Overrun: Project Hideaway (3 page)

"Bay Guard! Bay
Guard!" Watch Tower screamed as he struggled to stand. He slid away from
the bodies of the men who had just lit the Death Wall and now sprawled
motionless across the deck of the destroyed observation post. “Bay Guard are
you still there?!”

The body of one of the sentries
pinned his leg against a tangled beam preventing him from standing completely
up. When he was finally able to pull away, the searing heat from the roaring
Death Wall kept him from raising his head over the observation rail and looking
below. "Tell me you’re there! And what do you got?"

"We’re here…," came
the sullen reply. "We got a few, Watch Tower. Had to close on some that
weren't in yet. They impacted against the doors. The shield drop crushed a few
more. But, we got a few."

Watch Tower glanced down briefly
at the bodies of his own dead crew and then quickly turned away.

"Roger that, Bay
Guard," he said and switched off his comlink.

Watch Tower hooked his arms
again on the observation rail and struggled to pull himself up. Resting his
weight on wounded feet, he trained his glasses across the flaming carnage
below. Through the disarray and confusion on the ground's surface, a large
movement caught his eye through the thick smoke. His hands shook as he adjusted
the glasses for a better look.

Many of the massive dome-killer
superstructures were intact and still moved on the ground after the blast. They
continued to push steadily through the roaring flames towards the flaming dome.

Watch Tower stared in horror at
the sight. More than fifty dome-killer transports lunged through the fiery
aftermath of the Death Wall pushing past the safety zone perimeter. As if
coming from Hell itself, they appeared from the deepest parts of the monstrous
flames that consumed the surrounding land for as far as the eye could see.

The massive structures moved
quickly and steadily before slowing to a stop a few hundred yards from the
dome’s base.

Watch Tower knew then that the
end for both himself and Science Dome 15 had finally come.

The transports lined up along
the damaged dome lumbering mercilessly across the wreckage of those already
destroyed by the battle. The scorched metal of exploded transports and flaming
ruins of the doomed Bullet land fleet were ground into the earth beneath their
wheels. Several more of the structures appeared from behind lining up next to
them and dropping their panels to their sides. Thousands of rockets extended
from their interiors into the blasting heat of the outside.

As one they launched. Their
destructive force thundered without mercy into the sides of the dome.

The blast ripped the observation
platform from its base and lifted it in a fiery oblivion towards the sky.

By this time, Watch Tower was
already gone. His body, long since crushed by raining debris, laid still with
the rest of his observation crew. In another quick instant, they were all
lifted by the flaming destruction into the battle-ruined sky.

Wind scattered what remained of
the observation post across the advancing forces of the J.G.U. ground team.
Steam rose from the pieces of jagged metal that fell from the night and pierced
the ground.

The dome-killer
transports kept rolling relentlessly forward over the shredded flaming
battlefield.

Their guns and rockets continued
to fire. Their ferocious and brutal advance did not cease.

Ten minutes prior to Death Wall ignition
Science Dome 15 Command Center, Meeting Room 26

"Veer left! Veer left,
Ground 2!"

A trail of fire blazed after two
Bullet land fleet vehicles racing back towards Science Dome 15. A giant burst
of flame gouged a hole twice the size of the two vehicles combined deep into
the ground beneath the rear of the one furthest from the landing bay. The blast
rocketed its frame into the air and hungry flames devoured it before it hit the
ground. The fiery debris rained across the path of the lead Bullet causing its
pilot to swerve into the path of another J.G.U. rocket that ripped it into
nothingness.

The steel from the exploding
vehicle seemed to shriek briefly before shredding into oblivion, and then no
further sound came from the battle monitor.

"As everyone has been
notified, the security of Dome 15 has been compromised," the tall figure
of Lt. Commander Dome Leader Steven Corrado loomed ominously at the head of the
large meeting table. Taking a half step to his right, his large frame blocked
the large holovid screen displaying the battle being waged outside on the
sun-battered terrain.

"A defense land fleet has
been dispatched and are heavily engaged. They are only a few miles out."
Corrado hit a button on the panel to his left raising the lights across the
meeting room slightly. "We are here to address rumors and discuss possible
scenarios and solutions as they relate to this dome attack and the security of
Mission Hideaway."

A series of explosions flashed
across the holovid causing the dozen or so gathered members of the Hideaway
science team to glance away from Corrado back at the screen. Two more of the
Bullet land fleet burst into flames and were gone. Their fiery destruction
jabbed bright light across the still dimly lit room. A thin cloud of smoke
hovered in the air from cigarettes clutched tightly in the nervous fingers of
many of the people sitting around the table.

"How far
away are they?" Dr. Katie Rone, head of the Hideaway Pilot Research
Program, questioned the speaker.

"The command to light the
Death Wall was given about five minutes ago," Lt. Commander Corrado
answered her. "They're very close. And as I know I needn't remind anyone,
the Death Wall has always been considered a last resort."

The room fell deathly silent.
Only a soft sound of explosions from the monitor and the quiet sucking from
deep drags on cigarettes could be heard.

"Do we wake them up?"
Corrado questioned the group. "This is one of the most difficult decisions
this facility has ever faced. I know that. But people…, we have to decide this
fast."

"Of course we wake them
up," Rone answered him. "If the Death Wall is the last resort, then
we have to bring them down to Earth. Right now. While we have time."

"There is no time,"
Dr. Robert Kobus, a member of her personal research team and the man seated
directly to her left, answered curtly. “This decision should have been made
many days ago. It should have been made when we first heard we were going to
war. But now, the war has all too quickly come to us.”

Rone tried, as she always did,
to control the red-hot poker-through-the-eye emotion she always felt when
discussing anything with her colleague, Kobus. She had always considered him a
bickering and argumentative man since the day he had come to work for her. He
was someone that she had never really liked very much and each day wished would
leave the research team. Their views on how to interpret the Hideaway crew
never seemed to coincide.

But the
focus of their research was by far too intriguing for either of them to ever
leave the team.

The ship was sent up into space
loaded with some of the most prized technology ever created on the planet.
Updates and supplemental data resources for this technological equipment was
uploaded from Science Dome 15 on a continuous daily basis to the ship’s vast
array of storage equipment.

The two pilots had rocketed a
secret course away from Earth with orders to conceal the ship. Simply keep it
hidden from anyone that wasn’t directly linked to the science dome. Once safely
away, the pilots found a dark remote region on the far side of the moon away
from the furthest reaches of any detection system on the planet. There, they
set an automated stationary course and put themselves into an extended period
of suspended animation.

Their mission was to wait. Wait
until sometime called upon.

That was fifty years ago. And
what had become interesting to both Rone and Kobus was that “sometime” had now
become way too long.

The job of her research team was
to monitor the hibernation and thoroughly examine the psychological histories
of the pilots. Based on these studies, they were to think, rethink, and predict
each pilot’s reaction to any and every set of situation and stimuli that could
be possibly encountered on the ship.

Neither Rone nor Kobus had ever
met the two men. They had inherited the project from a screening and
implementation team now since retired. This previous team had selected these
men from more than thirteen hundred candidates referred to the project for
consideration.

Despite not knowing them
personally, through numerous lengthy discussions with her predecessors, some
done through dissertations and coursework at the dome universities, Rone felt
she had experienced the entire process firsthand. She felt connected with the
men inside and out. And considered herself the most qualified of anyone ever
associated with the project to get into their heads and gaze into their souls.

Of anyone in the room, she was the
foremost expert on the two men guarding the most important cargo ever to be
shot off the planet in a ship.

She had heard rumors of the
project during the earliest years of her university enrollment, and they had
drawn her…almost fanatically so. She was fascinated by the fact that these men
had been left in hibernation and never wakened from what could be considered a
terminal sleep. She was fascinated by the moral implications of the sin they
continued to commit each day they did not bring these men back to Earth. And
she was morbidly curious as to what would happen if these men were ever to
awake.

Rone spent years and three
subsequent theses on the subject. She spent more than ten years with the
original personnel that screened the men. She knew the personal histories of
each pilot by heart. She had run and re-run their psychological evaluations and
created and played out every scenario of their return to consciousness both in
report form and in her head. She lived, breathed, and dreamt these men and always
wondered, despite all her studies, what would really happen when their time
finally came to return to life.

During the course of this all,
she had acquired an extreme fondness for these two men, an almost illogical
love. Impractical or unethical. Romantic or paternal. She was always never
sure. What she did know was that despite whatever their personal intentions for
signing onto the project, she felt an emotion toward both of them based on
their individualities and what they had gone up there to do.

She feared the longer they were
left up there, and now with the country at war and the dome under attack, the
closer they came each day to becoming irretrievably lost.

These were the thoughts driving
her in this conversation. She had always felt it would be her decision and hers
alone as to when these men would finally return to Earth. If there was ever a
time to bring them back down, this was it.

"These
men have been in hypersleep for fifty years,” Kobus spoke directly to her.
“That’s nothing to their bodies, but half a lifetime to everyone they knew
around them. People that are now most likely gone. They will come out of it
thinking they’ve been under for only a few weeks or a few months. Natural human
reaction has to be taken into account. They will be disconcerted at first, more
so than what follows a typical stretch of suspended animation. After that, fear
will quickly follow," he said not addressing the room so much as he was
lecturing her personally.

“And then anger,” he paused and
turned away from her to the others listening intently. “It will come. We could
quickly lose control of the ship and the entire situation.”

Kobus shared some of the same
feelings as her own. Though, not entirely so. Like her, he was morbidly
fascinated at the prospect of the two pilots possibly floating forever through
space in a continuous hibernation. However, he never felt a personal connection
with either of the men. The control they held over their personal fates didn’t
sway his emotion or compassion in either direction. And the fact that she was
the expert, with more knowledge, credentials, and overall authority on the
subject, always caused him to engage her in debate.

Rone turned from the lieutenant
commander and looked directly at him.

"They're going to be really
pissed," Kobus said ignoring the rest of the room and speaking to her
directly again.

Each additional year the project
continued, Kobus had become more and more squeamish at the idea of ever
bringing the men back to Earth. He advocated leaving the ship up there
indefinitely rather than risking the possibility of detection even from the
minute surges of low frequency power required to bring it back online. He had
also started to harbor a growing fear of the two men.

This apprehension and his own
personal research centered on only one of the pilots. Each day he spent working
on it was another day he felt the decision made many years ago had been
entirely wrong. This pilot was wrong. He was not the one the world should be
counting on to keep it as well as its secrets safe and secure.

Kobus never wanted to see the
ship come back down, not with this man alive and on board.

Kobus had gone so far as argue
his case to her in court. After the ruling, there was even an appellate
proceeding. But on both occasions, in the presence of both governing tribunals,
he was never able to completely convince her or those making the ruling of his
fears. Rone wondered if Kobus’ repeated attempts to keep the pilots and ship in
continued hibernation was only due to personal fright of the world they all
existed within. Or perhaps he just wasn’t entirely convinced himself of what he
claimed.

Either way, she had always been
able to keep Kobus and his ideas in check while at the same time keeping the
project moving forward. Ship mission plans had never changed in all the years
since it was launched.

"I've researched both their
psychological histories thoroughly. I've been closely monitoring their life
support and brain patterning. Nothing has been out of the ordinary," Rone
argued back at him. “There have been no complications going into or during
their hibernation states. Normal brain wave patterning has always been intact.
They were both given top physical and psychological clearances when they went
up.

“If these men were given the
military clearance to be aware of and then safeguard one of the most important
inventions the world has ever seen, then these same men are certainly capable
of handling unforeseen contingencies and changes in mission plans. They are
United States soldiers for God's sake, not unstable civilians under suicide
watch. They can handle this. This is what they were sent up there to do,” Rone
finished.

"These are not unforeseen
changes in mission plans," a younger male voice came softly but with
authority from the far end of the briefing table.

Heads turned towards the man
that had spoken. Rone could barely see the outlines of his face through the
thick haze of smoke choking the room. She thought it was Christopher Korcheck,
a member of the Beam Cannon technical group. Only when a burst of air from the
overhead ventilating fans cleared the air a bit was she finally sure.

Korcheck was considered to be
one of the top minds in the entire United States scientific dome community. He
grew up a child prodigy. His genius as an adult was thought to be immeasurable.
Some said it simply couldn’t be described.

Korcheck was a young, eccentric,
and driven scientist who spent years working in the tunneled caves below the
domes. A man who declared on national news at the age of ten that he would use
his knowledge, a great gift given to him from God, to one day save the world.
The footage was a favorite throughout the national news media throughout the
years that followed.

Korcheck worked with the beam
cannon scientists. He studied their designs, examined the flaws, and conducted
his own experiments into the technology. He then helped a corps of beleaguered
engineers see it through. He had discovered new means of storing and utilizing
power. He created atom chips and power control devices that were always smaller
than anyone else had ever dreamed of in design.

He refined the space necessary
to make the Beam Cannon Hardware usable. Through his own ambition, he made it
possible for the beam cannons to work. Once constructed, the technology he
helped perfect in design would completely encompass the globe with an
artificial atmosphere. Not limited patches of the globe that would only be able
to protect a preordained few.

Once a few more things worked
into place, it would be possible to implement the technology completely. Once
done, the disease and division that ravaged the planet would one day be gone.

"We need to think about
what we are going to do," Korcheck continued. "We're going to pull
these men from hibernation, a procedure that is in itself disconcerting and
stressful to the physical and mental system, and tell them the world is at war.
And then tell them that their family is dead. Everyone they’ve ever known is
dead, because we decided to leave them up there in an extended hibernation rather
than bring them back down at the specified time.