Something like a giant green worm was extruding through the gate, filling it from side to side. As he watched a ball of lightning jumped out from a horn on the side of one segment and impacted on an Abrams, which exploded in a ball of fire. He saw 25mm rounds bouncing off the armor on the thing and just as he wondered about Abrams rounds a “silver bullet” went downrange with a sound like ripping cloth, impacted on the armor of the thing and then, incredibly, bounced off, the depleted uranium arrow breaking into pieces and sparking fire.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, keying the Forward Air Control frequency.
“Alpha Seven this is Romeo Two-Eight!”
“Romeo Two-Eight, this is Alpha Seven. Before you ask I’ve already called for JDAMs. Impact in forty-five seconds. Danger very God damned close!”
Shane switched frequency to the company net and shouted: “JDAM! JDAM! JDAM!”
A B-52 or B-1 bomber had been on continuous loiter since an hour after his company arrived, their Joint Directed Attack Munitions programmed to the location of the gate. Because of the danger of the gate the weapons they were carrying were M-82 two-thousand-pound bombs. In the event of their use the only thing the infantry could do was hunker down and hope like hell that the bomb hit the target and didn’t hit them. If it came anywhere near the line it would probably kill half the company.
Artillery rounds were already starting to land but they had no more effect on the creature than the Abrams rounds. And, as he watched in horror, more bolts of lightning were jumping skywards. He looked up and winced at the first titanic explosion overhead. Then there was a tremendous roar in the sky and the contrail that had indicated the presence of the B-52 on station was abruptly terminated in a gigantic cloud of fire and smoke.
There were three segments through the gate, now, all of them belching chain lightning. The artillery started to dwindle as some of the lightning intercepted it overhead, the explosions raining shrapnel down on the beleaguered infantry company. But he noticed that the front segment had taken damage. It seemed to be crippled, being pushed ahead by the trailing segments, and was no longer firing. It could be hurt.
“All units,” he called. “Try to aim for repeated hits on the same spot. Try to bust through this thing’s armor.”
The gunner had slid into his seat, replacing the driver who started the vehicle.
“Switch to TOW,” Shane said to the driver, switching back to the company frequency. “All Brads, go TOW!” The Tank-killing, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided missile was the Bradley’s premier antiarmor system. It was capable of taking out a main battle tank at four thousand meters. On the other hand, it was pretty inaccurate at less than a thousand meters, which was the current engagement range. Shane cursed, again, the directive that ordered him to “remain close to the gate.” He was well inside his maximum engagement range, with no room to maneuver against this hell-spawned thing.
He looked to either side and saw that he had lost two of his precious Abrams, both of them billowing fire into the sky. They were mostly intact, ammunition magazine ports blown out but their turrets still in place, but from the looks of them the crews were gone. Whatever that thing was firing seemed to pierce the armor of the Abrams as if it was insubstantial as paper.
“Keep up fire,” he commanded. “Keep hitting it on the same spots if possible. Do not retreat. Say again, stay in place, do not let this thing…”
It was his last transmission as a ball of plasma blew his Bradley sky-high.
Weaver rolled over and groaned at the pounding on the door. He sat up and stumbled over, cursing.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m up,” he said, unlocking and unbolting it. Command Master Chief Miller was the one doing the knocking and at the look on his face Weaver woke up fully. “What happened?”
“The company in Eustis just got clobbered, again,” Miller said, walking into the room. “It’s all over the news.”
“Let me take a shower at least,” Weaver grumped. He turned on his cell phone, first, and shrugged at the multiple message icon. It could wait until he had a shower.
A science fiction writer he knew always carried a black backpack that he called his “alien abduction pack.” “Everything I need to survive for twenty-four hours in eighty percent of terrestrial environments.” It was really a “I crashed in somebody else’s hotel room at a con” or “the airline lost my bags” pack. Weaver had started carrying one as well and he was glad for it now. He could shave with his own razor and brush his teeth with his own toothbrush. He’d used up the bottle of water the day before but that was easily remedied.
As soon as he was done with his shower, hair brushed, wearing new underwear thanks to the “alien abduction pack” again, he was ready to face the day.
Or, afternoon as it turned out.
As they walked out of the front of the hotel, Weaver hoping that the nice security director would make sure the bill or whatever was paid, he started listening to his messages. The national security advisor wanted him to call. A secretary at Columbia pointed out that he had missed a scheduled meeting with a client that morning. His girlfriend in Huntsville wanted to know when his plane was getting in and reminded him that they were supposed to go to a party that evening. It was still on, despite the news, but Buddy was retheming it an “Alien Invasion” party and what was he going to wear? His cell phone company reminded him that he was overdue on his bill and if the balance of three hundred dollars wasn’t paid in two days his cell phone would be temporarily disconnected.
That reminded him that he didn’t know how any of this was being billed. He supposed he was working for Columbia but, come to think of it, nobody had signed a contract. He was basically working on the word of the secretary of defense. On the other hand, that ought to be good enough. But he hadn’t talked to his boss at Columbia for that matter.
He keyed in the number and got a secretary, the same one that had called him about the missed meeting. He put her off and got ahold of Dan Heistand, vice-president for Advanced Development at Columbia.
“Hey, Dan,” Weaver said as the chief pulled onto Highwayy 192.
“Weaver, where the hell have you been?” Heistand asked. He was normally a pretty mild fellow, so Bill was taken aback.
“I’ve been working on the UCF anomaly,” Bill replied. “Didn’t anybody tell you?”
“No,” Heistand said, calming down. “Who brought you in?”
“The SECDEF. I had a meeting with the War Cabinet on Saturday morning.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, he sent a couple of MPs to my hotel room. Speaking of which, I never checked out of that one, either.”
“Where are you, now?”
“Disney World.”
“Disney? What the hell is happening at Disney? Who’s paying for this? How many hours have you billed? What’s the contract number?”
“I don’t have a contract number,” Bill sighed. “Look, when the secretary of defense, the national security advisor and the President tell you to go to Orlando and send you down in an F-15 doing Mach Three, you don’t say ‘Oh, excuse me, Mr. President, would you mind signing this contract from Columbia Defense Systems so the billing will be straight?’ Okay? As to how many hours I’ve been billing, except for four hours’ sleep this afternoon and about three and a half unconscious yesterday… all the rest. Okay?”
“Unconscious?”
“I got blown up by one of those rhinoceros tanks,” Bill said. “That was after the standoff in the house. Hey, did you know that an H K USP .45 caliber pistol will kill one of those dog-demons if you hit it just right?”