Hybrid - Forced Vengeance (24 page)

* * * *

The hybrid was perched on the top of the Eiffel Tower, standing on the tower’s highest point far above the spectator platform. Out in the quiet of the Paris night, he could focus on the faint impressions his enhanced senses detected. The hybrid focused his telepathic power outward, calling out to the signal that had reached him.

He finally found the wave of thought he had been seeking and drew it into himself. There was no coherent language, only feelings and impressions and the knowledge those impressions were meant for him. Now utterly confused, he tried to lock down the location – but was thwarted. It was almost as if the impressions were deliberately blocked and only a fraction of the telepathic message was getting through. Erik concentrated, sending out the most powerful telepathic message he had ever attempted.

* * * *

Shanda Knight’s entire body quivered as her baby stirred and fussed. Her heart leapt with joy as she recognized her husband’s distinctive mental pattern. Her skin filled with goose bumps as the telekinetic message engulfed her and her child. The child’s impression of comfort was overwhelming, Erik Jr. was reaching out across the thousands of miles to touch the consciousness of his sire.

The sensation of her husband was everywhere, bathing her in its overwhelming power. She closed her eyes and concentrated. She had to call out to him, and now was her chance.

* * * *

Erik Knight listened intently for a response to his signal. Whoever had contacted him had heard his powerful reply. He detected palpable waves of comfort, as they were broadcast weakly back to him. Within the impressions he sensed something else, faint but easily distinguished from the generic impressions.

Erik, help us. We are alive!

He immediately recognized the telekinetic pattern that was unmistakably Shanda’s. He turned his head abruptly, and seeking deep into the night, he strained his powers to their limit, focusing on the barely perceptible message. Then he lost it as it faded into the background again. But it was enough.

Shanda was alive!

Somewhere out there, his beloved lived and was calling to him. It didn’t make sense, but his heart assured him it was true. Having never truly accepted her death, his instinct now felt justified. He would find her, no matter what the cost. He focused his myriad powers on a short message, calling upon all of the energy his enhanced body could muster.

I never stopped believing. I’ll find you no matter what!

The girders he was gripping crumpled under the force of his grasp as he focused his mental powers on his wife. He should be acting, doing much regarding Monique LaSalle and the information he had gleaned from the sniper, but in his mind, none of that mattered now. Shanda was his first priority. He would plow through anything or anybody foolish enough to interfere with his search.

He leapt from his perch atop the Eiffel Tower and dove toward the ground. The spectators occupying the observation platform caught a quick glimpse of a falling shape in the darkness. Erik held his staff before him and willed the object to transform.
WING!
He projected the word toward the weapon.

The staff flattened and expanded, providing the lift necessary to stop his free fall and carry him off into the night sky.

* * * *

Shanda was sweating profusely from the strain of projecting her message. The physical demands required for this kind of telepathic undertaking were enormous. She couldn’t last much longer.

She sighed with exhaustion just as the answer came to her, directly on her own unique frequency. She felt the mental link she shared with her husband burn inside her once again as his message reverberated throughout her body.
He had never stopped believing!
He would find her no matter what. Shanda fell to her knees, crying with relief. Her husband had heard her. Erik knew she was alive and if he had to, he would turn Hell inside out to find her.

* * * *

Sergeant Phelps saw Shanda Knight fall to her knees.

“Mrs. Knight? Are you ill?” he asked in a worried tone.

She looked up at him, her tear-filled face beaming with an unspoken pride. Wiping the tears from her face, she stood up. “My husband has made contact. He knows I’m alive. God help you all.” Exhausted, the woman turned and sought the couch to lie down.

 “Daddy heard you, sweetheart. He’s coming.”

* * * *

Arthur Phelps felt his blood run cold as she walked away from him. It wasn’t so much what she said, but how she had spoke those words – ominously with a doom-filled tone. He had only a small inkling of what her husband was capable of doing.

If Erik Knight were truly as formidable as everybody believed, then it was his duty to inform his superiors of the potential threat. But, wasn’t his real duty to protect the two innocent victims in these cells? Colonel Ross could burn in Hell as far as he was concerned. Let Mrs. Knight’s husband come; hopefully he would bring an army with him. The sergeant focused his limited telepathy toward her.

Your secret is safe with me. I hope he makes it in time to see his son come into the world.

He saw her tense slightly and knew his message got through.

You’re a good man, Arthur. You’ve been a blessing to me and to Gray. I can’t thank you enough.

Chapter 14: Gestation Day 46, 0630 hrs

Probe

Colonel Ross sat in his command chair, anxiously waiting for a sit-rep from the search team. The alien object had buzzed their secure facility and impacted roughly twenty miles off in the desert – as the last trajectory readings predicted. But the report never materialized.

At the first crack of daylight Ross dispatched a team of seven men to patrol the designated impact area. In case trouble materialized, he relied on the three experimental battle tanks and other heavy weaponry he had on standby.

* * * *

Chief Master Sergeant Casey Millhouse hated the heat. He promised himself he would personally strangle the idiot who gave him a desert assignment after he’d served four years in the surveillance outpost in the Arctic. He had been at Groom Lake for two months now and was absolutely miserable because of the incessant heat.

Millhouse and the six men under his command were out since 04:45 conducting a grid-by-grid search for the damned UFO that had nearly crashed on the facility. All they had discovered so far were scorpions and the occasional desert rattler.

From the passenger seat of his vehicle, Millhouse watched with dread as the sun rose higher in the morning sky, then addressed the soldier driving their Jeep.

“Where to next, private?”

“Coordinates 116 by 53 on our map, sir.”

When the convoy of three Jeeps crawled over a large sand dune Millhouse spotted a trench carved in the desert sand that stretched as far as the eye could see.

“Gentlemen, we’ve struck gold,” he announced excitedly over the radio.

The driver stopped his vehicle and Millhouse and his men surveyed the trench.

Millhouse sent in one man to take a sample. As the soldier tried to comply, he complained, “Sir, the sand at the bottom of this shallow gulley is partially fused into crude glass from excessive heat and friction, I’ll need a pickaxe to retrieve a sample.”

“Make it so, soldier.”

As the team stowed the sample in one of the Jeeps, Millhouse reported his discovery back to base before another one of Ross’s booming commands demanded yet another update. Most of the senior enlisted men disliked the colonel – himself included. Millhouse had never heard of a non Air Force service member controlling an Air Force installation. He’d heard rumblings about Ross’s lack of expertise in particular areas but dismissed much of the talk as mere gossip.

A great number of things occurring at Groom Lake were borderline illegal and clearly immoral. He’d heard rumors of an abducted pregnant female being used as a lab rat and he’d personally witnessed the hapless Sergeant Phelps doing the most disgusting garbage details imaginable. Word had spread that Phelps had interfered with something very crucial; now the NCO was paying for it in spades. Millhouse didn’t really know the geeky sergeant; he only knew that Phelps had a spotless record and was never a discipline problem until a few days ago when his punitive detail commenced.

The recon party carried on, following the grooved burnt gulley, along its left side. After a half mile, a large pile of sand and debris became visible.

“Stop here,” Millhouse ordered his driver. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with so we’ll play this like a kindergartener: Simple and safe.”

The driver slowed then killed the engine and the two vehicles behind fell silent as well. Millhouse reached for the binoculars on the dashboard and studied their next objective. He cursed, lowering the binoculars.

“We’re being observed,” he told his men. “An object at the end of the trench appears to be studying us.”

It appears to be nearly two meters long, almost egg-shaped, and … suspended in the air by six appendages.”

More binoculars were raised and a collective gasp escaped as the craft shifted through several different color changes. Some of the colors were known, but others defied human description. Like a daddy long legs spider, the body of the object was tiny in comparison to its overly long legs, which suspended it easily eight-to-ten feet from the ground. A lime green oval eye flowed back and forth, then stopped as if to study the three Jeeps.

“Comm Tech! Radio in our position and tell them we have visual contact with the UFO. Also tell them that we’re withdrawing to a safer distance and will continue observation,” Millhouse ordered.

While the comm tech carried out his order, he watched the ‘otherworld construct’ then, lowering his binoculars, he signaled for a safe withdrawal.

The team settled in their Jeeps, drivers fired the engines, and retreated another hundred yards back as per Millhouse’s order.  Millhouse assumed that at this range, barely in sight of the craft, they offered no threat to it, yet their position would provide ample reaction time should it moved out of its resting area.

While they were armed, Millhouse was reluctant to use force. He conferred with his team and assigned a watch schedule with the use of the most powerful binoculars within their arsenal.

“What the fuck is that thing?” one burly soldier asked.

Their most technically savvy soldier piped up, providing his assumption. “I’d say some sort of probe or reconnaissance robot. The long legs would be perfect for navigating most terrains or shallow water. And… and…that greenish nimbus is clearly some kind of advanced sensor prejudging by its continuous 360-degree sweep of the immediate area. We seem to be out of its field of vision right now.”

Millhouse barely gave the information provided credence while he operated the rangefinder. “Thanks for your input, private. We’re slightly over 200 meters away,” Millhouse paused and continued. “We can use that distance to our advantage. Bishop, take your Jeep and go around to the flank. Stay just outside the 200 meters range, which should take you to that higher dune directly behind it. Moss, take your Jeep and do the same only come back in at seven o’clock. Until we receive further instructions, let’s circle this space bug and see what happens.”

Both men were heading toward their vehicles when Millhouse added, “Under no circumstances should you fire on the object unless ordered to do so. If it advances toward your position, withdraw. If you have to abandon your vehicle in order to do so then do so. I don’t want us to be the aggressors, understand?”

Bishop and Moss nodded and Millhouse added, “Someone sent this probe here; let’s not start something that we may not have the firepower to finish – or piss off the people who sent it.”

Dismissed, the soldiers departed for their positions. Millhouse reported to Command again, informing them of his strategy.

After several anxious minutes, the vehicles reached their designated positions. With Millhouse already in position they were all set. The desert sun was higher in the sky now, and Millhouse cursed the oppressive heat as he wiped sweat from his brow. The sunlight reflected off the alien probe, giving it an ominous appearance. The body of the probe was now a golden color while the six legs were charcoal gray. His driver set up a high-powered 100X spotting scope on the hood of their Jeep. The scope provided the master sergeant with a close-up view of the alien craft.

Its unnerving glowing green eye continually shifted from Bishop’s to Moss’s to his position which conveyed that the probe’s detection range extended over their assumed 200 meters. Millhouse was tempted to pull back further, but knew that if they did, then they would lose their high position on the dune directly behind the probe. Since they were only observing, Millhouse felt safe where they were for the moment.

They had been in their respective positions for almost thirty minutes and still the object gave no indication of aggression. Since each Jeep was equipped with a HAWS Mark 9 rocket launcher, plus regular issue M16s and an experimental pulse rifle that used electromagnetism to fire armor piercing rounds at nearly Mach 10, over five times the speed and twenty times the impact power of conventional 20mm shells, if the probe was deemed to be a threat, they would disable it by severing its legs, if possible. Destroying the object was the last option on their list of defensive actions.

“It’s moving!” Bishop reported over the radio.

Millhouse looked through his scope. The probe was now positioned away from the gulley it had created upon impact. It took two more tentative steps testing its footing on the sandy surface then it began to walk like a gigantic spider, closing in on Bishop’s team, positioned to the west.

“Bishop! Stay calm. Remember your orders: If it gets too close, withdraw.” Millhouse cursed this development.

The probe advanced closer and closer to Bishop’s position. Millhouse held his breath in anticipation. The men should have abandoned their vehicle by now. The probe was now much too close for them to escape safely. Then Millhouse heard gunfire and his stomach turned.

His men had panicked, opening fire on the probe with their M16s. To his horror the bullets deflected off the golden alien skin. Then the probe stopped its advance roughly twenty meters from his men, its green ocular no longer shifting. Millhouse presumed it was focusing on the men defending their position rather than retreating as ordered.

A beam of brilliant green energy temporarily blinded him. When he looked back through his scope, the men and the Jeep had vanished, leaving behind an ugly black burn mark in the sand. There was no noise or dramatic explosion to announce their demise. One moment his men were there and the next they simply weren’t.

Millhouse let out a string of curses then ordered his remaining men to withdraw well away from the probe. Once he felt he and his men were safe, he reported the new development to Command.

Colonel Ross’s displeasure was evident as the moody colonel terminated the communication with Millhouse who now had a severe knot in his stomach. ‘Destroy the invader,’ Ross had ordered. But deep down Millhouse wondered if the HAWS rockets had enough firepower to pierce the shell that had survived an orbital re-entry and crash landing.

The probe continued on a course that would lead it toward Groom Lake.

Millhouse formed a desperate plan. The two remaining vehicles drove ahead of the slow moving probe. He had the soldiers position themselves behind a shallow dune after leaving both Jeeps directly in the path of the oncoming probe. Millhouse hoped that the alien machine would stop to examine the abandoned vehicles. Once the probe stopped, they would fire their rockets and hopefully destroy the construct. The fuel tanks and extra fuel canisters on the Jeeps would add to the explosive force brought to bear against the alien craft. Millhouse picked up the experimental pulse rifle and he and his four remaining men anxiously waited for their target to approach within fire range.

The probe approached the Jeeps and stepped over the vehicles, its egg-like pod hovering over them. A beam of white enveloped each vehicle for a brief moment and then ceased.

The few seconds allowed the men to lock their weapons on the target and fire. Two armor-piercing rockets sped toward their objective and each hit their mark. The first rocket impacted against the probe’s body and detonated milliseconds after contact. The second rocket hit a Jeep, detonating its fuel and exploding both vehicles into an inferno. The concussion and secondary explosions were deafening and the four men ducked behind the dune to avoid debris and fallout from the explosions.

After a five count, Millhouse peeked over the dune. The smoke and fire still dominated the impact site. After three more seconds the alien probe became visible, unscathed by the inferno they had brought down upon it. It was advancing – now heading for their position.

I knew it.
Millhouse thought for a moment before addressing his men. “Take my canteens and radio, head back for the base, and radio ahead that we failed in our objective. I’ll hold this thing off as long as I can.”

The three men looked at him, stunned by the implications of his words. He was condemning himself for their survival.

“Move, damn it!” Millhouse ordered. “This thing’s gonna be here within seconds.” He tossed his canteens at his men.

The three men scrambled over the dune and ran from the oncoming alien probe.

Millhouse hefted the experimental pulse rifle to his shoulder and took aim.

“Smile, you alien fucker,” he whispered as he tapped the weapon’s firing pin.

Three rounds impacted the probe, cracking its outer shell. The probe stopped its advance. Millhouse fired two more three-round bursts which caused a distortion in the alien hull metal.

The probe’s hull changed from a golden hue to light purple. It once again began to approach his position. Millhouse placed his second and final nine-round clip into his weapon and fired. The rounds impacted against the probe, but to his dismay, the distortion effect was minimal. Somehow the probe was able to polarize its plating, increasing the bond that held the molecules together. No longer able to penetrate its shell with his weapons, Millhouse retreated slightly, cursing when the probe altered course to intercept him.

Retreating further, he looked back over his shoulder and was filled with dread. The probe was closing in – now only a scant twenty meters away. He couldn’t outrun the monstrosity. Death was imminent, but his survival instincts and adrenaline urged him to keep running.

He fell face first into the desert sand. He flipped himself over, and to his horror, the spider like probe had snared his leg with some kind of tactile strand. Panicking, he grabbed the glowing filament to free himself and it crackled, sending a shock throughout his body. The probe had captured him with a tendril of controlled energy. He glanced over at his experimental rifle which now seemed crude in comparison to the elegant and lethal alien arsenal.

Millhouse struggled to free himself from the unyielding strand but his strength was waning. The probe shot out another strand, then another. Soon he was hopelessly trapped with the probe looming directly over him. More and more strands of energy enveloped him like a spider wrapping up a hapless insect caught in its web.

His entire body was securely wrapped in this energy cocoon. The probe still loomed over him, its greenish ocular lens staring directly into his eyes. The alien eye focused over to the experimental weapon. It snared the pulse rifle with appendages from one of its legs and bathed the weapon in the same white light it used on the Jeep and then discarded the object. The probe turned around and continued, crawling away from Millhouse, resuming its earlier course toward the Groom Lake facility, leaving the captured soldier to his fate.