Tesla's Signal (68 page)

Above, the Martian ships had lost their disciplined formation. They seemed to be moving around at random, firing at the ground. What were they shooting at?
Not Clara, please God
...

No time to rest yet. On his burned hands, he managed to crawl toward the Saucer. This battle wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot...it was still Niko and Clara, versus an entire Martian fleet.

“Niko,” Clara called out, and came running up. She wrapped her arms around him. “It worked,” she cried, clutching him up in an ecstatic embrace. “We did it! The Angels are paralyzed! Niko, it was...incredible.” She came to a stop. The smile left her face. “They were...they had hundreds of people penned like animals—they were
feasting
on them,” she finished, wiping at her eyes.

“Yes. Humans are cattle to them.”

“Not anymore. We just kicked them in the
tuchis!”

“We haven't won yet. They've got ships all over the world...they'll probably call them.”

“What?
Oy gevalt.
Hurry!” She glanced over her shoulder at the sky, as she helped him walk to the Saucer and climb inside.

He ached all over—his broken ribs still hurt, and he felt as if every cell had been fried by the current. But he dared not weaken. “You pilot. I'll handle the weapons. Lift off—give it all it's got!”

She pressed the throttle and the Saucer zoomed directly upward into the sky—farther and faster than they had ever dared to take it before.

“Wait, Clara. Let's make sure they see us.”

“What? Are you nuts?”

“Got to decoy them...get them away from New York. Or they will punish...use the city as bait.” Gritting his teeth against the pain of movement, he reached to turn off the Light Bender controls. “Get them to follow us.”

“You're crazy,” Clara muttered. “They're as fast as we are.”

A Martian scoutship rose up from the Wardenclyffe base and came in pursuit. Then another, and another. “All right, Martian
schmucks,
catch us if you can.” Clara banked the Saucer in a steep curve as one of them fired. The sky lit up as the ray sliced past them.

“They're fast, but they're lousy shots,” she said.

“Yes. They never visited a planet that could fight back.”

“Not till now!” The second ship fired and Clara took further evasive maneuvers, flying in a dizzying corkscrew pattern.

For a moment Niko thought he would pass out from the vertigo. Grimacing, he pulled himself together. “Very well, they saw us leaving New York. Let's lose them now.”

He turned on the Light Bender effect. From inside the Saucer, it appeared as if a filmy curtain had fallen over them.

“Well it cuts down
our
visibility, that's for sure. Think it'll protect us?” Clara asked, from the pilot seat.

“I don't know, but it certainly draws a lot of power.”

Another shot from the Martians went far wide of them.

Clara studied the sky, and the panels. “Lots more ships coming.” Through the Light Bender, they could now see scores of Martian battle cruisers arriving from the east. “Must be their international fleet.”

 Niko recalled scenes from the ancient Serbian battle epic: the heroic skirmishes against overwhelming odds.
It's all coming true.
 

The Saucer had turned inland and now flew over a breathtaking vista of clouds and blue sky; the Allegheny Mountains lay far below. Somewhere down there, his power array on Tussey Mountain was pumping out millions of volts.
Yes
. This was the day they had envisioned on the mountain: the day when they would need enough voltage to power a space ship, and the weapons systems aboard that ship. How many volts did the meter say?
Five hundred million.
 

“It's time to hit them.” Niko crawled over to the weapon emplacement, where the Teleforce/Thor weapon had been mounted on a rotating turret. He turned the crank until the barrel protruded from the Saucer's hull and hunched over the controls, adjusting the voltage.

Before he could fire, the Martian ships launched a salvo. “Look out,” Clara cried. One of the rays clipped them on the side. The Saucer went into a dizzying fall and Clara fought to steady it. Niko struggled not to throw up. But his hands never left the Teleforce controls.

He stared into the aiming scope, and targeted one of the U'jaan battle cruisers. “See how you like this.” He pressed a series of relays, channeling millions of volts into to the Romanov crystal, which focused all of the deadly force into a narrow beam of destruction.

A thin crimson ray lanced out. A flash impacted the cruiser and flung it backward. “Got him,” Niko cried, as it began to fall.

“Look out!” Clara cried a warning as a Martian cruiser zoomed toward them. She banked the Saucer and Niko's next shot missed by a wide margin. “Sorry. When we fire, we become visible for just a moment,” Clara said.

Niko held onto his side, which had begun to ache again.

“Come on, let me have some of the fun.” Clara leaned out of the pilot's seat and took hold of the aiming scope. “You like the taste of Earth folks? Take a bite of
this
, why doncha!” She fired, hitting the closest Martian ship. It went down, trailing smoke.

“Got him! You like that? Here's another.” She knocked a second ship out of the sky. A moment later one of the battleships fired back and barely missed the edge of the Saucer. Niko fell to the floor, holding onto his sore side, stifling a curse.

“Glad we built a small ship,” Clara said. “A smaller target. Any bigger, and they'd have smashed us by now.”

“But every time we shoot...we betray ourselves,” Niko muttered. “Wish we had some strategy. A real military tactician...”

“Like one of those quaint gentlemen from the Patriots' College?” Clara grinned. “Those Civil War veterans?”

“Sure. War is war. My turn.” He struggled back up, grabbed the weapon controls, squeezed the trigger: once, twice.
Again.
 

His smile grew ever fiercer as he blasted the enemy ships, one by one. They lanced rays in every direction, as their target popped in and out of visibility.
They are probably wetting themselves with terror,
thought Niko. The sky filled with streamers of fire and smoke.

“How many did we get?” Clara struggled back into her seat, after a bruising firefight.

“Not enough. Power's getting low...” He watched the needle creeping toward the red on the meter, wishing he could change the laws of physics so the Teleforce Ray could charge up more quickly.

“They probably think we'll turn tail. So let's charge them.” Clara pushed the throttle back and angled the Saucer right through the U'jaan formation. “Yee-ah!” She seemed to be having a good time.

Niko aimed again and hit more of the alien ships and exulted as they fell. Until today he had hated war and the military. But he had never felt such intense joy as he felt in this moment. In his exhilaration he forgot the grief of losing his Tower; the pain of his injuries. He forgot everything except the joy of striking back at his enemies. How many so far? Twenty? Thirty? He envisioned piercing every one of the U'jaan with his powerful crimson lance, until the alien invaders and their soul-sucking Orbs were erased from the Earth.

“Niko, look at the screen...there's something else up there. It's huge—is it their master ship?”

The smile vanished from his face. “Yes, it's the Fleet Ship.”
Stupid Nikola:
in his battle madness, he had completely forgotten it.  

He had glimpsed the
Void Stalker
once, when he had taken a soul- journey through the universe. It lurked up there in the stratosphere like a vast predatory shark, waiting to rain death and destruction. Surely it was the one responsible for the earthquakes, the fires and disasters.

He glared at the shape as it rapidly expanded on the screen. “They're coming for us. Look how massive it is!”

A panel of meters confirmed what he could already sense: the deformation of the electromagnetic waves as the Fleet Ship's war engines charged up a weapon—he could feel its massive power building up and up.... “They're going to fire!” He grabbed the throttle from Clara, gave it a hard shove and pushed the Saucer into a steep dive. The earth rose up to meet them. An instant later, a blinding beam stabbed out of the
Void Stalker,
frying the space they had just vacated. Clara cursed as she struggled to control the Saucer.

“My turn now,” Niko growled, as he lined up the U'jaan Fleet Ship in his aiming mechanism.
St. Sava, guide my aim.
He held his breath.
Fire!
 

The Teleforce Dragon spat out its beam of particles. “Direct hit. But...they're still coming. Do they have a shield that can withstand this?”

“Maybe change your aperture profile. Give him the fireball,” Clara suggested. “Hammer of Thor.”

“Yes. But...” after studying his meters for a moment, he realized the problem. “Our power has dropped. Where's it going?”

“The Light Bender takes a lot of energy,” Clara said.

“And something else. The higher up we go, the less power we get from our tower network.”

“Should we go back down toward Earth?”

He thought about it. Draw the Fleet Ship back down toward the planet? “No. We want them
away
from Earth at all costs. Or else they might start destroying cities, just as a diversion.”

Clara pointed upward. “Look. There's the
schmucks
now.”

And there it hovered, now visible to the eye, where the blue faded into the black of space. Big as an ocean liner. “Yes. That's where they took me. Where I welcomed them to Earth...and they treated me like an animal.”

Loathing and dread curdled his belly. Was it his imagination or was the Light Bender effect diminishing?
Can they see us?

He fought to keep his seat as Clara kept the Saucer in motion, diving and twirling to present a difficult target. “Can you hold steady for just one moment?” His hands shook as he prepared for another shot, aiming visually this time.  He couldn't miss: it was an easy target, huge and slow. Once again, he loosed the power of the Teleforce dragon and struck the monster ship, dead-center.

Still, the dreadnought loomed above them, menacing and unhurt, preparing for a counterstrike. Why couldn't the Teleforce ray penetrate the thing?
Because our power is almost gone.
 

He watched the indicator creep toward the red zone.
Come, give me more power,
he beckoned with his fingertips, pleading with the electromagnetic forces which had always been his friends. He gripped the contacts and tried to squeeze current out of himself.
No. I cannot—I have nothing left.
He had depleted all of his life-force at Wardenclyffe Tower.

Meanwhile the Void Stalker's weapons charged up. “Look out—they're getting ready to fire!”

A flash lit up on the flank of
Void Stalker:
ignition. 

Clara twisted the throttle in an attempt to dodge, but the impact slammed them and the earth and sky changed places as the Saucer was flung backward. He heard the sound of metal shattering...his head smashed against the Saucer's hull.

“What happened?” he gasped.

Clara brushed at a thin stream of blood on her forehead. “If we're still alive...it must have just clipped us.”

The odor of smoke filled the Saucer. “It's the Light Bender circuitry,” he realized. “Light Bender's disabled.”  

“You mean they can see us now?” They exchanged a frightened look. Without that protection, they were easy pickings. “Niko...” Clara called out, while leaning to connect some of the circuitry that had come loose. “Do we have enough power for one more shot?”

“We'll try. One more—last chance.”
And the last chance for Earth.
His throat was dry as dust. “I'll hit them with everything.”

“Nikola.” She grabbed his hand. “Whatever happens, we're not turning tail and running away. If we have to, we'll just ram them and explode ourselves!”

“Yes. Suicide mission.”

His hands were sweating as he lined up the aiming mechanism for the last shot. He turned to the indicator panel...

“Wait a second...” he stared at the meter in disbelief. It had just jumped into the green. “I just got a power spike...it's giving us a huge boost!”

“Where's it coming from?”

“I have no idea! It's—”

The outline of a great bird-shape appeared against the dark sky. <
Bright! I send you the Power! It comes from all of us—we send it through the Gate. Take it into your crystal!>