Mattie realized he was still wearing the hospital gown and no shoes. He ran back into the medical center and retrieved his clothing and gear from his room. He was back in the parking lot in a flash. As they climbed into the car, Mattie heard screaming coming from a building at the far end of the parking lot.
“Help! Help us please! The guards ran off, we’re locked in! Someone please!”
“Wait here, I’ll be back.”
Against his better judgment, Mattie jogged to where the screams were coming from. He found an empty building full of holding cells—the base’s interrogation center. The cries were coming from one of the cells at the end of a long hallway. Mattie found Jing Wei and her husband, faces white, hands bruised and bleeding from trying to claw their way out of the cell.
“Please help us!” she screamed again. Her long dark hair was pulled back, revealing fine Asian features with few age lines, even though Mattie knew her to be in her fifties. Charles was about the same age, born in the United States to Chinese parents. They’d met while working at Project Chronos.
Mattie wondered what sort of answers the interrogators were able to pull out of the couple. Of course, with the true culprits behind E-Day revealed, these two were obviously innocent. Any contact Jing may have had with a Chinese spy meant nothing now. He could just leave them in the cell, but something told him they might be useful. They were, after all, brilliant scientists. Mattie yanked the door off.
“Come with me. Let’s get out of here.”
They ran back to the car and hopped in with Chen, Holly, and Evangelista.
“What are they doing here?” Chen said in disgust.
“They may have broken rules at Chronos, but they’re obviously not responsible for this.” Mattie pointed to the sky. “We may need their expertise.”
Chen grumbled, and Holly looked at the two former prisoners through narrowed eyes, not saying a word.
“Well, what the hell are we waiting for?” Chen snarled. “Let’s get out of here. Or do you want to wait around for a close encounter of the most unpleasant kind?”
Evangelista turned the ignition just as the first of the blue drops came within range of the base. Instead of hitting the ground, they exploded in the air, like fireworks, spreading blue and green streaks across the night sky. More and more drops fell in a brilliant cascade, exploding and filling the sky around them. The streaks drifted down, promising something destructive.
“Step on it, Evangelista!” Holly yelled.
The old soldier accelerated out of the parking lot. Overhead, a squadron of fighter jets moved in to intercept the falling particles, then the jets disappeared. One second they were there, the next they were gone.
"Oh shit! Did you see that!" Mattie yelled.
"The jets just disappeared or disintegrated or something," Holly said. "They didn't even get a shot off. Damn! We're in trouble."
"Weaponry beyond our understanding," Chen added. "Like magic."
The EM pulse cannons began firing all over the base, but the particles continued to fall. The car left the parking lot, and Evangelista steered it onto the main road leading off the base. Tanks and other equipment were moving into position for defense against an aerial attack. And still the particles drifted down, like glowing blue snowflakes.
Five silent minutes later they got to the base exit. It was manned by two guards who were glancing skyward nervously as they scanned Mattie’s palm.
“Not staying for the fight, Colonel?”
Mattie felt a pang of guilt. He was abandoning his men. He had no idea where they were on the base, but now that he was fully recovered, he should be with them. If anyone was capable of fighting this new threat, he was. He couldn’t leave everyone to die.
“Just escorting these folks safely to the gates, Sergeant. I’m heading back now.”
“Mattie, no.” Holly grabbed his arm.
“I can’t abandon my men. I’ll catch up to you. Don’t worry—I can handle whatever these aliens throw at me.”
Holly started shaking her head but before she could say anything, Mattie jumped out of the car and turned back to the base. The car sped off, tires squealing.
He needed to find a weapon. Preferably two. Perhaps one of the new mini-pulse cannons and a more traditional plasma rifle. But before he could move, the blue-green particles stopped falling and just hovered over the base. Spotlights shot up from all over the perimeter, casting light on this new threat.
They looked like hideous Portuguese man o’ wars floating in the sky. Their bulbous blue tops pulsated, and trailing out below them, greenish tendrils undulated like snakes.
The base’s weapons began firing at them. The sounds of explosions and machine gun fire were deafening, but the weapons had no effect. The missiles were blocked by bluish round bubbles that appeared around each of the creatures or objects. It was shielding of some type.
The sound of weapons fire subsided. And Mattie immediately knew why. Everything mechanized—huge tanks, pulse cannons, fighter jets—was disappearing, gone in a flash, like candles being blown out. They simply evaporated.
Mattie couldn't believe his eyes. His heart sank as all the hope and optimism he had for the future drained from him. What were these new weapons these aliens were using? They hadn't prepared for anything like this, and they didn't stand a chance.
The men continued fighting, firing their hand weapons to no avail. Those in armored vehicles and manning pulse cannons disappeared with their weapons of war. Another round of EM pulse bombs lobbed overhead, exploding and sending their shockwaves downward, onto the floating man o’ wars.
They were not affected.
Mattie turned his focus higher—more streaks were coming down from the alien ship. These didn’t stop and explode like the first barrage; instead they just kept coming, plowing through the atmosphere. One crashed into the middle of the base.
He jumped onto the guard tower to get a better look.
Buried in the ground was a tall cylinder, cone-shaped at the top and glowing red. The cone began spinning, sucking in dirt and debris. Mattie felt tiny pebbles hitting the back of his neck. He reached out and grabbed a handful of grit as it fly by him.
His hand was filled with dead nanobots.
A mini-tornado formed around the spinning cone as it pulsed red, beating like an evil glowing heart. When the top erupted like a geyser, spewing a fountain of purple matter into the night sky, Mattie knew immediately what it was.
The nanobot swarm reborn.
He grabbed a pulse weapon from one of the guards and jumped off the tower. As he fell to the ground, he fired right into the heart of the creatures, but nothing happened. None of them fell.
And the swarm spread.
It overtook the men standing nearby, devouring them. Mattie continued to fire, but it did nothing.
Then the swarm was on him.
He looked down and could immediately tell these creatures were different from the others. They were larger, about the size of a flying cockroach, with razor-sharp mandibles and barbed legs. They bit into his flesh. His nanovirus-enhanced immune system immediately took over.
Then the world around him disappeared.
Mattie was inside a vortex of data flowing around him, information streaming from all the man-o’-war-like devices floating above him, from the reconstituted nanobots, from the giant ship orbiting the planet, and finally from the minds of something very alien—the architects of the invasion.
He reached out with his mind and touched one of the alien invaders. Then he felt a neural connection with millions more. He could see through their eyes. He could read their thoughts, their linked thoughts. They were huge bulky creatures, born on a planet larger and denser than Earth, with heavier gravity. They were hardened by centuries of war. And they saw him, all his memories and all the thoughts of his life.
He could feel their weariness and frustration from traveling for so long through the emptiness of space. Now they wanted only to stretch their legs and brea
the fresh air. They were expanding their empire, looking for a new planet to colonize, and they’d found it. They just needed to exterminate the insects that infested it.
The humans.
He felt a searing hatred as the aliens probed his mind—an intense desire for him to die. And they certainly had the technology to make it happen, devices so advanced they seemed like magic to the human eye. Mattie couldn’t begin to understand the mysteries on board the mother ship.
He felt the alien inquisition into his mind dig deeper. They were looking for something. Images of the destroyed Chronos lab flashed before his eyes. He knew the base was for time travel and now the aliens did too. He felt something like surprise, then anger—or was it fear—from the creatures. It was hard to tell. But now, through his memories, they knew humans had time travel capability and that could pose a threat to them.
Enough of this. Mattie used his willpower to sever the link with the aliens. He couldn't let the aliens pull information about the second base from his mind. That was their only hope now. He’d seen enough, as had they. There would be no negotiating with them. They saw humans as nothing more than vermin, inferior to them in every way. They were here to eradicate the human race and take Earth for themselves.
Slowly the world came back into focus. The nanobot cockroaches were still crawling on his body, biting him, but he this time he felt a mental connection with them. It was very similar to what he’d experienced with Raphael; however, these creatures had much simpler thought patterns and programming. Their goal was simply to eat and breed.
He concentrated and willed the creatures to leave him. Dozens of the horrible things flew into the air, buzzing off to join the rest of the swarm.
Around him, nothing was left.
All buildings had been completely wiped out, down to the foundations. All military equipment, the entire arsenal of the base, was just gone. And no people were around. Everyone who hadn’t fled earlier was dead—the entire base of over three thousand. Not even ashes remained.
Moving off, headed east toward the horizon, were the floating man o’ wars and the growing swarm of refurbished nanobots. The giant conical tube-thing was walking, four crab-like legs protruding from its underside. It was still spinning, pulling in the nanobots they’d destroyed earlier and shooting new ones out of its top, like an erupting volcano. Far above, the alien ship slowly moved away, looking for its next target, ready to drop more horrible creatures down upon them.
Holly and the others had driven west. If they were still alive, he needed to find them and anyone else that had survived the attack.
With Chronos One destroyed, they only had one option for survival—the second site. And Mattie knew getting there would not be easy. The alien invaders would make sure of that.
Chapter 28
8:00 a.m. Local Time, January 16, 2038
Chronos Two, Hillah, Iraq
The devastation was like nothing Buddy Paulson had ever seen.
The entire U.S. military had simply been erased out of existence. Everything was gone. Not broken or destroyed, but gone. Disappeared.
And more alien ships had arrived, hundreds, orbiting the earth. They were positioned over major cities and military installations, dropping new seeds of destruction far more devastating than the virus or the first wave of nanobots. It was as if the aliens had adapted and were leaving nothing to chance. They sought only total destruction.
Paulson paced back and forth down the hallway outside the main conference room. The Joint Chiefs were filing into the room, but they were still waiting for the president. Paulson wasn’t ready to go in just yet. He needed to get himself under control first. He couldn’t help thinking how he should’ve seen this coming. How he should’ve been prepared for it. The virus came from deep space, and they should’ve mounted a stronger orbital strategy with defense platforms and weaponized space stations.
“Stupid,” he whispered to himself, kicking the wall.
“The president is gathering some last-minute data; he will be there in the next fifteen minutes or so.” The message came from Diaz’s chief of staff.
The others got the same message, and Paulson heard their impatient grumblings. He decided to take a quick walk to clear his head. Since the second wave of the attack hit, he’d strapped his pistol to his belt, like an old western gunslinger. He gently stroked the grip of the weapon as he barreled down the hallway, moving faster and faster. He needed to get outside. Get some fresh air.
He ran down the stairs, not willing to wait for the elevator, and exploded out of the doors into the lobby. The giant time vortex lay behind him. He didn’t even bother looking at it, he just wanted out. He just wanted all of this to be over. He’d been counting on it being over.
He ran out of the building, the guards saluting him as he flew past. When he got outside, he looked up at the rocky ceiling far above. The weight of the cavern felt oppressive, like the weight of the entire world folding down upon him. Far above he knew the alien ships waited for them, ready to exterminate all humanity. He needed no in depth intel to tell him their intentions. They'd already proven they wanted to kill everyone with the introduction of the virus and nanobots, and now the destruction of the military.
“Fucking alien bastards,” he said quietly as he reached for his pistol.
He yanked the weapon out of its holster and pointed it up at the ceiling.
“I’ll kill all you motherfuckers!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.
He squeezed the trigger, and the gun exploded in rapid automatic fire. There was more firepower in that tiny high-tech handgun than most tanks of a century ago. The heavy rounds hit the rocks far above, and explosions pulsed outward like Fourth of July fireworks. Tiny rocks fell down onto his head and scattered across the surrounding buildings like a hailstorm.
Paulson felt the tension drain from his body as the rounds drained from his gun. Soldiers came running, their own weapons drawn. He released his finger from the trigger as four or five men looked at him in shock, then searched for intruders.
“Are we under attack, sir?” asked one of the men, pointing his weapon at the ceiling.
“Not yet, Sergeant, but the world is under attack.”
Paulson put his gun back into its holster. He could still feel the heat from the weapon’s power on the outside of his upper thigh.
“Now it’s our turn to fight back.”
He turned and headed back to the conference room, ready now to discuss strategy in a civilized manner with the president and Joint Chiefs. He salivated at the thought of firing his weapon again, the next time at an alien’s head, or at whatever they had that passed for a head.
When he got back to the main conference room, he found a table filled with the sad and angry faces of the Joint Chiefs and the president. Everyone was talking at the same time, arguing about what they should do, how they should never give up fighting, how they should try to contact the aliens to make peace, how they should hide in their underground bunkers and hope the aliens didn’t find them.
President Martin Diaz sat at the head of the table, his head bowed, hands pressed to his forehead. He looked up, then he stood.
“Gentleman, please.”
The chatter quieted, and everyone turned their attention to Diaz.
“I’ve listened to all the ideas, all the speculation, and one thing is clear. There will be no peace with these invaders. They only want us dead. We saw that in the last timeline, and we see it repeated now. We have no weapons to fight them with. Even our nuclear arsenal has been wiped out of existence. We can try to hide, but I think that will only buy us a short amount of time. Eventually these aliens will find us and kill us.”
“What the hell can we do, Mr. President? Are you saying that we just give up?” General Craig asked.
“No!”
Diaz slammed his fist down onto the table.
“As long as I’m breathing, I will fight. The human race will not go extinct on my watch. We have only one option, and t
hat is Chronos. We have the power to go back in time and prevent this.”
“But, sir, we have no idea what type of weapons they’re even using, much less how to defend against them. And all of our offensive EM pulse weapons were useless against this new attack.”
“I think Senator Madison can help us there. Senator.”
Diaz nodded to Jeff, who stood.
“As most of you know, working as CEO of MadisonTech, I directed the development of most of the weapons we used against this invading force. They were effective, and we thought we’d won. However these new weapons are of a sort far more advanced than anything I could even imagine. From the video footage we’ve been able to piece together from the secure underground com-networks, and data from our remaining sensors, we see that all our defenses have just disappeared. I believe the aliens are using some type of singularity weapon, the only weapon that could make objects disappear without leaving a trace. But Dr. Franklin Whittenhouse is the expert in this type of technology. Doctor?”
Whittenhouse stood beside Jeff, looking confident, as always.
“A singularity weapon has been hypothesized for decades, ever since the first particle colliders began creating mini-black holes. But to create a usable weapon, you would need to shrink a particle accelerator down to about a tenth of the size of the ones we use now and then somehow shoot the singularities out of it, all the while keeping them stable and under control. I . . . I can’t even begin to understand how it could be done.”
“For us non-scientists, what is a singularity, doctor?" asked Secretary of Defense Calhoun.
Whittenhouse nodded.
"A singularity is a black hole, a very small one. When used as a weapon it's shot at an object and then absorbs all of the matter from that object in an instant."
"Then does it grow bigger?" Admiral McLean asked.
"In this case no. The singularities are too small. After absorbing the matter, they simply dissipate, giving off a small amount of energy, which our sensors have been able to pick up."
NanoSwarm: Extermination Day Book Two Page 23
