Enemy (5 page)

     The words tore through her mind without warning. The Enemy mind-essence revealed itself to her for an instant, then was gone.

     A trap? She had to alert Simon. The Enemy somehow knew that she had summoned the Judas. Had her beacon been intercepted
by the damned? They would be preparing to engage them. It was a trap.

     She felt a presence caress her mind. ((maggie?))

     Confusion. Terror.

     (simon!?)

     ((it’s me, maggie. don’t worry; we’re close. we’re coming to get you.))

     (your fleet?)

     ((second assault, star one. First assault and the rest of second are pursuing the enemy in transit—))

     (no! it’s a trap!)

     ((what do you mean?))

     (there are more enemy here than i’d anticipated. simon, i don’t know how many. there may be a larger force than this at alpha point already. they must have intercepted my beacon. they’ll be waiting at alpha! they’re luring us to the point. it’s a trap.)

     despair.

     ((but this is an uncharted when. how could we have missed this much enemy activity?))

     (it’s command.)

     ((command? what do you mean?))

     (simon, kilbourne’s—)

     should she tell him? what if they were listening?

   (that can wait. can your forces be recalled from the point before they—)

   ((you know it’s too late. if the enemy found your last beacon, they’d find this one, too. it’d never get through.))

   (i’m so sorry.)

     ((it’s not your fault, maggie. this isn’t the first time we’ve been deceived by the enemy. i’ll be there soon, and we’ll get you back to command.))

     command…

     should she tell him? she decided not to, for the time being.

     (may their deaths serve a purpose.)

     (((first assault, do you see anything out there?)))

     (((it’d better show up pretty fucking fast. we’re going to be out of the tube in three decems.)))

     (((it’s not engaging it in the bubble that worries me… it’s his friends that could be waiting for him there.)))

     (((there could be an infinity of them.)))

     The statement was bold, but it was true. How many enemy were out there, watching?

     (((he’s not here. either maggie was wrong, or he whendropped and we didn’t see him.)))

     (((here goes nothing.)))

     The Alpha Point:

     The Enemy floated in the blackness, waiting.

     The black was pure, the absence of light. The Enemy thrived here, basking in the primordial waves of nothingness.

     This was Alpha, a place and time beyond definition, beyond the light, beyond sanity. To be at the Alpha Point was to be at both the beginning and the end of the universe. It was, is, and will be the beginning and end point of the cycle of existence.

     In the nothing, there was anticipation.

     Silence. A shimmering.

     The peaceful strata of void was torn apart by a sphere of expanding, fiery white brilliance.

     The universe had begun again.

     Just instants into the past, on a different plane of phase space, the Enemy activity was frantic. A sea of black forms, scurrying, placing the offerings from infinite futures before the altar of the Alpha god, layering the bioneural pattern energy around the singularity. Souls by the trillions, waiting for upload into the Omega Point, screamed into the dead night. When the time of the Purpose had come, the planes would be opened to one another and the souls would be uploaded into the Point. The Pattern would again be complete, after billions upon billions of lifetimes.

     But it was not yet time… It was time to deal with the Judas threat.

     The Enemy vessels that lay in wait were placed in stark silhouette by the blazing point of hell as it swept outward at them.

     The beginning was silent in its fury.

     The Enemy faded into the past once more, to await their quarry.

     The Judas fell backwards through time, and they emerged from the Whenstream just minutes before Alpha in a stark flash of white.

     This was a Black place.

     (((and we’re clear. sound off, people.)))

     Voices, hundreds. Minds touched one another in reassurance.

     [assault two ready.]

     (((keep it tight. alpha point emergence in two-dot-five decems.)))

     There was no sign of the Enemy yet, but it had to be here... There had been no sign of it in the Stream, even though Magdalene had said that there was an Enemy on Purpose-transit. They would destroy it before it could attempt to infuse the pattern load it bore. And when it did not report back, there would be more Enemy coming. This could be the last stand...

     Simon’s fleet held their positions, blind in the innate blackness that was non-existence. There was no light in a place where there were no stars.

     (((this is it. let’s end it right here, right now.)))

     The Enemy had a surprise coming.

     The Alpha Point.

     A slipping of matter; the ignition of infinity: the adversary of Omega.

     A childlike future civilization would name it the Big Bang. It was hardly a fitting name. The fury of the Alpha singularity was as silent as the void that had preceded it.

     In the pure white, the countless Judas were thrown into stark contrast, each casting a long black shadow into the harsh, palpable light.

     In the spaces between the Judas, where there should only have been the white light of the Point, a seemingly infinite horde of writhing, black shadows faded into existence.

     The Enemy.

     black

     laughter like so many tortured pleas resonates

     satisfaction of the kill

     They flew to their ends.

     The Enemy cut through the Judas as a pack of wolfs cuts through a herd of sleeping ewes. Simon’s fleet was caught completely unaware. Those who had been staging an ambush were themselves ambushed.

     Many Judas fell immediately to the wrath of the fierce beams of light emerging from the Enemy vessels. Their hulls punctured and pierced, rended apart, they flashed from this realm of reality in tiny white explosions. The Enemy bathed the fleet in a paralyzing phase disruption, snapping the Judas’ tether to the Stream and making them vulnerable to physical destruction.

     Coming to their senses after the immediate shock had worn off, other Judas began to maneuver between the flailing Enemy forces and the derelict Judas vessels. The ravenous horde webbed the dead Judas and fed upon them voraciously. The Judas wielded the Shadows against the Enemy horde, but severed from the Stream, they had little effect on the lumbering, shapeless number of the Enemy. The Enemy moved as a fluid, deftly avoiding the fury of the Shadows. So many…

     The waves of existence the Point had set into motion were closing in upon the site of the battle at an incomprehensible rate.

     The Enemy struck down upon the Judas with the god-like power of their webs. Engulfed in the silver strands of phase energy, the Judas died and became one with the Black. Only a few Judas left...

     The Enemy suddenly halted their pursuit of the remaining Judas. They converged from all sides and merged into one massive concentration, throwing a haunting shadow over the dazed remnants of the Judas fleet.

     The hideous Enemy began to fade, furtively carrying with it the webbed and patterned remains of the Judas it had captured. Where its shadow had been, a wall of pure white energy approached at a speed beyond speed: the Alpha Point wave.

     The remaining Judas, still reeling from the terror of the ambush and the paralyzing effect of the phase energy, were torn from this level of existence as the Point wave smashed into, within, and throughout them.

     The victorious Enemy smiled.

     Simon’s fleet had been destroyed. They would serve the Purpose well. They would help to complete Omega.

     Magdalene.

     She arose from her slumber, feeling the terror of her compatriots as they became no more. There was an emptiness to the Judas pattern where before there had been none.

     She wept, as only a machine can.

Harkness.

     The Marines had landed.

     They set up roadblocks and barricades on the roads leading into and out of Harkness, U.S. Route 41 and the old Eagle Road.

     The citizens of Harkness were unaware of the invasion of their town by several thousand heavily-armed Marines.

     A veritable armada of Navy and Coast Guard helicopters converged on the impact area, the site where the Indomitable had gone down.

     The Marine troop transports kept coming and coming.

     The Harkness situation would soon be under control.

     5:30 A.M.

     The sun rose over Sawyer Air Force Base.

     The eight men in black stood at the main gate to the electrified fence. One went into the small booth beside the gate and pushed the dead body of a soldier out of his chair. The man leaned over and pushed a button. The gate quietly slid open on concealed bearings.

     The men strode through the open gate. The man in the guardhouse remained behind. He took the fatigues off the dead guard and put them on. It was a tight fit, but it would have to do.

     No one was going into or out of Sawyer Air Force Base.