Oracle

by Douglas E. Richards

  “Good,” said Stinnett. “I know I don’t have to remind you that killing this woman is everything. If she calls off her mission and remains alive, you’ve failed. And even though I can’t tell you her exact role in the Vorian plan to destroy humanity, if we don’t kill her here and now, the consequences will be devastating. Obviously, wiping out all Vors and avoiding losses on our side is a plus. But nobody leaves that forest until Abbott is dead.”

  “Roger that,” said the SEAL commander. “Are you still in contact with the Tart commander stateside?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Can you confirm that you’re both getting the video feeds from the Tarts’ body cameras?”

  There was a short pause. “Yes, our computers indicate that the feed from all six hundred eighteen cameras is coming in clearly.”

  “I recommend that you turn off all but a few of them per team. Over six hundred views of the battle will be too chaotic to make sense of.”

  “The Tarts have developed advanced algorithms to handle this,” said Stinnett. “They’ve programmed an AI to sort through all feeds and only present those that are most informative. The AI will rotate through various scenes as necessary to give us the most efficient, comprehensive picture of what’s happening. We may even get a better sense of the battle than you.”

  “That may be true,” said DeMarco. “Regardless, I request continued full operational control of all forces, human and Tartarian, even after we engage the enemy. I’d ask for you to confirm this with the Tart commander and have him instruct his people to follow my orders without question. Despite your ability to see a video feed, you still aren’t on the battlefield, sir, and neither is the Tart commander. And since you’re six thousand miles away, there’s a communication time lag. It’s very brief, but given how quickly events will unfold here, it will likely become a significant hindrance.”

  The commander paused. “Also,” he continued, “our forces have considerable experience fighting in a forest environment. In an Earth forest environment. The Tarts, on the other hand, no matter how well trained they might be, are dealing with sub-optimal lighting for their species, and are breathing air that is also sub-optimal.”

  “Understood,” said Stinnett. “I’ll discuss this with Shane Frey, the Tartarian commander, now.”

  Less than a minute later his voice returned. “Your request has been granted, Commander,” he said. “Commander Frey has agreed, and is even now instructing his forces to follow your orders throughout the operation.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Secretary,” said DeMarco. “I promise you, sir, that you won’t regret it. Nothing will stop me from carrying out my mission, no matter what it takes.”

  “Thank you, Commander. Of that I have no doubt.”

  59

  Wilson Stinnett sat at a large circular table in Shane Frey’s spacious factory office and stared at an eighty-inch monitor attached to the wall, now broken into just eight tiles, each showing a different view of the Albanian forest. Kaitlyn O’Connor was seated next to him, and Shane Frey and Eldamir Kor were directly across, but all could easily see the monitor.

  Two Tartarian women stood watch in the corners of the office, their guns ready in case Kaitlyn tried something stupid.

  “All teams are in place, Mr. Secretary,” said the voice of SEAL Commander Horace DeMarco through a speaker in the ceiling, several hours after his last report. “We’ve yet to see any sign of Vors or Anna Abbott,” he continued. “Not that this is conclusive, given invisibility. But we’ve laid enough vibration sensors to encircle the portal, about a quarter mile out from it, which will alert us if they pass through. We’ve had a few false alarms, caused by forest animals, but nothing else.”

  “Understood, Commander,” said Stinnett. “The AI is choosing views from the Tarts’ body cams, and I’ll be watching carefully. If I see any leaves moving on their own, or twigs being crushed on the ground, I’ll alert you immediately.”

  “Roger that, sir. The portal is due to activate in seventy-eight minutes. So this is crunch time. Abbott has to be in the woods by now, and I need to be in constant contact with individual team commanders. So this will be our last communication until after she’s dead. Unless you see something important in the interim and contact me. Tell the Tartarian commander that his . . . people, are in good hands.”

  “Will do, Commander DeMarco,” said Stinnett. “Stay frosty.”

  Kaitlyn tried to remain calm, but without much success. DeMarco had no idea that he was about to walk into a buzz saw and lose nearly the entire force under his command before Anna was killed. Frey, of course, hadn’t told his own people that he had sent them on a suicide mission. He hadn’t shared that if things worked out the way he hoped, the vast majority of them would be dead, torn to shreds and left as an all-you-can-eat buffet for the insects and creatures of the forest.

  But the massacre of at least seven hundred humans and Tartarians didn’t trouble Kaitlyn nearly as much as the loss of forty-one Vorians. This left her heartbroken. But Frey was right. If they backed off now to save lives, it would cost them even more later.

  Frey was lost in thought, but finally turned his attention to the Vorian chief scientist. “Kaitlyn,” he said, “I need you to contact Vega. I’ll briefly allow your signal to get through. I assume you’ve programmed your comms by now for Vorian to English conversion, and vice versa.”

  Kaitlyn nodded. “We have,” she confirmed.

  This was one of the first actions protocol dictated, for the benefit of fellow Vorians just arriving on Earth. Their strong conscious minds and memories allowed them to suck in languages very quickly, but there were a number of languages to learn, depending on where they were assigned, so these translation programs helped them ease into the new world.

  “Good,” said Frey. “Run the translation program through the speakers, so we hear both sides of the conversation in English.”

  “And why am I talking to Tom Vega?”

  “To see if you can glean any valuable information. Try to get him to tell you if he’s seen any hostile forces. How far out from the portal he and his team are. Anything that could help our efforts.”

  Kaitlyn took a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll do my best,” she said.

  ***

  Tom Vega had never walked through a woods with forty fellow Vorians and an irreplaceable human before. And he especially hadn’t done so when each member of this group was invisible. But on the whole, he thought it was going well.

  Individual invisibility conferred enormous advantages, but it precluded marching in tight formations. They had spaced out enough to prevent endless collisions, and individuals had only run into each other three times over many hours of hiking. They all maintained communication through their comms, and since all but Anna could use these subvocally, communication was largely silent.

  “Tom, it’s Kaitlyn,” said the voice of his chief scientist in his ear, using their native language.

  “Kaitlyn?” he responded subvocally. “Why are you calling? Is Stinnett okay?”

  “Still unconscious,” replied Kaitlyn. “But his vitals are improving. I’m not calling about that. I just wanted to wish you and your team luck. How’s it going so far?”

  “Good, as far as we know. Colonel Redford is calling the shots from Huntington, and we haven’t seen any Tartarians. We’ve scouted the area many times over the past twenty-four hours, and there’s been no sign of them. I expected this to be the case, since they don’t know our portal is here. But we had to assume the worst, as you know.”

  “How long before the portal is receptive?” she asked.

  “About seventy minutes,” replied Vega. “We’re seventy minutes away from achieving a goal we’ve hoped to attain for thousands of years. It doesn’t seem real to finally have this chance.”

  “Is the portal in sight?” she asked excitedly.

  “No. We’re still a mile to the northeast. The colonel is about to deploy our forces in strategic positions along this
route, to protect us as we approach. So I need to go. Don’t contact me again until this is over, even if the secretary takes a turn for the worse.”

  “Understood,” said Kaitlyn. “Sounds like you have everything under control. Good luck, Tom.”

  Vega walked in silence for almost a minute, while Redford continued to issue orders to various members of the group.

  “Tom, this is Anna,” whispered a human voice through his comm. “Were you just in contact with someone?”

  “How did you know?”

  “One of my hunches. Who was it?”

  “Kaitlyn O’Connor.”

  Anna didn’t reply to Vega. Instead, she switched to Redford’s channel. “It’s go time, Steve!” she announced decisively.

  The colonel didn’t hesitate. “To all Vorians,” he announced immediately, “there’s been a change of plans. I’m relinquishing complete control of this operation to Anna Abbott, effective immediately. Disregard all previous plans. Follow her every order, no matter what. All status updates and reports should go directly to her. I’m officially out of the loop.”

  “Thanks, Colonel,” said Anna over the general comm channel. “My intuition tells me we aren’t in sight of any hostiles at the moment. So I’m now making myself visible. Squadrons A, B, and C, make yourselves visible and find me as quickly as you can. Once you do, hand me your invisibility units. Hurry!” she added when it was clear the stunned Vorians weren’t being responsive. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  Vega touched the back of a large lapel pin on his shirt and his cocoon of invisibility disappeared. Throughout the nearby forest, the sea of brown bark and green leaves was now punctuated by various Vorians popping into existence as they followed the same procedure.

  Vega was closest to Anna and rushed to her side. “What’s happening?” he whispered urgently. “Why did the colonel relinquish control? And why are you collecting invisibility units?”

  Anna knelt on the ground and removed five drawstring sacks from her backpack as a number of Vorians began reaching her and handing her their lapel pins. “I don’t have time to explain, Tom. But you’ve always trusted my intuition. I’m asking you to trust it now. Do as I say and we’ll get through this.”

  Anna quickly collected the invisibility units from the twenty-one members of squadrons A, B, and C and apportioned them out into the five bags, which had each harbored a number of units to begin with.

  Vega felt dizzy and slightly ill as he realized just how uninformed he truly was. The fact that Anna and the colonel had felt the need to keep so many things from him was alarming. And it wasn’t just them. Ansel Cartwright, a Vorian, had failed to tell him that he had produced many more than the forty-two individual invisibility units they had asked for.

  But how many more, exactly? And for what purpose?

  Vega resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn’t be getting answers anytime soon.

  “Squadrons A, B, and C,” said Anna, “retreat back to our Albanian base of operations. Since you can no longer make yourself invisible, you’re no longer part of this. Get to safety as quickly as possible.”

  Vega shot a questioning look at the clairvoyant human. “You’re dividing our force in half?” he said in disbelief. “Are you certain you know what you’re doing, Anna?”

  “Not certain,” she whispered back, “but very confident.”

  Vega nodded unhappily

  “Squadrons D, E, and F,” said Anna into the general comm channel, “remain invisible and prepare to follow my detailed instructions.”

  60

  Twenty-five minutes after Redford had relinquished his command of the Vorian forces, Orbimel Cain, a Tartarian female, gasped as Anna Abbott and Tom Vega materialized from out of nowhere, fifty yards distant. They were wedged between several large tree trunks in a dense section of the forest, but Orbimel’s team, Tart 7, would first have to cross a large clearing to reach them.

  The clairvoyant detective stared directly at those Tarts in Team 7 who were visible through the trees, far off in the distance, and smiled broadly. Then, just to be sure she had caught their attention, she waved.

  “Tart 7 leader to Commander DeMarco!” shouted Orbimel breathlessly, forgetting to use subvocalizations. “Anna Abbott and the Vorian leader just lost invisibility and appear to be taunting us. We’re going after her now.”

  “Negative!” said DeMarco. “It’s a trap. She’s showing herself as bait. Stand your ground. We won’t play this out on her terms.”

  “Tart 7 team leader,” said Shanifrey in his own language, “go after her now! All sixty of you! Ignore DeMarco. That’s a direct order from me.”

  “Going after her now,” said Orbimel in English, letting DeMarco know she was ignoring the SEAL commander’s order. She and her fellow Tarts spread out as they headed to the clearing and raced toward the two targets, who began to retreat back through the forest, but far more slowly than Tart Team 7 was approaching.

  As the first wave of Tarts hit the clearing, phantom machine-gun fire broke out from all four compass points around them, slicing dozens of them to ribbons. Just over half of them reached the heavily wooded section on the other side of the clearing while their Tart commander viewed the carnage from his factory stronghold.

  “Continue tracking her down!” thundered Shanifrey, using a Tart-only channel. “But sweep the area around you with machine-gun fire as you go. They’re invisible, not bulletproof.”

  The survivors of Tart Team 7 swiveled and shot all around themselves as they moved, kicking up bark and leaves and adding to the hellish, deafening cacophony of machine-gun fire coming from everywhere all at once. But they continued to be cut down as if they were sprinting into invisible helicopter blades churning at full speed, drenching the woods with bits and pieces of their bodies and thick black blood.

  Every so often, Anna Abbott would duck out from behind a tree trunk up ahead and taunt the survivors onward, making sure the horses were still chasing their clairvoyant carrot through a gauntlet of death.

  Despite sustained efforts by the Tarts to spray machine-gun fire all around, the fire heading their way didn’t diminish in the slightest, and Shanifrey searched the video feeds frantically for any sign of Vorian body parts or neon green blood that would indicate Vorian casualties.

  But there was no evidence of a single hit. It was impossible! The Vorians were invisible, not ethereal.

  Only five members of Tart Team 7 remained, now close enough to Anna and the Vorian leader to fire directly at them. But their targets were both concealed behind beefy tree trunks, and their fusillade only managed to whittle the trunks smaller and burst through low-hanging branches.

  The Tart closest to Anna took a bullet to her forehead and crashed to the forest floor, and the four Tarts remaining leaped over her body and kept charging ahead.

  And inside a stronghold in California, Shanifrey Doe suddenly realized why the Vorian force seemed so invincible. “They’re up in the trees!” he screamed, stating what should have been obvious to all. His team had been trying to pick off invisible phantoms by shooting at chest height, while all the while, the Vorians were cutting them down from the safety of the branches above.

  “Spray the trees about twelve to fifteen feet up!” he ordered his soldiers, but the order came too late. Before they had a chance to respond, all four remaining Tart combatants were shredded by a barrage of gunfire, causing explosive bursts of inhuman viscera and thick black blood to be splattered onto trees and forest undergrowth.

  A deep voice came over the general comm line. “Commander DeMarco, it’s Lieutenant Brent Knox, Spec Ops 3 commander. I have eyes on the attempted incursion by Tart Team 7. It appears there were no survivors. We’re nearest to Anna Abbott’s last known position. Request permission to come at her from behind to avoid the gauntlet she set up to ambush the Tarts. Our Tart 3 teammates are still several minutes to our south, and I don’t recommend waiting for them.”

  “Permission granted,” said DeMarco, who
then began barking orders at a number of other teams to move closer to the action.

  Shanifrey, anxiously watching the video feeds coming from his soldiers, was encouraged. The secretary had done an excellent job of convincing the US forces that the fate of humanity was on the line if they failed to kill the clairvoyant detective. Shanifrey had no doubt they would sacrifice their lives without hesitation to accomplish this goal.

  But the US forces had no camera feeds, so the Tart leader could only guess at the progress the human team was making. Which was maddening. On the other hand, in Anna’s vision, she had been killed by one human and one Tartarian, so he fully expected all twenty humans in Spec Ops 3 to fail. It was all part of a future history that was already woven into the fabric of the cosmos.

  “Lieutenant Knox here!” said a breathless, harried voice on the general comm channel, which was also broadcast to the factory in California. “Spec Ops 3 has taken heavy losses! Seventeen down! The last three of us have taken refuge behind a large rock formation. We’ve been spraying the forest floor and up in the trees. And we’re wearing advanced body armor. But I don’t think we’ve touched them! It’s almost like they know what we’re going to do before we do. It’s uncanny!”

  There was a pause. “But we’re now very close to Abbott,” he added. “And I think I know how to take her out. So stand by. I plan to turn her into paste within the next few minutes.”

  61

  “The humans with the camouflaged uniforms are on their way here!” said Vega urgently to the woman at his side. “And you didn’t place any of our people behind us. There’s nothing to stop them from reaching us. We need to return to invisibility!”