Equestrian Alliance: Project Oblivion

"In position," Chris said into his headset. He looked around the room again. ProteC security personnel stood at intervals around the perimeter of the Gate room holding rifles, most eyeing the huge rotating rings at the center.

"I like this new gear," McAllister commented, thumping his tactical vest. "Really shows off my broad chest and shoulders."

Hamilton rolled his eyes. "I'm sure that makes a huge difference in the big scheme of things."

"You've no idea. Think, an enemy comes up, sees a big burly guy like me holding this big-ass rifle, he's gonna think twice about messing with us."

Hamilton opened his mouth, then thought about it for a moment. He looked McAllister up and down. "You do have a point," he said, eventually.

McAllister grinned. "Posing is half of deterrence."

Sanchez grunted. "You're smarter than you look, McAllister."

"Keep it down a little, guys. This is kind of a big deal," Chris interjected. "I'd like to have a little peace and quiet to reflect upon the deeper meanings for humanity." He was greeted by a chorus of rude grunts and noises from the other three, but they grew quieter.

A voice came from behind them. "What's up, gents!"

They turned to greet Jeff and Dr. Hardy. Chris nodded, keeping one hand on his tactically slung rifle. "Morning, Boss."

Jeff looked around the room, evidently pleased. "Security looks good. Again, I don't expect anything dangerous to happen. But with an experiment of this magnitude, a little extra insurance is a wise precaution."

"This could change everything," Hamilton said, looking upwards at the softly humming rings as they rotated majestically. "Everything."

"Yes, indeed it could," Dr. Hardy replied. "Time to make history."

"By the way," Chris asked, "Who is running the remote gate?"

"An old friend of mine, Spencer Boyd. There's a crew of over a hundred on the island, including security. Spencer is going to be in the control room, though. Don't worry, he's got a handle on things out there for sure." He paused for a moment. "And I just got a message from him that they're waiting on us." Jeff grinned. "Game faces on! We'll be up and running within minutes." He turned to Dr. Hardy. "Ready, Doc?"

"Yeah, well, in a few minutes. I gotta go up to the control room and make sure nobody dropped anything valuable."

Jeff nodded. "Hold the fort, fellows." He gave them a thumbs-up and headed for the control room stairs with Dr. Hardy.

Chris watched them go, then turned back to the others and shrugged. "Uh, I guess we just stand here and make sure nobody does anything stupid."

Several minutes passed. The rings swirled sedately, creating small intermittent breezes inside the closed dome. The perpetual hum was low and distant, almost imperceptible. Chris shifted his three point sling slightly, keeping his rifle muzzle pointed safely at the ground.

Jeff's voice came over the intercom. "All personnel. Standby for final countdown, starting at T minus one minute."

A warning klaxon sounded, and numbers appeared on holographic projections around the room, counting backwards from 60.

Jeff's voice continued over the loudspeakers. "Main power in thirty seconds. Clear the ring perimeter."

Chris looked around the room, and saw the security personnel giving a thumbs up to show the area was clear. He looked back towards the control room and nodded, giving Jeff a thumbs up. In the window Jeff responded with a similar gesture, and a digital female computer voice took over the announcements.

"Main power online in ten seconds," the computer stated calmly. "Five. Four. Three. Two. One. System is live."

There was a huge clank as enormous relays slammed closed somewhere underground. Powerful lights came on in the ceiling, aimed towards the Gate pad.

"Activating Gate in ten seconds."

"Five."

"Four."

"Three."

"Two."

"One. Initiate Phase One."

A deep thrumming sound emanated from below. It grew louder, seeming to come from the Earth, or the air itself, like a distant thunderstorm. As it rose, there was a flash from the rings. Bolts of electricity began leaping between them, and a glow rose from their pale surfaces as they rotated faster, flashing and crackling.

"Standby for live feed from Gate Two."

Chris's HUD glowed to life. It was an image of the exact same thing happening on the island two hundred miles away. He nudged the image off to the corner of his visor and continued to watch the gate in front of him. The rings swiftly increased velocity, the bolts of electricity becoming a plasma field surrounding the center of the room.

"Initiating Phase Two."

The rings glowed translucently as they spun in a blur, whirling around in a seemingly random dance. Inside them, the empty space had the flickering look of air over a hot road in summer. Glowing orbs appeared and vanished. Space itself warped and flexed, distorting Chris's view of the room beyond. The rings looked like glass now, totally transparent, pure energy spinning at such speed that it looked as if a giant crystal ball floated liquidly in the air before them. Even though the speed of the rings was unimaginably fast, there was only the slightest breeze from them, as if they had become immaterial.

"Initiating Phase Three."

Nothing changed.

"Seeking connection."

"Retrying connection."

"Retrying connection."

"Retrying connection."

Chris glanced at the remote feed from the other Gate far out on the island. Oddly enough, it appeared in the HUD monitor that Gate 2 was already connected. Then the feed disconnected into blackness.
He looked back towards the control room questioningly.

***

On the monitor in the control room, Spencer peered at Jeff from the Gate 2, miles away across the ocean. "It looks like we are connecting on this end," his voice came over the speakers.

Jeff frowned and looked at the display bank in front of him. "I'm showing a phase mismatch here. Are you certain it is not a malfunction?"

"No, it is definitely activa-"

A brilliant flash came from the remote monitor. The camera watching the remote gate blinked out and was replaced with a NO SIGNAL error message.

Jeff's eyes snapped back to the other monitor, seeing snow and static instead of Spencer.

"What the hell?"

"Sir, there's been some kind of an EMP surge at the remote facility, coming from Gate. All their commlinks are knocked out. The island has gone dark."

"Get the backup system online!" Jeff said, and flipped up an older LCD monitor, plugging several cables into it. He turned it on to a black screen. "Is the fiber link up?"

"Yes. There's no signal yet. Wait. There it is!"

The screen flickered, then steadied.

Spencer's face appeared. "We've got a situation here. Hold on a moment." In the remote view, Spencer stood up, yelling something unintelligible. Red warning lights blazed and the overhead lighting was flickering randomly.

"Spencer? What in the hell is going on in there?"

He sat and talked quickly to Jeff. "Something overloaded. Half the lights are out. We've lost the primary controls."

Sparks and smoke started fountaining out of the equipment behind him.

"Abort! Shut it down!"

Spencer was standing up and shouting again. Incoherent voices replied, and the connection became intermittent and pixellated.

Jeff stood as well.

"Oh hell. Shut ours down too! Abort the connection!"

A technician pressed some buttons, and then looked back at him. "Sir, we can't. We've latched on, and the gate is holding."

"Holding? Well power it down."

The technician slapped some more buttons, and then frowned. "It's not responding, sir. The controls are shut down, but the gate is still active."

Dr. Hardy stepped up and looked out the window and into the heart of Gate 1. The other side of the room seemed to stretch and distort, as if it were rushing away. A wave of white noise rose to crescendo, and a powerful gust of wind blew out of the center of the gate. Immediately after the blast of air, all fell silent. The rings had vanished completely, phased out of continuity with the local space-time. An enormous glowing bubble like a giant water drop suspended in a zero gravity field floated and distorted eerily in the center of the now silent machine.

Dr. Hardy glanced back at Jeff. "The anomaly should collapse if the main power is cut."

He leaned in to look at the power feed panels. "It is showing zero input power at the trunk lines. However, the anomaly is still active. It appears to have become self-sustaining."

Spencer's voice crackled from the commlink. "Jeff? Jeff!"

Jeff leaned down. "Spencer? what's goin-"

Spencer interrupted him. "Something is coming through our gate! Someth... Oh, what in the... What the HELL is that?"

Spencer leaned forward. "Jeff! Something's in the gate room! I don't know what the hell it is but it's big and it's..." He was interrupted by the sound of sustained gunfire. "There's another. And another. We're under attack!

More gunfire, and distant screams.

"Oh shit. We're getting overrun."

Spencer stood up again, and this time Jeff could clearly make out what he was saying.

"Evacuate! Evacuate the island! Send every combat robot into the gate room and evacuate!"

Spencer leaned down to the camera again as technicians rushed past him. "We're getting out of here, the guns aren't stopping them. Some kind of force fields. I've never seen anything like it. I've sounded an evacuation alert to get all personnel off the island, and-"

Suddenly there was the crash of shattering glass, and one of the technicians flew screaming past Spencer and slammed into the wall with a wet slap. His neck bent at an absurd angle and blood sprayed as his head flattened and deformed, crushed like a rotten tomato dropped from a skyscraper. His body crumpled to the ground, twitching slightly.

Spencer looked up at something behind the camera, and his face drained of all color. The room was silent except for the hissing spatter of sparking equipment and the buzz of flickering ceiling lights. Spencer's eyes continued to stare past the camera, and Jeff could see the sanity draining from his mind.

"Spencer! What do you see? Spencer!"

Spencer smiled, and it was the horrifyingly empty grimace of a man with a broken mind. He giggled and trailed his fingers across his mouth. "Ehehehehe! Ehehehehehe!

A tentacle reached into the field of view, the end of it looking like a giant pair of ant mandibles with an insectoid head above them, the eyes flicking back and forth.

Jeff bellowed. "Snap out of it! Get out of there!"

The suddenly crazed man burbled and laughed while the insectile claws reached for him, caressed his hair gently, then slowly drifted underneath his chin.

Spencer's eyes were feverish with madness, and he chortled and shook, smiling and babbling like a child.

The claw lifted his chin up gently, and the eyes on it gazed into his, curious, inhuman, and cold as ice.

Then suddenly it snipped his head almost completely off.

A thin flap of skin at the back of his neck kept his head connected as it flopped backwards, his tortured eyes aware and awake until finally they dropped out of sight behind his back. A geyser of blood rushed from his torso, and the tentacle slammed down the hole of Spencer's neck and into his body, thrashing around wildly like a roto-rooter in a clogged drain. The sound was nauseating as bone, sinew, and internal organs flew in chunks out of the neck hole.

More tentacles leapt eagerly into the field of view.

The backup commlink unit was knocked over and crushed in the chaos, and the screen went blank.

NO SIGNAL.

Jeff fell back, gasping for breath, his eyes wide in abject horror. He tried to speak but nothing came out.

Then the flickering light from the active anomaly of Oblivion Gate One caught his attention and broke the spell.

"SOMEBODY TURN THAT DAMN THING OFF RIGHT NOW!"

***

An hour later, the gate was still active.

Jeff stared at it from the control room, glowing and shifting beyond the rows of armed men, robots, and vehicles that waited vigilantly for something to breach the surface. He sighed heavily. All attempts to close it so far had failed, but they still had not been attacked by anything.

"In the shadow of the gods, men are but insects, and we must tread softly, lest the great ones by chance lower their gaze, and be offended by our presence," he mused quietly to himself.

"Sir?" One of the technicians going over the gate control circuitry looked at him quizzically.

"Never mind, tis naught but the passing thoughts of a tired mind."

The man nodded and returned to work.

Jeff's headset beeped softly.

"Go ahead."

"Sir, this is security control. We have confirmation that a boat has escaped from the island."

Jeff inhaled sharply. "Survivors?"

"It would appear so, however we believe their communications equipment may be damaged, as they do not respond to radio hails. They are headed towards us at a high rate of speed."

"Keep an eye on that boat's travel. Set up a security contingent on the docks in preparation for arrival. Bring gun trucks. Have medical teams standing by, but remember this may be a hostile action."

"Understood."

"And get me some drone coverage on the island. I want to know if anything tries to leave."

"Sir, about the drone. We already have one en route, however there are some highly unusual weather patterns forming in the immediate vicinity of the island that will prevent direct aerial coverage."

"Do you have a visual?"

"Standby."

An image of the island appeared on his AR goggles. A heavy, low cloud was forming over the land. It was still far off, but it appeared to be swirling in a circular motion.

"Is that a tornado?"

"If it is, it's huge. And stationary, the cloud has not moved from it's current position since we acquired visual contact. And we can see no apparent funnel."

"Get as close as you can. Keep me appraised."

"Affirmative, sir."

Jeff looked back at the light of the Gate, and tapped his fingers on the edge of the console in front of him absently. "Can't wait for that boat to arrive," he mumbled to himself. "By then it may be too late." He made a decision.

"Chris!"

"Yeah Jeff?" Chris replied through the headset.

"Bring your team in here, we need to talk. Put another team in charge of the gate room for now."

"Roger that."

***

"So you see what must be done." Jeff leaned back in his chair, looking at the security squad over his folded fingers.

"I'll be honest. I don't care for this idea at all. It sounds like a suicide mission. We haven't even tested the gate," Chris replied.

Dr. Hardy folded his arms. "We are prepping a robot right now to check the far side. It's risky, yes. But I'm afraid, after seeing what happened at Gate 2, we have little choice."

"I still don't like it."

Jeff sighed. "Believe me, I would rather be going through with you, but I have responsibility here. I have to begin organizing a response to what happened out there immediately. I don't have the luxury of doing whatever I want these days."

Chris leaned forward slightly in his own chair. "We are not the most qualified operatives you have to be the first exploration team into unknown territory."

Jeff looked at the four of them silently, then spoke. "I know. Were you going up against any form of human enemy, you would be correct, and I would choose a team of prior special forces personnel. However, I think we can both agree that we are not facing humans. We are facing something completely unknown."

He paused. "I chose you because you are a bunch of nerds."

Chris scowled. "You're pulling my leg."

"Not at all. I chose you not simply because you are all adept at using firearms, but because Hamilton likes survival horror games. You've read a lot science fiction, Chris. Sanchez likes military science fiction also. And McAllister is a lazy, sneaky bastard and adept at cheating the system, even in the simulator."

"Why thank you," McAllister said, sweetly.

"Oh, the honor is entirely mine. You're a smart man McAllister, when you choose to use it. That's why I haven't fired you for not showing up to all those meetings that somehow logged you as present anyway."

Chris shot him the evil eye, and McAllister tried unsuccessfully to look as innocent as possible.

Jeff looked at Chris. "The benefit here is that all your minds are accustomed to comprehending and analyzing things that go beyond the realm of normal, day-to-day life."

Chris and his team said nothing,

Jeff continued. "None of us knows what you guys will see over there. None of us knows... if you will survive. However, I believe that you have a better chance of surviving than the average operator, and you are better prepared to interpret what you see than most."

Chris exhaled noisily. "Well. That is... not what I had expected. But I see where you are coming from."

They both glanced at the large monitor, which was displaying a live feed from the active gate, surrounded by a growing crowd of heavily-armed men, robots, and vehicles.

Jeff spoke again. "We may have little time. Something could come through that gate at any moment, and we have no idea what is on the other side. You and your team have to depart immediately."

Chris sighed, and looked at the other three. They replied with silent nods. "Got it. Let us grab the guns and the gear."

Jeff reached out and put a hand on Chris's shoulder. "Thank you. And watch your asses, all of you. I've already..." Jeff paused, and swallowed hard. "I've already lost one friend today. I don't need to lose any of you guys also."

McAllister grunted. "Why don't you just give us one of the armored trucks? We'll drive on through and if anyone starts any crap we'll light them up."

Jeff frowned. "Once opened, the Oblivion Gate's spatial anomaly expands slowly to maximum size. It will be several hours yet before we can send anything larger than a human through, and a full-size vehicle theoretically will not be feasible for at least several days."

"Well that sucks."

"Yes it does. And we can't really wait that long to see what happens."

"Then let's arm up and roll out."