Enemy tst-1

by Paul Evan Hughes

  He looked at the faint light on the eastern horizon.

  He turned and walked north.

  He had been here before.

  West felt the flood of long-suppressed memories wash over him. He scanned the room with slowly dawning realization.

  A spherical room. An orb of stars at the center. And—

  People.

  Long ago he had entered the Diablo vessel and became something else in the orb of stars. It had been Heaven in that light. So peaceful, so beautiful.

  He had been pulled from the light. It had not claimed his soul for its own. How often had he hoped to return to that heaven? And now, stretched before him, were countless people, caught in the rapture of the orb. The harsh light had already killed most of them, uploading their minds. Something was different…

  black

  THERE IS A DISTURBANCE HERE.

  WHAT DO YOU MEAN((?))

  CAN YOU NOT FEEL IT((?)) IT IS AS IF A SHADOW IS CAST OVER US, EVEN AS WE SPEAK.

  A THREAT TO THE PURPOSE((?))

  A RIPPLE ON THE OCEAN OF OUR FAITH.

  IT IS COMING((?))

  IT IS HERE… WE SHALL READY OURSELVES. DOWNLOAD, SYNTHESIZE REINFORCEMENTS.

  IT SHALL BE DONE.

  the black closes

  In his shifted form, West was beyond the grasp of the light. He knew that if he shifted down, he would be seized by the radiance; his mind would be captured once more.

  The remaining humans were falling dead to the floor, their minds too feeble to withstand the power of the light.

  Something was wrong.

  West looked at the bodies near him.

  Horror.

  They had been changed.

  Fine lines of glistening metal had encompassed most of their bodies, like some grotesque spider’s web. Flesh and metal were intermingled. West saw that the bodies were quickly decaying, becoming mercurial extensions of the room. When the body was gone, the remaining metal webs fluidly merged with the walls of the massive room, disappearing into the black.

  Thoughts flickered in his mind at a phenomenal rate as he made a connection between this monster embedded in the earth and the vessel they had found in Wyoming.

  There had been no metal webs in Wyoming. There certainly had not been this ravenous silver substance.

  People, falling. Dying. Being webbed and encompassed.

  Souls being harvested. Souls being uploaded.

  Who had the owners of the Diablo vessel been fighting?

  Wars through time and space. Wars in the space between sanity and light and yesterday. Who had they been chasing?

  Only one human remained, a woman partially ensnared in the metal webs. The orb of light snaked outwards, lines of fire entering her mind through her eyes. West knew she must be strong to withstand the force of the light, which crawled over her eyes, trying to gain entry into her mind.

  He could save her before the light took her soul.

  He shifted back into human form.

  fury

  INTRUDER((!))

  HOW((?)) WHAT((?))

  ONE OF THE JUDAS((!))

  THE JUDAS((?)) HERE((?))

  UPLOAD AND DESTROY HIM((!)) ELIMINATE THE ROGUE CODE FROM THE SACRED PATTERN((!))

  West realized too late that he had dropped his guard.

  The light became a hypnotic glare as luminous tendrils grasped at him, reached for his eyes, struggled to pry their way into his soul. He clenched his eyes shut and rushed at the woman before him. He stepped in front of her, snapping the bonds the light had secured in her eyes.

  West gasped with agony as the light beams slammed into and throughout him, but the bond had been severed. She blinked several times and gazed confusedly at him.

  Silver eyes. She had silver eyes.

  Oh my god, West thought. It’s the President’s daughter.

  Spidery tendrils of silver lace enveloped his left foot, holding him solidly in place. he tried to shift, but to no avail.

  That can’t be.

  Yet it was. The web crawled up his leg, entangling him. He felt a stinging pain as the metal web bit into the flesh of his calf and tendrils of silver wound their way under the skin of his leg.

  He panicked.

  They put out the ashes of the fire and packed their few possessions. A meager sunrise tried to light the horizon.

  Simon looked over the blood-stained uniform he had worn when they had been attacked in the tunnels. It had been red, bright red blood, but now it was a faded brown, just like dried human blood. What were they, underneath that black armor? He would have to run an analysis on a sample of that fabric. He cut off a small section and placed it in his pocket.

  Flynn rubbed her arms to warm them. “It’s colder today.” She put on her thermal fatigue vest, zipped up the front. She kneeled down, began to roll up her sleeping bag. There had not been a lot of sleeping during the night. They had talked until the faded sun tried to shine above the horizon. Simon had without any signal from her returned to his side of the fire, his own sleeping bag. He had not tried to stay on her side of the fire; he had been the perfect gentleman. She appreciated that fact, but still… She would have let him stay with her in the cold night air.

  “Maybe it’ll warm up when the sun gets higher.”

  It was not a reassuring thought. The sun was almost completely concealed by a translucent web of black and purple and silver. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Any ideas where we should go?”

  Flynn shrugged her shoulders. “Wind River is gone.”

  Hayes looked up, startled. “How did you—”

  “I can hear things sometimes. Whispers. Except they’re usually thoughts. It’s how the Styx communicated. We could hear each other’s thoughts.”

  “And you heard me think of Wind River?”

  “I know it’s gone because I heard them command our own forces to nuke it.”

  “Why the hell would we nuke our own—”

  “The aliens took it…They did the same to Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. A Spear fleet was supposed to take out Seattle, but it was destroyed en route over Chicago. That’s why they triggered the bio-bombs.”

  “Seattle? We would have been…”

  Maggie stopped rolling up her sleeping bag.

  “Maggie? Are you all right?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Have you ever heard a civilization die? Voices. Thousands. Millions. Billions. All at once. Everyone. I thought I could block them out…But the last days, I heard every scream, clear as day, in my mind. Echoes. So many dead…”

  West struggled.

  The metallic mesh climbed up his legs. He felt it bite into his flesh, drill into his femur and tibia. The light pulled back, ceasing its relentless attack on his mind. The webs quickened their pace.

  The woman who had once been a president’s daughter stood shocked to silence in front of him. Her face was a rictus of terror as the man before her tore at the metallic strands that snaked around him.

  ((help him))

  What? Who?

  ((HELP HIM))

  How?

  An image. A flash of light, a flickering of surreality.

  West was tiring. The webs became his flesh…

  Please, please. I can’t panic now.

  Icy fingers grasped his mind. Reaching…

  From the very walls of the spherical orb chamber, aliens began to materialize, black shell forming over silver endoskeleton. They sensed him and approached.

  His thoughts were wandering as the excruciating webs worked their way into his flesh and the black presence struggled to grasp his soul.

  Patra Jennings shifted her arm, and with a flash of radiance, severed the webs that held him in place.

  “I can still feel them. The ones that aren’t dead.”

  “How?”

  “I can feel them still alive, billions and billions. Captured by the aliens. Their minds are being drained. Fading away. It’s like the aliens are collecting them, using them as a power so
urce.”

  “A power source? Food?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know…The Diablo vessel was powered by neural energy.” She pointed upward. “Neural energy. Electrical patterns. Souls. You see all of those?”

  Hayes nodded.

  “That would take a lot of energy. Billions of minds. Billions of souls.”

  The web severed, West could shift once more.

  The aliens rushed at him.

  He began the killing frenzy.

  The corridor he had walked down into the orb chamber sealed off, faded into solid black metal. No escape.

  West whirled around, warding off the mindless creatures that surged before him.

  Patra.

  She gazed at her own arm, spellbound by her shifted limb. West studied her face. She was definitely the President’s daughter, older, shorter hair, but hell, it had been over a decade since she had disappeared.

  In places, the metallic web had actually meshed with the underlying skin. She wasn’t human anymore. Disks of metal protruded from her temples. Extending from them were the strands of metal that had fused with most of her body. If he hadn’t pulled her back…

  No way out. Except…

  The aliens were upon him.

  “Diablo, Wyoming…Sounds pretty ominous.”

  “What?” Flynn looked up at Hayes, who had fallen silent.

  “Diablo. The vessel. Is it still there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why they would have destroyed it. I don’t see how they could have destroyed it. They could have sealed it into the mountain, but I don’t think they would have. It was too much of an asset.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “What?” She was intrigued.

  “Let’s go to Diablo and see what’s there.”

  “I already know what’s there, Simon. Weren’t you paying attention last night?” She smiled that smile and her eyes shined.

  If she only knew… “I know, but that warship could be the key to winning back this planet…It’s a hope.”

  “No. We’re hope.” She embraced him.

  “Maggie?”

  “Hmm?” She looked up into Simon’s eyes.

  “You could hear me think of Wind River before.”

  “Yes.”

  “What else could you hear me think?”

  She grinned mischievously, revealing dimples. There was a spark in her shiny gray eyes. “Don’t worry, Simon. I didn’t hear too much. I don’t listen to everything, you know.” The embrace tightened, and she kissed him quickly on the cheek.

  Hayes stood motionless, feeling Flynn against him. He never had been good at dealing with awkward situations, especially those awkward situations dealing with women. He eventually put his arms around her and returned her embrace in kind. She looked into his pale blue eyes, and a sly smile came to her face.

  “What is it?”

  “In your book, in ‘Deus Ex Machina,’ do we win? Do we defeat the aliens?”

  He laughed, and sighed. “Rejected twelve times. Each time because it had a negative ending. Humanity falls, the aliens took over, and the stage was set for a sequel about the resistance.”

  “Did you ever write the sequel?”

  “Maggie, we’re living the sequel.”

  The battle was exhausting West.

  He and Patra had stepped close to the orb, so close that the light became a burning force. West looked at the light, had to struggle to look away again.

  The walls. Aliens everywhere. They were materializing from the walls.

  Too many.

  Desperation.

  Patra was in shock. West couldn’t blame her.

  The orb. Heaven.

  “We have to go through it! Now!”

  She did not understand. She was terrified.

  West shifted his arms back down, grabbed the young woman. “We have to jump into the light! We can’t stay here!” Her fiery silver eyes were blank; she was not comprehending. He looked once more around the chamber at the aliens. A voice filled his mind, his soul.

  GO THEN. PRAY YOUR GODS, JUDAS. OMEGA IS THE ONLY—

  Shielding Patra with his body, they jumped into the light.

  NO—

  Time stopped.

  The spire shattered with force enough to level the crater walls. An inconceivable deluge of light poured from the crater, swept out across the land, consuming everything in its path. Countless patterns dissolved into the landscape, the uploaded dead screaming with sudden freedom in the instant before they dissolved into nothing. In the sky above what had been Chicago, the translucent purple web cracked and the Enemy vessels fell from the sky, suddenly empty of their lifeblood of souls.

  The wave of light erupted from the dead upload spire, and nothing could stand in its path. The humans collected at the base of the spire, the Enemy vessels on land and in air, all were cleansed from existence in the pure wave of light. They felt no pain.

  West and Patra had entered the orb.

  timesweep.

  a white place, out of time.

  the Whenstream.

  “What is it?”

  (((tight-beam combeacon; recon front code fourteen-seven.)))

  “Fourteen-seven? I thought we’d abandoned that When.”

  (((recon galilee matthew, ali report)))

  “Run it.”

  a pause. eyes widen.

  “Convene the Circle. Now.”

  (((done.)))

  “You’ve been called here because we have a confirmed web breach.”

  The meeting chamber of the Judas Command First Circle was filled with shocked silence. Several members looked up suddenly at the announcement. There had not been a web breach in… Well, a long time. Hundreds of years, perhaps thousands. Perhaps longer.

  “When?”

  “The timesweep waves are emanating from the Fourteen-seven front.”

  “How? That When was abandoned—”

  “—three weeks ago. Zero-Four, I believe you were there.”

  Michael Zero-Four stared at her with a gaze like acid and dust and quiet, accumulating hatred. “Yes.” His voice was quiet, almost a sigh. It was the voice of an ancient and weary traveler. “I piloted Gethsemane Simon into that When.”

  “And there was a confrontation.”

  He laughed, almost a chuckle. “A confrontation… Yes. There certainly was a confrontation, Hannah. That When was on the verge of being uploaded when we got there. We lost too many in that engagement. Vishnu, Paul, Mohamet…Magdalene. Too many.”

  “They are mourned, Zero-Four.”

  “I’m sure they are, but we had some concerns about—”

  “The Fourteen-seven When was as far as we knew not yet uploaded by the Enemy. Their presence was indeed a shock and surprise to our reconnaissance forces. Magdalene’s loss hurt us all, Michael.

  “Did it?”

  She looked at Michael Zero-Four with a delicious fury, which thankfully was interrupted by another Judas captain, Okeke from the Judas Seattle Baird.

  “How could there be a web breach in an abandoned When? Could the native populace have caused it?”

  “Doubtful…We’re sending a recon team to investigate.”

  “This could be another trap. My group has tracked them from bubble 7K to bubble 8.5K. They’re definitely on the offensive this time, Hannah. They’ve been attacking our Forts up and down the Stream. Have the Altwhen patrols reported any—”

  “There’s been no proof of a link between the destruction of Fort Evans and this web breach.”

  Zero-Four frowned, stood. “Wait a minute. Fort Evans was attacked?”

  “Michael, you—”

  Okeke looked angrily at Hannah. “You haven’t told him? Fort Evans fell while you were floating out there in stasis. The Black seem to have launched a full-scale offensive on our advance positions.”

  “Sweet Richter. How many casualties?”

  Okeke looked icily at Hannah, then back to Michael. “All was lost. Fort Evans, Fort West, Forts Nixon, Tehr
an, Hatchet, John Wayne, Kiribati… So many others. They’ve found most of our bubbles and uploaded them.”

  Michael’s hands curled to fists, shimmered with the shift.

  “What the hell is going on, Hannah? If they’ve found our advance bubbles, they can find us! They probably know our damned position already. With that much activity… Why was Maggie back that far? Did you suspect an Enemy presence?”

  “Don’t speak out of turn, Zero-Four. You—”

  “Cease with the formalities. The Alpha-Point periphery was swarming with Black. They’re ready to open it up, Hannah. The slaughter of Simon’s fleet is evidence enough. If you knew about their buildup of forces, why was Maggie that far back in the Stream alone?”

  “I don’t have to explain my actions to you; needless to say there was an Enemy presence and we needed to investigate. Enough of that for now. We can discuss it further when you return.”

  “When I return?”

  “Yes, Michael. You have combat experience in the Fourteen-seven When. You’re going back to investigate the web breach.”

  “I am? What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Where is Simon now?”

  “He’s at the dockyards being refitted into a Golgotha-class chassis. He took some major burn escaping that When.”

  “Did he? Well, we must send an escort with you, just to make sure you get to the Fourteen-seven When safely.”

  “An escort.”

  “The new gunships.”

  “I see.” Zero-Four was infuriated.

  “Good.” Kilbourne smirked.

  “Do you think there’s actually a web breach, Hannah? Is there anything else I should expect to find when I get there?”

  “Whatever do you mean, Michael?”

  Zero-Four looked back at Okeke, who shook his head and placed his index finger to his lips, a gesture that had become very popular lately. Zero-Four stormed from the chamber. The Circle adjourned.

  Detach. A quiet humming, the gentle sensation of movement. The transport was empty at this hour. Zero-Four rode alone.

  The news of a confirmed web breach disquieted Michael Zero-Four. Everything about this disturbed him at some base level… Judas forts being uploaded by the dozens. Judas Command covert missions to Whens literally thousands of years earlier than any Enemy forces had been tracked. The debacle of Maggie’s death and the massacre in the belt and at Alpha forged an anger within Zero-Four unlike any he had experienced in quite some time. Things had not felt so… so liminal since the changing of command after His death. There was a force within the Judas, a force working behind the scenes. People were disappearing; people were dying. Things were falling apart. And now he had to pilot a mission back into the When they had just left supposedly for dead, with escorts. Gunship escorts. What was Kilbourne planning? Something wasn’t right.