Stephen Molstad - [ID4- Independence Day 03]

by War in the Desert (epub)

  With Reg in the lead, they moved at a fast march through the piles of twisted debris. The enormous room had been turned into an empty box by the force of the explosions. They walked uphill through the leaning skyscraper, then broke into a jog until the front wall of the tower came into view. The destruction was less complete here, and it was possible to imagine what the interior must have looked like before the crash.

  Sections of transparent wall still stood in places, or hung from the ceiling like ragged sheets of ice. They had once divided the floor into smaller rooms, workstations of some kind. When Ali rapped on one of the walls with his knuckles, the vibrations caused it to make a humming noise.

  “Look at this,” Tye called from the far side of the glassy barrier. He’d found a room that was only slightly damaged. It was the size of a small auditorium, and there were low black benches arranged in rows. Hanging on the forward wall was a flat, squared-off sheet of material that looked like a modified tortoiseshell. “Looks like a really uncomfortable movie theater,” he mused, sitting down on one of the benches. The seat of his pants was still wet with the thick gel that lined the floor of the chariot. It made a rude noise as he sat down. “Aaagh!” Tye jumped up immediately when the bench moved beneath him. “What in the—”

  He reached down and touched it again, with his hand this lime. The surface of the bench was as hard and as smooth as polished marble. But when activated by the galvanic charge coursing through his fingertips, it bubbled to life, its surface rising into a series of inch-tall welts. Struggling against the impulse to tear his hand away, Tye held it in place and watched in horrified fascination as the transformation of the stonelike material continued. Tiny lines of light appeared in the surface, first as a dull glow, but then brightening to form a complex grid. Within moments, the entire length of the bench lit up with a visual display, showing an unintelligible, highly complicated blueprint: half anatomical drawing and half engineering schematic. They realized it wasn’t a bench but a table designed to be used by a creature half his size.

  Reg had forged ahead to the front wall of the tower. When the others followed him, they saw bands of blotchy light leaking through a network of narrow “windows.” A series of thin geometric lines ran the entire height and length of the huge wall, each one emitting an uneven greenish glow. Reg stared up at the strange green lines, trying to understand the significance of the pattern they made. When he brought his face close to one of them, he saw that the large plates covering the outside of the tower were connected to one another by some sort of dense, stringy ligament.

  In some places, all that stood between Reg and the outside world was the same ultrathin material that was used in the construction of the rest of the tower. This time it was more than semitransparent. Reg could see through it to the desert outside, which was brightly lit in a sickly, green-tinted glare.

  “What is it?” Fadeela asked.

  “They’re windows,” Reg said. “They seem to be amplifying the light outside. Take a look.” The others pressed close to the spy holes and stared through them.

  “Fantastic!” Tye said.

  “It’s like looking through night-vision goggles,” Edward said.

  “And a magnifying glass.”

  The scene was almost too bright for their eyes. The rocky hills and wadis of the desert floor were illuminated in a harsh glare, as if enclosed in a giant copying machine. At the same time that it amplified the light, the material acted as a telescope. When Edward spotted a shape moving across a dune top far in the distance, the image quickly focused and enlarged until he could see that it was a lone alien soldier out on patrol in a chariot. The magnification continued until he could make out the individual tentacles on the armored creature’s shoulder blades and the glowing three-inch medallion on the back of his bony hand. He stepped back, blinked his eyes, and his vision returned to normal.

  “Very strange,” he said. “Someday I’m going to build a house with windows like this.”

  “I can see Sutton and Remi,” Yossi said, pressing his forehead against the surface and looking straight down. “They look nervous.”

  “Now we understand why we are losing so many planes when we try to attack them here,” Ali said, pondering the windows. “They can see us coming from a great distance.”

  “Which means,” said Edward, pointing out the obvious, “that if there are any survivors in this tower, they probably watched us drive up.”

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Reg said, checking his watch under the beam of his flashlight. “We’re not climbing fast enough. We’ve been inside almost an hour and we’re just past halfway up. We’ve got to find a faster route.”

  “Yeah, but where?” They scanned the ruined monumental space with their flashlights but saw nothing that looked remotely like a staircase. In the distance, near the center of the tower, rubble was piled high around a set of columns that reached to the ceiling. They headed in that direction.

  Along the way, they passed an overturned set of the black worktables. When they came close to them, Yossi stopped short, froze in his tracks, and swung his machine gun into position. Holding his flashlight steady, he stared straight ahead with all the concentration of a bird dog, while the others fanned out to surround the spot. When he gave the signal, they began closing in from all sides, aware that if it was an alien they’d cornered, a telepathic attack was imminent.

  Everyone held their breath and stepped closer, their weapons trained where Yossi was pointing. There was a rustling sound and then a flash of movement as a small gray body leapt from its hiding place and darted in one direction, then another, looking for a way past the humans.

  Ali and Yossi both shot at the thing, but missed. Their bullets ricocheted into the distance. With surprising speed and agility, the creature bolted forward and would have gotten away if Reg hadn’t pounced and knocked it to the floor. He grabbed it around the neck and felt his fingers sink into the spongy flesh.

  When the shock wave of pain tore through his body, Reg was ready. He lifted the creature off the ground and slammed it against one of the touch-activated tabletops.

  The pain's not real, he told himself. You can resist it.

  Once more, Reg lifted the homuncular body with his halfparalyzed arm and brought it crashing down against the stone-solid surface of the table, sending a telepathic message of his own: Obey or die. But the alien continued to resist. Reg continued to pound it against the tabletop until its body went as limp as a rag doll and it fell into a stunned submission. Then he leaned over it and saw himself reflected in the surface of the alien’s silvery eyes. Reg had been waiting for a moment like this: He tried to read the alien’s mind. He conjured up the image of the silver box from his memory and attempted to “send” the image to the alien.

  “Where is it?” he demanded loudly. “Where’s the box?”

  When he received no answer, Reg fed the creature another mouthful of tabletop.

  “It’s dead,” Edward told him.

  “No,” Reg said. He could feel the thing’s consciousness. It was monitoring him, playing possum. But he didn’t know how to access its thoughts. Telepathy was, after all, an alien skill, not a human one.

  “What should we do with it?” Fadeela asked.

  “Kill it,” Reg said, searching the bulging silvery eyes for signs of fear. The only thing he felt in return was a hateful defiance. Ali stepped up to the table, lifted the butt end of his heavy, five-foot-long gun, and held it over the alien’s enlarged brainpan.

  “Should I?”

  Last chance, Reg warned the creature. Its eyes closed calmly a moment before Ali slammed his weapon down and split open its skull. Reg felt the life slip out of the little body in his grip. He backed away, wiping his hands clean on his uniform and breathing hard.

  “I really hate those little bastards,” he said.

  The team regrouped and continued the search, marching quickly through the monumental darkness. They had only gone a short distance when they saw the flash of an
alien pulse weapon and heard a startled scream that sounded like Tye. The others hit the deck and prepared to fire in the direction of the noise, assuming the bioarmored aliens had finally shown up to defend the tower.

  “Sorry!” Tye called through the darkness. “That was only us.” He and Yossi had gone ahead of the others and found something that had startled them.

  “Come this way,” Yossi called, signaling with his flashlight. “We found something.” The others raced forward and saw the two men investigating a deep recess in the wall.

  “What is it? What did you find?”

  Tye was down on his knees leaning into an opening, shining his light straight down. “It’s a shaft of some kind.”

  “Ugh! What are those things on the walls?” Fadeela asked, disgusted by what she saw. The inside of the shaft was lined with sickly-looking white strands.

  “I don’t know, but I just lost my appetite,” Ali said. The vertical tube seemed to travel the entire height of the tower, and its walls were overgrown with slender white tendrils that hung limply in tangled masses. Reg thought the tendrils looked like relatives of the vines he’d seen growing in other parts of the ship.

  “There’s that horrible smell again,” Edward said, backing away. “Ammonia.”

  Tye turned to face the group. “That smell could be a good thing. Think about it. The pulse gun, the chariot, their bioarmor.” Reg understood instantly. “Of course. This is another one of their machines. But what?”

  “I think it’s a lift,” Tye said. “It’s got to be.” He cautiously leaned over the edge and peered once more into the bottomless pit. “All of their technology is basically ripped off from other species or cultures. They must be zipping around the universe, conquering one planet after another and adapting the technologies and life-forms they find to serve their own purposes. You know what I think this shaft must have been?”

  The others didn’t have a clue.

  “A giant esophagus,” he announced with a dramatic expression. “The aliens probably found some poor brontosaurus-sized slob, cut his throat out, put it in one of those liquid growing vats of theirs and—voila!—instant elevator. These stringy white things hanging down the sides are cilia, just like you find in the human windpipe. I’ll wager ten quid that if we touch them, they’ll do something.” He glanced around at the others. “Any takers?” “Maybe they have stairs,” Yossi offered.

  When no one volunteered, Tye took matters into his own hands, literally. He reached out and grabbed one of the gooey white strands. Instantly, the entire shaft erupted to life. Tens of thousands of white tendrils began to whip around the interior of the shaft in a writhing frenzy. Pleased with himself, Tye smiled an I-told-you-so smile, not noticing that the strands were crawling up his arm. By the time he realized what was happening, the stringy tendrils had wound themselves around his shoulder and pulled him inside.

  The group had just enough time to recoil in horror and level their guns at the man-eating tendrils before Tye came flying out and landed, ass over teakettle, in a heap ten feet away. The tentacles all dropped limp, and the shaft went quiet again.

  “Michael, are you all right?” Fadeela asked.

  Tye sat up and spit out an oily piece of tendril. “It wasn’t exactly a Riviera holiday, but yeah, I’m okay.” He was covered head to foot in a fine layer of the foul-smelling slime.

  “There goes your elevator theory,” Yossi smirked.

  “Not at all,” he said, getting to his feet. “I got a little nervous is all. Once I was inside, the only thing I was thinking about was getting out, not going up. It did what I asked. Maybe I’ll have one more go. I don’t think it’s dangerous.” Before the others could dissuade him, he marched back and jumped inside. The long strands flared to life again, whipping back and forth like overcaf-feinated sea snakes, and caught him. He screamed suddenly and was carried off. A moment later, the movement stopped suddenly, and the tendrils all fell dormant.

  Carefully, Reg leaned a few inches into the shaft and looked up, then down. “Tye! Can you hear me?” He backed away from the opening when he heard something coming toward him from above. Tye’s helmet flew past, falling to the bottom. “Tye!” Reg shouted again, then, straining to hear a response. He was about to give up when the millions of thin white strands whipped into a frenzy of movement once more. Reg leapt back from the opening and, a second later, Tye came flying out of the shaft and landed once more in a heap.

  “Gotta work on the landing, but 1 think I’m getting the hang of it,” he said.

  “We thought this thing ate you for breakfast,” Reg said. “Where’d you go?”

  “Up. How far up, I’m not exactly sure.” He looked at Yossi through the darkness. “I told you it was a lift,” he said. “And guess what it turns out to be?”

  “A lift?”

  “Precisely. This time, when I went inside, I thought about moving upward. Just like with the chariot. Next thing I knew, whoosh, I was going up.”

  “See any shiny metallic cases up there?” Reg asked, glancing at his watch.

  “I didn’t stay long enough to look around,” Tye answered. “Wait a second,” Edward said. “The report on that clipboard, it said something grabbed them, remember? Then it said control room. The case is up there, it has to be.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Fadeela pointed out. “Let’s ride this thing to the top.”

  Tye lectured the group. “Don’t be distracted once you get inside. Think about traveling up, concentrate on getting to the top.” He reached his arm inside and brought the stringy white cilia to life once more. They wrapped themselves around his lanky frame and dragged him inside. “Can you see me in here?” Tye called through the storm of movement.

  He was fully engulfed, but the others caught occasional glimpses of him—a kneecap here, an elbow there. They watched Tye think himself up a few feet then back down again until he was hovering in front of them again. Without leaving the shaft, he called through the rustling cilia, “Everybody clear on the concept?” Then, without waiting for an answer, “Good. See you at the top.”

  Yossi was the first to follow. He took a deep breath and stepped bravely to the threshold of the shaft, but lost his resolve and hesitated, staring into the grasping tendrils, overwhelmed by the strangeness of what he was about to do.

  “This is not why I joined the Air Force,” he moaned, closing his eyes tight and leaning forward until he felt the moist strands begin to lash softly across his face and chest. The next thing he knew, they had wrapped themselves around him and dragged him inside. It was an odd, terrifying sensation. He suddenly found himself floating in a zero-gravity environment. The moist white strands came at him from every angle and buoyed him up, each one lifting a tiny fraction of his weight. When he opened his mouth to yell, the strands darted into his mouth. He batted at them with his arms and kicked with his legs, but felt no resistance. It was like fighting against the air. Individually, the tendrils had very little strength, but they were wickedly quick and adjusted to changes in his position as fast as he could make them. It took a second or two for Yossi to realize that although he was floating inside the shaft, he wasn’t moving. I need to move up, he remembered. The mere thought wasn’t enough, it had to be a positive act of will. Up, up, I want to move up! Sensing his desire through the conductive medium of the gelatin, the tendrils obeyed. Yossi shot upward, tumbling end over end. Once he stopped struggling, the ride was surprisingly comfortable. Then it came to an abrupt end. He was spit out of the shaft and crashed to the floor. When he looked up, Tye was looking down at him.

  “Weird, isn’t it? Come on, get out of the way before the next person comes through.” Still slightly disoriented from the experience, Yossi allowed Tye to drag him to one side a moment before Edward came crashing out of the esophageal bioelevator. One by one, the others followed until the group had reassembled on the new, higher stage of the tower.

  “That was disgusting.” Fadeela winced, wiping the film of clear
gelatin off her face. “Are we at the top?”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Reg said with a sinking feeling. He moved a few strides into the cavernous space. It was a virtual replica of the floors below, full of the same shattered walls and pieces of broken equipment. In the distance, the false daylight filtered through the gaps between the exterior plates. “It looks like there’s at least one more floor above.”

  Through the semitransparent ceiling, they could see what appeared to be an open chamber above. It looked completely empty. The team marched toward the front of the tower, keeping their eyes open for a way up to the next story.

  “I just realized something” Reg announced. “This floor above us, it has to be the exit bay for their attacker planes.”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” Tye said, nodding. He was the only one who had been with Reg during the first attack over Jerusalem, when hundreds of the disk-shaped attackers had come swarming out of an opening about three-quarters of the way up the face of the tower. “This is the tunnel they flew out of. It’s as wide as the tower itself.”

  Ali cursed in Arabic, then said, “There’s got to be a way around it.” “Maybe along the sides,” Fadeela suggested, and started to walk in that direction.

  “Sounds logical,” Ali grudgingly agreed, and began to follow. Just then the walls began to quake violently, followed by a booming explosion. The floor shifted sideways beneath their feet, powerfully enough to knock all of them to the ground. With a shudder, the tower leaned another degree off center. The entire structure teetered back and forth as the support beams on the lower levels decided whether to give way and collapse. When it seemed as if they would hold for a while longer, Fadeela was the first to break the silence. “And what exactly was that?”

  “1 think your fiance’s planes have decided to show up after all.” “Just when we need them least,” Edward observed. “They’re going to knock the tower over before we can get outside.”

  “It’s getting close to sunup,” Reg announced. “We’ve got to find these bioweapons.”