Overlord

17

The dimensional wormhole formed out of the thin upper atmosphere. The powerful event was tracked by weather satellites the world over and immediately reported to their corresponding stations.

Europa was the first system to know what the wavering displacement of atmosphere meant, and the first system to announce the dimensional rift to the command and control element at Camp Alamo.

The first line of defense put into action was the vanguard of missiles hidden away inside five different communication satellites that had been decommissioned five years before and then refurbished by the European Space Agency, under the guise of saving the platforms from a decaying and thus dangerous orbit.

Twenty 100-megaton warheads were targeted at the mouth of the dimensional rift that started the initial forming of the wormhole. As the first saucer exploded out of the tunnel-like tornado in the upper atmosphere, ten of the warheads, in anticipation of the appearance, detonated after launch from two hundred and fifty nautical miles above the Earth. The resulting heat wave in space knocked the first small attack ship backward, where it collided with the next two, which in turn exploded, taking out six more of the attackers. The next ten warheads caught the second formation as they made the initial entrance into Earth’s atmosphere. The first missile was a direct hit, disintegrating the saucer, and then the rest of the missiles detonated in quick succession, destroying no less than sixteen of the attackers. The violence was recorded from a KH-11 operated by the Pentagon. This information flashed across the screens inside the situation room far beneath the E-Ring of the Pentagon where several officials watched, including the acting president of the United States.

Acting President Giles Camden was far more comfortable with the replacement staff of military men that he trusted. He had worked closely with these men in his time on the Senate Armed Services Committee and they had been extremely loyal to the House Speaker beyond those days. After all, the new president had made most of them a hefty sum of money geared toward their retirement.

The president watched from the upper tier through the thick glass as the men and women below went about their duties tracking the forming dimensional rift. He felt the eyes on him from below as the soldiers, sailors, and airmen waited for him to give the orders that they expected for him to issue. On the big board, a three-dimensional map of the world, the 7th Fleet-Asiatic Squadron was still conducting rescue operations with the Chinese navy. Camden had come to terms with the admiral commanding that particular task force and through the offices of his new chairman of the Joint Chiefs had even managed to make him look good, as it was reported that the president had sent the large force in to assist their friends in their time of need. Some of the press had accepted and reported that it was a brilliant and gracious move on his part, but others, more than he cared to admit, felt the president was only trying to save face after a major policy blowup with his military chiefs.

He stood with his hands behind his back as the White House official photographer snapped picture after picture, depicting the commander-in-chief in complete charge of the situation. When the photographer was finished instructions were given that the images should immediately be sent out to the AP and Reuters news agencies as soon as possible in an attempt to get his latest and dismal approval ratings up.

Daniel Peachtree entered the situation room and went to the president’s side.

“The president is awake,” was all he said. Camden tensed.

“I need the attorney general and the chief justice brought here immediately. I want the truth about the laws regarding that man retaking power and I want it now.”

“I’ve already done that. They’re enroute.”

“What progress on the asset in Nevada?”

“The FBI has basically refused to enter the grounds of a federal installation unless a legal warrant signed by a federal judge is issued. Until then we are helpless. But I did find out that they may be in the process of moving our boy to another location.”

“I need…” Camden caught himself as he saw Peachtree flinch at his loud voice. He mentally forced himself to be calm. “I need that thing now. Is there any hope the asset will return to where our people are waiting?”

“I am a firm believer they will take him to what they think is a bigger secret than their own complex, Chato’s Crawl.”

“This is not just about me hanging onto this damn office any longer; it’s about going to jail. Now get it done,” he hissed.

Peachtree went to his chair that was situated around the long, oval conference table.

Camden relaxed and looked at the situation in Antarctica. The two battle groups were still moving away from the continent and would soon be too far away to assist in the defense of Camp Alamo and whatever project had been hidden from him.

“Sir, the first saucers have exited the rift and are approaching the south pole at a high rate of speed,” an airman said as he read the sit-rep coming from Space Command three floors up. “McMurdo Station, Antarctica, is requesting assistance.” The young Air Force officer looked at the president’s back.

If the president had been facing his new subordinates inside the military arm, he would have seen them shift in their chairs uncomfortably when he remained silent. Finally he turned and faced the communications officer.

“Inform McMurdo that the situation is currently being evaluated, and assistance will be forthcoming.”

“Sir?” the airman said with his pen poised above his pad.

“Send it, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

The new chief of the Joint Chiefs looked at his Air Force commander and frowned. They might owe Camden for their sudden rise to power, but it was tearing their guts out not going to the aid of American forces calling for assistance. Lefferts nodded for the Air Force commander to meet him out in the hallway and they were soon joined by the Marine Corps commandant.

President Giles Camden never noticed that a few of his rats were considering jumping ship.

The door to Niles’s hospital room burst open and without ceremony a civilian-attired Maxwell Caulfield entered pushing a wheelchair. Virginia — who had been speaking with her boss and relaying the bad news about the early attack by the Grays that was currently in progress — almost peed herself as the general threw back the sheet and blanket covering Compton’s battered body. He tossed the director a pair of glasses he had absconded with from his personal belongings that had been recovered from his quarters at the ruins of Camp David.

“Mr. Director, we’ve been ordered to attend an emergency meeting, now!” The general assisted Niles up, careful not to hurt his broken left leg and his shattered right arm. Virginia, meanwhile, placed the director’s replacement glasses onto his heavily bandaged face. “The chief justice and the attorney general are already there, along with the directors of the FBI, the CIA, and the rest of my staff.”

“A meeting with whom, may I ask?” Niles weakly asked as he was carefully lifted by the large Marine into the waiting wheelchair.

“We are going right down the hallway. When the president calls, we act. Now hang on!”

Caulfield turned Niles and out the door they went with the president’s Secret Service detail clearing the way. The entire hospital was abuzz with relief as the news quickly spread that the commander-in-chief was awake and talking his head off with the assistance of his first lady. Secret Service and capital police were busy wheeling large television monitors and communications equipment into the president’s hospital suite. They even saw the president’s two young daughters carry armloads of bottled water inside.

The political war was also just beginning.

Jack almost slammed into Sarah and Anya just as the action station alarms started blaring their warning. She was on her way to his quarters as he and Everett had sprinted to get to their stations. They both stopped and out of breath couldn’t say anything at first. Collins looked at Carl as he quickly kissed Anya and then pushed her at arm’s length.

“Gotta go, baby,” he said and then kissed her again. Then he quickly turned to Jack and Sarah.

“Take care, McIntire.” He then faced his friend and held out his hand. Sarah quickly pecked him on the cheek and then backed off. “Jack, tell Will — hell, just tell him something.” Carl took the general’s hand and briskly shook. “See ya, ground pounder!” With that Everett jumped upon a speeding tram. Before Jack could say anything his friend was gone.

Anya quickly slapped Collins on the chest, giving him a quick and soldierly good-bye, and then turned and watched the tram with Carl inside disappear downward into the tunnels.

“Short Stuff, get to your bunker and keep your ass down.” He quickly kissed Sarah and then held her a moment.

“I love you, Jack,” she said, loud enough to be heard over the blaring horns.

He smiled and then before Sarah realized it, he was gone.

Anya turned back and took Sarah’s hand, then started pulling her away in the opposite direction they had been told to go when the shit hit the fan.

“The bunkers are in that direction!” Sarah said.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m a soldier and I intend to die out there, not in this frozen icebox.”

Sarah started sprinting. “I knew I liked you, and thought Carl couldn’t do any better.”

The two women sprinted for the SAS arms locker that Anya had accidentally stolen the key to.

Admiral Everett met up with his team at the main elevator leading down into Poseidon’s Nest. As they traveled downward he saw the young face of the SEAL he had chewed out at the Johnson Space Center. His face was now clean-shaven and he looked even younger than he did four days ago. Carl winked at the boy of twenty.

“Ready, son?”

“Not at all, sir!” he said loudly as the others laughed — SEALs and Delta together.

“Now you’re a SEAL!” Everett said as he slapped the boy on the back.

The view from above was one of organized confusion as yard workers started cutting the fifty-six enormous ten-ton braces that held the battleship upright when the British engineers had freed her from 700 million years’ worth of ice. Scaffolding was being cut with acetylene torches and was falling free to crash onto the frozen seabed. Fuel specialists scrambled to load the full complement of liquid nitrogen into her vast tanks and live ordance was being loaded by giant cranes to feed the large 70- and 105-millimeter rail guns. Yardmen were quickly tearing away the tent structure they had erected for the installation of the alien power plant that had been seated inside a ten-foot-thick wall of titanium alloy to protect it from enemy cannon fire. The workers knew that the alien-designed engine had yet to be tested but didn’t really care, as their yard supervisors urged them on with their destruction of the support systems.

Commodore Freemantle stopped and turned as the doors for the elevator opened. He faced Lord Durnsford and Sir Darcy Bennett.

“Good luck, Percy, old man,” Sir Darcy said.

Lord Durnsford held out his beefy hand to a man he had very little love for but respected immensely. “Look, I know we’ve had our differences, old boy,” Freemantle said, “but I wonder if you’ll do me a favor. I was caught off guard and forgot to say good-bye to my wife. She frets ever so much.”

Lord Durnsford realized the man before him was saying good-bye in the only way he could. He nodded his head and then shook his hand. Freemantle smiled and then saluted the two men. Then he turned and hurried to the upper gangway.

The two men stepped out on the elevated platform and watched the 4,000-man crew scramble aboard. Lord Durnsford glanced up toward the area where the engineers had tunneled out four square miles of tundra and frozen seawater and then filled it in again with a pattern of much thinner and well-disguised ice.

“I hope Niles Compton was right about our General Collins.”

“All we need is an hour, one bloody hour.” Sir Darcy Bennett stepped by Lord Durnsford and entered the elevator.

With one last look at the enormous battleship, Durnsford joined his friend inside the lift. The last view they had was of the American SEAL and Delta teams hurriedly loading their special gift from the government of Israel.

The twenty-five saucers streaked low over the frozen earth as they hit the speed of sound after their dive from a hundred and fifty miles up. They flew in a V formation as the powerful attack ships blew snow and ice in their wide path toward Camp Alamo, a location they had discovered while tracking the Super Galaxies two days before.

As the first attack craft breached the coast, the lead saucer broke formation and sped toward the one base in the direct line of communication to the Alamo: McMurdo weather station. As men, women, and weather observers ran for hollowed-out bunkers, the saucer struck. Its rapid-fire cannon burst from the lower dome at the center of the ship and stitched a pattern that tore the 100-year-old base to shreds. The insulated metal buildings rocked and then burst into flames as the powerful laser cannon did its deadly job.

When it was finished the saucer didn’t even slow down. It jumped back to altitude and reformed at the rear of the assault flight.

The twenty-five saucers were now on a direct line of attack to Camp Alamo.

Admiral Jim Sampson sat on the admiral’s flag bridge, drinking a cup of coffee when the captain of “Big George” handed him a message. The commander of the carrier watched the admiral’s reaction as he read the note. He looked at the captain and set his cup of coffee in its holder on the arm of the large chair.

“Now?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, he’s on the command phone.” The captain was pleased to see the blood drain from the man’s face. “The message relaying the time has been decoded and authenticated as coming from National Command Authority. It is the president.” He removed the heavy phone from its cradle and held it out to the admiral, who then took a deep breath and reached for the instrument.

“Admiral Sampson,” he said into the phone. The captain, standing by the admiral’s chair, could hear everything because he had turned the volume to full before handing the phone over.

“Admiral, do you recognize my voice?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

“Glad to hear it,” came the tired but firm words. “Admiral, it seems you backed the wrong goddamned horse in this particular race.”

“I was following orders from the commander-in-chief, sir, I would never have—”

“I don’t buy that just-following-orders crap, Admiral, and you know that. Now turn those two groups around immediately and steam at flank speed for the coast of Antarctica. Assist the ground element on station in the defense of American and allied lives. Is that clear, sir?”

“Yes—”

He was speaking into a dead instrument.

A short time later, the George Washington Battle Group, with the USS John C. Stennis Group in tow, made a dramatic full-speed course change to the south.

The first three advance scouts crossed the outer markers without any defense being thrown at them. The scouts slowed to subsonic speed as they came low. One stopped to take heat emanation readings while the other two sped ahead.

The entrenched men of the 82nd Airborne observed but did not report, as per their orders from General Collins. They were to report only when the main element arrived. It was tempting to send the battery of TOW missiles toward the slow-moving targets, but the men realized they would have plenty of saucers in their laps soon enough.

The advance element of Airborne waited.

The three saucers rose in height and hovered, waiting. The hidden 23rd Panzer Division was targeting these ships but had no orders to fire. The same went for the fifty emplaced and well-disguised M-109-A12 Paladin Self-Propelled Artillery. The specially modified Paladins had recently been redesigned and had their 155 Howitzers replaced with M-9780-A2 Standard Rail Guns, the exact same weaponry that had completely gutted the saucer that had attacked the Russian missile cruiser in the South Atlantic. The trick would be for the saucers to slow down enough for the geopositioning targeting systems to function correctly.

Collins was watching with his staff in a specially prepared bunker two miles from Overlord. He watched the close-looped monitoring system and saw the three saucers just silently hovering near the exact center where Poseidon’s Nest lay. It was excruciating waiting for the real assault to begin. It was the silence before the storm that precedes every major battle and Jack Collins knew the game well — it was knowing when to make the other guy flinch.

Colonel Henri Farbeaux was monitoring the technician that watched the advance BQPP-7 special radar system built to pick up the barest minimum trace of a stealthy aircraft by reading trace elements of the environment — in this case, snow and ice as it was disturbed by a speeding aircraft from almost any altitude. The Frenchman watched the scope intently as he was unprepared to die in this frozen hell.

The Air Force technician, a volunteer from Edwards Air Force Base and now a part of the general’s staff, pointed to his scope silently. He looked up at Henri and nodded his head.

“We have contact, General,” Farbeaux said confidently as he patted the airman on the back.

“Positive contact?” Will Mendenhall asked.

“Unless a flight of giant pterodactyls just flew over the warning line,” he said as Henri placed his web gear on and then charged a round into his nine millimeter handgun, “I think the enemy has arrived.”

Tram and Major Krell did likewise and made ready to evacuate the general when and if it were called for. Will Mendenhall stayed close to the phones and radios to relay the orders as the situation dictated. Collins leaned forward and studied the twelve battlefield monitors at his disposal.

“Inform Alamo and Poseidon’s Nest, we have incoming.”

Will relayed the information and then swallowed, wondering how in the hell everyone could be so cool. But as he looked at the many faces inside the command bunker he saw the same fear in their eyes as his own.

The radio monitored by 101st Airborne personnel sprang to life. “Incoming, seventeen ships behind the first scouts, crossing into zone 1187,” came the excited voice.

Jack calmly looked into the appropriate monitor and saw the snow being churned up before he saw the saucers. The three scouts remained in their hover. Collins nodded and Will responded as calmly as he could with the radio.

“Fire Team Bravo Five, take out the scouts. Fire at will!”

Six TOW missiles streaked into the air from two different hidden locations as fire teams from the 101st opened fire.

The wire-guided weapons made a beeline for the saucer at the forefront of the hovering vehicles. The first three struck its metal body and knocked it sideways, but it quickly recovered — just not before the second set of three hit it. This time the saucer dipped and dug its nose into the snow and ice. It came to rest just as thirty more TOW missiles broke free from camouflaged positions. Missiles struck the two still in place as at least five missed altogether. The alien craft now reacted and streaked toward the line of fire, firing their laser cannon as they went. Carefully prepared positions started to explode in a hail of ice and snow as men and equipment were blown apart.

“Eighteen saucers on the scope.” Henri turned to face Jack.

“All positions, open fire, fire at will!” Collins said, a little louder than he had intended.

All hell broke loose as the Paladins opened fire. The rail guns were the only thing visible as the mobile weapons system moved far enough forward to uncover their twin-barreled batteries.

“Order the 23rd to scatter and confuse!” Collins calmly commanded as he watched his orders being carried out.

Mendenhall shouted into the radio and Jack looked at him and mouthed the word calmly. Will immediately lowered his voice. Tram, after loading his old M-14 American-made rifle, smiled as his adrenaline started pumping as fast as the young captain’s.

“We have ground movement from the first downed saucer,” Major Krell said as he watched on the perimeter monitor.

Jack watched as the 23rd Panzers broke cover with their armored bodies breaking free of the camouflage netting and snow. It was a magnificent sight as the large main German battle tanks opened fire even before they were free of the earth they had been buried in. They immediately scattered to try and make the saucers spread out their fire to protect the troops on the ground. Collins switched views and then saw at least fifty Grays breaking free of the downed saucer.

“What are you waiting for, Major?” Jack said to a stunned Krell as the German officer saw the Grays for the first time. He quickly snapped out of his trance and then grabbed the radio and the map.

“Victor Seven, Victor Seven, we need you at…” He looked at the premarked map for his grid designated points. “Coordinates 27–89. Fire for effect!”

The line of buried 155 Howitzers of the 82nd Airborne fired all twenty of their large guns at once. The heavy shells arced into the sky and came down directly on top of the slow-moving Grays as they attempted to get away from the small-arms fire from the entrenched infantry to their sides and rear. The ground around the twenty survivors erupted in a hell storm of shrapnel as the Grays were engulfed with fire and death. When the wind blew the smoke away there was nothing left but a large hole in the ground.

The Paladins were taking their toll. The remaining two scout ships had succumbed to the twin rail guns’ rapid rate of fire. The two vehicles lay in pieces as the radios were crackling to life with the sound of targeting requests coming in.

Several of the attacking enemy broke free as they started becoming more coordinated in finding their own targets. Laser cannon erupted and several of the expensive Paladins exploded deep in their revetments.

Calls from calm but determined groups of Airborne began to get more frequent as the enemy started stitching the frozen world with far more accurate fire. Men started to break cover, running from one protected position to the other.

Jack looked at the Frenchman and nodded that it was time. In the din caused by the loud discharge of the rail guns and artillery, Farbeaux made the call to the orbiting British Sea Harriers.

“Eagle flight, Sentinel. I repeat, Sentinel,” he said matter-of-factly into his headset.

The American Airborne troops wanted to cheer out loud as the British air arm made its dramatic appearance in the skies over Camp Alamo. Missile after missile struck the saucers from above as they attacked the maneuvering tanks and Paladins, not realizing they were being hunted from the air they thought they had under control.

The enemy recovered quickly as even the first of the downed craft began healing faster than the defense was led to believe they could. The damaged craft slowly spun up into the air. It was like a shooting gallery where the little ducks kept getting up. Collins didn’t know how long his forces could hold out against such technology.

Mayday calls began streaming in as the Sea Harriers were starting to succumb to the rapid-fire lasers of the enemy. Smoking ruins marked the grave sites of the Royal Navy aviators as they rode their antiquated birds into the ground. Vapor trails and missiles along with cannon fire filled the blue sky as dogfights broke out and then quickly ended for the Harriers as their Sidewinders and AMRAAM missiles had little effect against the advanced technology of the Grays.

The enemy had quickly regained control of the skies around Camp Alamo and was now free to stalk and kill the fast-maneuvering Panzers and the men they were there to protect.

General Collins ordered both the 82nd and the 101st to use their TOW missiles and then break for the fall back positions code-named DiMaggio.

Henri Farbeaux called into his radio as Will helped lieutenant Tram and a young airman start to gather their gear.

“All units, DiMaggio. I repeat, DiMaggio!”

The defense had now retreated to only a mile from Poseidon’s Nest.

Everett secured the weapons next to the arms locker in the assault team’s ready room, where his men hurriedly started dressing in the layered plastic suits that would protect them in the hard environment of space. Carl followed suit. He started with the blue long johns and that was covered by an ultrathin layer of chest armor made from Kevlar and other dense carbon fibers. Then the suit itself: the nylon-based clothing was not much different from the atmospheric suits the shuttle astronauts wore, but were far more lightweight in nature. He placed the oversized boots on and then zipped them up, but left the combat gloves dangling by hooks from his wrists. He checked his thirty-man team and saw that they had completed their dressing in far less time. He checked them one at a time.

Carl then ran to the forward bulkhead to check the status screen of his area of responsibility and saw that all of his personnel were accounted for. Along with the assault element, his weapons specialists would wait until the giant battleship gained the unrestricted confines of space before arming the fifteen nuclear devices supplied by the Israeli government.

The warning alarms were silenced from the outside but the red blinking call to stations was still active throughout the ship. Everett turned and ordered his men to strap in to the Velcro-secured stations where the team would ride the initial flight into space, braced by nylon and canvas straps. He made sure all were secured, starting with the ingress team who would be the first to enter the assault craft. He examined his men as they were lined up against the forward bulkhead like tin soldiers. He made sure each was holding their helmets and they would stay that way until ordered by the ship’s crew to don the expensive acrylic 360° vision visors for takeoff.

When he was finished he turned and ran for the automatic bulkhead doors that remained open until the ship’s captain called for all doors and hatches to be closed a minute before launch. His feet were sticking to the deck as his boots were designed with microfiber Velcro that adhered to the same hook-style fabric that clung to the soles of his boots like a cocklebur to a sock. The admiral ran through the companionway until he reached the large launch tubes that were the home to the two assault craft that would be used to take his men to their assignments. The six-man crew of each was going through their final checklists and the Air Force pilots were doing it rapidly. The great warship started to shudder as the alien power plant was brought online for the first time.

Every man in visual range stopped as their hair came up as static electricity coursed through them from the decks and bullheads. A swirling sense of dizziness struck every one of the four thousand crewmen and all to a man or woman wondered if that was a normal thing — and no one really knew the answer.

The shuttle bay was wedged into the girder system of the main decking superstructure and looked out of place. It was nothing more than two separate pressure chambers that were not part of the original Martian design. As Carl crossed the connecting ramp he saw that if he missed a handhold he would tumble more than a thousand feet down to the cave’s bottom that was fast being evacuated far below. He ran across the connecting bridge and saw Jenks struggling with the main engine bell of one of the shuttles. A large chuck of ice from above was wedged into the housing as he started kicking at it. Carl wondered if the crazed bastard knew that he was actually dangling a quarter mile above an abyss. As he started to say something the chunk of ice fell free and Jenks turned and ran for the safety of the girders that held his two shuttles secured. Everett reached out and grabbed the master chief by the arm and pulled him through to safety.

“What in the hell are you doing?” Carl screamed over the powerful noises coming from three hundred feet aft as the six main engines came to life. The ion-based technology was the reason for the electrical discharge that had coursed through the vessel.

“That goddamn vibration from the battle above is knocking ice from the tunnel down onto everything. I warned the damned limeys about it. I told them they have to erect shielding, but the pansy-asses think they know everything!”

“Well, don’t you think once this thing starts rising with all of those thrusters out there it will melt anything that isn’t steel and composite material, you old goat?”

Jenks stopped and the looked as if he were considering the monumental thought that Carl just passed on. He unzipped his shoulder pocket on his coverall and popped the stub of a cigar into his mouth, then shook his head.

“No, I didn’t think of that,” he said as an angered admiral pulled him back into the companionway. He resisted and then told Carl to be on his way, that he was going to ride the rocket from his place in the number one shuttle. He said he felt safer there.

“Okay, you stupid bastard.” Everett held out his hand. “I’ll see you up there!”

The two men quickly shook hands and then Jenks smiled and tossed his cigar out through the extensive steel girders that made up the ship’s superstructure.

“Watch your ass, Toad, my boy.” He vanished into the raised doorway of shuttle number one. As the door closed Everett saw that someone had painted a name across the shuttle’s heat-reduction tiles: Virginia. Carl shook his head, realizing that the master chief was still carrying a torch for the assistant director of Department 5656 from their time together in Brazil.

“Hey, I know I’m only excess baggage on this little cruise, but don’t you think you better get back to your station?”

Carl looked at the next shuttle station where Jason Ryan was hanging out of the doorway like a small monkey.

“I ordered you to the command bridge with Captain Lienanov where you might be useful, you little pain in the ass!”

“Borrrring,” Ryan said as he acted the insulted commander.

“You better hope this ship blows up and we’re all killed, because … because—”

“Go get ’em, Admiral.” Ryan quickly ducked back into assault shuttle number two.

Everett cursed and then had to laugh as he ran back across the connecting bridge to the relative safety of the pressure hull. The second officer called over the loudspeaker from the sixteen-story bridge high above.

“Defensive force has fallen back to the DiMaggio line, enemy penetration is imminent. All personnel secure for launch sequence. Security detail standby on the main deck to repel borders until final countdown begins. All hands, man your launch stations.”

“Repel borders?” Carl said to himself over the noise surrounding the ship as her ion engines were at station keeping.

“All hands standby, commence charging boosters.”

Everett knew that was the last resort as the electrical connection was made to all one hundred and twenty dry chemical booster rockets attached to the Lee’s outer hull, along the massive girders that made up her main deck.

“Oh, shit,” he cursed. The rumble and clanging of steel restraint started in earnest as the full weight of the battleship came down on the remaining support structures keeping the Lee upright. Everett realized that gravity was starting to take effect on the 125,000-ton structure.

“All hands, final warning: secure all decks for launch in ten minutes. Defensive command reports Gray penetration of safety zone is under way. Defensive line DiMaggio has been compromised.”

“Damn it, Jack, get the hell out of there!” Carl spat out the words just as he reached his launch station on the uppermost deck, which was the most exposed area of the Lee. As Everett strapped himself in next to his men, he could see clearly outside as men hustled from her decks. He and his men would have the best view as the colossal battleship rocketed into the sky.

On the upper command bridge, Commodore Freemantle looked over at his new aide, a man who had virtually no training on bridge operations but might come in handy if he lost immediate communication with his command technicians monitoring and operating all the shipboard functions thirty feet below. Freemantle strapped himself in the upright position and braced with a steel station so he could remain standing at all times during launch and battle.

He examined the Royal Navy seamen below and was pleased with the calm approach they had during the most stressful event of their young lives. They called out shipboard status of all thirty-two decks. Freemantle knew that the HMS Garrison Lee was launching light, meaning to say the ship was carrying a minimum of food, water, and other necessities needed for an extended stay in space. Freemantle and the planners had figured the great battleship could only last less than an hour from launch to assault. Their job was to give the Americans time to reach the power refurbishment saucer.

“Rather exciting, isn’t it, Captain Lienanov?”

Lienanov stood next to the Englishman, in awe of what he was seeing through the large plates of thick, triple-paned glass that made up the bridge windows. Black Hawk and Gazelle helicopters buzzed like small bugs in and out of view above the Lee’s wide decks.

“Strap yourself in, Captain.” Freemantle saw that the Russian was frozen in wonder at the events he was now a part of.

“‘Exciting’ wasn’t the word my limited English would have chosen, Commodore.” Lienanov sat in his plastic chair and pulled the triple harness over his head and snapped it into place.

Next to him Freemantle laughed heartily as the pressure of the past four years bled away as the moment approached. His number one, feet sticking to the material-covered decking, stood rigid next to Freemantle and held out a flimsy.

“Flash message from the States, sir.” The first officer held firm to the railing lining the upper battle bridge.

“Read it please, Number One.” The commodore watched the activity outside the large windows. He reached over and made sure his helmet was nearby and then faced his first officer.

“‘The hope of the world rides with you, good luck,’ signed, the prime minister.”

“Rather nice of the old boy. Now enter the message into the ship’s log, Mr. Jennings, and take your station.”

“There is one more, sir, a warning from NASA. The United States Space Command and the European Space Agency have long-range telemetry showing the invasion fleet is now moving away from the dark side of the moon. Course is plotted and confirmed; they’re on their way here. Estimated time of arrival is twenty-five minutes.”

“Bloody cheeky bastards, aren’t they? Not waiting and hiding. Well, let’s give them what for, shall we?”

“Yes, sir!” the first officer answered. He momentarily stood at attention, then quickly moved away to his launch station.

“All hands, prepare for launch, five minutes until power-up. The DiMaggio line is in full retreat.”

The commodore heard the announcement sent from his communications center and then grimaced and was mumbling to himself, but Captain Lienanov overheard nonetheless.

“I must apologize personally to General Collins, he gave me ten minutes longer than I needed or expected.” Commodore Fremantle lowered his head. “Good show, old man.”

Jack had watched his command being mowed down one unit at a time and knew that over a quarter of his men lay dying in the snow and ice. The German Panzers had finally been decimated as they fought to give the 101st and 82nd Airborne time to break from their defensive positions on the DiMaggio line and head for the deep shelters that had been designated for complete withdrawal. It had been hard for Collins to have the order issued.

“General, it’s time for you to go.” Will Mendenhall thrust Jack’s web gear into his arms. “We’ll get the rest out, now go, your Black Hawk won’t last long out there. We just received a message; we have over a hundred Super Hornets heading in from the Washington and Stennis Battle Groups. Go, General.”

Collins nodded for Farbeaux and the others to get to the Black Hawk. Sebastian and Tram gathered their gear but refused to move until the general came with them; he was now their responsibility. Jack locked eyes with the Frenchman as he eyed the young captain.

“General, a ground attack force of Grays, over a thousand strong, is heading straight here and are only three minutes out.”

“Okay, get out,” he said to the young 101st Airborne communications man.

The soldier looked at Mendenhall and the Frenchman. “I’ll stay, sir.”

Henri removed the nine millimeter and chambered a round, then holstered the weapon. He looked from Collins to the young black man he had never cared for. Now he knew the reason why: he never liked the perception of lacking in dedication to his craft, as he saw from the young officer studying him. He nodded at Will and then turned back to Jack as laser blasts started shaking loose ice from the last control bunker still operating.

“I’ll be staying as well, General,” the Frenchman said, to the amazement of Mendenhall and a stunned General Collins.

“It’s not your style, Henri,” Jack said as he was starting to be pulled away by the remainder of his staff to get him to leave. He angrily pulled away.

“It once was, Jack, now kiss little Sarah for me.” He picked up the radio to prepare to make the call that would call down death from above.

Jack turned to Will and stuck out his hand. “The best damn soldier I’ve ever known. So long, Will.” He dropped the offered hand and hugged the young captain.

“Sir,” Mendenhall said, knowing that anything else would be pointless. He had to give the general time to leave. “Kick Ryan in the ass for me.”

“Damn you, Captain, I should have left you at home.” Jack Collins released Will and took a step back.

Mendenhall smiled and looked back at Henri, who had turned away and was leaning heavily on the desk where the radio sat.

“You know I wouldn’t have accepted that. Now go, and when you get home, tell Doc Ellenshaw to keep swinging away, the rest of the world will catch up to him eventually.” Will smiled and then looked at Farbeaux. “You know, Jack, he’s not Ryan, or the rest of my friends, but I could go out with a far worse soldier.”

Jack nodded, unable to say the words he so wanted to say to a friend, so he turned and left. He ran hard toward the waiting Black Hawk as if the running would stop the feeling of utter despair.

Will zipped up his parka and then faced Farbeaux and the 101st Airborne lieutenant. He then removed his own automatic and chambered a round, then nodded to Henri, who raised the microphone to his lips as the sound of the Black Hawk started moving away. Jack was safe for the moment to fight again. The Frenchman waited until Collins and his team were clear and the Grays thought the line was still holding the defense. He made the call.

“St. Bernard, St. Bernard, this is Raven’s Wing, this is Raven’s Wing. Broken Arrow, I repeat, Broken Arrow,” Henri called and then gently placed the radio down. “I don’t know about you gentlemen, but I would prefer to be outside in the fresh air.”

Will nodded in total agreement with the man he had hated for many years, who was now going to be with him for a very long time.

“After you, Colonel — sir.”

Jack looked out of the Black Hawk’s large door window as Tram and Sebastian lowered their heads in shame for leaving the three men behind. They knew it was a necessity to delay the Grays as long as possible to bring them into the killing zone, but that didn’t make the two professional soldiers hurt any less.

As Jack Collins watched, over a thousand Grays surrounded the last remaining bunker on the DiMaggio fallback position just as the roar of the attacking air wings of the United States Navy was heard four miles distant. Then the world exploded right over the top of his friends.

18

As the last Black Hawk fought for altitude, a hundred streaks of blue and green laser light lit the skies around it. The army warrant officer pulled hard right on the stick and brought the large helicopter almost to a stall position to avoid a line of tracer-like cannon fire. They were being bracketed by not only five of the remaining twenty saucers but also the surviving Grays of the ground assault.

U.S. Navy Hornets buzzed the battlefield in an effort to engage the enemy, but the saucers were much too fast to get missile-lock. The naval aviators finally started using their twenty-millimeter cannon to engage at close range. Their goal was to protect the remains of the German infantry element left stranded by the destruction of their own shield of burning Panzers. The two airborne units had climbed aboard anything that was still operational when the orders had been given from the command-and-control bunker to break for the designated deep shelters prepared months in advance of the attack. For the first time since Operation Market-Garden during the air assault and invasion of Holland in World War II, did the two American airborne divisions actually leave a battlefield in the hands of an enemy. The soldiers of the 101st and 82nd did not like what was happening.

The retreating soldiers set up pockets of rearguard action and fired TOW missiles from the backs of Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles; they struck mostly air as the wire-guided weapons flew past the speeding saucers. The Gray reinforcements on the ground were paying a heavy toll for every foot of ground they took as missile after missile struck among their ranks. Heavy-caliber weaponry fired by the rearguard sent thousands upon thousands of tracer rounds into the saucers and the Grays on the ground. The effect was chilling to behold as the airborne units and the German infantry fought for all they were worth. Bradleys opened up with their Bushmaster weapons and started mowing down the Grays as they advanced, with each armored transport succumbing eventually to enemy handheld laser fire. The mechanized monsters Jack remembered from the Peruvian mines made their appearance as they rolled free of the saucers and then broke into their original forms and started deliberately walking toward Poseidon’s Nest. Their arms were extended and heavy-caliber kinetic weaponry opened up in all directions as the enemy advance continued.

The command Black Hawk swooped low over the retreating units as the men inside wanted desperately to join them.

Jack slammed his hand into the glass of the window as he saw three Bradleys explode simultaneously below.

Four more of the saucers had landed at the spot where the command bunker used to sit and thousands of Grays and their automatons ran down the metal ramps. It was like watching ants emptying a hill.

The American and German forces had been completely overrun and were now just trying to survive.

The Black Hawk pilot slammed the stick to the left as a line of cannon fire hit her four-bladed rotor. The helicopter shook but remained in the air and the pilot cursed as he brought the army bird directly over Poseidon’s Nest.

The three tons of charges had been placed when the false ceiling of the three hundred tons of camouflaging ice had been frozen over by the U.S. Army and Royal Corps of Engineers years before in anticipation of the Lee’s breakout of Poseidon’s Nest. The loud warning blasts of horns could be heard throughout Camp Alamo and Poseidon’s Nest and every man and woman braced for one of the largest explosions ever detonated by man over an occupied zone.

“All camp personnel brace for shock wave,” came the automated announcement that echoed off the ice walls of the now-deserted hangar.

Carl and his men looked at one another and most felt as if they would never reach the IP position for their assault to take place. The men in the two squads had set their odds of the Lee making it into the air as 75–1. Everett had not wanted to place his money on the outcome because the odds he had figured were far worse.

Inside the hangar the sound of the powerful ion engines pulsed with the power of the alien power plant. Blue-colored venting started to flare from her six thirty-five-foot-in-diameter bell housings at the stern of the battleship. The paint marking the name Garrison Lee, stenciled on the fifty-foot fantail, started to peel and fly away from the tremendous heat being generated from the giant engines. Plastic wire-ties left by the workers flared and melted away, and even a scaffolding left by the yard started to melt like ice cream in the summer sun until it fell like melting wax to the frozen ground beneath the last of the support struts, and even these enormous pieces of steel started glowing red hot as the engine exhaust became too much, even with the six engines at idle.

The HMS Garrison Lee was as ready as she ever would be as she shook in her red-hot mountings with the power of the Martian technology flowing through her structural lines.

“Ceiling detonation in ten, nine, eight, seven…,”

Carl braced himself for the impact that would be caused by one hundred tons of hardened ice striking the ship as the man-made roof opened to the sky. He hoped the Martians knew what they were doing in their design of the large battlewagon.

The Black Hawk took another direct hit on the tail boom and the rear rotor barely hung on after ten feet of aluminum housing tore free.

Suddenly the world seemed to go silent. The illusion could be attested to by men caught in the opening moments of an artillery barrage as the mind played a protecting trick on the body. It was if the world slowed down so the human reaction could spark movement in the speedy detonation around them.

The Black Hawk vanished in a hail of shattered ice as the false roof of Poseidon’s Nest exploded upward. Four square miles of ice and snow disappeared in a millisecond as the explosives were electronically detonated by computer.

The passengers and crew were thrown against the sound-reducing roof of the helicopter as the impact first lifted and then flipped her onto her side, and then the Black Hawk rolled over upside down. Her tail boom was ripped completely free of her main body and the five-bladed rotors were sheared away by one-ton blocks of ice that were thrown into the sky like Styrofoam. The helicopter spun in a dizzying circle as she fell from the sky in flames and falling ice.

Everett closed his eyes as the impact started beating a horrible sound against the Lee’s superstructure as the millions of tons of ice fell free and onto the decks of the warship. The giant battleship shook and was nearly pushed from her remaining support beams as she righted herself and then shook even more as five delayed charges exploded against her superstructure. When the shaking and battering stopped and the Lee ceased her frightening roll, Carl chanced a look onto the upper deck of the battleship to see falling blocks of ice striking the ship with terrifying loudness. The view that he had was amazing and horrifying at the same time, even as several of his assault team members shouted their approval at the adrenaline-producing scene.

Everett’s eyes widened when he saw amongst the falling ice, the dark shape of something his brain didn’t recognize at first. Then he realized it was the damaged main section of a Black Hawk. It struck the deck and then bounced, stopping only when it was inundated with falling ice from above. Carl immediately released his harness and sprinted for the emergency hatch only feet away. The opening would lead him toward the deck and superstructure beyond. The two Special Forces lieutenants had seen the same thing as the admiral and also unsnapped their harnesses and ran after Carl, finding it hard to lift their feet against the grip of the Velcro flooring. They admonished the rest of the men to stay put as several of them attempted to follow.

Everett ignored the hatch-open warning and even the yelling from the engineering section on the bridge to secure the hatch. He finally managed to break the hard seal and he was nearly crushed as ice continued to fall. He covered his head, cursing himself for not bringing his helmet as he was joined by the two team leaders. They dodged and ran along the laced girder superstructure that made up the forward decking just aft of the giant deflector plow. The Black Hawk was starting to burn as it was wedged into the sharpened rear of the immense plow.

“Check the other side!” he yelled as he ran for the shattered door of the upside-down helicopter. Ice fell and warning alarms once more sounded inside the immense cave.

“Booster ignition in two minutes,” came the announcement that eerily echoed and bounced off the ice walls three hundred feet away.

The three men struggled getting both sets of sliding doors open. Finally Everett smashed the Plexiglas and slid inside, careful not to puncture or slice his environmental suit. He bounced down inside the upside-down compartment. He landed on at least two men. The two team leaders could not get the wedged-in door open and couldn’t reach the glass window because of the immensity of the deflector plow. They ran to Carl’s side and helped him lift the first live passenger out. It was a small man, to the relief of the Delta and SEAL as they roughly pulled the man free.

Lieutenant Tram was seriously hurt from a bleeding head wound as the Delta lieutenant threw him over his shoulder and ran for the open hatch thirty feet away, still dodging the falling ice.

Everett checked the next man after discovering the two pilots dead in the seats. He rolled the large body over and saw that it was Major Krell. His blank and staring eyes told the admiral the major was dead. This gave him a start as he realized both men were a part of Jack’s command staff.

“Jack!” Everett yelled as the countdown outside started at exactly at one minute.

Finally Everett found Collins lying underneath their field gear and rolled him over. His head was bleeding from several large gashes and he looked as if he were having difficulty breathing.

“Oh no, you don’t — not here, not now!” he shouted into Collins’s face as the big SEAL lifted him free from the debris. He practically tossed Jack through the broken window and didn’t wait to see if anyone caught him as he too scrambled free of the Black Hawk.

“Booster ignition in thirty seconds,” the computerized voice stated.

Carl quickly ran for the fast-retreating Delta lieutenant, who had the heavy general in a fireman’s carry as he made for the hatchway. Carl wasn’t far behind.

Helping hands took Jack and placed him on the deck. Then the men quickly strapped themselves in. Everett and the Delta lieutenant threw themselves on top of the two unconscious men and braced them as best they could. Several of the assault team reached out with their legs and slammed their booted feet down across the two men and the rescued passengers to assist in holding them down.

“Three, two, one, ignition.”

Outside the pressure hull a tremendous explosion rocked the Garrison Lee as one hundred and fifty solid fuel boosters flared to life at once. The Lee shook and then rocked in her cradle as the giant battleship dangerously rolled to starboard as the synchronization of the igniting rocket port boosters was off by 2.3 milliseconds. The men hung on as the Lee bounced several times, crushing the remaining support beams holding her in place.

Flames erupted all along the central line of midsection of the battleship as she strained against gravity to rise. On the command bridge the officers and men were being shaken as if a 12.0 earthquake had erupted under the ship.

“Gimbal main drive engines one to six to maximum down angle,” Commodore Freemantle said calmly into his headset and mic. “Maneuvering thrusters 150 degrees down angle, full power, gentlemen. Let’s see if the Martians knew how to fly!” That command was the only excitement they had ever heard from their stoic commander.

The added thrust of Lee’s six main engines coupled with her maneuvering jets pushed the Garrison Lee into a slow climb.

The power of the booster and the main engines melted ten million gallons of ice lining Poseidon’s Nest, instantaneously inundating the superstructure with a wall of water.

The Lee rose like a slow-moving airship as her boosters lifted her clear of her remaining support beams. As it did the thrust melted even these.

Still the enormous battleship rose majestically skyward as embedded cameras broadcast the images to the world as major networks were ordered from every capital on the planet to break in.

The HMS Garrison Lee broke through the remaining ice that clung tenaciously to the sides of the tunnel walls. Melting ice fell like Niagara as her engines burned and scorched steel support beams holding the walls intact, and still she rose.

The battleship shook and rocked as her bulk finally cleared the opening. Two of the hovering saucers were hit hard and bounced away as the Lee blasted into the open with brilliant sparkles of sunlight illuminating the thirty tons of ice crystals whose luminescence was excited by the combination of heat and color as the engines exploded her into the clear.

The world watched in awe as Operation Overlord became active and the Garrison Lee rose faster and faster into the brilliant blue sky, incinerating thousands of attacking Grays on the snow-covered ground.

The Earth trembled at the hybrid mix of Martian and Earth technology, and the idea advanced by a small alien in Arizona became reality.

Operation Overlord was going on the attack.

The president was propped up in bed. His eyes were both blackened and his head was still bandaged. Both arms had been broken and the casts were being held up by nylon lines that kept a tight traction on the arms and shoulders. The first lady was standing next to her husband and as they watched the Garrison Lee rise into the air, the water glass she was holding slowly tilted forward and water inundated the commander-in-chief. He didn’t notice as his lips were moving but nothing was coming out of his mouth.

Niles Compton was at the foot of his friend’s bed and Max Caulfield and Virginia Pollock were at each of the handles of the wheelchair, watching in awed silence as the scene from Antarctica was played out before them and six billion other citizens of the world. In an instant the military expenditures incurred by the major contributors to Overlord immediately explained the enormous bill for the project as every advanced technology made by every nation on Earth was utilized in the discovery, excavation, reverse engineering, and repair of the Martian technology that was 700 million years old.

It was two of the six Secret Service agents who voiced the hopes of the world as they simultaneously screamed encouragement as the stirring sight unfolded before them.

“Go, go, go!” they shouted, ignoring the flinching people around them.

Finally the man who had just awakened from a coma less than three hours before joined the men in their enthusiasm. He tried to swing his arms but only succeeded in knocking the rest of the water glass being held by his wife onto his head and he still didn’t notice; neither did the first lady.

As the Lee rose higher and higher, a chase plane from the USS John C. Stennis, an old Grumman A-6 Intruder, had to turn sharply out of the path of the largest object to ever move on land, sea, or air, but her cameras kept rolling. It was Niles Compton who saw the carnage on the ground as the Intruder’s cameras caught the scene as she straightened and accidentally showed a panoramic view of the battlefield beneath the Garrison Lee. He looked at the view of devastation as hundreds of burning and smashed armored vehicles were clearly seen below. Men of the 101st and 82nd Airborne and the German 23rd Panzer divisions were lying dead across the scorched field of ice. Aircraft from the Royal Navy and the remains of Hornets from the Washington and Stennis aircraft carriers were crushed and in flames where their sliced and smashed aluminum frames had impacted the ice.

Niles lowered his bandaged head as he realized it was his plan that had sent so many men and women to their deaths. Max Caulfield, ever the general who cared for his men, had seen the same devastation as Compton, and Virginia allowed her tears to flow for the first time without wiping them away. Niles was only seeing, within his deepest soul, the smiling faces of the friends he had sent into harm’s way — friends who could never be replaced. Caulfield squeezed Compton’s undamaged shoulder in sympathy because he knew exactly how the director felt. Virginia Pollock could no longer stay in the room and turned and left.

On the television screen the Lee burst through the thickened cumulus clouds and vanished.

Acting President Giles Camden realized that many of the soldiers who owed their allegiance to him were the loudest of all the officers in the situation room. He turned as the British-christened warship reached the sky and the cheers inside the room erupted in earnest. For show the president waved his official photographer over by whipping his head around. The man raised the camera and started taking shots as he stood on his high perch and placed his hands over his head and clasped them together and shook them like a prize fighter after a KO.

Daniel Peachtree watched the show put on by the president and knew that somehow he was to be blamed because the grand experiment had succeeded when he said it would fail and Camden had gone with his advice.

The military men who had been in the acting president’s camp earlier in the day were now stunned at the exhibition being put on by a man they knew had wished Overlord to fail; who had insisted it wasn’t real in the first place. As for Peachtree, he wanted to throttle the man because he wasn’t watching the rats leaving a sinking ship, he was actually pushing them off himself. It didn’t take long for many of the enlisted personnel to see the man above them behind the glass and they slowly lost their enthusiasm for cheering. Finally Peachtree stood and moved to the front and acted as if he were studying the situation boards. Since the awakening of the real commander-in-chief, not only had the two battle groups changed course and assisted in the battle in Antarctica, the Nimitz Battle Group in the Arabian Sea was steaming at flank speed toward the Indian coast. The man having his picture taken had yet to realize that he was no longer in charge. As he stepped to the glass he spoke out of the side of his mouth to get the fool to acknowledge the reality of what was happening.

“The president is giving orders from Walter Reed, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Camden nodded at the photographer and then turned around. “I am well aware of that, and that is why I have had you summon the chief justice and the attorney general.”

“Well, they’re meeting with a president, but it’s not you. My men tell me they’re currently inside the president’s suite of rooms, more than likely telling him the procedures for getting you out of his office.”

Camden lost a lot of the bravado he had been feeling just a moment before.

“Either that or he’s asking for arrest warrants for a few men that seem to have been at odds with their oaths of office.”

“What are you saying?”

Peachtree wanted to turn and shake the fool out of his dreamlike slowness. Finally he turned and faced him directly as many eyes turned their way.

“This is not about hanging onto power any longer, it’s about what prison they send us to after that power is yanked right out of your hands. We have to stop everything right now and put an end to…” he stopped for a moment and lowered his voice to a hard whisper, “Recall the Black Team and immediately eliminate Vickers — he’s the only one that has more than just innuendo and rumor on us. He has knowledge that can hang both of us, and not just about technology buying and selling. Other things.”

“Well, we had already decided that, so what?” Camden said, still not fully grasping the situation. “When he goes, the problem goes.”

Peachtree gave up and walked out of the situation room.

The moment he was outside in the grassy area between the E ring and the glass doors of the D, he pulled his cell phone out and hit one number.

“Yes?” came the cold voice.

“Mission cancelled. Eliminate the problem that you have currently in your possession.”

“It looked like the asset wasn’t going to utilize this out-of-the-way facility anyway, and the other problem is right in front of me at the moment.”

“Also, after you finish, lay low for a while, a long while. Your payment has been deposited in your regular account.”

Peachtree didn’t wait for a response. He closed the cell phone and then looked over at the two Marines standing guard by the glass doors. For some strange reason it seemed as if the two men knew what sort of man he had become, like they could see his very thoughts. He decided that he would return to his office and await the fate that had been destined for him since he first threw in with the likes of the former Speaker of the House.

This particular rat was on the gunnels of the ship and he was seriously thinking about jumping.

Poseidon’s Nest was now completely destroyed. The HMS Garrison Lee and her powerful booster rockets, coupled with her ion drive engines, had completely melted the entirety of the ancient inland sea. As the command group, Sir Darcy Bennett, admirals Kinkaid and Huffington, and Lord Durnsford watched from monitors inside the defense zone created by the SAS, the tremendous heat had caused the largest cave-in in world history. Water heated by the ion drive had created waterfalls that cascaded back into the light green, blue, and white void that once was the birthplace of the Lee.

All eyes went to the surface cameras and they knew immediately that the Grays had not taken too kindly to their destruction of their landing force and were even now landing two of their saucers to eliminate any further threat from the site. Camp Alamo, however, was buried so deep not even their powerful lasing systems could strike at them.

“Well, gentlemen, it seems our little secret is out and the landlord has come to evict us.” Lord Durnsford stood from his chair and walked closer to the nearest monitor. “How far out is the remaining Royal and U.S. Marine force from the George Washington and the Stennis?”

Admiral Kinkaid looked at his watch and then frowned. It was Huffington who answered.

“It seems we will be getting our hands dirty before they arrive.”

“Oh, Lord,” Sir Darcy said as he too stood and watched the embedded monitors that showed the battlefield high above their heads. “There are men still alive out there.”

As all eyes went to the many screens around the command center they saw boys being rounded up by the advancing Grays. Men no older than these gentlemen’s grandsons were being pushed and prodded toward the waiting saucers as thousands of Grays were rounding up the survivors of General Collins’s defensive forces, and from what they could see there were far more survivors than the men ever thought possible.

“Can we help those men?” Darcy asked as he sadly looked on.

“With a thousand SAS personnel, old boy, we can’t even defend ourselves,” Lord Durnsford said as he watched the horrible spectacle before him. “We will have to arm every technician, doctor, yard worker, cook, and kitchen personnel that we can find to delay the enemy long enough until help arrives. Which, I’m afraid, could be long on promise and short on delivery.”

“What the bloody hell,” Admiral Huffington said as he pointed to the screen. “What force is that?”

All eyes again turned to the screen. It was impossible but a force of at least two hundred men were actually advancing on the Grays, who were too intent on rounding up the survivors that they hadn’t noticed the spider traps that the SAS had installed weeks and months before. The trapdoors were open and men were streaming from the interiors and firing on the surprised force of Grays. With the two enemy vehicles on the ground the human element advanced quickly as they laid down a withering fire. They were soon joined by the surviving armored personnel carriers once thought destroyed but obviously had made it out before the crushing “Broken Arrow” attack by the U.S. Navy. Also at least three to four hundred of the battered 82nd and 101st Airborne troops and also men dressed in tank gear and German support troops were also among the hastily formed and very mixed composite regiment trying to save their brethren from being taken like broken cattle back to the waiting saucers. At least twenty of the German- and American-made vehicles were on a rapid advance to cover the fire team that had been hastily organized by someone inside Camp Alamo.

“Look, General Collins has saved his attack helicopters!”

Long streaks of Hellfire missiles arched into the ranks of the Gray rear guard. Explosions wrecked their loading ramps as once more the Gray ground element had been caught off guard by the combined strength of over thirty attacking AH-69 Apache Longbow gunships and more than fifteen Gazelles of the British Army. Hellfire antitank missiles were joined by twenty-millimeter chain guns of the Apaches and the thirty-caliber weapons of the fast Gazelles as they joined together against the attacking Grays, to devastating effect.

“Good show, Jack, old man,” Lord Durnsford said under his breath as he leaned in to better view the attack. Suddenly an inspiring thought entered the old master spy’s head. He turned to the two admirals. “Gentlemen, as they say we must not look a gift horse in the mouth. This is the time that courses and outcomes of battle are made. Admiral Huffington, order every man, woman, and whoever else you can, get them with our SAS boys and get them out there. We either defend from the ground or die like rats inside here, and unlike our German foe Herr Hitler, I don’t intend to go out that way! We owe it to General Collins at the very least.”

Huffington sprang to action as did Kinkaid, and for the first time the two men didn’t argue an order as they came to the same conclusions as Durnsford.

“Shall we get our best winter clothing on and join those men, Darcy?”

“By all means. I would very much like to meet the person responsible for getting a force together so quickly while we sat here and predicted our demise.”

“Then, after you, old man.”

Sarah McIntire had sat and watched Jack’s entire force be decimated on the surface during the defense of Camp Alamo. She had felt sorry for herself for all of ten minutes and then her eyes settled on the men, women, technicians, shipyard workers, and extra military personnel who had no orders for what to do after the Lee had been launched. She saw the frightened eyes and knew they couldn’t just set here and wait to die. She knew she had at least three thousand able-bodied personnel that would rather be outside fighting than in here waiting on the Grays to dig them out. She stood and so did Anya Korvesky after coming to the same conclusion.

“We have fifty arms lockers right out there. Now you can either sit in here and wait on those ugly fuckers to come and get you, or we can get out there and help those boys that gave us the time to do our jobs.”

The eyes looked at her from benches; mouths that had been whispering in hushed tones were now closed. It was a burly welder from the shipyard who stood and looked at the gathered personnel in the largest of the bunkers, looked at the diminutive female soldier, and decided she was right. The Englishman looked around at the men and women who had worked for years to get the prize put back together and get her launched.

“I don’t relish the thought of waiting here for those ugly bastards with a bleedin’ welding torch. Let’s take it to them before they know what’s happening!” The men and women, cooks and bakers, military computer personnel, and even the cleaning crews slowly rose and looked toward Sarah and Anya.

“The least we can do is help the survivors get back inside,” Sarah said as she yelled, “This way to the armory!”

Word had spread that an attack was going to be mounted, and everyone who foresaw their deaths at the hands of the Grays decided in an instant that they would rather go out with a weapon in their hand instead of waiting for mercy from a merciless race.

Bunker after bunker had emptied out as SAS guards knew they couldn’t contain the rush of humanity who charged the four armories they were to guard. Before they knew what was happening they too started issuing weapons and ammunition to the workers. The fever had spread like a virus and the carriers of this new disease were two women who now fought for men who possibly would never return.

19

Colonel Henri Farbeaux fought to get the ice and the remains of the command bunker off his body. It felt as though the very life was being squeezed from his lungs as the weight of sandbags and snow covered him from head to foot.

He had lain there for what seemed hours and it wasn’t until the heat from the engines of the rising Lee had struck him that he realized he was still alive. He felt the earth shake and the weight of the debris press down even harder as the remains of the bunker pressed harder into his hurt body. He remembered he and the young captain had just broken free of the entrance when the lights, the air, and the world vanished around them as the attacking carrier aircraft laid waste to the command post.

Henri felt strong hands reach into the rubble and pull him ruthlessly out of the situation he was in. He wanted to curse at his rescuers for the indelicate way they were going about it when he heard the familiar hissing and cursed language of the Grays. He knew then that it wasn’t friendly hands freeing him.

He was finally pulled out and thrown onto the ground, and just as he opened his eyes a long sharpened staff came down and stabbed him in the right shoulder. Farbeaux screamed as he felt the alien weapon drive deep, and then among his own scream of pain he heard a satisfying hiss of a Gray as he stood over him. Henri cursed in his native tongue and then tried to roll over and away from the assault, but the Gray grabbed him by the white, blood-soaked parka and threw him again onto his back. Before he could curse again he saw three more Grays in their purplish-colored and strangely styled clothing. The Grays were showing their faces to him as they picked him off the ground and made him stand before them. The Frenchman kept his eyes on the taller Gray that had ruthlessly tested him for life with the sharpened edge of his laser staff. Henri angrily spit out at his tormentor, wanting the animal to finish the job and quit stabbing at him like a trapped and injured fly by a mean-spirited child.

He heard a loud grunt as another captive was thrown down at his feet. It was Will Mendenhall; the boy was out cold. Henri watched as the Gray that had captured his prize also sent the spearlike tip of his strange weapon deeply into Will’s leg. It produced not so much as a cry of pain.

“Bastard!” Farbeaux took a step forward and was mercilessly kicked and beaten to the ground. The assault continued for what seemed like minutes and he thought he was going to get the final coup de grâce, but the killing blow never came. Instead Henri heard a single gunshot and when he managed to look up he saw the three remaining Grays kicking and punching at the young captain, who had curled up in a tight ball to protect himself for the brutal blows. The smoking nine millimeter was lying a few feet away and Farbeaux had to admire the kid for getting at least one of the brutal bastards before they fell on him. Will’s victim was on its knees, still breathing and looking dumbfounded with a nice clean bullet hole in the center of his chest. Mendenhall must have hit at least one of the Gray’s two hearts because as the Frenchman watched the alien just simply rolled over and then fell face-first dead into the snow. Its sickly greenish-purple blood stained the burnt and crusty snow around it. The beating of Will came to a stop as the three Grays hissed and spat. One raised the laser staff and took aim at the now unconscious kid. Henri rolled over and placed his body over Will’s. He was also pummeled but not shot. When the beating was done he was again lifted to his feet.

Henri realized that his right leg was broken and at least four ribs felt as if they had been snapped in two. He had never felt such pain in his life and thought the same as the captain that it was better to go his way than being slowly beaten to death. But as he looked around he saw other survivors of the battle, boys no older than Will being revived and pushed toward two saucers that hovered only feet off the snow and ice. Like Mumbai and Beijing they were being herded together and marched to a waiting butchering at the leisure of their ruthless and barbaric foe. He had decided that wasn’t the way his story would end, it would end the way Mendenhall’s had — on his own terms, not these bastards’.

Farbeaux closed his eyes and thought for the briefest of moments of his long-dead wife, Danielle, the woman whose death had been blamed on Jack Collins for years, and he smiled, knowing that soon enough he would join her in a far better place. He also thought quickly of Sarah McIntire, the complete opposite of his wife but just as loved for no better reason than he saw a kindness to the woman he had never seen in anyone else. With those faces in front of him he charged and the first Gray raised his weapon.

The field of battle once more erupted in gunfire and explosions. Henri felt bullets whiz by his exposed head and the Gray who had just had the intention of ending his life went down in a spray of sickening blood. Once again Farbeaux hit the cold earth and rolled as more fire caught the next two captors and sent them reeling backward. Still the rounds came in a ruthless but satisfying abundance that hit everything near and far. He realized that whoever was firing had very little discipline as to who they were shooting at. He covered his head and waited for the bullets to end what the Grays had started.

He heard Will’s name called in the din of battle and he managed to look up and see many hands pulling at the unconscious captain, then other hands were on him and he knew that the Grays had probably beaten whatever attackers had momentarily saved him and were back in control. He heard the missile strikes and the sound of helicopters buzz past, shouts and screams of men and women as they surrounded him. The hands that picked him up were strong and not very delicate, but he realized that the blessed hands were at least human.

“There, a little worse for wear, but still breathing,” said a Cockney-laced accent as he came face-to-face with a large brutish man with a thick dark beard.

“Who in the hell are you?” Henri managed to ask of the same yard worker who had earlier echoed the commands of Sarah and Anya. The brute of a welder stared in wonder at the injured soldier before him.

“A bleedin’ Frog, will wonders never cease!” the man said and then ran off.

Henri wobbled on his feet and then slowly looked around and saw the attackers were a motley mix of men and women in varying states of dress. The one thing they had in common was the arms they held and the way they used them. His eyes widened when a lab technician — a woman no older than a twenty-something punk rocker with pink and blue hair streaming from her parka’s hood — kneeled only feet away and cut loose with a Heckler & Koch German assault rifle on full automatic. The weapon was spitting bullets as she lost control and sent the rounds into the snow-covered ground and then stitched a pattern that ended up going straight into the air. The woman was nonplused at her inaccuracy as she immediately sent the spent magazine flying and quickly inserted another and then recklessly charged forward.

An American Apache Longbow attack helicopter streaked low overhead and sent a pair of wire-guided Hellfire missiles straight into the open hatchway of the far left, hovering saucer. The interior of the alien vehicle exploded outward in a hail of strange material and flying bodies, then it fell to the ground, where a loud Bushmaster twenty-millimeter cannon mounted on a surviving Bradley Fighting Vehicle slammed its large exploding rounds into the remains of the saucer.

Henri was shoved in the back and as he turned he saw none other than Sarah McIntire, wearing the white camouflage BDUs of a soldier. She was screaming at him to get down as she fired at something rushing their way. Her bullets riddled one of the shocked Grays as it charged them maniacally. The Gray hit the ground and its large body dug a path as it finally slid to a stop.

“Come on, Colonel, help us gather these men together and get them the hell back to Alamo!”

Henri was still in shock at not having his life ended, and further stunned to find out just who his rescuers were.

For a five-mile radius around the crater left by the departing Lee, three and half thousand civilian and military personnel were fighting for their lives as they attempted the rescue of the remains of General Collins’s defensive force.

As they fought and died to save their own, a roar filled the sky high above. But before the force of civilians and military could spy the new threat their attention was forced back to the ground. Amid the explosions of Hellfire missiles and mortars they saw the attacking Grays streaming from another saucer that had landed. The rescuers were now slowly being surrounded.

And still the roar overhead continued of what could only be assumed were even more saucers coming to assist the Grays’ landing force.

The mistakes in their reverse engineering and even the technical instruction given to the engineering teams by Matchstick in the mating of the Gray power plant with the Martian-designed ion drive were readily apparent as the Lee gained high orbit. Fires broke out in the engine spaces as the reverse-flow generators cooling the power plant went into the red and coolant leaks sparked a blazing inferno as engineers, both civilian and naval, fought to extinguish the hell that had erupted in the tight spaces. The only way they could see to put the fires out was the use of emergency venting into open space; the vacuum would suck the inferno out of the large hatches designed just for the scenario.

The bridge was loud as technical men and women were taking emergency calls from almost every deck on the battleship. Commodore Freemantle felt the powerful ion-drive engines shut down as the Garrison Lee became the largest object in the history of the planet to be an out of control, floating, and spinning object in space.

Captain Lienanov unfastened his safety harness when he saw the red blinking lights coming from the engine room, six decks high and as many deep at the stern of the ship. He saw the temperature in those spaces rising rapidly as the fire alarms were tripped. He heard the frantic calls coming from those spaces and he roughly shook the commodore by the shoulder to get his attention.

Freemantle immediately placed his headphones back on, and then said into the mic, “Permission granted. Open all vents and hatches to space. Get the fires out and shut off the coolant flow to the mixing chambers, for God’s sake, before they explode and take the bloody engines with it!”

“Commodore, we are also venting oxygen into space from numbers three, six, and fourteen tanks,” the atmospheric officer two tiers below the main deck of the bridge called into his communications mic.

“We can’t do anything about that right now — we can’t spare the damage control parties to fix them. Shut down and transfer as much O₂ to the remaining tanks as you can.”

“Aye, sir,” the man said and then relayed the order.

Suddenly sparks flew from the maneuvering panel and the four men and two women monitoring the now shutdown maneuvering jets fell back onto the steel deck and rear consoles, their feet losing grip on the Velcro-accented station. They floated free.

“Keep your harnesses on, people, how many times did we drill for that?” Freemantle said as calmly as he could. The Lee shook and rumbled and was pushed thirty kilometers from her position as more alarms announced a fracture somewhere in the superstructure.

“We have hull breach!” came the voice of the damage control officer below them. As more technical support personnel floated free of their stations, Commodore Freemantle held his temper in check.

“Calmly, people, calmly, now. Shut down the hull breach alarms, Lieutenant Stevens, that is not a hull breach, it’s the bloody venting ports open to space. Now please shut off that damnable noise.”

The young man felt foolish as he did what he had been ordered.

The Lee, to the casual observer from the vantage of the Earth, was upside down, but the crew never realized it. The alarms were slowly being shut down as fires and other small emergencies were brought under control after the men and women in all departments slowly became use to zero-gravity maneuvering in the spaces throughout the ship.

“Gentlemen, I need engine status or we’re going to have Grays sitting in our lap with no engines or weaponry. Radar, enemy fleet status, please?” Freemantle tried his best to be a calming influence to his crew as no men or women in the history of the world had ever faced something as traumatic as this — technology that had gone out of control with no prior testing in the ship’s natural element of outer space.

“Thus far they have not rounded the moon.” The radar officer and his seventeen operators adjusted set and bandwidths. “We are receiving telemetry from Sydney Station; they’re bouncing a signal off of the Mars relay station. The enemy is still being screened by the moon. We are not, I repeat, not being tracked by enemy sensors at this time.”

“That will change as soon as they get in direct line of sight with us.” Freemantle looked over at Lienanov and winked. The captain could not believe he was on this mission in the first place, and was nervously watching men and women who really didn’t know what they were doing. He released his handhold and then went to a standing chair and strapped himself in. “People,” the commodore said, “I need the status on my engines. Without them we have no generators, and without the generators we have no gunnery at all. We will only have the kinetic weapons and the rail guns, and I’m afraid that will fall far short of what we need.”

“Power plant is still offline, Commodore. Engineering is getting assistance from shuttle management, and he is—”

The commodore and everybody else heard the cursing over the intercom as someone below was haranguing the engineering crew to shut the magnetometers down, that they were electrically interfering with the power plant’s flow of energy to the main mixing chambers. Freemantle recognized Professor Jenks immediately — who else would call his engineering officers a bunch of pussies that couldn’t turn a monkey wrench?

“Commodore, we have extraneous personnel interfering with operations down here. We need to—”

Freemantle hit his transmit switch and cut off the engineering commander down below. “What you need to do at the moment is listen to the master chief. He seems to be the only one that has an idea of what to do.”

“Yeah, did you hear that, you limey, snot-nosed little shit? Quit being a tattletale and get your ass over to the mainframe coupling and turn it on. I don’t relish the thought of floating here and being used as fucking target practice. Now move.”

In the background everyone heard the master chief as he took control. They also heard a voice remind Jenks that they were still transmitting to the bridge.

“I don’t give a good goddamn who—”

The command bridge intercom was shut down when Freemantle gave a slice-across-the-throat gesture.

“I particularly do not like that man, but I must say he is one colorful … whatever he is,” the commodore said.

“Permission to join the master chief below?” Lienanov asked.

Freemantle just nodded his head as he studied the motion control board before him. He saw that they had at least 60 percent of their monitors out as the Lee spun crazily out of control.

“Now gentlemen and ladies, I need my eyes back online. Can we do something about that, please?”

Carl Everett checked Jack’s status as the Delta medic looked him over.

“As far as I can see, Admiral, he’s got one bad concussion and maybe some glass in his side, but other than that, I think he’s just out.” The medic turned to Tram, who was finally sitting up and being held in place by three men as his body wanted to float away. A sergeant walked toward Tram and offered him a pair of Velcro booties to slip over his white combat boots. Everett turned his attention to the small Vietnamese sniper. Another SEAL passed him an environ suit that should fit the small officer. The suit floated in front of Tram, which caused him to get dizzy and almost vomit.

“Pretty bad down there?” He kneeled as best he could next to Tram inside the zero-gravity environment.

Tram held the Velcro boots close to his chest, pulled the clothing down into his lap, and lowered his head.

“Captain Mendenhall? The Frenchman?” Carl hesitated but asked anyway.

Tram shook his head as he finally looked into Everett’s face. The admiral just patted the famed Vietnamese sniper on the shoulder and then gestured for the medic to get that head wound tended to and for others to get him and the knocked-out Collins into spacesuits.

Everett stood with his feet secured by the antigravity boots and looked out into space from the large porthole. The remains of the Black Hawk were now gone as he spied the roll of the battleship.

“Well, things don’t look like they went according to plan in phase one of this operation.” He looked down at Jack as he lay on the plastic deck. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”

Commodore Freemantle floated to the elongated damage control station and watched his people working the boards. Thus far the fires had all been extinguished without the use of mass venting, thus saving precious O₂ that they couldn’t spare or replace. They had lost three of the nitrogen coolant tanks used for the enormous turret guns, and thus far they were lucky as far as deaths and injuries. Twenty-two dead and one hundred and fifty injured. For a launch that had gone off without a hitch the Garrison Lee soon reminded the crew how dangerous this mission was from start to finish. He realized the training they had the past four and a half years told all personnel in no uncertain terms that this was nothing more than a one-way trip to begin with. They all wanted to get at least a chance to prove to the world, and to themselves, that the Lee could make a difference.

“How are the repairs to the power plant? We need at least maneuvering as soon as possible. Right now we wouldn’t even give the bloody Grays a fright, not spinning like this.”

“Professor Jenks said it was nothing more than the arrogant bastards — sorry, sir, his words. The engineers at the Royal Institute of Technology and the techs at General Electric misinterpreting the American asset’s design drawings and installing the twin plasma pumps backward. They said they didn’t look right and changed the specs. It tested well, but when full power to the ion engines was engaged they backed up and shot pure plasma into the cooling system, causing the overload. They are in the process of changing out the lines now. The two plasma pumps have been taken out and reversed.”

Freemantle shook his head. “Awful brave of those engineers who aren’t on this little ride to change the specifications of a being with the intelligence quotient of four hundred of those bloody sots.”

“Yes, sir,” the female American navy motorman said. The twenty-two-year-old had been one of the first volunteers when the assignment was offered to members of the American navy.

Freemantle took hold of the handrail and pulled himself to the radar officer. “Any sign of the bastards?”

“No sign of the large power ship yet, sir. One of the small attack ships nosed over for a look-see and then vanished from the scope in a flash three minutes ago. Gave me a start, I can tell you.”

“Any indication the scout saw us?”

“I don’t see how he could have missed us with the spectacle we’re putting on.”

Freemantle had to smile at his radar officer’s observation. Down the line radar personnel from the Russian, American, and British navies watched their scopes closely. Some of the sets were calibrated at differing wave bands to cover the full spectrum in order to defeat the stealthy design and materials of the alien vessels.

“Well, we have to assume they know we’re here and just don’t know what to make of us as of yet. That time could cost them if we get the damned power plant online,” he said angrily.

“Or maybe they’re just laughing too hard to come at us,” the officer interjected. “I mean, they haven’t had to deal with this class of ship for seven hundred million years.”

Freemantle had to laugh and that broke his momentary spell of anger. He had been too long absent from the real navy and real seamen and knew they joked at the harshest of times. He nodded his head, feeling better about his crew.

His damage control officer joined him as he floated up and took a hold on the same railing, letting his feet secure themselves to the Velcro adherent on the deck.

“Mr. Jenks reports two minutes more will be needed to flush the coolant and plasma lines. He cursed me for not having the foresight to add lengths of ceramic lining to our ship’s stores before takeoff.” The officer looked behind him. “I think he ate all of my behind on that one, sir.”

“Well, he has a point, but it wasn’t your fault, lad. I’m afraid I cut what I thought were all nonessentials from the stores list. Just don’t let on to the master chief, eh? So what did Jenks use for the ceramic lines?”

The officer grimaced. “He bloody well tore out the officer’s zero-gravity toilets. He used the small sections of ceramic tubing, nonconductive duct tape, and aluminum foil.”

Freemantle was stunned.

“He said the officers can shit themselves for getting them into this mess.”

“Very well, I’ll give up my toilet privileges if the damn thing will just work.”

Freemantle let go of the handrail, peeled his boots from the deck, and launched himself up and over the two tiers of battle bridge technicians to grab a firm hold on the captain’s station, where he came to a twirling stop. He would never admit this to his men, or even his wife — if he ever returned home that is — but he had become totally infatuated with the zero-gravity travel from one spot to the other. He settled to the deck and then strapped in. He placed his mic cord into its station and then cleared his throat.

“All hands, this is Commodore Freemantle. I have been informed that we will be testing the power plant repairs in just a few moments. Please take your stations and secure all material.”

The Garrison Lee was still spinning crazily in a wide circle.

“What do you mean, they’re just gone?” Admiral Everett said to the attack craft commander of the first shuttle.

Five men were floating free in the bay next to the two ships. The locking gear firmly held them to station but they also did not escape damage from the engine meltdown. Everett counted at least ten serious-sized holes that had to be patched on the outer docked attack ship. When three of the large booster rockets attached only a hundred feet from the shuttle bay were jettisoned, the explosive bolts holding them in place blew them off. But there had been an inordinate amount of dry chemical still left in the booster from the countdown misfire that delayed its activation, thus when the bolts exploded the rest of the fuel was redirected from the containment housing into the girder system of the superstructure. That, in turn, was vented directly to the exposed fuel lines attached to the outboard shuttle. The explosion not only knocked holes in the DuPont-designed heat tiles, but also killed the pilot and copilot of shuttle number two who were strapped into their stations nearby — another safety flaw of the hurried design.

“Commander Roberts and Lieutenant Rodriguez were blown out through the deck and into space,” said the Marine pilot of the number one shuttle, Commander Emily Coghagen. The two men had been her friends and she had trained with them on Master Chief Jenks’s design for the past two years.

Everett angrily kicked out at nothing, forgetting he was floating and momentarily throwing himself into a slight spin. Jason Ryan reached out and steadied his friend.

“Can you make two trips?” he asked Coghagen with little hope of a positive answer.

“Not in the time frame we’ll need to get two teams inside. The first will already have found their way deep into the energy ship before we returned with the second assault element.”

“So, you’re short one pilot and copilot and have a damaged ship?” Ryan asked with a brightening smile.

“Forget it, Commander, you’re not qualified,” Everett said angrily, knowing the young aviator would pull something like that.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t qualified to land the LEM on the moon either, but guess what?”

“What in the hell is he talking about? What is a LEM, and what fucking moon?” the Marine pilot asked astounded at the claim by the cocky naval aviator. “Sir.”

“Landing Excursion Module. Mr. Ryan accidentally landed one on the moon four years ago.” Everett shook his head at the astonished men floating next to the grinning Ryan.

“You see, Commander, the navy doesn’t tell the corps everything it’s up to — we keep some secrets to ourselves,” Ryan said as he returned his attention to Carl. “Now, either you think you can blow that thing up with one assault element, or you allow me to at least try to get your second team over to the opposite side. I’ll even take that asshole friend of yours along to show me the way of things. I’m sure those engine room boys would love for Jenks to get the hell off their ship anyway.”

Everett looked at his watch for no other reason than to see the time, because in reality he didn’t even know if they could get the Lee back into action long enough to find the power ship.

Ryan was watching, no longer concerned with his request as he noticed the thick blood clinging to the admiral’s watch. Without even asking he knew it was the blood of Jack Collins and everything he had learned about the British find came flooding back. He swallowed but refused to point that out to Everett.

“Okay.” Carl turned to the Marine commander and her copilot. “You have until launch time to get this asshole up to speed on the flyby wire control system of that bird, and you make him understand it and understand it good.” He turned to face Ryan. “Pay attention and no smart-ass comments or observations, is that clear, mister?”

Ryan nodded, smiling at last, letting the vision of the blood-covered watch go for the moment.

“Great.” Coghagen looked from the admiral to a cocky Ryan. “No matter if he understands something or not, he’ll say he does. I know these carrier jocks.”

“She’s got you pegged already, flyboy.”

“I love you too, Admiral.” Jason blew the retreating form of Everett good-bye. Ryan soon lost his smile as he turned to face the commander. “Let’s get to it.”

The Marine Corps pilot saw the sudden change in Ryan’s demeanor as soon as the admiral was out of sight. Gone was the man she had seen moments before; now Jason Ryan was all business.

She had no way of knowing that Ryan had just sworn to himself to try and change the destiny the Event Group, Matchstick, and the planners for Overlord had in store for him. Even if it cost him his life, Admiral Everett, his friend, would not die in the Earth’s ancient past if he could help it.

Ryan entered the damaged shuttle without another word.

“I want the drone launched immediately; I have to know the disposition of the enemy ships. How many are they, what does their fleet consist of, where are the processing vessels? And most importantly, the number of attack ships protecting the power distribution craft. As soon as the computers are up and propulsion systems restored I want that probe on the way. We’re not getting telemetry from the Earth stations since their jamming started.”

“Probe is ready and in the launch tube, Commodore.”

The lieutenant in charge of torpedo tubes 1–18 answered the commodore from his computer station. Jenks walked behind the kid and slapped him hard on the back. “Son, you take that system off-line while we try to crank this ion pump up; if she blows again it’ll take your torpedo tubes up with it. So safe all your weapons, is that clear?”

“Clear, Master Chief,” the young Royal Navy officer said, just grateful the master chief didn’t yell at him the way he had the commodore earlier when asked for the status of the ion drive.

“Good boy, now all hands strap in.” Jenks paused. “Ah, hell, hide behind something and take those damn Velcro boots off or you’ll break your ankles if we start venting again. Just hang onto your ass or the guy’s next to you. Everyone, helmets on.” The master chief and once proud professor looked at the Royal Navy female ensign standing next to him and raised his brows. “You stay by me, doll face. Okay, let’s start the music, sound the warning alarm, and tell the bridge we’re tryin’ her now.”

The alarm echoed through all eighteen decks of the Garrison Lee. Silent prayers were said and men and women closed their eyes as they waited for the loud sound of rushing coolant, and prayed that the new lines didn’t leak into the plasma containment tanks.

“Tell the computer to start, son, she ain’t going to do it without you.”

The propulsion officer swallowed and turned the switch, thus allowing the computer system to take over.

A loud whoosh sounded in the engine spaces as the coolant flow shot into the lines. Everyone cringed and then waited for the lines to back up into the plasma generator again, but this time the lights all turned green. One by one the plasma containment indicators switched on in the slowest manner possible. All twenty indicator lights were now in the green, or safe mode. Coolant was heard pumping through the lines at a rapid rate.

Master Chief Jenks closed his eyes and pursed his lips, surprised his jerry-rigging was successful. The propulsion officer sitting at his console watched as the power plant was now receiving the required amount of coolant and she slowly came online one system at a time.

“You did it, Master Chief, she’s up!”

Captain Lienanov, who had been hastily assigned to watch the plasma tanks for escalating pressure buildup, turned and echoed the officer’s words.

Jenks opened his eyes after his silent prayer and then looked at the computer showing full power had been restored. He raised the glass visor in his helmet and then stuck the stub of a dead cigar in his mouth, much to the horror of the safety officer, then turned to the men he thought of now as his people.

“Of course it is, what do you think it was gonna do, you bunch of—” The master chief looked at the young female ensign and then thought better of what he was going to call the men in the engine room. “Well, of course it works!” he said instead.

Jenks floated over to the intercom and slammed a beefy fisted glove into the switch. He removed the stub out from his mouth.

“Bridge, engine room. Full power restored. Now you have maneuvering capability, but don’t go slammin’ her into the moon or anything!”

Commodore Freemantle stood at his station and shook his head at the very unprofessional man he had in charge in the engine spaces. But he was thankful the gruff old engineer was there.

“Starboard maneuvering watch, fire jets one, five, and eight. Stern, reverse thrust of jets twelve and eighteen.”

The commands went without comment as the silent roll of the Garrison Lee started to slow.

“Port jets twenty, twenty-four, and fifty-one, fire now!” he said, overly excited to get the command out.

“She’s stabilizing, sir,” the helmsman called out. “Roll has slowed, slowing … stopped.”

“All jets cease burn. Helm, please give control back to the navigation computer for station keeping. Now torpedo room, launch my drone.”

“Drone away.”

On the one-hundred-foot view screen the commodore saw the small torpedo-shaped drone shoot out just aft of the deflector plow. The probe fired her booster engines and shot around the moon.

“Launch relay drone.”

Soon the first pilotless information-gathering drone shot free of the Lee, only this one stopped at seven hundred miles above the moon and still in visual range of the battleship. There it fired its automated breaking jets and came to a complete stop. She waited there to receive the information the first Black Bird drone sent back. Then it would relay the telemetry to the Garrison Lee.

The bridge personnel waited silently for what the drone would tell them they were facing.

“First images coming in,” the intelligence officer called from her station.

Freemantle and the rest of the bridge leaned forward as far as their safety harnesses would allow and watched the screen closely.

“Oh, Lord,” said one of the younger radar officers.

“Stow that, sailor,” Freemantle said, though he too was stunned at the first image.

There were at least a thousand smaller attack saucers sitting in formation, six rows deep. The computer was rapidly counting and printing their type on the large screen. The message wasn’t good. Sitting on the outer rim of protecting attack craft were at least ten of the processing ships. They were at minimum the same size as the two that struck Mumbai and Beijing. Then in the exact center was the power-producing and transfer ship that would feed the invasion force the resupply of energy they would need to take on the lacking defenses of Earth’s military power.

An attack saucer broke formation and shot toward the probe. The little missile stayed in place and kept broadcasting as long as it could, and that was only a few seconds as the bridge crew saw a bright flash of light and the telemetry being sent to the relay went dark. But before it did they all saw the fleet of enemy warships start their advance.

“Number One, I would like to address the crew at this time, please,” Freemantle said as he straightened up as best he could.

“Aye, sir, one MC is active.”

“All hands, man battle stations,” Freemantle said calmly. “All sixteen-inch gun turrets, charge your particle canisters and energize your Argon systems. Ladies and gentlemen, the battle we trained for these past four years is now upon us. We must destroy as much of this fleet as possible to give the boys time to destroy their only power ship. Assault element, man your attack ships. Good luck, Admiral Everett.”

Throughout the HMS Garrison Lee, men and women tensed for the first outer space battle in history, and as most of them thought, the shortest and possibly the only battle.

The Lee turned to starboard, exposing all of her sixteen-inch laser cannon toward the curvature of the moon, waiting to discharge a full broadside into the first saucers that showed themselves.

Not since the end of World War II was a battleship more prepared for offensive action with naval gunfire.

Carl Everett looked Jack over as he sat up and winced at his broken ribs. He tried desperately to clear his eyes as the announcement was made about the testing of the power plant. He was finally able to focus on the face in front of him. As he tried to speak he felt sick as he started to float up into the air. Everett reached out and pulled him back down.

“I thought that letting you float away would be faster than explaining to you where you were at.” Carl smirked and then realized the last thing his friend had seen on the surface was more than likely his command being blown to pieces, and the death of Will Mendenhall. “I’m sorry about your command, Jack.” He looked over at Tram, who was sitting next to the now-spacesuited general. “And about Will.”

Jack Collins was still dazed, but not quite enough not to feel the pang of guilt over how he had failed. And now there was no telling what was happening below on the surface.

“Camp…” He swallowed and tried again, “Camp Alamo?” Tram handed him a Mylar bag of Dr. Pepper and he took it as his eyes searched Everett’s face.

“No word. Hell, we just got this big bitch back under control, thanks to the master chief.” Carl had heard the coolant pumps engage just a moment before.

Collins took a drink of the sharp-tasting liquid, coughed, and then drank again. He handed the empty bag back to Tram. He reached out and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “The rest of the staff?”

Tram lowered his head and then started to clean the old M-14 rifle once again. The gift he had received from Jack in South America had never been out of his sight. Luckily when the Black Hawk went down he had it strapped to his back.

“Sebastian and the others are dead, Jack.”

Collins leaned back as he held firm to one of the many canvas straps that hung from the bulkhead.

Suddenly the feel of movement was pushed throughout the ship as the Lee started to control her roll.

“We’re headed for one hell of a gunfight in just a few minutes, buddy. I have to go. You and Tram take the number two lift to deck six, and then take the tram to the forward spaces nearest the escape pods. That’s the safest place on board, right by the plow. Thicker steel.”

Jack started to say something in protest, but Carl shook his head. “Not this time, pal, it’s my turn. You and your men have done enough.” He looked at the Vietnamese lieutenant. “Tram, you take command of the staff of General Collins, and if things go bad get him off the ship. That’s an order, you understand?”

Even Tram hesitated, making Everett shake his head. He then turned to an SAS military security man.

“Sergeant, you take these two men to the escape pod. You’ll know real fast if this attack goes south, so get them the hell out. The general’s flag is being transferred.”

The SAS sergeant came to attention and nodded.

“Sorry, Jack, but the fights in the navy’s corner now.” He peeled his feet off the floor, pushed off, and floated through the open hatch to the shuttle bay without the slightest hesitation. Collins knew he couldn’t say good-bye like he wanted to in front of the men around him.

The two assault teams of Delta and SEALs moved off with a nod of thanks to Jack for giving them a shot at their jobs. The last man by was the young SEAL who had recently shaved his beard. He smiled. “Thank you, General.”

Jack watched the young SEAL sail through the hatch, knowing every man on that detail knew they wouldn’t have the time to get back to the shuttles before the detonations of the warheads turned them to nothing more than light particles.

Throughout the Garrison Lee every person onboard felt the ion-drive engines come to life just as the announcement from the commodore sounded through the loud speakers.

And General Jack Collins never felt so helpless in his life.

The two men in black Windbreakers waited inside the Cactus Bar and Grill. One was shooting pool on the filthy and beer-stained table that had seen far better days; the other walked up to the old Rockolla jukebox and not too gently shoved the long-haired old man away. The old man walked to a crooked and slanting table and slowly sat, placing his head on the tabletop. He looked like he had fallen asleep, which is the way the alternating watchers, the men in black, had seen him do most of the long and boring days in the time they had spent here.

The bartender was his usual self as he stood behind the bar and just watched the men. He had been kept busy in the kitchen serving these men sandwiches and cheeseburgers at least five or six times a day. He knew the bulk of the eight men kept low in the Texaco station across the way but never enquired personally. He wiped his bar and tried to ignore the two men until they ordered something, usually just water to his great dissatisfaction.

The small bell above the double doors chimed and the leader of these men came in and walked straight to the bar. He was soon followed by the redhaired man in the now dirty blue suit. The skinny one sat at the bar as the leader called the other two black-clad men over to where he pulled out a barstool, looked it over, and then decided to forego the seating as it looked like it would collapse under his weight. The two men came forward. The one playing pool placed the old, crooked pool cue on the bar and gave the heavyset bartender a dirty look until he moved down to what used to be a waitress station that hadn’t seen a waitress in six years.

“This little safari is at an end. We’ve been ordered to pull out and head our separate ways,” the larger of the three said. “Our target seems to be a lot smarter than our man Vickers here thought he was.” He glanced at Hiram, who just stared at the stained bar top with his hands hidden out of sight. “For all we know the asset is holed up at the Motel 6 in Apache Junction, drinking Coronas and lying by the pool.”

“He will be here, eventually,” Vickers said, not bothering to look up.

“Maybe he will and maybe he won’t; that’s no longer a concern of ours, or of Mr. Peachtree’s.” The man glanced at his two partners and slightly nodded his head. “We’ve been ordered to clean up our mess here and leave.” The man suddenly pulled out a silenced nine-millimeter Glock and started to clean up.

He never saw the maniacal smile of the redhead’s face as he just sat there. The other two slowly went for their hidden weapons, not feeling any need to hurry on this occasion — after all, there had been nothing more threatening to them since they arrived than a small, yellow scorpion walking slowly across the cracked and slat-missing hardwood floor. That was their mistake.

The other major mistake was for them and their new employer Daniel Peachtree to have not enquired as to what Vickers had been doing in the hours leading up to him being found in Las Vegas. They would never know he had found the Cactus Bar and Grill, along with the entire town of Chato’s Crawl, deserted and abandon. Life could never have returned to the small place after the events of 2006. The town had been gutted of life and no one who lived there before could ever get the images of the slaughter out of their minds, so every one of the surviving townies had packed up and headed to where there were people — a lot of people where they would feel somewhat safe. Vickers had taken precautions against this eventual turn in fortune. He had stocked the bar in preparation for him to go it alone in securing the asset. He would have waited forever if that’s what it took because he knew his life depended on a deal to trade the asset for his freedom. He never trusted Peachtree or Camden — Hiram knew how this particular game was played because he had written the rules long ago.

The shotgun blast caught the largest of the three men in the chest, taking his gun hand off before the double-ought buckshot tore into his body, flinging him back into the second and third man. Hiram easily raised his hand and fired three more very loud shots into his face and head as the old man sprang from his chair where the men in black had thought him drunk and passed out. The bartender with the sawed-off shotgun still smoking ejected the spent casing and easily walked up and fired again, this time catching the last man in line as he attempted to rise off the floor. The shot caught the man in the head, turning the air into a bloody mist of brain and bone.

The old man jumped on the second man’s chest as he too tried to rise. With his legs pinning the man to the ground the codger, who wasn’t so old and never drank a day in his life, pulled out his weapon of choice, an eight-inch switchblade. He smiled and slowly cut the man in black’s throat from ear to ear. Then he stood with the dripping knife as the frightened man grabbed at his torn neck. The gun was kicked away from his grasping fingers and it slid away.

The bartender ejected the second shell from his sawed-off shotgun and then fired a round into the struggling man’s upturned face. It was all over in five short seconds. Vickers placed his own nine millimeter on the bar top and then turned to face his number one team of assassins: a man and his quiet older brother who had set up the brownstone in Georgetown the night he had to eliminate the sister of Jack Collins. They were also the murderous siblings who had placed the two bodies on the turnpike later that night.

“So transparent and predictable,” Vickers said.

The bartender and his brother stood next to Hiram. The older, silent one wiped the blood from his switchblade on the bar rag that was tossed to him by his brother.

“This thing is nearly over one way or the other. Either the president’s plan will work, or it won’t. Either way we take the asset.”

“We wait?” The old man bent over and started removing money and identification from the slain agents.

“Yes, we wait. The asset will be coming home very soon.” Vickers took some stale peanuts from the wooden bowl in front of him. He tossed away a few that had drops of blood on them and then lazily threw the remainder into his mouth and chewed. “You’ll find the rest packing their bags over at the station.” He looked at his personal employees. “I assume you won’t have any trouble taking care of them?”

The burly man behind the bar took up his shotgun and started replacing the spent shells and smiled.

“Good, now go show them how real bad guys operate.”

The president, as tired as he was, waited with General Caulfield inside his room as he spoke by phone to the prime ministers of two allied countries. The conversations were short and to the point. Caulfield knew he wouldn’t last that much longer as he took in the beaten and worried countenance of the chief executive.

“Where is Dr. Compton?” the president asked quickly, fearing something had happened to his friend. The first lady looked up from the paperwork she had been trying to keep busy with since the attorney general and the chief justice had left the previous hour after the launch of the Lee.

“Calm down, he’s right out in the hallway. He’s about as bad off as you; you both have to stop for a while. Everything else is out of your control for the time being. You’ve hamstrung Camden, so he can’t order lunch without congressional approval. Your military knows who is in charge and what’s happening up there”—she looked toward the ceiling—“is out of your hands at the moment.” The first lady stood, felt the president’s forehead, and became worried as his fever had risen in the past hour by seven degrees. “You and Niles are both going to fall over and then you are back to square one with that son of a bitch.”

The president looked at General Caulfield. “I think the wrong person has been in charge the whole time.” He smirked as his wife kissed him on the forehead.

Niles closed his good eye and sighed. He was well aware of what the ground element at Camp Alamo was facing. He didn’t know which of his people were alive and who were lying dead on the snow and ice. His leg was propped up in his wheelchair as he spoke to Virginia Pollock and Lee Preston. The attorney had never seen a battered man who refused to rest like this Dr. Compton had. The man frightened him as he realized that if all government employees were as tenacious as this man was he would run as fast as he could to the nearest border and get out, because the pencil pushers and the slide-rule boys would inherit the Earth and men like him would soon be out of work.

“I’m authorizing you to pass Mr. Preston through security at the complex and retrieve Matchstick. He’s done as much as he can do, and Gus wants to be at home.” Niles looked up and slowly blinked his left eye underneath the glasses that were propped as best they could be on his bandaged head. “We owe the old man that dignity. Mr. Preston, thank you for your assistance thus far, but with Camden, you never know what kind of legal maneuvering he’ll pull and I don’t trust anyone when it comes to Matchstick and Gus. Get them out of the complex and secure them the best you can away from Nevada. Chato’s Crawl should be the safest place. We should be getting our military contingent back soon, one way or the other, to secure him better. Virginia, see to it.”

“Niles, you have to rest. I’ll personally take the little guy and Gus home. I’ve already notified Denise Gilliam, Charlie, and Pete, that they will accompany us, because Matchstick will need friends around him as Gus … well, he’s too tired to keep his eyes on Matchstick all the time. We should have enough old-timers providing security at the two houses; I don’t anticipate any trouble from now on.”

Niles looked up and bobbed his head. “Tell Matchstick … tell him…”

Virginia thought Niles had fallen asleep and became worried as she looked at his battered and bruised body.

“Thank you.” Niles’s head dropped to his chest once more as Virginia leaned over and kissed Compton’s forehead. She wiped another tear away like she had been doing most of the day as a nurse took Niles away.

Virginia had come to the conclusion earlier in the day that she could no longer fulfill her duties at the Group. She had become far too attached to the people she worked with, especially far too close to Niles.

Virginia halfheartedly smiled at Lee Preston as he waited patiently for them to leave for Nevada. He smiled his charming smile and then said what was on his mind.

“If you plan on quitting, I would at least leave Dr. Compton a note telling him why you are going to do what it is you’re doing. He deserves to know that you love the little bald guy. Lord knows he’s about the toughest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen that wears a suit and tie for a living.”

Virginia looked shocked as she blew her nose on a handkerchief. She made a distasteful face.

“Here,” Preston said as he held out a pen and notepad. “No charge, but I want the pen back.”

Virginia accepted the pen and paper, smiled a sad smile, and patted the attorney on the shoulder. She went into Compton’s room to explain the whys of her leaving.

“What a fucking day,” Preston said as he watched the door close behind Virginia.

Sarah held Mendenhall as upright as she could. The vision of another two thousand Grays and their automatons broke the spirit of many of the men, women, and soldiers. And the sound from above was mind-shattering as even more of the saucers were making their way down from high altitude.

Henri took hold of Will’s other side and Anya scooped up both Sarah’s and Farbeaux’s weapons. They struggled in the snow to get the seriously injured captain to safety.

“Over there,” Henri said with a nod of his head. Fifty feet away was the burned-out remains of a German armored personnel carrier. It had been blasted by one of the robotic automatons and the steel monstrosity was just starting to rip the hatches from the carrier. “Set him down,” Henri said to Sarah.

Will was laid not too gently into the soot-covered snow and Farbeaux looked at both women.

“I’m going to get that metal bastard to chase me. It won’t last too long, but see that Bushmaster cannon lying on the upper deck? Get to that and blast that thing to hell.”

Sarah shook her head. She yelled as she tried to be heard above the din of battle and the constant whoosh of laser weaponry flying past as the Grays came on in force, heading straight for Camp Alamo and the hidden entranceway.

“You’ll never make it,” she finally managed to say.

“You know me, any chance to get away, I’ll take.” Henri grabbed the Heckler & Koch automatic weapon and sprinted a few steps, then started firing at the robotic monster. It had succeeded in ripping open the top of the personnel carrier and had one of the dead armor soldiers in its clawlike hands. Sarah had to turn away from the horrid sight.

Suddenly the metal beast felt the heavy blows of the 7.65-millimeter rounds as they slammed into its chassis. The large red eye imbedded in the front of its head slowly turned toward the man who caused it not pain, but irritation as it had been programmed to kill and collect. The metal monstrosity let go of the dead soldier and then nimbly hopped from the armored vehicle. Henri added more fire, and then Sarah and Anya added their own. Hundreds of bullets met the strange alien steel. A survivor of either the 101st or 82nd added a light 40-millimeter mortar to the assault but the automaton shook off the blows and started forward. It raised both hands to waist level and curled the long sharp fingers inward as it started to take aim with its heavy caliber belt-fed kinetic weapon.

“Get down!” Henri shouted, but knew it would be too late as the evil red eye had the two women and Mendenhall locked in. Farbeaux raised the Heckler & Koch to his shoulder and that was when he noticed the slide was locked open. The weapon was empty.

Before they knew what was happening they were all knocked off their feet as two Tornado fighter-bombers bearing the insignia of a blue circle with a red Kangaroo inside of the Royal Australian Air Force, and twenty Gazelle Attack helicopters with the blue circle and red kiwi of the New Zealand army screamed by. The earth erupted as four laser-guided smart bombs struck the metal giant, blowing it into a thousand pieces. That was followed up by fifty-caliber machine-gun fire from the Gazelles as they strafed what remained.

Sarah, Anya, and Farbeaux raised their heads long enough to feel the blast of jet engines and rotor wash as the sky quickly filled with aircraft of every sort. Henri wanted to shout but was quickly inundated with debris from the robot that lay shattered on the ground only a hundred feet from the two women and the unconscious Mendenhall.

The roar from the high clear sky above continued and they all chanced to look up just as a thousand parachutes broke into the clear through the low clouds that covered the battlefield. It was the white canopies of the 12th Australian and 3rd New Zealand Parachute Brigades. This time Henri did cheer and shout as he stood and shook his fist at the stunned Grays. Ground fire and Gazelle attack choppers were knocking them down as fast as they could charge down the ramps of the hovering saucers. And they too were being hit by a multitude of weaponry such as Sidewinder, Phoenix, and AMRAAM missiles. At that moment, the powerful assault from the sea was timed perfectly as forty Tomahawk Cruise missiles were directed at them from the faraway coast. Sixteen missile cruisers of both Australian and New Zealand navies had joined a force of cruisers from the U.S. Navy and five Royal Navy and Los Angeles — class subs. Explosions tore the battlefield apart as all three surviving saucers were soon a smoking ruin on the melting ice field.

The Anzacs and the U.S. and Royal navies had arrived in force.

20

An hour later Mendenhall was in the hands of New Zealand army medics. They rushed him inside Camp Alamo for immediate emergency surgery. Sarah watched him being taken away as Anya took a deep breath beside her.

“I understand it was you two who rallied the workers and remains of our army to our defense?”

Sarah and Anya, with Farbeaux sitting down in the snow getting tended to, looked up to see a heavyset man in an expensive winter coat with three others standing beside him. They all had weapons that looked as if they had been recently fired.

“Pardon me,” the man with the bow tie and glasses said as he gave his smoking M-16 assault rifle to the burly and smiling man next to him. “Very rude of me. I am Lord Durnsford, of Her Majesty’s MI6; I am the person responsible for this … this … mess.” He gestured around the battlefield as SAS men and the rescuing Anzacs were busy dispatching Grays one at a time — there would be no prisoners taken, not after Mumbai and Beijing. “These men are Admirals Kinkaid, of the U.S. Navy, and Huffington of the Royal Navy. And this is my good friend, Sir Darcy Bennett, in charge of the Overlord Project.”

Sarah and Anya said nothing. Their faces were bloodied and looked as if they had nothing to say to the four men.

“I believe you two were on the Russian vessel which brought the alien power plant through safely?”

Sarah nodded her head and then looked at the sky. She only wanted one question answered. She looked directly at Durnsford.

“General…” She paused as the question caught in her throat; she tried again with encouragement from Anya. “General Collins?” she finally managed.

The silence from the four men who could not look them in the eyes told her everything she needed to know.

“The Garrison Lee, any word?” Anya asked as her hope remained even as Sarah’s was dashed.

Lord Durnsford was just about to say there had been no word as of yet when the high sky lit up. The battle in deep orbit between the moon and the Earth had started. All heads turned up as small, dot-sized flashes were seen in the crisp blue sky. It was almost like an illusion they were all witnessing. The dark of space was being inundated with small sparkles of gunfire as high as the human eye could see. Many more faces turned upward, as the powerful weaponry was bright enough to cut through not only the darkness of space, but the atmospheric blue of the planet’s air.

The battle for Earth had commenced.

The HMS Garrison Lee, with her powerful ion-based engines, had covered the seventy thousand miles to what would be forever known as Moon Gap in Earth’s history books in a matter of ten minutes. She was now facing the strength of the Gray invasion armada. If the Lee failed to stop this assault it was only the opening vanguard, as the rest of the Gray civilization would soon follow the initial assault element and inundate Earth until it was totally subdued.

The full 1,865-foot length of the Garrison Lee was side-on to the first of the small assault ships as they exited the orbit of the far side of the moon. They came on at fantastic speed as the battleship before them flew on, seemingly oblivious to what was coming her way. The enormous sixteen-inch guns of all six massive turrets were trained directly at the Grays, but the large-bore weaponry must not have been seen as a major threat, because instead of slowing, the first one hundred attack saucers sped up to meet the Earth’s last defense.

Commodore Freemantle watched as the small dots illuminated against the glare of the distant sun came at them without hesitation. He smiled and winked at the nervous female yeoman at his side. She was rapidly recording everything she was to be witness to in the upcoming battle. It would be her job and her job alone to back up the ship’s log if and when it was jettisoned after the battle. She nervously and bravely smiled back, but the commodore could see her fear and it was no less than he was feeling.

“Weapons status?” he said calmly to his fire control officer on the next lowest tier.

“Mounts one through six are fully charged with particle shot.”

“Close-in defensive weaponry, please.” Freemantle studied the fast-approaching saucers just as the largest section of saucers — along with the processing ships and the power distribution vessel — made their first appearance as they rounded the moon.

“Five-inch rail guns are manned and ready, they have individual fire control at their command. Ten-thousand-watt laser mounts are operating on computer control, all systems report ready.” The officer swallowed his fear and stated as clearly as he could, “Power plant operating at 100 percent efficiency.”

“Very good. Defensive shield status?” Freemantle proudly watched his people calmly go about their duties — knowing they were in for the fight of their lives, they all had resigned themselves to a grisly, but honorable death.

“Water tanks at maximum, smoke generators at 100 percent.”

“Thank you. It seems we’re as prepared as we’ll ever be.”

Commodore Freemantle looked at every face that he could on his, the highest tier of the bridge, trying to burn the faces of each of these brave kids into his mind. All nationalities, Russian, British, American, Middle Eastern, Canadian, Australians, and Chinese, he was proud of each and every one of them and the nations that bore them. He thought for the briefest of moments that his swelling pride in the youth, the very best of the planet, was going to swell so that he couldn’t give his next command.

“Attack element, arm your weaponry,” he said, warning the two attack shuttles they were now on their own and would be the judge on when to launch. It was dangerous arming the newly redesigned AMRAAM missiles while still in the bay, but he wanted those young men to have every advantage he could give them, as he knew they would never return from their mission.

He cleared his throat as he watched the telescopically enhanced view screen. The first one hundred saucers were at thirty thousand kilometers and closing fast. Evidently the arrogant Grays thought they could plow right through their ship without even slowing. The smile on Freemantle’s face grew and his anger was a match for that smile.

“For all the wars fought; for all the injustice quelled; for the men, women, and children of our world, we fight for what we call home. Ladies and gentlemen, we shall engage the enemy at Moon Gap. All guns to fire on my command.”

The HMS Garrison Lee, with the giant, aluminum, one-hundred-foot blue-colored flag of the United Nations flying at her stern, flew proudly and defiantly as she sailed to the exact center of space between the Earth and the moon — a place that would be forever remembered as the coordinates where the battle for Earth would truly commence.

Ryan listened to the Marine colonel as she slowly explained the attitude jets to him. Jason knew the maneuvering thrusters well, as they were the same design as the LEM that he had set down, albeit roughly, on the moon’s surface at Shackleton Crater. The Marine shook her head when Ryan accidentally tripped the inertial navigation system when he toggled the thrusters.

“Now look, Commander, you can’t have heavy fingers on this thing or it will come back and bite you in the ass and everyone else back in the crew bay, you got that?”

“Boy, you turn the nicest color of pink when you’re angry,” was all he said as he reset the inertial navigation system.

“Knock it off. You’re speaking to a United States Marine Corps officer, jerk!”

Jason only smiled as he corrected the order of firing the attitude jets without a single mistake the second time. The colonel shook her head in frustration. The crowded cockpit was lit like a Christmas tree and Ryan was afraid of hitting something that would send him and the attack crew hurtling into deep space.

“Okay sweet cheeks, I’ll take it from here.” Jenks maneuvered inside the shuttle and waited while she exited the second seat. The master chief watched as the colonel slid close by, knocking him into the bulkhead. He raised his eyebrows several times as he got a real good feel of her heavily clothed chest. He looked at Ryan and then back at the floating form of the Marine.

“Gladly. You two dicks deserve each other,” she muttered.

“She acts like she has something against the navy.” Jenks tossed his helmet to Ryan, who caught the floating cover and then held it while Jenks strapped in. He reached out and hit the monitor that showed the assault team as they stood against the interior wall of the cargo bay. Once near the power resupply vessel the bay doors would be blown free and the Delta and SEAL assault element would be strung together in a long line being pulled by the first two men with their limited-range jet packs.

“Well, Officer Meat, you think you can control this thing for the five thousand meters it will take to get there?”

“No, I don’t, but what the hell.” Jason grinned at Jenks, who narrowed his eyes at the commander.

“Typical jock. Just do as I say when I say and we’ll at least crash into that big bastard.”

“Check, crash, that I can do.”

“From what Toad told me a few years back you tangled with these boys before, that right?”

“Yeah, I got my ass shot right out of the sky.” Ryan pulled his helmet over his head.

Again Jenks narrowed his eyes as he wasn’t used to anyone returning fire on him. He soon shook it off and then placed his helmet on as Ryan turned and looked at the gruff old man.

“If it makes you feel better, Master Chief, I shot one out of the sky before I ejected. Does that count for anything?”

“No, because you’ll probably be running into the son of a bitch’s brother, cousin, and daddy out there in the next fifteen minutes — if, that is, this big-ass battlewagon doesn’t get shot right out of the sky with us inside her belly.”

“Does this assault really have a chance in hell of working?” Jason asked, finally getting serious.

“Look, Commander Shit-for-Brains, I got this contract because I said I could build the system used to get us from point A to point B. I never really thought we would get this far. So, no, we’ll probably get our asses shot off when we open those doors.”

“Hey, I’m brimming with confidence now.”

Jack and Tram floated along hand over hand on the traversing line between sections with the two SAS guards as best they could as the announcement was made that every hand should man their battle stations. Collins gave a sideways glance over at Tram and the two men stopped, holding on to the line just inside the thick girder system of the main deck. The large windows showed the nothingness of space and that made Jack far angrier that he could no longer do anything to help his friends.

“Look, I guess you’re going to have to shoot me, but as an allied general I sincerely hope you won’t.” Collins allowed a far more mobile Tram to pull him down from his free-floating status until his feet met the deck and the Velcro took hold. He slowly removed his helmet, as did Tram.

The two SAS men inside their red-topped helmets looked at each another and then pulled themselves down to the deck and joined the men they were supposed to take to the evac stations near the extreme bow of the warship. Many other crewmen shot past on lines above their heads as everyone had a duty to perform.

“Look, you men want to be with your unit. If I’m not mistaken you’re supposed to be standing by in case the Grays start to board the Lee, am I correct?” Jack wiped a line of sweat from his forehead.

The two British commandos didn’t respond; they just looked at the American general inside his ill-fitting spacesuit. The two men had heard the scuttlebutt about what this man had done during the assault on Camp Alamo while they launched into space. He had given his entire command to give this ship a fighting chance. Finally the SAS sergeant slowly removed his helmet, as did the other. He faced Collins and then held out his gloved hand.

Jack shook it.

“No, General, we were ordered to stay with you two and that’s just what we’ll do, but your orders will supersede any previous command we were given.” The sergeant looked at his partner. “And in the heat of battle we, like you, must overcome, adapt, fight from wherever we are at — wherever you are at.” The SAS men replaced their helmets and then waited as Collins and Tram did the same. “What are your orders, General?”

“Can you take us to the command bridge?” He gave the helmet a twist to secure it.

“That we can do, sir.” The sergeant gestured for Jack and Tram to get on the six-man tram that was situated against the interior bulkhead. “Right this way, gentlemen.”

For the first time in hours, Tram smiled as he adjusted the old M-14 rifle and the many magazines of 7.62 rounds.

“One hundred and fifty thousand meters and closing. Magnetometers are pegged in the red, the attack saucers are powering their weapons systems,” came the call from the third tier.

“Hold, hold,” Freemantle said into his 1MC communications. The order reverberated off the heavily reinforced hull plates throughout the Lee.

As they watched the view screen, the saucers maneuvered into a wide V formation as they came on. They were using this tactic so the rest of the fleet could get in behind the screen for protection. Freemantle knew the Grays were sacrificing the forward element to protect the power-distribution vessel and the processing ships.

“Main batteries one and three will concentrate long-range fire on the power-distribution ship. Obviously they don’t think we have the power plant. They must assume we will use long-range missiles.”

The commodore turned and saw four men enter the battle bridge. He was about to order the newcomers off when he saw one of them was General Collins. He nodded his head and gestured the men down to his station.

“I would have assumed you had enough of our Gray friends down on the surface, General.” Freemantle kept his eyes on the one-hundred-foot monitor.

“You have my apologies for not knocking more of these bastards out of the sky for you, Commodore.”

Freemantle finally turned and faced Collins. Jack could see that the man had changed in just the past ten hours.

“I think you and your command did an admirable job, my good man. Now let’s see if the navy can accommodate these buggers and give them the fight of their lives, after all.” He smiled for the first time since Collins had met him. “We’re not the Martians, are we?”

“Not at all, Commodore,” he answered as Tram strapped the injured Collins into an upright chair. “Permission to watch you work, Commodore?”

“By all means, sir, by all means.”

On the view screen the attack craft were nearing the point of full impact from the Argon particle systems.

“Turrets two, four, five, and six, target the head of the attacking formation and fire at will at targets of opportunity.”

Inside the six upper and lower sixteen-inch gun turrets, the fifty-six man crews closed their eyes and waited for the order. The last to load were underside turrets five and six. First the men placed the silk-lined particle bag of miniature ball bearings, a thousand pounds’ worth, into the thirty-inch breach. Then a two-inch steel-rounded plate designed to fit snugly against the non-rifled barrel followed the particle sacks. The plate would be used as a simple push-plate for the powerful Argon laser to slam into the particle bag. The resulting collision would jettison the short duration laser beam into the steel, spreading out and slamming it through the twenty-inch-thick barrel of the cannon. Once it hit the muzzle guides, redirected rifling would push the steel shot to form a circle as it passed by the expensively made crystal laser-enhancer developed by the British, tripling the power of the 1.67-second-duration laser, thus producing a blast of twenty million volts of power that would rejoin with the steel particles once outside of the barrel and hurl the shot toward the enemy. It had been tested many times at the cost of several nuclear reactors.

The men and women of the gunnery sections were sweating profusely inside their reinforced suits as they waited for the orders that would send the Lee to war.

The attack saucers came on arrogantly and didn’t break formation as they broke six hundred miles.

“Open fire!” Freemantle called, far more loudly than he intended.

On the upper deck, the first to fire was the number one gun turret, followed a split second later by number three mount. The two were separated by a higher and lower platform, just like the battleships of World War II. The blast of all six guns rocked the Lee and propelled her on her side by more than two thousand feet just as turrets two and four let loose. The maneuvering jets activated to keep the Lee straight and then push her back to her original station keeping. The underside guns let loose their salvos at the closer ships flying in their V formation.

The first to hit were the guns of two, four, five, and six turrets. The particle beam, which actually looked like a short duration blast instead of the long-lined laser systems of the enemy, tore into the first three saucers, blowing them to bits and slamming their remains back into the widening formation. It was as though the remaining ninety-six attackers didn’t know what had hit them. They kept coming in their suicide alignment instead of breaking apart and scattering. The Earth ship had caught the Grays napping.

After the discharge of the large-bore sixteen-inch guns, a burst of over five hundred kilos of liquid nitrogen burst from the cannon. The steam curled to almost nothing as it hit the vacuum of space. The Lee was only momentarily inundated by the nitrogen particles as they rapidly dissipated, sliding by the speedy warship to its rear. The men inside the gun turrets quickly reloaded before the attackers broke formation, and before the enemy knew what was happening twenty more exploded.

The six particle beams of the upper six guns hit one of the processing ships trailing far behind the vanguard of attackers. The shot caught it on the right side and the large craft started spinning crazily until it slammed into six of the surrounding saucers, also knocking them into a fast-decaying orbit over the moon. The seven ships vanished almost immediately. Three particle beams hit the larger power distribution ship but all it did was punch a hole in its forward section; the damage was short lived as the powerful saucer started to heal itself immediately. The scab was clearly visible on the monitors on the Lee’s battle bridge. The power-replenishment ship immediately took evasive action and slowed, allowing the bulk of its protectors to front the important vessel.

“Damn,” Freemantle said angrily as he saw the large target fall behind a screen of over seven hundred of the smaller attack ships. Still, it was satisfying seeing the main guns of the Lee reload and start pummeling the attackers in front and at a distance. Over a hundred of the attackers were burning in space as the giant battleship continued on.

“Incoming!” one of the techs shouted. Freemantle reminded all to be calm.

Jack Collins and Tram, along with heir SAS escort, saw the bright flashes of over a thousand incoming streaks of laser light. They were also of short duration. The crewmen hung on as the first tendrils of light slammed into the broadside of the Lee. The jolt to her was wild. The ship banked hard right as fires erupted in the interior spaces. She rolled as she brought her underside to bear against the enemy fire. This was intentional, to give her main batteries time to reload.

“Defensive measures, now,” Freemantle said.

All along the length of the enormous ship, one hundred and twenty thousand gallons of ionized water was released into space, where it froze instantly into tiny crystal beads. The lasers of the enemy hit these and the powerful light weapons were fractured and defused before they hit the armored underside near turrets five and six. Three of the smaller twenty-millimeter laser cannon were knocked free of their mounts and thrown into the void of space with all twenty men and women inside. Then before the water dissipated the Lee rolled back to zero bubble and fired another powerful salvo from all sixteen-inch guns. The fire was devastating to the enemy formation as they finally got the hint and started to disperse in a wide arc.

The Lee stayed upright this time as her smoke generators were now assisting the water jets in weakening the Grays’ laser weapons. The beams still contacted the Martian steel but her damage was light compared to what it would have been. The vanguard of enemy saucers was now closing to close range of the Lee.

“Close-range batteries, open fire!” the commodore shouted purposefully this time.

The twin-barreled rail guns opened up. With the alternating poles of current they hurled a solid steel projectile weighing three hundred pounds straight at the closest saucers. The impact was tremendous as the saucers crumpled from the inside out from the electrically charged kinetic weaponry. Then the twenty-millimeter 1,000-watt laser cannon opened up on the streaking and closest saucers, slicing them into pieces. The rest backed away as they realized the weapons of the Earth ship had been vastly underestimated.

Inside the two attack shuttles, the pilots and crews felt the impact of the enemy weaponry. The bay shook and sparks flew outside the cockpit windows. Admiral Everett looked at the young faces around him in the shuttle’s crew bay. The men had their eyes closed for the most part as they waited for their section of decking to be blasted away. He just prayed that the Lee could get them close enough.

“We’ve just lost water tanks six, seven, and eight, smoke generators six and nine!”

Freemantle felt the large explosion amidships.

“Helm, hard over one hundred degrees, bring us bow on, all-ahead flank. Let’s close the distance, gentlemen, before we lose anymore countermeasures. Turrets one, two, and five, continue fire, clear us a path straight for the heart of their rear formation. All rail guns and laser cannon take the enemy as they close. Attack shuttles, launch in approximately three minutes — all nonessential crew to their evac stations.”

The Garrison Lee fired her aft and starboard maneuvering thrusters, bringing her into a head-on flight toward the largest enemy formation, and centered on the two-mile-wide power distribution saucer.

The 4,000-man crew knew this was the moment of truth for the Garrison Lee as she made her way through the densest part of the enemy formation. They were going to take a pounding.

The Garrison Lee shot forward with her six powerful blue-flamed ion engines firing full. The enormous warship rammed everything that got in her way as her powerful sixteen-inch guns continued to clear a path of destruction as she charged forward. The small mounts were blasting saucers as they came in to attack the exposed side of the battleship. Saucers were struck at close range by the powerful Argon-based particle cannons and disintegrated as their debris peppered the thick girder lines of the ship. Still she came on at full speed.

A saucer slammed into the lower section of deck fifteen, knocking out number five turret and her fifty-plus-man crew above and below the guns. The men and women passing particle bags were jettisoned as a massive hole burst outward as the destroyed saucer entered the girder protection and exploded deep inside. Fires were now raging out of control, licking against the lower bridge section. Freemantle ordered the lower reserve bridge abandoned as the flames became untenable. Damage control crews had to give up in frustration as they lost all pressure to the foam firefighting equipment. The Halon 1301 gaseous firefighting tanks exploded, taking out three hundred of the lower sections’ precious damage control crew. The lower decks were now awash with flames as they curled into the now exposed lower bridge. Still the number six gun kept up her fire, her gun crew refusing to leave their station.

Jack grimaced as he heard the emergency calls coming in. His frustration was only equaled by Lieutenant Tram as he gripped his safety harness with his gloved hands as he watched the Lee coming apart around them. Large cracks formed in the five-foot-thick plastic composite glass of the bridge as Freemantle ordered her steel shutters closed. Jack felt claustrophobic as the outside battle raged on unseen with his real eyes. The view screen at the front of the battle bridge rocked and went askew but held on as the enemy fire increased in effectiveness. Water and smoke discharge was down to 30 percent effectiveness with the loss of more water tanks and kerosene dispensers. The Lee rocked as the mixing chambers of maneuvering jets eight, ten, and twenty exploded outward, luckily taking out five saucers as they attempted to get close to the speeding battleship.

Jack frowned as the large power-regeneration saucer looked no closer than it had been when the Garrison Lee started her run at full speed one minute earlier.

“Stern section has taken an indirect atomic strike. We’ve lost two of the engines!” The Lee seemed to whiplash as the enemy started to play dirty in their fear of the battleship.

“Close-in batteries, I need those damn saucers off my ass for two minutes, don’t let them launch again. AMRAAM stations, fire everything you have.”

All along the centerline of the Lee, missile tubes opened wide and fired three hundred specially designed AMRAAM missiles. The American-made long-distance, dry-fueled antiair missiles were specially equipped with fifteen-megaton warheads. They cleared the superstructure and sped to thirty miles’ distance before their small warheads detonated. The resulting explosion rocked the Lee and the surrounding void of space. The pressure wave backfired into the girderlike superstructure and started three hundred different fires. But the real damage was done to the attackers. The AMRAAMs caught over a hundred saucers as they maneuvered toward the sides of the Lee to come into port and starboard attack profiles. They never stood a chance as the weapons melted their special skins and blew them inward, crushing and burning to death the Grays inside. The debris field was far and wide as the battleship barreled her way through. The giant plow at the far forward section slammed into damaged and burning saucers, knocking them clear.

“Good show, targeting, that’s the way to hold off and draw the bangers in. You got quite a few of the buggers with that one,” Freemantle said just as an enormous explosion threw him and the rest of the bridge crew forward, even snapping the safety harnesses of some.

At three hundred miles the processing saucers and the power-distribution vessel opened fire with their vastly superior laser cannon. The forward number one gun blew up as the first strike hit the Argon delivery system. The resulting cataclysm engulfed the battle bridge and the superstructure from frames twenty-one to forty. The HMS Garrison Lee was now a hurtling ball of flame as she approached the largest ships at the center of the armada.

Before anyone could realize it, six of the smaller attack saucers made a suicide run for the stern of the Lee. They slammed into her graceful and curved fantail where the United Nations flag stood out straight, and exploded into the thinly armored rear. A catastrophic explosion rocked the Lee from her stern section all the way to her forward areas. The remaining four engine bells blew outward as her power plant was struck. The ripple effect of so much energy traveled to the areas of least resistance, downward into the bowels of the great warship. The resulting explosion snapped the Lee’s hardened back in two as her bow sank fifty degrees. Her large deflector plow was now at a downward angle as the battleship continued to push forward in a blind desire to hit the power-replenishment vessel, which was now helpless to get out of the way. One of the five hundred crewmen ejected into the freezing void of space was Captain Lienanov, who died bravely with the men he had been assigned inside the power plant section.

Freemantle was assisted back down to the deck by Jack and Tram as they fought to get the commodore to his station. The ship was rocked again as turrets four and five exploded from the immense heat buildup after the cannons were refused the coolant they so needed to freeze the hot barrels. The resulting backlash of energy traveled throughout the ship and she shuddered under the stresses of coming apart. The great battleship heeled to port and then seemed to magically correct its trajectory, as if with a mind of its own it was intent to finish the task.

The estimation by Matchstick, that the Garrison Lee could only last fifteen minutes against the Grays, magnificently exceeded his prediction. The Lee had lasted twenty-five minutes and had destroyed well over seven hundred of the invincible armada.

Commodore Freemantle was seriously injured as Jack and Tram strapped him back down. The noise inside the bridge was nearly unbearable as the venting of O₂ started in earnest. Men, women, and debris were flying around as if a tornado had erupted inside the enclosed spaces. Freemantle hung onto Jack, his face shield misting over with escaping gas and blood.

“Maneuvering thrusters to full, ram the bloody bastard!” he said as loudly as he could into his 1MC mic.

In the vacuum of space it’s impossible to feel the forward momentum of any hurtling object, but the surviving crew of that day would swear they felt the Lee, with her last remaining working thrusters, shoot forward. The power-replenishment saucer actually saw the Lee bearing down on it from six miles but could do nothing about it as the downward-angled deflector plow slammed into the strange metal skin. The resulting deceleration threw every surviving crewman forward and killed many of the remaining men and women. Jack Collins lost his handhold on both the commodore and Tram as he was tossed like a flying rocket into the now blank view screen. The Garrison Lee and her sharpened deflector plow were now lodged deep inside the two-mile-wide saucer. The giant battleship would never move again.

Everett saw that there was no use in checking the vital signs of the Marine colonel and her copilot. The large girder had pierced the windscreen of the number one shuttle, impaling both. They sat in their seats, never knowing what hit them after the destruction of the engine room spaces. Everett saw that the damage the attack shuttle sustained was beyond repair, and floated back to the men in the cargo bay. Two of the insertion team was wounded as the thick-tiled skin of the shuttle had been penetrated by flying metal. Their suits had vented and they had almost succumbed to the harsh environment before adhesive patches could be placed over the punctures in the outer skin.

“What a mess,” the admiral said as he started getting the remainder of his men moving. “Sergeant, you and Haley get to the rescue stations and jettison, that’s an order. Your suits are too damaged. I’ll ingress with the assault team.”

Carl looked around at the shaken men as he searched the wreck for the special weapons that had broken free of their restraining straps. He saw them floating toward the rear bulkhead and ordered them secured.

“Lieutenant, get on the comm link and find out how number two shuttle is. If we’ve lost her too, we’re truly fucked.”

“Aye, sir.” The SEAL officer hastily unstrapped after the massive explosion only three hundred feet above their shuttle bay. “Tell Jenks we’re dead in the water over here and two men short.”

“Done. The rest of you get the special packages out of here before this entire bay breaks loose. We need cable, lots of it.”

“Jenks reports they’re shaken and stirred but not broken, Admiral.”

“Good, the number one shuttle must have shielded them from the main blast. Inform the master chief there’s been a change of plan. We need to hitch a ride.”

The remaining twelve men looked at the admiral for the barest of seconds.

“Move, damn it, before we’re vented out of the damn ship!”

Before Carl realized it, Jason Ryan was in the open hatch, gesturing for the men to step it up.

“Hurry, gentlemen, hurry, we have Grays docking with this wreck. We’re out of time. The rest of the Lee’s crew is evacuating. Move, move, move!”

Jason assisted each man with their loads of weapons and ordnance from the wrecked bay of the first shuttle. He waited on Everett and assisted the big man free, then turned to help the men find added cable for their ride on the remaining shuttle. Jenks had quickly explained Everett’s makeshift plan, as they both thought along the same lines in a split second of consideration.

“The rest of you get to number two shuttle, now!” Carl said into his internal microphone. “Duct tape those packages to your suits; we can’t afford to lose any of them.”

The men were again shocked at the order. This was turning into a real high-tech endeavor. Another explosion rocked the stern of the Lee as three of the ion gas-mixing chambers burst and sent a high-heat energy wave outward, engulfing two saucers as they tried to dock with the flaming battleship. The men were knocked around and one of the Israeli weapons broke free of a SEAL’s grip and headed straight at Ryan’s faceplate. He batted at it and slammed to the deck in the zero gravity. He cussed and then easily tossed the two-hundred-pound yellow box back to the SEAL.

“Try and hang onto that damn thing, okay?” The SEAL took the package and started hand over hand for the undamaged bay thirty feet away.

Everett floated up to Ryan, tossing him a five-hundred-pound coiled cable. Ryan caught it, but the force of the blow almost sent him through the large hole that looked out onto the oxygen-fed burning superstructure.

The minute they gained the access port to the bay Everett started unreeling the thin cable. “Hook to your backpack harnesses. We’re going space skiing.”

Jenks was leaning out of the forward hatch of the number two shuttle with his gloved hands taking a tight grip of the frame.

“In case you boys didn’t realize it, we have a shitload of ugly bad guys breathing down our necks. Now get hooked up and be sure you’re clear of the main engine bell and the thrusters.” He eyed Everett. “And don’t think I’ll forget you fucked up another one of my boats, Toad, you shithead!”

The master chief vanished before the middle finger of Carl’s gloved hand shot up.

“And to think I almost forgot what a lovely man he was.” Ryan hooked up the last Delta man to the lifeline. “Now for God’s sake, take a firm hold on the running rail of the dorsal or we’ll lose the bunch of you!” Jason slapped Everett on the top of his helmet. “Good luck, buddy.” He shot off toward the cockpit just as the inducers kicked in for the main engine.

Everett floated to the top of the shuttle and then made sure his team was secure. He knew they had just cut their chances by half as the second shuttle would have to travel twice the distance with the same amount of fuel, and that wasn’t enough.

Before he could think further the attitude jets started pushing attack shuttle number two toward the still-closed bay doors.

“Goddamn it, Jenks!” he screamed. He knew the master chief was just showing off. Ten feet before the crumpled doors smashed the shuttle’s stern, the doors slowly creaked open and the shuttle was free.

Attack element Pershing entered a kill zone of saucers.

The commodore was dying and Jack could see that. He and Tram lifted him to his station once more as the fifth explosion of the number three armory went up.

“We have to cover the assault element,” Freemantle said in a barely audible whisper. “We have to order the remaining rail gun and laser cannon crews to remain at their stations.” He pushed his way along the rail toward the damage control station. He harshly shoved a dead technician away as he floated over the shorting-out computer boards. He looked closely at the computerized silhouette of the Garrison Lee. He quickly saw that they had little hope of covering the assault teams as three quarters of the giant battleship were awash with flames that blazed even in the vacuum of space. “General, order rail guns six and ten to cover the remaining shuttle.” Freemantle hopes quickly dimmed when the computer told him shuttle number one had been disabled. “We have to give those chaps all the help we can.”

Jack pulled the commodore away and said into the command mic the orders the commodore had spoken. He felt a shattering vibration rend the ship as the two remaining rail guns opened up on the six saucers that were tracking the fast-departing shuttle. He prayed that Carl and Jason were onboard the surviving craft. Round after round of high-strength tungsten steel blasted the saucers before they knew they were being targeted.

“Gentlemen,” Freemantle hissed through broken teeth. “Get my people clear now. The remaining gun crews will stay their post and cover the shuttle and the escape pods.”

Collins looked around and saw that most of the bridge crew was dead or just gone, vented out through the large holes in the pressure hull. He quickly gestured for the survivors to get out. He looked at Tram and then helped the commodore back to his command station.

“Thank you, gentlemen. I’ll be staying with my ship and crew. Tell them down below how they performed, will you?”

“Yes, sir.” Jack and Tram looked away from the dying Englishman. He watched hundreds of six-man pods eject from their small tubes as the crew abandoned ship.

“That’s my good chaps.” Freemantle leaned forward, unable to stay upright any longer. “Now, it’s time for you to leave the Lee. Good show, by the way.” And then Freemantle died.

As the remainder of the bridge crew went to the escape pod underneath the battle bridge, Jack looked at Tram.

“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you to get the hell out of here, would it?”

The Vietnamese lieutenant frowned as if he didn’t understand, then tapped his helmet, pretending a short in his communications.

“That’s what I thought, you’re just like Ryan and Mendenhall.” Jack shook his head inside his helmet. He quickly reached for the plastic laser rifle once owned by the dead SAS sergeant. “Well, let’s go and see if we can get a few of those pale-skinned bastards.”

Tram smiled, clearly understanding that order.

Collins looked out of the large hole in the bridge where the view screen used to be and saw the deflector plow dug deeply into the two-mile-wide saucer as smaller craft buzzed around it.

“Feel like taking a walk out there? Maybe we can find some targets inside. After all, we put the hole in the son of a bitch.”

Tram removed the M-14 from his back, charged the weapon, and nodded his head.

“Jenks, we need a place where there’s already a hole, got that?” Carl could swear he felt the speed of the shuttle as Ryan fired the main engine just as the two remaining rail guns took out the six saucers at their rear. The men inside the shuttle didn’t realize how close they had come to being destroyed a few seconds out, but the men hanging on for dear life had a front-row seat and stared with wide eyes at the expanding destruction around them.

“I thought I would tell Ryan to pull into the drive thru, Toad. Of course that’s what we’re doing, we’re dropping you off at the front door of this fucking thing!”

“I swear I’m going to kill that mean bastard if we live through this!”

Inside Ryan was trying desperately to avoid the saucers that zipped in and out of the burning superstructure. He rammed some of the floating debris and thought for a moment he had holed the shuttle.

“Now you get on my shit list, all right?” Jenks grimaced at the loud bang as a large chunk of destroyed saucer bounced off the nose of the small shuttlecraft.

“Master Chief, I’ve got an idea. This big bastard doesn’t have the shielding to defend against anything this small.” Jason used the small joystick on the left-hand armrest to avoid another large chunk of steel from the Lee. He tried not to notice the hundreds of floating bodies from the Lee as he dodged them the best that he could, but still heard the occasional thump as one of the crew would bounce off the shuttle’s tiled surface.

“Your point?” Jenks used his body to turn the shuttle as if his added weight would drive the ship farther to the left. “Damn it, do you have to hit every piece of crap in space?”

“We use our six AMRAAMs and punch a hole in her skin right here, and then get our asses over to the hole the Lee made in her and enter from there. If we stay out here much longer we’re not going to be mistaken for floating debris.”

“You’re the fucking pilot, what in the hell are you asking me for?”

Ryan cursed and slammed his stick as far right as he could, praying the men attached to their roof stayed right there.

“Firing braking jets,” Jenks called out as the shuttle approached the silvery skin of the enormous power replenishment ship. The forward thrusters fired, using up precious JP-5 fuel. Jenks shut them down even before the shuttle stopped. Still drifting forward and before they got too close, Ryan flipped up the cover for his weapons selection and hit the switch six times. Under the stubby wings of the shuttle, six large AMRAAMs slid off their rails and went straight for the saucer. The small weapons would do relatively light damage to the behemoth, but maybe it would be just enough to create the hole they needed.

The missiles struck at one time, creating a straight line of destruction and making Ryan fearful of not concentrating the powerful conventional warheads close enough together. The resulting detonation rocked the shuttle and pushed it away from the saucer. Jason saw a thirty-five-foot hole had been blasted into the material — but the hole started to repair itself. Ryan saw the material start to scab over a foot at a time.

“I’ll be damned,” Jenks said as he saw the first of the SEALs and Delta team start moving toward the hole. Everett was the last, using his little bit of fuel to propel himself after his team. He turned on his back and gave Ryan and Jenks a thumbs-up. For once Jenks didn’t have anything to say as he saw his old student head into the damaged section of saucer, just as the material completely covered the hole. Jenks hit the forward OHMs engines and the shuttle quickly backed away. “Good luck, Toad.”

As Jason backed out he didn’t see the small saucer waiting for the shuttle.

Gus, wrapped in a blanket, smiled at Matchstick as the small alien sat next to him. Denise Gilliam kept a close eye on the prospector as they neared the compound.

Pete Golding and Charlie Ellenshaw dozed in the seat facing the trio as the large Black Hawk circled the old house and the two-story Victorian before setting down. Pete awoke and looked at Corporal DeSilva, the lone security man onboard, as he looked out the wide window. The old Marine looked troubled as the helicopter slowly started to settle.

“What’s the matter?” Pete asked as he nudged Charlie awake.

“Half of the compound security lighting is dark,” DeSilva said as he continued to study the grounds.

“Partial blackout, you think?” Pete asked as Charlie leaned over and also looked at the ground far below.

DeSilva got on his helmet mike and called to the pilot. “Get ahold of gate security or the main house and find out what the deal is. I haven’t worked with these retirees before, and I don’t know what they’re thinking.”

The pilot nodded his head. He banked the Black Hawk into a wide turn and remained at altitude.

“Sienna One, to Crow’s Nest, Sienna One, to Crow’s Nest, what’s the deal down there?”

“This is Crow’s Nest, we have a power line down between here and Chato’s Crawl. We’re running on generators but expect to have the power up in fifteen, over.”

“Look, Doc, I don’t like this.” The old corporal leaned closer to the window to study the two houses below. “Our gennies can run the two houses, the security lights, and the whole damn town if we have to.”

Gus frowned as he listened to the men speak. Matchstick placed his long-fingered hand on Gus’s and then smiled. He then looked at Denise.

“Look, fellas, I don’t pretend to know your business, but we have to get Gus inside pretty quick. I was against this little foray from the beginning.” Denise looked at Pete and raised her brow, asking him to overrule any security concerns. Gus was exhausted and just getting him home would do the man wonders as far as recovery went.

Pete shook his head as he raised his glasses and looked out over the semi-dark compound. He looked from that to Gus, who laid his balding head against the padded support of the Black Hawk.

“Ask the gate guard to show himself, DeSilva,” Pete said.

The pilot relayed the request and as the helicopter banked once more the guard stepped from the darkened booth and waved. DeSilva sat back and cursed under his breath, then looked Gus, who wasn’t looking that well. He had the cold chills and Matchstick was staring at the Marine like it was his fault.

“Look, I want our friends up front to stay with us until we can confirm what’s going on.” DeSilva nodded toward the pilot and the copilot of the Black Hawk.

“Whatever you think is best, Corporal,” Pete said, relaxing somewhat.

“Okay, take us down,” DeSilva said, not really happy with the compromise.

The burly gate guard lowered his waving hand and then turned to the man hidden well inside the gate. The man who had been a bartender a day ago was satisfied as the Black Hawk started to settle onto the pad. He turned away from the blowing sand as he eased the shotgun free of the shack. His brother, hiding near the bodies of the six-man security team they had killed earlier, smiled as the helicopter touched down.

Hiram Vickers watched from the darkened window of Gus’s old shack as he slowly pushed the screen door open. The taking of the compound had been too easy as the fatal flaw was quickly found in the replacing of the normal military security team. That flaw was about to cost the strange group under Nellis Air Force Base their asset.

The tall redhead smiled as he thought of Daniel Peachtree and the now-disgraced President Giles Camden.

21

The armada of saucers had covered the distance between Moon Gap and Earth in less than half an hour. The burning Garrison Lee was still hanging onto the huge power-replenishment ship and her superstructure was now covered in space-suited Grays as they boarded looking for anyone still alive.

Ryan saw how big the Earth was growing in the windscreen and hurried the shuttle toward the enormous deflector plow embedded deeply in the saucer, which had already healed itself as much as the deflector plow would allow. The battleship was now attached to the large saucer. Jenks again hit the braking thrusters and was satisfied when the shuttle started to slow. Then the fuel lines quickly ran dry as Ryan saw the fast-approaching deflector plow growing larger in the windscreen.

“Oh, shit.”

The shuttle first slammed into the bow of the Lee and then careened into the thick steel-reinforced plow. The shuttle slammed to a stop.

“All hands, time to go.” Jenks blasted open the twin bay doors. As the men started to use their backpacks to get into the air, several laser shots blasted by their heads. The men slowed, as they didn’t know where the fire was coming from.

“Damn it, they were waiting on us.” Ryan wished he had a cannon mounted on the nose of the shuttle.

Suddenly a rail gun sprang to life, firing a single round in front of the fast-moving assault element. The tungsten round slammed into the opening of the damaged section and took out five Grays as they thought they had easy floating targets. The rail gun fell silent as a team of Grays hit the mount, blowing it into oblivion.

The assault element entered the saucer though the giant hole created by the Lee.

Jenks removed his helmet, forgoing the danger of a hull breach, and then popped a dead cigar stub into his mouth.

“Well, all we can do now is wait, flyboy.”

Everett had lost one man as they floated through the strange interior of the large craft. The curved walls were luminescent in a soft green glow. The expanse of deck was empty, with the exception of debris that had blasted into the interior from Ryan’s AMRAAMs. As they gained a foothold, they found the farther they got from the damaged area, the more gravity they were feeling. Soon they were able to place feet on the deck and move far more rapidly. They soon found the flooring to be slimy underneath their boots. The vessel seemed to pulsing with a life of its own.

Suddenly they were confronted by an unhelmeted Gray as the creature rounded the curvature of the corridor. The Gray reacted faster than the assault team as it raised its long staff of a weapon and fired point blank into one of the Delta team as he was caught totally unaware. The laser weapon tore a large hole into the kid and he was blown backward. Before the Gray could re-aim his clumsy weapon, Everett and three others opened fire with their seventy-five-watt laser rifles. The beams caught the Gray and neatly sliced its head and arms away as if he was cut with a butcher’s saw. Everett checked on the downed Delta man, who clearly was dead. He quickly removed the large nuke from his back, cutting easily through the duct tape, and slung it over his oxygen tanks.

Everett knew then the assault team was bound to run into more Grays inside the vast ship, and the admiral also knew they would never make it as far in as they had planned.

“Attack team Alpha, we’re placing charges right here. We’ll get cut to pieces before we get to the target area.”

“Attack team Alpha, this is Bravo, we understand, we are running into heavy Gray activity. Will progress further and see if resistance is lighter, over.”

“Bravo, negative, say again, negative. Set your charges at current pos. I repeat, your current position. I believe the nukes will be enough to set off a chain reaction inside the ship. Look at the walls, the whole thing is one big massive power cell, over.”

Ryan and Jenks heard the radio calls and exchanged looks.

“Carl will never have the time for his team to find another way out. And we’re all out of heavy ordnance.” Ryan felt helpless as he knew Everett would set off the charges regardless.

Jenks looked frustrated as he tried to think. He removed the cigar and threw it hard against the glass. “Goddamn it, I knew that asshole Toad would go and blow himself up!”

“Ryan, do you copy? Over,” a call pierced their helmets. “Ryan, do you copy? Over.” The call came in the clear.

“This is Ryan. Jack, is that you?”

“Listen up, we have control of the last functioning rail gun, but we have Grays crawling all over the place. Leave the section you’re currently in and make your way back to the same location where the admiral and his men entered the saucer. We have the coordinates and will blast open the hole again. Get those men off that are near you and Lieutenant Tram will bring your team over to the escape pods, over.”

Jenks whistled. “Ballsy, but that may be the only way of getting two birds with one stone.”

“Roger that, what about you?”

“Just follow orders, Jason. Now get a move on; I fire this thing in two mikes, over.”

Jason saw the first of his assault team as they started to gather at the damaged section where the deflector plow was buried deep into the saucer. That was when he felt a strange vibration course through the shuttle.

“What in the hell is that?” he said to Jenks.

“Oh, shit,” the master chief said as he looked closely at his radar screen. The familiar displacement of space and time started to show up on the sweep of radar. “We have a large buildup of power emissions coming from that ship. I think it’s trying to power up to form a time-displacement wormhole. Goddamn it, can we catch a break here?”

Jason didn’t hesitate further. He tried to fire his maneuvering thrusters, but they failed to fire.

“Forget it, mister, we’re bone dry on JP-5 for the thrusters. All we have is main engine power. You’re going to have to push us through the steel of the Lee to get us out.” Jenks quickly replaced his helmet. “Bravo team, do you understand the plan? Over.”

“Weapons set and operational — ten minutes to detonation. Team Bravo regressing to evac point, I hope someone’s there to cover our asses,” said the SEAL lieutenant.

Jason grimaced as he looked over at the master chief. “Sorry about this.” He pushed the joystick on the left armrest to its stops, at the same time firing the starboard maneuverings jets. The shuttle started coming forward, farther into the damaged section of saucer. The large deflector plow scraped hard against the tiles of the shuttle as Ryan applied more forward pressure. They heard cables and electrical wiring snapping like piano wires as the shuttle cut through the stabilizing rigging for the plow. Jason applied more fire to the starboard OHMs burn. The shuttle started turning as they entered the interior of the giant saucer. The inside of the cockpit glowed green and blue as the walls of the ship illuminated the men’s two faces. Then Jason felt the pressure holding back the shuttle ease as he broke through. He turned tight and then she was free.

“Go, go, go!” Jenks shouted. The small shuttle broke into the open with her main engine shooting a long flash of bright blue flame, her engines at full power. She sped along the centerline mass of the saucer, heading for the scabbed-over area where Carl and his men had vanished, hoping Collins was right about a rail gun being operational.

Tram was at the very bow of the Garrison Lee, waving the attack team forward. He saw Grays close behind and so he lowered himself behind the large deflector plow, then brought the very old gift he had received from Jack Collins four years before to his shoulder. The M-14 was settled into a conjoined seam of steel for a steady support, and the Vietnamese sniper took careful aim. The Grays were firing at the men trying desperately to escape through the hole. They started to scramble over the area the shuttle had just destroyed when the first of the Grays started shooting.

The SEAL lieutenant was shot in the back before Tram could cover him. The small man cursed his slowness but still drew a bead on the monstrous being bearing down on the retreating assault team. He fired. The 7.62 millimeter round caught the first Gray in the exact center of the helmeted head, dropping him immediately. The second powerful round took the next one in line and was just as deadly. The third took two shots to bring it down. The assault team now had the time to go hand over hand across the plow to reach Tram’s position.

Tram raised the rifle and pointed back toward the very bow of the Lee and the escape pods waiting there.

“General, we have succeeded. I will now come to you,” Tram said in broken English as he moved to follow Team Bravo to the superstructure of the burning Lee.

“Negative, Lieutenant, get the hell out of here. That’s an order!” Jack said forcefully.

Tram looked amidships, where Collins was inside the number fifteen rail gun. He watched as the small turret turned toward the formerly damaged area where Alpha team had entered. Tram cursed and then followed the team to the escape pods. His battle was now over.

Everett watched as the last charge was set. He felt the hair inside his suit rise as power coursed through the ship around him. He had heard the master chief and his opinion earlier that the saucer was trying to open a wormhole. The giant saucer started to shake as the power increased.

“Last charge is set,” he called. A rocking explosion sounded from close to a half mile away. Jack had done what he promised and opened the hole. The rail gun discharged once more, opening the hole wider and slowing the reatomizing of the material making up the alien saucer’s hull.

“Okay, Alpha, your door is open!” Jack called as he saw the shuttle limp close in. The braking jets were still and silent as Ryan slammed the black nose into the void. “Your ride’s here, Admiral, move it!”

“Jack, get the hell out of there, don’t worry about us!”

Collins escaped the turret just before the Grays blew it to shreds. Fifteen of them fired continuously and didn’t even notice when Jack slid out of the opening between the two electrically charged barrels. He thought for a moment that his bulky suit was going to get caught, and then with a deep intake of breath he pushed through. He floated freely for a brief moment until he was able to reach out and grab a floating cable that arrested his flight before he drifted away between the flaming wreck of the Lee and the power-distribution saucer. Steady explosions were starting to rock the broken battleship from stem to stern as her munitions and coolant tanks started to cook off as the flames reached the many storage lockers buried deep inside the ship. As Collins watched the bridge area finally let go as the Lee’s forward particle and Argon gas storage area exploded in a blue cloud of debris. The bridge separated itself from the superstructure and went hurtling into the large saucer. The steel slammed into the large alien craft, creating a large hole that quickly started to heal. Jack chanced a look at the hole he blasted through the saucer’s hull and saw Ryan taking on Carl’s assault team.

Suddenly the area of space around the saucer started to waver before Jack’s eyes and he thought that he was finally succumbing to his head wound. Then his stomach started to turn over as his gloved hand tried to keep a hold on the drifting cable holding him in place. As he spun he saw the whiteness of Antarctica far below. He wondered if Sarah was safe, and that was all his mind could take in at the moment. A hand took hold of his suit and he thought he saw Carl’s face.

“Damn it, Jack, you accidently shut down your oxygen mix.”

Collins felt himself rolled over and then the cold, refreshing blast of air as it filled his helmet.

As Everett turned him over he saw that the shuttle was ready for them. He pushed and pulled Jack free of the wreckage of the Lee as she shuddered, and then there was silence as she started to wrench away from the fast moving saucer. Everett saw the shuttle as Ryan tried in vain to hold her in place, but the Garrison Lee finally broke in two directly amidships. The stern section whipped around and in its wake it slingshot the shuttle forward and away from the two men.

Carl reached out and grabbed the remains of the aluminum United Nations flag as her battered stern came around. That was when his eyes fell on the tunnel opening for the escape pods.

“Make a run for home, Ryan, we can’t make it!” Carl said into his mike as Jack started to come around. His eyes tried to focus but all he could see was the deflector plow finally releasing its hold on the giant saucer and go hurting into low orbit.

“No fucking way, we’re coming to get you.”

Jenks came on next and belayed the order. “We don’t have the fuel, we’re going to have to find a clear and very long runway as it is. We’ve lost lower hydraulics and that means no landing gear.”

“You heard the man, Jason, fire your main engine and get back to Camp Alamo. You can’t miss it, use the ice for a runway. Now get to it!”

With one last look at his two friends Ryan realized he had to save the men crammed into the cargo hold. Angry, he throttled the shuttle forward.

“I take it the rescue didn’t go well,” Jack said as he finally came around. He grabbed for the dislodged stern section that held the battered flag.

“We only have to float here for a few seconds longer, buddy,” Everett said as he held onto Jack tighter.

“How much longer?” Collins asked, knowing what Carl meant.

Before he could answer, a small rescue pod bumped into them. Inside they saw the serious face of Tram as he guided the escape pod closer. He threw open the Plexiglas cover and then gestured for the men.

Carl knew the limitations of the pod. It held six and Tram already had six plus himself inside. He pushed and pulled Jack along the flag and then shoved the weightless body toward the open hatch.

“Take him, Lieutenant; I’ll catch the next one.”

Collins tried to reach out and take hold of Everett’s arm but it was too late. He felt hands on him as the men of the Bravo assault element pulled him inside the small pod.

Tram placed the escape vehicle into automatic and the small craft shot forward, hurtling toward the ice continent far below.

Everett watched his friends leave and was content.

The swirling pattern of the vortex started in earnest as the dimensional wormhole started to form. To his surprise it whipped up a debris storm and his eyes widened as he saw an empty escape pod come at him from out of nowhere. He let go of the flag and reached for all he was worth. He caught the open canopy of the dislodged and empty pod. He held on as he tried to pull himself up and in. He finally managed to make it and immediately buttoned it up.

“Carl, damn you,” Jack was heard saying.

“I’m not dead yet, buddy.” He placed the pod into automatic to allow the computer to take him home.

“Get away from there, the wormhole is on you!”

To Everett it looked as if a kaleidoscope had opened up and the colors of the universe filled the black void of space. The sight was amazing. The saucer was creating something only found naturally in deep space as stars collapsed in on themselves. The swirling tornado of dust particles, debris from the battle, and dust from space filled his vision as the saucer started to make a run for its home fleet. The smaller saucers fell into formation with it and Carl’s pod was pulled up at the same moment.

Every event of Everett’s life soon flew past his vision. He knew this to be illusion as his body and mind were caught in the displacement of time as the escape pod shot up into the swirling tornado of light. The large saucer, the processing ships, and the smaller attack craft were three hundred miles ahead of the small pod and much farther into the tornado.

“I don’t think so,” Carl said as his smile grew wide.

The twenty-four Israeli-built nuclear charges detonated right on time, catching the large saucer before it exited the displacement into the deep-space home of the floating home fleet carrying the remains of the Gray civilization. The power replenishment ship blew outward with the power of an exploding sun, vaporizing the other ships and sending them to their doom in the wink of an eye.

“Oops,” was all Everett had time to say as he glanced at the watch he had attached to his spacesuit’s sleeve just above the thick glove. He saw the exact time that was recorded on the damaged and ancient watch found in Antarctica by the British five years before, and the blood-streaked crystal. The small pod was violently thrown backward as the wave of superheated gases slammed into Everett. The pod was immediately and violently thrown free of the displacement wormhole and sent tumbling through the tunnel until it exited somewhere over Antarctica — two hundred thousand years before the Garrison Lee ever took flight.

The great mystery that no man could avoid came to pass and Admiral Carl Everett vanished into a distant past.

Soon the dimensional wormhole dissipated and nothing was left but the floating wreckage of a once proud warship of human and Martian design.

Matchstick held the hand of Gus, and Dr. Denise Gilliam had her arm wrapped around the old man’s waist as they were led from the Black Hawk to the front gate. Gus wanted nothing more than to get inside his old, comfortable shack and rest with his best friend. Before they reached the gate, the copilot of the helicopter hurriedly caught up with Pete and Charlie. Matchstick stopped to see what the excitement was about. They failed to see the burly man with the cowboy hat at the open gate tense up.

“Dr. Golding, we have a flash message from Group,” the young copilot said as the pilot also joined the three men. The Marine corporal was eyeing the big man at the gate suspiciously as he noticed the man’s eyes never left the small form of Mahjtic.

Pete took the hastily transcribed note and read it. His smile was cautious as he looked up at an expectant Matchstick.

“The power-replenishment saucer and the processing ships no longer appear on long-range Earth-based imagery.”

Matchstick momentarily let go of the hand of the old prospector and took an expectant step closer to Pete. His small blue jumpsuit was too large as the pant legs dragged on the ground.

“The Garrison Lee has been destroyed.”

Charlie placed a hand on the small shoulder and lowered his head.

Pete seemed to take heart with the next paragraph written on the notepad.

“The Lee’s escape pods are parachuting into the sea and on land near Camp Alamo and rescue operations have commenced.”

The small alien took hold of Gus’s hand and smiled up at him.

“Well, you did it, you little shit,” he said with his old smile that made Mahjtic feel good inside that he could please Gus. “Don’t go braggin’ ’bout it,” the old prospector said to Golding. “He’s gonna be a bear to live with now.”

Charlie, Pete, Denise, and Matchstick, in his strange cottony voice, all laughed.

“Come on Gus, we can talk about this inside,” Dr. Gilliam said.

Marine corporal DeSilva moved closer to Matchstick. He also looked at the guard shack closest to the fence and slowly started to reach for the old Colt .45 at his belt. The young pilot of the Black Hawk saw the movement and unsnapped his holster that lay across his chest and then nudged the pilot trying to get his attention. The corporal saw something that gave him pause. The big man at the gate kept flicking his dark eyes toward the old shack and then back again. He also didn’t particularly care for the way he looked back at the group and the uneasy smile that appeared. His old combat hackles began to rise.

The Marine corporal pulled the Colt from its holster, but before it cleared the leather a shot rang out and DeSilva fell into the copilot. The pilot was much faster, as he had his Beretta nine millimeter in his hand, and shot the big man who had fired into the Marine with a gun he had hidden at his side. The large round caught the man in the shoulder, knocking him off balance and before anyone knew it, Charlie Ellenshaw was on the man, taking the giant down, beating him with his fists.

Gunfire from their rear struck Ellenshaw in the back of his shoulder blade and sent him flying off the wounded bear of a man. Charlie hit face-first, his glasses flying from his face. Gus pulled Matchstick and Denise to the ground just as flying bullets caught the pilot. Three rounds stitched his flight suit but the tough Air Force lieutenant managed to get off one round as he fell backward. The nine-millimeter bullet struck the man directly in the center of his forehead, freezing him like a statue.

Gus saw the fallen weapon of the man as he fell and it clattered next to him. He started to reach for it when Denise screamed for him not to.

“Stop shooting!” Hiram Vickers shouted as he sprang from the open doorway of the old shack. He was waving his hands as the giant’s brother was screaming as if he had gone insane. “Stop, we need them alive!”

The crazed brother of the dead man wasn’t listening. His M-4 opened fire on full automatic. Gus was struck in the head and chest, and he was thrown off of Matchstick and Denise Gilliam. Pete tried desperately to retrieve the falling gun that flew from the old man’s hand and in a near state of panic allowed it to slip through his fingers. He turned just as the charging man that had lain like a snake in hiding emptied half of the magazine into Pete Golding, sending him flying backward. Then he turned the weapon toward Denise and a frightened and stunned Matchstick as she tried to protect him the best that she could. She threw her body once again onto the alien. She felt the bullets pass through her back.

Vickers took quick aim and fired his nine millimeter six times. The bullets finally dropped the crazed fool, first to one knee, and then with a blank look on the bearded face, he fell forward dead. Vickers looked at his weapon and then lowered it in stunned silence. He raised his eyes and looked at the complete disaster that had unfolded in the blink of an eye.

Vickers stood there with the smoking weapon in his hand and looked at the carnage before him. Denise Gilliam’s body twitched, then he saw a small arm and hand reach out and try and touch the hand of the old prospector who lay not far from the two bodies. The fingers twitched and as the long digits came into contact with the old man’s still hand, the hand then quit moving.

Vickers saw his life coming to an end as his last hope of getting a trade for his life was now gone.

He slowly made his way to the car that was hidden behind the old shack. He looked back once more at the eight bodies that lay there as the hot desert wind started to pick up. His red hair blew into his eyes as he saw the carnage not as a disturbing scene, but as a man would look at a broken dish he had dropped in his kitchen. He knew now he would have to run.

Hiram Vickers had one last hope and that was to blackmail Camden and Peachtree. After all, he had been under orders to secure the asset known as Magic.

As the red taillights of his car vanished in the distant desert night, another Black Hawk came low over the desert scrub. The pilot took the large helicopter to two hundred feet as he looked on in shocked silence at the scene below. He switched on his powerful searchlight and scanned the area below. His heart sank when his mind took in the carnage.

Dr. Virginia Pollock, tired and weary from her flight from the east, saw the scene in slow-motion detail as the searchlight played over the fallen. Her head slowly slid against the glass and a loud moan escaped her lips.

The president was wheeled into the Oval Office by the first lady. Four Secret Service agents flanked them as the commander-in-chief saw the man stand from the couch he had been sitting in. Before the door closed, General Maxwell Caulfield entered and was followed by the reaffirmed director of the FBI and the newly reinstalled director of the CIA, Harlan Easterbrook.

The president reached out a hand and touched his wife’s as he neared the window that looked out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. He swallowed and pulled back the lace curtain and took in the view. Gone were the thousands of protesters that had lined the avenue. Being packed up and crated were the many missile batteries that had not only covered the White House grounds, but the entire city. Gone also was the innocence of the nation, along with that of the entire world. Not one person living could ever have that sense of security again. It had been ten days since the battle for Earth and they had lost too many of their own and others. The entire planet was in mourning over the death and destruction.

Speaker of the House Giles Camden watched the president as he allowed the curtain to fall back into place. The small man adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and sternly looked on as the broken and wounded man was turned in his wheelchair by the first lady to take his rightful place behind the Lincoln desk.

The other men in the room flanked the desk and looked at the former acting president.

“Your friend and ally, Mr. Peachtree, is nowhere to be found,” the president started saying. “The FBI says he’s somewhere in Panama, but they suspect he will try to eventually make his way to a nonextradition nation.”

Camden remained standing and silent as he eyed his most hated enemy.

“He should know that there is no such thing as a safe haven any longer. The entire world is searching for Mr. Peachtree and his trained monkey, Hiram Vickers — who, by the way, has forwarded to this office a very cryptic message. It said that he has information on not only who ordered the hit on our asset in Arizona, but also an unsolved double murder in Georgetown last year.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. President. Who is this Hiram Vickers?”

The first lady scowled at the question and wanted to jump over her husband and strangle the man. But the president patted her hand that was gripping the wheelchair so tight it turned her knuckles white with rage.

“Well, I’m sure we’ll know everything in a few days. In the meantime, Mr. Speaker, I have had conversations with members of your party and the rest of the House. It seems you have been relegated to minor status — in other words, they want you out. The loss of two hundred and fifty thousand American lives in Antarctica, at sea, and in space has been charged to your account.”

“I only did what I thought—”

The president’s hand came down hard on the reports of death and destruction that lined his work area, and his face grew grave as he slowly stood on his shattered legs and leaned on the desk.

“Peachtree and Vickers will be caught, Mr. Speaker, and we will get to the bottom of this, and your resignation will be the last thing you are thinking about. The FBI and the IRS have uncovered some very interesting paper trails from your office that wind through many foreign bank accounts, and those countries you thought would assist in hiding that paper trail have suddenly become very cooperative. It’s not the same world any longer, Mr. Speaker.”

Camden looked closely at the man behind the desk as he tiredly slid down into the wheelchair. His eyes then went to the men around him and even the Secret Service agents who only days before had guarded his life. The hate there was enough to send chills down the most coldhearted man ever to hold public office. He reached down and retrieved his briefcase, nodded at the president, and then left the Oval Office.

“Mr. President, that’s enough for today,” Max Caulfield said as he took in his exhausted features.

“No, I have one last task to perform. Mr. Easterbrook, do you have that address?”

“Yes, sir, right here.” The silver-haired man reached out and gave the first lady the note.

“Do we have enough to put that son of a bitch Camden away for life?”

The director of the FBI smiled. He just nodded his head.

“Then the testimony of the two traitors, Hiram Vickers and Daniel Peachtree, will not be needed?”

“Not at all, sir,” the director said as he and the others started to leave.

The president waited until he and the first lady were alone before he picked up his secure phone. Before he made the connection he looked up at his wife. She only nodded and smiled, giving her tacit approval of what he was about to do.

“We owe him at least this much.” She patted him on the shoulder and then reached down and pecked him on the cheek.

The president watched the first lady leave the office and then he turned to the phone and made the call. It was answered.

“The Juarez Hotel, Panama City, room 817,” the president said calmly into the phone and then hung up. He then made another connection. It was also answered on the first ring. “After this I cannot protect you. Your status will be as before in the eyes of American law enforcement.”

“I understand,” the voice said from the other end.

“But before I say anything, in my eyes and the eyes of many others you have shown your true quality. I won’t ever forget that.”

The phone was silent.

“1262 Norman Drive, Beverly Hills. He’s there now.”

The phone went dead and the president slowly hung up.

“All family business,” he said to himself. The Oval Office door opened and the Secret Service man allowed the president’s two daughters to come in running. They threw their arms around him and hugged him. His eyes went to the window as he returned their hugs. “All family business.”

Daniel Peachtree was staying at the richly appointed home of an old college friend, one who’d invested the millions of dollars he and Camden had made during the technology buy-up of the past four years. He casually walked out to the pool that was a part of the thirty-five-million-dollar home and told the houseman that he wanted a drink. He had been doing a lot of drinking since Vickers’s small fiasco in the desert. He shook his head, slowly sat down, and leaned back in the expensive chaise longue. He closed his eyes until he heard the tinkle of ice inside a glass. He smiled and looked up as his drink was handed to him.

He took a sip and then noticed the houseman had not moved away but continued to block his sunlight. He glanced up and became confused, as he didn’t recognize the man standing over him. The gray suit and white shirt bounced the sun off of him and Peachtree became concerned.

“Who in the hell are you?” he asked as he placed the drink on the glass table next to the lounge chair.

“I, Mr. Peachtree, am no one but a messenger.”

Peachtree swallowed at the blond-haired man standing over him. “What message?”

The man didn’t smile, he didn’t even blink as the large knife was plunged deeply into the former CIA’s director of Operation’s chest. The blade was twisted and the breath exploded from Peachtree’s lungs. Blood flowed from his open mouth.

“Colonel Jack Collins sends his regards.”

Henri Farbeaux pulled the knife free and then slowly and mercilessly sliced the American traitor’s throat.

With that, Colonel Henri Farbeaux once again assumed his most-wanted status in the world. He disappeared into the backdrop of a tired and war-weary society.

Hiram Vickers was whistling as he turned the old-fashioned lock to his room. He had just left two messages, one at Camden’s Georgetown residence, and one at Peachtree’s. There had been no answer at either home but that didn’t dampen his mood, as he knew the men had been forced into a corner with the simple threat of exposure. He slowly pushed open the door and flicked on the table lamp by the frame. He closed the door and then tossed his room key in the ashtray there. As he turned he saw the man sitting in the room’s only chair.

Jack Collins.

He tried to say something but the words froze in his throat. Collins tilted his head as he looked at the man who had so ruthlessly murdered his little sister. The man was an enigma to a man like Jack. The way he arrogantly pranced through the world affecting the lives of others with no regard to who the men or women really were, and how his decisions affected not only them, but the families of those unfortunates.

Jack Collins was still bandaged from his forehead to his arms from the ordeal in Antarctica and outer space. His eyes were blackened and his nose broken. This made his appearance that much more menacing, even though Vickers easily recognized the man from his apartment in Georgetown and the many nightmares since.

“I—”

Collins shook his head and Vickers stopped before he started. Jack nodded for Vickers to move to the couch and sit. He did.

Collins slowly stood, feeling every one of his injuries from the previous week. He stood before Hiram Vickers.

“I didn’t know what I was going to say before today. What you did to Lynn, and then the taking of so many innocents in Chato’s Crawl…” Jack stopped, unable to continue for a moment. “What turns a man into an animal?”

The redheaded man swallowed and looked away from the piercing blue eyes.

Jack Collins made his way to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the warm day. He took a breath and spotted a small housekeeper making her way down the second-story balcony. Jack placed his sunglasses on and then smiled as he approached the old woman.

“Llamar a la policía y el cuerpo de bomberos, por favor,” he said with a smile. “Vámonos!” he added and slapped her ample behind.

The housekeeper left her cart and started hurriedly walking away. She turned and with one last look back at the bruised man who had sent her off to call the police and fire departments, decided that she should run.

Jack Collins slowly walked away and down the nearest set of stairs. He was almost to the rented car when a whoosh was heard from above. The large window of the room Hiram Vickers had rented blew outward. Flames licked the hallway as the screaming sounded in the nearly empty hotel.

Jack opened the passenger door of the rental car. Jason Ryan was behind the wheel and he placed the car into gear. The two Event Group officers moved away from the cheap hotel as fire alarms and the distant sound of sirens pierced the beautiful day in Panama City.