Battle for Earth: Journal One (Shockwave Book 1)

same time, like their necks were attached to a gear on a machine.  Every face was lined with tears.  Oh, they must have thought he and Para had bought it in the explosion ... implosion.  Yeah, looking at the house, they would have been goners.  He’d have to find a timestamp of the event.  They must have made it out by only seconds.  Wow.

Mr. T starred.  “Are WE okay?  Where’s Para?  Are YOU okay?  What happened?”

Roll started to explain the whole thing.  Roll hadn’t gotten far in the explanation when Mr. T stopped him.  Para and Roll were okay.  But Mr. T kept looking up at the sky.  They might be under observation at that very moment.

Mr. T jumped up.  “We need to port to Para and move to someplace safe, someplace inside.”

First responders were just pulling up out front.  They would check on the neighbors.

The team ported to Para in the park.  Mr. T called the general.  There was a warehouse at Joint Base Lewis McChord that was completely empty.  Mr. T received the location pin on his s-loop.  We would port there immediately and figure it out from there.  The general made sure we would receive V.I.P. accommodations.  And a barrel of goop-be-gone for Para.

Even as the team arrived, troops were bringing cots and all the necessities.  Nothing like a cold cot and an MRE to make a soldier feel at home.  We would have been happy to sleep on the floor.  Mom and dad were sure happy to know we were safe and sound.  I’m not sure anyone in the neighborhood bought into the government’s leaky gas line narrative.  Thank goodness no one was hurt.

Time to move on and interrogate the two captured queen bugs.

***

+ BEGIN TIMELINE DROP.

NOTE: Drop by Viz.

I was bored one evening and decided to put together some definitions to help with Journal words and concepts.  You can find it in the Journal Aid Section.  Then I got busy on something else.  But there are quite a few definitions.

END TIMELINE DROP. +

BY THE DARKSIDE OF THE MOON.  MOONSTRUCK.

Chapter Five.

September 9^th.  We slept in until almost 9:00, oh-nine-hundred, whatever.  Noon would have been better.  But we have a tight deadline.  And the Moon operation is going to be ... complicated.  There is no rover on the Moon to help us locate the bug base.  We are blind and need to get some good intel from the two queen bugs captured during Operation BrightLight.  Mr. T called upon our general yet again.  The conversation developed like this.

Mr. T: “Hello general.  We need to talk to the two bug queens we recently captured, in order to develop a plan of action for the Moon.”

General: “Shockwave can speak to the bugs?”

Mr. T: “We have to try.”

General: “I’ll make arrangements.  Let’s say, tomorrow 09:00.  I’ll upload the coordinates to your device.”

Mr. T: “Thank you general.”

The general must not know about the delving.  Rock did a quick reconnoiter of the area where the queens were being held.  He picked out a nice untangle spot for our team.  At 08:58 on September 10^th, Shockwave arrived at the location where the NSA, National Security Agency, was keeping the queens.  If a ship in orbit could pick us out by thermal imaging or something more advanced, we would have been dead by now.  Still, we were careful to stay out of direct view.

***

A PAIR OF QUEENS

Well before the interview time, Mr. T was starting to look a little sick.  He hates delving into the mind of a queen bug.  I’m not sure if these guys, military types attached somehow to the NSA, knew we were the team that captured the queens.  Probably not.  They certainly seemed dismissive.

We were introduced to the commander in charge as a special group attached to signals intelligence.  They allowed us in to see the queens.  It went the same way with each of the bugs, though Mr. T spent more time with the second interview.

He and Para acted like they were being nice to them.  Para held the head of the queen bug close and stroked it.  Of course, she was actually immobilizing the bug.  Mr. T gave a nice long pat too.  He pulled out a pad and played a tape of some harmonic buzzing sounds.  I suppose those watching must have thought it was some odd level of bug talk.

It was actually his attempt to play some relaxing sounds for the queens.  Extrapolating from his first queen delve, he had worked with Communal to make the recording.  He really did want to start out with a relaxing atmosphere.  If the officials thought it was an attempt at communication, that would be fine too.  Yeah, Mr. T was walking a fine line over the pit of deception.  And I know it bothered him.

The first queen did not struggle.  Her mind was damaged in some way.  Being captured may have broken her, or perhaps it was the continual interrogation.  Mr. T found it interesting that she was aware of the attack on Shockwave that had occurred just yesterday.  That meant queens either had a telepathic ability of some sort or they had subcutaneous communication links.  He was betting on a comms link.

This broken queen didn’t know much about Shockwave other than some incidental information that including the attack at Mr. T’s house.  She had been informed only after the destruction of the house, a general broadcast of some sort.  It was difficult for her to focus.  This queen didn’t recognize the team.  He hoped the other queen didn’t recognize us by sight; otherwise this installation could be in immediate peril.  The broken queen wasn’t going to contact anyone.

Before he delved the other queen, he would need to disable her comms.  He did get an important impression from the broken queen.  The comms links, there were two of them, were located just below the knee on each of the frontmost legs.

Why would a communication rig be located in their knees?  Mr. T took out his s-loop and sent