“You’re safe now,” the disembodied voice assured her. But rather than feel better, the way she might have, Hannah experienced a sudden stab of terror as Daedalus pumped what she perceived as gibberish into her mind. Was Jordan communicating in Chimeran? To her or someone else? Yes, Hannah believed he was still talking to her, and began to suspect that the man she had married was no longer sane. Not in the human sense anyway, as the thing farted internally produced hydrogen, and began to lose altitude.
As Daedalus loomed above her, Hannah could see the last vestige of her husband’s form staring down at her. It appeared that Jordan’s head was slowly being absorbed into his tumorlike body, and she guessed that it would eventually disappear. The skin covering his scabrous skull was drum-tight, and his eye sockets were deep caverns from which he peered out at her. “Jordan?” she inquired. Can you hear me? They’re using me as bait… They followed me here, and they’re going to attack you.”
At that moment explosions shook the ground and a specially rigged VTOL appeared overhead. Men were visible at the doors, crouched behind a pair of harpoon guns—both loaded with what looked like huge spears.
The VTOL had been equipped with harpoon guns capable of firing specially fabricated darts, each carrying 2,000 cc of a fast-acting sedative. A potion developed by SRPA, tested on captured Chimera, and proven to be effective.
The starboard gunner saw his shot, took it, and sent a huge dart into the airborne creature that was floating below.
Daedalus “screamed” as the harpoon entered his flesh, and the woman below him was driven to her knees as the “sound” echoed through her brain, and the brains of everyone in the vicinity.
The VTOL’s pilot was incapacitated, and when he took his hands off the controls to slap them over his ears, the aircraft ran into the curved wall that loomed in front of him.
There was an enormous explosion, followed by a momentary ball of flame, and a series of crashes as chunks of flaming debris fell onto the landing pad below. Some of the smaller pieces hit Daedalus, as he struggled to remain conscious, but was ultimately unable to do so.
Daedalus hit the landing pad with a loud thump not ten feet from the spot where Hannah was kneeling.
And as unseen troops battled with one another outside the massive cylinder, another VTOL appeared above. It, too, was armed with harpoon guns, plus a specially designed harness, which was slung below the aircraft’s tubby fuselage.
Hannah’s hair whipped from side to side as she stood and the VTOL lowered itself down to a point twenty feet off the ground. That was when a team of Rangers slid down ropes and immediately went to work passing straps beneath Daedalus’s form.
Hannah, no longer conscious of her nudity, knew it was time to do something. But what? The problem was solved for her when a sergeant appeared at her side, threw a jacket over her shoulders, and pointed at the bosun’s chair that dangled below the aircraft. He had to shout in order to make himself heard over the roar of the VTOL’s engines.
“All you have to do is sit on it, ma’am… They’ll pull you up.”
Hannah wanted to thank him, was determined to thank him, but that was when she fainted.
There was light. But in order to reach it Daedalus knew he would have to make the long difficult journey up out of the black hole he found himself in. So he willed himself upward, and the light grew gradually brighter, until it was all around him and he could open his many eyes.
That was when it came back to him.
Hannah’s pain, her warning, and the attack. Which—as he took a long slow look around—Daedalus knew had been conceived to recapture him.
A silly notion really, since it didn’t matter where his physical body was located, so long as his mind was free to roam. The meat people didn’t know that, of course, because they were captives of their own limited capabilities, and therefore unable to grasp the truth of the matter.
His prison, because that’s what it was, consisted of a cube-shaped concrete cell which was approximately one hundred feet to a side. It was featureless except for the cameras that peered at Daedalus from every possible angle, the harness that held him aloft, and the rectangular drain below. A convenience that would allow the food things to hose his excrement away. Except none of the creatures were anywhere to be seen, and Daedalus thought he knew why.
In order to test his hypothesis Daedalus summoned a bolt of mental energy and let it fly. He knew the weapon was sufficient to render most humans unconscious, if not actually kill them. The result was a 900 kV shock, which not only hurt, but told Daedalus what he needed to know. An electrode had been implanted in his body, thereby allowing the meat creatures to punish him whenever they chose to.
Meanwhile, judging from what Daedalus could see, his captors were elsewhere watching him via the cameras. Far enough away that mental attacks would be ineffective. That theory proved to be correct when a voice boomed over speakers mounted inside the cube. “Greetings, Daedalus, and welcome back. My name is Dentweiler. We want to speak with you.”
Daedalus offered no response. None that the meat person named Dentweiler could perceive. But his mind was working. Daedalus knew he wanted to exert more control over the millions of Chimeran forms currently converging on North America. Whether that was a personal choice, or something the virus wanted him to accomplish wasn’t clear, and really didn’t matter.
Because Earth was about to fall—and that was the only thing that mattered.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Out of the Blue
Near Custer, Montana
Monday, December 10, 1951
Gray clouds hung like a lid over Montana, as the VTOL swept in from the south with a beat-up four-wheel-drive pickup truck dangling below its belly. There was a lot of open country north of Hardin, so there wasn’t anyone around to witness the moment when the aircraft lowered the truck down to a point just a few feet off the snow-covered road, and the crew chief pulled the harness release lever. The pickup bounced once, then came to rest, as a tangle of steel cables fell on top of it.
Freed from its burden the VTOL shot up, scooted sideways, and came back down as the prop wash hit a layer of light powdery snow and sent it swirling in every direction. Then, as the Party Girl touched down, a couple of crewmen went out to retrieve their harness and drag it inside the aircraft while Hale carried his duffel bag down the sloping ramp.
Once on the ground he circled around to a point where Purvis could see him. The pilot grinned, and gave Hale a cheerful thumbs-up. Both engines began to spool up as the ramp was retracted and the ship started to vibrate. Moments later it shot straight up again, turned to the south, and sped away.
Hale was on his own.
But unlike the recent trip to Chicago, Hale was well within government-controlled territory. So while he made his way over to the truck, the Sentinel felt none of the usual gut-wrenching fear that went with being dropped into what some of his peers referred to as stink land.
Still, there was some risk involved in his current mission, since Hale had been given the task of infiltrating a Freedom First training camp near Custer. The idea was to find out if Secretary of War Walker and his wife were heading there, since they weren’t in Chicago. The Grace administration was still determined to find them, or confirm that the two dissidents were dead, either outcome being quite acceptable.