USS REAGAN
Chavez practically exploded into Shane’s office as the admiral sat there trying to determine whether sending a letter of resignation to the Secretary of Defense was going to mean anything while the world was ending. “Admiral! You’re needed topside, right now!”
Shane didn’t even bother to ask what could have prompted Chavez to come flying in there in that manner. He got up from behind his desk so fast that he banged his knees on the underside. Swallowing the automatic moan of pain, he ran after Chavez, limping slightly, and minutes later was standing on the flying deck, looking at nothing.
Actual nothing.
Where the dome of water had been erected that had cut them off from their other three ships, there was now nothing.
“It’s like it just collapsed, sir!” Chavez said. “Like whatever was creating it was shut off—”
“Or destroyed,” said Shane, as hope swelled within him. Even as he ordered the communications officer to raise the Pentagon, he thought that maybe, just maybe, a Navy vessel had managed to rally and get the job done. And he was reasonably sure he knew who was responsible for it. “Good going, Stone,” he said under his breath, not realizing that he was addressing the wrong Hopper.
“Pentagon, sir!” called the communications officer. “Got Fitzroy on the horn.”
The vice admiral. Good. Shane was in no mood to talk to the Secretary of Defense. Shane grabbed the phone and said, “Sir, the jamming array has been terminated. I repeat—terminated.” When the communications officer gave him a quick thumbs-up, he added, “Comms are up, the signal is down. I’m getting our birds in the air and radioing the other carriers. With any luck, we’re turning this thing around.”
They were bold words, he knew, but there was just one problem: the Reagan was a super-carrier, not exactly built for speed. The ship topped out at about 30 knots, which meant it would still take them a while to get to the scene of the action. And if there was one thing Shane had learned in his time, it was that in combat situations, things could turn around very, very quickly.
SADDLE RIDGE
The air was thick with the smell of smoke, which was in turn fighting for dominance with the aroma of ionization rising from the disrupted power cells.
In the Jeep, the airbags had deployed at the moment that Sam, at the wheel, had driven it headlong into the antennae array. Both driver and passenger sides, fortunately, were equipped, but nevertheless Sam and Mick were somewhat dazed from the impact. Sam looked up and made a face when she saw that there was a dead alien a few feet in front of her, pinned against the upright remains of the array by the front of the car.
Suddenly Sam picked up movement out the corner of her eye and saw that another of the wide-shouldered warrior aliens was coming toward her fast. She tried to climb free of the Jeep and get the hell out of its way, but the wreckage of the tower had fallen across her. None of its weight was upon her—the structure of the Jeep, including the front windshield, was supporting it—but it was blocking her ability to clamber free. “I’d really like to get out now,” she said with growing urgency as the alien drew nearer.
Suddenly she shrieked as something grabbed at her from the other direction. She turned and saw, to her relief, it was Mick. He’d obviously regained consciousness, and was lucky enough to be unencumbered by any manner of obstruction. An army-issue fighting knife in his hand, Mick quickly cut apart the seat belt around her waist. He then tried to lift away the crossbar, but it wouldn’t budge.
The alien warrior was practically on top of them, and that was when Mick distracted it while calling out, “Hang tough, Sam. This one is mine.”
He rocketed out of his door and stepped between the alien and Sam just before it reached her, chambering a round into his shotgun.
The warrior stopped, looking momentarily confused, as if it wasn’t sure what Mick’s intentions were. Mick made it abundantly clear as he fired a round from the shotgun at point-blank range.
The assault rocked the creature back on its heels, but otherwise it was unhurt. Its hand speared forward before Mick could make a countermove and it knocked the shotgun effortlessly out of his hands. Automatically Mick tried to go in the direction of the fallen shotgun, but the warrior didn’t allow it. Instead, with a casual sweep of its right hand, it knocked Mick to the ground, his steel legs going out from under him.
Grabbing the edge of the Jeep, Mick immediately hauled himself back to his feet. “Come and get it,” Mick said defiantly, saying and doing anything to distract the thing from Sam.
The alien was all too happy to oblige him. It came in fast and proceeded to dismantle Mick with an array of blows to the head and chest. Sam watched, helpless and frustrated, as Mick waged a war of futility against his far stronger opponent. Whenever Mick did manage to land a blow, it was against the creature’s armor, which barely seemed to register any of the impact. Indeed, the warrior appeared to be enjoying Mick’s ineffectiveness.
Once more it knocked Mick to the ground. Lying there, the world swimming around him, Mick’s hand fell upon a sizable rock with a pointed end. Even as he wrapped his fingers around it, he tried to wave the creature off, going so far as to plead in what sounded like a whining voice, “Please, no… don’t hurt me anymore! Don’t—!”
Apparently the alien enjoyed brutalizing helpless foes. It reached down toward Mick, yanking him to his artificial feet, and that was the moment that Mick swung the rock around, aiming for the junction point of where the creature’s helmet was joined with its armor.
It staggered from the impact and Mick pounded away furiously. The noise was echoing within its helmet, and apparently the loud ringing it must have been causing wasn’t something that the alien could easily endure. It had lost its hold on Mick when he first struck it, and now it flailed at him, trying to get its hands back on him. Mick sidestepped the alien and jammed the rock forward as hard as he could.
He heard a crunch and the sound of something breaking within the armor. The helmet came flying off its head, revealing a butt-ugly face, which Mick promptly made even uglier as he slammed the rock into it. There appeared to be some manner of tubes visible in the top of the armor, and Mick’s assault broke some of them, causing what appeared to be salt water to pour all over the place.
“Kill it!” shouted Sam, even as she continued to try to push against the girder and free herself. “Hurry—!”
Her phone rang.
It was on the seat next to her, but she couldn’t see it. She shoved her hand down to her side blindly and was relieved when her hand found it. She managed to extract her arm and shoved the phone against her ear. “Not the best time!” she said.
“Sam!” Hopper’s voice crackled over the connection. “The comm’s working! Can you hear me!”
“Hopper, is that you? You’re alive!” Suddenly she felt a jolt in the Jeep and she turned to see that the pinned alien against the array wasn’t as dead as it could have been. “Hopper, we took out the array—!”
“No you didn’t! I see it!”
She looked up and her heart sank. He was right. Like a flower being restored to life, it—like the alien that was still trapped against the Jeep—was throbbing with renewed energy. The power had been at least partly restored and now the array was tilting upward, aiming itself at the satellite that would serve as the summoning beacon to the rest of the invading race.