Magnitude: A Military Science Fiction Thriller (Multiverse Space Book One) Page 3

  Shaking the thought from his head, he continued deeper into the facility. Several times he had to negotiate spans of cabling, but he found plenty of room as long as he kept his rifle from getting tangled.

  A few moments later, he saw several floor panels bowing down to his left. The sections creaked under the weight of the Caterpillars guarding the outside of the control room.

  Looking back, he placed his finger to his lips and then pointed.

  Both the captain and the scientist nodded.

  Continuing to advance, he soon came to a wide area with no cables. He estimated they had arrived beneath the center of the room beyond the wall, the control room Sampson and Laurent had discussed.

  Captain Laurent motioned for the scientist to hold position. Then she crawled up next to Craig.

  After pointing two fingers at his own eyes, Craig gestured toward another sagging section of flooring. It hung a couple of meters ahead of them. It rocked visibly under the weight of the Caterpillar that had taken up station within the control room.

  Laurent shifted her gaze from the sagging panel and then back to the one overhead. Then she pointed at herself and then at the floor directly above them. She pumped a thumb and mouthed, “I’m going up. Cover me.”

  He slid out of her way and then pointed his M4 at the area just above the control room’s drooping floor, ready to fire at the first sign the Caterpillar above it had noticed the captain.

  Working silently, Laurent released the panel directly over her head and slowly eased it up.

  Craig held his breath as he caressed the trigger of his weapon with his index finger.

  The French commando slowly raised her head. A wedge of white light illuminated her eyes. She looked left and right. Then she swallowed hard and glanced at Craig. She pointed ahead and then held up one finger.

  Just as Sampson had said, there was only one bogey in the room.

  Again, she motioned for the scientist to hold position. Afterward, she signaled to Craig that she was going up. She pointed to herself and then in the direction of the bogey. Then she pointed at Craig and gestured toward the floor beneath the line of Caterpillar robots posted outside the control room.

  He understood immediately. She wanted the two of them to attack both positions simultaneously. He was to fire through the floor, hitting all the Caterpillars guarding the entrance while she took out their apparent leader.

  The hum of the collider’s rising power increased to painful levels.

  The captain looked at Craig and mouthed, “On three!”

  He bobbed his head and then rolled onto his back. Taking care not to bump the ends of his rifle into the low crawl space’s floor or ceiling, he aimed toward the sagging panel just as he’d done earlier and ensured the weapon’s sightline wasn’t pointing toward the troops in the T-intersection beyond the Caterpillars.

  Craig felt his heart pounding in his chest as he remembered how fast these things moved. The two of them had to do this simultaneously, or else they would all be dead.

  Lying flat on his back with his head tilted up, he watched the captain slowly extend the muzzle of her HK416 through the opening and aim it at the back of the lead robot. Then she looked back at Craig and held up a finger.

  He nodded and eased his own finger to the trigger of his M4.

  Captain Laurent extended a second digit.

  Craig swallowed.

  With his thumb, he verified the switch of his rifle was still in full auto—AKA: spray and pray.

  Laurent extended the final finger.

  Craig squeezed the trigger and swept the weapon’s muzzle left and right, raking it across the unseen line of robots as he continued to aim just above the line of bowing floor panels.

  At the same time, he heard a three-round burst erupt from the captain’s rifle.

  The floor beyond his feet collapsed, dropping the shattered remnants of the remaining Caterpillar bots. The forward half of one of them continued thrashing. A quick double-tap from Craig’s M4 launched a pair of DU darts into the thing’s head, and then it, too, fell silent.

  Turning back toward the captain, he saw her climbing up through the hole in the floor. Her French-accented voice drifted down through it. “Target neutralized.”

  Craig keyed his radio. “Bravo Team, we got ’em. How do you read?”

  “Fuckin’ hell!” shouted an Australian-accented voice. “That’s bloody good to hear, mate.” Apparently, the now destroyed bots had been jamming the radios.

  Hearing the Aussie accent brought memories of Baker back to the forefront.

  “Grrr!” Growling through clenched teeth, Craig repeatedly slammed the heel of a boot into one of the inert robots. “Ahh! Ya. Bastard. Metal. Shitehouse!”

  “Staff Sergeant Carmichael! Are you there?”

  Craig shook his head. Releasing a sigh, he keyed the microphone. “Yeah, I’m here. Sweep the facility. Make sure there are no other targets.” After the special operators in the hallway acknowledged his call, he added, “Clear the rooms and corridors, but if you encounter anything else, watch your field of fire. Don’t hit us. You ken?”

  “Understood, Sergeant. Wilco.”

  “Good. Now, fuck off. Report back when you’re done.”

  The Aussie acknowledged Craig’s orders with a double click of his radio’s transmit key.

  “Sergeant Carmichael!” Captain Laurent shouted from the control room. “Get your ass up here! Bring the scientist. The collider’s power is still rising.”

  Motioning for Sampson to follow him, Craig climbed up and joined Captain Laurent in the control room.

  She had her rifle trained on the motionless and shattered body of the robot. The thing was huge, easily the size of a tractor. Much of the room lay in ruins, but the electronics and control console it had been using remained intact.

  A large window filled one wall of the control room.

  The captain cast a nervous glance through it, eyeing the large machinery that filled the facility beyond the glass.

  Craig recognized it as the iconic ATLAS Experiment.

  Dragging his eyes from the giant machine’s expansive plumbing, Craig stepped around the fallen Caterpillar, making sure to keep his distance.

  Captain Laurent hammered the butt of her rifle into a small appendage that extended from the alien robot.

  The blow yanked the device from the port on the front of the computer terminal. Still attached to the inanimate robot, the appendage collapsed to the floor.

  Looking down, Craig saw that the narrow tip of an apparent USB-C plug protruded from the end of the enemy robot’s attachment.

  Captain Laurent shook her head, releasing a string of French curse words again. She looked at Craig, mounting fear evident on her face. “The power is still building! We have to shut it down now.”

  She leaned over the console and raised a plastic cover. Craig saw something red beneath it. He realized it must be the emergency disconnect he’d heard about.

  Something crashed behind Craig.

  He and the captain spun toward it, weapons raised.

  Sampson’s wide eyes stared back at them. The floor panel he’d dislodged toppled and disappeared through the opening. Looking past them and seeing the kill switch’s plastic cover raised, the scientist threw out both hands in a stop gesture. “Wait! What are you doing?!”

  Laurent turned away from him and bent over the robot, reaching for the big red button. “I am cutting the power!”

  Sampson darted forward, holding out his hands. “Wait! That’ll physically cut all the power cables … again!”

  The captain looked back. “Exactly, Doctor Sampson. You should have never restored power in the first place.” She pointed down at the robot. “There are likely more of these on the way, and next time, we might not be able to stop—”

  The Caterpillar’s metal mandibles snapped upward. The woman’s words cut out mid-sentence as the gleaming jaws slammed closed, bisecting Captain Laurent’s outstretched torso.

&nbs
p; “Fuck!” Craig shouted.

  A truncated scream burst from Captain Laurent’s lips as the machine sliced through her abdomen.

  The lower half of her body fell to the floor.

  Arterial blood sprayed over the Caterpillar and shot across the room.

  Too late, Craig raised his rifle and emptied the last of his magazine into the base of the Caterpillar’s head, making sure not to hit the captain.

  This time, the machine died permanently.

  A male voice beyond the control room door shouted, “Clear!”

  Then the door flew open. The remaining four special operators stormed into the room, rifles raised.

  Craig waved them back. “We’re clear, but we lost Captain Laurent.”

  They swept their eyes over the scene, following the trail of gore across the room. Then the special operators froze, staring at Laurent’s upper body still clamped in the dead Caterpillar’s tilted jaws.

  The Aussie croaked an “Ah shit!” but to their credit, none of the troops looked sick or ready to bolt.

  Craig couldn’t say the same for Sampson.

  Turning from the asshole and the sound of his retching, Craig spun toward the big red button. He stepped across the captain’s severed hips and reached across her bloody torso. As he did, her lifeless eyes seemed to stare straight at him.

  Groaning, he said, “Sorry, ma’am,” and pushed past her. Then he slammed his fist down on the disconnect button.

  Nothing happened.

  The power level continued to ramp up.

  “Shite!”

  “What is it?!” shouted the Aussie.

  “The bleeding collider is still going.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” He pointed back through the control room’s door, indicating the shattered remnants of the other robots. “For now, just put a few more sabot rounds into the heads of each one of those bastards.”

  “Roger, Staff Sergeant.”

  The men departed, casting uneasy glances at Captain Laurent’s mangled remains.

  Craig looked at the captain in time to see something flash on the computer terminal beyond her. The blood splattered across the screen obscured the message.

  He leaned in and wiped away the gore and then read the words aloud. “Power level nominal. Initiating collisions.”

  “You have got to be shitting me! Useless piece of shite!” He looked back at Sampson. “You! Ya wee bastard! Why is this thing no fucking working? I thought this big, goddamn Easy Button was supposed to shut it off!”

  All color had drained from the scientist’s face. Wiping vomit from his mouth with the back of a hand, he continued to gape at Captain Laurent’s bisected body.

  “Sampson!” Craig raised his rifle and pointed it at the man’s head. “Help me shut this damn thing down, or I'll punch a sabot dart through your skull, you worthless shitebag!”

  The doctor blinked, and his eyes shifted to the muzzle of Craig’s rifle. “Thr-Three …” he stammered and then shook his head. “You have to hit the button three times.”

  Lowering his weapon, Craig spun back to the button. In rapid-fire succession, he slammed his fist down onto the button once, twice, three times.

  The computer screen went black, and the sound of building electrical energy fell away.

  Then the overhead lights died.

  Chapter 5

  “You know, if you keep doing that with your eyes, they’re going to stick that way.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re squinting, Rourke.” Angela grinned and pointed at the younger man’s face. “I don’t remember seeing lines around your eyes a year ago.”

  Beside her, Monique glanced up from her tablet. “Commander Brown is correct,” she said, grinning at Angela. Faint, well-earned lines creased the ebony skin around Monique’s eyes. The tall, thin woman canted her head and added, “Also, holding your tongue like that is not very becoming, especially for a professional of your considered pedigree, Doctor Geller.”

  Rourke didn’t look up from the drone. “Yeah? Well … with all the cackling coming from you two, it’s amazing that we ever get any work done.” Suddenly looking self-conscious, he stooped to inspect the undercarriage of the small aircraft.

  Angela smiled inwardly at Rourke’s discomfort. It was funny watching the bashful man trying and failing to adopt a more assertive demeanor. When a xenophobic race of robots called Necks had first invaded our universe, the newly minted astrophysics Ph.D. had been a NASA scientist assigned to testing the James Webb Space Telescope. Then fate had thrust him into a trans-dimensional war, and, timid or not, he had, in the end, risen to the challenge.

  Her eyes drifted to the deck beneath the drone Rourke was inspecting. Old, deep gouges crisscrossed the metal plating. They etched long lines across the cargo barge’s dark, flat surface, testifying to years of abuse imparted by the containers and heavy machinery that had ridden atop it. Usually, the hundred-foot-long by fifty-foot-wide vessel transported such things across the Gulf of Mexico. Now the governments of the world had employed the barge on an altogether different mission in a body of water lying nearly half a world away from its home.

  “Doctor Geller,” Monique said. “You have already checked that drone ten times. I am certain it is quite functional.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Angela agreed.

  As Rourke moved to inspect the next drone parked on the vessel’s deck, he shook his head. “Blah, blah, blah. If we don’t make sure everything is working properly, we won’t know why we lose it this time. It could be because of something I forgot to check.”

  Angela patted him on the back. “No one is blaming you for all the lost testbeds, Rourke. Now stop trying to sound like Vaughn.”

  The quartet of drones he was inspecting sat grouped around a short, central sensor platform. A pair of articulated binocular scopes sat atop the device. Aside from the light wave emitter that hung overhead, the drones and the sensor stalk were all that adorned the deck of the expansive barge. The ninth such testbed they’d made, although this would be the first deployed at sea.

  “I’m not trying to sound like anyone, let alone your boyfriend, but we can’t afford any more failures.” His brows peaked. “I’m hoping that moving the whole thing to the open ocean this time will save it.”

  Staring across the churning blue waters that surrounded the vessel, Angela hoped the same thing.

  So far, no sensor packages had returned from the targeted universe. To date, travel to the ’verse from which the xenophobic Necks had staged their invasion had proven a one-way trip. One theory held that their previous attempts hadn't been sufficiently remote. As she continued to gaze across the water, she nodded. They were undoubtably remote now.

  Rourke glanced up at the large boom suspended over their heads. “If we lose this one, too, I’m not sure they’ll agree it’s not my fault.” He gave Angela and Monique a meaningful look. “Or ours.” Then he tilted his head toward the gathered audience watching them from the adjacent vessel. “I think they’d be more than happy to blame us for the twenty million dollars that disappear every time one of these devices vanishes.”

  Angela thought he might be right about that. As the deck gently rocked beneath her feet, she shrugged. “Well, they can kiss my ass. If we hadn’t brought back that data, this wouldn’t even be possible.”

  Ever since the incursions started happening several months ago, the world’s governments had fully embraced the reality of the existence of a trans-dimensional enemy, one bent on our destruction. They had abandoned efforts to bury the possibility behind a veil of secrecy. Not to say that they had made it public knowledge, but after the incursions began, Earth’s governments started throwing prodigious amounts of money at the Neck problem.

  They’d been keen to replicate the capabilities of the enemy’s light wave emitter. Unfortunately, the emitter Vaughn had scavenged from a Tater and affixed to BOb’s EMP cannon had fried. It wouldn’t work.

&nbsp
; The memory of the Tater sent a chill down Angela’s spine. The featureless enemy device looked like a peeled potato, thus the name. She hadn’t been there when Vaughn had scavenged the light wave emitter from the crashed enemy vessel. Before the Battle Operations bot, aka BOb, had destroyed the hovering Tater, the cow-sized white ovoid had beamed Angela to Hell, a desolate version of Earth that existed within an alternate universe. The place made Dante’s Seventh Circle of Hell seem placid in comparison, so they’d taken to referring to it as Hell.

  The Necks sent life there to die.

  When the Tater had beamed Angela to Hell, she’d ended up on a mountain of the dead, the slaughtered remnants of all Earth animal life, including the whole of humanity, save the handful that had escaped the light wave with her.

  Through force of will, Angela pushed the memories from her thoughts and focused on their current task.

  Where had she been? Oh, the scavenged enemy light wave emitter, the device that broadcasted a smaller version of the energetic curtain that the xenophobic robots used to sweep all animal life from a planet before setting up house.

  By the time they had reset the old timeline and returned to this universe, the scavenged device’s destruction had been complete, so extensive the world’s top scientists and engineers hadn’t been able to recover any actionable data. The secret of the emitter’s inner workings had burned up with the electronics.

  Even the light wave emitters attached to the Caterpillars that had invaded Geneva had fried the moment their host robots had died. The same thing had happened during all of the subsequent incursions. All of their attempts to recover an intact emitter had failed. Neither Monique nor the myriad scientists and engineers assigned to the program had been able to glean any useful information or technology from them.

  Thankfully, Angela had extracted some alien data from the super collider’s computer network before she’d reset the timeline. She had loaded the files into some high-capacity ARCH discs. Due to the nature of the timeline reset, she and all of her comrades had retained their memories, and fortunately, so had the discs that had returned with her. The data they held had proven invaluable.