C11 Chapter Eleven

Captain Mason paced within the confines of the command center. It had been two hours since he’d received that last, garbled transmission from Echo and he was growing more concerned as the silence continued. Yet despite his unease, he knew everything was going according to plan. They had expected to lose contact once Echo entered the base proper and the self-imposed deadline set by Commander Williams was still several hours away.

Still, Mason worried.

This entire operation made him uncomfortable. From Father Vargas’ sudden appearance out of the desert like some kind of Old Testament prophet to the strange phantom-like creatures that had slaughtered his entire recon team, he’d constantly been playing catch up, struggling for understanding in the aftermath of each event rather than proactively facing the issues head-on. He always seemed to be one step behind and that was anathema for a professional soldier of his caliber.

He had to admit that he’d been surprised by Knight Commander Williams. The man’s reputation preceded him and he’d been expecting a maverick that played fast and loose with the rules. Williams had proved to be the exact opposite. He was careful in his planning, at least insofar as the situation allowed, and seemed genuinely concerned for the welfare of the men under his command. He’d expected a man with an axe to grind and what he’d gotten instead was the consummate soldier that approached a particularly dangerous mission with skill and planning.

But Mason’s confidence in Commander Williams still wasn’t enough to calm his rapidly fraying nerves. Standing around not doing anything had never been one of his strong suits.

The door mid-way down the length of the command center opened and one his men stuck his head inside the door.

“Sir? I think you’d better see this…”

Pvt. Chang quickly ducked back outside the command center and Mason had no choice but to follow.

He was just in time.

The storm over the base had been expanding ever since Echo Team had entered the grounds, pushing outward from the twister that had spawned it toward the edges of the facility. Now, as Mason watched, it reached the southern most portion of the perimeter, the side closest to the command center. It drifted across the fence line and then abruptly stopped as if it had hit a physical barrier.

“It’s done that several times now,” Chang informed him, without taking his eyes off the storm. “It’s as if there is something in the fence line keeping it from expanding beyond that point.”

There was a strange feeling in the air, the kind that Mason had known as a boy in Alabama, when the twisters would come out of the darkness like avenging angels, all brute force and power, as apt to take you and yours as it was to simply pass you by, leaving you unharmed. That feeling would get you just before the twisters would come, pricking at the nerves and dancing along the spine, the body’s way of saying IT’S COMING AND IT’S GONNA BE BAD.

That same green and silver lightning they’d been watching for days was still there, flashing among the black clouds like a frenzied animal looking for a way out of the cage that held it; the colors alone strange enough to send a chill down Captain Mason’s back. As he watched, a particularly vicious array struck the main gate in several places, the force of the bolt blasting it from its hinges and sending it cart-wheeling across the desert floor until it disappeared in the distance into the darkness of the storm itself.

Chang was looking at his watch and counting beneath his breath, “Should be…just about…now!”

Thunder boomed, a rumbling cacophony that pounded the landscape like the crash of a hammer on an anvil. Mason was forced to put his hands over his ears, but he didn’t take his eyes off the storm and afterwards he was glad he had not, for he never would have believed what happened unless he’d witnessed it himself. The storm rapidly sucked back in on itself, the clouds rolling backward like a video of an explosion run in reverse, while the thunder continued to pound at his ears with a fury of its own.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, the fury died down and silence returned. The storm was back where it had been before Echo’s incursion into the base, compacted into a smaller set of storm clouds that hovered over the center of the installation around the base of that odd column of darkness. Even the lightning seemed to have taken a break, for Mason could only catch a flicker of its presence within the depths of the clouds.

Mason stared, astonished.

“What now?” he asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“If it follows its previous pattern, it will take a few minutes for it to build up enough momentum to make another attempt,” Chang replied.

The captain knew instinctively that Chang was right. The storm, if that’s what it truly was, would keep trying, would keep pounding against whatever strange barrier kept it locked in place until it managed to find a way to free itself.

Then things would rapidly go from bad to worse.

“Keep your eyes on the situation, Private, and let me know the second anything changes.”

“Yes, sir!”

Turning away, Mason thought he heard the storm growl back at him in response.