Chapter 16
CHARLIE MIKE
Blake wasn’t sure if he dropped or if Judd threw him to the ground. Either way, he ended up pinned underneath the soldier with a mouthful of grass. Grunting, he knocked Judd’s hands off his head and glanced up.
The boom sounded like someone struck a sheet pan. Magnified by a thousand. It echoed painfully. He didn’t see any aliens around. The small park was the same as it had been five seconds ago. Tentatively, he wriggled out from under Judd and looked over to Victoria.
She’d had the same idea. The pilot was plastered to the ground just under the front of the SUV. They all looked at each other with the same panicked questioning look, until the shadow slipped over them.
Massive, it rippled across the ground like a wave.
Faster than any cloud. For a hysterical moment, Blake thought it was a dragon.
Which was ridiculous, but then again, three days ago he would have told you that aliens weren’t real either.
He wasn’t taking any bets against giant flying fire-breathing reptilians.
Craning his neck, he looked up in time to see a massive ship soaring overhead. It was flying high, so far away he couldn’t make out any exact details. What he could tell was that it wasn’t the same ship that was resting over Capitol Hill.
Judd came to the same conclusion at the same moment as Victoria. Their shocked cries mirrored each other.
“What—” they began just as a second boom echoed across the sky.
Blake’s brain worked faster than his body.
It recognized the second ship was shooting before he could move.
A large yellowish snot color, if he was going to be really specific—orb launched itself from the bottom of the second ship.
The orb hurtled toward the ground before splitting up into a hundred different smaller ones, like a shotgun blast.
They slammed against the shield, splintering apart as arcs of electricity danced over the translucent barrier. Flickering, the orbs went dark as they slid toward the ground, tumbling end over end before striking the dirt with a resounding thud. The ground shook with the force.
“They’re shooting at us,” Judd muttered, blinking up at the sky.
Victoria shook her head, pushing herself up with her broken leg sticking straight out. “Not us.” Her words were so faint Blake almost couldn’t hear them. “It’s shooting at the other ship.”
Another volley of orbs launched with the same effect. Electricity zapped from where they struck, thick arcs twisting out over the barrier before they died off. The useless orbs fell to earth as nothing more than dead projectiles.
No matter how much the second ship launched, the barrier held.
Blake felt exposed. Not that being inside a building would be of any benefit, but he would feel a hell of a lot better with a roof over his head.
He swallowed thickly. How long would the barrier hold?
What if it pulsated at just the right moment and the electric orbs got through?
How much damage could they do? What if they hit the river?
Would the water conduct the electricity?
A thought struck him.
Maybe it wasn’t space junk that damaged the alien’s shield. Maybe…maybe their battery was damaged in a fight with this second ship?
If the battery was damaged by this ship, that meant that these second aliens had weaponry that could destroy the first. And if they could destroy them…
“We need to get this shield down!” he snapped at Judd, pulling himself to his feet.
“What?” he asked, eyes wide. “That barrier is the only thing keeping those things back!”
“Exactly,” Blake said distractedly as he looked around for something, anything he could use to do exactly what he’d said—he was going to overheat the shield.
“Victoria said that the shield reacts to kinetic energy. It directs all its energy to where it’s being penetrated, right? What if it had multiple points?”
Victoria’s elegant eyebrows drew together. “You want to overwhelm the shield?”
“So far, the shield has only had to hold back our tech. A plane or two at a time. That’s nothing compared to what that thing up there can do. But if I can direct enough of its energy away from the second ship, then maybe they can bust it open.”
Or something. Honestly, Blake had no idea what he was talking about. But it sounded good.
“Ok, hold up. I’m still stuck on why we want to get rid of the one thing holding the zappy balls back?”
Victoria choked. “Zappy balls?”
They ignored her.
“Because,” Blake’s eyes landed on something that could help. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Judd blinked owlishly. “Or the enemy of my enemy is going to fry us to charred bits!”
“We have to risk it.”
“We really don’t.”
Blake started back toward the municipal building. “Think of it this way, if we get the shield down, then we can get some reinforcements.”
Judd growled in frustration, slapping a palm against his helmet. But he followed Blake anyway. “I want it on record that I think this is a bad idea.”
“I’ll take the fall if it doesn’t work.”
“If this doesn’t work, we’ll all be dead.”
“Exactly.”
Judd groaned again but helped boost Blake over the chain link fence surrounding the municipal parking lot.
Parked against the eastern fence was the row of snowplows Blake had noticed as they came in.
The orange trucks were hibernating, just waiting for winter.
Their angled blades rested against the ground; it could work.
Blake approached the first and hopped up onto the running board. Predictably, it was locked.
Grabbing his trauma shears from the clip on his belt, he flipped them to the small metal point on the back. Screwing up his face, he slammed the metal point into the window. Cracks splintered across the surface.
“Damn,” Judd whistled.
Blake cleared the remnants of the window. “They also have a ring cutter.”
“Handy.”
Reaching in, he unlocked the driver’s side door and stepped back, balancing on the serrated running board. He supposed it was too much to hope for the keys to be in the ignition.
“You know how to hot-wire a vehicle?”
Judd grinned lazily, extending a hand for Blake’s trauma shears. “Hell,” he drawled, ducking into the foot well to yank out a panel. “Lost the keys for every farm truck we ever had.”
The more Blake learned about Judd’s farm, the more he was convinced it was a lawless wasteland. He’d have liked to visit.
After a few minutes, the truck rumbled to life. The diesel engine was cacophonous in the quiet of the park and Blake felt like they were going to get caught at any moment. Judd returned the trauma shears, and he slid them back into his belt.
Hauling himself into the truck, Blake settled into the driver’s seat.
“I should be the one—” Judd said, reaching up for Blake.
“We’ve been over this,” he said distractedly as he looked around the cab for familiar buttons.
How different from an ambulance could it be?
“You need to stay focused on the shooting and soldiering. I have no idea what’s going to happen. If I get vaporized, you need to get Victoria out of here.”
Judd exhaled slowly. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
“None.”
“I don’t know why, but that makes me feel better.” He stepped back, gesturing for Blake to continue.
As it turned out, besides the hydraulic controls for the blade at the front, the snowplow wasn’t that different from driving an ambulance. It barely shuddered as it rammed through the chain link fence, dragging the twisted metal a few feet before it finally dropped off.
Victoria watched with an inscrutable expression as the truck rumbled towards the barrier.
Blake chose a spot a good distance from the SUV.
It was the only working vehicle they currently had, and he didn’t want to risk destroying it.
Not that he was sure distance would help, he might blow them all up for all he knew.
Shifting back in the seat, he released the wheel long enough to click on the seat belt. Couldn’t hurt.
Snowplows weren’t built for speed. The heavy angled blade on the front of the truck was controlled by hydraulics attached to the engine for power.
A small lip on the bottom of the blade helped it skirt over gravel and grass, so it glided rather than bulldozed.
He didn’t think any of that mattered for his purposes. He needed a workhorse.
Actively crashing into something went against all his instincts. Clenching his fingers around the wheel, he slammed his foot down on the accelerator and let the truck lurch the final few feet.
Blake felt the moment the blade hit the shield.
The entire truck shook, the metal creaked and groaned as the back tires spun in the grass.
He had to fight the wheel to keep the back end from wobbling back and forth as the momentum looked for other ways to expend itself.
Something at the front of the truck cracked, metal screeched, and Blake’s ankle ached with how hard he was pushing down on the accelerator.
The engine thudded, whirring as it pushed past its limits. A bolt snapped from the blade attachment and ricocheted into the windshield. Cracks splintered across the glass and Blake instinctively ducked.
When he looked back up, he could see something happening. Through the cracks in the windshield, the barrier began to shimmer. The filaments pulsating and hardening. They glitched, growing hard and then soft as if they couldn’t decide what they needed to do to stop the onslaught.
Blake had suspected the shield used the same force exerted on it to repel. Like the pressure of flicking a rubber band. If the aliens used in space, then that would be impact only as the space debris pinged off it. It wasn’t designed to hold something back long-term.
Especially not while it was also holding back an onslaught of zappy balls.
At least, that’s what Blake hoped.