by John Conroe
From the shock on her face, it was clear that she could, but then she frowned in disagreement. “His aunt would never allow that. And I was nice to him because he did so much for my brother. He’s on the spectrum and people can be awful.”
“You are correct, but still, when a young lady with the social standing you held in school stays friends with a spooky boy who others fear, it sends a huge message,” I said.
She snorted. “Yeah, it told all the mean kids to leave me and my brother the hell alone.”
“Well, maybe there was a quid pro quo, but still. I think he might be a different person if not for you. We happen to need him just the way he is.”
“Mr. Gordon?” another student asked.
“Yes?”
“Do we have a chance?”
“Oh, we have a whole lot more than a chance,” I said as I picked up my own tray and moved toward the doors. “We’re doing things that you wouldn’t believe.”
Adine, who had sat silent throughout the whole encounter, followed me out the door.
She wore a seriously puzzled expression. “What are the odds of running into that girl at this moment?” she asked me.
“Don’t start down that rabbit hole, Adine. You might never make it out if you start those kinds of calculations.”
Chapter 41
I caught up to the others before the elevator appeared. “You were really bothered by her thinking you still had time for college?” Stacia was asking him quietly.
“I haven’t seen much of anyone from high school for some time. In my head, they’re all still where we were,” he said. “I totally get her finishing college fast and getting into med school. Despite the whole pretty cheerleader thing, she’s really smart and a really good student.”
“There’s a nice blast from the past, huh, Declan?” I asked as I got close enough to be in their conversation.
“Really, really weird coincidence if you ask me,” he said. “I mean, come on? What are the odds?” he asked absently.
I glanced at Adine, who raised her left brow. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. We got on and rode up to Creek’s floor.
Armed Oracle guards lined the hall, tensing as the elevator doors slid open. Adine stepped off first and they instantly relaxed.
Inside the general’s room, Nathan Stewart had pulled a chair up next to the bed, putting himself even with Creek’s head. The general himself was sitting up, his eyes blinking as he tried to wake up. Tanya and Nika were on the other side of the bed but almost in a corner, out of the general’s line of sight if he didn’t move his head.
“Tobias, the game is up,” Nathan said, not looking our way as we moved quietly into the space. “There is no reason not to tell us what’s next.”
Creek looked like he was really out of it, blinking slowly and opening his mouth, but no words came out. He turned enough to catch sight of me and stared for a second. Then recognition came in the form of a wicked frown. He turned back to Nathan and blinked some more. “If he’s here, it hasn’t happened yet.”
“The bombs already went off, Tobias,” Nathan said.
“Not the bombs,” the old soldier snarled. “I know about those, you old moron. The second phase hasn’t happened if he’s able to lounge around like an idiot.”
“What second phase?” Nathan pressed.
Creek suddenly looked around, his eyes getting a bit wild. “Where’s my stuff?”
“It’s safe, Tobias,” Director Stewart assured him. “All your stuff is in custody, including your prized .45.”
“Not the gun, you idiot. Where’s my necklace? I have to have my necklace. Where the hell are we? How much time has gone by?” the general asked in a frantic tone.
“Since you went unconscious?” Stewart asked.
“Since the bombs went off?” the old soldier asked, almost frantic. He was trying to sit up, but he was clearly too weak.
“Why, Tobias? What’s supposed to happen?”
“That was the trigger, man, don’t you see? They’ll be coming!” He thrashed around, but it was feeble. Nothing like the dangerous old soldier I had known for some years now.
“Who, Tobias? The Vorsook?”
“Vorsook? Don’t be crazy, man. No Vorsook would get anywhere near Earth. Not now!” he was almost shouting. His monitors started beeping like crazy and Dr. Mehta came rushing in, an alarmed expression on his face. He took one look at Creek and pulled a syringe from his white med coat pocket. With quick, practiced movements, he introduced the needle to the port in the IV tube and within seconds, Creek slowed his freak-out and then slipped unconscious.
“He was in danger of a cardiac event,” the doctor said. “You’ll have to let him rest.”
“But we needed more,” Nathan protested.
Tanya cleared her throat lightly. Stewart glanced at her, read her intense expression, and nodded. “Very good, Doctor. You know best. We’ll step out.”
Nathan led us down the hall, farther away from the elevators. Every room on the floor was empty except the general’s. Director Stewart opened the door to a small room with some upholstered chairs and a small sofa along with a wooden table and four chairs.
“Combination family waiting and consulting room, I imagine,” Stewart said tiredly, but with a little smile. “What did we find out?” he asked Nika and Tanya.
“He’s aware of a second phase involving some kind of shock troops; biological entities,” Nika said. “The necklace he mentions contains some kind of device or transmitter to allow him to survive the assault.”
“Any idea of why he went over or when?” Nathan asked.
“I can’t tell for certain. His mind is confused, but it seems like it’s been some time, maybe all the way back to when Rome and China happened,” Nika said, referring to the diamond-skinned combat troops created from human stock. “He was approached by other government officials who provided evidence that he felt made it overwhelmingly clear who would win this fight.”
“Do you know who they were?”
“Not for certain. He’s very confused and mostly fixated on the attack that’s coming,” Nika said.
“Is it those black diamond bastards?” I asked. “Where are they coming from?
She shook her head. “Something else, something we haven’t seen yet. The name he uses in his mind is kraykenast. And they’re already here… in the oceans.”
Omega popped into being, much faster and cleaner than his charade in the cafeteria.
“If the general’s understanding is correct, we have a real problem,” Omega said.
“Why? What are these things?” Tanya asked.
“Kraykenast are a deadly invasive predatory species. The Devourer of Worlds was more serious about taking this world than we thought,” the A.I. said.
He turned and pointed at a holographic image that popped into being in midair. The thing floating there was a snake hater’s nightmare, a thick tubular body with a flat tail and a round open mouth like the sandworms from Dune. Omega had the image turning so that we could see it from all sides.
“This is the larval stage. Egg sacs are deposited in deep water locations near thermal vents for incubation. Upon hatching, the larva swim up from the depths to shallow waters. They will feed on anything they encounter but won’t deviate from a direct path to the shallows and therefore the nearest landmass. Upon arrival near land, they begin a metamorphosis similar to that of the common tadpole, but much faster.”
The holograph morphed into a whole new nightmare.
“Six legs emerge, three to a side, and the thermal sensors they were born with become more sensitive, similar to FLIR technology. The head enlarges, as does the mouth, which contains inward-facing teeth like a lamprey eel. A major difference is that each of the concentric rings of jaws are anchored to a separate plate of muscle. This enables each jaw to move side to side over a seventy-degree arc as well as disengage from all the other jaws. The result is an expandable mouth like a snake’s but with rotating jaws equipped wit
h teeth similar in hardness to carborundum.”
“My God,” Stewart said. “That’s like a tunnel-boring machine on legs.”
“Excellent analogy, Director. This version will crawl up on land at about the size of a large Norway rat. Each leg is equipped with two curving claws approximately two inches long. The tail changes as well, becoming more tubular rather than paddle-like and carrying a stinger that on the newly emerged will be about five inches long. The stinger is detachable should the kraykenast flick the tail, giving it a ranged weapon. Each stinger is coated with an extruded toxin similar in chemical constitution to that of the blue-ringed octopus.”
“The size of a rat?” Stacia asked.
“Initially. They expend all the nutrients they were born with as well as any ingested during their ascent from the depths. Upon reaching land, they are ravenous and will devour any animal they come across. They hunt with thermal vision and very sensitive auditory organs analogous to ears. The mouth is normally the same width as their heads, but with jaws disengaged, it can expand up to thirty percent larger. They grow very fast for the first month on land, reaching the size of a large dog, say a German Shepherd or Rottweiler.”
“That’s why the scout ship was in that Pacific trench,” Tanya said.
“Yes,” Omega answered. “Seeding the depths with stored eggs. It can be assumed that other deep-water sites around the world’s oceans were similarly prepared.”
“How many?” I asked.
“A scout ship such as the one destroyed by the carrier strike group could convey as many as four million eggs,” Omega said. “Generally, the Vorsook use about one million per planet. Kraykenast are considered an ecology killer, as they will strip a land mass of all animal life larger than a cockroach.”
“They look like powerful predators but they’re still just the size of a big dog, right?” Declan asked.
“One on one, a kraykenast is more than a match for the toughest dog,” Omega said. “Their skin is very tough, like an old vampire, and they heal wounds almost as fast as they eat. The world they evolved on has a gravity field seventy-five percent higher than Earth’s, so pound for pound, they are much stronger than terrestrial animals of similar size. But the most important detail is that they never hunt alone. If you see one, there are assuredly others nearby.”
“Are they as fast as a vampire or were?” I asked.
“No, but faster than normal humans,” Omega said.
“What is the other shoe?” Nika asked. “The one you have not yet dropped?”
“Kraykenast reproduce two ways, one via eggs laid by a mature adult of over two years of age. The second way is the problem. Kraykenast are hermaphroditic and fertile at two weeks of age. They mate during feeding frenzies, and each can produce a land-form offspring the size of a mouse every twelve days, assuming there is sufficient food available.”
“Good Lord,” Nathan said.
“An appropriate response, Director,” Omega said. “In one month’s time, the number of invasive predators could be over sixteen million; in two months, sixty-four million. There are over seven billion humans, a billion and a half cattle, one billion sheep, and over eighteen billion chickens on this planet. Food is more than sufficient.”
“Some will be killed for sure,” Stacia said.
“They are tough but not unkillable. Most firearms can kill them, although it would take excellent shooting or a multiple of shots. Bladed weapons, however are unlikely to be of much use by most humans, as individuals, unless very well trained, do not have the speed or strength to successfully fight them at close range. In fact, most modern humans have no training, nor are they conditioned for high-stress violent encounters. The lure of the internet has reduced both situational awareness and survival sense. Also, firearms are heavily controlled in most countries on this planet and not available to the general public.”
We sat in stunned silence until Adine pulled out her phone and placed a call. “Yeah, get General Creek’s personal belongings up here immediately.”
“The necklace,” Tanya said in realization.
“Oh dear, that would be rather useful,” Nathan said.
Chapter 42
There was instantly so much to do and very little time. Omega estimated we should be seeing landfall by kraykenast in as little as forty-eight hours.
It fell to Nathan to inform the president. Omega notified the other world governments, giving them just two hours before he notified the general population of every country on the planet.
Tanya worked with Omega on the necklace, as it appeared to produce some kind of sonic code or cue that would repel the krays, as we were now calling them.
Declan was tasked with contacting the witches of College Arcane and preparing them for the coming battle. Stacia first called up her pack for protecting Declan, then helped him build out a strategy for maximizing the magic users’ effectiveness which included himself.
Demidova Tower had two state-of-the-art war rooms, one high up in the Tower near the heliport, and another, a backup, in an underground bunker below street level. We picked the first one and activated all its systems as well as the personnel Tanya had selected and trained to run it.
We had been preparing for war against aliens since we first learned of the Vorsook. An attack using aggressive shock troops had been on our radar since the diamond-skinned monsters of Rome. It was part of every government’s civil defense to prepare their respective populations for attack. That said, average preparedness was probably in the sixty percent range. Some countries, like Switzerland, Israel, Vietnam, New Zealand, and Japan were rated by Omega as being seventy-five percent prepared.
The agreed-upon global plans included fortified civil defense structures for civilians to evacuate to, hardened structures with food, water, medical supplies, and trained security forces. Every civilian was also supposed to have a grab-and-go supply bag ready at all times and each person was theoretically informed of an assigned evac site. The reality was mostly confusion mixed with chaos and liberally doused with a bit of panic. The planning had flowed from Omega to world leaders to individual national governments to local governments. Turns out there were a lot of dams and logjams in that information stream, because very few evac sites were fully supplied or adequately staffed. Add to that the fact that most of the personnel were barely trained in the basics of their jobs and you had a recipe for disaster. Actual civilian populations were for the most part unprepared, both in terms of personal bug-out supplies as well as even knowing where they were supposed to go. It was mostly due to politics, misinformation, and basic human nature. Without an enemy right in front of them, most people put the threat out of mind, and so did their leaders.
“Makes me wish for a return to the Fifties and Sixties,” Gramps commented as he watched both the news and defense updates that we received in the war room. “The nation was so much better prepared for war, or at least the civilian part was.”
Omega, by virtue of owning almost every computer everywhere, as well as having the keys to the world’s nuclear arsenal, had assumed overall control. Our little group, which had no formal authority per government charter or constitution, had mixed results in obtaining cooperation in our own efforts. Anything Coven-related answered to us, and many of the shapeshifting communities listened to us as well. But overall, it was like herding drugged and psychotic cats.
One area that seemed to go well for us was Declan’s plans for utilizing his fellow witch students, who had all received training by either him, his aunt, or in some lucky cases, both. And because of the level of power, skill, and status he’d achieved in the witching world, their home Circles paid very close attention to his ideas. The pack of weres at the school had also bonded with our warlock, and like the witches, brought the ideas to their home packs. The result was one of the few things that looked optimistic.
“So every witch at the school will return to their home, village, state, or country and prepare a portal circle—even if they, themselves, can�
��t power it up?” Lydia asked during his presentation.
“Exactly. They prepare a portal, snap photos of it, and upload to Omega. He can share it with those of us able to open portals so that we can use them to either move fighters, evacuate civilians, or both at the same time. Kind of like the US Interstate system.”
“And more importantly, you could portal to any place that needed heavy magic firepower,” Lydia said.
“I guess,” he said, “but don’t discount these witches. Aunt Ashling taught me; now she’s taught them.”
“And you’ve done your own share of special seminars,” Tanya said, looking at a list on her phone. “Combat shielding, energy transformation under stress, directed energy from fire, earth-based combatives, simultaneous air assault and defense, telekinetic attacks, plus you organized a water witch seminar even though it’s your weakest element.”
“The Book of Darkest Sorrow was almost a field manual for this stuff,” he said. “I seem to remember everything in it.”
“That defense teacher, Jenks, had some clever ideas for the witches to try out too,” Stacia added.
"My point is each of those witches has taken that training home at every school break and holiday, disseminating it throughout Circles all over the world.”
“How many countries are represented now,” Lydia asked.
“Thirty-eight,” Tanya said. “Along with twenty-nine Circles around the United States.”
“How about the military responses?” one of Stacia’s wolves, Bruce Devaney, asked. I recalled that he and Lydia had gone out for a bit, but it had ended not too long ago. Oddly, each seemed okay with it.
“Omega?” I asked.
“Better than the civil programs,” he said over the hidden speakers in the war room. “Most militaries took the threat to heart when we first announced it. Preparation and capabilities fall in line with national defense readiness pre-Vorsook. The US, most of Europe, China, Japan, Australia, Canada, India, Pakistan, and much of the wealthier Middle Eastern countries are quite well prepared and deploying to vulnerable coastlines in their respective geographies. The rest vary considerably. Also, there have been a couple of instances of naval patrol regions overlapping among the Big Three; a bit of competition, if you will. I have resolved several moments of contention and have fine-tuned their areas of operation, which should curtail these conflicts. Also, please be advised that I have just received an update from the Peruvian navy. Both military and civilian sailors are reporting sightings of krays in shallow waters.”
