Flynn shifted back down, solidified.
“Flynn. Richter.” West looked from one to the other. “It’s good to see you, given the circumstances. Who’s this?”
“Simon Hayes,” Flynn answered. “He’s with me. He’s one of us now.”
Richter shook his head. “That explosion, a few weeks ago. You shifted into him to save him? Jesus Christ, Flynn, you know we aren’t supposed to—”
“Stay the hell out of my mind, Richter.” She regarded him with a raw fury.
The earth shook below them.
“What was that?” Flynn braced herself on the airlock.
“They’ve collapsed the sun.” Richter spoke gravely. “The planet’s being pulled in. Everything’s being pulled in…We have to get out of here.”
“How do you—”
“Can’t you hear them? They’re so close… West, the orb?”
“It’s still there.”
A woman stood within the vessel, a woman who was not entirely a woman. From under the fatigue jacket she wore, a metallic mesh stretched across her skin, encompassing parts of her body completely. She gazed upon them with silver eyes.
Flynn gasped in disbelief. “Patra Jennings?”
They entered the vessel in the earth.
Zero-Four worked in silence in the battle chamber of Judas Golgotha Simon, aided by his neural links into the vessel’s weapon system. Simon targeted each Enemy vessel, harnessed it and drew it intimately close before puncturing its hull with focused Shadow energy, releasing the phase energy and killing that particular extension of the Enemy mind-essence, erasing that particular line of code from the Omega pattern. From all directions, Simon’s prey flew at him, and he snared them mercilessly. Simon passed judgment on the damned. After all of the eternities lost, after all of the friends he had seen killed, after all of the impossibilities had been realized, the time had come to loose his wrath upon the Enemy.
They followed West down the slightly canted corridor, weaving in and out of destroyed areas and remnants of the military team’s equipment left from the initial investigation, so long ago.
“It’s fading, but it’s still operating.” West motioned.
They entered the spherical orb chamber. It hung in the center of the room, a dying onyx jewel.
THEY WILL PAY FOR THIS.
THE INTERCEPTION TEAM((?))
MASSACRED. A TRAP. THE VERMIN UTILIZE NEW, POWERFUL WEAPONS. THEY HAVE ACQUIRED NEW CODE FROM SOMEWHERE. THEY HAVE HARNESSED UNBELIEVABLE POWERS—
IT DOES NOT MATTER. THAT WHEN HAS ALREADY BEEN HARVESTED. WHAT MATTERS NOW IS THE NEXT WHEN. WE WILL JUMP FURTHER THIS TIME. WE WILL THROW THEM OFF OUR TRAIL.
DON’T YOU SEE((?)) THEY WILL COME—
SILENCE. WE WILL OVERCOME. THE VIRUS WILL BE CONTAINED AND PURGED FROM THE SYSTEM. OMEGA WILL BE COMPLETED. WE WILL BE VICTORIOUS.
WILL WE((?))
fury, tempered with the inception of fear. the black closes
The vessel around them was shaking disturbingly.
“Not long now,” Richter whispered.
West had informed them about how he and Patra had arrived. Ever since, Richter had been studying the orb, thinking to himself. Contemplating.
He looked at Patra. “What was it like, to be one with them?”
“It was hell. Billions of souls, trapped in hell.”
“When you two went in, it hurt the aliens. Badly.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s eternity in there. It’s heaven in there.”
“What do you mean?”
Richter outstretched his hand. “I could destroy them.”
“No. You don’t know where you’d end up. You don’t know what would happen—”
“For ten years, each day of my life since I was pulled out of there, I’ve wanted to return. You have no idea…I know where to go. I know how to stop this. Don’t you see that one of us has to go? One of us has to end this.”
The shaking was becoming unbearable. So close…
West rushed at Richter. “I don’t—How? You could be killed. Don’t—”
Richter laughed, smiled a smile that in no way looked like a smile. “One of us has to begin this so that we can end their plan. If you only knew… You’re safer here, for now, but in time, you’ll come, too.”
“Come where? You can’t just go back in, Richter. You don’t know what’ll happen.”
“I do know. We’re all dead already. This isn’t living. I know what I have to do. I’ve known for years. They told me what I have to do.”
“Richter, don’t—”
Richter’s form suddenly illuminated the room with a silvery brilliance, and fire tore from his eyes into the orb. In a flash, he was gone, and the orb faded considerably, blackened.
A beam of nothingness, a pillar of phase energy tore from the orb, a vertical hole forming in the threads of existence, up, up through the chamber’s ceiling, up through the solid rock, through the atmosphere, through the void between the stars.
The four people remaining in the chamber put their hands to their heads, screaming in the waves of non- existence.
((michael, i detect a shadow drive on the planet surface.))
“What the—? That’s—Simon, take us down.”
A SHADOW ON THE PLANET SURFACE((?))
THE JUDAS—
REROUTE RESOURCES FROM NEXTWHEN TRANSIT, DOWNLOAD FORCES FOR JUDAS ENGAGEMENT…
SURFACE FORCES CONVERGING ON SHADOW POINT. REINFORCEMENTS DOWNLOADED, GENERATED.
THE HERETICS WILL SUFFER. THE VIRUS WILL BE ELIMINATED.
From above, a meager light shined down the circular hole cut through the rock, the metal. Richter was gone, and the orb was nearly black. Faint pulses of light from within were the only indication that it still lived.
West stood, unsure of his footing. “We have to get out of here, now!”
They bolted through the ship, hearing girders squeal, rocks grind. Thankfully, the elevator still worked.
Something had been triggered.
The earth threatened to tear itself apart.
“What’s this all about?”
“Well, David, we detected a Shadow drive emanation.”
“A Shadow drive?”
“A suppressed black hole. The power source of all Judas vessels.”
“Where?”
“In the mountains in the middle of your country.”
“A black hole?”
“Yes. A black hole.”
“In the mountains?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus—it’s Diablo.”
From the top of Diablo Peak, the four unknowing soldiers of the Judas watched the alien creatures converge upon them. From the east. And the west. And the north. And the south. The air was charged as the Enemy were generated in flashes of silver and white.
