Independence Day: Silent Zone
To my science advisor, K.R.W., and his wife
The Battle Continues
On July 5, the worldwide battle
against the invaders
continued. All thirty-six of the alien city
destroyers had successfully been shot out of the sky, but there was no
mood of
celebration in the below-ground research facility referred to as Area
51. This
secret lab, buried below the Nevada desert, had replaced Washington,
DC, as the
functioning headquarters of the United States. Inside the lab's
communications
and tracking room, President Thomas Whitmore, his advisors, and a crew
of
technicians were frantically working to coordinate a counteroffensive.
Four
city destroyers, along with thousands of smaller ships called
attackers, had
crashed to earth on American soil—many of them in the scrub desert
surrounding
the lab—and it was too soon to know how many survivors there might be.
President Whitmore, who had first come to national prominence as a
fighter
pilot in the Gulf War, had personally climbed into the cockpit of an
F-18 jet
and led the squadron of planes which had scored the first kill against
these
gargantuan airships. The aliens had apparently detected the radio
transmissions
coming from the base and broken off another attack to fly toward the
spot. They
were on the verge of destroying Area 51 when Whitmore's team discovered
that it
only took a single AMRAAM missile detonating against the giant ship's
primary
weapon to cause a chain-reaction explosion powerful enough to rip the
craft
apart. The technicians immediately spread this news around the globe,
then
waited for reports to filter back.
High
above
the base, AWACS reconnaissance planes were circling, using their
sophisticated
electronic equipment to provide Area 51 with cell-phone and radio links
to the
remnants of America's military. From their perspective, the AWACS
pilots had a
clear view of the monstrous, fire-blackened hull of the destroyer lying
in the
desert, a smoldering shell seventeen miles wide. Also visible were the
convoys
of military vehicles coming from all directions to surround the
destroyer. All
day long, men and equipment that had survived the devastating attack
poured in
from military installations all across the Southwest. By midafternoon,
the
solid ring of soldiers and civilians surrounding the craft was thick
enough to
be seen from the air. On the ground, the crest of the ruined megaship
was
visible from as far away as Las Vegas.
Delta Company out of
Fort Irwin was one of the first on the scene. This elite squad of
soldiers was
given the unenviable task of acting as the shock troops for the
counterinvasion. They were the first ones in.
It
was
like storming into an impossibly large church. They entered through a
two-hundred-foot break in the exterior wall, advancing quietly,
twenty-five
yards at a time. The size of the ship's interior spaces was stunning,
incredible. Once they had secured and cleared the first thousand yards,
armored
vehicles, Jeeps, and hundreds of both soldiers and civilians, poured
through
the breach. Deeper into the ship, the rooms became a labyrinth of
smaller
chambers, closing down to the size of narrow hallways in some places.
Delta
Company pushed forward, tensely expecting to encounter hostile
survivors around
each corner. They began to find fragments of alien corpses ripped
apart in
the blast. But by the end of the first twenty-four hours, not a single
survivor
had been discovered.
Helicopters
had entered the ships vast central chamber through great holes that the
explosion had torn through the roof. The pilots had reported "a big barrel of fish," thousands
of destroyed
attackers lying in a single heap three miles across. Delta Company
received orders
to spearhead a drive toward this central chamber, where it was thought
they
might find survivors and take them as prisoners.
Nolan jumped from
the surface of one crashed alien attack ship, landed on the hard shell
of the
next, then sprinted the sixty feet to the edge of another, where he
took cover
and searched the vast space around him with the barrel of his assault
rifle.
The central chamber of the city destroyer gave him the feeling of being
at the
bottom of an underground lake surrounded by blackened vertical walls.
He
estimated the distance across the chamber to be about three miles. Gray
sunlight poured in from where the explosion had torn away a large
section of
the roof. In the distance, he could hear the sound of a Jeep and the
sporadic
shouts coming from another recon team working the southern sector of
the
chamber. The space had obviously been some kind of portable airport, a
staging
area for the attacker planes, which now lay in a colossal pile, stacked
ten
deep in some places, after having been knocked loose from their
moorings high
overhead.
Nolan
glanced back the way he had come and gave Simpkins the come-ahead
signal. As
his partner crossed the open space, Nolan covered him, tensely scanning
in all
directions for signs of danger. Although Delta Company hadn't heard or
seen any
live fire, reports had been made in other sectors of alien snipers
using
handheld weapons. As Simpkins made his dash, the ship under him settled
slightly, groaning deeper into the pile of identical ships on which it
rested.
He was momentarily knocked off balance, recovering just in time to
avoid being
tossed over the side. Peering over the edge, he looked into the maze of
narrow
tunnels created by the jumble of saucers. He gulped before backing
carefully
away toward higher ground.
First Simpkins, then
Myers, then Henderson joined Nolan under the ledge where the edge of
one ship
rested on another. Their objective, a cigar-shaped craft, visibly
different
from the others, was just on the other side of the ship they were using
for
cover.
Nolan
spoke into his handset, "OK, Captain, we're one ship away from the
target.
I see some windows, but no doors. Looks like the best way in would be
to shoot
out one of the windows."
"Roger,
team leader. Use your discretion. If you can't find a quick way in,
turn around
and come back down to base. Over."
"Confirmed."
Nolan slipped the walkie-talkie back in his belt. Turning to the other
men, he
said, "Me and Simpkins go in first. As soon as we get through the
windows
you two advance and cover. Here we go."
And
off he
went. At close range, Nolan squeezed off a few rounds from his M-15,
and the
armor-piercing bullets completely shattered the clear material. Up
close, the
surface of this long ship had a
weathered look. Unlike the others, it seemed to have seen service out
in the
elements. And this one wasn't covered with any of the strange symbols
embossed
into the surfaces of the attackers. He ducked and peered through the
opening.
No sign of movement, but he was only looking into one, mostly empty,
chamber.
Using his flashlight, he could see there was a doorway leading deeper
into the
ship.
"Looks like an
operating table," Simpkins said sourly, his own flashlight sweeping
across
the ceiling of the ship. Indeed, since the vehicle was upside-down,
there was a
weirdly contoured metallic table firmly attached to the ceiling. On
what was
now the floor of the vehicle, all manner of debris, including several
objects
that might have been surgical tools, lay in heaps.
"Sick
mo' fo's," Nolan snarled to himself. "I'm going in." He fitted
his flashlight into the mount at the top of his rifle, rolled through
the opening,
and snapped to his feet, ready to fire. Once Simpkins had joined him,
he
signaled toward a doorway covered with some stiff material drawn closed
and
obstructing the view to the back of the ship.
Communicating
by gesture alone, the pair put themselves in position, then Simpkins
tore back
the curtain. Fingers tense against triggers, the men aimed into the
next
chamber. It was a narrow corridor with large shelves on both sides.
These
shelves had been full when the ship turned over, spilling their
contents into
the narrow aisle between them. Beyond the pile of debris, the space
opened
again.
"Nolan,
check this out. What the hell were they doing in here?" Simpkins's
flashlight was focused on the spilled contents of the shelves: a green
nylon
baseball cap with the Quaker State logo, a prosthetic leg, hunting
jackets,
shoes, scarves, a rifle, photographs, all manner of human artifacts,
the
detritus of a thousand abductions.
"All
those people who said they got kidnapped by aliens and they stuck
probes up
inside of them and did experiments, looks like this is where it
happened. And
this pile of crap is the coatroom."
"...
or the lost and found."
Nolan took four
measured steps deeper into the room, crunching a pair of eyeglasses
under his
boot. He reached down and picked through the debris, retrieving an
audiocassette. "It's in Japanese," he said, tossing it aside and
picking up a piece of paper. He studied it for a second, then reached
for a
second sheet.
"What
is it? You find something?"
"Maybe.
You know how people are saying they must have had spies, humans who
were
helping them?"
"Yeah,
I've heard that, but it's bullshit. Like they needed any help."
"Take
a look." Nolan shrugged. He handed the pages over his shoulder and
picked
up a third. The pages had been torn from a blank book, and were full of
quick-but-skillful engineering schematics of alien technology. One
showed some
kind of screen at the top of a wiring chart, another page labeled "aqua
box"
had a two-second sketch of something that looked like an Egyptian
hieroglyph in
a six-sided box. Surrounding the picture were equations and notes, all
of them
completely indecipherable to the soldiers. "There's a whole book of
this
crud. Let's take some of this stuff down to show the captain and come
back with
more men."
Simpkins
relayed that plan back to Henderson and Myers, then returned to where
Nolan was
gathering evidence. "How convenient," he said when he noticed that
his partner had found a shopping bag and was dumping items into it like
this
was a rummage sale. Simpkins spotted some poor slob's wallet and
started
flipping through it when he thought he heard Nolan say something like,
Don't
worry. I won't hurt you. Be calm.
He glanced over at Nolan,
who looked
right back at him.
"Quit
messing around, Simpkins."
Don't
be afraid. Do not use your weapons. No harm will come to you.
This time they were looking right at one another, and
nobody's lips had moved.
Do not use your weapons,
the command repeated
itself out of nowhere. Both men turned toward the back of the ship,
fully
expecting to see a tall alien figure step into the murky light. And a
second
later, that is exactly what happened.
Nolan
snapped his rifle up and took aim at the things forehead, in the spot
above its
eyes where the brain was so close to the surface you could literally
see it
thinking. In the glare of the flashlight, the creature's glistening
skin looked
ghost white. Long almond-shaped lids blinked over bulging reflecting
eyes the
size of ripe plums.
Simpkins's
first impulse was to shout "enemy in the hole," and open fire.
Instead, he froze, staring down the barrel of his rifle, locked on the
alien's
chest. Then, almost mechanically, he felt himself change his mind.
Tell the
others not to fire,
he said to himself. Then, quite aware
that he was being
manipulated by this bony, snot-shiny, shell-headed crawdad, he felt
the need
to tell the guys outside. Without breaking
concentration on his target, he backed into the rounded
room with
the table on the ceiling and yelled to the others, "We got one. It's
alive, but it's not dangerous! He won't attack! Hold your fire."
"It's
messing with us, man," Nolan said, visibly trembling—partly from fear,
partly because of the effort it took not to lay his rifle aside as the
thing
was urging him to do. "It's messing with my head."
In this confusing
situation, Nolan and Simpkins were, quite literally, of two minds.
Without
losing any possession of their regular consciousness, they were
"mentally
listening" to the alien, who had found some way to "speak" to
them. They were about to shoot anyhow, but then both men felt something
like an
emotion, a vibe, which assured them the alien would cooperate. It was a
teletactile communication, a skillful imitation of the human feeling of
friendship, a trick the creature could only have learned through
previous
exposure to Earthlings.