Chapter Two - Unforeseen Consequences

Chapter Two
Unforeseen Consequences

Kylar finished pulling on the gloves of his Hazardous Environment Suit, an HEV Mark V model, and disconnected it from its charging port on the wall. He pulled the helmet out of his locker and tucked it under the crook of his arm. Closing the locker, he turned and exited through the airlock and into the sample collection room.

Sebastian stood next to Isaac in the Central Observation Room, where they could remotely assist him by controlling various instruments and robots inside the sealed Anomalous Materials Lab.

“Do you have the sample, Doctor Ivanenko?” Isaac asked, bent over the intercom microphone. On the camera, they watched Kylar raise a large, crystalline orb to the lenses. “Very good. Proceed.”

They watched Kylar progress on camera to the second airlock, and move through to the room housing the Mass Wave Oscillator. Kylar carefully placed the orb in the center of the machine and then moved back behind a plexiglass shield stuffed with monitors.

“Start her up.” Kylar’s voice came over the radio. Sebastian typed the start-up commands into the main computer. The three arms of the Mass Spectrometer rose out of the ground and began to rotate around the sample, scanning the orb.

“Let’s test its conductivity and reactive properties.” Doctor Kleiner said.

Sebastian began feeding volts into orb. No reaction at first – no reactions at all. Ivanenko’s voice came over the radio,

“It seems to be a perfect insulator. It looks like a perfectly black sphere is growing in the center.”

“Full power please, Doctor Wolfe. Higher frequency in the wave oscillation.” Isaac said.

“100,000 watts?” Sebastian asked, unsure.

“At 100,00 gigahertz if you please.” Kleiner said, intensely watching the screen.

Sebastian pushed the power lever up to Full.

“The inner sphere is growing-its completely filled the orb now.”

They stood there, looking at it. Sebastian cut the power – but the sphere remained the same. Doctor Kliener signed with relief, and then said, “Okay Kylar, retrieve the sample.”

Kylar stepped out from behind the blast shield, and reached for the orb. He touched it, and suddenly, the room when silent.

All Sebastian saw was a flash, and time seemed to slow. He could feel his heart pounding – one long beat after another. Light bloomed out of their computers and across the room. Two words came out of Doctor Kliener’s mouth, nearly horse with fear.

“Resonance cascade.”

And then the air exploded. The monitors blew out in a shatter of glass, and for a moment, the room went dark. An emergency generator deep in the facilities bowls kicked in, and the lights flickered back to life, revealing the destruction. One camera remained operational, showing the remains of the test chamber. A massive, black, pulsating orb sat in the center of the room. Light seemed to ripple around it, like waves in a clear pool. A giant, spiraling tower of blue light rose through the orb from the ground, casting neon-blue lightning across the room. The whirling tornado of energy passed around the surface of the orb and blasted through the ceiling of the lab, right through the floors above them, and assumedly pierced through the bedrock onto the surface and into the sky.

“Kylar? Kylar!?” Sebastian shouted into the mike. He looked back at Doctor Kleiner. “What happened in there?”

Doctor Kleiner simply pointed one of the screens, shaking with fear. Sebastian turned and looked. It was feed from the surface several miles away – showing a huge swath of the night sky. Centered in the frame was the massive spiraling tower of light, piercing through the dark, stormy sky. In the upper stratosphere, clouds were starting to spin around the glowing tornado like a storm. Lighting raged in the clouds around it. And that’s when he saw it. The twister seemed to be splitting at the center, as if it was being pulled apart at the sides. As the gap widened between the two beams of energy, white, intense light poured out. He blinked. Something was moving through the storm, towards them. At first he thought it was a cloud – but it was too solid, too uniform. The energy storm seemed to warp around it, and a where a moment before there was nothing, appeared a massive vessel. It was a sphere, with a massive control tower lifting out of it. The sphere was encapsulated by a huge, C-shaped ring that coupled with the center via a building-sized engine bank. The ship nosed up ever so slightly as it dropped slowly to the desert floor, large, mechanical feet extending outwards from the ring section.

That thing could be over a kilometer across! He thought. Behind it, another emerged ship emerged. And another. They all bore the same markings – an angular golden clasp enclosing a circle.

The Union had landed. In the next seven hours, all of Earth would fall.


Chapter Three - Out of Time