“Confirmed,” Cue Ball said.
Next, Akers heard the second command officer say in a more serious tone, “Swallows Two, break apart to allow the object to come between you. I want detail observation. Attempt to shadow object best speed and course.”
Neither pilot interrupted, and each slowly arched away from the other to allow anything as large as an aircraft carrier to pass between them. Akers glanced between the clearance lights of his wingman and the oncoming light blue object. He knew Cue Ball was doing the same. Operational safety was something Captain Akers would not violate and made damn sure his wingman understood through the years. Dying in a training accident wasn’t something he wanted his loved ones to face.
From years of flying, Captain Akers could tell the object was slowing and losing altitude but would catch them in moments. “Cue Ball, adjust to stay behind and port.”
“Aye,” Cue Ball said over plane-to-plane comms. “Oh shit, are you seeing this?,” Akers could hear the excitement in his voice.
The object came up from behind the pair of F16’s. Akers and Cue Ball kept it centered between them. It was much smaller than anything Akers had encountered in flight. Both pilots banked towards the center. Akers drew the object closer on his left. He was near to the object and could make out more details. Aker’s mouth fell open again. Made up entirely of the same light blue background, the “thing” was filled with white points of light that seemed to move around inside the figure. It was like looking onto a compressed section of space with a sun buried deep inside. Akers looked back onto his wingman’s F16 and saw that the object was casting light out against the matte finish, illuminating the night. He quickly scanned his instruments and saw they were passing back over the Pennsylvania border. His F16 was coming along side the unidentified flying object. The front half was flying in the shape of a prone humanoid. The latter half appeared to be in flux. Akers surmised it was the thing’s source of propulsion. From the waist down it looked like a giant jet flare. Except from the waist, the inner sparks trailed down to the tip of the effect. Sparks accelerating from the waist wicking off in the object’s wake. It was huge for a humanoid shape. At least five meters, Akers guessed.
“Now that — that is fucked up,” Cue Ball cracked over plane-to-plane.
“I agree,” Akers keyed back.
“Am I high?” Cue Ball asked. Akers knew the feeling.
“Command, this is Swallows Two,” Captain Akers keyed his command channel.
“This is command.”
Akers did another quick check of his instruments, noting they were nearing the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh.
“We are astride the object, speed four-twenty, heading eight degrees true,” Captain Akers said. He paused, trying to form the words in his mind to accurately describe what was flying formation with them now.
“Hoooooly shit,” Cue Ball said over private comms.
“Swallows Two, report!” command shouted
“Sir, we see a large humanoid shape, flying prone, approximately fifteen meters in length, made of sparkling blue light, its face forward. From the waist down it looks like a gigantic blue propane torch,” Captain Akers reported, just like he was trained and had drilled over hundreds of hours of flight time. He continued, voice softening, “It’s the god-damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Akers paused. Realizing what he had just said was beyond fantastic. “I understand that a pee test will be required after this mission,” he said. “But I stand by what I said.”
Captain Akers studied the apparition, flying dude, SparkleMan, whatever. He took in as much detail as possible because he knew after what just came out of his mouth to command, he would face a fuck storm of questions. And then the UFO animated, turning its head to the left and slightly behind. The realization it was “alive” made Akers quaver on his flight stick.
“It’s looking at you, Cue Ball,” Captain Akers said.
“I see that, Chuckers. Creepy,” Cue Ball said.
Out of his periphery, Akers could see Pittsburgh, just ahead, the lights from a dozen bridges forming a distinctive outline of downtown. The dark paths of three rivers became more visible with each second. Akers knew the air traffic had been cleared over western Pennsylvania and most of West Virginia, but at this speed, Canada would be minutes away.
Akers skewed the fighter closer to the anomaly, crab-walking his craft carefully as it continued to eye Cue Ball. After a few anxious moments Akers could make out physical impressions: shoulders, arms, a neck, and ears. The thing was humanoid in shape all right; there was no mistaking that now. The being was bald and devoid of any clothing. The outline of its form was unbroken from the waist up.
The being was forty feet off his port and slightly ahead. Beyond the being’s port was Cue Ball mimicking Akers’ closer inspection. The thing was a giant, a flying man filled with stars, lit from within, fucking flying giant. Akers saw the being turn its right hand and make a fist. His wingman’s F16 was snapped in half like a twig. The entire nose forward of the cockpit was ripped down and broken off. The canopy self-ejected from the force of the break. Behind the cockpit, the F16 crumpled from an invisible giant hand and batted from the sky downward. The ejection seat, with Cue Ball in it, hurled forward into naked sky, flipping bottom up into a slow falling somersault.
Captain Akers wasn’t aware he was screaming. His scream cut off once all remnants of his wingman, his friend, had fallen from view. The “Captain” within Akers took over. Remembering he had left his command comms open, Akers began his running report: “Cue Ball just broke in half. I’m breaking off for an offensive... run... I —“ Thinking quickly of an aerial position that would grant him the most advantage, Captain Akers jammed his throttle forward and then back, flipping the F16 upside down, still in a line with the hostile being. A quick “On-Off” of his air brake created enough drag to put him at a safe weapon distance. Akers muttered to himself, “Fucker.” He switched the master safety off and extended his index finger for a satisfying pulse of hot lead up this things ass. The being darted down and to the left. Akers, knowing he was still upside down, knew the hostile went up and to the right. Akers rolled his F16 violently to his left in order to see where the hostile had gone. He saw the trail of blue-white sparks jet behind him.
“Swallow Two?” his command channel barked.
“Evading,” Was all Akers could think to say, fear crushing his senses.
He pulled nose up, inflicting a high-G turn. Above him he glanced the blue-white light dance below.
Akers righted his craft and frantically glanced around and decided his next maneuver. And suddenly there it was, standing in mid air, the propulsive lower half gone, replaced with perfect humanoid legs. It turned slightly and threw back its right arm as if about to chop wood with its giant hand.
A quiet “Oh, God” escaped Akers’ throat.
A giant, glinting, blue-white hand bashed into the forward edge of his F16s right wing and ripped it off like a wooden bat through a water-soaked piñata. Beyond the hand blurring across his vision, Captain Akers looked into the eyes of the giant and understood. He had danced with something beyond him, horrific, an original nightmare returned to Earth. It spun around to its left, and with the other hand swatted the nose of his dying plane. Captain Akers was thrown forward into his canopy, which had violently angled down into the path of his ejection seat, unattached to the remains of his F16.
Remorse
Gabriel continued on, diving for a preordained spot somewhere in the north hills of Pittsburgh. Inside, tucked far underneath the rigid instructions, smothered by layer upon layer of the will of the Dominion, the real Gabriel screamed. He was trapped inside a nightmare construct. He could not push beyond the confines of this angelic-energy cocoon. There was nothing he could do as he saw the two pilots killed, shredded against the wind and structures below. Was their destruction necessary? Was this violence part of the God’s plan?
Throughout millennia, Gabriel’s consciousness had nev
er survived the transformation to this universe. He had never been forced to witness his actions, a vessel within a vessel. The will of the Dominion had been complete. Once returned to Heaven, and rejoined with his physical self Gabriel would upload his journey and only then remember every day within the other realm. It was like being in a non-debilitative coma and waking, recalling every visit from a relative, every action around you.
Something had gone wrong here. Gabriel was not to be witness to this terrible monster, bent by will, unable to accept any option but success, and killing anything in its path. Gabriel had known the human race for fifty-thousand years. He had visited many times, assumed many forms, and delivered every word of God to this point. And yet he had never witnessed or remembered himself do such harm without being part of God’s plan. Had he done as this before and those memories been erased? Had he killed humans for no reason before? The grief was heavy for a moment, but Gabriel put it aside. He would not weep for harms of which he had no knowledge. And back on Heaven, Gabriel had witnessed himself slaughter a few humans during an upload. He had grieved but, in time, accepted his duty and responsibility.
Gabriel knew that each set of God’s messages was more important and timely than the last. Was this journey so important that his corporal self would smash its way through and trample humanity to do so? Locked away inside this construct Gabriel had no access to God’s current plan for his terrestrial form.
Gabriel felt his energy form slow and turn slightly left as it passed between tall buildings located in a large cluster where two rivers joined to form one. Lights covered the surfaces and the ground. Humanity had moved well beyond his last visit. Gabriel had reviewed the reports and knew the history. The wars, advancements in technology, mankind leaving the surface of this planet, the struggle with slavery, oppression, and the rise of a new entity, the corporation — the evolution to the global enterprise which enslaved many to the ignorance of others. It wasn’t Gabriel’s place to weigh the grace of God, or to understand the meaning behind all of this. Many civilizations had come and gone upon this planet before these humans. All were failures. All collapsed. The earth had washed them away. Space provided the dust to slowly cover each under a carpet of time. The planet itself would provide the engine to mix and change its surface as needed to keep the current civilization from discovering the last, or the first. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. A habitable world held the power to erase its population completely, and many had done so. Self cleaning was built into God’s equation. The background formula was, in itself sentient. Sensitive humans, through time, would imagine such and give the planet a name or claim it had a soul of its own. But none knew the depth of the mechanism that made up a living planet. Any species could harm a planet to the point of poisoning their own environment. But, after a few hundred years, a blink to the lifecycle of a planet, all would be set right. The air would be scrubbed, the oceans, lakes, and rivers filtered, the ground cleansed with rain and turnover.
The inner Gabriel stopped his roaming thoughts and began to pay attention to the outer Gabriel. His form was slowing again. He came to a stop now above a cluster of homes. Gabriel’s last visit had found his vessel far away from any civilized area. Taking that vessel had been, well, easy. But here, among so many humans, so close together? The conscious inner Gabriel saw the instructions as they were read by the machine-like Gabriel. Deliquesce and coalesce once the vessel is found. This should be interesting, Gabriel thought. He got a sense of falling as his energy form poured out from his feet, its feet, into millions of points of light. His formed caved in upon itself and was poured out. He was everywhere and nowhere. Each point of light went out and searched for the vessel. Touching dozens of minds, and negating each. Some were awake and the sight of the roving lights confused many and frightened some. There were a few people in the streets. They had woken by the sound of falling flying machines, planes. The angelic energy ran across the ground, passing through solid matter, through homes, walls, vehicles, pets, and people. Moments passed and both Gabriel’s took in countless amounts of information of each individual their combined energy touched and what was gleamed from the electronic devices left running through the night. Inner Gabriel passed his attention back and forth from all streams of data relearning the languages, completing his near recent history, and understanding more of the technology employed everywhere.
But wait. There it was. Alone and silent, the person, the vessel he sought. Griffin DeLuca. The energy sprites that made the whole of Gabriel’s corporeal form began to arrange in radial lines using Griffin as the center. Then they reformed back into the figure of Gabriel.
Griffin opened one eye, and for several moments he looked around his room. From his room’s exterior walls small balls of light rolled through and were coming together in a single point. Right through the walls! Opening the other eye, he almost laughed. All that has happened, and now this....this apparition in his bedroom. Griffin rubbed his eyes. Maybe these lights were sparks within his eyes. An effect of being too tired and awake far too late. But the lights didn't go away. They were real. Not in his mind. Griffin repeated that to himself, ‘Not in his mind.’ And as he watched, Griffin grew fearful, alarmed even. In front of him a pillar of lights took shape. At first the swirling mass appeared like dozens of large fireflies caught up in a dust cyclone. Each source of light cast a bright sphere onto the interior of Griffin's bedroom. Then they were hundreds, and the swirling slowed and stopped as each light source was clicking into an invisible notch. The pillar expanded, growing shoulders and a distinctive head.
Griffin knew he had either completed his madness or needed to run for his life, or both. Then, he witnessed the impossible. He felt and heard a vacuum of sound come over him. As in the dream, there was a pressure in the air. Not overwhelming, but distinct. As the pressure kicked in and the sound went away, Griffin saw lose items lifted around the room in reaction. He felt his bed covers rise slightly. Behind the apparition, on Griffin's chest of drawers, a silver ring lifted and resettled. Dust was mixing freely with the lights. Sound was muffled to the point Griffin could hear and feel his blood swim in his ears.
The apparition was collected sparks of light that came from the floor, from beyond the walls. The convergence accelerated, light swimming and fixing to this person, thing, ghost, horror. Then it changed. A light blue illumination filled in between the lights and gave the apparition the three dimensional effect. The final lights clicked into place, and the apparition took a step forward and lifted its left lower arm and hand, palm up. Griffin experienced a strange sensation; he felt cool water was rushing into the gap between his scalp and brain. It would have reminded him of a cold shower, but this feeling was beneath his hair. And now it was running beneath his skin down his back and... and... and... his thoughts were no longer his. Other thoughts flooded in, images, tasks, need, control, and Griffin panicked.
He inhaled through his nose and mouth, filling his lungs. If this was how death came, Griffin was going to go with a fight. According to the small amount of his own brain he still controlled, Griffin knew he was screaming in defiance. His body shook with rage, and for two seconds the vacuum of sound held. He broke through the vacuum, and "OOOOOOOOOOOOOO" roared from his mouth, lips peeled back exposing his teeth, spit flying. The word began as a “No.” Griffin mentally ripped the sensation from his spine and head. He forced the creature back. It turned its head ever so slightly to the left in mild disgust.
Again the horror came at Griffin, and this time he heard his name vibrate through his skull. The effect cracked Griffin's sense of self. He felt he was turning into smoke and was too close to a slamming door. His essence wavered, and he was made transparent. Was he dead? Was he now a ghost? Defying the threat before him, Griffin turned, expecting to see his body wilted on the floor or upon his bed. But checking his hands and thighs, saw he was whole. The apparition had made another attempt to take him, but this time it tried to displace his soul from his body. That too had failed.
His legs weren't as defiant as Griffin wanted them to be, but he made it to his feet. As he did, his fear subsided and his confidence grew. “Fuck you!” Griffin screamed at the giant form in his room. The apparition hunched over and blossomed to fill the room. Its head grew to a meter tall and looked down at Griffin. Its giant hands opened on either side of him. Griffin was squeezed from all around. His feet slowly left the floor and he felt the creature suspending his body in mid-air. He heard and felt the creature say, “Vessel, obey,” like he was inside a giant bell. The sound crushed him, and he vibrated with terror. Griffin again imagined he had died and was being dragged to hell. He almost began to reflect on his misgivings as a bad teenager, but realized he was still in front of the now-gigantic thing, and it was out-of-this-world pissed off.
Griffin felt the force of its radiant hands attempting to liquify into his mouth and nose. His eyelids felt like they would peel back under the force of tainted water. He felt a blood vessel give way in his nose. A warm sensation began to leave his left nostril. The blood defied gravity and ran across his cheek into his ear. Griffin couldn't withstand this for long. The pressure smothered and crushed him at the same time. He started shaking, going into shock.
Griffin gave in and let go. “If I'm going to die and leave this plane, it will be on my terms, and I will choose my final resting place,” Griffin thought, connecting with the mind of the horror. He closed his eyes and allowed the air to be crushed from his lungs. From within, Griffin welcomed the cosmos. He imagined himself as a lone tree, his roots curled down beneath a field of tall grass. He looked up and saw the sky swim below the stars, his face awash in warm winds. His leaves waved a thousand goodbyes and hellos.
Griffin fell limp to the floor. He was still shaking. He let out a broken sob and began to cry. His body ached. It was too painful to move. “I’m not a tree?” Griffin cried aloud. “I’m not a tree,” he answered himself back. “Not a tree,” he repeated again, this time with disappointment. Blackness took him.
Divine Destruction (The Return of Divinity Book 1) Page 10
