Divine Destruction (The Return of Divinity Book 1) (13 page)

“Aye - left,” replied Cue Ball in his pirate voice.

The pair increased speed as ordered. The radio crackled again. Akers was expecting command, but it was Cue Ball instead.

“Did we pass whatever we are chasing, and were going back to intercept?” he asked.

“Unclear,” Akers replied, choosing a word from the military dictionary of short, sarcastic words.

A full minute of silence dragged by.

“Swallows Two.” It was command again.

“Swallows Two,” Captain Akers replied, eager like a benched quarterback given another chance during a homecoming nail-biter.

“Begin elevation change, minus twelve,” command ordered.

“Down minus twelve,” Akers repeated in a razor-focused tone.

“Fascinating,” Cue Ball added in his best Science Officer Spock voice.

“Lower speed to four-fifty,” command said.

“Four-fifty,” Akers replied. They were obviously being lead and curiosity was about to make his head explode.

“The Klingons may be cloaked. I recommend we proceed with caution, Captain,” Cue Ball added. Akers shook his head and let out a warm chuckle like sunshine and golden retrievers. This laugh was the source of his call sign back in flight school. Akers knew it would make his wingman happy as shit to hear him laugh over comms.

“Check your six, Swallows Two,” Akers heard over command from the second officer. He instinctively looked over his left shoulder behind his wingman. The recent humor gone now.

“This is fucked up,” Cue Ball said, finally returning to his own voice. Pilots don’t like objects coming up their tail pipe. Akers craned further around in his cockpit, scanning the stars for anything distinctive, anything out of place.

“Uh,” Cue Ball squawked, “What the fuck is that?” And then Akers saw it too. A bright blue ball had just fallen below the horizon of stars. It was unmoving against the thickening atmosphere. Akers could make out some color flickering coming from behind the object giving it a more three-dimensional shape.

"We have visual on a blue ball,” Akers trailed off his words into the radio. His mouth fell open and he felt his eyebrows hit their stops. He barely heard his wingman.

“Confirmed,” Cue Ball said.

Next, Akers heard the second command officer say in a more serious tone, “Swallows Two, break apart to allow the object to come between you. I want detail observation. Attempt to shadow object best speed and course.”

Neither pilot interrupted, and each slowly arched away from the other to allow anything as large as an aircraft carrier to pass between them. Akers glanced between the clearance lights of his wingman and the oncoming light blue object. He knew Cue Ball was doing the same. Operational safety was something Captain Akers would not violate and made damn sure his wingman understood through the years. Dying in a training accident wasn’t something he wanted his loved ones to face.

From years of flying, Captain Akers could tell the object was slowing and losing altitude but would catch them in moments. “Cue Ball, adjust to stay behind and port.”

“Aye,” Cue Ball said over plane-to-plane comms. “Oh shit, are you seeing this?,” Akers could hear the excitement in his voice.

The object came up from behind the pair of F16’s. Akers and Cue Ball kept it centered between them. It was much smaller than anything Akers had encountered in flight. Both pilots banked towards the center. Akers drew the object closer on his left. He was near to the object and could make out more details. Aker’s mouth fell open again. Made up entirely of the same light blue background, the “thing” was filled with white points of light that seemed to move around inside the figure. It was like looking onto a compressed section of space with a sun buried deep inside. Akers looked back onto his wingman’s F16 and saw that the object was casting light out against the matte finish, illuminating the night. He quickly scanned his instruments and saw they were passing back over the Pennsylvania border. His F16 was coming along side the unidentified flying object. The front half was flying in the shape of a prone humanoid. The latter half appeared to be in flux. Akers surmised it was the thing’s source of propulsion. From the waist down it looked like a giant jet flare. Except from the waist, the inner sparks trailed down to the tip of the effect. Sparks accelerating from the waist wicking off in the object’s wake. It was huge for a humanoid shape. At least five meters, Akers guessed.

“Now that — that is fucked up,” Cue Ball cracked over plane-to-plane.

“I agree,” Akers keyed back.

“Am I high?” Cue Ball asked. Akers knew the feeling.

“Command, this is Swallows Two,” Captain Akers keyed his command channel.

“This is command.”

Akers did another quick check of his instruments, noting they were nearing the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh.

“We are astride the object, speed four-twenty, heading eight degrees true,” Captain Akers said. He paused, trying to form the words in his mind to accurately describe what was flying formation with them now.

“Hoooooly shit,” Cue Ball said over private comms.

“Swallows Two, report!” command shouted

“Sir, we see a large humanoid shape, flying prone, approximately fifteen meters in length, made of sparkling blue light, its face forward. From the waist down it looks like a gigantic blue propane torch,” Captain Akers reported, just like he was trained and had drilled over hundreds of hours of flight time. He continued, voice softening, “It’s the god-damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Akers paused. Realizing what he had just said was beyond fantastic. “I understand that a pee test will be required after this mission,” he said. “But I stand by what I said.”

Captain Akers studied the apparition, flying dude, SparkleMan, whatever. He took in as much detail as possible because he knew after what just came out of his mouth to command, he would face a fuck storm of questions. And then the UFO animated, turning its head to the left and slightly behind. The realization it was “alive” made Akers quaver on his flight stick.

“It’s looking at you, Cue Ball,” Captain Akers said.

“I see that, Chuckers. Creepy,” Cue Ball said.

Out of his periphery, Akers could see Pittsburgh, just ahead, the lights from a dozen bridges forming a distinctive outline of downtown. The dark paths of three rivers became more visible with each second. Akers knew the air traffic had been cleared over western Pennsylvania and most of West Virginia, but at this speed, Canada would be minutes away.

Akers skewed the fighter closer to the anomaly, crab-walking his craft carefully as it continued to eye Cue Ball. After a few anxious moments Akers could make out physical impressions: shoulders, arms, a neck, and ears. The thing was humanoid in shape all right; there was no mistaking that now. The being was bald and devoid of any clothing. The outline of its form was unbroken from the waist up.

The being was forty feet off his port and slightly ahead. Beyond the being’s port was Cue Ball mimicking Akers’ closer inspection. The thing was a giant, a flying man filled with stars, lit from within, fucking flying giant. Akers saw the being turn its right hand and make a fist. His wingman’s F16 was snapped in half like a twig. The entire nose forward of the cockpit was ripped down and broken off. The canopy self-ejected from the force of the break. Behind the cockpit, the F16 crumpled from an invisible giant hand and batted from the sky downward. The ejection seat, with Cue Ball in it, hurled forward into naked sky, flipping bottom up into a slow falling somersault.

Captain Akers wasn’t aware he was screaming. His scream cut off once all remnants of his wingman, his friend, had fallen from view. The “Captain” within Akers took over. Remembering he had left his command comms open, Akers began his running report: “Cue Ball just broke in half. I’m breaking off for an offensive... run... I —“ Thinking quickly of an aerial position that would grant him the most advantage, Captain Akers jammed his throttle forward and then back, flipping the F16 upside down, still in a line with the hostile being. A quick “On-Off” of his air brake created enough drag to put him at a safe weapon distance. Akers muttered to himself, “Fucker.” He switched the master safety off and extended his index finger for a satisfying pulse of hot lead up this things ass. The being darted down and to the left. Akers, knowing he was still upside down, knew the hostile went up and to the right. Akers rolled his F16 violently to his left in order to see where the hostile had gone. He saw the trail of blue-white sparks jet behind him.

“Swallow Two?” his command channel barked.

“Evading,” Was all Akers could think to say, fear crushing his senses.

He pulled nose up, inflicting a high-G turn. Above him he glanced the blue-white light dance below.

Akers righted his craft and frantically glanced around and decided his next maneuver. And suddenly there it was, standing in mid air, the propulsive lower half gone, replaced with perfect humanoid legs. It turned slightly and threw back its right arm as if about to chop wood with its giant hand.

A quiet “Oh, God” escaped Akers’ throat.

A giant, glinting, blue-white hand bashed into the forward edge of his F16s right wing and ripped it off like a wooden bat through a water-soaked piñata. Beyond the hand blurring across his vision, Captain Akers looked into the eyes of the giant and understood. He had danced with something beyond him, horrific, an original nightmare returned to Earth. It spun around to its left, and with the other hand swatted the nose of his dying plane. Captain Akers was thrown forward into his canopy, which had violently angled down into the path of his ejection seat, unattached to the remains of his F16.

Remorse

Gabriel continued on, diving for a preordained spot somewhere in the north hills of Pittsburgh. Inside, tucked far underneath the rigid instructions, smothered by layer upon layer of the will of the Dominion, the real Gabriel screamed. He was trapped inside a nightmare construct. He could not push beyond the confines of this angelic-energy cocoon. There was nothing he could do as he saw the two pilots killed, shredded against the wind and structures below. Was their destruction necessary? Was this violence part of the God’s plan?

Throughout millennia, Gabriel’s consciousness had never survived the transformation to this universe. He had never been forced to witness his actions, a vessel within a vessel. The will of the Dominion had been complete. Once returned to Heaven, and rejoined with his physical self Gabriel would upload his journey and only then remember every day within the other realm. It was like being in a non-debilitative coma and waking, recalling every visit from a relative, every action around you.

Something had gone wrong here. Gabriel was not to be witness to this terrible monster, bent by will, unable to accept any option but success, and killing anything in its path. Gabriel had known the human race for fifty-thousand years. He had visited many times, assumed many forms, and delivered every word of God to this point. And yet he had never witnessed or remembered himself do such harm without being part of God’s plan. Had he done as this before and those memories been erased? Had he killed humans for no reason before? The grief was heavy for a moment, but Gabriel put it aside. He would not weep for harms of which he had no knowledge. And back on Heaven, Gabriel had witnessed himself slaughter a few humans during an upload. He had grieved but, in time, accepted his duty and responsibility.

Gabriel knew that each set of God’s messages was more important and timely than the last. Was this journey so important that his corporal self would smash its way through and trample humanity to do so? Locked away inside this construct Gabriel had no access to God’s current plan for his terrestrial form.

Gabriel felt his energy form slow and turn slightly left as it passed between tall buildings located in a large cluster where two rivers joined to form one. Lights covered the surfaces and the ground. Humanity had moved well beyond his last visit. Gabriel had reviewed the reports and knew the history. The wars, advancements in technology, mankind leaving the surface of this planet, the struggle with slavery, oppression, and the rise of a new entity, the corporation — the evolution to the global enterprise which enslaved many to the ignorance of others. It wasn’t Gabriel’s place to weigh the grace of God, or to understand the meaning behind all of this. Many civilizations had come and gone upon this planet before these humans. All were failures. All collapsed. The earth had washed them away. Space provided the dust to slowly cover each under a carpet of time. The planet itself would provide the engine to mix and change its surface as needed to keep the current civilization from discovering the last, or the first. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. A habitable world held the power to erase its population completely, and many had done so. Self cleaning was built into God’s equation. The background formula was, in itself sentient. Sensitive humans, through time, would imagine such and give the planet a name or claim it had a soul of its own. But none knew the depth of the mechanism that made up a living planet. Any species could harm a planet to the point of poisoning their own environment. But, after a few hundred years, a blink to the lifecycle of a planet, all would be set right. The air would be scrubbed, the oceans, lakes, and rivers filtered, the ground cleansed with rain and turnover.

The inner Gabriel stopped his roaming thoughts and began to pay attention to the outer Gabriel. His form was slowing again. He came to a stop now above a cluster of homes. Gabriel’s last visit had found his vessel far away from any civilized area. Taking that vessel had been, well, easy. But here, among so many humans, so close together? The conscious inner Gabriel saw the instructions as they were read by the machine-like Gabriel. Deliquesce and coalesce once the vessel is found. This should be interesting, Gabriel thought. He got a sense of falling as his energy form poured out from his feet, its feet, into millions of points of light. His formed caved in upon itself and was poured out. He was everywhere and nowhere. Each point of light went out and searched for the vessel. Touching dozens of minds, and negating each. Some were awake and the sight of the roving lights confused many and frightened some. There were a few people in the streets. They had woken by the sound of falling flying machines, planes. The angelic energy ran across the ground, passing through solid matter, through homes, walls, vehicles, pets, and people. Moments passed and both Gabriel’s took in countless amounts of information of each individual their combined energy touched and what was gleamed from the electronic devices left running through the night. Inner Gabriel passed his attention back and forth from all streams of data relearning the languages, completing his near recent history, and understanding more of the technology employed everywhere.