The infantry skeletons were highly boosted by the aircraft’s ground invasion. They immediately changed their mission from fighting to confuse to fighting to defeat the US Army. The skeletons started forming groups that would encircle a platoon of human soldiers and kill everyone. Then they would confiscate their weapons and use them to drive other platoons away from major towns and city centers.
Artillery men started fleeing to the outskirts of major towns and cities to escape the might of the skeletons. The soldiers that tried to surrender in advance would not be spared. The skeletons were shooting them down even when they dropped their weapons! The clever soldiers decided to put off their uniforms to disguise as civilians. Some even joined the groups of refugees that had started streaming from USA to neighboring Mexico and Canada. But the aircraft would still attack them! They would drop fragmentation bombs on them which could kill multiples.
The most disastrous weapons that the ghosts came with were the flying drills which had been designed to cripple the US Navy. Each of these contraptions consisted of a cylindrical body with a hemispherical end and a sharp pointed front part. The front part was a driving attachment which could perform much the same work as a drill of boring holes through a barrier. Their bodies had been built from an alloy that was five hundred times stronger than steel. They could hence pass through the concrete walls of earthly buildings or titanium hulls of warships without registering any damage. Inside the cockpit, the pilot of each flying drill was facing an instrument panel on which various gauges and dials could indicate the drill’s position, altitude and the target to hit. The single seat cockpit was covered by a small polycarbonate canopy which could enable the pilot to see what was taking place above them.
In true sense, the drills were flying submarines that had been designed to hunt and sink down warships including aircraft carriers and submarines. Not less than six of these would fly above an aircraft carrier and use their rapid firing guns or their small missile launchers to destroy all the planes on the ship’s deck and to disperse the crew on board. As the crew tried to escape from the attacked ship, the drills would soar high up in the air before returning at a blinding speed to collide with the ship intentionally. During the collision, they would use the driving attachment in front of them to bore holes through the deck of the carrier. At the same time other drills would attack the ship from below the surface of water to bore holes through its hull. The carrier would then start sinking after taking in water through these holes. Before attacking any warship, the ghosts from the International Space Station would first jam its weapon systems which made it impossible for the ship to defend itself.
The drills had also been equipped with high-end torpedo computer targeting systems which they could use to shoot down the submarines from beneath the water surface. With their advanced stealth systems, they would remain concealed in the depths of water for a long time before attacking the submarines by surprise. Below the water surface, they could travel at speeds of over 90 knots, twice faster than any man made sub! But even when moving at such a speed, the skeleton pilot could still properly calculate their position, orientation and velocity without external reference, using the advanced inertial guidance systems that had been mounted on board.
US submarines could not clearly identify their locations nor get directions to follow because the ghosts had switched off the Global Positioning System. They instead had to resurface from below the water body in order to use their periscopes to view what was ahead of them. This was multi disadvantageous to the submarines because apart from the periscopes having poor and short visibility ranges, it made easy for the drills that were flying above the water body to spot them. The drills also had sonar detection systems that could enable them to detect the submarines that tried to use sonar telephony to communicate with each other.
Many submarines decided to maintain radio silence and remained submerged in one position in order to avoid detection. In others, the crew decided to abandon them by means of their Escape Immersion Equipment whenever they suspected an approaching drill. When those escape systems failed or when they failed to use them early enough, they got no chance to survive after the collision between the attacking drills and the subs.
Right from the start of the attack, the fight on the ground had been greatest in Arlington County, in the US state of Virginia. There had been a stronger whirlwind at the start than anywhere else. The wind had blown off many gravestones from almost all the graves in Arlington Cemetery, just near the Pentagon. Skeletons of the dead arose from the graves, many of which were probably former US Servicemen. They were joined by skeletons from other cemeteries to wage an attack on the Pentagon, the US Army headquarters. Over four hundred of these human skeletons quickly occupied all the highways leading to Pentagon on the complex Pentagon Road Network.
Initially the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, together with the US army had tried to repel them backwards by shooting heavily at them. However, the arrival of the ghosts’ air force and the switching off of the Pentagon’s Computer and Communication Systems plus its electrical power supply had helped reinvigorate the skeletons on the ground. The fighter UFOs had also weakened them further by dropping bombs on all interchanges that link different highways on the Pentagon Road Network, limiting further access to the Army Headquarters by the US soldiers from other areas who would have wanted to help their colleagues.
Also the fragmentation grenades that were dropped on the soldiers and on their artillery greatly demoralized them. Many decided to retreat in order to save their lives. Despite the effort the PFP agents had put in to defend the building, the skeletons proved to be militarily superior and were able to conquer it. The skeletons killed everyone at the headquarters and even moved to the bunkers and butchered all the VIPs that had taken refuge there.
As soon as the infantry skeletons finished taking over the Pentagon, the third division of the skeleton warriors arrived. They came in very large aircraft which were actually flying airships. With 20 decks, a height of 75 meters and a width of 320 meters, the largest of all was arguably larger than Oasis of the seas, the largest manmade cruise liner at the moment. It arrived last and was accorded the greatest hospitality by the fighter UFOs because it was the one carrying Lord Ghost. As it descended to the ground, twenty fighter aircraft kept on flying closer to it in formation. They escorted it until when it landed in the central courtyard of Pentagon.
Many of the other airships landed in the highways that lead to Pentagon. The skeleton warrior helped the engineers to offload the equipment which these airships had carried from Ghostia. Using the trucks the skeletons had confiscated from humans, they transported the cargo load to Pentagon. These different sets of equipment were used by the ghosts to assemble different structures at Pentagon and in other parts of the country. Many missile launch centers were set up in the Pentagon’s central courtyard. The ghosts expected to use them to launch Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles against any foreign country that would try to rise against them. Many of the ICBMs were armed with multiple warheads that would carry mixtures of deadly chemicals and pathological spores which could kill thousands of humans in a short time. These missiles were however to be used as a last resort because their air force was strong enough to counter any foreign attack.
Pentagon’s last basement level, Level B was turned into a science laboratory for their clandestine experimentations. Lord Ghost sent a special group of skeleton warriors to the streets to carry out raids in all man’s hideouts. They kidnapped all the babies below the age of three that they would come across. Using the trucks they had looted from the streets, they drove all the children to Pentagon and handed them to a team of the skeleton scientists. The children were taken to the laboratories in which they were forcefully laid on operation tables in supine positions.
Every child was injected with sedative drugs that made them motionless. The children were then undressed immediately and the skeleton scientists started dissecting them. Their internal organs were di
semboweled and their skins were removed to obtain their skeletons. The bare skeletons would then be dropped in very large centrifuges. The centrifuges had inbuilt grinding tools that would crash the bones of the babies’ skeletons to extract out their bone marrow. The bone marrow would then be collected and put in very large glass test tubes.
The ghosts had come with a team of cytologists who had devised methods of stimulating the pluripotent stem cells in the bone marrow to reverse them back to totipotent stem cells which they would then use to develop all body organs and tissues. Their aim was to use these cloned tissues and organs to dress up their bare skeletons! All along, this had been the main reason as to why Lord Ghost had decided to attack mankind! He hoped to obtain another arm and new flesh which could transform him into a half-immortal-half-mortal being which was to rule both the earth and Ghostia.
This operation had been kept secret from all the skeleton warriors including their battlefield commanders. Only Lord Ghost, Gen. Cov and Roth knew about it. The other skeleton warriors were fighting with all their strength because they had been promised better living conditions on earth. After conquering earth, each skeleton was to be allowed to live in all the beautiful places of their choice! But none was told about this plan!
Prof. McDonald, being a specialist in Molecular Phylogeny, was forced to be part of the team of the cytologists. In their pilot experiments, they were able to develop different body tissues in a short period of time. Five skeletons were put in separate closed test tubes which had been connected to delivery tubes through which they were feeding the test tubes with the bone marrow solutions and other mixtures of different chemicals. Gradually, skin tissues started forming over the skeletons and within ten minutes, they were all covered with flesh. Their next operation, which was perhaps the hardest but most important was developing internal body organs, blood and its vessels. According to Lord Ghost’s plan, all the skeleton warriors were to receive these cloned bodies and organs. The brains which the warriors were to get were to first be programmed in such a way that they could listen to orders from Lord Ghost only. This was the best way Lord Ghost would be secured against attack from his own soldiers.
The ghosts turned the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center into a communication hub for the whole world. They were using it to provide accurate, complete and timely information for the operational chain of command for their armed soldiers both on the ground and in the air. Lord Ghost himself went to the Pentagon’s Briefing Room and ordered his computer specialists to connect Pentagon’s communication system to all the secure underground military bunkers in different countries where the world’s leaders were hiding. In a live video feed to these bunkers, Lord Ghost issued a series of threats to the world’s political and military leaders across the globe. Leaders in different parts of the world were able to watch him speaking from the comforts of their covers and many took his message seriously.
“Don’t be fooled to think that by hiding behind those heavy blast doors you are out of reach!” he warned. “You must know that we don’t need any explosive to kill you from there. We have enough dangerous chemicals to saturate the ventilation systems of all your bunkers to kill you in just seconds without a single blast. Most importantly, remember we are in control of all your nuclear stockpiles. If any country tries to intervene in this fight, we shall be forced to nuke your own cities. If not, we shall self-detonate them at once from their silos. I hope you can all guess what will happen if we reach that far.”
He first paused for some seconds before he resumed. But midway his next sentence, “We have not come to kill all………..” all the computers at Pentagon went off at once due to an abrupt signal transmission failure. Lord Ghost was stricken with panic and rushed to the Pentagon’s war rooms to find out what had happened, but he was humbled down when he found his specialists equally confused. They were trying as much as they could by pressing all possible buttons on the computer keyboards to restore the condition but it was not an easy task.
The source of that confusion was from Beijing, China. As soon as Lord Ghost had started talking to the world leaders, three hackers attached to The Second Artillery Corps which manages China’s ICBMs gained access to Pentagon’s computer systems. For over five minutes, they took control over them from the ghosts. After locating where Lord Ghost was talking from, the hackers launched a DF-41D ICBM from Jiuquan launch center in Northwest Gansu Province to destroy the Pentagon.
Unfortunately, the ghosts managed to regain control over their computer systems before this Dongfeng missile could reach the US airspace. Using one of their three killer satellites in space, the ghosts managed to blow it out of the Pacific sky in time. Luckily, all the ICBM’s Multiple Reentry Vehicles were carrying conventional warheads. Their explosion in the sky did not cause any irradiation effects to humans on the ground, as it would have been if they were nuclear warheads.
Lord Ghost was greatly angered by that action. In retaliation, he ordered his computer specialists to fire one manmade ICBM at one of China’s large cities as a warning to the world. They launched a RS-24 Yars missile from the Russian 31st Missile Army Centre, a silo based ICBM complex near the town of Dombarovsky. It was carrying a 50 megaton nuclear warhead and was destined for Shanghai, China’s most populated city. It was recorded live by their satellites as it followed its trajectory and the videos were fed live to all the bunkers to ensure that all world leaders could see what would happen to their countries if they attempted to attack them again.
When it reached Shanghai’s airspace, the missile made a dive and raced towards the ground. Its center of explosion was to be in the People’s Square, near Shanghai Museum. But before it touched its ground zero, the ghosts diverted it back into the skies. It soared back in the air from where the ghosts weakened it and then forced it to fall in the nearby East China Sea without exploding. When it dropped in the water body, world leaders took a huge sigh. They were relieved of the stress they had developed after thinking about the millions that were to die at ago.
That was a good warning which the three Chinese hackers would have lived to remember had they survived the wrath of the ghosts. The skeletons were able to establish their location and sent one of their hypersonic aircraft to destroy the building from which they were operating. The aircraft reached Beijing and dropped only one bomb at the building which demolished it at once. It then returned to the US airspace without bombing any other place in China
CHAPTER FIVE
THE COMING OF THE GHOES
Back to Ghostia, the moment Lord Ghost’s third division left for earth, Gen. Cov and Gen. Path invited all the ordinary ghosts to the Ruthst Square. Gen. Cov had planned to address them for the first time in his new capacity as the acting Lord Ghost. When they started arriving, he ordered the warriors of the reserve force to surround the palace in order to tighten the security. Over one hundred warriors were ordered to escort Gen. Path to the last floor of the underground facility on mission known only to the two generals.
Four hundred years before, after the construction of the underground facility, all the prisoners had been forced to work on the facility either as experts, warriors or casual laborers. Only the eight former Ghoes were left in custody. Each Gho was heavily chained and placed in a metallic box that had been made from a very strong alloy. These eight boxes containing were locked up in one vault that had also been made from thick walls of a similar alloy. Their golden crowns were also packed in two separate boxes and locked up in the same vault. The twenty ton metallic door of this vault had only one key and it was only Lord Ghost who knew where he kept it.
When Gen. Path and his one hundred escorts reached the vault, he opened it and ordered the warriors to carry the metallic boxes to the Ruthst Square where the ordinary ghosts had gathered. The warriors were not aware of the contents of the boxes because the presence of the vault was a secret that was known to a few skeletons. The procedure of locking them up had been done by Lord Ghost, Roth and their trusted bodyguards only.
No other ghost had been told about it.
Meanwhile, by the time they came back, Gen. Cov had already started addressing the assembly. The sight of a group of skeletons who were carrying the metallic boxes attracted the attention of the ordinary ghosts. Gen. Cov’s speech was interrupted for a while as the warriors lifted the boxes to the platform and lowered them next to the general. After putting them down the warriors were ordered off the stage and left it to the two generals. There was total silence among the skeletons as they could not understand what was taking place.
When Gen. Cov resumed with his speech, he abruptly changed the topic and started speaking about the boxes. “Comrades, since time immemorial Planet Ghostia has been known as the planet of the dead. It was given to us as a gift by the gods of the universe. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the first person to die on earth arrived here. He was followed by many like you from the same planet. But by then, very many of you had not even been born. A few of you were still immortals on earth. But for us we were here!”
“We started planning for you because we knew that one day you would be born and you would then die to join us here. We laid the foundation for this planet. We built all these structure that you see to ensure that every ghost that would come to Ghostia could live in peace and harmony. We achieved all our dreams. There was bliss everywhere. Love, equality and justice flowed. We had got the comfort that could make us forget planet earth. All our differences on earth were put aside and we were one.”
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