Evan felt that electricity intensify. He saw the podium as his piano, the press as his audience, and today a grand concert playing out under perfect July weather: sunny, but not too hot. It seemed as if even the heavens blessed the day.
The President strode casually across the well-manicured lawn with a friendly smile and settled into the character of an approachable populist. As important the press conferences and news releases, Evan found that reporters responded well—and in a favorable manner—when you connected with them on a personal level.
"Angela, I hear you just had a birthday? You must be thirty-five now, is that right?"
Evan knew darned well that the broadcast reporter had passed forty a few years ago. And while she usually responded well to flattery, today her mood appeared less friendly.
"Yes, Mr. President. Tell me sir, what is the status of General Shepherd? Why hasn't he been charged yet? And I hear he has not been granted access to counsel. Is this true?"
Evan's smiled wavered. "Angela, why don't we save those questions for the conference. I thought I'd take this time to—"
"Mr. President," called a skinny black reporter from the Atlanta Times. "Senator Trimble is attempting to establish a Constitution Committee without your input, citing your lack of action as justification. Do you care to comment?"
The smile faltered further. "Doug, I was hoping to have a more informal discussion before the conference began. The representatives of the military are only just arriving. Tell me, are things as hot back home in Atlanta as they have been here in D.C.?"
Evan heard how forced his reply sounded even before it left his lips. He realized he had misjudged the situation. Evan decided to retreat but he could not leave. If he did, he would cede control of the upcoming press conference to the reporters as if throwing red meat to a pack of sharks.
"Mr. President, there are reports that General Brewer has taken a dreadnought beyond the treaty borders. Do you know why and has this action been undertaken with your blessing?"
Evan grew quite warm inside the dark suit he wore.
"Mr. President, do you have plans to introduce a time schedule for the formation of a Constitutional Convention?"
President Godfrey waved his hand in a calming manner toward the growing crowd of media and assured, "I'll get to that in a bit. Just give me a few moments to get set here."
He turned his attention to his binder, buying time under the guise of reviewing notes…
…Nina's keys jingled as she slipped one into the lock. The motion pushed open the busted door; no key required.
She moved inside with one hand instinctively resting on the butt of her rifle but quickly relaxed as she saw no further sign of intrusion. Satisfied no threat loomed, she closed the broken door as well as she could and stepped forward.
Her boot kicked something.
Nina looked to the floor. She saw a square package wrapped in brown paper, secured lengthwise with plain white string.
She stooped, grabbed the package, and stood again so as to better examine it. The delivery address listed Nina Forest, but no information in regards to sender…
…Ashley entered the lake side mansion through the front door walking in rigid but slow strides, feeling the eyes of the world upon her even though only a cleaning crew and a handful of bored staff watched.
That had been her way, of course. Ever since they had pulled her from the green goo through which she had rode time, Ashley's life had been one of appearances, of duty, of responsibility.
As she returned home she tried to find sanctuary in that role. She focused every muscle of her being on remaining in control; on maintaining the front of the elegant, proud first lady no matter how empty and alone she felt inside.
She climbed the stairs keeping her eyes forward. Her son followed.
The staff stared at her, surprised to see her return and amazed at the dignity she projected; not realizing how much strength she burned to project that image over a bleeding heart…
…Dante Jones stood on the White House roof gazing off at the Washington skyline. He did not know exactly why he came there each time the President held one of his press conferences. He also knew that this time he would be forced to leave his perch and stand alongside Godfrey, flashing smiles and shaking hands to show how splendidly they all got along.
He peeked over the side and saw the gathering reporters that seemed more a gathering storm. Evan stood at the podium with his eyes locked on a binder while ignoring sporadic questions. Apparently the President had walked in on an unexpected hornets nest.
Dante sympathized. At least Godfrey could block out the questions and the doubt with his politician's armor of arrogance. He wondered if Evan ever regretted anything.
Yet no matter what doubts bubbled in Jones' belly, he knew he had cast his lot. There could be no turning back. He could never undo what he had done, no matter how badly he wished he had not chosen so poorly.
The sound of an approaching transport diverted Dante's introspection. The sight of a landing Eagle did not surprise him, several such transports and helicopters had arrived and departed today. He wondered if it might do him some good to go downstairs and mingle with old friends. Or would facing those people only make his guilt more acute?
The Eagle flew in toward the northeast gate and descended.
A voice crackled from the radio attached to the holster strap around Dante's waist.
Tucker sounded somewhat unnerved, "I've got a transport landing over here, and you will not believe its call sign."
Far below Dante's rooftop perch, Ray Roos hustled through the West Wing in a fast walk with his sport jacket fluttering behind like bat wings. He replied on his radio, "I'm on it…"
…Inside the passenger compartment of Eagle One stood a rack of weapons. One shelf offered a plasma rifle captured from the Platypus-like aliens known as the Duass, another presented a Colt M-4, Trevor's weapon of choice.
But he chose another weapon for the day's work. A weapon on the top rung of the rack: a shiny Civil War era sword once wielded by Stonewall McAllister and bequeathed to the Emperor in that man's dying breathe.
An angry hand took hold of the blade, swiveled about, and opened the port side door. In rushed a blast of sunshine.
Trevor jumped from the compartment onto a makeshift receiving line complete with red carpet. To one side stood a small gathering of military officers. He noticed Cassy Simms and Benny Duda, as well as General Phillip Rhodes, Captain Carl Dunston, and others. In turn they saw a thin man with hair longer than they remembered, razor stubble on his cheeks, and energy—the energy of rage--radiating from his eyes.
Trevor ignored their gasps and shouts, keeping his attention straight forward as he stepped toward the entrance to the White House. In his way stood the short gray haired I.S. agent named Tucker.
Whether Tucker was too shocked to act or cowed into obedience did not matter; Trevor recognized the traitor's face. The sword drove into the man's belly, spearing him straight through. Tyr's killer crumbled over. Trevor yanked the blade free and the dead body fell to the ground.
The audience of guards and soldiers and officers dared not intervene. They could not be sure…did they see an enraged ghost or a crazed murderer? Whatever the truth, they sensed that any force standing in the way would be swept aside.
Trevor entered the East Room, passing buffet tables and shocked servers. The crowd hushed. A tray dropped. A Senator screamed.
The vengeful demon left the reception area and moved into the long Cross Hall where a colonnade separated that corridor from the large Entrance Hall.
Ray Roos—on the opposite end of the hallway—stopped.
Trevor marched forward.
Roos pulled an automatic pistol from beneath his sport jacket.
Trevor dodged out of view between columns.
Roos stepped fast to the other side of the colonnade just in time to see Trevor—still moving forward—weave back again like a skier slaloming between flags.
Again Roos followed; again not fast enough to fire but fast enough to see Trevor slip to the far side.
He jumped back again, this time with his gun raised in his right hand. But no sign of Trevor.
Roos darted back.
Something flashed in front of his eyes and he stood nose to nose with Trevor Stone.
Roos did not hesitate. He pulled the trigger on his gun at point blank range…but nothing happened.
Misfire?
Ray Roos glanced at his hand holding the gun and saw it lying on the floor in a puddle of red, detached from his arm at the wrist. He raised the stump and examined it with wide, child-like eyes.
"Well looky here…"
Trevor's sword swung again, sending Roos' head rolling across the red carpet…
…General Tom Prescott followed his aide through the front door of what had been the Long Beach Museum but now served as 2nd Corp's Signals and Communication station. He had been pulled from a meeting with community leaders by a message from General Bobby Bogart, one time assistant to General Shepherd but now the commanding officer of the Pennsylvania 1st Armored Division.
Meetings with community leaders were vital, especially now that attitudes toward The Empire, or nation, or whatever they were those days, finally started to show signs of change in California.
This particular meeting with the locals meant to win help in rooting out a handful of hit-and-run bandits sniping check points and harassing convoys. What a pity that meeting went unfinished. Bogart's summons better be good.
Prescott hurried through the building passing tables of electronic equipment some of which linked to portable radar stations along the beach and others to a series of sonar buoys dropped off shore: a sort of makeshift west coast tambourine line.
Bogart—easily identifiable by his big Lebanese nose--waited at the rear of the building near a glass door leading to a beachside patio.
"Pardon my French, but what the heck is it, Bobby?"
Bogart answered in a voice bordering on panicked, "We've got contacts."
Technicians seated at monitoring stations shouted, "Five Hundred Yards and closing," and "Multiple contacts" and "Airborne! Repeat I've got radar contacts in the sky."
Prescott hurried onto the patio with Bogart a step behind. A swift sandy breeze blew across the empty space there.
The General raised a set of field glasses. The hands holding the binoculars trembled.
He saw shapes climbing the horizon and closing on the shore line illuminated by a low-hanging sun. They seemed to be animals of a kind, born from some perverted nightmare. As they neared, they made a sound. A beastly groan from a chorus of damned creatures. Of war machines.
Of Voggoth's children.
"Oh my God…"
…Ashley reached the top of the stairs and stepped through the open doorway to Trevor's old office; the office that would be his once more. Her return to the mansion meant its rebirth. Once again that lakeside estate would become the epicenter of humanity's survival. Once again armies would march to war commanded from that place, led by an Emperor but one more focused, committed, and—yes—more barbaric than ever.
Her husband, she knew, served a mission. Just as she did. But as she slipped inside the office and stepped to the side against the wall, she let the front fall. Ashley leaned there next to the office door and raised a hand over her eyes.
JB hovered just outside the door hearing a sound he had refused to hear before; his mother's cry of loneliness…
…The string unknotted with a gentle pull; the brown wrapper peeled away in strips, leaving Nina holding a small box with a blue lid. No emblem. No markings.
Her hands quivered. Payment for her services had finally arrived from Ashley.
Feelings rippled through her; an ache in her belly; a hunger in hear heart.
The answers came in the form of a photograph and a disc labeled "New Year's Eve."
Her legs wobbled as she eyed the picture. It showed her wearing that black dress she had found hanging in her apartment the day her memories had been stolen.
In the picture, she stood among a row of people: Lori and Jon Brewer as well as Dante Jones, all of whom she knew to have been close friends of Trevor Stone going back to the earliest days of the invasion, maybe longer.
Next to her, with his arm slung around her waist and holding her close, stood Trevor. All of them smiling together. All friends. And yet, the way he held her so close…the way his arm wrapped around her…the look on her face; an expression of happiness so deep and real she nearly did not recognize herself…
…Evan Godfrey stood at the podium waiting for his VIP guests to arrive so that the press conference could begin. He had come outside early with the intension of gaining the media's trust, of taking control of the event. Instead, he felt uncomfortable and vulnerable.
A commotion pulled his eyes from the pages of notes and quotes and background information. The line of reporters seated on folding metal chairs rose to their feet one after another like stadium fans doing the wave all with wide eyes staring beyond Evan.
The President swiveled around.
A man descended upon Evan Godfrey in determined strides. A ragged man dressed in BDU pants and a black shirt carrying some long object in his hands. A man with eyes locked onto Evan's own.
Trevor. Trevor Stone.
The President's shock stymied any defense, any attempt at escape.
The warrior King who had come to reclaim his throne raised the sword with both hands in a clumsy but brutal downward thrust. The metal pierced the double breasted suit dead center and slowly but firmly plunged into Godfrey's sternum and out the other side.
The victim's knees bent forward while his shoulders and body slumped back. The blade finished its blow by firmly lodging in the ground, pinning President Evan Godfrey in a half-standing position; his arms dangling.
He coughed blood once. An insane smile flashed on his lips. His eyes glazed over.
Video tape rolled, cameras flashed, but no reporter spoke in anything other than gasps.
Trevor Stone gazed at Godfrey's corpse for a moment, and then instinctively shot his eyes up toward the roof of the White House. There Dante Jones stood, watching the carnage below with an unhinged jaw and scared eyes.
Trevor turned around and walked back inside…
…It wasn't very big—maybe the size of a small car—but it made a Hell of a noise. A screaming noise, as if it were a wounded animal in horrendous pain. From a distance, it resembled a stained green sheet wrapped around a ball with the ends of that sheet flapping like a kite trapped in a gale. It made Prescott think of a ghost, a specter, some kind of spook.
However, this 'Spook'—about the tenth so far—rose from the mouth of one of the whale-things. The 'Spook' hollered as it swept over the beach before finding a target and diving as if it were a kamikaze pilot, hitting a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and exploding both of them in a burst of fire, sand, and shrapnel.
"Get those tanks on the beach!" Prescott screamed at Bogart through a radio above bursts of automatic fire coming from the rear patio. "We have to hold them on the beach!"
Bobby Bogart's voice replied from a tank cupola, "I've got two more columns coming up. They'll be here in five minutes!"
Bogart's first column of Abrams lined in a row of eight along East Ocean Boulevard. Their main guns fired one after another, slamming into the phalanx of rough-skinned whale-things that served as landing craft, each twenty yards wide and twice as long.
One of the ships suffered a critical hit, listed, and tossed about chaotically on the surf bleeding a type of yellow puss. The others—a hundred of them—continued toward shore stopping periodically to release batches of flying nasties.
Human infantry manned hastily-improvised barricades facing the beach from Ocean Boulevard. Machine guns and light artillery fired toward the Pacific at the mass of ships; or were they monsters?
In reply, one of The Order's own battleships—something like a piece of coral
with barrels—launched a bombardment of its own. The big round shells resembled water balloons, spreading a splash of killer acid on men and equipment, mortally wounding both. The disintegrating liquid worked too fast to allow for screams. Prescott saw a dozen of his troops melt away in the blink of an eye.
One of the flying 'Spooks' hit the roof of the museum and detonated. Plaster fell, glass smashed, someone cried out. A smell of burning wood drifted through the room.
Prescott ignored the hit and screamed to a radio man, "Get me a main line back east. They have to—"
"General!" A soldier's shout managed to reach his ears above the sound of battle.
Prescott followed the voice toward the patio, only to be greeted by fleeing men.
"Stand your ground! We have to stop them on the beach!"
How silly that sounded even to Tom's own ears as he saw the weapon Voggoth had sent against them.
It rose out of the water some five-hundred yards off shore. Rising…rising… impossibly big much like The Empire's own dreadnoughts, but the grotesque form of the beast made it far more hideous.
Prescott wandered onto the balcony, transfixed by the sight. He forgot about the bullets and enemy projectiles whizzing by; the tanks firing; the kamikaze 'Spooks' dive-bombing armored vehicles. He forgot about all that because he knew none of it made any difference anymore. He was already dead.
At that moment, he came to see all their efforts for the last ten years to be in vain; all the battles won insignificant. At that moment, General Tom Prescott understood that someday soon, the Earth would belong to Voggoth.
Beyond Armageddon IV: Schism Page 49
