length; some were a foot or two, while others were 6-12ft. There was control panel that was protected by a metallic-like compound. The metal would become see-through every 4-9 seconds, and when this happened the control panel could be seen. A rotor on each outside edge of the object was spinning, and a maroon smoke began forming from underneath the object.

  “Masks!” someone said.

  “It’s too late for that, we’ve already been exposed,” said General Kaplan, referring to the cloud of smoke.

  He was at the front of the audience of maybe 200 people.

  “Any sign of the President?” Kaplan asked the congregation.

  “Nope, nada,” Christina replied.

  “Well we have a couple options, we can sit around and twiddle our thumbs, waiting for this unit to attack us or we can see if it can be disabled somehow.”

  The smoke from the object had subsided.

  “Sometimes the old fashioned way of brute force works the best when trying to disable something,” Kaplan said after not hearing any opposition to his plan, “Aaron’s not here, but if you are on his crew, bring some tools back here.

  They waited for a good ten minutes; he could see a lot of side conversations going on, but couldn’t hear what was being said because they were being whispered. He wondered, Why when people are nervous do they start whispering? What’s up with that?

  The construction crew brought back an array of tools. A circle grinder started off the process. General Kaplan grabbed the wheel and placed it on the surface of the object, moving it back and forth like a sander to see if he could remove the metallic-layer. It actually started working, but every section that he grinded down was replaced with more of the metallic layer. The object had a mind of its own.

  “Fuck me,” General Kaplan muttered under his breath, and finally gave up on the wire wheel.

  Next he tried a power drill. He remembered someone telling him once that if you drilled enough holes in something in the correct places it would lose its strength. The holes appeared to stay, which was progress from his previous attempt, but he didn’t know what to do after he made the holes. One of the construction crew members took over from here, he couldn’t watch Kaplan continue to throw mud at the wall.

  Using a machine that was run by a forklift, he adjusted the fork width, pulled up to the object and used the tool to ‘squeeze’ the object. This could be compared to a car crushing tool; the amount of tension could be set. The ‘crush’ was successful, the object was crushed to half of its normal size. However, when the fork lift backed off though, the object expanded beyond its starting width, now measuring at 15 feet wide instead of 10.

  “Holy Hell. I can’t even get the forks wide enough now to crush it again,” the construction member said.

  “It looks like the bait is working Logan,” said Preston, “I went into their system, made a bunch of changes, and then alerted all of the supervisors via email about the dishonest activity within their organization, but made the email look like it was sent from one of the their own.”

  Logan had a puzzled look on his face so Preston elaborated.

  “I essentially said ‘so and so is stealing money from your organization by doing A, B, and C’. The responses that I received were all along the lines of ‘Thank you for alerting us of this problem, he will be dealt with immediately and will no longer be a worry for the IHL.”

  “Solid work, Preston,” Logan said.

  “Kalil over there started a similar thread. He alerted IHL management that agents were shutting civilian’s water back on without receiving payments from the civilians. He toyed with some of the coding in the database so it would verify this statement.”

  “Great, so the heat is on. The IHL might soon be at war with itself,” Logan said.

  13

  Navigational Beacons

  A Zyrgian craft landed twenty yards from the ‘object’. Wasting no time to come out, Clearokyt stood in front of them.This was the first time many of the bystanders had seen an alien up close and personal before, so they were taken aback to say the least. The gut instinct was to get the hell out of dodge, and some did. Clearokyt waited until General Kaplan reached the front of the group before speaking.

  “You should have consulted me before touching that kratyriac. What you have done now is give the Fadothial tribe more access to you than imaginable. When a kratyriac is touched, its ability to gather information about its surrounding environment is unlocked. So it will began to do everything from voice recording to video to controlling your power supply. There is no clear and clean way to stop it.”

  “So you’re saying that all of our conversations from this point on, the Fadothials will be able to hear?” General Kaplan said, “And all of the actions we take, they will be able to see?”

  “Precisely. Every kratyriac is different and unique but I’m telling you based on what my people have been through,” Clearokyt said.

  “And how did you put an end to the madness?”

  “We had to sacrifice some of our own to stop it.”

  “What about if we relocate, you know, leave DC?”

  “It won’t make a difference the kratyriac will follow you.”

  “Jesus Christ. So what do you recommend we do?”

  “Carry on normal life, but be methodical about it. Don’t speak loud if you’re speaking of something pertaining to the mission. Also have some people work on projects outside of this geographic area.”

  “But you just said the damn thing will follow them?”

  “Yes and no. It has to pick and choose who to follow. What it does is gather intel about the group and then decides who the key players are. If the group splits up it will stick with the key players.”

  “One final question, how many people would need to be sacrificed to make this thing go away?”

  “It depends on a few factors, but a good estimate is fifty.”

  Clearokyt walked closer to the General and began to whisper in his ear, “Let’s get started on planting the disks. I will provide you with a pick-up location within the hour. Have your teams ready to deploy. Try not to screw anything up between now and then.”

  He walked away and disappeared back into the craft, flying out of there soon after.

  “I’m not gonna lie, I literally tinkled in my pants a little bit when that alien came that close and whispered in my ear,” General Kaplan said to everyone within earshot.

  “Ho!” A man yelled with his hands up, standing on the double yellow line located in the middle of the two lane highway.

  Clyde, who was driving the semi-truck pulled the Jake brake in addition to the foot pedal break, and downshifted to assist with slowing the truck down. It would take a good 400 feet to stop the truck. The man standing there was clueless about this fact or was maybe suicidal so he didn’t move out of the way. Clyde without panicking scooted over a few feet to the right, half of the axle was now on the soft shoulder and the other half on the road. He
avoided the man as planned. Clyde’s initial reaction was to slow the truck down enough to avoid hitting the man, but when he was close to stopping Aaron asked, “Should we get out and see what this idiot wants?”

  “Yep since he made us go to all of this trouble, he now has some explaining to do,” Clyde said.

  They were in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was a two hour plus drive to get back to the White House. They had come this far because it was the closest cattle ranch they had found. Clyde had parked the truck in such a way that if a cow was being herded and had nowhere to go, it would run up a ramp and into the truck’s trailer. The duo had managed to herd 11 cattle onto the trailer in a two hour span before calling it quits and beginning the return trip to DC.

  Clyde and Aaron stepped down from the truck to assess the situation. The man who had yelled for them to stop slowly approached them. Clyde clenched his fists, ready in case he had to throw down.

  “Thanks for stopping fellas. You’re the first vehicle that has passed by in the forty-five minutes. Our car broke down,” he said and pointed towards a black Suburban parked on the southbound side of the highway.

  “You say ‘our’ car. Does that mean there are others with you?” Aaron said.

  “Yes four others. The name is Tom by the way,” the man said.

  “I’m Peter this is Jared, “Clyde said, coming up with some fake names.

  “Are you guys with the league?” Tom said.

  Clyde had to think about his answer for a second first.

  “Yes we sure are. Would you guys like a ride?”

  “That would be fantastic. Let me tell the others.”

  As Tom was walking away, Clyde said, “Where are you headed?”

  “It don’t matter, there are plenty of options, so long as its one of the safe houses,” Tom said.

  When Tom got back to the Suburban, Aaron said, “You sure about this? We’d be giving some sketchy people a ride. What’s in it for us?”

  “We’re going to take them to the White House, not to the location they request. I’m pretty sure when that guy said ‘league’ he meant the IHL. So we’ll turn them over to the President and he can choose to what course of action to take from there,” Clyde said.

  “So that’s why you provided him with fake names then?” Aaron said.

  Tom returned with his four friends two minutes later, two females and three males including Tom. Tom seemed to be the spokesman for the group.

  “Unfortunately we don’t have any room in the cab so you’ll have to ride in the trailer,” Clyde said.

  He unlatched the trailer door. There were holding stalls for the cattle and at the front of the trailer was a gate to prevent the cows from exiting the trailer when the back door was open. It was a tight fit, but the five guests were able to fit between the trailer door and the gate so that they didn’t have to sit with the cows.

  Clyde shut the trailer door and went back to the cab with Aaron.

  “That guy really trusted me when I said I was from the league huh?” Clyde said.

  “He must have figured that since you are driving a truck that it was likely, since the majority of the population doesn’t have a running vehicle,” Aaron said.

  “I wonder what they have in that huge duffel bag?” Clyde said.

  “I don’t want to take any chances trying to find out what is in there,” Aaron said.

  “It’s likely a pile of guns,” Clyde said.

  “Let’s alert the President now, that way they are ready to subdue these guys when we get back in the event that they do have guns,” Clyde said.

  “I’m probably paranoid, but how do we know the radio frequency is safe?” Aaron said.

  “It’s not, it’s an unsecured line that anyone can get on,” Clyde said.

  “That’s what worries me. What if the IHL is monitoring the radio frequencies, listening in on all conversations?” Aaron said.

  “Or even worse, what if Tom and his buddies in the trailer have handheld radios and will hear our conversation with the President? Then we’d be in some deep shit!” Clyde said.

  “So we’re on the same page? We can’t use this radio?”

  “Yeah, but for that matter the phone lines might be tapped too. So I guess we should just get back without alerting them. When I get close to the White House, you’ll hop out and give everyone the 411 while I’m parking the truck. Got it?”

  “10-4,” Aaron said.

  “Hank it’s Logan. The plane that was meant pick most of us up just crashed moments before landing on the runway. From the view I had it definitely did not look like pilot error, The whole right wing just seemed to crumble causing the jet to flip and immediately turn into a fireball.”

  “Frickin A, one problem gets solved and another is created. The pilot is dead I’m assuming?”

  “I haven’t gone up real close to inspect, but after that crash there is no chance that he is still alive,” Logan said.

  “The Europeans are going to be irate when they catch wind of the crash. And now we’re gonna have to find another way to get you guys home.”

  “One more thing. Just before the crash, a sliver of the sky turned pink, and it went away moments after the crash. Put that away in your memory bank, it might be useful information to know later.”

  Hank filled Logan in on the most recent happenings including the kratyriac landing at the White House.

  “Are you gonna be around this phone?” Hank said, “I’ll call you back when I come up with a plan.”

  “Any sign of Taylor?” Hank asked General Kaplan.

  “No I haven’t seen the President for the past few hours. Maybe check his living quarters?”

  Privacy was not a luxury that was available nowadays. Anyone could burst into your room at any given time and that was becoming the norm.

  Hank found President Taylor in his bedroom, laying down on a couch.

  “Yo,” Hank said.

  Taylor didn’t move.

  Hank walked over and gave him a nudge on the shoulder. The President rolled over and opened his eyes to see who had just awaken him.

  “Hope you had a nice nap, but now it’s time to go back out there and grind. We have a lot on the agenda.”

  “Hwhat we gon’ do next?” President Taylor said, partially slurring his words.

  “You’re drunk as a skunk. Unbelievable! We got aliens arriving and planes crashing, but you found it more important to drink your sorrows away! C’mon man, snap out of it!”

  Hank walked into the bathroom, grabbed a washrag, doused it in cold water and threw it on the President’s face in an attempt to fully wake him up.

  Hank couldn’t blame the President. He did have an ungodly amount of pressure on him at all times, more than anyone else, and sometimes you had to release some of that stress.

  “What’s the play here?” Aaron said.

  There was a steady banging sound coming from the trailer. They assumed it was Tom and the others, clanking an object against the wall of the trailer to let Clyde and Aaron know that they needed something.

  “If we don’t stop, they might think something is up, but if we do stop the truck and open the trailer door, they might hop out and leave,” Clyde said.

  “You used to be a stuntman in the movies right?” Aaron said.

  “Yes I sure do miss it.”

  “I got an opportunity for you to show us all if you're the real deal or not. You wanna hear it?’

  “Of course I wanna hear it!” Clyde said.

  “So here’s what we do. You know that off ramp before getting to the White House? It’s shaped like a U? I say we bang Tom and the boys up a little bit. Then we’ll have them transported back to the White House for ‘medical treatment’. They won’t put up a fight because #1, they’ll be in pain, and #2 they won’t realize that we are holding them hostage until it’s already happened.”

  “What does the off ramp have to do with any of this?”

  “So we’re gonna loosen the cable that attaches the t
railer to the truck and when we reach that ramp, you’ll work your magic to detach the trailer from the truck,” Aaron said.

  “Im digging this.The worst case scenario given that I don’t crash the truck myself is that we end up with a trailer of dead cattle and a few dead IHL agents. Best case, no one dies, but gets banged up,” Clyde said.

  “So I guess we aren’t going to stop and see what all the commotion they are causing is?”

  “No we’re only fifteen minutes away from that off ramp.”

  “You keep ‘er steady, I’m going to climb around to the back of the truck and loosen that cable. Let’s get this party started.”

  Static came through the radio before a voice was heard on the other end.

  ‘Hey fellas, Tom here. No idea where we are, but can you drop us off in Baltimore? New York or Philadelphia would also be fine too, if we’re already past that point. Hopefully you’re on this radio frequency.’

  “Good call on not using the radio earlier. Tom would have definitely overheard our conversation with the White House!” Clyde said.

  14

  Which Way Is West?

  President Taylor was back to full strength by the afternoon.The scene on the White House grounds was like Grand Central Station; people were shuffling back and forth between various buildings. Sierra had given him the silent treatment for the past half hour because she found his behavior to be irresponsible when he had a country to lead and she was right.

  General Kaplan led Hank into the President’s private study and the three men took a seat on a leather sectional couch.

  “So Logan might be in a bind out in Cali. I have an idea regarding how to extract him, but it’s pretty radical,” Hank said.

  “Let’s hear it. Your ideas always sound nuts but tend to surprise me in terms of their success rates,” President Taylor said.