Revelations (19 page)

Jacob intercepted Emily as she walked through the compound back toward Building One. The squeak of his wheelchair’s tires on the concrete gave away his approach before she even saw him. She kept on walking, hoping it wasn’t her he was looking for.

“Emily. Got a second?”

She gave a deep sigh, put on the best smile she could muster, and turned to greet him.

With the pathways between buildings cleared he now had more or less full access to all ground-level areas. In all fairness, the freedom seemed to have done him a world of good, his mood and attitude seemed to have returned, his usual sullenness replaced by an almost permanent smile. He was even starting to get a bit of a farmer’s tan, thanks to the California climate.

Still, she really wasn’t in the mood to talk to him right now.

But the Jacob she faced when she turned around looked as unhappy as he always had. A frown creased his forehead, pulling the skin around his eyes up until he looked like he was squinting at her.

“You saw the helicopter?” she said by way of introduction.

“Hard not to, it damn near broke every window in the compound when he flew overhead.”

Emily shrugged. “Boys and their toys.”

“So they are still intent on going ahead with their plan?”

“They seem to think it’s a good idea. I have to agree. We need to know what we’re dealing with, don’t we?”

Jacob shook his head no. “Just think about it for a moment, will you? We are talking about an intelligence that can manipulate matter, turn it to its own needs. And whether that’s a ship that landed or not, have you given any thought to what it means if it is?”

Emily’s expression conveyed her answer. Now it was Jacob’s turn to let out a long sigh of exasperation when he saw she had no idea what he was talking about.

“Not only can they manipulate matter, they can also send objects over inconceivable amounts of space. I can guarantee whatever that thing was the other night, there’s no way it came from anywhere near our neck of the universe. And yet, if Commander Mulligan’s observations were accurate, they appeared out of nowhere, materialized just a few miles outside of Earth’s orbit. Do you have any idea how incredible that is? The kind of technology and math and intelligence it would take to send something as massive as just
one
of those things potentially over millions of light-years and have it pop out right next to a planet? Hell, don’t even get me started on how they managed to gather the energy to send it.”

“Of course I understand. Well, sort of. But so what? All the Brits are planning on doing is getting close enough to take a few pictures; we’ll be in and out before they even know we’re there.”

Jacob shook his head again. “My point is,” he continued, “whatever made these things, whatever intelligence sent them here,
you
are not going to creep up on them. They
are
going to know you are coming before you even do. And if they are so inclined, they will knock you out of the air with as much impunity as we swat a fly.”

“I think you’re worrying about this way too much. MacAlister’s a careful man, he’s not going to put his men at risk if he can help it,” she explained, then echoed MacAlister’s own words, “It’s just a reconnaissance mission, anyway.”

“Do you
really
want to risk disturbing that hornet’s nest, Emily? Right now, we’re not even on their radar.” He struggled to come up with a suitable metaphor. “Look, you own an old house; you know you have bugs, spiders, roaches, right? But if they stay in the walls, out of sight, you don’t think about them, you don’t worry. But all it takes is one of them in your kitchen or on your bed and you’re on the phone to the first pest-control company you can find.”

“You’re saying we’re bugs?”

“I’m saying that if we stay here, keep our heads down, and don’t piss them off, maybe they’ll leave us alone. But if we start sending our people to them, they
are
going to notice us, and if we are an annoyance to them, they might just come here and finish what they started. I have to talk them out of this madness.”

Before Emily could say another word, Jacob swiveled his chair and rolled past her toward the administrative building. The concrete path sloped at an angle and he accelerated quickly, the chair rattling every time its wheels rolled over an expansion joint in the concrete.

“Jacob, wait a second,” she called after him but he ignored her, intent on achieving his goal.

A cloud moved in front of the sun, its shadow darkening the path between Emily and Jacob as he raced away from her. When the cloud passed, the light bounced off a nearby window, dazzling her eyes. In that momentary disorientation she heard the first fear-tinged yell of warning from somewhere behind her. The shooting started a second after the first cry had died. Emily instinctively ducked to the floor and turned in the direction she thought the firing was coming from. In her peripheral vision, she saw Jacob wobble in surprise, his wheelchair almost overturning as he spun it around to face the same direction she was looking.

Two
HMS Vengeance
crewmen, one a lookout perched on a rooftop, the other taking cover along the side of a wall, had their guns pointed at her and Jacob, their faces contorted in fear.

No! The gun’s muzzles weren’t aimed
at
her or Jacob, just in their direction. The men were yelling at her to
run, just fucking run!
But instead her eyes followed the trajectory the sailors were aiming, back over her shoulder and into the air and…“Oh, fuck!” she blurted out and dived to the ground just as a huge pair of talons closed around the space she had just occupied, the razor-sharp claws giving a resounding
click
, like the sound of a tripped mousetrap as they snapped around empty air.

The impression of something huge, something with diaphanous wings that hummed as they vibrated with a thrum like a million bees, cut through the air with razor-like sharpness. An oily, rainbow-stained tail flittered behind it like a cape, and Emily felt the rush of disturbed air as the creature flew not three feet over her head and soared into the sky. She rolled over on to her belly and watched as it climbed higher into the air. It reminded her of how a stunt plane at an airshow might fly; it was as big as a plane too.

It reached its zenith, and like her imaginary plane, stalled and flipped onto its back, its four wings flicking backward to form a delta shape…then it dived.

It rocketed toward the sailor perched on the roof. He held his position, his fully-automatic weapon flaring as he fired an entire magazine at the creature in a few short seconds, then he dived into the safety of the nearby doorway. Emily was sure the creature would slam into the concrete roof but instead, its target unreachable, its wings popped out from its side and it came to an abrupt, impossible stop that would have broken the neck of a human. Its wings became a blur as it hovered thirty feet above the roof, its long neck moving back and forth as it hung in the air, searching for another target.

It was only for a second, but when its eyes locked on hers, Emily felt the most fear she had ever experienced. There was an undeniable intelligence behind those orbs that skewered her in place, reaching some primal part of her brain and readying her for extinction.

And then the creature arrowed down toward her, streaking through the sky, chased by a hail of bullets that either missed or it was impervious to. As it neared her, the two taloned feet that had missed her the first time flicked open, readying to sink into her flesh.

Her legs would not move. She was ice, frozen to the spot.

The creature grew larger, filling her vision, then it swept over her, gone except for a rush of air from its passing that dragged her hair after it.

From behind her she heard the creature give a mighty cry that resonated around the camp. She spun around and watched as it again soared into the air before shrinking into the distance, vanishing into the jungle.

Something was clamped between its claws, she realized, something that still moved.

Emily pushed herself to her feet, brushing away gravel that had lodged in a bloody graze on her left hand. People were still yelling, their voices mingling together in confusion as others who had been inside the buildings came out and demanded to know what had just happened, the event over before most had even managed to make it to a window.

Something squeaked and rattled behind her.

Emily turned to see Jacob’s wheelchair rolling slowly down the path, its rubber-coated wheels jostling and bumping over the uneven concrete before it tipped over the lip and fell on its side, exposing a bright slash of blood splashed across the wheelchair’s foam seat.

And Jacob was nowhere to be seen.

There was little doubt of Jacob’s fate. One of the sentries who had opened fire on the flying creature confirmed he had seen it pluck Jacob from his chair and fly off. Neither Emily nor the second sentry—he had still been hiding in the doorway when the creature struck, he said—had witnessed it happen, but Emily confirmed that she had seen the creature flying away with
something
clutched in its talons.

The logical conclusion, given the blood and Jacob’s reliance on his wheelchair, was that it had taken him. The man could not have simply gotten up and walked off, after all. No one else was missing and a search of the area revealed no trace of a body, just a small amount of blood ten feet from Jacob’s empty chair.

“We should organize a search party,” Emily said, still stunned at how swiftly death could arrive in this new world.
But he wasn’t dead, was he
? she reminded herself. She had clearly seen his arms waving as the thing had carried him away.
And that beak, just imagine what it must have done to him
.

Stop it!
Her inner voice yelled at her.
Just stop it
.

“I’m sorry, Emily,” Captain Constantine said. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I just cannot risk any more men for a search party. I know he was your friend, and God knows we owe him a debt of gratitude, but the risk outweighs the probability of finding him alive. I’m sorry.”

Emily stared at the hand on her arm for a moment, then nodded silently and walked back to her room.

They postponed the Nevada sortie until the following day. No one was going anywhere until they were sure the creature that had snatched Jacob from his wheelchair wasn’t coming back for seconds, MacAlister said later that day as he, Captain Constantine, and Emily met for an update to the plan.

“Sorry, Emily,” MacAlister said, realizing his comment may have sounded insensitive. “I know Jacob was your friend.”

That was the second time someone had called Jacob her friend today.
Jesus!
Why did it stir up such a mass of confusion inside her? Either the man had deceived her into travelling to the backend of nowhere to save his ass,
or
he had been astute enough to figure out what was coming after the red rain, and saved
her
ass. She still did not know which of those was the truth. Maybe both? Either way, she was never going to get an answer now that Jacob was dead, but she
was
surprised at the pain she felt at his death. It was a sharp quandary of a pain that lodged itself somewhere in the space between her heart and the bottom of her throat. She may well have harbored a grudge against him, but they all undoubtedly owed him their lives to some extent. Truth was, there were so very
few of them left here that losing a single person was a blow they could ill afford, and Jacob’s technical expertise was going to be sorely missed in the coming days.

Her thoughts trailed away as she realized that everyone was expectantly watching her, including MacAlister, waiting for a reply.

“Ummm…thank you?” she eventually said.

Emily barely remembered anything else about the meeting. Something about effective ranges and combat readiness preparedness.

That night, she barely slept. It wasn’t like she was restless, there was no tossing and turning, instead she just lay on her cot, her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling through the darkness as Rhiannon and Thor slept peacefully.

Now, as she stood on the shore waiting for the boat, the early morning fog rolling in from the bay, she found herself nervously fingering the harness of her backpack. Here she was again, setting off
on another journey into the unknown, but this time, it would be without the guiding voice of the man who had effectively been her compass, her lodestone. While his voice had reached out over the miles to her she had always felt as though there was someone with her, someone watching over her. Even with MacAlister and his team standing just feet from her as they checked their gear for the third or fourth time, she felt more alone than she had ever in her life.

“Shit!” she said.

“Are you okay, Miss Baxter?” the captain said from behind her. She had not heard his approach across the shale beach.

“I’m fine,” she said, forcing a smile to her lips. She turned her head to face the sea and caught MacAlister looking at her. His eyes watched her with an intensiveness that was almost as unnerving, although in a pleasantly opposite way, as the nervous flutter she felt facing the unknown again.

“You know, you’re in the best hands. MacAlister is one of the finest men I’ve ever served with. You have nothing to worry about.”

“I know. I’m fine,” she said again, this time more to reassure herself. “Where’s the boat?”

As if her words had summoned it, the dinghy appeared from the direction of the dock and skittered across the waves toward them.

As soon as it beached, the sailors and Emily threw their kit onboard and climbed in.

“Good luck and keep your heads down, understand?” the captain said from the shoreline, the fast approaching high tide lapping around his shoes.

The sailors each snapped off a smart salute and then the boat was off again, scudding out across the bay toward the waiting helicopter on Coronado Island.