Rise of Aen Read online

  Emily froze; she had hoped to never see 54 ever again, but here he was and he was interrupting her with an argument with his own daughter. Did he remember her? Did he remember his daughter who was now right beside him? She felt her body be squeezed slightly as her body was lifted up from the wheelchair she was bound to. Aen was about to prove a point with her and Emily hoped she would survive it. Everyone, including Sara and Krista, gasped at this show of power, but Aen approached his prey without noticing the terror he was creating.

  “Tell me of these details, these far reaching possibilities,” Aen continued walking slowly towards Phillips, his stature causing the soldier to recoil slightly. “Because I am anxious to hear someone truly explain what you sought to gain by torturing innocent people.”

  “And what do you know of this project?” The question was an attempt to sidetrack the attention levied upon him all of the sudden. “There aren’t many people out there with knowledge of this and they won’t talk about it.”

  “There are even less than you think, after I was done with them.” Aen said with an evil smile, his eyes locked onto his adversary’s. “Your precious installation in the mountains is all but gutted, her data and samples wiped out. Your research team is either dead or too scared to speak to anyone about it. And the hangar in the desert, the one with the Lyarran ship in it, has been reduced to rubble that covers the carcasses of soldiers pitted against me. I believe your precious Dr. Frankenstein is under there too.”

  “Why?” Emily asked in shock and fear. “Why would you do that? There was so much knowledge, so much to learn from all we’d done.”

  Aen was now right in front of her, glaring down into the fearful eyes of the lifelong soldier. “Why was I stolen from those I loved, tortured and changed? Why do I stand before you as the greatest failure of any experiment in human history, yet remain power incarnate? It was arrogance such as yours that allowed you to play god with forces you couldn’t understand, and it is arrogance like yours that threatens to destroy the best of intentions here.”

  “These monks didn’t have to invite any of you here. They could have let every one of you die, let the brightest minds and the valuable works of mankind disappear in the fires of reckoning. With your need to be in charge, you have almost undone that which had been planned for a thousand years—the safety of all these innocents jeopardized by your stupidity! And out of kindness, these men of the cloth have offered to leave this place to you and your delusions of ultimate power. Look around you—the sun is setting on the world you know, and the dawn of a new one rests on what we do next.”

  Silence followed his words; all in attendance struggled to digest what had been thrown at them. The officer just hung there, as if slapped in the face and unsure of how to respond. Aen backed down and lowered Phillips gently to her chair once more, turning away to face Sara. He nodded to her before making his way through the crowd to the doors. He felt the heaviness of the room, the energy drained from the people of this simple haven. He knew that Phillips would never be the same, he had broken her will as much as her body.

  “So now what?” Sara called out from behind. Aen stopped at the door and swung around slowly.

  “We get ready to fight like we’ve never fought before.” He answered.

  “Then you will fight for us?” she asked.

  Aen paused, thinking carefully before choosing his next words. “I will be the weapon they made me to be—in a few days the sky will fall and I will do everything I can prevent the human race from falling with it. All of you here will have to look deep within yourselves, there are no easy answers anymore. These walls will shield you from the horrors for only so long. War will find you, and it is up to you if to stand and fight or roll over and die.”

  His words fell across a sombre room; everyone within was shocked into a deep reality check. Aen didn’t wait for a return comment and left them all staring blankly—he had a yearning for a quiet respite before hell broke loose. With his whole heart, Aen longed to stay and protect his family, but his mind told him otherwise. The time to be a father and a husband was long gone; time was short for almost everything. Days remained for the world he knew, only days before he came face-to-face with the world he was created to save.

  SIXTEEN

  Himalayan Mountains, Mount Kailash, Tibet -

  Three Days until Arrival

  The pre-dawn sky began to light up as the alien projectiles began to hit the upper atmosphere as they streaked inwards. Like little balls of flame, they tore across the dark western skies as they screamed with their surface heating up from the friction of entry with long plumes of smoke trailing from them. Like long, black tentacles reaching far and wide, they stretched out from the edge of space and crossed the sky as far as one could see before they hit a predetermined height of ten thousand feet and simply stopped as the first globes to arrive waited for all the rest to reach their goal.

  As these fireballs fell, the real panic below began, as the reality of what was happening became clear. This wasn’t a visit from a friendly neighbour; the Husk were here for a purpose and humans were in the way. Riots turned to stampedes, cities began to empty and traffic ground to a halt with accidents and gridlock as people tried to escape to a safe place. But where was safe anymore? No one was sure, but the crowd took on a herd-like mentality as people began to blindly follow one another in a pointless attempt at self-preservation.

  Aen sat on the ledge above the monastery and watched as these orbs of fire and smoke fell from the heavens above him with keen interest. He had done his homework and knew what this was—an EMP attack with a psychological backlash as well. That part could be seen around the world clear as day. It was only a matter of minutes before the grouping was all in place and then the real show would begin! As the first of the metallic globes slowed to its position above him, he began to study it as closely and carefully as he could before the charges went off. It was a deep grey in color, with no visible seams on it and no discernible markings either; it more resembled a ball bearing than anything else he had seen before. There was nothing special about the outlying structure of the object that would foretell the true tale of what it was for.

  Another joined this one as it too stopped at its destination, then another one in the far distance, then another; soon the web would be complete. Aen brought himself to his feet and with a movement of his eyes turned the armor’s power off and removed his helmet to watch it all unfold with his eyes. Time slowed, seconds seemed like hours as nothing happened, but that all changed in a blink of an eye.

  With Aen being as he was, he was in tune with the Earth’s magnetic field and felt the disturbance start and grow exponentially before the orbs overhead had a chance to do their thing. Over North America, the first of these globes exploded in a blinding flash that dimmed the breaking dawn and unleashed a circular wave outwards that was visible as the air moved only briefly. When the charged EMP wave hit the surrounding globes, it triggered them to explode as the chain reaction grew and grew. The wave instantly killed any electronic device operating at the time, as vehicles became useless and computers and cell phones turned into expensive paper weights. Hospitals went dark as patients on life support no longer had the machines to keep their bodies alive and quickly passed into death. Pace makers failed, causing a rash of fatal heart attacks world-wide as the weak and frail were automatically thinned from the herd.

  As the wave hit the Tibetan skies, Aen felt the wave rush pass through his body as it struck the globes above causing them to explode as well. It was almost a surreal feeling, like one’s soul being pulled from their body as it clung on for dear life. To Aen it was just a unique feeling, but to those in the monastery it was near agony as their height and proximity to the wave increased the intensity of the effects on the human body.

  Due to the intensity and power of the wave, it caused most of the people in the monastery to pass out as it disrupted the electrical impulses of
the brain momentarily. Others like Sara, felt pain in their chests as hearts began to beat erratically from the electrical interference. Clutching her chest, she dropped to the floor in confusion and collapsed into a fetal position as her body struggled to regain control of its primary functions. It was only moments to reset, but those moments dragged as the pain was more than she had ever felt. Sara wiped the tears from her eyes, before she noticed her mother’s unconscious body lying on the floor of the temple not far from her. She pushed the fear and confusion down deep to crawl over to her mother to check on her; once she could see the rise and fall of her chest, Sara felt relief and wrapped her arms around Krista, holding her until she awoke once more.

  Similar scenes played out all around the monastery as the wave hit and dissipated quickly. As everything began to return to normal, there were injuries aplenty and one fatality as a middle aged scientist with a pacemaker succumbed to his heart failing as it did. Aen resisted the overwhelming urge to rush down and check on his daughter and wife, but instead re-powered the armor and donned his helmet once more. He had work to do before the enemy arrived; it was time to visit with his old friend General Patterson.

  Groom Lake Military Installation –

  Code Named Area 51, Nevada - Three Days until Arrival

  “Did we get everything shut off in time?” Patterson asked to anyone that might be able to answer him in the darkness that now enveloped the war room as he picked himself off the floor and began to straighten his uniform. He had ducked down under a desk as the sparks began to fly shortly after the hovering devices began to detonate, not from any of the main systems shorting out as they were shut down in time, but from the back-up lights and generators that quickly overloaded and exploded with sparks and flames galore. The bedlam had scattered everyone in the room as they ran for cover—now that it had been silent and dark for a few long minutes, Patterson heard scuffling about and decided it was time for him to emerge from hiding as well.

  It was a long pause before anyone responded to his query. “Hard to say, sir, systems are still down as a precaution.” A voice in the darkness replied.

  “Well, wait fifteen minutes and let’s boot this bitch back up,” he crowed, understanding that the power was off for a reason. “And for fuck’s sake, someone get a fucking candle or lantern in here until then!”

  There was scrambling in the dark to accommodate the General’s rather blunt request. He heard a door open and footsteps run down the hall—only for them to announce the owner’s return with a flashlight and a lantern, lighting the hall up. Once lit, the room stayed quiet as everyone inside was held fast by a nervous energy, silently hoping the power would turn back on. The prospect of it not returning was a fear rooted in the fact they were fifteen floors beneath the surface of the Earth in the Nevada desert. If the power didn’t return, all inside this room realized that this would be their tomb.

  Fifteen minutes passed at a snail’s pace; time was counted off the General’s old wind-up pocket watch given to him from his father. The age of the piece and lack of anything electronic made it the only device of any kind down here that still worked. The very second the imposed time limit expired, Patterson barked the orders to power everything back up and the tension mounted. Main breakers were pumped and primed; a loud thud signaled that at least the main was ready for action. Nervously, they all watched the red indicator lights flash on the main screens as the system boot up began followed by a hum from above as the air conditioners restarted and the lights slowly came back on. The room erupted in cheers, but Patterson just breathed a deep sigh, for this was a minor hurdle to climb. In the coming days, the real fight would begin and to cheer now would be pointless.

  Lyarran Vessel Amarra, Southern Pacific -

  Three Days until Arrival

  Caretaker monitored the Amarra’s systems carefully as the wave of electromagnetic energy washed over the shields. Two thousand years of sitting beneath the ocean had not been kind to the frigate, but the shields performed admirably against the Husk salvo. A few systems overloaded and sparked as they shorted out, but all in all the damage was surprisingly low afterwards.

  The ship hovered silently over the deserted island as it had before, dropping only a few meters when the wave hit as the propulsion system temporarily lost power. The AI redirected power to the downed system in a fraction of a second from an unaffected sub-system, quickly stabilizing the drive systems and preventing the Amarra from crashing. During this time, it also watched attentively the other two million functions of the ship as multiple functions sputtered under the power spike. A few adjustments here and a couple of system shut downs there was really all the headaches given by what seemed to be a major hurdle to overcome. Pitch and yaw sensors crashed, but Caretaker quickly routed the functions to his own processing unit to keep the Amarra from flying haywire; once the wave passed, it made an order for a drone to go fix the sensors to bring them back online.

  All the time this was happening, Caretaker had “inserted” himself into the multitudes of communication and spy satellites in orbit, to monitor the effects of the wave on the planet. Watching with keen interest, it noticed the preparedness of the armed forces as they shut down before the wave launched and actually co-ordinated with a few public sectors—nuclear power plants, hydro dams, air traffic control towers and manufacturing plants—to ensure the longevity of essential infrastructure. The rest however, was utter chaos. Explosions spotted the surface as gas stations malfunctioned to the point of blowing up, electronic signs shorted out spectacularly and many other electronic devices self-destructed as the wave washed over them. If the arrival of the EMP devices hadn’t caused enough panic, the loss of the electronic life-blood of the modern world pushed the general population to the brink as fear turned to sheer terror.

  In an instant, most of the planet had been set back a hundred years without wanting to and that kind of shock would normally ensure a low resistance for an incoming army. However, the humans had done a masterful job at concealing the fact that they were both prepared for the incoming threat of the Husk and the EMP wave attack. Knowing that there was a momentary loss of control over the satellite network, Caretaker decided to reposition them to peer in at the base sites to see if they had survived the pulse wave and for a minutes there was little or no activity. For an AI that could process thousands of different tasks in the blink of an eye, fifteen minutes was its equivalent of a hellish wait. After an agonizing delay, Caretaker noticed the Groom Lake facility showed power spikes, and then a slow return to normal operating conditions, followed by the installations, worldwide. Shortly after the power was restored in the bases, it monitored the ships, tank battalions, and airstrips also coming back online. If it was able to smile, it would have; the warnings had been heeded and the Earth forces stood ready. Just to humor itself, Caretaker decided to run some numbers to better see what the chance of survival was for the human race. He quickly deduced that there was a thirty-four percent chance they survived the first day of the Husk arrival, a number that dropped significantly each passing day the alien Harvesters were on Earth.

  It decided that the humans had a fair chance, given that there was no way to extrapolate accurate data taking into account the presence of Aen and the Amarra in the fray. Given the ship’s frail condition and limited firepower, Caretaker decided that it would only serve as a distraction at best. But Aen—he defied all data-gathering. Instead of over-analyzing the situation and taking mere guesses as fact, it decided that with the addition of Aen, the planet might have lasted long enough for the Dark Light to arrive. However, Caretaker knew that one Lyarran cruiser versus a Husk Harvester was hardly a fair fight and that may not be the end of the conflict. Deciding it was best not to share any of this information with Aen, it merely catalogued this data for further usage and chose to simply watch the events of the next few days unfold.

  Groom Lake Military Installation –

  Code Name Area 51, Nevada - Arriva
l Day

  It was a sight that none alive would ever think they would see and it was a day that would be forever remembered as the one when the Husk Harvester reached lunar orbit. The fabled day of first contact had come as widespread panic and fear rose once more after a brief respite once the EMP wave had run its course. Now stationed to the left of the moon, the giant construct stuck out like an ugly tear in a painting of the stars as it stood over half the size of our nighttime companion. They were here, and once in a level and stationary orbit they wasted little time to get underway.

  It resembled a monstrous and mechanical pine cone, with scales opening along its surface to reveal stunning green lights beneath. Each scale at the front half began to open along the surface as they moved out from the center mass of the ship. Hatches slid to allow the Husk’s second volley of an attack to spring forth as all eyes on the planet below and all satellites that could be trained on the target watched helplessly. Each of the spires began to spurt out car-sized objects—robotic drones that resembled heavily armored ants—immediately powered up and sped towards Earth like a swarm of angry bees streaming out of a hive towards an attacker. The sky over Asia darkened immediately, the swarm so thick and immense it blocked out the sun for thousands of miles in all directions. As they hit the atmosphere, the planet fought back against the assailants with the friction from the very air itself, each individual drone glowing brilliantly as it descended. A few succumbed to the searing heat the atmosphere pushed back on them and exploded in giant fireballs; others were knocked down by the satellite defence networks, laser firing systems and nuclear missiles—but the sheer number of the drones soon overtook all these deterrents and pushed past the resistance.

  Once below the dangers of the upper atmosphere, the drones quickly spread themselves to prioritized targets and began to rain bolts of plasma down on strategic military installations, as anti-aircraft guns and jet fighters engaged the enemy. The sky began to light up as both Husk and human crafts exploded; in the blink of an eye the fight for the Earth had begun and it didn’t take long to see that humanity was overmatched! For every one of the enemy drones to fall, twenty jets or gunner stations were destroyed. Within the first half hour of the attack, the Russian Naval port city of Severomorsk erupted in a gigantic ball of flame as it began to sink away into the sea as it burned. There were no survivors; the destruction of the port was quick and brutally efficient. Patterson watched in horror with the knowledge that this was only the beginning; more cities would fall and many more lives would be lost.