Orbs II: Stranded (22 page)

CHAPTER 30

“A
PPROACHING
Colorado airspace,” the pilot said over the com.

Captain Noble felt a thrill pass through him the moment he saw the Colorado wastelands. The sand dunes protruded from the dead earth like sores on a diseased body. He’d seen them before, but never from the sky. The destruction from the solar storms of 2055 was a sobering sight. The reach of the coronal mass ejection had been far and deep, engraving a scar into the earth that would take thousands of years to erase.

He went to stroke his beard, but his fingers scraped across his helmet’s breathing apparatus instead. He had become so fully immersed in the view that he’d forgotten everything else around him. The near-silent hum of the helicopter’s blades vibrated through the cabin. Noble pulled his gaze away from the window and checked the monitor. In the upper right corner, the radar showed a green line, circling clockwise. The screen was clear of contacts; there was nothing but the expansive ocean of sand and cracked earth between them and Colorado Springs.

Noble rested his helmeted head against the seat and tried to appear calm and relaxed. The last thing he wanted was to display any sign of weakness to the soldiers, especially Sergeant Harrington. Noble didn’t know the man all that well. As captain, he focused on giving everyone under his command a very long leash. If they went astray and got tangled, then he would deal with them accordingly, but otherwise he trusted them to do their work. Harrington had never given him a reason to get involved with the business of the Special Forces team.

A chirp from the screen pulled him back to the monitor. As the line
circled the radar, it passed over a slowly growing green mass.

Ping.

Ping.

Ping.

The object grew with every pass, and Noble’s blood pressure rose with it.

“Captain Noble, we have a situation.”

“Dust storm?” Noble asked, his fingers reaching for his armrest again. They wrapped themselves tightly around the metal.

“Roger that, sir. And from the looks of it, a big one.”

Noble closed his eyes. “Take evasive measures ASAP.”

“Sir . . . there’s no going around it.”

Ping.

The captain’s eyes shot back up to the screen. Another object? Could there really be another storm? He waited for the line to circle again. This time it picked up a smaller object, no larger than the size of a grape. This was something else.

“Sir, we have an unidentified craft on our tail.”

Noble gripped the armrests tighter.

“What are you orders, sir?” the pilot asked.

In his peripheral vision, the captain could see some of the soldiers fidgeting in their chairs. With every ping, another one of them moved.

“We have to go through it, sir,” a voice said to his right.

Noble turned to see his reflection in Harrington’s armored visor. The man had finally broken his stoic trance.

“She was built to withstand a direct hit from a grenade. She can take whatever the wastelands have to throw at her.” The man’s voice was hoarse but calm. There was courage in his words. That was the mark of a true leader. Noble drew strength from Harrington’s demeanor.

“Sir, your orders,” the pilot repeated.

Ping . . . ping . . .

Sophie, Jeff, and the marines walked past the mounds of alien bodies in silence. Just minutes ago, Sophie was about to put a hole in Jeff’s head
and her own. And now?

A miracle.

No
, she thought.
Science.

Past the last house, they had a panoramic view of the lakebed. Even under the white sun, the glow from dozens of orbs was obvious. Looming over them in the distance was the field of poles.

They had found two vans with hydrogen cells a few blocks back, and Bouma had been able to fire them up. The last stage of their plan was now in motion.

“I’m guessing those are what’s left of anyone who tried to run,” Bouma said, pointing at the orbs.

“The poor bastards really never had a chance,” Overton replied gravely.

The sound of Jeff’s footsteps stopped, and Sophie turned to see the boy wiping sweat off his forehead. “It’s so hot,” he said in a low voice.

Sophie glanced over him. His face was pale and his eyes were rimmed with dark circles. Strands of hair stuck to his wet forehead. She looked down at her water bottle—only a quarter left. Her own throat ached with dryness, her lips cracked and bleeding.

She pulled the bottle off her belt and handed it to him. “Drink the rest. It’s okay.”

He hesitated only a moment before grabbing it and gulping down what remained. He held the bottle above his head, trying to force out any last drops. “Thank you,” he said, handing it back to her.

“Keep moving,” Bouma said.

The marines fanned out as they worked their way down to the beach. Sophie and Jeff followed. While every alien within fifteen square miles was dead, Sophie knew there was something else waiting for them: the human farm.

Why hadn’t the pulse from the RVAMP knocked out the poles? Sophie considered the problem. They had to be on some other sort of power source, which meant the team was going to have to find it in order to get the prisoners down.

It took only fifteen minutes to cross the lakebed. She tried to ignore the orbs, forcing herself not to look at them. There was no helping those
people now. But as the marines made their way closer to the poles, Jeff stopped beside one of the glowing balls of light. He hunched over to look inside, holding his hands over his eyes like a shopper peering into a store window.

“This one’s moving!” he shouted.

Overton balled his hand into a fist and raised a finger to his helmet as if to hush the boy. But Sophie jogged over to him.

“Come on, Jeff,” she said, trying to usher him away.

“Wait a second. I want to see this.”

Sophie noticed a black shadow moving inside the orb. The figure was small, much smaller than a child. Her heart sank as she realized it was an infant.

“Oh my God.” Her worst fear had finally been confirmed. She knew there would be infants out there, left behind when their parents had been captured, but seeing one liquefying in front of her made her gag.

She doubled over, trying to prevent the bile inside her throat from plastering the inside of her helmet.
Deep breaths, Sophie, deep breaths.
She sucked in the filtered air and felt the blood seep back into her head before standing back up.

She forced herself away from the orb, grabbed Jeff, and yelled, “We’re leaving!” Sophie yanked him across the cracked earth toward the shoreline. He turned several times to look back at the orb but didn’t put up any further resistance.

Climbing the hill that led to the farm was more difficult than the trek across the lakebed. The dirt was littered with dead Spiders, their bodies stacked on top of one another.

Every step took them closer to the poles. Overton was the first to reach them. He ran down the nearest row, presumably looking for his soldiers. He kept going, stopping at each pole and tilting his helmet toward the sky to examine every individual. Bouma stood guard over the lakebed with his rifle at the ready.

Overton finally spoke into his com. “Unconscious . . . all of them. Maybe dead.” He panted over the channel, “Come on! They have to be alive!”

Sophie watched Overton reach out toward a man at the bottom of
the pole closest to him. Even from her location she could see he was elderly, small, and emaciated.

“Get over here, Doc,” Overton said.

Sophie turned to Jeff. “Stay with Corporal Bouma.” Her armor creaked as she ran, or maybe it was her bones. She was tired, her body mentally and physically exhausted. And the injury she had sustained weeks earlier on her side was flaring up. Every step sent a jolt of pain down her right leg.

She didn’t have time for the pain. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Overton, she slowly pushed the old man’s chin up with her armored fingers so she could examine him. His face was completely sunken in, and his skin was jaundiced—both signs of dehydration. Her gaze shifted from his face to his torn red T-shirt. His chest moved up and down ever so slightly, the outline of his ribs showing with each breath.

Somehow he was still alive.

With the most delicate touch, she let go of his chin, guiding it back to rest against the hollow of his sunken throat. “How is this man alive?” she whispered into her com.

Overton shrugged and moved to the next pole, grabbing the person’s hair to check their face before moving on to the next. “They’re all in some sort of trance.”

Sophie nodded. “They’re unconscious, dehydrated, and on the verge of death. None of these people are in any shape to move.”

“This is bullshit,” growled Overton. He ran to the next pole, and then the next, wrenching back the heads of the people he could reach. “My squad has to be here somewhere.”

Sophie studied the elderly man in front of her. She knew he was alive because the Organics were keeping him alive. But how they were doing it wasn’t clear. They seemed to be suspended and held in place by some invisible electrical force. With a sigh she whispered, “I’m sorry this happened to you.” She reached to pat his arm gently, and his eyes popped open.

“Oh my God,” she yelled, tripping over her feet and landing on her back. Her head smashed into the back of her helmet. Darkness began
to creep over her. She blinked several times and opened her eyes to stare into the endless blue sky. There was something flying above her, a tiny black object. Was she just imagining things? Was her mind playing tricks on her again?

Blinking several more times, her vision finally cleared. She looked at the sky again. The black object was getting bigger, descending from above.

The loud boom hit her like a shockwave from a massive earthquake, shaking the ground where she lay. She rolled over to see Jeff and Bouma fall to the dirt, clouds of dust exploding around them. Sophie tried to stand, bracing herself against the pole where the man was trying to reach out to her.

“Help me,” he wheezed.

“Hold—” she began to say when another shockwave hit her. She flailed for the man’s hand but crashed to the ground. The pole vibrated and the glow intensified. Panicking, she began to crawl across the dirt. All the poles were getting brighter, trembling with every blast.

Sophie tilted her head and scanned the sky. The black object was racing in their direction. And this was no drone. It was . . .

It was the black ship from her dreams.

Her heart jolted insider her chest. She counted the beats as she lay on the ground, paralyzed. Thoughts of Emanuel, Jeff, and the rest of her team disappeared. Staring at the ship, she fell into a trance. The sight was both mystifying and terrifying at the same time.

She was finally going to see the real Organics. The aliens behind the solar storms and the invasion that had left Earth a post-apocalyptic wasteland. They had killed almost everyone she had ever known. Now she was going to see the monsters’ faces with her own eyes.

Five heartbeats later, the ship lowered over the lakebed. It was as large as the one in her dream, covering the entire area. A gust of air hit her and sent her tumbling over the cracked dirt. She landed a beat later, her back smashing into one of the poles. A strong electric current raced through her body. And then she felt the most powerful sensation she had ever experienced, like she was connected to a thousand different consciousnesses at once.

Darkness clutched her.

She tried to stay awake, tried to fight the pain. The faint sound of gunfire broke out somewhere in the distance, and then she heard screams over the com. She couldn’t make out the voice, but she could make out a single word.

“Run!”

CHAPTER 31

C
APTAIN
Noble braced himself as tiny rocks peppered the chopper. They were probably no larger than pebbles, but at 350 miles per hour they had virtually the same effect as high-caliber bullets. The helicopter’s armor was thick enough to survive hundreds of dust storms, but the windshield? Noble wasn’t so sure.

When he turned to check the blue screen for the drone’s location, another tremor violently shook the chopper. He lurched forward, the seat belt snapping against his armored chest.

Static erupted over the com. “Losing auxiliary power!” the pilot yelled.

Noble forced himself into a sitting position. “What the hell was that?”

“The drone, sir . . . it’s using some sort of . . .”

The cabin was suddenly filled with blue light as the drone’s beam engulfed the
Sea Serpent
. Another vibration ripped through the chopper’s body.

Noble fought the turbulence and twisted toward Harrington. “We need to get that thing off our ass or we’re going to end up worm food!”

Harrington nodded and unclipped his belt before Noble had a chance to react. The soldier crouch-walked over to the side of the cabin where one of the automatic miniguns was mounted to the floor. “Lenny, get over here,” he yelled over the noise of the storm.

“Strap into the other gun and take that drone down!”

“On it!” Lenny replied.

Noble watched the other soldier unbuckle his belt and dart for the second gun. Seconds later, Harrington and Lenny were strapped into the mounts and turret doors groaned open. Sand immediately burst through the gaps, showering the other soldiers with rocks.

Harrington rotated the gun into position. He squeezed off an automatic burst of pulse rounds at the craft as soon as his crosshairs locked on. The drone reacted swiftly, diving beneath the craft and disappearing from view.

“Lenny, watch for it!” he yelled.

The pilot’s voice was distant as it broke over the com. “Looks like we lost it!” The transmission cut out when another wind gust hit the chopper’s side. Noble lost his grip on the armrest and jolted to the side. The entire craft shook and blue light flooded through the windows.

Angled over the left side of his seat, Noble watched the drone emerge on Lenny’s side of the chopper. The glow from its beam reflected off the visors of the other soldiers, who stared ahead like machines. They had been trained for this very thing.

Where Harrington had failed, Lenny succeeded. The rounds from his gun tore into the drone’s sides. The alien craft spun out of control, disappearing into the storm. Just as Lenny clenched his fist in victory, the drone reappeared and bolted toward the chopper. Before he had a chance to react, it smashed into the turret door. A horrible groan rippled through the chopper as the window, the minigun, and Lenny were sucked out into the storm, leaving a massive hole in the Sea Serpent’s side.

Wind screamed into the cabin, bringing with it a torrential spray of rocks and dust. Safety harnesses deployed from the ceiling and bolted the soldiers into their seats.

“Close it!” Noble screamed. His words were lost under the sounds of the storm. He gripped the metal harness around his chest and watched the backup door slowly close over the hole in the helicopter’s side.

Before the hole was sealed, he saw the darkness of the storm. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky just as the door crunched closed. Somewhere out there, Lenny was being torn apart. Noble closed his eyes, forcing the image out of his head. He had to remain strong. The
drone was gone, but the
Sea Serpent
was still at the mercy of the storm.

Sophie awoke to the horrifying feeling of solitude. She tried to open her eyes, to scan her surroundings, but her eyelids were too heavy. The last thing she remembered was hitting her back on a pole. But oddly, she felt no pain. She reached where her visor should have been and instead felt her face.

Then she remembered the black ship.

Her eyelids finally snapped open, and a world of dazzling orbs surrounded her. She was back on the same ship she had dreamt she was on days earlier—the ship that was now hovering over the lakebed.

But how had she gotten inside? And where were the others?

Sitting up, she twisted to look for Overton, Jeff, and Bouma. Had they been captured too?

Nothing.

Wait
 . . .

There, against the backdrop of orbs was something . . . alien.

She counted them one at a time. Six gaunt, glowing figures hovered in the air. Like flames, the figures flickered, the blue light shimmering. The horrifying feeling of being alone disappeared.

Sophie narrowed her eyes. She’d never believed in the paranormal. But the apparitions reminded her of ghosts, figures from a horror movie, flickering in and out of existence. Slowly she tilted her head.

One of the figures disappeared and then reappeared above the platform, bathing her in a cool blue. Through the light, she could see the alien had no eyes, no face. It had no arms or legs or even a recognizable torso. The creature was just a conglomeration of shifting blue flesh. Nothing indicated it was even a life-form. It was like . . .

No, that’s impossible
,
she thought. Multidimensional life-forms were just a theory.

The creature continued to shift, flickering like a hologram. Sophie was so fascinated she had forgotten everything else around her. Oddly, she didn’t feel the same fear that had paralyzed her before, nor did she feel anxious. In fact, she felt nothing but awe.

Sophie reached out toward the being. And then it was gone, a trail of blue light fading where it had just hovered. She crawled to the platform’s edge and looked down. Where there had been a circular opening in her dream, there was only the sleek dark surface of the ship. It was then it really hit her.

This wasn’t a dream. She was trapped.

She needed time to think. Were those shifting blue shapes the intelligent Organics? And were they really multidimensional creatures? Theoretically it was possible, but watching it was like seeing a god with her own eyes. She couldn’t explain it, but something about them seemed timeless. The revelation was gripping, but still she did not feel fear or anxiety.

Sophie emerged from her thoughts at the sound of a distant, low humming. She’d heard the exact noise before in a secret NTC lab over five years ago. It was the sound of anti-gravity technology—technology that wasn’t supposed to exist. Only it did. And it had been hidden right under her nose.

Eve.

“Jesus,” Sophie muttered. Hoffman had been using the alien technology long before the invasion. Certainly he could have found a way to stop them, to defeat them. Unless he didn’t want to.

Eve wasn’t the only part of the equation that didn’t make sense. What about Luke Williard’s magnetic technology? He’d built it to help shield the planet from solar storms, and NTC had initially expressed interest in buying the tech. But Dr. Hoffman had scrapped the project at the last minute. Somehow, Sophie knew everything was connected, and Dr. Hoffman’s lies ran deeper than she could imagine. Scrambling on all fours across the platform, Sophie realized she would probably never know the extent of the man’s deceit.

A flicker of light distracted her. She paused and scanned the interior for signs of the entity. Again, she didn’t see anything except the glow of the orbs, and the longer she stared, the harder it was to see clearly.

Somewhere beyond her reality she knew she was being watched by the Organic. She could sense it—almost feel its presence. As she turned, a blue radiance enveloped her and the same shifting blob of blue flesh
appeared. Before she could comprehend what was happening, the room disappeared. Darkness washed over her.

Then there was light.

Her hands shot up to shield her eyes from the extreme brightness just as a force grabbed her. There was no resisting it.

Her body went limp, her muscles useless. A warm sensation washed over her as she closed her eyes. She’d felt it before. Weightlessness. And yet she still felt no emotion. No fear or anxiety, just the awareness of being alive.

She was being transported.

She watched the blue walls of the wormhole race by, mystifying and beautiful. And then it was over her. She was back on a solid surface. Back on . . .

Blinking, she opened her eyes to see an endless sea of red sand. Above her was a white sun. She knew at that moment she was on Mars.

Reaching for her helmet, she felt her fingertips on her naked face. If she was on Mars and she
wasn’t
dreaming, then how could she breathe? She stood on the planet’s rocky surface waiting for the being to reemerge. Sophie knew it was there with her—she knew it had brought her here for a reason.

When she turned, the red landscape disappeared, replaced with the most beautiful sight she had seen in months: an ocean. She found herself beneath the slurping waves, sinking deeper and deeper into the blue abyss. Above her the sunlight began to disappear, but another light illuminated the seafloor from below—a dazzling blue glow radiated from giant coral-like tubes that twisted between hundreds of bright domes that littered the ocean floor.

As Sophie sank deeper, she could see signs of movement under the clear surface of one of the domes. What appeared at first to be miniature crabs turned out to be thousands of Spiders. They were just tiny specs moving back and forth, some carrying orbs while others roamed freely.

As she got closer to the dome she could see Sentinels, Worms, and other creatures. Ones she had never seen. Before she was close enough to examine their anatomy, a guttural sound erupted, and with it came a fiery glow. The seafloor began to shake violently, a fatal crack ripping
through the surface. The dome shattered, and the aliens were sucked out of their habitat. Lava burst out of the gash in the seafloor, instantly consuming the entire city of domes.

Sophie began to rise toward the surface, an unknown source pulling her away from the catastrophe below. Another crack broke through the seafloor, running perpendicular to the river of lava carpeting the bottom. Sophie could see the fissures were beginning to spread, extending in every direction. The faint glow of other domes in the distance vanished as the massive underwater volcano consumed them too.

As she rose up toward the surface, she saw there was something else rising with her.

Ships.

She tried to count them as they escaped, but the scene disappeared.

Sophie found herself back in the bowels of the black ship. She slid her hand across the metal platform. The sleek surface was still cold. For the first time, her mind struggled against the odd sense of peace. What was she doing here? Why was she being shown these things? And what had happened to the Organics on Mars? If they were intent on exterminating the human race, then why show her all this?

The questions raced through her mind as she sat waiting for something to happen. None of it made any sense. A faint glow shrouded her. The being had returned. She spun around to see the shifting blue flesh just inches away.

She tried to think, to comprehend what she was seeing, but her mind felt trapped.

What do you want from me?

There was no immediate answer, only the silent hum echoing off the walls and the constantly shifting flesh in front of her.

Why am I here?

Still there was no response.

She took a step closer to the alien and reached out for it, her fingers inching closer and closer to the fluid skin.

Another inch.

One more.

Her finger swiped through emptiness just as the alien vanished. Sophie fixated on the orbs lining the ship’s walls. For whatever reason, the alien had shown her what had happened to the Organics on Mars. They had been torn from their homes beneath the ocean by a massive volcano, and then left the planet in their black ships.

Above her, another light emerged. This was different from the blue she had become accustomed to; this was a soft teal that crept across the ceiling and ballooned into some sort of hologram. As the light expanded, it formed an image, one that Sophie recognized immediately as the solar system. The glow of the orbs in the background faded.

The hologram zoomed in on a comet racing through the darkness of space. Behind it several of the Organics’ black ships collected the icy residue from its tail.

The next image was of Jupiter’s moons. The same black ships hovered over the frozen surface of Europa as they collected the water beneath the slabs of ice.

And then she saw Earth. The beautiful blue oceans surrounding the continents she had memorized when she was a little girl.

Sophie realized that the images, the visions, were all snapshots of the Organics traveling across the solar system for water. They had sucked dry thousands of moons and planets. Killed hundreds of civilizations. Earth had simply been next.

Questions consumed her. Why hadn’t NTC or NASA discovered this before? Why hadn’t they detected the Organics? It was then she finally realized that they had. Eve had just been the beginning. Dr. Hoffman must have known all along the Organics had left Mars. He had to have known that if the Organics came to Earth, they would leave the planet desolate, dead, and void of life.

Sophie finally understood that the Biospheres weren’t just an experiment to help colonize Mars. The mission wasn’t to help humanity escape from the destruction their own hunger for resources had wrought; it was to help humanity escape from the Organics. There had been no need for Williard’s magnetic technology, because there was no stopping them.

But why had the multidimensional alien brought her here? Why had
it shown her these visions?

She had to know—she deserved to know. With a new resolve, she pushed herself off the metal surface and yelled, “What do you want from me?”

The only answer was the sparkle from thousands of orbs. Inside were aliens from worlds she would never see, creatures like the flower-shaped one she had seen in her dream. But why were they here? Why had the Organics kept them alive, the last remnants of their species?