The sergeant glared at Michael. “Is there any member of your group not accounted for? If we leave them behind, they won’t fare too well.”
Michael stared back at the Sergeant. He hoped his eyes were giving nothing away, and he wondered where the hell Storm was hiding.
MacKay had caught the flicker in the astronomer’s gaze.
“The unit will incapacitate the RV before they go. It’ll be left good for temporary shelter, but not for much else. Anyone who remains in the forest has a bloody long walk ahead of them before they reach our camp or the town.”
Sergeant MacKay turned to watch Cameron offering his hand to Summer and Stella in an attempt to coax them down the steps of the RV.
A dog had squeezed past the woman and stood in the door of the truck. It jumped to the ground and stood off to the side of the corporal. Its posture was rigid and its head lowered. Even from where he stood, MacKay could see the raised hackles and bared fangs. When he heard the warning bark, he knew what was coming.
“Watch out, Corporal!” MacKay bellowed.
“I got it, Sarge,” Cameron said, placing his hand on Stella’s shoulder as she took a step down.
Champ launched into the air.
Cameron had made the mistake of taking his eyes off the dog. The corporal barely managed to step aside in time to escape the snapping jaws.
Champ landed on all four paws, and with a snarl, he spun around to come at the soldier once more.
Cameron had pulled his sidearm. He stood his ground, firing off three shots in quick succession.
Champ yelped and wheeled in a tight circle, biting at his side before he collapsed on the ground. He whimpered and lifted his head to lick the oozing blood making a sticky mess of his coat.
Summer reached the dog before the corporal could draw a bead on the animal’s head. She crouched down and gathered the dog up in her arms, rocking too and fro as four paws pumped the air.
Champ was taking his last run on a road only he could see.
“Move out of the way!” Cameron told her.
Storm stepped from behind the ambulance and strode toward the corporal, ignoring the soldiers and their guns. The rifle was almost hidden, held tight to his side until he was midway between the two vehicles.
“Drop your gun, you fucking asshole!” Storm said in a guttural voice he never knew he had.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Cameron asked in astonishment, staring at the rifle leveled at his chest.
“You are a bastard!” Storm said simply and brought the rifle up to his cheek, his finger tightening on the trigger.
If the corporal were a rabbit, Storm would have put him down already.
Sergeant MacKay turned to Michael. “Why didn’t you tell me, man?” He stepped into the clearing. “Put that gun on the ground!” he yelled at Storm.
Storm took another step forward. “He puts his down first.”
“Storm, we are not going to do this,” Michael called out.
Cameron turned his hand sideways and held up his sidearm. With great care, he placed the gun on the ground and took a step back.
“It’s okay. You should put the rifle down.”
“This fucking Ned Kelly is as good as dead, Corporal,” a soldier muttered menacingly.
Michael brushed his way between the line of soldiers and raised rifles.
“Come on, Storm,” he said. “Put the gun down. Don’t do this.”
“Storm, remember what Dad said to us?” Summer said as reached her brother.
“What was that, Sum?” Storm said, not taking his eyes away from Cameron.
“Don’t take stupid risks,” she said. “You don’t take risks when you have a choice.”
“How do we know they are not going to shoot us, anyway?”
Daylight flickered and dimmed. Fingers tightened on triggers. Unnoticed by all, the shadows in the clearing were quickly melting into one another.
Champ would have alerted them all to what was about to happen, but he lay still in the grass.
A gust of wind smacked into the surrounding trees, sending branches together in a great clatter. The hue of their surroundings, the reflections off the vehicles and guns, and even the color of the forest shifted a moment beforehand.
It happened with terrible suddenness. The upper atmosphere ripped away from the planet with the squeal of a million banshees shrieking in unison. The sky unzipped from the sides to the center to reveal a jet-black firmament studded with bright objects.
A planet that appeared the size of the Moon but with the color of burnt orange was north in the sky. The great ball glowed as if it was surrounded by an aura. There were other objects too, like bright stars, but further out, bigger than the stars any pair of eyes staring up had seen before. As the sky continued to pull back, the horizon shimmered like a mirage in the desert.
They held their hands to their ears, barely able to process what they saw and heard. No one, not even Michael, registered the three black dots passing on the slightest of diagonals across the planet’s burnt surface.
More than the objects, it was the sudden revelation of a night sky that rooted them to where they stood, unable to move. It was the sheer shock of night arriving in the middle of the day.
The clatter of a gun hitting the ground brought MacKay to his senses.
“Soldier, pick up your weapon!”
The stunned man flinched, but he didn’t turn his head away from the night sky in the middle of the day.
“Look at me,” MacKay barked. The sergeant felt the panic that was spreading like a wave through the troops and knew Private Jones was at its very center.
The terrified man turned to his commanding officer, slack-jawed and making strange sounds. It took several long seconds before scooped his gun from the ground. All the while he held the stare of the sergeant.
MacKay pointed to Cameron’s vehicle, his voice husky and shaking.
“Get your people into that Bushy,” he said to Michael. “There’s room enough for all of you.”
Michael could not believe his own eyes, but he knew he was gazing at the location of the dark star. The shimmering was the event horizon that hid the thing.
MacKay shook Michael’s arm. “Snap out of it, man!”
But even the sergeant couldn’t help himself and he turned to look back, his hand dropping to his side.
“The sky is on fire!” Sergeant MacKay exclaimed.
“That’s not fire,” Michael said. “I never thought it would ever…”
He fell speechless, then he shouted out loud in fear and exaltation.
“Allah Akbar!”
The Shimmering
The dark swirling core of a single empty eye stared back at Earth. The tiny star invisible to all but the most advanced telescope sat on the edge of the world, content for the time being to pause there before it set beneath the horizon. It’s massive invisible mantle, an affect of starlight pulled into the great gravity sink that surrounded it, extended outwards into the vacuum for hundreds of thousands of miles. If it were possible to gaze upon the core, all that could be seen would be a small ball surrounded by captured starlight. A pip seed compared to the Moon. The closest depiction of its image ever produced by humanity, the Al-Hajar Al-Aswad: The black stone of Mecca, an oval of ebony set in swirls of silver.
Michael was weeping.
“Where did the Sun go?” Sergeant MacKay cried out in disbelief.
MacKay was struggling to maintain his grip on reality. One part of him wanted to run until he found a hole and crawled into it. Oh, he was trying so very hard.
“It’s still there, but now so is its twin,” Michael replied. “We have two stars, not one!”
“Two stars?” MacKay asked in bewilderment. “They would have told us…”
“They even managed to hide its approach from our telescopes!” Michael murmured, unable to take his eyes off the shimmer.
“How can they do that?”
“They control what we know and what w
e see,” Michael told him. “There’s the cause of climate change for you! They turned the sky into a giant movie screen so we wouldn’t see it. Now it is so close they are unable to hide it.”
MacKay could feel his reality tearing at the margins, and he turned to the scientist.
“I know you! You’re the director at Siding Spring, but you were supposed to have died in the fire.”
“I was the director and the only one to escape alive. I can tell you that it was a team of assassins that killed my colleagues and detonated bombs that burned down my observatory.”
“What’s bloody happening to everything?”
“Our sun’s twin is a dark star that has returned home. As it comes closer, it draws off energy from the Sun. Eventually, it will absorb so much the Sun will turn black as its twin swings around it. Then the dark star will shoot back into space and take its orbitals with it.”
“That’s all?” MacKay asked, his voice breaking as he fixed his gaze on Michael.
He was concentrating on information gathering, leaving his corporal to sort out the troop. He was hoping to hear something that might give him hope that his world was going to continue.
“I expect we will have a pole shift and it will be a global catastrophe of biblical proportions.”
“What exactly is a pole shift,” MacKay asked.
“The surface of the planet will change with great rapidity,” Michael continued. “We are lucky to be alive to witness such an important moment in the history of the planet. Of our solar system.”
Cameron took the gun from the boy’s hand.
Storm did not resist, and the two stood side-by-side staring at the terrible rip and what it had revealed.
“Pen, this is not right,” Franchette whimpered to her daughter.
Penny stood beside her mother, unable to find the words enough to answer.
Aunty Wanganeen reached a hand out to Summer, gripping the girl’s shoulder.
“The old one has returned,” she said with eyes wide.
Deep below the surface of the Australian shelf, there came a crunch, then seconds before the quake struck they heard the sound of an approaching train. The ground slammed upwards and knocked them to their knees. Then it fell away, only to rise once more with the ferocity of a bull bucking its unwanted rider.
The RV lurched backward and one wheel sank into a newly torn crevice. The momentum of the moving front end forced the vehicle to hop sideways, twisting panels and popping rivets.
The soldiers lay flat on their stomachs until a couple of minutes passed and the tremors grew smaller in size and number.
“Soldiers, on your feet!” MacKay called out. “Anyone hurt?”
“Okay here, Sarge.”
“All good here, Sergeant.”
Cameron ran over to the sergeant’s side. “Sarge?”
MacKay snapped at him. “Get everyone in the vehicles. Carter and Fudgeface can escort Jones to my truck. You take the civvies with you and whatever from the unit you can fit in the Bushy. I’ll take the rest.”
Cameron nodded. “Yes, Sarge.”
“You have a couple of kids in Brisbane, don’t you?”
“Sarge?”
“Brisbane’s too far away, Corporal!” He said and slapped Cameron on the back before he strode away. “It’s about time you thought about a visit home.”
Cameron stared after the sergeant in dismay then he pulled himself together.
“Okay,” he shouted. “We’re moving out!”
He walked over to the prostrated soldier. “Get on your feet, man.”
Jones had his arms outstretched. “Oh, Lord Jesus,” he cried out, his face lifted to the visage above.
“Jones, Jesus won’t be coming down today. Maybe tomorrow, but not today.
But Jones was not listening. He only cried out louder for deliverance.
“I said, shut up!” Cameron bellowed. “That’s an order!”
“My God, my savior. I am your humble…” Jones shouted.
Cameron slammed his boot into the back of the soldier, sending him face first into the dirt. He looked around at his team.
“Sergeant wants everyone in the Bushies. Now!”
A soldier stepped forward. “Corporal, what about the civvies?”
“They’re coming with us.”
“In the Bushy?”
“That’s right! And Carter—”
“Corporal?”
“You and Fudgeface help Jones into the back of Sarge’s Bushy. You are both to stay with him until you get back to base.”
“Got it, Corporal.” Carter shouldered her rifle. She felt a huge relief at the thought of heading back to join the rest of the company. She picked up the soldier’s gun.
“Come on then,” she said gently, slipping a hand under Jones’s arm. She looked up at Murphy. “Hey, Fudgeface! Are you helping me or not?”
Murphy tore his eyes away from the dark shimmer and gave her a nod.
Storm and Darren crouched beside Matthew as he examined the RV. All of them trying hard not to catch another glimpse of their new night sky.
“We could just drive out, couldn’t we?” Storm asked. “It’s a four-wheel drive, after all.”
Matthew stared at the rear wheel suspended over the gaping space. He dropped to one knee and peered under the vehicle.
“That lot isn’t going to give us any help,” he said.
Matthew kept his voice low. “You heard them. They want us to get in their trucks. They will take us to their camps. Stuff that! What do you think is going on with the sky?”
“I think they just chose to just reveal everything by pulling back the curtain. Like a—a grand reveal,” Storm said. “Martyn told me they wouldn’t be able to hide it for much longer.”
“If that was controlled then it must be a really awesome version of shock and awe!” Darren said, his voice shaking.
“Yeah,” Matthew muttered. “That’s what it is, alright. Shock and awe.”
MacKay watched the troops climb into his truck. He was doing his best to digest all he had been told about the new world.
“We’ll make the base in no time,” he told Michael. “Don’t you worry.”
It wasn’t in MacKay’s nature to be anything other than optimistic, but the words came out with more conviction than he was feeling.
Michael never blinked. “We are going to Wingari.”
MacKay frowned. “To Wingari?”
“That’s where we are going,” Michael said squaring his jaw.
Sergeant MacKay searched the astronomer’s face for a sign the man might be suffering a breakdown. How could anyone remain sane under the circumstances? Instead, he saw only balance and determination.
“What’s in Wingari?” He asked.
“A cave system going deep into the hills,” Michael replied.
“Are you certain about a cover up?”
“They didn’t tell us anything, did they?” Michael said. “And they’ve had years to prepare.”
“I heard we can put a hologram up there,” MacKay said.
“Probably, but that up there is no hologram. It’s real.”
“You are saying they wouldn’t warn the Army?” MacKay asked incredulously. “I am damned sure they would tell us! I don’t see the Red Army pulling back from the battle front! It has to be a projection.”
“We haven’t got time to argue,” Michael told him with a shake of his head. “You and your team can follow us. If you want to do that.”
“Do you think we’ll be getting another meteor shower?” The sergeant persisted.
“That’s an entire star system that’s invaded our own,” Michael replied. “At its center is a tiny star of immense density that will really screw with this planet, and it’s going to come a lot closer. The real threat is from its immense magnetic influence on us. A few hot rock is nothing compared to the sudden Earth changes we will face. And then there’s its affect on the Sun!”
“How’s it going to end?”
&nb
sp; “For most of us—not well. We all need to be underground, and right now!”
“What supplies have you got in the camper?”
“There’s water, food, medicine, and other critical stuff—like a water purifier. There are gas stoves to cook with…”
MacKay stared at the group gathering by the crippled RV. He had made up his mind.
Michael and Storm watched Cameron’s team transfer their supplies from the camper van into the back of the Bushmaster.
“Looks like we’re in the hands of the Army now,” Michael muttered.
“Where’d they go?” Storm asked.
“They’re returning to the Gwabegar internment camp,” Michael said. “Anyway, as it turns out, their arrival was a good thing for us. The corporal will be taking us to Wingari in his truck.”
Road to Wingari
The sky had reconstituted itself once more into a ceiling of cloud. The light was paler now. It as if the day had become one long dusk, and they switched on their headlights to compensate.
Darren played with the radio. “May as well listen out for whoever is broadcasting,” he said.
Storm watched Darren as he searched through the channels. It was enough time for him to miss seeing the red brake lights flash on the Bushmaster in front.
“Look out!” Penny shouted from the back.
Gravel spun up from the carrier’s tires, striking the ambulance with the sound of shotgun pellets. Thick white dust billowed outside the windows.
“For fuck’s sake!” Storm cried out as he tapped the brakes in an attempt to control the swerve. “I can’t see anything! Shit—hold on!”
He braked hard sending the ambulance into a slide. It struck the shoulder of the highway and came to a juddering stop.
Storm sat behind the wheel, staring into the dust that rolled up in front of the cab. He turned in his seat and saw that Penny was sprawled against the door.
“Pen!” He shouted.
She groaned as she sat up, bringing her hand to rub her head and staring with surprise at the blood on her fingers.
Storm clambered over the front seats and the stretcher fixed to the floor. He fell on his knees before her.
Jubilee Year: A Science Fiction Thriller (Erelong Book 1) Page 23
