The Mothership (2 page)

Such was the futility of the situation
facing mankind. There were only enough weapons recovered from Roswell, Berwyn
Mountain and a handful of other crash sites, to equip one small team. It hardly
seemed enough.

Beckman started across the open ground
towards the chain link fence. Ten meters out, he signaled to Timer Morie, the
team’s combat engineer to place shaped charges on the fence posts. Timer ran
forward and quickly blew a four meter gap in the wire then, before the posts
hit the ground, Beckman charged toward the opening. His squad followed, while
Hooper’s team took up covering positions behind them. The suppressed crack of a
M95 rifle sounded behind Beckman as the sniper in Hooper’s team let off a
single round. Almost immediately, a small fireball erupted above the eastern
building, then bounced off the roof and rolled down onto the snow.

Beckman sprinted past the helo pad as a
small, dark disk rose above the central building ahead, firing red laser bursts
at them. Almost immediately, the burp of an LSAT light machine gun shattered
the still night air and the disk exploded, lighting up several dozen more disks
rising above the roof. They were half a meter across, and emitted a soft
thrumming sound as they floated forward. Both squads opened up with assault
rifles as the disks swarmed towards them, emitting beams of red laser light. A
female screamed behind Beckman, then a white suited form collapsed onto the
snow covered ground, convulsing uncontrollably.

“Too many for guns,” Beckman shouted,
“Switch to specials!”

While LSAT tracer laced the night sky, the
rest of the team drew their recovered weapons. Beckman aimed his ‘midget’, the
second smallest type, at the nearest disk and thumbed the firing surface. He
relaxed his arm, letting the weapon push his hand to the side as it positioned
itself for a perfect shot. Maybe it repelled Earth’s gravitational field, or
maybe it was magic? No one knew. But the moment it positioned itself, a flash
of light erupted from the weapon and one of the flying disks exploded in
flames. All around him, bursts of orange and yellow superheated plasma filled
the night as the team’s specials went to work, annihilating the drones. Beckman
ran forward, pointing his special at the disks, letting it find and destroy its
own targets.

Every shot was a hit, every hit a kill.

No matter how many times he’d seen the
recovered weapons in action, they never ceased to amaze him. And frighten him.
This was what they were up against, eons of technological development. In
moments, the snow in front of the buildings was littered with flaming wrecks as
more drones began to sweep in over the buildings.

Timer began fixing a shaped charge to the
central building’s main doors as Beckman and the two surviving mission
specialists came up behind him. When double doors blew in, Beckman hurled a
stun grenade through the doorway. The flash bang detonated, then he charged in
to discover the entrance foyer was deserted. A security desk equipped with a
bank of monitors occupied the center of the room, flanked by a pair of
elevators leading down to the missile control center, and a locked door barring
access to the fire stairs.

Beckman motioned to the fire door. “Get
that open!” There was no way he was going to risk getting trapped in the
elevators. He clicked his mike. “Clear. Come in.”

Hooper ran through the door, closely
followed by Corporal Frank Tucker, the only other survivor of the force
protection squad. They took up positions at the windows, firing their specials
at the drones outside, each shot drilling a pinhole through the glass.

Beckman did a quick count, discovering half
the team was down, but at least they were inside. They might still knock out
the fire control center, but it was going to be close.

“This isn’t a door,” Captain Teresa ‘Xeno’
Bertolini said as she finished inspecting the entry to the fire stairs. Xeno
was the team’s alien expert, a PhD with the highest security clearance of any
member of the team. “It’s A-tech.”

“Blow it,” Beckman ordered.

Timer placed shaped charges on the alien
technology door, and yelled, “Fire in the hole!”

The foyer thundered with the sound of C4
detonating, but a glance told them the metallic surface was unaffected.

“Stand clear,” Beckman said, then he fired
his special into the dull metal surface, punching a tiny hole through it. The
exotic material immediately contracted, perfectly repairing the puncture wound.

“It’s a self-sealing hull plate,” Xeno
said. She’d seen its like before at Groom Lake. “We’ve got nothing that will
cut through it.”

“Incoming!” Hooper warned, pointing at the
elevators. The floor indicators were ticking over steadily, as the elevators
climbed towards ground level.

“Specials!” Beckman yelled as he pointed
his weapon at the elevators.

Timer and Xeno took up positions either
side of him, weapons ready. When the elevator neared ground level, Beckman’s
skin tingled as he felt his stomach leap into his mouth. He swallowed hard,
feeling as if he was falling, no longer sure which way was up, then his feet
lost contact with the floor. He tried keeping his special aimed at the elevator
door, but the more he moved his arms in one direction, the more he drifted the
other way.

Hooper, floundering in the air, tried to
fire his ‘fatboy’ special through the window at a drone hovering outside, but
the weapon refused to discharge. “My special’s not working!”

Dozens of red laser streaks flashed through
the windows, striking the floating soldiers repeatedly. The room filled with
groans and curses as electric shocks surged through their helpless forms.

“Useless alien crap!” Hooper growled as
lasers laced his body, triggering a series of sharp, electric shocks. He
released his special, letting it float away as he drew his Model 500 Smith and
Wesson revolver. The big .50 caliber pistol wasn’t military issue, but it could
stop an elephant in its tracks.

“No!” Xeno yelled when she saw him aim the
big handgun, but it was too late.

Hooper fired at the nearest drone,
shattering the disk as the recoil sent him spinning backwards, head over heels.
His motion drew the attention of more drones outside. They concentrated their
fire on him as his helmet crashed into the far wall, leaving him barely
conscious and adrift in the air.

In front of Beckman, the elevator doors
opened. He touched his midget’s firing surface, but nothing happened.
How
could they all fail at once
, he wondered, as he realized the elevators were
empty!

Black disks crashed through the windows
behind him, circling their helpless forms, firing constantly. Even when they’d
released their weapons and lacked the strength to resist, they were hit again
and again. Simply drifting in zero gravity was enough to attract the drone’s
motion sensors, even long after they’d been neutralized.

After an eternity of pointless torture, the
drones ceased firing and a monotone voice sounded in their earpieces, “Exercise
terminated. Brace for gravity.”

How do we do that?
Beckman wondered absently, so numb from
multiple electrocutions, he found breathing difficult. The Earth’s pull
returned and they all crashed to the floor amidst a shower of loose equipment
and abandoned weapons.

“Man, that
really
sucked!” Timer
muttered.

“I thought we were doing OK, right up until
we got our asses kicked,” Tucker said bitterly.

The radio cracked with a deep basso voice,
“Is it over? I’m freezing my God damned balls off out here!” Corporal Ramone
Steamer Massey growled. The second former SEAL in Hooper’s squad now lay ‘dead’
in the snow outside, cursing his luck for being killed in knee deep snow.

“Frag
your balls, my tits are freezing!” Kim Vamp Gerrity,
the second female member of the team snapped through chattering teeth.

As official KIAs, the rules of conduct
required them to remain where they fell until the exercise was terminated.
Beckman stretched his jaw, trying to make his tongue work, then thumbed his
mike so everyone would hear. “Stand down. We’re dead. Again!”

With a mix of anger and frustration, they
peeled off their snow suits and body armor to reach the hated kill simulators
strapped to their chests. The net like vests were woven with wires and
connected to a belt mounted battery pack. The infra red sensor over the chest
triggered a small, nonlethal electric shock each time it was struck by a
targeting laser.

“God, I hate this damn thing,” Tucker said
as he hurled his kill sim at a wall.

“Sadistic sons of bitches!” Timer said
through clenched teeth, referring to the scientists who’d invented the kill
sims to make their training more realistic.

“OK people,” Hooper said weakly, propping
his back up against a wall. “Get your gear, check safeties, and switch off kill
sims.”

“Switch off kill sims?” Tucker said
incredulously. “Mine juiced me so many times, it’s fried.”

The door to the left of the reception desk
opened and General Lawrence Hickson stepped through, followed by medics and
equipment technicians.

“Anyone hurt?” Hickson asked, running an
eye over the team. The kill sims did no permanent damage, but falling paralyzed
from zero-g with all their gear could break bones.

Beckman stretched, trying to get some
feeling back. “Didn’t expect zero gravity, sir.”

“Good,” General Hickson said with
satisfaction. “We’re training you to expect the unexpected.”

“How’d you do it?”

“We strapped a couple of gravity plates
from Roswell Two to the elevators. When the lifts got close, you were caught
inside the field’s radius.”

“Nice trick.” Beckman said sourly, looking
over his stunned team and the discarded equipment strewn across the floor.
“That’s our third wipe this month.”

“Yeah, but you learned an important lesson
tonight.”

“Yeah, we stink,” Tucker growled.

The General indicated one of the specials
lying near the security desk. “Our mission analyses indicated you’ve become too
dependent on the recovered weapons. Every time the going gets tough, you go
straight to them. It’s a bad habit. The specials aren’t perfect. As you
discovered, they don’t fire in zero gravity.”

“Why not?” Beckman asked.

Hickson shrugged. “No idea. Maybe zero-g
confuses their targeting systems, or it might be a safety feature to prevent
them punching holes in ships in space. Whatever the reason, it’s a lesson you
won’t forget in a hurry.”

“A memo would’ve been less painful,”
Beckman said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Our weapons might be primitive by
comparison, Bob, but they work. More importantly, we know
how
they
work.”

“Yes sir.”

The General took one last look around as
the medics started their checks, then said in a low voice, “Let’s take a walk.”

Beckman followed the General out of the
training complex to a waiting staff car. It took them across the base, past
runways, hangars and machine shops to the command center.

“The drones are new,” Beckman said. “Does
that mean we’ve cracked the gravity problem?”

“No, we’re not even close to figuring that
out. They’re just fiberglass disks with an internal propeller for vertical
lift, a gyroscope for stability and a targeting laser controlled by a motion
sensor to keep you on your toes.” Hickson suppressed a smile. “No more
dangerous than a flashlight, without the kill sims. The air force is evaluating
them for low altitude target painting.” He paused, then added, “We didn’t
realize the drones would keep firing once you were weightless. That was as much
a surprise to us, as you.”

“No, General,” Beckman said earnestly, “I
can assure you, it was a much bigger
shock
for us.”

The staff car stopped at a large brick
building. Hickson led Beckman inside, past several sets of armed guards, to the
base’s situation room. It was two stories high, with three large screens
dominating the far wall. Glassed-in offices occupied by military personnel
looked down on several rows of computer terminals arrayed in front of the three
wall-mounted screens. The operators were a mix of air force officers and
white-shirted civilians. Several men smoked anxiously, their eyes glued to
their respective screens. The chief of operations, a civilian in his early
forties, paced the room behind the second row of terminals. He wore a loosened
thin black tie and had eyes that flitted nervously from screen to screen,
taking in everything at once.

On the central wall screen was a map of the
southern hemisphere spanning the Indian Ocean. A curved trajectory was plotted
from Mozambique in East Africa to Sumatra in Western Indonesia. Astride the
trajectory curve was a small satellite icon, just east of Madagascar, inscribed
with USA-325. The two other screens listed satellite telemetry, none of which
Beckman understood.

“Four minutes until the bird clears the
horizon,” a civilian from the National Reconnaissance Office reported from the
front row. He was the leader of the NRO team managing the deployment of the
satellite.