SUNGLASESS AND ROCKETS Part 2: The Machine

STRANGE FORMS

The apocalyptic vision left us speechless. I breathed in deeply and shifted in my seat. I saw Darwin out of the corner of my eye. He was slapping himself.

We were just starting to become aware of the delicate situation. You could say the same about the pilot who had to take a breath before recovering his strength.

"In this case," he finally replied, "the best that we can do is to deactivate the SVM as soon as possible..."

Good grief! Did anyone imagine that on that summer night of 1999, Earth could be destroyed in less than three hours?

Moses Masterton wouldn't allow it.

"We won't fail", he said, determined to save the world. Suddenly he turned to the back line. "Understood?"

I nodded mechanically.

Shoot!

"You can count on me," the magnate said showing his solidarity, "in the back compartment there are three ultra light suits, jet-packs, tools." He looked to the control panel. "Liu always leaves a couple of guns inside the glove compartment..."

The doctor looked through the window and made us an emergency sign.

"Let's get ready."

We went to the rear and took out the suits and the jet-packs.

After a couple of minutes, the four of us, including the pilot, were wearing the suits and equipped with the jet-packs. In the back row, Darwin and I exchanged looks and each one of us put our helmet in our laps as if we were soldiers going to war.

Oh boy! Here we went again!

How did this huge responsibility ever fall on the shoulders of two high school students?

At least under the direction of the doctor, an SVM was quite easy to deactivate...

But... what if a fit of hysteria betrayed us and we blew it? We would be responsible for 6 billion souls including ours!

We did not have the time to make a mountain out of a molehill, because the pilot suddenly made an announcement that captured our attention:

"We're here."

I tried to relax the muscles in my neck.

"Beginning descent", he announced.

Descent?

Suddenly we felt some tickling. I looked through the window.

We were still many miles away from the ground. Taking the stars as a reference you could see that in fact we were descending, but not like a spaceship, but like an elevator.

Our landing was completely vertical.

"Major", the doctor radioed. "We are near the LHC territory".

I leaned forward a bit more, to have a better look.

"Roger", the Major replied thru the radio. "Ten Bats are on their way."

"Aren't they here yet?" Darwin asked.

"We are at least 45 minutes ahead", Lucas replied.

That could be an advantage or maybe not. Without looking away from the window I stated my objection:

"What if the place is full of Vampires?"

Underneath there were only shadows...

"We'll find out in a moment", the doctor replied and he went back to the radio. "Do you read me? Have you gotten any contact with Bilsby?"

A broken answer in the middle of strong static made it clear that he had not.

"Major," the doctor insisted. "If you hear me; we need Bilsby's people surrounding the LHC enclave in a perimeter of 20 miles; there could be more than one entrance around," the doctor hesitated. "I think that..."

The transmission got cut off.

"What does the radar say?" the pilot asked.

The copilot took a while to respond.

"There are some structures that are floating..."

His answer made me move away from the window.

"Structures?" Darwin inquired.

"Shall we continue?" the pilot asked.

The doctor fixed his eyes on the radar and we laid ours on him. He just raised his thumb.

"Major," the doctor called through the radio. "I need that all Bilsby's people be surrounding the LHC enclave. Do you read me?"

Nothing.

Darwin unbuckled his seatbelt and threw himself forward.

"Are those the Vampires?" he asked.

The doctor said to the pilot, "Can you sharpen the image?"

The pilot's right hand moved towards the controls.

"They're not Vampires", the doctor determined. The pilot side glanced and the doctor added, "they look like enormous discs and there's a bunch of them..."