Escape: Omega Book 1 (Omega: Earth's Hero) (14 page)

General Hendricks grinned. It was the first time he’d shown any emotion besides the short rise to anger this morning. He put out his hand, Black accepted it. “Yes,
major.
I did. We believe this thing has the weaponry needed to put an end to our little alien problem. There will be a lot of testing, a lot of training to learn these foreign systems, but it is the only thing in our arsenal I would pit against Omega. It stands to reason a war machine from his world would have the best effect on eliminating him.”

“Eliminating?” Perry, Major Black, let the word hang in the air.

“Precisely. We have an escaped walking, talking armament out there. We will eliminate him, and if deemed viable, start the whole project over from scratch or seal the files and make it a fond memory. Omega has gone Rogue, Major. There is no telling what he is capable of. We need a hero, and I’m putting my money on you.”

Black looked the general eyeball to eyeball, and then shifted his gaze to the spacecraft. “That I can do, general. That I can do.”

Keep Reading

for a sample

of

ROGUE

Omega: Book 2

a serial by

Keith Latch

July 4, 1947

Just before midnight…

It wasn’t easy. It took a lot of work, but boy, was it worth it!

Darrin was squeezed down on the bed of the truck, in between the cargo and the place where the tarp tied down to the side. Now he knew what a sardine felt like. But he wasn’t complaining, not by a long shot. He still couldn’t believe his own eyes. It had taken more than a little gumption to strike out on his old bicycle in the middle of the night, but even if he was grounded for a year after this, and put on extra chores, he wouldn’t complain. No sir, no how.  

The road was rough, and though the driver took it slow and easy, the shocks on the back of the transport left a lot to be desired. Every time they hit a hole or a bump, it rattled Darrin’s teeth. He found that keeping them clamped together helped, at least a little.

The thing that troubled him beyond the teeth jarring and the possibility of being discovered by the soldiers—and there were dozens: the ones driving the truck and the ones in the vehicles both to the front and back of him—was the likelihood that this huge thing would shift and either crush him or knock him off, roll off on him and, worse than crush him, smash him like a bug underneath the tire of a big Ford tractor so flat his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.

Of course, there was a prospect of something even worse than that.

Darrin didn’t even think about it. Instead, he cleared his mind of awful maybe’s and concentrated on the extraordinary object that he could reach out and touch. It was so dark beneath the tarp that he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face. He should have brought a lantern, or even a book of matches, he reasoned. There simply wasn’t time. After the light scratched across the sky and the ground shook, it took him only a fraction of a second to decide what to do. Only after fetching his bike and pedaling as hard as he possibly could for several miles did he realize he was so ill-prepared for whatever lay ahead.

And what did he could not have guessed in a million years.

Darrin had been quite a distance from the downed object, hidden behind a rock formation, as it was surveyed, then loaded by the army, but he’d been close enough to see the important stuff. He saw the vessel from the sky as the men worked, then as the big man, the one apparently in charge, had pulled his gun as if to fire.

And then it was the craziest thing in the world.

They pulled something, or somebody, from the crater that held the ship. He looked human, at first. Darrin’s mind went crazy, the gears turning so fast they stripped. It wasn’t a man: it was an alien.

Darrin was a thinker. He always had been. It had been the source of many sleepless nights as he thought way too hard about too many things. He’d never completely decided if it was a gift or a curse. At ten-years-old, he’d already read more books than most of the adults in town, and while young, had mature notions about the world, all the while looking at that same world with the same wonder and excitement of the child that he really was. That was most of the reason he’d seen the crash, or at least the ribbon of brightest blue that cut through the desert night like slow motion lightning.

Darrin was a student of astronomy, and aided by his homemade telescope--a nifty little job that was his prized possession--he was making observations, which he learned to take from a sky guide he purchased out of what his daddy called a “funny book.” It took him almost a month of working down at Dobson’s Feed Store to get the money.

It was getting late, and the youngster was just about to turn in. The sun would rise early in the morning, and there was no sleeping in unless you had a fever or broke out with the measles. A few more seconds and he would have missed it.

But he didn’t miss it. The blue flame cut across the sky from east to west, bright as dawn for just a moment, then faded away. A moment later, the ground quaked underfoot. He realized he knew then what he was seeing even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself.     

The object--the vessel, the spaceship--was loaded onto a huge flatbed diesel. Men scurried off in a hurry to their respective vehicles as a heavy, black tarp was pulled over the object and secured tightly. As the lights were killed and the vehicles began turning so they could pull back into a formation, Darrin saw his chance and took it. He’d never run so hard in all his life, and it almost wasn’t fast enough. A dozen yards from the flatbed, with nothing but flat desert and the headlights of the trucks slicing the darkness, a soldier had jumped from his perch in the cab of the truck carrying the strange, otherworldly load and shuffled back to double check the strappings. Darrin had dropped flat against the ground in a flash, exhibiting a sporting skill he was unaware he possessed.   

When the soldier was satisfied that the cargo was snug, he beat feet back to the cab and the truck revved to head out. Sand and dust covered Darrin, but it didn’t slow him one little bit. He was up and across the distance before anyone noticed a thing, or so he hoped.

The bed was higher than he first thought, and after the night’s exertions, he found it hard to pull himself up. But pull himself up he did, giving himself a bang to the head in the process. Still, that didn’t cause the slightest hesitation as he wrangled in beside the vessel. There he laid still, teeth clenched and wondered just from what corner of space this ship had originated.

Finally, after he felt like he’d been kicked by his father’s prize mule at least enough to bruise every major part of his body, the truck finally reached the main road. With one final bump, the tires bit onto the pavement and the ride smoothed.

The ride took forever. Darrin lost track of time and couldn’t read the face of his watch in the darkness. Minutes stretched into hours and the steady vibrations of the truck bed against his body caused him to go numb in places. He was excited and scared, but as the miles wore on, he became sleepy as well. He knew the worst thing that could happen was for him to fall asleep. His bike left behind, he had no idea how he’d get back home, or even where they were headed. He’d deal with that when the time came. His main priority was evading discovery, his second learn as much as he could about this strange flying object.

He could, of course, not see the spaceship, but knowing it was there was good enough. Along with these army men, he had seen something completely miraculous, and he wanted--no
needed
--to learn more. Darrin did his best to stay focused, to keep his young mind active, but soon exhaustion won out the war and he drifted away.

Shouting of men woke Darrin and his stomach knotted with sick fear as he realized the truck had stopped. He couldn’t make out the words at first because there were so many, but he strained his ears. Finally the shouts and coalesced into coherent speech.  

“Get a move on, men. Sunup is right around the corner…”

“Move it, move it, move it…”

“Franklin, get your rear in gear, get those wheels chocked…”

Darrin had no idea what to do. He could make a run for it, but that was insane. These were soldiers. Soldiers were armed, and they were trained for bigger things than a trespassing ten-year-old. He could remain right where he was, but the tarp would sooner or later be taken off, as researchers were no doubt nibbling at the bit to get a glimpse of the desert find.

Though a rather intelligent young man, Darrin could not make a decision.

But as the straps pulled free and with the all too distinctive rustle of plastic, he knew he wouldn’t have to. The decision was already made for him.

Blinding white light stung his eyes as the tarp retracted. All around him soldiers stood. Out of the periphery of his vision, he saw the shine of the chrome under the powerful lights. It was simply awe-inspiring. No one on planet Earth had ever seen a sight like it, Darrin thought. It was perfect. Even the front, where it had burrowed into the hard desert floor, didn’t even appear smudged, not even dusty.

It took him seconds to remember that he was not alone with the ship, and that any chance of escape was gone.  

Swallowing hard, he looked around. The soldiers looked as shocked to see him as they were to finally see the small craft under proper lighting. But their initial shock didn’t last long. To their credit, everyone seemed to catch on to the fact they had a stow-away pretty quickly. Apparently, after witnessing a certified UFO, a ten-year-old kid wasn’t much to warrant heavy consideration. For the briefest of moments, Darrin thought everything just might be okay. Then he heard the distinctive click of a bolt being pulled in a rifle. The room was that quiet, making that click sound like thunder in his young ears.

Now, all of a sudden, he wished he’d just gone to bed early.   

~*~

It had been a very long shift for Captain Garrett Fallow. Up before dawn, a full day of exercises with his unit, dinner in the officer’s mess, a drink before bed. He’d thought his day through when he switched off his bedside lamp a few minutes after nine P.M. He’d been wrong--dead wrong.

Fallow’s unit, the 509
th
Atomic Bomb Group, had been enjoying a temporary assignment at the White Sands army base in New Mexico when radar had caught the speeding object tearing from the top reaches of the atmosphere toward the desolate countryside just outside Roswell. White Sands was a comparatively large installation and many units called it home. Unfortunately, the commanding officer decided that the 509
th
was the most viable unit to send to intercept the unknown potential threat.

Fallow agreed that he and his men would be the best equipped, if out of nothing more than pride in his soldiers. With the advent of the A-bomb, it only made sense that American soldiers should be trained in all aspects of dealing with one. From disposal to fall out control, to treating those afflicted with radiation sickness. As a result of the varied needs, Fallows’ men were the brightest of the bright and the cream of the crop.

But nothing in boot camp or in their subsequent training could have given them even the most meager tools necessary to process and deal with the sight they beheld this night. Truth be told, when he came face-to-face with the extraterrestrial, Fallow himself, a career man with twenty years in the service, found himself at a loss, as confused and frightened as an adolescent who found himself stranded alone in a cemetery on Halloween night.

Garrett was a practical man, never given to flights of fancy. His most creative moments came while engaged in war games and plays of strategy. The tales of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells never held attraction for him. He was keener on military history and biographies of great leaders such as Napoleon, Robert E. Lee, and George Washington. Perhaps if he had chosen to read more broadly, his mind could have wrapped itself around the events of the last few hours.

As it was, had fatigue not been so heavily draped across him, he would still be shaking. And Captain Garrett Fallow, commander of the 509
th
, was not a man that shook easily.

The jeep and most of the other vehicles had stopped just outside a large hangar. The truck carrying the craft and the van carrying the dead form pulled on inside. As soon as they were through, the large roll-down was lowered. Fallow and his men hurried through a man-sized door to the side of it.

When Fallow was in, he made his way to the center of the large floor where the flatbed had halted. His NCO’s were shouting orders and the soldiers were following them in a flurry of activity. They, like he, had lost their bearings for a little bit out at the crash site, but they had recover. Now, they exhibited the determination and professionalism that he respected so, and he couldn’t contain the pride that swelled within him.

And all of a sudden something went wrong. Very wrong.

Excited shouts. Weapons, both rifles and pistols, flashed into position.

“It’s one of them,” someone shouted.

“He came off the ship!” another yelled.

Fallow realized what was happening. He saw the kid, hunkered down, afraid. He saw the muzzles pointed the child’s way. He saw the way things were going to go.

“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” he shouted. “Stand down!” Fallow’s deep, hoarse voice filled the hangar, but he didn’t take the chance of no one hearing him. He moved fast, swinging his massive arms. The majority of the soldiers were situated to the rear of the flatbed, and that’s where he hurried. He saw the kid shrink back further toward the rear of the cab; his eyes wide like a deer in headlights.

Somehow, remarkably, Fallow made it to the youngster before anyone fired.

He stopped at the side of the truck, turned to his men. He motioned for them to lower their weapons. It was clear they were still on edge, but when the captain gave the order, they obeyed.

Looking to the kid, “Now, just where in tarnation did you come from?”

~*~

Darrin was locked in a windowless room. There had been no interrogation. There had been no questioning. Once they had figured out that Darrin was just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill ten-year-old and not a visitor from beyond the stars that had snuck out of the spaceship on the trip here, they tossed him into this small room with one bare light bulb, without preamble or explanation.