Revolution of the Gods: The Battle for Sol Book One (13 page)

Mykah, vigilantly sitting on watch, witnessed the exodus of Taon from the Luxor upper floor and focused her scope to track them.
Nice to know what you look like,
she thought after finally seeing Taon’s face.

Taon rose to his feet with both the front and back of his new attire shredded. Removing the jacket, his eyes were attracted slightly to the southwest with the movement of a defense turret pointing in his direction from the top of a building across the street.

Instantly upon the distraction, the S2’s PCR was trained directly at Taon’s back, switched to its highest possible setting. A barrage of fire erupted over the embattled GEO’s shoulder as Mykah unloaded on Valik. Before the S2 could fire, Mykah’s assault plowed him up against the base of the pyramid. Taon looked behind to see his assailant being pummeled against the structure. He returned his concentration to the Mandalay tower and saw the turret firing on two more rooftop pods in quick succession.

Someone is helping me.

Running past the monorail that stretched from the Mandalay Resort to Excalibur, Taon decided to test his full stride on Las Vegas Boulevard. He began running north with his full concentration. Within a few seconds his velocity exceeded 80 mph, as he dodged the oncoming taxi-cabs and limousines.

Just after passing a mile, he was abruptly cut short, bouncing then skidding across the pavement. Valik had recovered and forcefully overtook Taon, tackling him down to the pavement. Their momentum carried them rolling into the shallow nine acre manmade lake in front of the Bellagio.

Meanwhile, Mykah had repelled down the elevator cable in the shaft that she had previously disabled on the fourth floor after she evaded C7 guards on her way up to the defense pod. She exited the tower near the monorail and jumped on top of the train headed for Excalibur. She was out of the sight of C7 guards scurrying toward the Bellagio on foot, in cars and on motorcycles. When she reached the end of the rail, Mykah leapt to the ground and searched for a vehicle.

The 1,200 plus water nozzles and 4,500 plus lights were performing their trademark fountain show in front of the Bellagio in defiance of Earth’s tribulations. As some of the streams shot skyward over 460 feet, Taon and Valik slowly rose to their feet under the majestic arcs of water. Some presumptuous spectators were yelling at the men to get out of the fountain when the two opponents began a furious exchange of hand to hand combat.

Sinatra’s
Luck be a Lady
was blasting loudly from the Bellagio’s speakers while the spectators took in this unscheduled Vegas bout.

The two men were trading vicious blows with neither gaining any discernible advantage over the other. Every S2 was trained in all known forms of martial arts and this particular S2 had utilized each one of them. Valik was having trouble processing the fact that his target withstood every one of his known attacks. No normal human would have survived this onslaught.

Taon had been consciously restraining his abilities. All he knew to this point was that every time he attempted to project control, he became debilitated to some degree. And he did not want to make himself vulnerable to this seemingly unstoppable force. But Valik’s blows were beginning to sting and Taon knew he had to end this quickly.

The S2 managed a choke hold on Taon with his well-built left arm and quickly pushed a button on an embedded display panel in his right cybernetic thigh. He then grabbed a charged blade from a compartment next to the panel. As he raised the blade to drive it through his opponent’s skull, Taon instinctively increased the density of his entire molecular structure. He instantly phased to a higher density causing the blade to simply break when it struck against the top of his head. As Valik’s logic sub routines were briefly perplexed, Taon escaped the choke hold and flipped him over in the water.

Without restraint, Taon drove his fist squarely into the S2’s chest, causing his polymer vest to crumble and breaking his reinforced sternum. Finally, Valik was hurt and lying motionless face down in the fountain. As Taon looked down at his foe, several bright lights flashed over his downed opponent. Just as he was shifting his gaze upward, Taon was hit with a much larger modulated particle beam. Entirely engulfed in the hazy white field, he absorbed the first few seconds of the shot and then was blasted backwards from a feedback explosion.

The Helios attack from above brutally ejected Taon out of the fountain and across the street, whipping his back into the base of the Eifel Tower replica at the Paris Las Vegas resort. This property was under renovation; scheduled to become the new primary EU resort in the Vegas RZ.

The distanced spectators were thrown to their feet from the force of the explosion generated by the confrontation. These self-declared elites that thought they could control anything struggled to their feet and cowardly ran from the area. Notwithstanding his disorientation, Taon did not feel drained this time as he rose back to his feet. He grabbed the base of the Tower replica and began redirecting the full charge of the Helios blast up through the 2,000 ton, 560 foot steel frame.

Arcs of lightning began jumping from Taon’s hand, linking to the tower and assembling like a rapidly growing electrical web toward its tip. The energy flow transformed into a plasma wave and concentrated in the observation deck on the forty-sixth floor as Taon consciously controlled the wave. A beam flung out and struck the Helios while it attempted to retrieve an upright and operative Valik from the fountain. The ventral section of the Helios was obliterated by the ultra-dense plasma beam. The crippled attack cruiser dove nose down in front of the water pillars shooting from the laminar-flow nozzles, landing where Valik was now standing.

The explosive wave from Taon’s redirected plasma beam suspended the advancing C7 guards nearest to him by knocking them down and throwing their vehicles a couple of feet into the air. Just outside of the shockwave, Mykah was speeding toward Taon in a late model Ferrari Aurea that she had acquired at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.

“Get in now if you want to survive,” Mykah yelled after skidding the Aurea to a stop in front of the tower with Sinatra still playing loudly in the background. Taon, who was now resting on his knees, struggled to his feet and stumbled toward the Ferrari. As Mykah reached over and swung open the door, he quickly chose to trust the attractive leather clad woman versus what he had faced thus far this day. He climbed into the passenger seat and painfully closed the door. Mykah sped right on East Flamingo Road back toward the old East Cannery.

“Who are you?” Taon gasped.

“I am a friend of a friend. My name is Mykah” she responded, looking in her mirrors.

“There is a place I need to be,” Taon breathed as he drained away.

“I know, I’m here to help you get there.”

“I can’t stay awake…” Taon passed out.

T
he scope and consequence of his next move were well understood. General Bracken had contemplated his conflict of ideologies for over two years. He had never supported the CIA’s assumption of control through the use of martial law, the discharge of sovereign world governments, or even the replacement of the UN with the creation of the New Earth Union and Council of Seven.

When the General initially formed the nucleus of his resistance group, the unit leaders second guessed military action several times. But now, armed with the knowledge of a purposely planned culling of Earth’s population, General Bracken knew unequivocally that Operation Goliath was absolutely necessary.

The main conference room on Dugway’s primary command level was locked with its windows opaque. Bracken, Hauer and Leroux were seated across the conference table from Bracken’s trusted Generals Tucker and Kirsch with their four other colonels on the right.

Four images of the NAU Regional Military Command leaders with their designations appeared on the main wall viewer:

General Bracken stood and walked toward the viewer, “Gentlemen, we will discuss Operation Goliath following Dr. Hauer’s briefing. What he has to tell you will change everything. Give him your full attention…” Bracken announced as he signaled Dr. Hauer to the viewer.

“Let me begin by telling you that I immigrated to this country in 1945… and my people immigrated to this planet over sixteen thousand years ago. Time is of the essence, so please forgive my brevity,” Dr. Hauer stunningly qualified as he stood and walked by Bracken to face the viewer.

“It is well known among us here that your contact with the
Min
, known to you as the Greys, confirms your worldly governments are fully aware of the existence of extraterrestrial life. This species is a relative newcomer to interstellar travel and their five hundred year old history with your race has mostly been one of observation. But, there is a much older and malevolent force that has inhabited your planet since the beginnings of your civilizations.

“The Council of Seven and it components are the descendants of this force. They are part of a group of extraterrestrials known as the Ansharians who have continuously inhabited Earth for the last sixteen thousand years. The Ansharians are from a planet named Anshar in the Ventori-Soiala System - the same system as my planet, Torahnoss …” the doctor paused to superimpose an image of space on the viewer.

“Earth’s modern astronomers have actually discovered our system and even our planets; they are known to you as 47UMa
d
and
e
in Ursa Major. Our system is about forty-six light-years from Sol and our planets’ orbits are similar to your Earth and Mars. Both our peoples are what you call hominina subtribes, following similar evolutionary processes as humans on Earth.”

“The anthropogeny of your humanoid species on this planet has been manipulated twice. The first manipulation is one shared with all intelligent extant hominina that we have discovered in both our galaxies. On Earth, it happened about 5.7 million years ago in your planet’s time. The same benevolent force that accelerated intelligent life in our galaxy also genetically enhanced a primate species on your world by accelerating targeted regions of its DNA. The culmination of this externally induced mutation was the eventual emergence of Earth’s modern man some two hundred thousand years ago; approximately forty thousand years after the same evolution occurred on my planet,” the doctor paused, looking in Leroux’s direction.

The cranial fragment!
Dr. Leroux worked hard to keep her reaction subdued.

“The identity and location of this benevolent force is beyond the purview of this particular briefing but an additional conference on that topic will be necessary if we are successful. Nevertheless, the cranial fragment that was tested at Jackson Laboratories holds high significance for all of us.”

“So what are these Ansharians up to?
” General Straka spurted, unable to help his curiosity.

“Our planet existed in peace with the neighboring Anshar until their peoples adopted a posture of colonization and acquisition as a result of accelerated resource depletion on their home planet.

“Initially, we attempted to assist our neighbors but they grew more desperate. Their adoption of a strategy for galactic colonization and resource acquisition forced our worlds into a direct confrontation when the Ansharians attempted to take over our planet. The subsequent war has persisted for the past twenty-six millennia. Twenty-four thousand years ago the Ansharians came to the Sol System utilizing the nearby Kadingir wormhole…”

“Excuse me, did you say wormhole?”
General Alexander immediately queried.

“Your modern science has not yet detected it because it only appears for a brief period every eight thousand years. The Ansharians discovered the wormhole in an area of our galaxy where they had gained a foothold early in the war. They didn’t know the duration and frequency of the wormhole so their first expedition included only a small number of scouts.

“The scheduled twelve hour surveillance mission to Earth was tasked to gather environmental and genetic data. When the wormhole dissappeared only a few hours after their arrival, the Ansharian scouts realized they were stranded here with no idea if and when the wormhole would reappear. The number of Ansharians that landed on Earth initially was not large enough to sustain a 'pure-blooded' colony. However, a few of them did in fact interbreed with your ancestors. 
As a result, the Ansharians introduced additional accelerations to the DNA of the dominant life form on your planet. In your case that was the homo sapien
sapien
– specifically the ones inhabiting the Levant in the eastern Mediterranean, near the
Toros Da lar
(Taurus Mountains).
”

“So our evolutionary process has been diluted with alien DNA since that time?”
General Vaughn asked.

“A vast majority of human lineages do in fact diverge from that point in time. But there still exist pure blooded humans to this day,” Hauer revealed.

“You explained the wormhole appears every eight thousand years?” Leroux prodded.

“That is correct. From the time of its disappearance in our galaxy, the Ansharians began construction of a sensor array around the wormhole's coordinates. Eventually, this enabled them to discover its time intervals and predict its reappearnce sixteen thousand years ago. This time they were signifcantly better prepared for the opportunity and sent an entire fleet through the wormhole.”

“When and where did your faction get here?”
 Bracken asked point plank, remembering what he wanted to ask Hauer earlier.

“We learned of the Ansharian plans for Earth before the second wormhole occurrence and although we were stretched thin, Torahnossian forces managed to get two destroyers through the wormhole ahead of them. The team, comprised of nine hundred and forty crew members and passengers, was specifically chosen for a multi-generational clandestine mission of reconnaissance and subversion of the Ansharian presence on this planet.