Dark Dragons (52 page)

“‘To the tribes who have left the lands of Eridu,’” Towsley
recalled from the invader’s psychic message.  “Southern Mesopotamia . . .
what was he saying?”

Yates shook his head.  “The software we have
unfortunately can’t construct direct word translation from an extinct
language.  Our voice recognition software only identifies individual
consonantal phonemes and vowels matched against comparable modern
phonologies.  I’m sorry, sir.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter, anyway,” Towsley said.

“Am I getting this right?” the president asked.  “These
aliens were here four thousand years ago?  But there’s no historical
record of an invasion.”

“Unless you believe all of that Chariots of the Gods stuff,”
Weinholt said.  “The Anunnaki mentioned in the Enuma Elis?”

“Which is . . . ?”

“The Enuma Elis is the Babylonian creation myth,” Towsley
said.  “It was written around sixteen-hundred BC.  The Anunnaki were
deities sent to Earth by Marduk the Sun God to teach mankind agriculture,
medicine and writing.”

“That was Oannes, colonel,” Weinholt said.  “The
Anunnaki were credited with creating the world.”

“Oh.”  Towsley shrugged.  “It’s hard keeping up
with all the ancient alien mythology out there.”

“Now who’s Oannes?” the president asked with just the
slightest hint of exasperation.

Weinholt cleared her throat.  “He was a being described
by a third-century BC historian named Berossus as being part fish, part man who
appeared from the Persian Gulf and educated primitive humans living around the
marshes of the Shatt al-Arab.  Some believe the Shatt al-Arab is the
location for the Garden of Eden by the way.”

“Educating mankind how to write on clay tablets and
cultivate grain doesn’t sound very aggressive,” the president said.  “So
what pissed them off?”

“We didn’t have the technology to resist them back then,”
Admiral Breuer said. “Maybe the aliens chose to be discreet and deceptive so
that they could learn something about us.  Four thousand years later, they
drop the pleasantries and diplomacy and bring out the orbital lasers and
flesh-shredding nanobots.”

Towsley shook his head.  “Whatever goofy theory one
subscribes to——human-alien DNA fusion, Giza Pyramid UFO launch pads——the fact
is the Vorvons took a few or many Akkadians with them when they left
Earth.  Either congenially or by force.  In light of recent events,
I’m leaning toward the latter.”

*

Darren had been listening to the conversation and the
background voices through Towsley’s sensitive microphone.  He had his
answer now.  Or at least part of one.  “Colonel, I’m sending you GPS
coordinates so your helicopter boys can retrieve this bad guy and his
Dragonstar.  And I wouldn’t wait too long because the natives around here
might get restless.”

A crowd of locals had gathered between him and the two
destroyed homes about two hundred feet away.  He couldn’t see any torches
or pitchforks but that didn’t mean they weren’t stirred up.

“I appreciate that,” Towsley replied.  “We’ll have some
people in the air in ten minutes.  By the way, how’s that duct tape
holding up?”

Darren chortled.  “Yeah, right.  Tell your redneck
engineers I appreciate the patch job.  So far, so good.  Contact me
on this channel for recon intel and interrogatives.”

“The same for you.  Our call sign, by the way is NESSTC
Red-David-Four.”

“Roger that.  Space Cowboy out.”

Darren waved at the crowd of rural Kansas folk before
climbing into the cockpit.  A few waved back, which made him smile.

Peeling off the ground, he checked his scopes for a quick
battle status and any nearby trilobite pods.  No Vorvon fighters, but the
two surveillance satellite drones still had telescopic lock on the
moonship.  As for the troop carriers, his AMDS registered no nearby mass
shadows.  Over North America anyway.

Darren thought-toggled the IFF-interrogator to locate his
bros.  Three blue dots appeared on his global positioning scope when their
transponders answered back.  Tony, Nate and Jorge were circling Los Angeles.

Darren realized he still had his comm tuned to the EHF Air
Force satellite.  Swearing at himself, he switched to Sub-Space Channel
One.

‘——are you?  Darren, answer me!’

‘I’m here, what’s going on?’

‘Goddamn it!’ Nate shouted.  ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘I got into a furball with Scorch,’ he replied.  ‘I’m
happy to report no more bad guy Dragonstar.’  For now, Scorch’s human
identity would remain secret until an appropriate time.  Or until he fully
grasped what was going on.  ‘Give me a status on the troop carriers?’

‘Status is FUBAR!’ Tony replied.  Even filtered through
Tony’s thought-processed voice, his agitation was unmistakable.  ‘We
smoked twelve troop carriers before the rest bugged out for the moonship. 
But one managed to puke an entire squadron of dropships over L.A. before Jorge
put a singularity missile up its ass over the Pacific.’

Boots on the ground.  Darren inhaled slowly to placate
himself.  It didn’t work.  ‘How many?’

‘Two Battalion strength maybe . . . infantry . . . some
armor it looks like, but no sign of close-air support.  The dropships
landed right in the middle of downtown.  They leveled everything in
Pershing Square to make an LZ including that big parking lot across the street
to the north . . . I don’t see any civilians or any moving cars downtown . . .
Chinatown, the Rampart, Boyle Heights, South L.A.  . . . it’s all deserted
in every direction . . . a lot of traffic jams on the freeways leading out of
town, though.  Looks like an evac order went out a while ago.  Good
thing.’

‘Engage now,’ Darren said.  ‘I’ll be there in fifty
seconds.’

*

Tony aimed the Dragonstar’s nose toward the skyscrapers and
gunned the mental-accelerator.  The machine burst into high velocity, and
Tony went back against the seat.  He lined up Grand Avenue, a north-south
street running through the heart of Bunker Hill and spotted Vorvon
hovertanks.  They looked like metallic turtle shells, twenty feet in
diameter, with a pair of creepy glowing “eyes” in the front and a short
“tentacle” on top.  Dozens of Vorvon shocktroopers hovering above the
street alongside the tanks provided infantry-armor combined arm
formations.  Tony locked up four tanks and prepared the anti-intruder
hydra shroud for an offensive killing run, but before he could even think the word
FIRE
, four of the lead tanks opened up on
him.

A bright flash lit up his windshield——four laser blasts blew
the ablative laser armor off his nose and along the starboard cockpit——and Tony
rolled away out of the fire zone, swearing in terror.

Nate zipped in from the west through the skyscrapers and
managed to pop a couple of hovertanks with his gauss cannon before a complete
and total cluster-frick erupted across the skies over downtown Los
Angeles.  Surface-to-air laser and missile fire exploded from everywhere
and not just from the streets of Bunker Hill but from several floors of
skyscrapers——individual shocktroopers with portable SA-weapons were firing out
the windows.

Both anti-missile pods went to work, and Tony sped away out
of the AO, feeling his Dragonstar shudder from the small lasers striking the
fighter’s skin.  Angry, swearing again, he snap-and-burned back to
downtown, pulled up to the 43rd floor of Two California Plaza and the platoon
of Vorvons there and gave the entire level a raking with both laser
cannons.  Fire and smoke exploded out of the opposite side along with
concrete, steel and body parts before Tony had to pull a hard reverse when
ground fire struck his fighter’s belly.

Something struck his Dragonstar with such force that the
fighter rocked in the air, and a bright flash lit up the cockpit.  He
heard the fighter lose power, and slowly it began to fall.  His brain
scrambled to regain control, and his dragon nosed up again.  He heard his
bros shouting in anger and terror from the unrelenting ground fire.

As he pulled away, Tony managed a quick look to the ground
and saw one of his buddies’ missiles get zapped before it could strike a
hovertank.  The tentacle on top of the vehicle was some kind of
air-defense weapon.

Another missile darted at him, this time from the right, and
he reacted quickly.  The Dragonstar nosed up and accelerated just before
the missile struck the Gas Company Tower next to him.  A flash tore
through the top floors of the skyscraper, bits of window glass and concrete shooting
into the air.  Several hovertanks protecting the dropships in Pershing
Square were the culprits.  Tony optically-locked up two of the tanks with
the gauss cannon and popped them both. 
Air-defense that.

Return fire from the remaining tanks forced him back behind
the Gas Company Tower, but more ground attacks from Vorvon units along Grand
Avenue forced him away further until he turned tail and lit out.

*

Finally arriving on battle, Darren told Tony to form up and
ride shotgun on his six and Jorge and Nate to head over the Fashion District
and swing west to draw SA fire away from Darren’s ingress.  He and Tony
turned south and went in low between the buildings thirty feet off the
deck.  Three black Ford Explorers parked in the intersection of Grand and 5
^th
Street shielded several SWAT officers firing on an advancing horde of Vorvon
shocktroopers.  Darren programed the hydra shroud’s targeting computer for
“non-human” engagement.  Ahead, three hovertanks met Tony’s gauss stream
while Darren greased forty shocktroopers with a single blast from the hydra
shroud’s forty-gun cannon.  A half second later, he popped forty more and
another forty shocktroopers a half second after that.  Six platoons of
Vorvon infantry disappeared in less than two seconds.

The platoon-killing weapon’s “wow-factor” moved Darren to
shocked silence, witnessing his hydra shroud in action for the first
time.  Not in fear, but absolute delight.  The SWAT officers didn’t
even have to duck.

Nate and Jorge did their best to pull enemy ground fire
away, but there was so much of it, both Darren and Tony received several direct
strikes across their bellies.

‘My hydra shroud!’  Tony spat.  ‘I just lost comm
with the targeting computer!  Fuck!’

Darren had fourteen damage points flashing in the assessment
box on his visor, three of them critical.  Smoke continued to build in the
cockpit.  The Dragonstar’s main computer was practically demanding a
temporary, system-wide shutdown to scan for possible “micro impairments” that
could amplify to a complete system failure.  Darren didn’t have time,
however, for a computer reboot.

He pulled up twenty feet above Fourth Street and hovered in
for the kill on the remaining Vorvon formations attempting to seek shelter on
Lower Grand Avenue.  He did short work.  Tony appeared in a heartbeat
from the west and smoked the last five alien tanks with his gauss cannon.

‘Clear!’ Darren said.

‘Yeah, clear on my end,’ Tony replied. ‘Smoke ’em if you got
’em!”

‘No, I don’t think so, Tony.”

‘Just kidding.’

‘Ah, guys?’ Nate said.  ‘I’m outside the Third Street
Tunnel . . . oh, god.  You gotta see this shit.’

‘What is it?’ Darren asked.

Nate did not answer fast enough.

‘Nate!’

‘Just get over here,’ came Nate’s tiny voice.

*

While Tony hovered above them in his Dragonstar, Darren,
Jorge, and Nate stood outside the east entrance into the Third Street Tunnel
with Brutus.  None of them could speak.

Darren remembered a nightly news broadcast a few years ago
taken during the civil war in Sierra Leone of a blood-soaked city street
literally strewn with bodies.  They had been hacked to death by
machete-wielding kids used by RUF rebels to attack villages and guard the
“blood diamond” mines that fueled their war.  Fortunately, the TV didn’t
broadcast the stomach-churning smells or the moans of the still living. 
Darren also recalled Colonel Towsley’s account of what happened in Washington
D.C. last night involving a swirling cloud of flesh-shredding nanobots.

Jorge cleared his throat.  “It looks like they were
hiding in here . . . but they didn’t hide well enough.”

“They look like they were mauled by animals,” Nate said, his
helmet light waving back and forth across the darkened tunnel.  “Jesus,
what the hell are we really up against?”

Brutus counted eighty-one bodies.  All of the victims
were adults.  College-age, middle-age, senior citizens.  But no
children.  Darren even spied a couple of overturned baby strollers but no
babies.  Large swaths of blood even reached the tunnel’s ceiling.

Darren closed his visor to keep the stench out of his
nostrils.  “They’re all slash and puncture wounds.  Deep, too. 
No gunshots or laser burns.”

Brutus hovered over to a woman’s body and extended an
appendage, a slender tube with dozens of long probing filaments at the end,
several of which pierced the woman’s skin.

“Jorge, what’s he doing?”

“He’s doing a medical,” Jorge replied.  “This woman not
only got slashed to hell but also poisoned . . . some kind of neurotoxin.”

“You mean like animal venom?”  That didn’t sound like
nanobots.

Jorge nodded.  “If the flesh wounds weren’t deep enough
to kill, the venom would have.”

Darren looked quickly into the dead woman’s open eyes,
frozen in place along with her expression of terror, and tried to guess what
last vision they had held, what horror had visited upon these eighty-one humans
seeking refuge from the storm outside.  Looking across the cleaved, ragged
bodies strewn about like rag dolls, Darren told himself that this was just the
first of many acts of wonton slaughter brought forth from the gods of war that
he would encounter.

Brutus withdrew his analysis tool.

“Let’s get out of here,” Darren said.  “I can’t stand
the smell.”