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Timeshadow 01

By: Adrian Leverkuhn



I

Thursday

Sergeant Jim Sutter sat on his idling Harley Davidson, reading his notes on the route the motorcade would take back to the city, and once again he unconsciously wiped away sweat that kept running from inside his helmet down his face. He looked at the bike's instrument cluster, checked the engine's temperature once again, then looked the ambient temperature and shook his head. The air was 102F, and it was not quite three in the morning; road traffic into and out of JFK's Terminal Four had already been stopped for them. The "package" was a Saudi diplomat, but Sutter didn't know who it was, and he could not have cared less; he watched security personnel surround the man and get him into one of the armored limousines. He scanned the area for threats, then the signal was given and Sutter pulled out onto the JFK Expressway; the convoy made for I-495 then to the Midtown Tunnel and made good time, and once on Manhattan they turned north on Park Avenue, heading for the Plaza Athénée on East 64th Street.

Sutter saw it first, but all the radios came alive at once.

The motorcade stopped, men got out of cars, Sutter and his motorcycle officers dismounted and stood openmouthed in the middle of the street...

Everyone was staring at one of the skyscrapers just ahead, staring at an electric blue luminescent sphere that had just emerged from the side of the building. Now the sphere was just hovering outside the building, perhaps sixty floors above street level, and Sutter took off his helmet and pulled out his iPhone, began recording video of the...whatever it was.

"What the fuck is that, Jim?" one of the other officers asked, but Sutter just shook his head and kept filming the object. He guessed it was less than fifteen feet in diameter, and whatever was holding it up was completely silent. They were not quite two blocks from the sphere, so he zoomed in on the object. The surface was alive with what looked like short, hairy lightning, and now he could just make out a faint crackling sound, faraway, almost hollow. He looked at the sphere more closely on the screen, squinting in the darkness until he thought he made out the something inside. What? Was there someone inside?

"Let's get out of here," someone yelled, so Sutter pocketed his phone and mounted the bike, but just then he felt a sudden deep chill sweep across the street. He looked at his gauges, saw the ambient air temp had fallen more than eighty degrees, and as he put on his helmet he looked up just as the sphere rose into the night sky, up into a solid wall of cloud blanketing the city. Snow began falling, while less than a mile away the temperature remained well over 100F.

+++++

1st Lieutenant Judy Aronson piloted the lead ship in a group of twelve AH-64M Apache helicopters, the squadron en route from Hood Army Air Base, near Killeen, Texas, to Kelly Air Force Base, just outside of San Antonio, Texas. All twelve Apaches were fully armed with war-shots, or live ammunition, even though they would be loaded directly onto Air Force C-17s at Kelly. She didn't have the mission profile yet, but with food distribution and water supplies critically low throughout Central America, she could guess. Maybe El Paso again, she thought, or Brownsville, to shore up the border. Governments were imploding as temperatures soared, as water supplies dwindled. When crop failures in Africa trebled last year, Europe had been overrun with starving hordes; now the United States was acting preemptively, stopping any and all border crossings -- with deadly force used without warning, She hated the duty, but she had her orders.

They had passed Johnson City, Texas, ten minutes ago and the outside air temp was holding at a steady 134F; if the air got much hotter they'd have to limit operations to short duration hops or risk engine damage, and the air-conditioning pack under her seat was struggling to keep her cool. They'd be on the ground in another ten minutes, fifteen more max, and she looked forward to getting into the Crew Ops there -- if only because it was so well air-conditioned...

"Lieutenant?" her weapons officer said, "check your two o'clock, pretty high, maybe flight level two zero..."

"What is it..." She looked up and to the right and her eyes went right to it. A huge sphere, iridescent blue, and huge -- hung up there in the early morning sky, but she couldn't tell how far away it was, or even how big it might be. She cued the radio immediately: "Beagle lead to all sections, tighten up and get eyeballs on the object at out two o'clock high. Anyone got any ideas..."

She looked around quickly as the other Apaches drew into a tight defensive formation behind her, then before she knew it the blue sphere was on them and in an instant they were "inside" whatever it was. Blinding light followed and she got her visor down, her eyes on the panel while she struggled to maintain level flight, then as suddenly they were clear of the sudden turbulence -- and the sphere was gone too.

But then again, so was everything else.

There was no GPS, no TACAN, no civilian VOR/DME signals, nothing. Nothing at all. She got on the radio, called San Antonio approach, and there was nothing, the same when she tried the tower at Kelly Field. Nothing, not even static.

"Beagle one, this Beagle three."

"Three, lead, go."

"Lieutenant? The highway's gone. We were almost over right over 163 and Blanco should be about two clicks ahead, but I got nothing. Road's gone, so's the town."

"Okay, EWO, get me some kind of signal, somewhere. A beacon or radio maybe. Check for any airborne traffic, too. I don't want to run into anything up here. Everyone, start scanning, look for anything that looks like a town or a road."

She looked at her NAV instruments again, and each one was simply useless. The HSI was nothing but red flags now, and the GPS overlay was gone too, not even their groundspeed registered. The only explanation was that the GPS constellation was down, but what about all the VOR/TAC stations? How could those all go offline at the same time? The artificial horizon was working, as were all the ship's mechanical systems, so how could it be? She thought it was almost like Beagle flight had been cut off from the rest of the world...but...how? Why?

"Lieutenant," the weapons officer sitting just behind her said, "I got smoke on the horizon, eleven o'clock, probably twenty miles."

"That's on the bearing to San Antonio," she said. "Check a thermal imagine, see if there's a heat bloom. Can you check for radiation signatures?"

"On it."

"Beagle lead, Beagle group. Got a visual on smoke about one-eight-four magnetic, stay on me and let's get a little closer."

+++++

Jim Sutter sat in the Watch Commander's office, holding his iPhone up and playing the three minute video clip again.

"What is it, Sergeant?"

"I don't know, Lieutenant. After I put my phone in my pocket I saw it, well, it rose straight up into that cloud, and then the snow started coming down real heavy."

"Snow!" he laughed. "It hasn't snowed in New York in over ten years, and it was over a hundred last night!"

Sutter paused this first clip, then found the next in his library. "Well then, take a look at this..."

Sutter hit the play button and the scene shifted to 64th Street, right outside the hotel, and he handed his phone to the Lieutenant. "Damn!" was about all the man said, but Sutter watched the old man's head shake from side to side repeatedly as he looked at snow falling in July. "I don't get it," he said finally. "I mean, assuming this is real and you didn't fake it somehow..."

"I didn't want to write it up, sir, but that Saudi guy saw it, and so did his detail. And so did my men, all six of us."

"And you all saw the same thing? The light up there, and the snow?"

"Yessir."

"You didn't post it anywhere, did you?"

"No, not yet."

"Don't. Not until I talk to the chief."

"Yessir."

"You and your men. Keep quiet about this."

"Okay, sir."

"Dismissed."

When Sutter was gone the Lieutenant picked up his phone and hit a speed-dial. "Paul? This kid Sutter caught it on video. Yeah, the snow too. Where are you're men? So, it was on the sixty-third floor? No kidding, right through the glass, too? A perfect circle? The glass melted? No. That just doesn't make sense, does it? No, I'll make the call. Let me know when your men get back. Right, will do."

+++++

"Spirit Two-nine Bravo, you'll be number two to tank, behind Boomer Five-oh-five," the tanker's boom operator said.

"Roger, number two behind the F35," Colonel Tom Courville said. He drifted off to the right of the KC-46 Pegasus, trimmed his B-2 into a slow cruise and watched as the little attack bomber lined up and tanked. Just seconds later the little jet disengaged and floated left and above the big Boeing aerial tanker, joining his squadron.

"Five-oh-five clear. Spirit Two-nine Bravo, clear to start your approach."

"Got it. Coming over." With practiced ease, Courville lined up and accelerated, taking commands from the boom operator until his aircraft linked up to the tanker. When positive contact was confirmed fuel started flowing, and he kept a constant eye on the guidance cues coming from the boom operator -- until...

"Two-nine Bravo to Pegasus Kilo-echo," Courville said. "I've got an object directly overhead, bright blue and descending."

Boomer Five-oh-five, I got eyeballs on it, and I'm going up intercept, going hot now!"

"Two-nine Bravo, you're full and we're breaking off, so have a nice day!"

Without thinking Courville trimmed down and drifted right again, keeping the tanker and the blue orb in sight, but just then everything went white, blinding white, and Courville watched as his co-pilot slammed down the blast curtains, plunging the cockpit into darkness. He went "on instruments" then, kept his eyes on the artificial horizon, then his airspeed and rate of climb indicators, but the primary NAV display flickered and went black, then red warning flags popped up, indicating all NAV information was down.

"What the fuck!" his co-pilot, Captain Eve Sinclair, cried. "We just lost GPS; switching to inertial guidance -- now."

The HSI flickered back to life, putting their position about where Courville thought it should be, about 800 miles WSW of Pearl Harbor.

"Boomer Five-oh-five, negative contact, back with you guys but I got no NAV data now."

"Kilo-Echo, we lost NAV too."

"Two-nine Bravo, we've got inertial, and we're, uh, stand by one. Okay. We're seven seven five miles from Pearl, bearing zero-four-four degrees. Why don't y'all form up on me and follow us in. Who do we have up her?"

"Uh, Five-oh-five, me and three wingmen, five-oh-two, five-oh-six and five-oh-seven. I got the Pegasus at my twelve o'clock, and I think we've got a Qantas A380 above us, around flight level three three zero."

"Two nine Bravo. Kilo Echo, could you try and raise the Airbus, see what his status is? I think we'll head on upstairs and see if we can raise anyone at Pearl on VHF."

+++++

"Beagle lead to red section, got a range to that structure right at 2.3 miles, so let's get on down in the weeds for our approach. Blue and Green, y'all hang here for five minutes then move in behind us, weapons hot unless you hear otherwise."

Aronson dove her Apache down to treetop level and accelerated to 160 knots, heading right for the smoke. "This isn't kosher, WEPS, we should be over the suburbs now."

"I got nothin' but the smoke, Lieutenant."

"Okay, I'm going in hot. Red section, echelon formation, and let's pop up about three hundred yards out." She let a little airspeed bleed off and pulled up on the collective, and at 300 feet she nosed over and went into a hover, settling there while she looked at the structures below.

People were pointing and running, a few women had dropped into prayer and a donkey was bucking across a market area...

"Beagle Lead, this is Red Two. It looks like a movie set. Could we be west of the city? You know, where they filmed those movies?"

"That ain't no movie set, Higgins," the pilot in Red Three said.

"Beagle Lead, okay Red Three, what the fuck is it!"

"Lieutenant, that's the Alamo, the real one, I think, and you can bet your sweet ass we ain't in Kansas no more."

+++++

Todd Parks was setting up his telescope at a parking lot located just inside the Saratoga National Historic Park, just east of Saratoga Lake, New York; he was one of more than thirty amateur astronomers setting up scopes at the park that Friday afternoon for a 'Star Party' being put on by several regional astronomy clubs that night. His scope, an ancient Takahashi TOA-130, was already set up on his EM-200 Temma IV mount, and he had just finished connecting the mount to his computer when Sara Goodman started talking to him.

"Did you hear about that shit in the city this morning?"

"No, I guess not. What happened?"

"Something came out of a building, hovered over Park Avenue, then took off -- straight up..."

"Something? Like what?"

"A blue sphere, hollow, like translucent. Then it started snowing."

Parks stood and looked at Goodman. "Snowing?"

"Yup. But there's more. I heard another sphere appeared over Texas and a bunch of Army helicopters disappeared."

"Any wreckage?"

"Todd, I said they disappeared. As in, without a trace. I get concerned, you know, after what you saw..."

What Parks had seen, almost a year ago, had almost -- almost -- made the news. As a project manager for the new Ultra-large LaGrange Point based solar observatory, he had been making observations when something he half-jokingly called The Death Star moved into a tight solar orbit. The object, easily twice the diameter of Mercury, then appeared to fire a beam into the solar corona. Other team members were unsure what the beam was until an astrophysicist near Grenoble, France made the assertion that the object hadn't fired anything at all; it was, rather, she said, drawing energy as a plasma directly from the Sun. After orbiting for five days, the object left the solar system at incredible velocity, and that's when 'intelligence types' from the NSA and FBI showed up. The information was compartmentalized, contained, and shut away in some vault somewhere, with warnings given to all involved to shut up or face dire career fallout. Then Parks started doing research.

He'd found other, very similar occurrences recorded as far back as the first SOHO observations in the early 21st century, including some grainy video of two identical orbital insertions, the first in 2002, the second in 2013. These observations had been ridiculed and filed away, but he began searching through observations in 2024 and found notes from a like interval deleted. His occurred in 2035, a year ago, and he'd been very worried ever since. About what, he couldn't tell, but with the steady and rapid deterioration of global weather patterns beginning in 2024, and the catastrophic degradations that began a year ago as a backdrop, he was growing very concerned there was a causal link. One he just hadn't figured out yet.

Sara Goodman had been a skeptic all along. A good one, though, supportive of his research in solar seismology, an MIT trained astrophysicist and researcher now working for the NSC, she was one of the few people he trusted with his "other" observations. He'd invited her to Saratoga to look at the stars, something they'd both enjoyed doing once upon a time, and he always enjoyed her company, the conversations they fell into when they somehow forgot to argue with one another about his government conspiracies.

She had a much newer, totally computerized scope set up next to his and was close enough to talk to, and now he wondered where she was going with this -- but she grew quiet, got back to setting up her scope. She'd been looking forward to this for weeks...

Kids from "special schools" all over New York and Vermont had been invited to these star parties for decades, and Parks expected between two and three hundred people to show up that night. Someone had the bright idea to get a couple of carnival vendors up there too, so there'd be snow cones and hot dogs to keep everyone happy -- 'til at least three in the morning, anyway. Many of these kids were emotionally impaired, though most were physically challenged in one way or another, but anyone was welcome and local radio stations helped get the word out. One of them, a station from Rutland, Vermont, even had a van set up to a live broadcast from the park, and Parks had to wonder who'd listen to a broadcast of astronomers at work. Like watching grass grow, he thought.

As darkness came he starting aligning the mount on the first stars out, then syncing it to his computer -- and just then a school bus pulled into the lot, and the first group of kids made their way to the telescopes. Within an hour, more than five hundred people were were walking around, many kids with their parents and grandparents with them, and he heard Sara talking about M57, the Ring Nebula, and about it's age and distance from Earth. One of the kid's parents, a middle aged woman of indeterminate intelligence, began asking Sara about the age of the universe, and when Sara started to answer the woman interrupted.

"The universe is six thousand years old," she said, and Sara followed with her standard rebuttal, but the woman wouldn't listen, couldn't listen, Parks thought, without challenging her entire belief system. He shook his head and turned away, entered some coordinates on the screen and began slewing the scope to a new target.

"Besides," the woman said, "my girl can't see shit anyway. This crap wouldn't do her no good, no how."

"Oh," Parks said, "what's the problem?"

The woman turned and looked at Parks, at his inquisitive face and kind eyes, and she walked over to him, dragging her seven year old girl roughly by the hand.

"She can see about two inches in front of her face. That's all. That's what God did to punish her for..."

"Well, you know what? I can show her something right here that I bet you'll both like."

"I don't know, Mr, I don't know..."

Parks knelt down and looked at the girl; her eyes were a bloody battleground but she reacted when he turned on his penlight. He held his hand in front of her face and aimed the light on his fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up, sweetie?"

"Two," the little girl said.

"That's right. Say, what's your name?"

"June," she said.

"Well June, how about we take a look at something really cool. Come with me."

He pulled up his observing chair and and helped her sit on it, then he helped her get to the eyepiece and explained how to look through it. He could see light from the telescope reaching out through the eyepiece and touching her eye, then her heard her take in a deep breath...

"Oh!" she said, "what is that?"

"Well, June, that's a planet, called Saturn. Saturn is famous for it's rings. Can you see the rings in there?"

"Oh, yes, they're beautiful! Mommy, you've got to see this! Come look!"

Parks let 'Mommy' see Saturn, and she too was very impressed, then June wanted back on the chair and was at the eyepiece once again...

"I guess she was born this way?"

"Yessir," the woman said.

"Kind of interesting, don't you think then, that she can only see things a few inches away, yet she's looking at something almost nine hundred million miles away right now?"

"I guess. Why?"

"Her vision isn't really a handicap, you know, anymore than the people who tell her she can't do things. With a little encouragement, there's no telling what she can do. Next time you look up at the stars, try to remember that, would you?"

"Okay."

"June? I'll be back here next year, and I hope I get to see you then. Okay?"

"Okay. What's your name?"


Timeshadow 01



"I'm Dr Parks, but from now on you can call me Todd."

"Okay, Dr Todd!" She reached out and touched his face, then leaned in and gave him a long hug...

"Todd?"

"Yeah. Sara, what's up?"

"Todd, quick, look up!"

He looked up, shook his head as if clearing his vision. Not twenty feet above his head was a radiant blue sphere; it had simply materialized out of nowhere and now it hovered directly overhead. He heard people screaming, the radio announcer yelling, then equipment falling over as everything disappeared in a blinding flash...

+++++

Lieutenant Aronson circled her Apache above what appeared to be an old mission compound, looking at people scatter while she looked for a good place to set her bird down. Men behind ramparts on a big building were aiming muskets at the Apache, yet so far no one had fired; she didn't feel like taking any chances so aimed for a broad, flat grassy meadow about a quarter mile away from the compound and landed.

"Okay, WEPs, let's shut her down, conserve all the fuel we can."

"Roger that."

She looked at her gauges and saw she had about more than half left, not quite two thirds anyway, and she shook her head, then got on the net: "Beagle Lead, come on in and land in two lines, on my bird. No one, repeat no one is to exit their aircraft until I give the all clear, and write down your fuel levels." She felt her holster more for reassurance than anything else, then flipped a lever and the canopy opened, one side lifting up and out of the way.

She felt it then...the air on her face. Clear and cold, and the only thing she smelled was a fireplace burning somewhere, so she did the 'Apache two-step' -- a little twist and turn necessary to climb out of the cockpit -- then stepped on a strut and hopped down to the ground, already missing her crew chief and his ladder...

"Someone's coming," her weapons officer said. She heard him unclipping his holster, getting his pistol ready, and she turned to face the threat.

She saw a man on horseback, riding her way. He looked unarmed and was walking the animal at a slow pace when she heard the rest of Beagle Group coming in, and the man stopped his horse and looked at the mass of helicopters, overt fear clear in his eyes.

"It's alright!" Aronson yelled, waving at him, "Come on in!" and the man heard her as Aronson took off her helmet. When he saw her hair and shook his head, she almost laughed. The horse broke into a trot and he was by her side moments later. Now she watched his approach carefully -- for weapons, for indecision on his part, but he seemed focused on the Apache, looking up -- as the main rotor was still spooling down.

He stopped short of the fat blades while Aronson walked up to the horse, and when she got to the animal she rubbed it's forehead, scratched under it's chin, all while looking up at the man.

"And who would you be," the man said.

"Lieutenant Judy Aronson, United States Army, sir."

His eyes went wide. "And what the devil are these...things?" he said, pointing to the other eleven Apaches flaring in the field behind them.

"This is the Boeing AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter, sir. I'm Beagle Lead, this is my squadron."

"The United States Army, you say?"

"Yessir. And if you don't mind me asking, who are you?"

"Ah, yes," the man said as he dismounted, "pardon my manners, Lieutenant. My name is William Barret Travis, Colonel Travis, of the Texas militia."

"Travis," Aronson said quietly. "And this is the Alamo?"

"Yes! Jackson! Did President Jackson send you!?"

Aronson turned to her weapons officer. "Dutch, call Three, Higgins. He was a History major, I think. Get him up here on the double!" She turned back to Travis. "Santa Anna. Do you know where he is?"

Travis seemed taken aback. "You know of Santa Anna?"

Aronson nodded as she held her ground, waiting, then she heard Higgins jogging up.

"Lieutenant?"

She held up her hand, tried to think of the best way to do this, but in the end decided to just dive right in. "Higgins, this is Colonel Travis."

"Yessir?"

"That's is to say, this is Colonel William Barret Travis, Texas militia, who is in command here, at the Alamo, is that correct, sir?"

Travis nodded, looked at Higgins: "And this -- woman -- is your commanding officer?"

"That's a fact, Colonel."

"And you are a historian, did I hear the Lieutenant say?"

"Yessir."

"Colonel, I'd like to get my men settled. We have a lot to..."

"Feel free to garrison in the Mission, Lieutenant. If my men can..."

"Colonel, we'll set up on that ridge-line." Aronson pointed at the ridge a few hundred yards away. "Do you have any recon on Santa Anna?"

"Any what?"

"Do you know where Santa Anna is? Any idea at all?"

"The last we heard he was at the Rio Bravo."

"Do you know the date, Colonel," Higgins asked.

"The twentieth of February, sir. Why?"

"Lieutenant, we need to talk," Higgins said urgently, "now."

"Colonel Travis, we'll get our camp set up. Perhaps we can talk later this afternoon, while we do some work on our, uh, our machines."

"As you wish, Lieutenant. Perhaps your men would like to join me and my men for supper this evening?"

"Sure. We'll talk, later, Colonel. I promise."

+++++

Patricia Hahnemann remembered going to sleep -- but just fragments remained after that. Memories of floating, somehow high above Park Avenue. Men below, police maybe, staring up at her as she floated outside the building, then came the clouds -- clouds everywhere. Cold, gray, then suffused with pale amber.

A ship? A spaceship?

But no. It looked like a ship, at first anyway, then she saw it was a building...but no, even that was wrong. She felt like, at one point, she was moving through a cavern. A huge cavern. Then she was in this room, this cell.

And now, this...man. How long had he been standing there?

He was tall, very tall. Perhaps eight feet, and thin. His skin was caucasian, but his skin was bare, completely bare. No hair, no facial hair at all, but his eyes were distinctly human, even if his face was a little too oblong.

He had been in her cell for hours, she guessed, just staring at her. His head seemed to bob slowly, glacially, and his eyes never blinked. The pupils were, well, huge. His nose tiny, the mouth almost vestigial, and he'd never opened it once. Why had he come unclothed, she wondered. His penis was uncircumcised, and frankly a little on the small side, while the muscles in his legs looked atrophied.

And everywhere she looked, he looked -- with his eyes, with his mind. He made associations. She looked at his foot and she unconsciously thought foot in her mind. He saw the association, saw 'foot' in his mind too, heard her speak the word in her mind, and his now too, and so he began building a basic vocabulary. He knew who she was. She was vital. Vital to their plans. To the success of the operation. To the future of humanity, and future of their planet.

If the first part of the plan failed, she was their last hope.

He could not fail. He could not let her fail.

But he was very afraid. *

(C)2016 Adrian Leverkühn | ABW



Timeshadow 02



"Boomer Five-oh-five, this is Two-nine Bravo," Colonel Tom Courville said into his mic, calling the lead F-35 as each approached Joint Base Pearl Harbor.

"Five-oh-five, go."

"We're only getting some low level VHF, commercial chatter. Nothing on UHF or Z-band, no VOR/TAC. We've got three very low level search radars targeted, but no long range stuff. You picking up anything?"

Lieutenant Bob Sandusky, leading the reconstituted VA-165 "Boomers" back to Pearl, was now about fifty miles north of Two-nine Bravo, directly over Honolulu. "Nothing except VHF, the radars are so low power they're barely registering."

"What does Pearl look like? Can you see anything?"

"Several ships in harbor, looks like a small carrier heading out. Uh, I'm gonna go down, make a high speed pass, see if I can get some eyeballs on the field...looks like some unusual traffic down there."

"Okay, Five-oh-five, we'll go active ECM and jam 'em from here." He looked to his co-pilot, saw her telling the EWO, the electronics warfare officer, to light up all the shoreside scanners, then he got back to Five-of-five: "Alright, we're active now. Start your run."

"Roger." Sandusky reefed the F-35 into a long, arcing descent, let his speed build up to mach 1.2 as he lined up on what he hoped would be PNL's runway 4. Ten miles out and two hundred feet above the ground, he flew straight for Hickam's tower, but as he flew by his stomach knotted. He kept flying right over the city and roared past Diamond Head before he went ballistic, the F-35 going straight up into the sky before leveling out at twenty thousand feet.

Sandusky shook his head, tried to come to terms with what he'd just seen, then he got on the radio. "Five-oh-five, Two-niner Bravo."

"Bravo, go."

"Uh, ramp at Hickam had a few B-17s, a couple of squadrons of P-40s, I think an old Brewster Buffalo, and a couple of float planes. Maybe they were called Kingfishers. Bunch of battleships are lined up in the harbor, and I saw nothing of PNL. No ramps, no runways, but I think I saw an old Pan Am Clipper coming in."

"Bravo received." Courville looked at Sinclair, then shook his head.

"Just like that old 80s movie, The Final Countdown," she said. "I used to have it on my phone."

"Yeah, right. What freq is Kilo Echo on?"

"243.3"

Courville dialed in the numbers, called the refueling tanker, told them what the F-35 had just reported and to pass it on the other F-35s and the Qantas jet, then he switched back to Five-oh-five's frequency. "Five-oh-five, can you estimate how much runway we've got?"

"I'd say five thousand max. Those B-17s used to eat up a bunch of concrete, but not like a 767 or that 380."

"Okay. I'm going to enter the pattern, uh, start our downwind out over Diamond Head. Why don't you hang around and show the flag, in case anyone wants to start shooting..."

"Roger that...uh...looks like two P-40s taking off now. I'll go down and keep 'em company now. Uh, you guy's carrying?"

"Yup, four B-85 warheads onboard. 200 megatons each."

"Swell."

"Starting our checklist now. Let me know if those -40s look like they're getting angry."

"Roger." Sandusky watched the Curtis P-40s retract their gears and start to climb as he came in behind them, and he dropped some flaps to help bleed off more speed. The P-40 pilots apparently had no idea he was behind them as he nudged his throttle and squeezed in between them, and the pilot on his left stared at him as he pulled alongside. Sandusky reached for the landing gear lever and flipped it down, dropping his landing gears in the universal "I'm not a threat" configuration, then the guy on his left indicated Sandusky should follow him down; Sandusky watched as the other P-40 fell in behind his aircraft, then he looked towards Diamond Head and saw the B-2 flip on it's landing lights.

"Okay, Bravo, I've put the gears down and am following their lead back around for final. I've got your lights and the pattern looks clear, as far as I can tell, anyway."

"Okay. I'm gonna head out west a little and extend our final. When you get down let 'em know they've got a lot of traffic coming in, including that heavy. Better warn their fire crews in case that runway isn't long enough."

"Roger that. Good luck, Bravo. I'll stay on this frequency until you're down."

"Roger, and you too, Amigo. See you in a few."

+++++

Todd Parks and Sara Goodman stood as if frozen beside their telescopes in the middle of an open courtyard; June, the almost blind seven year old girl, sat nearby on a vast tile floor, hyperventilating. It was dark outside, wherever it was they were, so it took a moment to orient themselves to this new space. As their eyes adapted to the dark, Sara walked over to what she thought was a wall, but she stopped suddenly and jumped back. "Whoa! We're up a few floors, and this is a low wall, so be careful."

Parks knelt beside June and held her; she was shivering now, plunging towards hysteria, and the little girl jumped when she felt Parks' hands on her shoulders. "What happened, Dr Todd?" was about all she managed to say...

"I don't know, darlin'. Something, uh, I don't know...strange happened, and we're not in the park anymore."

"Did we fall asleep?" the little girl whispered.

"Maybe, but I just don't know. I want you to sit right here...and don't move."

"Don't leave me, Dr Todd," she cried, "please, don't leave me!"

"Okay, put your arms around my neck," he said as he lifted her and held her close, then he stood and looked around the courtyard again -- and now he saw there was a man standing in a far corner -- looking at them. "Sara? Better come here."

"What is it?" she said, then she saw Todd pointing -- and she too saw the man in the corner.

The man took a few steps towards them, then stopped when he saw the computers on Parks' camp table; they were in 'night-vision mode' and so almost invisible, but Parks motioned to the man, in effect asked him to come closer. Much to Parks' surprise, the man did.

Both screens had immense star charts displayed and the old man leaned over and examined them, then grew almost enraptured, crying with effusive joy -- then an explosion of language burst forth from his lips at such speed both were left gasping.

"Is that Spanish?" Parks asked.

"I don't think so," Goodman said.

"It's Italian," June said. "My Uncle Geppetto speaks Italian. He taught me too."

"June, did you understand what he said?" Parks said, holding her close.

"Most of it."

"What did he say, June?" Sara asked.

"It is fantastic. What is this thing, this window, and why are the heavens inside?"

Parks bent down, looked under the camp table, saw all the cables were there and still attached, even the three golf cart batteries were still under the table, and he was struck with an idea. Someone, somehow had moved exactly what he needed right here. Nothing superfluous or extraneous had been moved, and even the girl served some purpose, even if she was just to act as their translator. He heard Sara and June talking to the man while he looked at the battery monitor; he'd just topped them off so he had about seventy hours of life left with normal usage, more if he conserved power. Still, why would someone bring them here, then leave them?

"Left to do what?" he asked aloud as he heard Sara calling his name, but he ignored her, instead asked: "Sara, can you find out where we are?"

"Todd! Come here!"

Somewhat miffed, he walked over to Sara and June, and the man -- who was looking at him now with something akin to frank admiration. "Yeah? What is it?"

"Frank, we're in Florence. Italy. As best as I can tell, it's the seventeenth of November, 1618. And our friend here? His name is Galileo Galilei."

Parks stared at the man a moment, then walked over to the wall, looked out over the sleeping city as the significance of the date rattled around in his head. He recognized the Duomo, and Giotto's campanile, and he looked down at the cobbled street below, at the flickering pools of torchlight -- and everything he saw fit with what Sara had just said. "June, tell him this. Whatever else may be happening, we have been brought here for a reason. Someone or something has brought us here just before one of the most significant moments in human history is about to occur. We don't know why we are here, or who brought us here, but it's my guess we are here to help him."

Parks walked over to his computer and input the current date and location, and he asked the man what time it might be. The man, Galileo, Parks forced himself to say, came to him and watched as he input the data, then he commanded the scope to slew to the coordinates he'd input. The Takahashi whirred and spun to a spot in the sky, and Parks looked through the eyepiece, then centered the object and commanded the scope to track it. He switched eyepieces, put in an ancient TeleVue 12mm Nagler, then he re-centered the object once again. It was as breathtaking as it was legendary, and he stepped aside, let a 17th century man look through a state of the art 21st century refractor, and the man gasped, almost fell away from the scope.

"Todd, what is it? What did you find?"

"I didn't find it, he did, four hundred years ago, well, tomorrow night. It's Galileo's comet, and the scientific world was never the same after his discovery."

He held June up to the scope, let her see what no one alive -- in her world -- had ever seen before, and never would again, and he wondered out loud as he held her... "Just why are we here -- now?"

"What?" Sara said. "Why is that so important?"

"Important? It's vital! Right here, right now, with all our equipment? You and me, trained astronomers, thrust into Galileo's world on the eve of a complete paradigm shift? This is not a coincidence, Sara. This is anything but a coincidence. I just don't know why. Yet."

+++++

Boomer Five-oh-five was configured for a conventional landing, and when Sandusky hit the numbers he deployed the spoilerons and popped the drogue -- and the F-35 decelerated smartly on the black asphalt runway. An olive colored Jeep pulled out onto the runway ahead of him, a large "Follow Me" sign clearly visible as it turned and started down the runway ahead of his aircraft. The F-35 was clearly marked as US NAVY -- but he had to wonder? Would they believe him? Well, why wouldn't they? This aircraft was certainly real enough, but nothing compared to what was coming in just a few minutes.

When his speed had slowed to 45 knots he popped the canopy a few inches, braced for the expected blast of hot air -- but cool air streamed-in hitting his sweat covered flightsuit, chilling him quickly. He pulled to a stop just behind the Jeep, and dozens of troops and military police surrounded his fighter, everyone aiming some sort of machine gun at his face, and he laughed.

He opened the canopy all the way, then addressed the men below: "Well, just don't stand there! Get me a goddamn ladder!"

"And just who the devil do you think you are, bucko!" a line chief snarled.

"Lieutenant Jake Sandusky, United States Navy, and if you don't get me a goddamn ladder you're gonna regret the day you were born! Now, MOVE IT!"

Sandusky smiled. It never failed to amaze him...the louder you yell, the faster they run.

Another Jeep came racing through the massed men, and a naval officer with four stripes on his boards hopped out and walked over to the ladder being put up by Sandusky's cockpit.

"Captain," Sandusky said as the man stepped on the first rung, "y'all best not shoot at my friend there," he said, pointing to the black, bat-shaped bomber on short finals, "'cause he's a colonel and he get's real pissed off when people do that."

Everyone turned and looked at the B-2 as it flared and popped it's drogue, then the engine sounds hit and the men dropped to the ground, most covering their ears. The captain climbed the ladder and looked at the instrument displays on the panel: he appeared to be shaking, and extremely confused.

"Captain," Sandusky said in his best poker face, "y'all sure look like you could use a drink. I'm buyin', so the least you could do is help me out of this crate."

"Five-oh-five!" his radio blared.

"Go ahead, Bravo."

"The date, find out the date!"

"Captain," Sandusky said as he turned to the man on the ladder, "today isn't December 6th, 1941, is it?"

"Of course it is, you idiot!"

"Yes. Right. Of course." He turned back to the cockpit, "Two-nine Bravo, looks like company's coming tomorrow morning."

"Uh-huh. Look, have those base security guys find out who's in charge around here, and get them down here pronto. And tell 'em about the other incoming aircraft!"

"What's that?" the captain said. "There are more of you coming?"

"Oh, Captain, you got no idea. Three more like me, a really big aerial refueling tanker, and a Qantas airliner so big I guarantee you that every one around here is going to shit their knickers."

"How soon?"

"Ten minutes, and that airliner needs a lot of runway. You better get your fire and rescue guys organized. And who's in charge here?"

"General Short."

"You might want to get him down here real soon, Captain. We need to talk."

"Why? Why did you want to know the date?"

"The Japanese are going to attack early tomorrow morning. You ready for that?"

"How do you know that!? How could you possibly..."

Sandusky pulled out his DoD ID card, which of course had his date of birth and date of issue for the card, and the captains eyes went round before he went down the ladder and sprinted away.

"Five-of-five, this is Kilo Echo, how's the weather down there?"

"Kilo Echo, this is Two-nine Bravo. Start your downwind at Diamond Head, extend west. Wind out of the east, very light right now. Can someone get us a pressure?"

"Captain?" Sandusky said, "got a barometer around here?"

"29.92!" someone called out, and Sandusky relayed the information.

"What in God's name is that!" he heard someone cry, but Sandusky didn't really need to look. Nothing in 1941 was as big as the tanker, yet as old as the A380 was, it was something else again. He saw they were pointing at the tanker as he unclipped his harness, so he knew the best was yet to come. He climbed out of the F-35 as the B-2 followed the jeep up to the ramp, and he saw all kinds of garbage on the tarmac and ran towards the bomber with his hands crossed over his head.

Courville saw the signal, then all the stuff on the ground and he braked hard, idled the engines and hoped for the best.

Sandusky was beside himself... "All of you, let's get all this crap off the ramp! Now! If an engine sucks this stuff up, that's it. End of airplane!" The men responded, swarmed all over the area, and soon it was clean enough -- then the tanker touched down just a few yards away and immediately went into reverse thrust -- and while the entire base felt the rumbling, men near the runway flattened on the pavement, covered their ears when the tankers left wingtip passed just over their heads.

Two of the three F-35s landed in quick succession, while the third automatically assumed CAP duties high over the base, and while the Qantas 380 entered the newly established pattern out over Diamond Head.

The B-2 taxied to a vacant area and shut down it's engines; Courville slid down his crew ladder under the cockpit and ran over to Sandusky, just as a General Staff car drove out onto the ramp and over to Sandusky's F-35. Courville and Sandusky saluted as a General exited the olive colored Buick, and the man returned the salute absent-mindedly as he looked at the F-35.

"I suppose there's some sort of explanation for this," General Walter Short said as he walked directly over to the ladder and climbed up to the -35's cockpit. "If there is, keep it brief and to the point." Sandusky pulled another ladder and climbed up and stood beside the general. "What IS all this crap?" Short said, clearly more confused than he looked as he pointed at the cockpit displays. "And who the hell are you!?"

Sandusky handed over his DoD ID again, and Short looked at it closely. "This shows an issue date of 2032. What the hell's going on here?"

"We don't know, General," Courville said from the tarmac, "but we need to face some facts..."

"What the FUCK is that!" the general shouted, pointing at the A380 on final, nearly losing his balance when he stood up on the ladder.

"General! We need to talk, now!" Courville said again, but Short stood in silence as the 380 flared and touched down, then Sandusky saw huge chunks of asphalt flying up behind the Airbus' main gears...

"The weight!" Sandusky yelled. "It's too goddamn heavy! That pig is going to tear up the runway!"

"Too late now," Courville said, kicking the tarmac. "Goddamn it! How the hell do we get out of here now!"

"Get out? Now?" General Short said angrily. "You're elements of the armed forces of the United States of America, and you told one of my men we're going to be attacked tomorrow morning. Just where do you think you're going?"

"General?" Courville said. "We NEED to talk NOW!"

Short turned to the navy captain. "Get that runway fixed before sundown."

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Now, Colonel, let's go see what..."

The last F-35 was coming in now, and due to the runway damage the aircraft was coming in to make a vertical landing on the ramp, like the old AV-8 Harriers used to, and everyone scattered again when it's massive thrust blasted the tarmac. Short jumped down the last few rungs of the ladder and rolled to the ground, tearing his khaki uniform in places, then he stood and glowered at Courville and Sandusky.

"Any more surprises!?" The General growled as the F-35s engine spooled down, then he looked at the A380, which seemed to be sinking deeper into the asphalt. "How much does that goddamn thing weigh!" he yelled.

The giant Airbus managed to clear the runway before one of the main gears broke through the pavement completely, sinking into the sand underneath, and the Qantas captain wisely decided to shut the engines down right there.

General Short limped over to Courville and Sandusky, stopped to pick bits of gravel out of his bleeding knee, then stood and glowered at the two aviators. "Which one of you sons-a-bitches is going to tell me what the hell is going on here! I want answers, and I want them NOW!"

+++++

Lieutenant Judy Aronson sat with all the pilots in Beagle Group, and as a group they went over what they knew. They were in San Antonio, in the 19th century unless some elaborate hoax had been played on them, and probably as a result of some interaction with the blue sphere they had encountered earlier that day. The Alamo was a few hundred yards away, and the Mexican Army under Santa Anna was marching their way, it's arrival imminent, within a day or two, anyway. Each helicopter had approximately two thirds of a full fuel load left. The helicopters in Red and Green sections were each armed with 16 AGM-114N Hellfire II, while Blue section aircraft each carried 76 Hydra rockets. The 30mm Gatling guns in most ships had 1200 rounds on board, but each section leader's aircraft had been fitted with 'directed energy' weapons -- laser-type weapons that were effective against targets as varied as tanks, incoming missiles and, of course, human beings.

They were wearing their flight jackets, sitting on olive green nylon and aluminum camp chairs just outside 24 one man tents, arranged in a circle, and so far, while Aronson had done most of the talking, everyone was cold. None of them had experienced temperatures in the 80s since they'd been kids.

"Does anyone have any idea what that sphere was," she asked. No one did. "Okay. Well, so it's my guess we've, apparently, been transported back in time. To a very specific point in time, and we are at a location, and a time, where something critical to the development of the United States is about to happen..."




Timeshadow 02



"Critical?" Greg Stinson asked. "How so?"

It was Higgins, the historian, who spoke up. "Well, consider that Texas, in the mid-1830s anyway, didn't look a whole lot like the state we know now. It stretched far to the north, almost to Montana, and included a lot of territory to the west, places like New Mexico and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma and Kansas too. Only the Louisiana Purchase resulted in a larger increase in the size of the country, at least until Alaska came along, and if Santa Anna had beaten Sam Houston at San Jacinto, it's not too big a stretch to say that Mexico might still own the entire southwestern part of the country, maybe even California..."

Okay," Aronson said, interrupting Higgins, "let's consider something off the wall. Say someone, or something, brought us here for a purpose. Let's ignore all the obvious implications of that for the time being, too. Like who brought us here, or why. Let's ask ourselves one question. They have, for whatever reason, left us here under circumstances that lead me to believe they want us to do something."

"Do something? Like what?"

"Well," Aronson continued, "maybe it's a test. Maybe they want to see what we do. How we act. Maybe they want to measure our moral and intellectual development."

Higgins chuckled.

"What's so funny about that?" she asked, clearly offended.

"Occam's razor," Higgins said. "What's the simplest explanation, given your hypothesis about us being here for some reason, for our being in San Antonio in 1836? For being at the Alamo right before the defenders get wiped out?"

Aronson looked at Higgins, shrugged her shoulders.

"Because," Higgins said, "they want us to kick their asses all the way back to Mexico City!"

"Oh come off it!" she said. "Why on earth would they want us to..."

"Well, think about it," Higgins replied. "They, whoever the hell they are, want us to change time, to change history. You've all watched those old Star Trek shows, seen all the time travel movies. You know about the paradox of time, you know, you go back in time and kill your grandfather so how could you be born to go back and kill your grandfather? Well, what if someone wants us to, in effect, go back and kill our grandparents? To change the entire matrix of causality that led to 21st century?"

"Well, if that's true," Carlos Chavez said, "if we change the sequence of time, if we kill our grandparents, won't we cease to exist?"

"That would be my guess," Higgins said. "At least, it's a possibility. Another might be, if we fulfill our task, their objective, they might return us to our time."

"That's a pretty big assumption," Patty McKaig, one of the weapons officers said. "Like number one, what if this was some sort of natural phenomenon. Two, we're making unwarranted assumptions about motives. Assuming there is someone doing this. And why wouldn't they do it themselves?"

"Maybe they can't?" Higgins said. "Or maybe they don't want to? We're trying to guess with no information to go on!"

"But," Aronson interrupted, "we have made one assumption. Someone wants us here. Can we agree on that?"

"I can't," McKaig said. "This could be an entirely random, naturally occurring event..."

"Preposterous," Higgins added. "The odds are..."

"I agree," Aronson said, "and this isn't a democracy. So, what do we do, now that we're here? Defend the Alamo, or bug out and preserve the order of history as we know it?"

"But if we change history, we die," Chavez repeated.

"Maybe," Higgins said. "And I don't think we'd die, per se. It's more likely we'd simply cease to exist."

"What's the difference!" Chavez cried. "This is f-ing loco, man!"

"Everything about this situation is insane," Aronson said. "Nothing makes sense. Look around you, for God's sake! There're grass and trees here, the temperature's in the 80s. It hasn't been below 120 in Texas for over ten years. All the trees died, what? Eight years ago? The events at the Alamo happened two hundred years ago! Tell me what's sane about this!"

Higgins looked at her closely. "Lieutenant? You're in command. Assuming we still consider ourselves Army aviators, that is."

Aronson bristled. "Stop it. Right now. As long as we're alive, right here, right now, we will conduct ourselves as members of the United States Army. Period. As far as I'm concerned, the only question confronting us is simply this: do we defend the Alamo or do we retreat. If we retreat, it's likely we'll remain here. We'll be stuck here. If we defend the Mission, it's likely we'll change history in such a profound way we could, as Higgins puts it, simply cease to exist. Immediately."

"Lieutenant, if you're in charge we follow your orders. It's as simple as that," Higgins said, and most everyone agreed.

"Alright. It's my opinion that we were brought here to defend this place. As far as I'm concerned, that's what we're going to do. I'm equally troubled by the idea of disrupting the flow of history as I am with the idea that this may all be occurring in some sort of alternate reality, or some other dimension. Still, if we've stumbled across a being capable of doing this to us, I don't want to piss it off."

"Lieutenant, there's someone in those trees, listening to us," Chavez whispered, and Aronson thought for a moment, then stood and walked towards a small grove of live oaks and mesquite twenty yards away, Chavez and Higgins by her side, their service pistols drawn.

"How y'all doin'?" The man said as stepped out from behind a tree, fumbling with the laces on his buckskin pants, then he looked down and seemed embarrassed.

"How long have you been listening?" Aronson said as she closed the distance to the man, but she stopped short when the smell hit her nostrils.

"Sorry. I like takin' a shit out here instead of in the privy back there in the fort. Stinks to high heaven," the man said, shaking his head.

Aronson craned her head, saw the man wasn't lying and she sighed, then turned to look back at her men and the campsite. "How long have you been listening to us," she repeated as she looked at the man again.

"Long enough. Sounds like y'all are in a little bit of a pickle. Where y'all from, anyway?"

Aronson didn't say a word...she just looked at him, not sure what to say or do, then it hit her. She was in command here, not Captain Davis or Colonel Lewiston back at Fort Hood. They weren't here now, she was, and 'command' was all on her. She'd never had to make decisions like this before. No one had, and that old saying about the loneliness of command had never seemed so true, or so remote sounding. She looked around again, feeling not just alone, but lonely...

"What's your name?" the man asked, curious about what he saw in the girl's eyes.

"What?"

"You name? You do have one, don't you?"

Aronson grew stern, looked him in the eye. "Come with me." She turned and started back to the campsite, Higgins and Chavez walked behind the man, who she now thought seemed perpetually good natured and unconcerned.

"Take a seat," Aronson said, pointing to her chair.

"That's yours. I'm not taking your chair," he said as he picked the flimsy looking chair up and looked it over -- carefully. "What the hell is this, anyway?" He looked at a fat log in the trees and went to pick it up, then stopped and kicked it -- hard, and a copperhead poked it's head out of the rotten part resting on the ground and looked around, then retreated back into the log. "Not that one!" he said, then he settled on another one and hauled it back to the others. He sat on the log and looked at Aronson. "Well, what can I do you for?" he said, smiling.

"What's you're name?" Aronson asked.

"I asked you first."

"Lieutenant Aronson," she said, "and this is my squadron. Beagle Group."

"What's a beagle?" he said, chuckling. "Y'all look like beagles, or somethin'?"

"Your name?" Aronson repeated.

"Oh, Crockett. David Crockett. Late of Tennessee, now residing over yonder," he said, pointing at the Mission.

"Davey Crockett?" Higgins said. "Bear fighter and Congressman?"

"One and the same, boy," he said, clearly pleased he'd been recognized.

"Mr Crockett," Aronson said. "You listened to what's been said. Where do you think we came from?"

"Well, if I heard what y'all said right, the future. You've come from the future. Now, normally I'd say that kinda talk is pure hog shit, but I've seen those machines of yours, so I guess that changes everything, don't it?"

"Mr Crockett..."

"David, please, Lieutenant Aronson."

"Alright, David, my name's Judy."

"Judy. I like that. Now, you're going to ask me what I think you should do, right?"

"Almost," Aronson said. "What would you do if you were in our position?"

He chuckled again. "Well, hell, you got the benefit of hindsight, don't you? You already know what's gonna happen, and then what happened as a result, all the way to time you lived in. Like you said, if you change what happens tomorrow, you no longer have any idea what happens the day after tomorrow. And if that's true, how the devil could you possibly know what's right, or wrong, for that matter."

"True," she said. "But..."

"Yeah, but. What interested me most," Crockett said, "was one of you saying you've been brought here for a purpose. And I'm just guessin' here, but I don't think you had God in mind when that came up. So, the question is not who brought you here, as interesting as that might be, but why." He paused, looked at Aronson for a moment. "You know? You got really nice eyes. Kind of hard, but real cute, too."

Aronson blushed, shook her head while a few of the pilots laughed -- quietly.

"Anyway. Why. The question is why. To change time somehow, that's what you said," Crockett said, pointing at Higgins. "Why would someone want to change time unless time has led to an unsolvable dilemma. Unless those folks think there's no other way out of the dilemma."

"Right!" Higgins said, "If we alter time then we would have to alter their past and future too, maybe even they will cease to exist!"

"Then they're desperate," Crockett said. "Their backs have been pushed into a corner, and like you said, my guess is they're counting on you doing this based on their knowledge of history."

Aronson nodded her head. "That's what my gut tells me," she said. "So, he'll be here on the 23rd, right, Sam?"

Higgins nodded. "Midday, I think."

"That's in the history books, eh?" Crockett said. "So, what happens, here, uh, happened here?"

Higgins looked at Aronson. She nodded: "Tell him."

"They get here and lay siege to the Mission. After several skirmishes, Santa Anna attacks on March 6th, just before dawn. The final battle lasted 90 minutes, and everyone died. A few women and a slave named Joe were spared."

"Shit. So you're telling me in a few weeks I'm gonna be dead?"

"Yessir."

"Well then, you can't ask me what you should do. I don't want to die -- be killed here. I got my family back in Tennessee, Elizabeth and my girls. I promised I'd bring 'em out here as soon as I could, as soon as I'd settled in somewhere." He turned and looked at the 12 Apaches tied down in the meadow. "Those things," he said, pointing at the helicopters, "could stop Santa Anna, couldn't they?"

Aronson nodded. "My guess, David, is that just one of them could destroy his force. Twelve of them could destroy any army on earth right now, but we have one limitation. Fuel."

"Fuel? You mean..."

"They're machines, David. They need energy to run on, to operate, and once the fuel we have is expended, that's it. These machines can't do a thing without fuel. We could salvage the guns, perhaps, but that's about it."

"I think you're missing the basic point I tried to make earlier," Higgins said. "Once Santa Anna is defeated the timeline is destroyed. I think in that moment we'll simply cease to exist. We'll just wink out...disappear."

Crockett looked at Aronson. "Dear God. How could you even consider..."

"If what we hypothesize is true," Higgins interrupted, "that someone far in the future has come up against an insurmountable future, and that as a result humanity fails, how could we not act?"

"Because we don't know that!" McKaig said again. "You're just guessing! We don't have the facts to make such an assumption!"

"Facts and circumstances, dear girl," Crockett replied. "Together they make up the truth. Absent one, you must rely on the other."

"My mind's made up," Aronson said. "As far as I'm concerned, the only thing left to do is devise appropriate tactics."

"Yeah," Chavez asked, "do we attack straight away, or demonstrate our capabilities, give them a chance to surrender?"

"If you let Santa Anna slip away," Colonel Travis said, emerging from a dense clump of cedars, "he'll just come back. With a much bigger army next time, and you'll have tipped your hand."

"Well, William, I wondered when you'd show up. How's Colonel Bowie?"

"Fever, flat on his back. When I saw you hadn't come back..."

"We're having an interesting discussion, William. Did you forget the whiskey? As usual?"

Higgins watched the conflicting egos emerge, wary swordsmen circling for best advantage, but decided they couldn't afford to let this discussion devolve into such a dispute. "Colonel Travis? Have you met the General? This Santa Anna?"

"No. By reputation only do I know the man, but he seems to me a scoundrel. Completely untrustworthy."

"So," Aronson asked, "a surrender by him would be meaningless?"

"A tactic, Lieutenant. A delay. That would be his reaction to intimidation. Then he would seek an advantage. Fuel, did you say, is your achilles heel?"

"Yes. We have about two to three hours of operational time. We could extend that by grounding some of our machines, using their fuel and weapons to give us more time in the air, but to what end?"

"We could end this in two minutes," Higgins said, "once and for all time. Let Santa Anna's army arrive and encamp. Let the General and his lieutenants gather and demand your surrender," he said to Travis, "and then we attack."

"Not without provocation," Aronson said. "Let Santa Anna approach. Let him demand your surrender, but refuse, or tell him to leave, do anything that commits him to make the first move.

"And then you'll kill him?" Crockett said. "And what if he attacks before you do? What if he kills twenty of our men in that time? Easily preventable deaths, wouldn't you say, considering you'll be killing Santa Anna and all his army, in any event."

"I won't attack with provocation. That's final. Get your men under cover, do what you can to protect them. Tomorrow morning at first light I'm going up to locate them..."

"Lieutenant," Higgins said, "don't do it! We know when they'll be here, and how many men are in his force. If he spots an aircraft who knows what changes that might cause? He could retreat immediately, or change objectives, leaving us powerless to intervene. Let's just sit back and wait, do what we can to prepare the aircraft."

"Do you know where is?" Travis asked.

"No, not exactly. Just that he'll be here on the 23rd."

"Then we must prepare," Travis said, standing.

"Why?" Crocket said. "If the Lieutenant's machines do what she says they can do, what's the point?"

"Suppose something happens to the Lieutenant's machines, David? Then what?"

"Then history unfolds as it will, as it, apparently, already has. We will be dust, ashes scattered on the winds of time." He looked at Aronson and winked, and she blushed again. "Travis, you should see to Bowie, and shouldn't we think about dinner tonight, for our guests as well as ourselves?"

Travis looked at Aronson, then at Crockett. "Yes, I think we should. I think we have some fresh venison..."

Aronson looked at her foil-wrapped MRE and decided fresh meat might be better after all, but Higgins looks scowlingly dubious, hoping the antibiotics in their Med-Paks would be up to the challenges of 19th century hygiene. 'Well,' he thought, 'at least they'll be 19th century bugs versus 21st century antibiotics.'

+++++

Courville, Sinclair and Sandusky rode in a Jeep behind General Short's staff car to a cluster of quonset huts in a dry creek bed between Hickam Field and the naval base on Pearl Harbor; when they pulled to a stop Sandusky noted an Admiral's staff car already parked under cover, out of the way of prying eyes, and he told Courville this looked like an 'intel' facility.

Courville grunted his understanding while he watched Short get out of the Buick. "Well, I guess we're on." They walked into the first hut and into a room full of charts on huge tables...charts of the entire Pacific, and smaller charts of all the Hawaiian Islands, as well as Wake and Midway Islands. Three men stood around the large table, the 'Pacific' table, waiting; the Admiral standing by the table looked like he enjoyed eating Navy Lieutenants for breakfast. His fingers were drumming the table, his eyes were red-rimmed and tired, and to Sandusky, the man looked more than perturbed -- he looked angry.

General Short walked over and shook the Admiral's hand. "

"So, what's all the fuss about?" the Admiral said. "Who the hell are you, and where did those aircraft of yours come from?"

"Admiral," Short interrupted, "this is Colonel Courville, United States Air Force, his co-pilot, Captain Sinclair..."

"You're a woman," the admiral said, clearly confused. "Air Force?"

"And I'm Captain Sandusky, Annapolis '28, sir."

"Gentlemen," Short continued, "this is Admiral Kimmel, CnC PacFleet, and those two guys who look like they haven't seen sunlight in a month are Captains Ed Layton and Joe Rochefort, the Admiral's staff intel gurus. Tell them what you told me."

Courville spoke first, and even he was intimidated by Kimmel's four stars. "Sir, about 0930 this morning I was en route from Guam to Pearl..."

"Guam!" Kimmel growled. "What the hell were you doing on Guam!"

Short interrupted. "Admiral, you'd better just relax and listen for a minute."

Kimmel growled again. "Proceed."

"Sir, we were refueling at the time..."

"What? Where?"

"Mid-air, sir. Inflight refueling."

"Uh-huh."

"Sir, Captain Sandusky refueled ahead of my B-2, and while I was tanking a large blue sphere appeared directly overhead and descended on our location. The sphere disappeared almost immediately, but when it had, a lot of our basic navigational facilities went off-line..."

"Off-line? What do you mean?"

"Uh, they failed, sir. I was able to navigate to Pearl using something called INS, an inertial navigation system, and we landed. Admiral, we've been advised that today's date is 6 December, 1941, and the problem, sir, is that when we left Guam this morning the date was 7 July, 2036."

"WHAT!" Kimmel was through growling now. He wanted to eat someone, and his sights appeared set on a colonel in the Army Air Corp. "BULLSHIT!"

"Colonel Courville," Short commanded, "tell the Admiral what you told me! NOW!"

"Admiral, right now, right this minute, five aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy are closing on the Hawaiian Islands, my guess is right not they're approximately four hundred miles due north, and their intentions are to attack the base at Pearl at dawn tomorrow morning, the Philippines at dawn local time as well. There are small Japanese submarines off the harbor entrance right now, and the Japanese attack will begin launch operations about 0400 local time. Within ten days, you and the General will be relieved of command, and Chester Nimitz will succeed you. You'll both be scapegoated, blamed for the failure to adequately prepare the islands."

Layton and Rochefort were already leaning over the chart, plotting vectors, and Layton stood up after a minute. "That pretty much fits one of the possibilities, Admiral."




Timeshadow 02



"How the hell do you know this!" Kimmel shouted.

"It's in all the history books, Admiral, even the ones at Annapolis," Sandusky said dryly.

"But you said you graduated in '28, didn't you, Lieutenant?"

"Yessir. 2028."

"Piffle!"

"Admiral," Short said, exasperated, "I've seen their aircraft. There's no way these characters are lying. Even their IDs corroborate. I'm convinced they're telling the truth, and furthermore, I'm convinced that with their help we can turn back the attack."

"What? With a couple of aircraft?"

"Admiral," Courville said, "I have four bombs on my B-2. Each bomb could simply erase Tokyo from the face of the earth. One bomb, detonated 5,000 above the Japanese fleet, would make that fleet disappear. There would be no survivors. These are 200 megaton hydrogen warheads, sir, each containing the equivalent power of 200 million tons of TNT."

Kimmel looked at Courville, saw the earnest truth in the man's eyes, then he turned to Sandusky. "What about your aircraft, son. What can it do?"

"Sir, my squadron's intact. That's four F-35 Lightning II aircraft. We're each carrying four cruise missiles, two air-to-air missiles, as well as two anti-radiation missiles, which target radar transmitters. The cruise missiles can be fired at targets over two hundreds away, and they don't miss, sir. The warhead on just one of those missiles would completely destroy one of those carriers, sir."

"What about the Jap subs you mentioned, Colonel. Could we sortie the fleet tonight, under cover of darkness, and get past them?"

"Admiral," Sandusky replied, "if you sortie your destroyers now, prosecute every contact out there, then send the fleet out behind them, losses would be light. They're tiny subs, very small crews with only one torpedo each."

"Anything on your aircraft that could deal with them?"

"No, sir," both Courville and Sandusky said.

"Alright. I want to go over to Hickam and look over these aircraft of yours. Ed," Kimmel said, looking at his wristwatch, then at Layton, "get off a signal to MacArthur, tell him we're at war with Japan as of right now, expect an air attack at dawn. Warn the Brits, too. Joe, send out the destroyers, and tell 'em what to look for, then signal all the battleship and cruiser squadrons to light off their boilers and make ready for sea."

"What would you like us to do, Admiral," Courville said.

"Do? Captain? Can your aircraft, the four of you, take care of that fleet?"

"No problem, Admiral."

"What about fuel?"

"We have enough remaining on the tanker for several hours of operations," Courville said. "After that, we're out of business until someone can figure out how to make jet fuel."

"Jet fuel? Oh well. What kind of range does your aircraft have, Colonel?"

"With refueling, Admiral, our range is limited by human endurance. We've flown from Missouri to Afghanistan on a routine basis for decades."

Kimmel's eyes narrowed. "So, with your tanker, you could fly to Japan?"

"Easily. It's only about 3800 miles. A little over six hours, give or take. We could take off from here at six in the morning and be back in time for dinner. With tanker support, Captain Sandusky's squadron could fly there and back in a little over five hours."

Kimmel shook his head. "I need to talk to the president. What is this bomb of yours, this hydrogen bomb."

"They're already at work on it, Admiral. The president refers to it as the uranium bomb..."

"That's Top Secret. How the hell do you...oh, well, never mind. Colonel, what do you think would be the best way to deploy your assets?"

"Depends on what your objective is, Admiral. Japan is the immediate threat, Germany is too. In the postwar years, the Soviet Union will emerge as an even greater threat. From the year 2020 on, China will become the dominant threat to global security."

"You have four bombs? That's four targets."

"Sir?"

"Well, come on, let's go look at this aircraft of yours. You ride with me. I wanna talk."

When they arrived at the ramp, Kimmel got out of his staff car and walked over to the B-2. "What's with the shape?" was the Admiral's first question.

"Invisible to radar, Admiral, but so are Sandusky's aircraft."

"Alright. Captain Sandusky, you'll make ready to take off at 0400 hrs. Your orders are to locate the Japanese aircraft carriers and sink them. If any Japanese aircraft threaten these islands, take them out. Colonel Courville. If for any reason Sandusky's mission fails, you'll standby to take out their fleet. Captain Anderson?"

"Aye, sir."

"What's with all the children?"

"Refugees, sir. From the airliner."

"What?" the admiral said. "From Australia? Why?"

"Climate change," Sandusky said. "Temperatures in the northern territories are now above 150F. Most of Australia, aside from the southern coast, has relocated to northern Canada."

"Climate change," Kimmel said. "From what?"

"Fossil fuels, mostly, though some still argue it's just natural variability."

"So, I don't have a clear picture here," Kimmel said, looking perplexed. "What does all this mean? For the future of humanity?"

Courville shuffled his feet. "Admiral, projections are these climate changes could lead to an extinction level event."

"What?"

"The end of life on the planet, sir. I think that's the reason, that's why we're here."

"Explain."

"Someone or something wants us to change history. Your history, Admiral. My guess is they, whoever they are, think that by making these changes, we might help prevent such an outcome."

"How so?"

"Well sir, after the war the world economy underwent a wild expansion, and carbon based energy fueled that expansion. Automobiles, aircraft, coal fired factories, and by last year, I mean 2035, the global population stood at almost eight billion people, every one of those people wanting more and more. The real problem now, well, it's that there's no way to sustain such growth, but in 2025 the climate began changing radically, and by that I mean it began changing much faster than scientists predicted it could."

"I'm sorry, Colonel, but that doesn't add up."

"Sir?"

"If we stop this attack," Kimmel said, "what changes? Hardly anything. You might delay some aspects of this change, but hardly in the way you imply needs be done."

"Yessir."

"You're missing something. Something important. The only way to prevent the changes you've described would be to completely stop current technological practice. You could do this by introducing an entirely new technology to fuel growth, or by..."

"Sir?"

"Well, by taking humanity back to the Stone Age," Kimmel said, as he looked at Courville's B-2.

+++++

Patricia Hahnemann stared at the man, and he stared at her. They had been locked in a contest of Will for hours, perhaps days. She had no way of knowing where she was, no reference to time; all she knew was that this man was, somehow, probing her mind. She felt him, felt him in her mind. He was looking for something...no...someone.

Images came to her swiftly, suddenly, like the man had found the key and he was talking to her through images. The sensation was overwhelming -- like she had lost complete control of her mind's ability to filter incoming information...and images of astonishing clarity flooded inward at impossible speed...

Too much -- she forced herself to think. Too fast. Slow down.

The images dilated and receded, then slowed, and...

Then she saw a new image, bright and clear. Todd Parks. Sara, standing with Todd Parks, and Parks knows about them, doesn't he? Their ship? Does Parks know about their ship?

She saw the ship now. The image was as clear and vibrant as any picture she had ever seen, and she felt the man's question. She remembered Todd talking about his 'Death Star' -- and how it had orbited the sun, taking plasma directly from the corona...

And then she was standing on a vast, fertile plain, a cool breeze blowing through her hair, the sun directly overhead. This isn't an image, she told herself as she smelled the crisp air, then she watched as the man's head tilted toward the sky, as his eyes went to the sun and as he pointed at the star, then he looked at Patricia Hahnemann and smiled.

(C)2016 Adrian LeverKuhn | ABW



Timeshadow 03



The temperature had fallen into the low-80s, and Judy Aronson was cold. She zipped up her flight jacket and crossed her arms protectively while she and the rest of Beagle Group walked past their helicopters on their way to the old Mission. The air was pregnant with wild scent: trees she'd never known existed, wildflowers cloaked in fragrant kaleidoscopes and wild game cooking over wood fires. She'd known nothing but stale, air conditioned air for the last three years, air spiced with subtle textures of industrial solvents and hydraulic fluid. She watched as children played on dusty, red sand paths, a dog chasing a little boy here, a rooster chasing a cat over there, adobe-walled dwellings everywhere she looked, the white stone walls of the mission standing in subtle contrast, and she found herself wondering what it must be like to come of age in such a place. 

Travis and Crockett were waiting for them just outside the walls of the mission; Travis looked careworn and anxious, Crockett like he was in on the joke. As Aronson drew near, Crockett stepped forward and offered her his arm; annoyed but not knowing what else to do, she took it and smiled in spite of herself when she saw the warmth in his eyes.

Travis led the group to a small courtyard off the main building. She saw venison and goat roasting over open flames, corn and potatoes, and onions too, cooking on flat rocks near the flames. There were yellow candles on weathered tables, torches glowing on iron pikes along the rough stone walls, while an old man sitting in a chair hunched over a guitar by one of the fires played slowly, soulfully, and Aronson felt a sudden affinity for this simple way of life. Life was slower here, she felt, lives seemed to flow at a slower pace, like the breeze she felt flowing through the trees overhead. She felt Crockett's arm, too, entwined in her own and felt connected to this place all the more; she thought of the children playing outside and understood life was life, no matter where you were, no matter what your home looked like. Happiness is where you find it, she heard herself thinking...wherever you are. Whenever that happens to be. She looked at Crockett, looked at the warmth in his eyes, listened to his easy-going humor, and she wondered what it would be like to live here...to love here. 

"I'm sorry we couldn't put on a better dinner," Colonel Travis said, "but our supplies are running low. I'm sure as soon as Colonel Fannin arrives..."

"He won't come," Higgins said. "Fannin will leave Goliad on the 26th with about three hundred men, but history says he stopped after a mile and returned to the fort."

Travis looked down at the ground, rubbed a little patch of dirt with his boot for a moment. "Well, then. I suppose we'll make do tonight," he said with a quick, if vacant smile. "Perhaps tomorrow morning we can go for a hunt."

"I could go," Crockett said hopefully. "I can fetch him, bring supplies."

"What's the point," Travis sighed. "If the Lieutenant and her 'Apaches' do what she says they can, the war will be over a few minutes after it starts, then we ride east, find Houston and give him the good news."

"True," Crockett said. "Yes indeed. Why bother." He turned to Aronson. "I have whiskey, and I have bourbon. Which shall you have?"

"Water, I think, if you don't mind."

"I do mind. Never after sunset, and never with a beautiful woman."

"Never before flying," Aronson said, trying to smile. "On the other hand, I don't think we're flying tomorrow, so why not?"

"That's the spirit." He poured two fingers in a chipped crock mug, then one for himself. "So, where are you from? Not Tennessee, surely?"

"No. Oregon. Astoria, Oregon, but you've never heard of it, have you? It doesn't exist yet," she said, and she had to catch herself. Suddenly she felt like crying, not because her mother and brothers were dead, but because they had never even existed...not yet, anyway.

"It must be very difficult," Crockett said, watching her eyes. "My wife, Elizabeth, was a widow, and my first wife passed very young, too. Loss seems an unavoidable part of our journey, but this journey...the one you're on? I fear it has no precedent. I can't even imagine what you must feel? If you live out your days here, what would come of your memories?"

"I was thinking about that earlier today. About home. A home that doesn't exist yet. My mother, who hasn't been born yet, and who may never be born. Lives that have been lived, yet they may never be lived. How could this happen? Who would do such a thing?"

"I would love to know the future," Crockett said wistfully. "All our mysteries come to life, so many questions answered."

"You know, when I studied history about the only thing I thought about was that it was nothing but a progression of wars. White men fighting war after war. About technology leading to ever more efficient ways of killing people..."

"And so of course you became a soldier?"

"It's difficult to explain. There are very few opportunities for people today, well, you know what I mean. Opportunities for people other than in the military or law enforcement. It's either that or you work for a corporation that makes hardware for the military."

"Are wars so common?"

"Yes, and no. The real problem, David, is that resources like water and arable land have become so scarce, the weather so inhospitable. In most parts of the world, for almost the last ten years, the leading cause of death is suicide..." She fell quiet as visions of her world came flooding in, as memories of shortages and riots replaced the reality of this simple courtyard, this wondrously simple, unspoiled life. 

"I'm so sorry I brought it up again."

"How could you know. I mean, how could anyone living today ever expect what all this leads to. I look around and it all seems so perfect..."

"I guess it is, Judy, but then again, I love Texas. That's why I'm moving my family here, but as different as this must look to you, in it's own way life here is still a struggle too. Life will always be a struggle, I assume. I think it must be. Without struggle, what would we become? Complacent? Consumed with irrelevancies, forgetting about what's most important in life?" 

"Tell me about your wife."

"Elizabeth? I don't know where to start."

"You love her, I assume? Is that a good place to start?"

"Of course, yes, very much. And I miss her terribly."

"You said you have daughters?"

"Yes," he chuckled, "two boys and a girl with my first wife, two girls and a boy with Elizabeth. What about you?"

"No, no children," she said evasively. "I never saw the point, I guess, with where the world is headed."

He looked at her for the longest time, and she could see something beyond sympathy in his eyes, something final and enduring. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I keep forgetting."

"I don't know why you feel the need to apologize?"

"Because I think I feel a sorrow, a sorrow I've never known could exist. Actually, I think it feels like grief, like grieving, but not for any one person. When I think upon what you've told me the future holds, it feels like I've lost my own children. And their children. Like my children lost their way in the woods, and they're gone now."

"Are you hungry?" she said, desperately wanting to change the subject.

"Yes, of course. Let's find some food..."

They sat under a live-oak tree and ate in silence, Travis doing most of the talking until Colonel Bowie appeared. Pale and feverish, he was introduced to Aronson, with Higgins and Travis close by. He made a few pleasantries then asked the group's pardon as he retired to his room; Higgins came and sat by Aronson as he watched Bowie disappear, then he came right to the point.

"I don't know if it's TB or pneumonia, but we have antibiotics on hand that would take care of either one. You want me to talk to him?"

Aronson looked at Higgins and shrugged; Crockett wanted to know what antibiotics were. Higgins pulled out a cardboard blister-pak of pills from his jacket and held them up. "There are five pills on this," Higgins said. "You take one a day. My guess is whatever is ailing Bowie will be cured by these pills within a week. My question to the Lieutenant is an ethical one, I guess. As we're changing history on a strategic level, should we change it again on a more personal level. Give Bowie the medicine, or not."

"That hardly seems a question to me," Crockett said. "If you have the means to make someone well, why wouldn't you?"

"Because we're changing history again," Higgins explained. "If we remove the Mexican threat, well, in that case everyone here lives. Except, I guess, Colonel Bowie, because of his illness. Unless we give him the medicine, and then he lives too."

"I still don't see the problem." Crockett scowled as he looked at Aronson.

But Aronson only shrugged. "Not sure any of us should be playing God, you know, but go ahead. Ask him. See what he wants to do."

Higgins shrugged too. "Sure thing, Lieutenant," he said as he walked off after Bowie.

"Everything we do here is going to be wrong, one way or another," she said to no one in particular.

"So, you're saying Time as it's recorded in History is 'right', that's the natural order of things?"

"That's what it feels like to me, yes. What we plan to do is break the natural order."

"But you'll save everyone's life here."

"And we'll kill thousands of Mexican soldiers who wouldn't otherwise be killed. I just don't see how that changes things."

"How could we," Patty McKaig said, joining the conversation, "when we just don't have enough information to go on."

"So you keep saying," Crockett said as he looked at McKaig – and smiled. "Why's that so important?"

"Because we don't know motives. The motives of whoever put us here. Are they good motives, as we seem to think they are? Motives that truly have the best interests of humanity at heart? What if they're not? What if we unleash a series of events that accelerates collapse? But that's only one part of the problem. Not only do we not know any motives, we also have no idea what the outcomes of our actions might be. We're planning to act because we assume pure motives on the part of whoever put us here in the first place, but I think that's a dangerous assumption. Second, we know one set of outcomes already, if we haven't corrupted that already. That known future, the one we know and came from, may not be optimal, but at least we know where it leads."

"Facts and circumstances," Crockett said. "Remember?"

"Okay," McKaig replied, "we know nothing, really, about either. We know zero facts about 'them' – whoever they are. Circumstances? We're here. That's all we know. We assume this is a pivotal moment, but is it? Really? Maybe..."

"Maybe David returns to Washington, runs for president and wins," Aronson said, grinning.

"But that's my point, precisely," McKaig scowled. "After we intervene, we can no longer make any assumptions about the future. None!"

"If that's true," Crockett mused, now deep in thought, "then we've missed something. If someone was smart enough to bring you here, why would they leave the outcome to chance? That just doesn't make sense."

"Unless they don't care about any particular outcome." Aronson said as she looked at McKaig. "We've missed something. Something important, haven't we?"

+++++

Jim Sutter and Tom Foreman stood in the precinct's watch commander's office, Sutter looking down at photographs of an apartment on the lieutenant's desk. He was tired, almost asleep on his feet, and hadn't left the precinct since he'd come in after the encounter on Park Avenue seven hours earlier. Now "someone from Washington" was in the office too, looking at the video from his phone. At least, that was the rumor he'd heard before he was summoned to the lieutenant's office. Sutter had never seen this stranger around the precinct before, but now, as Sutter watched the expression on the man's face, he wondered just what the hell was going on.

"You say you heard something? When this sphere was hovering outside the building," the stranger asked.

"Like an electro-static hum," Sutter said, nodding his head. "Very faint."

"And then it, the sphere, just went up into the clouds? Was it snowing then?"

"No sir. It seemed to get cold first, as the sphere rose, then it started snowing."

"Did you notice anything else? When this was going on, when it started snowing?"

"Sir?"

"Look at your video again," the stranger said, pointing at the wall, "but ignore the sphere. Look at the sky, and the other buildings down Park Avenue," the stranger said as he hit the play button.

The image came alive on the wall screen, the blue sphere hovering outside the 100 story tall apartment tower. Sutter ignored the sphere as best he could, then he noticed stars in the sky and he remembered it had been a clear night, but not that clear. He'd never seen so many stars in the night sky, and the view was stunning – but as suddenly the sky was opaque. The sky changed in an instant and was now full of clouds, then buildings along Park Avenue began to fade away, like they had been erased... And just as suddenly they reappeared – just as the sphere disappeared – and as the snow started falling.

Sutter stood, mouth agape, as the video was played and replayed. "I never saw that," he said. "I was too focused on the sphere."

"Understandable," the stranger said. "The same thing happened to me too. The question that comes to mind now, Jim, is did you feel anything unusual while this was going on? I mean physically?"

Sutter tried to think back, but all he could recall was shock, then a brief moment of fear when someone yelled it was time to get the motorcade moving. "No sir, not really."

"The video shows something inside the sphere. Does that look like a person to you?"

"That's the impression I had when I was looking at it, yes sir. It felt like someone was looking at me, trying to tell me something."

The stranger looked at the watch commander, who nodded his head. "Jim," the lieutenant said, "is there any chance you've met someone named Patricia Hahnemann before...or that you, perhaps, know a woman by that name?"

"Patricia Hahnemann? No sir, never, not that I know of."

"Jim, this is Tom Foreman, from CID, and Jon Gray," the lieutenant said, making introductions. "He's from, well, an agency in Washington. Tom was the first person to enter the apartment. The apartment the sphere left, and the place belongs to one Patricia Hahnemann. Have you ever just heard her name before, anywhere, or know anything about her? Anything at all?"

"No sir. Nothing comes to mind."

"Well Jim, when Tom searched the apartment this morning he found this," 'Mr Gray' said, handing him a piece of paper.

Jim Sutter stared in shock at the photograph he'd been handed. He was standing between two middle-aged women, a man wearing an NYU sweatshirt stood to one side, with a much older man beside that man. The older man was bearded, and looked like some sort of comic book wizard. A very young girl, who for some reason struck him as being blind, stood in front of him, and he had his hand on the girl's shoulder. In the background? A city. It looked vaguely familiar, but very strange, like maybe something from Disney World...and he looked up at the stranger, this 'Mr Gray', and the watch commander, now completely confused.

He shrugged, shook his head. "I don't know anyone in this picture, sir. And wherever this was taken, I've never been there. It must be a fake, sir." 

"Look at the streets," Gray said.

"What are those? Horse-drawn carts?" Sutter said, his confusion growing.

"Yup," Gray said. "That's Florence, Italy. The woman on your right is Hahnemann; we haven't identified the man in the sweatshirt or the little girl yet, but the other woman is, we think, Hahnemann's sister, Sara Goodman. We've run all the people in the image through all facial recognition databases, and the older man has been identified as Galileo, if that makes any sense at all, based on portraits in museums."

"Does he live in Florence," Foreman said, "this Galileo dude?"

"At some point he did, yes," Gray said, shaking his head, "other times in Pisa. What disturbs me is the street traffic. No modern vehicular traffic of any sort, no cars, no trucks, not even a bicycle. The scene looks medieval, even the wood scaffolding on part of the campanile. So, what this photograph implies is that you, and it seems these other people too, have been in Florence, Italy – about 400 years ago. And as you have no memory of the event, the logical conclusion is that, for you anyway, this hasn't happened yet."

"400 years ago!?" Foreman yelled. 

"Do either of you know who Galileo was?"

Foreman shook his head.

"I do," Sutter said. "An astronomer, persecuted by the church."

"That's right," Gray said. "In the 1600s. So what are you and this Hahnemann woman doing in Florence, 400 years ago?"

"It's just not possible," the lieutenant said. "It's got to be a fake!"

"And the sphere? That a fake too?" An argument broke out, both men facing off and shouting at one another, and Foreman backed off, expecting the worst.

"Excuse me," Sutter said, trying to break in. "But where did the photo come from?"

Foreman looked at Gray, who shrugged and looked away. "Jim," the lieutenant said, "the image was on her phone. Hahnemann's phone."

"Okay," Sutter said. "Who sent it to her?"

Gray turned around and looked at Foreman again, then at Sutter. "You did, Jim," Gray said. "Two weeks from tomorrow."

+++++

Patty McKaig looked at Crockett and Aronson sitting together by the fire and she almost had to laugh. He was flirting with her, she saw, and suddenly the idea was almost overwhelmingly hilarious. Judy Aronson was about as far from being a heterosexual female as you could find, and Crockett just hadn't picked up the signals. Still, she thought, why would he – indeed, how could he see the signs any 21st century woman put out? But why Aronson? She was taller than he, built like a linebacker and by all accounts a hell of a lot meaner too, and while she'd been flying for three years, she'd also gone to Ranger school. She was a tough customer, so maybe he'd been attracted to that, but at one point Crockett put his hand on her thigh and McKaig almost laughed when Aronson slid away from him. Poor guy! He picked up on that, however, and right away, too... 

Then Aronson stood and walked over to her.

"What's with this guy," Aronson said when she got to McKaig's side.

"He's horny, Judy. Higgins told me he's been away from his wife for over a year...so cut him some slack! He's probably about to explode..."

"Look, I don't want to...you know what I mean?"

"So don't. Look Judy, the guy probably doesn't even know what a lesbian is, and even if he does, it wasn't something people went around advertising 200 years ago. You may be the first one he's ever met..."

"Geesh. Why me?"

"I guess you don't even want to throw him a mercy fuck?"

"No fucking way. He smells like a goat, and it looks like he's never brushed his teeth. I mean, never."

"Different world, Judy. It's a different world. So, would you mind if I gave it a shot?"

Aronson looked at McKaig incredulously. "Really? Would you?"

"Well, you know what Judy? Turns out I'm just a little bit horny too, and remember what the song says...you gotta love the one you're with."

"You and that ancient crap. Well, knock yourself out."

McKaig walked over and sat down beside Crockett. "Got any more whiskey," she said.

"Sure," he said, looking up, "but you'll have to share my cup."

"Not a problem, Amigo."

"You speak Mexican?"

"Pocito."

He laughed. "Yeah? Me too. What's with the lieutenant? She seems...shy?"

"She's involved with someone else, I think."

"Serious?"




Timeshadow 03



"I don't know much about it, David." She looked at him with her best poker face, but he already looked about three sheets to the wind.

"How 'bout you, darlin'?" he said as he looked her over. "You – involved?"

"Me? No. As a matter of fact, it's been a while since I had a boyfriend," she said as she looked him in the eye. "How long have you been away from home?"

"Too long."

"You know, David, I think you and I could help each other out tonight."

"Darlin'...you must be a mind reader. Besides, you're about as cute as any woman I ever met."

"Oh, David, I can do a lot more than read minds." She leaned over and bit his ear, ran her tongue around lightly a few seconds, then whispered something in his ear...

"You know what?" Davey Crockett said as he hopped up and held his hand out, "You and me need to go for a little walk. I got somethin' you really need to see..."

+++++

His tanks full and all ordnance flags pulled, Sandusky taxied to the end of the runway, the Orion constellation hanging high over the western horizon, Kimmel's orders still burning in his ear.

"Wait for their aircraft to begin launch operations, then take out the carriers. If you can identify any battleships, take them out too, then shoot down any incoming aircraft that take off. Our fleet is forming up off Diamond Head right now, steaming north to pursue any stragglers. Try to cover them if any threats materialize."

Sandusky looked over his left wing at the three other Lightnings and he felt butterflies in his gut. 'This is so wrong,' he said to himself as he flipped to the tactical frequency. "Boomer lead. Let's depart on zero-four-zero, climb to flight level two two heading due north, then we'll break into two sections when we go feet wet. Radar off until we split, then I'll ID the carriers visually and light 'em up for you."

"Two, roger."

"Three, roger."

"Four, roger."

"Boomer four, you stay on air-to-air. If you see anything that could threaten the harbor or the fleet, take out the threat then resume CAP over the base until we return. The B-2 will be orbiting at flight level four four, on this frequency, and the tanker will be on stand-by here at the field."

"Four, got it."

"Boomer lead, taking off when I get the green light..."

Standing in the tower high above the field, Kimmel and Short nodded to the controller, told him to give the Lightnings the green take-off light, and when Boomer five-oh-five ran up to full military power the ground began shaking, and Kimmel put his hands over his ears...

"Dear God!" he shouted, but nobody heard him, then Five-oh-five was roaring down the runway and it leapt into the sky, trailing a huge pencil-like line of flame as it went ballistic – straight up into the night sky... Kimmel looked at Short, and both grinned savagely. 

"This just ain't going to be a fair fight," Short said as Boomer Two ran up to full power, then leapt down the runway.

Lights all over the city came on... People ran into their yards, into the streets and looked up into the night sky as four howling demons shot up through a line of clouds, lighting them up from the inside – turning clouds to yellow motes in Satan's eye, and the world huddled in fear as the horsemen turned north and disappeared into the darkness.

+++++

"Boomer lead, feet wet. Go active ECM, radars from standby to active."

"Boomer four, I have multiple aircraft in two groups, range niner zero miles, heading one niner one, speed one six zero, altitude four thousand and climbing. Looks like four zero aircraft in the first group, four niner in the second."

"Lead, four, a little earlier than expected. Take 'em out, then watch our backs."

"Four, lead, roger. Weapons hot, going in."

"Lead, I'm going to burner now, up to flight level three zero, and I'll advise when I have the fleet painted."

"Three."

"Two."

Sandusky eased the stick back, climbed quickly to thirty thousand feet and leveled off, then turned on his high power search radar: instantly two groups of ships appeared, still more than a hundred miles away – but as Sandusky's F-35 covered the distance in just a few minutes, he powered back and looked at his threat panel. Low powered search radars were painting his aircraft – even as he jammed the Japanese radars, something which was unheard of in 1941. Now at cruise power and at thirty thousand feet, it was doubtful anyone below would even hear his approach.

Soon his radar was picking up enough data to ascertain size quite accurately, and the computer was assigning threat values based on this data. "Lead to flight, radar has six, repeat six carriers, two battleships, two heavy cruisers, and a whole shitload of destroyers and supply ships."

"Lead, two. Can you define shitload, please. That ain't on my cheat-sheet."

"Two, Lead. Sure it is, it's right before syphilis. Look it up."

"Two, roger."

"Lead, two, lighting up the first carrier, NOW!"

The targeting laser in the nose of Boomer five-oh-five powered up and Sandusky flipped to the target screen. He centered the crosshairs on the closest carrier and activated the beam.

+++++

Rear Admiral Hara Chuichi stood next to Captain Jojima Takatsugu on the bridge of the aircraft carrier Shokaku, both looking over the flight deck as the last aircraft of 5th FCU rumbled down the deck and crawled into the dawn sky, when the starboard lookout called out that he had spotted something unusual.

Captain Takatsugu walked out onto the small catwalk off the bridge and the lookout pointed high into the night sky...

"The sun, Captain, flashed briefly on the target. I do not know what it is."

+++++

"Lead, two. Target acquired and locked on."

"Two, lead. Fox one."

"Lead, two, one away."

+++++

Admiral Chuichi joined Takatsugu on the catwalk when he saw the captain looking up at the sky through binoculars. "What is it, Captain?"

"I do not know, Admiral. It is an aircraft, apparently circling, but it is too high..."

Another lookout screamed: "Aircraft...port quarter..."

Chuichi and Takatsugu swept to left, ahead of their ship, and both saw the pale gray shape closing on the carrier Zuikaku three miles away, to the left of their ship. The aircraft, for what else could it be, was skimming the waves when, perhaps a half mile from the Zuikaku, it rose to perhaps a hundred feet above the sea, then, when it appeared to pass over the forward part of the carrier, the sun came out. 

Chuichi reacted first. He just managed to close his eyes as the main blast wave of the thermobaric warhead hit the Shokaku. A fireball a quarter mile in diameter formed above the Zuikaku, then the secondary explosive warhead detonated, amplifying the primary fuel-air explosion and causing the air temperature around the target to reach 2500 degrees in a matter of milliseconds. Every ounce of fuel, every pound of ordnance on the Zuikaku spontaneously combusted, and Captain Takatsugu's mind barely had time to register pain as the hypersonic blast wave slammed into the Shokago, knocking him off his feet. 

He scrambled to his feet, helped Admiral Chuichi to his when he noticed fires breaking out on the deck of his ship, as he saw Chuichi's uniform. It was scorched, and the admiral's skin was bright red, his hair gone...burned away.

"The Zuikaku!" shouted Chuichi. "Where is it!"

Takatsugu's eyes scanned the sea where just moments before 850 feet of iron and steel had graced the seas. Now almost 1700 men and three squadrons of aircraft were – gone. "Bridge! Come hard right, new course two seven zero and all ahead full; signal destroyers: make smoke. Break radio silence, tell Akagi we are under attack from unknown..."

"Captain, lookouts advise another incoming aircraft, dead ahead!"

"Open fire! All anti-aircraft batteries...FIRE!"

Takatsugu didn't need binoculars to see the incoming aircraft...it too was skimming the sea, now perhaps two miles out, then it was climbing. As he watched the birth of another sun overhead, he found himself lost in shame, hoping the Emperor would excuse his incompetence...



(C)2016 Adrian Leverkühn | ABW



Timeshadow 04



She woke up in deepest night bathed in sweat, looked over at the man sleeping next to her and wondered who he was, then it all came back in a rush...

She was in a small adobe lodge next to the old mission, the Alamo, and that 'rich' smelling man was Davey Crockett – but...something was wrong. Something had changed. She ran her hands over her thighs and belly, then... 

...she sat up and looked around the room, just as a sharp blade of nausea passed through her like a scythe. A lone candle flickered on the one small table in the room, and she could just make out bare mud walls with a single crucifix hanging above the entry. She saw a small scorpion crawling up the wall above her head and sat up quickly, then, what? 

Do I feel light-headed? No, I feel ill, or something like ill, because...what was that?...the room just faded from view! But... 

Thoughts came out of the darkness in a rush now, disjointed fragments of images – like dreams out of sequence – filling her mind with chaos...then the room brightened and quickly came back into focus...

"Something's not right," she said as she quickly laced up her boots and ran outside. She looked around, spied a low wall nearby and sprinted to it, then jumped up and started scanning the horizon.

"It's over there," she heard Higgins say, and she turned towards his voice, followed his eyes to the south.

"Oh, God no," McKaig said, her heart now filled with dread. She couldn't tell how big the blue sphere was, or even how far away it might be, but her first impression was that it was huge, and not more than ten miles away. 

"Interesting," Higgins said, looking at his wristwatch. He punched a button on the watch, then lit the display, and McKaig could see the blue glow from where she stood. "Two-oh-five degrees. I make it 15 miles. What's your guess?"

"Ten, I think." McKaig looked around, but couldn't see any other people asleep in the courtyard. 

"One of us needs to tell Aronson," he said.

"What woke you?" McKaig said, still unsure what she'd just experienced.

"Nothing. I've been talking with Bowie all night. I gave him an A-pak and a Z-pak, and a shot of Vita-stim in the thigh. Big mistake. He didn't stop talking for five hours, then it was like: bang! The lights went out and that's all folks."

"Interesting conversation, I take it."

"Yeah, you could say that. Uh...how was Mr Crockett," he said, grinning.

"He, uh, has big feet." She was glad it was dark out; no way could he see her blushing... 

"Ah. Feeling a little stretched, are we?"

"Man alive. Felt like a Roto-rotter attached to a jack-hammer..."

"Shoulda popped him with a Vita-stim. That woulda been fun to listen to from out here..."

"You have a sick mind, Higgins."

"Say it ain't so, darlin'. Well, just so you know, there're a shitload of snakes out here. Rattlers and copperheads mostly, so if you see something that looks like a large twig on the ground, make sure it doesn't move before you step on it."

"I hate snakes," McKaig said...

"Who doesn't?" she heard Crockett say. "Rattlers taste good, but them copperheads taste like dog shit. What're y'all doin' up so early, anyway?"

"Hey," McKaig said, surprised how happy she felt when she saw him. "Did we wake you?"

"No," he said as he walked over to a tree and started peeing. "Little too much bourbon last night, I think. So, what got you two up?"

She looked at Higgins – who looked away, grinning. "Something didn't feel right," she said at last.

"You too? I felt like I was going to get sick, opened my eyes and everything was black...like I was looking through haze..."

"Me too," Higgins said, startled. "About ten minutes ago...everything went black..."

"Aronson," McKaig said. "Gotta tell her..." she said as she bolted from the courtyard.

"Snakes!" Higgins called out, reminding her. "Watch out for the goddamn snakes!"

+++++

Todd Parks sat at his computer, Galileo on one side, June sitting very close on the other; he had a planetarium program open and Parks was slowly, methodically explaining the origins of the solar system, June making the translations she could. When Parks ran into concepts June just couldn't translate he tried Latin, but that language's basic vocabulary simply wasn't geared to 21st century cosmological discoveries, so when he ran into those items he tried visual demonstrations on screen, followed with mathematical explorations to clarify key concepts. He noticed after a while that while Galileo was intuitively intelligent, and his basic math skills were solid, he broke down when calculus was invoked – and Parks had to backtrack and fill in the holes with sketches.

They came to a discussion of the sun, and he backtracked to the spectral characteristics of stars, all stars – including "our" star – and how electromagnetic radiation was first analyzed by using prisms. He pulled up the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and went over the spectral classification of stars, then over the basics of the Morgan-Keenan temperature classification system, and somewhere in this discussion a video screen popped up and began playing. 

Parks was annoyed when this happened because it was an un-commanded execution, and when he tried to shut the video player down – and nothing happened.

Then his "Death Star" video started playing, and Galileo asked what they were watching...

The object moved towards the Sun then – and again, with no command from Parks – the playback speed slowed to a crawl, and Parks gasped when he saw the black shadow behind the brilliant white orbiter for the very first time.

"What is this?" June translated almost as fast as Galileo spoke, but Parks simply held up one finger while he studied the on-screen image.

"It's not a screen artifact," he said to himself, though he was unaware he was speaking aloud, then he pointed at the screen, at the "Death Star". "Now, what the devil is this?" It looked like the outer hull of the orbiter was shedding material... "Ice? Could it be ice boiling off as the hull superheats?"

Then Galileo pointed at the screen, and June began translating: "This black object has mass," she said. "See how the white matter flows into the black sphere? It is almost like it's being drawn to the blackness. It has mass...and gravity...?"

"A singularity?" Parks muttered. No, he saw the white matter fall away after contact... So, the black object had mass, it had velocity, and it appeared to be following the orbiter. 

"But what are these things?" Galileo asked, and Parks sat back and looked at the screen one more time, then at Galileo.

"They are ships, my friend. Ships that travel between the stars."

"Who pilots these ships," the old man said, his voice trembling, and Parks could hear the fear in June's voice as she translated. "Are they human? From Earth?"

He looked June, then at Galileo and shook his head.

The old man looked at the little girl and understood, then he crossed himself – something he hadn't done privately in years – then he stood and walked unsteadily from the table.

+++++

"I don't like it," Aronson said. "It's just too big a coincidence to have happened right now."

"We still have two days before Santa Anna's army is due to arrive, don't we? So, why now?"

"Why not?" Aronson said. 

"Because something's changed. Somewhere, somehow..."

"Or some time."

"That would mean..."

"You saw the sphere go all the way down to the ground?" Aronson asked.

"Yes, Lieutenant," McKaig said. "Both Higgins and I saw it go below the tree line, ten, maybe fifteen miles away, almost due south, maybe around 205 degrees."

"Okay. Wake everyone up, and I want to preflight two birds – mine and Higgins'." McKaig saluted and ran back to the campsite; Aronson went to Beagle one and opened the canopy, climbed up into the cockpit. She woke up the batteries and powered up bus two, then she powered up the ECM system and looked at each the threat receivers... "Nothing," she said aloud, as if to reassure herself. Moments later her WEPs climbed in back and started waking up systems while other pilots walked around her Apache and pulled flags off all the ordnance. Chavez checked her aircraft's external sensors and cut loose the rotor blades, just as she saw Higgins walking back from the mission. She saw his eyes then, watery and bloodshot, and groaned inwardly as he stepped up beside her.

"Did you get any sleep last night," Aronson asked.

Higgins shook his head. "I stayed up talking with Bowie all night. Gave him a Vita-stim, too."

"Oh. Bet that was interesting."

"In a way. He's a...unique...individual, that's for sure."

"Think you can fly?"

"Me? Sure. I didn't have any of Crockett's 'shine, or whatever he calls that paint thinner."

Aronson looked him in the eye. "How big was that sphere?"

"Huge. About twice the apparent diameter of the moon – I'd guess a kilometer wide."

"Well, fuck," she said. I guess you better saddle up. I want to go check it out, but I have a bad feeling..."

"Plan of attack?"

"Stealth mode. Slow, through the trees. I want you to stay about a mile to the west of me, and a little behind..."

"We'll kick up a lot of dust that way..."

"Okay. What's your idea?"

"I'll circle around, come up from their rear while you probe slowly from here. Zig-zag between stands of trees, vary your altitude but don't kick up a bunch of shit."

Aronson nodded. "I like it, but I want a third, someone off to my west. Chavez!" she called out.

"Yo!"

"You're coming, so saddle up; I want you to keep west of me, treetops but vary your altitude to avoid rotor blast. Let's keep ECM and radar on stand-by. Chavez, you're Beagle Two, Higgins, three. Go to TAC frequency three, enable scrambled burst mode."

Both pilots nodded.

"Rules of engagement?" Higgins asked.

Aronson shook her head. "I don't want to give anything away, not yet. Bug-out unless there's no way out. Chavez? Get your WEPs and let's get going..." She turned to McKaig. "Monitor TAC three," Aronson said, looking around, "and be prepared to move everyone out of here. Break camp now. If we need to regroup, find some low cover 20 miles due north and wait for us."

"Lieutenant? What's up?"

"I don't know. Something feels wrong."

"Okay, twenty due north on your go."

Aronson nodded, then looked at McKaig closely. "How was Crockett?"

McKaig blushed. "He's kinda sweet. Loopy, but sweet."

"No regrets?"

"No. None at all."

Aronson nodded, grinned. "Well, I'm glad someone got laid last night. Why don't you keep Travis or Crockett close by 'til we get back?"

"Right. Will do," McKaig said as she saluted; Aronson returned it as she closed the canopy and checked safeties, then she slipped on her Nomex gloves. She held up her right index finger and twirled it a few times, telling everyone on the ground she was starting engines, and she worked her way through the Engine Start Checklist. When she saw Beagles two and three were ready, she pressed the button on the stick to key the mic:

"Lead to three: go now. Head north...maybe those hills will mask your approach, and keep an eye on your fuel. Try to get back with at least a half load. If we need to bug out, twenty miles due north from the mission."

"Three received."

"Two received."

She watched as Higgin's Apache lifted and veered away from the sunrise, nose down and gathering speed, first across a broad meadow then as it disappeared into trees. She looked across to Chavez and shot him the 'thumb's up' – then rolled forward before she pulled up on the collective.

"Beagle lead. Start the mission clock," and all three WEPs operators set clocks and began activating their onboard weapons systems. She crossed right over the mission, looked down at Crockett, Travis, and now even Jim Bowie was down there, hand up, shading his face from the rotor blast as her ship passed overhead. Once clear of the compound she slipped lower and checked her port side mirror for dust. Clear at 30 feet, so she slipped lower – and just below 20 feet 'above ground level' she saw tan dust rising so she pulled up a bit and began weaving slowly through and between stands of cedars and live oak trees. She kept it up for several anxious minutes, then:

"Three to lead."

"Lead, go."

"Thirty five miles down range, turning back to the north now."

"Lead to two, move out a little more to the west."

"Two, got it."

She saw the yellow light on the ECM panel almost immediately...there was a low-power search radar sweeping the sky just ahead... 

"Beagle two, lead, picking up agile scans on 26.5 through 40 Ghz."

"Lead, got it."

"Three, not getting painted out here."

"Lead to Beagles. Go active ECM."

"Lieutenant," her weapons officer said on the intercom, "at those frequencies it's got to be a Russian T-14."

"I know," Aronson said.

"Okay," WEPs said, "picking up AESA scans now. Confirm Russian T-14s, five, maybe six radars transmitting."

"Got a bearing?"

"Zero-seven-seven degrees, eighteen kilometers to lead element."

The threat warning annunciator lit-off, audible warnings began chirping on the ECM board, and Aronson slowed and went into a hover inches off the ground, behind a large outcropping of rock and scrub.

"LAUNCH detected!" her WEPs shouted; Aronson looked over the trees and saw three lance-like pillars of smoke race by just overhead, and she winced when she heard the detonations somewhere behind her Apache.

"Beagle lead to base. BUG OUT NOW. Beagle two, Beagle three, RTB now, repeat, return to base and lets cover the movement."

"Two."

"Three to lead. I've got eyes on five command tanks, guessing 30 more T-14s in five columns. Several fixed heat blooms, guessing a regiment sized ground force with APCs and two SAM launchers."

"Received! RTB, and stay down in the weeds!"

"Three, roger your RTB."

'What the hell's going on now!' Aronson thought, now feverish with dread as she slipped back through the trees towards the mission compound. There was no way the defenders at the Alamo could stand up to an augmented motorized group, let alone a regiment of Russian troops: she had to convince Travis and Bowie to leave the garrison and warn Houston...

"Lieutenant!" WEPs screamed over the intercom. "Two o'clock high!"

She looked right and high and groaned at the sight. 

Three new spheres, each unbelievably huge, drifted down through the crisp morning sky, but her eyes soon darted to the left. A wall of dark, menacing cloud, perhaps ten miles high and spitting lightning everywhere she looked was roaring out of the north – and within seconds she was fighting to keep her Apache aloft in a howling crosswind and blinding snow.

+++++

Sandusky reefed Boomer 505 into a tight left turn; he looked out over the wing and down into the Pacific 32,000 feet below; one battleship remained, and he could see fires burning out of control all along it's length. As he watched, fire hit the main magazines and a fireball emerged from the center of the ship, and Sandusky suddenly felt sick to his stomach. Nine missiles fired at fundamentally defenseless men and ships, and in a matter of minutes close to fifteen thousand lives had been obliterated. Now, as the smoke cleared, even this ship was gone, another 900 men gone... 

"Lead, two. Anything else we need to hit?"

Sandusky just shook his head. "Boomer lead. All remaining ships are heading north northwest into a squall line. Four, what's that incoming strike look like?"

"Four, lead. They're turning to the north now, skipper. I don't think they've seen me, either."

"One of the carriers must have gotten an abort code off," Boomer two said. "What should we do, Lead? There are no carriers out there for them to land on?"

Sandusky fought the wave of helplessness that hit him as he thought of the hundred or so men down there... "No godddamnit! They're pilots!" he shouted out loud as he flipped up his targeting visor and leveled his wings. He shook his head, struggled to regain his sense of humanity, thought of all the joint training OPS he'd been through with Japanese pilots over the years...

"Lead. Form up on me, then let's see if we can...Holy shit...Lead to Two-nine bravo."

"Bravo, go," Courville said.

"What's your heading?"

"090 at FL44, 478 knots, 'bout halfway to Moloka'i on my pattern."

"Come to 320 and tell me what you see."

Courville entered the heading on the flight director and the B-2 began a slow, standard rate turn to the left, then he craned his head around to see what Sandusky was, apparently, so worried about. 

"Hold mother of God," Captain Sinclair said as the wall of cloud appeared ahead of them. "That wasn't there fifteen minutes ago."

"It's not there now," Courville said, pointing at the weather radar.

"Put it on max range," she said, and Courville turned the range knob. A solid red wall appeared and both shook their head.

"Height has to be over a hundred thousand at this range scale," he said. "That's just not possible."

"Look at the lightning," Sinclair said. "Good thing we don't have to fly through that crap..."

Courville grunted, looked at the display again. "Two-niner Bravo to Boomer lead. Estimated height of cloud over F-L 100, and it's really moving-in fast."

"Roger that. I'm already getting some snow here."

"Four to Lead. Get out of there! Now!"

Sandusky looked up in time to see a deep gray lozenge-shaped orb emerge from the cloud – then it shimmered in the air and hovered, filling the sky just above his aircraft. He sat inside the mechanical cocoon that kept him alive at this altitude, happy to be alive and sorry it was all going to end so soon, then he suddenly felt unsure of anything and everything about the world around him. Nausea returned, the world grew dim – even his cocoon began to fade away – then a blue sphere, impossibly close and getting closer – lay just ahead in his path and instinct took over. He rammed the throttle to full military power and pulled back sharply on the stick, his eyes growing wide with fear and wonder as the view ahead filled with the certainty of his death.

(C)2016 Adrian Leverkühn | ABW