Robert Doherty - Project Aura

When there was no reply, he pulled his eye back from the scope and glanced to his left. Valika was against the smokestack, a large splotch of red on the upper left quadrant of her chest, a thin trickle of blood flowing from her mouth. Her lips twisted slightly in what might have been a grin, then her eyes glazed over and the body slumped back.

“Damn.” Dalton spared a look down and he could see Cesar running forward, a submachine gun tight against his shoulder. A string of bullets tore into the walkway just to the right of Dalton. He ignored them, knowing he had run out of time, and aimed at the center of the fourth dish.

“Reroute complete,” Zenata announced. Lonsky was on the left wing of the bridge, looking back, trying to find the source of the firing.

“Transmit in two seconds,” she yelled to him.

Dalton pulled the trigger and the bullet hit the center of the dish, silencing it. Even while the bullet was in flight he was fading, disappearing from the real plane into the virtual as Cesar fired another burst that tore through where he had been. The Barrett fell to the deck with a loud clang.

Dalton jumped and was on the deck just behind Cesar. He re-formed in the real plane, his left arm shifting into a firing tube. He didn’t hesitate or feel any compunction about shooting the other man in the back. He fired and the ball of energy hit Cesar in the middle of his back, blasting him forward.

Cesar was dead before he hit the deck plate.

Dalton shifted back into the virtual and jumped, heading back toward the Ranch.

The computers on the two B-2 bombers had been released from the reprogramming that Jackson had done. The planes were on their way to the nearest Air Force base outside Anchorage. The crews were certain their careers were over. Dropping eighty thousand pounds off-range was an offense they were sure they would never recover from. They could only hope they had hit wilderness and not killed anybody.

Behind them, there was little to indicate that 540 steel towers had once occupied the torn and savaged ground. On the hillside where the control center had been, there were just a few chunks of smoldering concrete.

Captain Lonsky looked at the body of the man who had bought the ship for a few moments, then issued an order.

“Throw it overboard.”

Once that was accomplished, Zenata waited for the next order.

“Let us head back to Russia,” Lonsky said. “The less said about all this, the better.”

Dalton raced along the power connection with Sybyl, back to his body at the Ranch.

Souris diverted the Lear to Dallas. She “knew” that Cesar had been unsuccessful, but she also knew that the Psychic Warriors had been responsible for destroying HAARP, so the two canceled out.

She had failed in the mission she had been assigned, but gaining the Psychic Warrior update was a coup. They would appreciate that. It would give them a way to enter the real world and fight the Priory.

Dalton climbed out of the isolation tube, his body shivering uncontrollably. Jackson was already back, a towel draped over her shoulders, and she handed one to him as he reached the floor. He immediately noted Barnes’s body still in its tube. “Do you have contact with him?” he asked Hammond.

“No,” Hammond said. “I’ve been trying, but he hasn’t responded.”

“His signs?”

“Strange.”

“Strange how?” Dalton demanded.

“Not like the others. He’s out there being supported with power somehow, just not from Sybyl.”

Dalton turned back toward his tank. “We need to go look for him.” He halted as Mentor entered, coming from the operations center.

“You did it,” Mentor said, slapping him on the back.

“MILSTAR is still up there,” Dalton said, “with the retransmit capability.”

“I can work on correcting that, now that I have some time,” Mentor said.

“And the Priory and Mithrans are still out there, wherever they are,” Dalton added. “We’ve only stopped them for the moment.”

To that, Mentor had no reply.

Jackson put a hand on Dalton ’s shoulder as he prepared to climb back into his isolation tube. “You need a break. Wherever Barnes is, he can wait for a little while. You need rest.”

Dalton was about to argue with her when he realized she was right. He sat down wearily on a crate, Jackson doing likewise across from him.

“We have to reconstitute Nexus here in the United States,” Mentor said. He pointed at the other three people in the room: Dalton, Jackson, and Hammond. “The four of us.”

“Five of us,” Dalton said, indicating Barnes. “We need to do better than reconstitute Nexus,” he continued. “This war between the Priory and Mithrans has been going on for a long time. With the advances in technology we’re seeing, this conflict almost just destroyed us. I say for the next round, we go on the offensive.”

He put his hand out, palm up. “Are we agreed?”

Jackson immediately reached out and put her right hand on top of his. Hammond followed. The three of them looked at Mentor.

The old man slowly nodded. “It is time.” He placed both his hands over theirs.

Dalton could feel the power, the aura of strength, coming off the other three. It wasn’t much to fight the Priory and the Mithrans with, but it was a start.

Robert Doherty is a pen name for a best-selling writer of suspense novels. He is the author of Psychic Warrior, Area 51: The Grail; The Rock; Area 51; Area 51: The Reply; Area 51: The Mission; Area 51: The Sphinx, Area 51: Excalibur; Area 51: The Truth; and Area 51: Nosferatu. Doherty is a West Point graduate, a former Infantry officer, and a Special Forces A-Team commander. He currently lives in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information you can visit his Web site at www.nettrends.com/mayer [http://www.nettrends.com/mayer].