by Lea Tassie
But this battle made no physical demands. He was not engaged in a battle of swords clashing, but a battle of minds, where pain radiated from his brain through his entire being. It was as if someone was driving a burning hot iron rod filled with burs and barbs through his brain, and slowly drawing it in and out.
One of his own memories allowed him to hold on. Her face and her ice-blue eyes seemed to appear from a fog in the back of his mind, yet as fresh as yesterday.
It wasn't romantic, just a simple picture of their meeting. He was sixteen and working at his dad's gas station. She drove in on a hot summer day looking to fill the tank of her Camaro. A beautiful car with a beautiful girl, and he was instantly in love with both. They chatted about the weather and her car and she asked, "So, what do you drive?"
He pointed to the old, purple Dodge Charger up on blocks at the side of the gas station and replied, "Someday I'll have her back on the road. She's been rotting for twenty years without someone to love her."
"I know what you mean," she responded. "My dad helped me get this car. He and my uncle rebuilt it last summer."
They talked cars for some time, then talked about having coffee together and maybe a movie, and in the following months they came to love one another deeply. That memory was now the only thing keeping him strong and alive as he faced five Taskers bent on getting their revenge against him.
His body was exhausted and numb from the pain, his nose bled and tears of blood formed in his eyes. The battle raged on for hours before the soldiers managed to kill a Tasker. Moments later another Tasker dropped. Charger held the others in place as a third Tasker fell, then a fourth. As the last Tasker died and he was being disconnected from the computer terminal, one of the soldiers said. "How the hell did you manage to hold those things frozen long enough for us to get from Fort Bragg to here?"
He passed out before he could answer.
When he awoke strapped to a surgical bed, the restraints biting at his wrists and legs, a strange memory formed in his mind. It was a distant memory, one that was not his, but from the Taskers the engineer had so foolishly said were blank shells.
The Taskers had found something. In their first year on New Eden, a statue was found in a cave. Someone in the past had carved a small object in the shape of a young woman, but she was different from the women of Earth.
At least that was what he thought as the statue became clearer in his mind, but the more he concentrated, the more it began to resemble a human woman. That was impossible. Or was it? The Mavens who first landed on New Eden might have thought the statue was a joke, created by one of their own. But if history was correct, it had to be human, for the Mahouds, the invaders that used Taskers to travel to distant planets for resources to further their war efforts, were originally from Earth.
How many other worlds had the Taskers visited to find resources for the invaders? How many Taskers were still out there? And, when they learned that the Mahouds had been wiped out, how many might come seeking revenge?
"We have a problem," Charger said to a nearby medical officer as his mind began to clear. "I need to speak with whoever is in charge, and soon."
He was brought before a tribunal of the world's leaders, to explain that Taskers might still be a threat to humanity. Everything he relayed was noted, packaged and then filed away, never to be addressed. The conclusion was that humanity had no proof except the word of a Hyborg who appeared to have an overactive imagination. They would continue to walk towards the dangerous future, with their eyes wide shut.
Chapter 7 The Grays invade
The old man sat down in his favorite chair, the one he'd occupied for thirty years as head of his department. He cleaned his glasses on his shirt tail and drank heavily of the hot coffee in his thermos cup. Tonight seemed like every other he had faced over his career, and he settled back to begin another long stretch of surveying the stars. Peering into the binocular aperture of the mega telescope high on Mount Washington, he decided this would be a good night to observe the southern skies.
He plotted the coordinates on the computer and the gigantic telescope began to swing slowly to the south. It creaked as it moved, a familiar sound that brought happiness, for the man loved searching the night skies for distant truths. The creaking stopped and the old man checked the computer to ensure he had the correct portion of the sky under observation. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to the aperture that gave such a commanding view of the universe. Staring into space, he let the motion of the planets guide the telescope's view finder, and a great sense of peace settled on him.
Hours passed as he watched and occasionally jotted notes in a small book. His coffee had gone cold and the air was cool by the time the old man decided to call it quits for the night. Then a small twinkle from a dark region of space caught his eye. He slowly tuned the great telescope's eye to focus on that area, and strained to see the distant twinkle. It blinked, then blinked again. How odd, the old man thought, that's not right. He checked the computer to see if other observers had noted anything in this area of space.
But there was nothing, and again he peered at the distant twinkle. This time he thought he could make out a second twinkle in the same area as the first, then he saw a third blink. The old man removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes with his shirt sleeve, then looked again. Now he could make out four distinct lights in the same area, all blinking. He stared at the lights for some time, noting a fifth light and then a sixth begin blinking. He reached for the phone and dialed a familiar number. A friend answered and the old man asked if he could also see the blinking lights.
A little time passed as the second telescope group swung their great eye to the region of space the old man gave them and, after a bit, the friend on the phone confirmed that eight lights were blinking in that area. Eight? Now the old man set about determining how far these lights were from Earth. The answer was most alarming. He again reached for the phone and called the space administration's main line to speak with a former student. "Hey, Randy, it's Dr. Kim. I've got an anomaly here I want you guys to look at."
"Sure, doc," Randy replied, "give me the numbers." Randy had known Dr. Kim for most of his adult life and knew that if the old man asked for help, he deserved every minute of the time it took.
Over the complaints of several other scientists there that night, Randy moved one of the big lenses to the specified area of space, but what came into view silenced everyone. Twelve blinking lights appeared on computer monitors around the room. "They appear to be traveling around the speed of light and, according to their redshift, are about a year away from reaching us," Randy said to his old friend. "They also appear to be on a direct course to Earth."
Another scientist in attendance pointed out that fifteen distinct lights were now in view. One of the scientists said this seemed reminiscent of the string of meteorites which had impacted Jupiter in the distant past. If this were a similar case, Earth would be looking at an extinction level event.
***
Dart speaks to Reader:
That scientist had no idea how right she was. These blinking lights were not objects commonly seen in space, but ships of the Grays entering Earth's region of space as they traveled from theirs.
Oh, very scary, Reader! The Grays had been a civilization for millions of years before humans first discovered fire and they had found a way to use the quantum portals created by an ancient civilization that predated even their own. These unique portals had the ability to bend light and space so as to be invisible to the unaided eye. Drawing on the powers of dark energy, the Grays could enter a portal and, in a short time, emerge at a different point in space.
Is that what the scientists saw in the sky that night? Yes, this time, the point in space where they emerged was near ours. They knew Earth, for they had been here before.
These were the Grays described in the Dinosauroid history, the ones who had traveled here before the extinction event of the KT boundary, the ones who had enslaved the primitive Dinosaur
oids before they rebelled. The Grays, who had enough technology to behave as gods, were on their way back to Earth.
What did the humans do? They sought advice from the Dinosauroids, who guessed correctly that the beam of light sent from Stonehenge out into space some two hundred and ten years in the past had been seen by the Grays. Now they had come hunting.
Humanity had about a year to build a defense. The military began placing great masses of ships in orbit, ships built with the blending of the three worlds' technologies.
The Dinosauroids' ability to shift time dimensions rendered the human ships invisible, or so it was thought. All available soldiers from New Eden and Neo Terra were sent to Earth, leaving only a skeleton force on the other two planets. The Dinosauroids rallied all their forces, hoping to put an end to this long-time threat.
Earth's lasers were trained toward the incoming Gray fleet, much as the artillery of old had been used. Obviously these lasers could be fired only a few times before being targeted, making Earth extremely vulnerable because all power plants around the world would shunt power to the laser, leaving the cities in darkness. Though the energy created by the Dinosauroids' element 118 generators was colossal, the power requirements of the world lasers drained all systems fully, leaving no power for rescue crews.
Over the course of the year, a great and powerful armada was built to circle in orbit just beyond the solar system. This was a fleet of hundreds of thousands of ships. Technology had improved tremendously in the past hundred years and now, in 2250, thanks to the Taskers' ability to gather resources and to construct ships at a pace never before needed, the fleet was so massive that, from the Grays' perspective, it was enough to block the view of the solar system.
Yes, Reader, "Wow!" is an appropriate comment. The fleet hung in orbit like a black curtain, protecting everything humanity had fought so hard to build. The human population had just topped two billion, five million of whom were Dinosauroids who had re-occupied their former homeland of old Australia and would fight to the death to put an end to the Gray scourge.
Are the humans going to win? Well, you'll have to wait and see, but think about this: technology always reaches a plateau, then shifts to a higher plateau. For example, when Stone Age science was replaced by Bronze Age science, and so on down to the Technological Age. Humanity was still in the middle of their Technological age, but the Grays had long since moved to the next stage. This was the Energy Age, or the age of the nonphysical being. The age of pure essence, the age of the quantum continuum, where life exists at all points in time and space, and all knowledge is attained.
Were the Grays a lot smarter than us? A long time ago, a scientist said that if you look at primates and humans, they are 99.3% similar. Yet while primates are swinging from the trees and looking for bananas, humans build wonderful, complicated technology. But the genetic difference between them is less than 1%. So the Grays need be only 1% smarter than us to have technology and abilities that we don't understand at all.
***
Crouching down on the cold cement floor, James and Paul hoped they wouldn't be discovered by the Grays. "I don't get it," Paul said. "We've thrown everything we have at these aliens and still they defeat us. We don't seem to have any technology that can even scratch the damn things. If we don't get something going for us soon, all of humanity will be blotted from existence."
The enormous armada surrounding Earth had been obliterated by the Grays as easily as a human might swat a mosquito out of existence.
The old hangar on the airbase was a poor place to hide, for the aliens tended to focus on military targets. James turned on his side and replied, "Yeah, nothing we have is advanced enough." The two boys shivered from the cold and darkness and pulled their clothing tight to try to retain body heat.
"Maybe what we need in this fight is not more technology, but less," Paul said, scratching his head.
"What do you have in mind?" James whispered, as another alien probed the hanger looking for humans.
The Grays had an unusual method for investigating areas that might hide survivors. Several of the small Grays would gather just outside an area they wanted to investigate. Then, as though of one mind, they would storm into the area in a bubble of radiating energy. Any attack on them would immediately be reflected back on the attackers, as from a repulse shield or an anti-gravity wave. The first thought had been to use heavy explosives to lay traps for the Grays to walk into. The result was the obliteration of the building or area being attacked, apparently with no effect on the Grays.
Paul put his finger to his lips, then pointed across the hangar to the shadowy, great gray mass of an aircraft sitting there. The words painted on the side of the old plane were faded, but could still be read. Enola Gay.
"You have got to be kidding," James said.
"Nope, all our technology has been defeated, so maybe it's time for some old school tactics," Paul said with a broad grin on his face.
"So…what? We fly that old crap up to the big ships and do what? Tickle their bellies? Say, 'boo'?"
"Something like that. I have a plan. We just need to get out of here alive and back to base," Paul responded, keeping his voice low.
It took the two boys several hours to stealth their way back to the main base, an old partially destroyed wastewater treatment plant. The odors of waste being treated seemed to deter the aliens from going in to probe the area. Apparently they had a sense of smell, too. Paul and James penetrated deep into the bowels of the old building in search of one special man, Dr. Jenkins, tall, thin, pale, and thought to be well over seventy.
As Paul approached, Dr. Jenkins pulled his frail old body away from the table he had been leaning on, and drank from a smeared glass. "What do you want?" Dr. Jenkins demanded rudely. "Don't pester an old man if you don't bring whisky!"
"Doc, that odd machine you were working on last year, does it still function?" Paul asked.
"That old piece of junk I scavenged from the crashed saucer?" Dr. Jenkins asked.
"Yup, that's the one. Did you ever get it working?" Paul said.
"If you mean working backwards, then yes, damn alien crap. I have no idea how they make that shit work right," the doc said, as he gulped from his glass of booze.
"Backwards?" James joined in.
"Yeah, asshole, I said backwards. Got the damn thing turned on and it killed five researchers and flattened the entire complex. The only thing not affected in a five-mile radius by the gravity wave was the shit-box alien device itself." The old doctor's gruff voice sounded both sad and angry.
"So wait, you turned the device on and what? It crushes stuff?" James asked.
"No idiot! That's not what it's supposed to do. It was supposed to lift off, like a rocket engine. Fly like the saucers. But it didn't." The old doctor poked a bony finger hard into James' chest. "Instead of generating a gravity wave to lift the saucer into flight, it did the opposite. The damn thing created a wave that drove everything within five miles into the dirt, like a gigantic foot stomping the building and its people flat as a bug."
"Perfect," Paul said, and flashed a wicked smile. "Can I have it?"
"What the hell you two boys up to?" asked Dr. Jenkins, as he struggled to stand up straight.
"Well, everything we've thrown at these aliens has just bounced off. They can see through our stealth and defeat our best biomechs. Even the Dinosauroid tech is useless against them. So instead of high tech, let's fight with low tech. I say we get that old plane in the hangar flying again. We can load your device on it and fly that thing straight up the ass of those big sky ships the aliens have." Paul was out of breath, sounding excited. "Something that low-tech will not be seen as a threat by the aliens, am I right?"
"What the HE-double-toothpicks have you two idiots been smoking? I've heard some asinine shit from kids before, but that just takes the cake!" Doc Jenkins snarled, as he wiped the whisky from his mouth and dabbed at what had spilled down his front. He was sure these two kids would get everyone on plan
et Earth killed just by their very presence, and he wanted no part of that. "Look, you boobs, I've told you before…" the old doctor started to slur, and both Paul and James joined in so that they all said together, "Just lay low till these things get aboard their ships and leave."
Doc Jenkins huffed at the way the two boys mocked him.
"Well, they ain't leaving. In fact, they seem fixed on staying," Paul said quickly, not giving the old doc a chance to argue again. "Besides, what's it going to hurt to try? It's our lives we're risking, not yours!"
That just made the old doc fly into a rage, explaining how the attack would draw the wrath of those damn Grays down on the few survivors that were holed up in the building. The yelling went on for some time, until the whisky got the better of him, and he reluctantly agreed to help. It took a few days of planning and work, with the help of many hands, to get the device aboard the Enola Gay undetected, get the plane's motors serviced and ready, and to fill her up with fuel. But after a week all was in readiness.
"Okay, we are going to need a pilot to fly this thing into the mother ship to bring it down, but the Grays have the ability to detect our presence, so how do you plan to get close enough to set the device off?" queried James as he rigged detonators for the main switches to fire in sequence.
"I got that covered, too" Paul replied, as he wiped his brow. "Remember the action figures we used to have as kids? The big vampire with two wolf pets? He's a real person."
"What? He is not! You just made that up," snapped James.
"I kid you not, he is real, and my great-uncle Marcus knew him. He is still alive, or sort of alive."
