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27 — The Battle for Command

“Go, go, go!” Jerry shouted, his arm waving as Johnny, Lewie and then Aaron all rushed past. He put his AR-15 assault rifle to his eye, or close enough as his large, black-framed glasses would allow, and fired.

Coming just around the bend and raising up what looked like a pen was a Gray. Jerry’s shot took it in the shoulder, but since its frame was so small and the force of the gun so much, the blast took of the thing’s whole side. Blowing out his breath in relief that the alien hadn’t gotten the flash gun up in time, Jerry started forward.

“There it is,” Paul was saying when Jerry got up against a parked alien UFO of some sort, another one beside it so they had some cover.

“See it,” Aaron said, emptying out the clips from his guns and then re-inserting them again, a nervous habit he had.

“How are you gonna—”

Lewie’s words were cut off as a laser or weapon of some sort blasted right into the UFO near their heads.

“Sombitch!” Jonny said, those large black lips of his quivering in anger. He grabbed hold tightly of his shotgun, jumped up, and fired a shot off in the direction the laser blast had come, then another and another before falling back down.

“They’re movin’ in,” he said, his eyes darting this way and that.

“It’s alright,” Paul said, his voice level and calm, like always, “we just have to get to that door, get it open, and that’s that — the controls to the sonic and all the rest of Dulce are in there.”

“The sonic — that’s down below on Level 7!” Jerry shouted.

Paul shook his head. “It’s in here, too — I know it.”

“Then let’s move,” Jerry said, narrowing his eyes at him, and started to rise up, “you men move and I’ll cover the rear — get that door open!”

The others didn’t have much choice in the matter — Jerry jumped up and began firing his machine gun rapidly, those thick glasses of his obscuring his eyes, but not the wicked grin on his face.

“Move!” Aaron shouted, and the others took off, Lewie charging forth across the open floor toward the command center thirty yards away, Paul and Johnny and then Aaron behind him.

“C’mon,” Aaron shouted once they’d moved a bit and Jerry was still behind, shooting at the Grays behind them, “we can’t get too far from Paul!”

Aaron kept back-stepping as he said it, and within another moment he was already ten yards from Jerry.

“Jerry, c’mon!” he shouted again, but it was too late. Paul was far enough away now, as well as the protection his mental blocking ability afforded. One of the Grays somewhere in the distance or firing upon them from afar, sensed this, and began to work its mental muscle.

“Paul!” Aaron shouted, and ahead of him Johnny and then Paul turned about.

“Damn!” Paul said under his breath, the first that any of them had heard him swear. Ahead of him Jerry was struggling, his AR-15 beginning to move back to point at his head, his arms fighting a losing battle to prevent his body from unintentionally killing itself.

“Fuck this!” Johnny said, and grabbed one of the grenades fastened at his belt. He lobbed it up and over where Jerry had been shooting, and a few moments later it exploded.

BOOM!

Not waiting to see if that did the trick or not, Johnny rushed forth and started firing into the smoky area past the parked UFOs where the alien fire had been coming from.

“Got him!” Lewie shouted, and Johnny looked over his shoulder to see Jerry down on the ground, and once again under command of his own faculties. Paul was near.

“Let’s get to that door before this happens again!” he shouted at them, although it sounded more like the way an average person talked.

It was clear that what Grays there were in the port area of the base hadn’t been expecting an attack, and were now scurrying to play catch up. What’s more, already several of their number had been gunned-down, the initial Gray by Paul and then the one by Jerry, not counting however many Johnny managed to blow to hell or whatever version of it the things had. It was for that reason that the five special forces soldiers managed to race across the thirty yards of open port hangar floor to reach the small command facility building set square in the center of the large space. No further shots came, and within seconds Johnny was fiddling with the controls.

“C’mon!” Lewie shouted, looking around nervously, his two Colt .45s held up and at the ready.

“Blow it!” Jerry shouted a second later.

“We need this building secure,” Paul said calmly, giving the two men an even look.

“Got it!” Johnny said a moment later, and there was an audible click, hiss of air, and then the door opened. The men rushed inside.

* * *

“They’re in!” Eddie shouted, clapping his hands together. He and the other main scientists, engineers and astronauts of the FAT Team were still in the helicopter, which was still just sitting out in the open.

“They’ll have it secure in a minute, two at the most,” Stan said, his eyes sparkling with a mischievous from under that large mustache.

Ronnie smiled at him. “Then let’s get to work.”

The men bolted from the helicopter and out toward the three lines of parked UFO fighter craft on the other side of the hangar.

“No… hey… shit!” Stu said from his spot in the helicopter, then held up his hand to stop Eddie from trying to rush after them. “No, let them go — they know what they’re doing… I hope.”

* * *

“What the hell is all this?” Lewie said once they were inside the command center.

“Never seen a computer before?” Paul smiled at him, what Lewie figured was the closest he’d ever come to a laugh.

“No, er… yes, er… you know!”

“These are complex systems, devised to keep unwanteds out and the better-not-seens in,” Aaron said as he huddled up to one control console and began looking at numbers and dials and knobs and readouts.

“What’s what?” Jerry said with a laugh. “All this junk looks the same to me.”

“They’re servers,” Paul said, not taking his eyes from scanning the various controls in a very quick and thorough way, “they hold all the information you could ever want and keep the base safe. And if any one of these things ever—”

Johnny narrowed his eyes and looked over at Paul, who’d stopped mid-sentence for some reason.

“Here it is!” the super soldier said in excitement. “The sonic controls!”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Aaron shouted. “Switch it off!”

“Alright,” Paul said right back, and a moment later flipped off the seven yellow-lit switches all in a row. There was an audible hum, a lowering of frequency, a depressing drone.

“Sounds like you just killed something,” Lewie laughed.

“Yeah,” Aaron said with a smile, pointing out the one small window on the side of the wall near the door. There they could see the flickering of the hologram concealing the very blast doors they’d come in through. What’s more, they now saw that those blast doors were in fact holograms themselves. They knew this when they just winked right out of existence.

Jerry laughed and the others looked to him, looked to see that wicked grin of his.

“Time to rock and roll,” he smiled.

28 — Disarray Down Below

Dulce Platform (Level 7)
Thursday, May 24, 1979

“What’s that?” Major John Bingham said, his eyes darting up above to where the lights were on the train’s ceiling, lights that were just then beginning to flicker, winking in and out. As usual, he had his lucky Vietnam combat helmet on, the dull and faded green a stark contrast to the black special forces and Delta Force uniforms all of the men were wearing. He said it brought him luck, however, and none of the men were going to begrudge him that.