There was no sound, only dark stark black and white pictures shot in a crude light depicting one man’s final moments before his death.
Hollanbach watched intently, all frames of the film as they blurred together into the moving pictures he and everyone else in the room witnessed before them…staring with the captain’s confrontation with the third alien type and Reese’s retrieval of the sphere.
A tame sequence of events compared to what happened next. Hollanbach felt his breath catch when the camera turned away from the dead alien’s body and saw a sudden image of the big-eyed gray standing there, quite alive, staring, at them it seemed, raising its arm to shield its eyes from the abrupt brilliance of Reese’s light.
Hollanbach could almost hear the shrill of the tiny creature as it might have sounded, screaming in unparalleled surprises, turning away and running into the darkness that extended. This darkness, Hollanbach knew all too well, in every direction around them.
He saw Reese’s arm raise up, his hand coming away from his rifle for just an instant, perhaps to show the alien he meant it no harm. But it was too late. The gray was long gone. It seemed that Reese stood there a second or two longer than he should have, and then he slowly began to turn around.
Hollanbach felt himself begin to cringe with terror when the light from his dead partner’s helmet illuminated the arm, the waist, and as Reese looked up, the chest of one of the giant’s they’d seen the likes of before. Only this one was alive and standing dangerously close. The light continued to travel upwards, following what had been Reese’s gaze…stopping as it reached the monster’s face, which instantly drew back to escape the harshness of the light. The former commander jumped in his seat when he saw the giant lunge at the camera, giant claws and giant teeth filling the screen.
And then came the flashes of light. Flash, flash, flash …one right after another in rapid succession. The camera caught the glint of a spent shell casting as it traveled up and away in the moon’s gravity, slowly tumbling end over end. The flashed stopped and Reese’s gun came into view as he bent down to eject the spent clip and slap in another one.
C’mon, Reese, Hollanbach heard himself thinking as the light from the helmet shone back onto the giant, now still and rubbing its chest in confusion. Kill it or get the hell out of there! The monster didn’t stay still for very long. Its claws came back into view as did its teeth…lunging at Reese as he fired yet again.
Flash.
Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash!
Hollanbach could see how close Reese was to the beast now, less than twenty feet he knew, as he emptied another magazine of 7.62 millimeter rounds into its chest. But the damn thing kept coming, and swinging its clawed hands at the how defenseless Reese, who suddenly threw his weapon at the creature as the camera, bolted away and upwards from its tight hold on the alien, light splashing onto the ridged ceiling of the spaceship.
The Navy captain tensed and sat up in his seat. “Holy shit!” his thoughts screamed out. “He’s falling down.” Then came the struggle to get up.
The dead frozen alien arm came into view and was tossed quickly aside, and the spiraling pieces of a neatly sliced M-16 zipped overhead as the creature continued to come at him, slower now….more sluggish. And then came the fall.
The motion of the film seemed to slow considerably now, with Reese finally managing to grab hold of some leverage to boost himself back into a standing position. The helmet-cam stayed on the downed creature, bathed in white light and lying on the deck. It seemed that the captain had finally managed to kill it after pumping more than forty-some rounds into its leathery skin. But Hollanbach’s mood soon changed once he realized that Reese was watching the giant because….as the tell-tale rise and fall of its chest indicated….it was still alive, still breathing.
Reese quickly turned, and came upon a blur of something in front of him. It was too close for the camera to be able to focus on it, substituting visual clarity for a gray and white smudge. The picture began to jerk violently to each side, and much to his horror, Hollanbach started to think that he knew what it was he was looking at. But he wasn’t certain of it until the camera angle slowly began to drift downwards, the helmet light illuminating the exposed second half of the Air Force captain’s body, freshly severed and left standing on its own, a glimpse of now familiar alien claws caught in the down-swing of the light, sparkled with the crystallizing blood on its sharpened tips.
Another flash of movement, and it appeared the glass from Reese’s visor shattered, bits of glass glinting as they passed quickly by…the camera beginning to pitch end over end as the helmet and Reese’s head separated from the man’s neck, slowly began to sail until it hit the bulkhead of the ship, lazily ricocheting towards the deck and hitting it, taking a few seconds to roll around until it came to a stop, amazingly enough on its side, and still facing the direction it came from, clearly showing the alien eating the captain’s remains…and two more attacking and ripping into their downed comrade in the background.
It was at that moment, the projection switched off and the lights blinked back on in the room, giving Hollanbach a chance to see what he could to see of the expressions of those around him. To his right, he heard a retching sound, turning to the British prime minister again tossing his lunch onto the floor, deeply sickened by what was just seen by all before them.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Coley said, drawing her audience’s attention away from the puking Prime Minister, and back to herself. “What you have all just witnessed is the tragic death of Captain Andrew Reese, a death caused by senseless and savage bloodlusts of those brutal aliens who apparently had come back to investigate the crash of their spaceship,” she said as she looked down at the French president. “Do you understand now, sir, what I was trying to relay to you beforehand?”
The Frenchman sighed heavily, shaking his head in disbelief.
“This…,” he began to say slowly.“….is impossible. The creature was nearly dead,” he pointed out. “Perhaps a few more rounds would have finished it off.”
Coley half-shrugged. “Perhaps,” she agreed. “But take this into consideration. How much firepower will be needed to kill these creatures should they turn their designs to our planet? Would their invading forces be in the thousands…or the millions?”
“Christ,” Hollanbach heard the Vice-President say. “Millions of them?”
“It’s not entirely impossible, sir,” Coley told him. “And it is definitely something to think about.”
At that moment, she opened the metal briefcase and brought the sphere back into view. “Especially once you view the contents inside this.”
“That looks like the object the captain retrieved from the ship,” a Russian-accented voice said. All eyes turned to see Sternenko, calmly sitting in his seat, even though his face looked as if it were straining to keep something else-some other emotion-inside. “I do not recall such a device making it back to Earth during our joint rescue attempt of your astronaut, Agent Coley. However did you manage to maintain possession of this artifact?”
The Vice-President became curious. “What’s he talking about, Agent Coley?” the politician said suddenly. “What rescue attempt?”
Coley smiled nervously, shooting cold looks at the grinning Sternenko, seemingly quite pleased with himself for exposing their shared secret, something she hoped to not have to discuss today in front of so many dignitaries. It had been a mistake to leave Reese up there anyway, they knew that when Hollanbach had informed them of the fuel gauge’s true status….and the fact that the U.S. had to rely on their nemesis for help….well, the politics of it was damaging, which is why the President had insisted she avoid all discussion of it during the briefing. But now that the general had just blurted out in front of them and the veepee, who obviously didn’t know anything about it- Coley felt she had no choice to tell what had happened. Setting the sphere down on the podium, she began.
“After a minor impact with a meteorite during descent, some of the LEM’s read-out systems were damaged…among them was the ascent engine fuel monitor, which displayed a sufficiently low volume reading. It was low enough, I’m afraid; to constitute an emergency decision made by the President, forcing one of the astronauts to remain on the moon’s surface while the other continued homeward,” she said as she sighed.
“It was the only way to rectify the weight-to-launch ration that would have allowed the lander to successfully use what tiny amount of fuel it did have to break lunar gravity and rendezvous with the CSM,” she said as he gave the audience a sorrowful look. “It was not an easy decision by any means…but one made for the greater good, which was bringing home the remainder of the crew and learning what we could of the spacecraft encountered there on the moon.
“In turn, we asked the Soviet Union for help in the immediate retrieval and rescue of Captain Reese, and much to the gratefulness of the United States, they complied,” she said as she focused her eyes on the Vice-President. “I’m sorry, Sir, if you were in the dark about all this, but there just wasn’t enough time to properly notify you, being out of the country on business as you were at the time.”
He nodded his head. “Entirely understandable. I’m quite sure the President would have briefed, accordingly, had I actually been given the chance to return to Washington instead of being sidelined to this briefing. Do go on, Agent Coley.”
With a slight smile, she picked up the sphere and walked to the center of the stage.
“Quite by accident,” she started again. “One of the examining technicians discovered this spherical object to be what we believe to be the ship’s black-box of some sorts…acting as a recorder for these creature’s conquests of other planets, other races….depicting them in a form not yet popular to the masses, but relatively new in the scientific community. Something called a hologram.”
Coley looked at their faces to see if the term registered and it didn’t look like I did. “Really,” she said, giving the signal for the lights to go down, which they soon did. “You have to experience it to understand it,” she said holding the baseball sized object out in front of her.
Coley depressed the black bulge on its side and withdrew her hand out from under it. Surprising the spectators into silence as the sphere remained in the air, floating it seemed, without any aid or suspension.
“Brace yourselves,” the agent forewarned. “This is an experience you’ll not soon forget.”
Her words seemed far away as the little metal ball began to hum in a low tone, its north and south hemispheres separating and hovering a few centimeters away from watch other as a light began to build in its center, pulsating as the humming began to grow louder and louder until there was a silent explosion of brightness, radiating outwards in all directions.
Shutting his eyes only briefly to escape the intensity of the light, Hollanbach opened them at the sudden absence of all sound, and became panicked to find himself still sitting in his chair, but all the world around him gone, replaced by a black, starry void, and a green and white planet unfamiliar to his sight, growing larger in size as he seemed to approach it. He blinked several times to be sure of it, yet each time his eyes opened, he was, in fact, still there.
The alien world was beautiful in every aspect of his view. Downwards he sailed, silently fleeing past the white clouds that floated up in the green-tinted atmosphere that surrounded every direction he thought to look in. The captain could almost feel the air of the planet brushing against his face as he flew onwards, into gathering of whiteness that blacked his view. The image was incredible. Beyond that. Everywhere he looked, he seemed to be surrounded by it. As if he’d been somehow transported there. The clarity of it was something he knew he could never describe…even if he were permitted to do so.
The clouds broke, and Hollanbach could now see the browning hills of land, along with grids of evident civilization in the green valley below him. Out from the corner of his eye, he watched an aircraft completely unique in design fastly approach…and quickly pass by. With a thought, the captain looked behind him; watching s two more flew around him in a similar way. Turning back around, the captain realized that he was about to witness an attack, the initial beauty of his surroundings taking a sudden turn to darker surroundings as he neared the ground at neck breaking speeds, watching in grief as hordes of white figures began to run in droves. He was near enough to see their faces, flashing forward looks of pure horror.
What came next surprised Hollanbach almost as much as the odd-looking humanoid beings that seemed to be the focus of the attraction. Giants were immediately everywhere, killing with every stroke, and every wave of their arm. Some carried jagged-edged axe-sphere that sliced through the foreign people as if they were not even there to begin with. A stream of pink blood arched in his direction and Hollanbach ducked, trying to move out of the way.
All around him, the slaughter continued. Nothing could match the ferocity of the beasts as they stopped killing long enough only to consume their prey. The humanoids boasted weapons, firing bullets akin to Earth’s own, but the giants would not go down.
The damage was shrugged off with hardly a care, doing nothing to appease their mindless anger or even slow the carriage. One by one, they all fell until the greens of the valley were painted pink with their own blood. In minutes the fight was over. The sphere played another scene.
Another.
And another.
And another.
Different races of intelligent life each meeting their end the same way, becoming food for intergalactic hunters who killed, ate, stole technology to incorporate into their own with the help of their apparent slaves, the grays, only to stumble upon another planet and do it all over again.
Hollanbach felt sick and tried unsuccessfully to look away, only peering straight into the killing from another angle. The captain felt his stomach turn and his control slip from under him. His throat burned as he vomited not once but twice, his blue eyes tearing from the strain, blurring the vision of the senseless carnage all around him. Even with no sound, he could hear the screams of the baby one of the beasts dangled by a hoof, licking its hungry lips in anticipation until another swiped half of it from him, leaving only a bloody stump pierced through its claw. Eyes wide, the captain watched as one attacked the other, fighting for the shredded remnants of what had been a living thing, now reduced to a thing of taste in these creature’s dark eyes. Each weapon they encountered, they overcame, rearing their ugly heads upwards in stronger defiance, more determined than before to quench their hunger…even if it meant eating every last living thing on the planet.
This they often did, time and horrifying time again.
The naval officer closed his eyes and leaned further back in his chair. Nothing could stop them, he thought. What chance could the human race have if those with technology far outreaching ours couldn’t find a way to kill these damn things by now?
And now they had a taste for human blood. In terror, he opened his eyes to find himself back in the hotel on Earth, Coley holding the sphere as its light dimmed to nothing in her hands.
Were they the next on the goddamn menu? he wondered, jaw sat in anger…and fright. His eyes locked with the Vice President who was in the process of turning back around in his seat, and could tell that he was wondering the exact same thing as he. Were they next?
Coley placed the sphere back in its case and locked it, walking solemnly back towards the podium and handing the case to a Marine, who took it from her and disappeared from view. She turned to face the crowd again, her jade eyes intense…more so than they were before.
“What you’ve all just seen here is a very real threat to our existence, as human beings and as creatures of God’s universe.”
The German chancellor shook his head. “God?” he wondered out loud. “Do you honestly expect me to believe in God after seeing this? If there were a God, I doubt he would create beasts such as those!”
Coley nodded. “A valid point, Herr Chancellor, but moot if you consider that God also created mankind, which also has a pretty good track record of killing other creatures… as well as themselves.”
The room grew quiet as Lockenshire entered the scene from behind Coley, his scarred eyes surveying the room as he waited to take the podium.
“At this point, I’d like to introduce to you, General Thomas G. Lockenshire,” she smiled, waving him forward. “Head of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff,” she said as she patted the big man on his uniformed back, exiting the stage, surrendering her captive audience to the general.
With an echoing grunt, he began.
“Thank you, Agent Coley. I speak on behalf of my President and my peers of the Joint Chiefs….as well as those in our Department of Defense and the nation’s military…when I say that the only chance we have at combating these….,” he stopped momentarily, searching for the right word, and smiling once he’d found it. “Monsters…is to call for something as yet unprecedented in these times of ours. And that is a united front dedicated to the preservation of our species, should these bastards attack.
“We do everything in our power to keep them away from this planet,” he said. “We work together to establish watch stations and listening posts in space and here on Earth. We send out ‘exploratory’ probes to try and find any sign of these creatures’ whereabouts and possible approach. We develop and experiment with weapons that can take them out. However, this should not be any one nation, all of us, if we work together, we can devise a solution to this impending problem. But if we are to begin this mission, then we all have to begin,” he said, stressing the word. “We are to agree on one, indisputable thing.”
“Which is?” the British Prime Minister asked.
Lockenshire grunted again, and gripped the edge of the podium with his strong hands. “To keep the risk of detection to a minimum-assuming these beasts are still unaware of our location, we all here today vow never again to venture manned spacecraft beyond the limits of our planetary orbit. Not to the moon. Not to Mars. We stay home, and keep watch over our own cosmic backyard.”
There was some low-leveled mumbling in the room until Sternenko stood up and asked the one question that seemed to be on everyone’s mind.
“If we all agree, then how long do we wait before we return to manned exploration of space? Ten years?” he guessed. “One hundred?”
The American general locked fierce eyes with his Soviet counterpart.
“A million years if we have to. Or until they come here and we do everything in our power to kill them all so we know for goddamn certain. Considering that we’re talking the survival of our race, I would hardly think it matters, eh, Comrade?”
With that, Sternenko looked down at Brezhnev who only nodded slightly, and the big Russian looked back up at Lockenshire, his eyes set.
“On behalf of the Premier,” Sternenko began. “The Soviet Union will be the first to agree.”
As Hollanbach watched the happenings around him, he could only think of one thing, as sardonic as it may have been….and that was why he was glad he got his chance….despite it all, he was glad. Because now nobody would. Not tomorrow or ever again would a man, or woman set foot on another world without wondering if they had just sealed the fate of countless souls back home who knew nothing of the truth, so far away….so defenseless and unsuspecting on that blue and white marbled speck sitting precariously alone and unprotected amidst the blackness of space…
On delicious little planet Earth.
The End.
THE ANSWER? 