SENTINELS: The Spearhead of Invasion

by Van Allen Plexico

 

The young woman lay peacefully sleeping in her bed as the grotesque alien machine glided into her room and hovered nearby, deathly still. Its many fiery red eyes sent dappled shadows cavorting about the room as it watched her with intense interest.

She lay covered to her neck in a thin layer of golden metal mesh sheets, a soft pink blanket on top of this and pulled up to just above her waist. Her shoulder-length black hair was spread across the two pillows wedged under her head.

As if she sensed danger nearby, her breathing sped up and her eyes began to dart about rapidly beneath their closed lids.

The machine took all this in and processed it, considering its options. The objectives were so close, and yet it dared not risk exposure. Not yet. . .

Tossing her hair to one side, the young woman groaned in her sleep and rolled over. The machine hesitated. It had not survived so many centuries, in all its various assignments across the universe, without being ever so cautious.

Then, with the human woman at last settling down, it moved forward once more. Its programming reasserted itself and it refocused with extreme intensity on the task at hand.

Telescoping appendages extended outward from its spherical body as the red lights of its eyes flared brighter and brighter. Shadows flared into and out of existence on every wall now. The bizarre gray machine loomed over her now, spindly arms reaching for her, reaching. . .

* * *

Hours earlier, an entirely different sort of creature had menaced Lyn Li. As the nineteen year-old Chinese-American college student, lab assistant, and apprentice super hero had strolled into the kitchen of her boss's mansion, looking for her daily popcorn fix, she had nearly run headlong into a very strange individual who appeared to have been lurking just around the corner, as if waiting on her.

"Ahh! There you are, and right on time, just as Esro predicted," came a shrill, almost shrewish voice that incongruously emerged from the mouth of a grizzled old man with long, white hair and massive mutton chop sideburns. The voice dripped with both scorn and a severe English accent.

Lyn came up short and nearly stumbled backward, gazing up at the tall, slender figure in surprise.
"Oh! Who - ?"

The old man looked her up and down, taking in her slender form crammed inside her trademark golden metal mesh outfit, and his face split in a somewhat disturbing leer that Lyn could only hope was intended to be a smile.

"I know who you are, missy! You're Lyn Li. Or should I call you Pulsar." He said the name as if it were the biggest joke he'd ever heard. "Esro done told me all about you, he did. Which is why I was down here now, gettin' ready to chase you out of here if you mean to mess up my kitchen with your infernal snacking!"

"Your - your kitchen?"

Lyn puzzled over the words, shook her head, and took a deep breath.

"Who ARE -"

She scarcely got the first two words of the question out before the man brandished a broom and literally swept her out of the kitchen and back into the adjoining den.

"Not now, not now," he replied, almost distractedly, as if his mind could only focus on one thing at a time and had already moved on. "Plenty of time to chitchat later. I have dinner to fix, now. Begone with you."

"I - but -"

"Out!"

Utterly nonplussed, Lyn started to object, then simply deflated and, turning, shuffled back out into the residence area of the mansion. Behind her, she could hear the odd man muttering to himself in his strange accent, seemingly scolding the house's absent owner, Esro Brachis, for lacking this ingredient or that appliance.

Ultraa emerged from his bedroom down the hall. Hearing the grousing coming from the kitchen, he grinned at the bewildered Lyn.

"Sounds like you've met Otto," he said.

"Otto?"

Ultraa laughed. "Esro's cousin from Europe."

Ultraa paused and scratched his head. "At least, I think he's from Europe. He doesn't exactly say much."

Lyn frowned and motioned with her head back toward the kitchen. "I think he says plenty," she replied. "But - why is he here?"

"Not exactly sure," Ultraa said. "I think he was supposed to just visit the country for a while. But Esro said something about how the guy had some financial troubles, and could use a job, and. . . "

"A job? Here?" Lyn's eyes widened. "As, like, our housekeeper or butler or - ?"

"Well. . . Caretaker, handyman - something like that, yeah," Ultraa said, nodding. "So you might want to get on his good side. Or at least get used to him - at least for the time being."

Lyn looked back at the kitchen again, her expression bleak. "Oh. . . Oh, no. . ."

Laughing again, the big blond hero strode past Lyn and greeted Otto with a wave.

"How about a ham sandwich?" he asked, and was answered with a very pleasant-sounding, "Why, certainly, sir! Coming right up."

Lyn took this in, huffed at it, and strode purposefully through the doorway and out into the gathering dusk. Where she was going, she had no idea - but she didn't think she wanted any part of this new domestic help. None at all.

* * *

The wormhole flashed open for only an instant; scarcely did it register on the super sensitive instruments directed toward the heavens by nations and individuals across the globe. For only an instant was it open - but long enough.

Through the crack in the fabric of the universe shot an object. It was not a large object; indeed, had a human been present to see the spherical artifact hurtling out into normal space might have compared it to a basketball.

Onward it sailed, rapidly closing the distance between itself and a blue-white planet just ahead in its path: Earth.

No, none of the great defense agencies or astronomical observatories marked its passage. In fact, no one on Earth would have even known of its existence. . . had it not been for the aforementioned nineteen year old Chinese-American part-time college student-slash-super hero (or paranormal agent, as the government called her and each of her associates), out for a nighttime flight to clear her head and to try and forget her encounter with the new resident in the mansion.

Lyn Li, better known to the public as hero-in-training Pulsar, soared above the forests of northern Virginia, her golden metal mesh suit sparkling in the starlight. As she channeled the planet's electromagnetic energies to propel her through the sky, on a whim she summoned up what she had come to call her "second sight" - her ability to look deep into the non-visible spectrum and "see" what normal humans could not.

What she saw now surprised and delighted her.

Hey! A shooting star!

But the way the meteorite portrayed itself within her second sight puzzled her. Instead of the expected layers of heat - caused by the friction of the planet's atmosphere - she saw only steady coolness. It was as if the object absorbed no heat whatsoever; as if it were frictionless.

And yet, as she followed the thing's path, she saw that it was in fact emitting something. A steady pulsing. A signal?

She frowned as she watched it.

What in the world?

The streak of greenish light flashed down toward the trees. Pulsar kicked in her power and shot after it.

 

* * *

Ultraa looked up from his book as the front door of the mansion swung open. Pulsar stood just outside, her silky black hair mussed from her flying. She beckoned him with one hand while the other seemed to be directed back out into the driveway.

"What's going on?" he asked, setting down his worn copy of Desolation Island.

"C'mere!"

With a sigh, the tall, blond hero got up and strode across the living room to the doorway, smoothing out the wrinkles in his red and white uniform as he went. Leaning through, he frowned.

"What in the world is that?"

There in the driveway, suspended above the pavement within one of Pulsar's crackling purple force spheres, floated a gray, metallic ball, approximately two feet in diameter. Its surface was covered in strange lines and grooves and half-melted spots, lending it an eerie, gothic appearance.

Quickly, breathlessly, Lyn recounted the story of where and how she'd found it.
"Well," Ultraa observed after she was finished, "I'm sure Esro will be interested in checking it out, once he gets back from DC tomorrow. But I don't like having it in the house. . ."

Lyn pursed her lips, thinking.

"I'll put it in one of the secure holding cells," she told him. "Esro and I have kept some pretty strange things in there before, and nothing's ever gotten in and hurt them."

Ultraa didn't appear as if he liked hearing that.

"It's not something getting in and hurting them that I'm worried about," he replied. "Of course, after what the Field Marshal did a while back, breaking into Esro's most secure areas - I don't think of anything as truly secure anymore."

She thought back to that incident and had to nod.

But he surprised her by shrugging. "I doubt any enemy agents are planning to break in tonight, though. And I guess you know the lab nearly as well as Esro does - if you say it'll be secure, I'll believe you."

She brightened and started forward, the globe bobbing along behind her at the end of her electrical tether.

"But," he continued, "be very, very careful."

She grinned.

"No problem. Nothing's getting in. Or out."

* * *

Hours later, as the mansion lay in quiet stillness, the gray metal sphere got out.

There, within a large metal box that was itself housed in the most secure chamber of Esro Brachis's lab, the strange globe twitched, moving as if by some unseen force. The hollow areas pitted across its dull surface sparkled to life, deep red lights flaring out from their depths. And then, as small doors retracted in half a dozen spots, thin, spindly metallic appendages erupted out and extended to a length of two or three feet. From the tips of these arms came cutting lasers, whirling saws and biting diamond drill tips. Within seconds, the box was open and the strange machine was free.

With a lurch, the globe extended a second set of appendages beneath itself and stood swaying momentarily on its new legs. It stumbled to one side, then the other, then righted itself. And then, a sense of confidence seeming to grow with every step, it moved forward, crossing the space of the lab's interior. There it encountered its first obstacle: the reinforced, computer-locked door.

Esro Brachis was no fool. He knew that his work would often involve both keeping intruders out of his labs, and keeping things safely locked inside. The door was six inches thick, made of various steel alloys, with hyper-dense resin in place of a window in the center.

The gray globe stood before the door, swaying gently back and forth. Another panel opened in its surface; another appendage extended out. In place of a saw or a foot, this one was tipped with a claw-like hand, small cutting and drilling tools revolving about.

Within thirty seconds of this appendage making contact with the control plate set into the wall, the door popped open with a sigh.

Swaying forward and backward almost as though it were nodding to itself, the strange, octopus-like entity moved quickly through the doorway and out into the mansion itself.

Up the stairs it raced, then down a long hallway, following some unseen trail, until it stopped before another door. This portal proved far less of a challenge; it simply let into a bedroom. Again the manipulative claw emerged, this time slowly turning the knob. The door creaked open and the creature stepped through. It paused, lurking there on the other side of the threshold, its silhouette bobbing slowly in the pale light from the window.

Across the room, a human woman lay covered in sheets, sleeping. The creature ambled over and leaned forward, its myriad flickering red eyes studying her.

Yes, this was the same being who had recovered it after its arrival from space. The energy patterns that surrounded her were unique, at least within the creature's experience, and instantly recognizable. She no longer wore the shiny golden suit she had worn previously, it noted - the outfit lay folded on a chair. Instead, she lay beneath several layers of sheets, one of which was made of that same material. A quick analysis revealed to the creature that the girl constantly emitted electromagnetic energy; clearly both the costume and the sheets were designed to contain that energy and limit any possible destructive effects of such unusual powers on the surrounding environment.

Registering this information, the creature scanned quickly about the room, then returned its attention to the sleeping young woman. Extending yet another telescoping arm, it brushed back strands of her black hair and rested the smooth metal contacts against her forehead.

Lyn stirred, her mouth frowning briefly, but she did not wake. Within her mind, her dreams grew suddenly darker, though she knew not why.

Exerting overwhelming psychic force from its partly organic, partly computerized brain, the globe-shaped creature pushed its way into her memories and began to sift through them, taking up each in turn and examining it this way and that. As to what it was looking for, it offered no clues.

Lyn's life became as an open book to the intruder. Her childhood, her years in school, her friendships and acquaintances and achievements and failures - all became fodder for the invading creature. With a growing ruthlessness it rifled through the layers of memory, peeling them back, one after another. Lyn groaned and shifted repeatedly in the bed, caught in the grip of this induced and seemingly endless nightmare, but the process relentlessly continued.

At last, after perhaps half an hour that to the unconscious Lyn would have seemed like an eternity, the earliest memories surfaced. And there, the creature saw perhaps what it was looking for: the origins of Lyn's wondrous abilities.

An elderly human male treated her in medical fashion in her youngest years. But the treatments were not those of a standard check-up. Instead, the old man injected her with various odd formulas and enzymes and even bathed her in several forms of radiation for brief moments.

"Grandfather," the present Lyn muttered, her voice somewhat plaintive as she shifted back and forth in her sleep again. "What - why - ?"

The creature observed all of this with growing interest, meticulously recording and cataloguing it all.

Finally, perhaps an hour after the process began, the creature apparently felt it had seen and learned enough. It withdrew the probes, yet still it hovered above her a moment longer. One of its arms extended a wicked-looking cutting blade and it held the weapon poised over her neck. Then, as if rethinking its plans and priorities, the intruder retracted the blade and, turning, glided smoothly and soundlessly out of her room.

* * *

The creature moved quickly and with surprising agility on its spindly legs into the neighboring bedroom and crossed quickly to where its second target lay: the tall, blond-haired human it had noted before in the living room.

Extending its probe arm once again, it set the contacts against the man's forehead and began to dig down into much deeper layers of memory.

First it saw the current situation of this man who called himself Ultraa. Leading a close, almost family-like group of individuals that included the girl in the next room, the scientist who owned the house, and others. Serving the government and the nation. Yes, yes. But beyond that?

Difficult to dig deeper than that. Resistance grew strong-stronger than the creature was used to encountering. It pushed harder.

There. The next layer. The decade previous to this one. Another team; another group of self-styled "heroes" working for the protection of the country and the world. This group - oh, interesting. Very interesting indeed. This group had encountered. . . something. . . that had all but wiped out its roster. Something. . .

The creature recoiled in surprise, almost breaking contact.

A Rival! This Earth man and his previous team had encountered one of the Great Rivals!

Astonishing!

How could such a thing be possible? The creature was not aware of any of the Rivals sending agents to this world, prior to his own arrival.

Noted, recorded, and prepared for priority transmission. Then: onward, deeper into the memories.

Decades earlier now - the vehicles the humans used to convey themselves about had changed, along with styles of dress and speech. Strange. The creature knew itself to be no great judge of the physical appearances of humans, but this blond man that slept before it in his white uniform did not seem to be so old. And yet. . .

There - yet another team of "heroes." Had this human done nothing in all his long, long lifetime save lead group after group of paranormal agents in missions for his government? It seemed so. This particular team fought in a great war, against foes from a continent across the ocean. Noted, recorded.

Deeper.

An earlier century now. The creature scoffed to itself. How could this be? This man - this human - could not be so old as this. How had he come by these memories? And yet, and yet. . . There was a memory of him looking into a mirror, so many decades ago - and he was himself, only a slightly different hairstyle and wardrobe betraying any changes from the present day.

Fascinating. This human was at least one hundred years old, if these memories could be believed.

More. It needed more information. Deeper!

Back, back, beyond another war - this one involving soldiers in blue and in gray - and even further back, to. . .
"Stephen," the man muttered. "Stephen, the French soldiers are coming - be careful - don't let - "

The creature nearly jumped back, the force of the memories assailing it via its link so powerful now, despite their age. These thoughts were coming from nearly two hundred years ago - and were nearly intense enough, deep enough, to trap its psyche forever.

Summoning up all its psionic power, the intruder wrenched itself free from the depths of these memories. So easy to have become lost there! Then, recovering, the strange machine considered the wisdom of abandoning the mission now, against the potential rewards of digging just a bit deeper. . .

The metal leads extended out and made contact once again. The memories surged forward. But this time, before the intruder could sort them out, a series of very strong images came directly to the forefront of the human's mind.

A Rival, the creature realized immediately. One of my master's Great Rivals! This human has met one of the Rivals before. But how is that possible?

And then, another image - this one much more recent, more vivid, and - for the intruder - much more disturbing.

A big, blue-silver, manlike form, smooth and shining and seemingly cast from a single piece of steel. Two tiny, red lights peered out from dark eyes. Electricity crackled all around.

And the big metal man - an Enforcer unit of the Worldmind, the intruder's own master -was shaking hands with the human. Conversing with him. Treating him as an equal -
as a partner - as a friend.

The Enforcer even had been given a name by the humans. Vanadium.

No longer a thrall to the every command of the Worldmind, this Enforcer was now an independent operator - living on Earth and working with these very humans!

Unthinkable!

The spherical machine shrieked at the mere possibility, its bizarre "voice" a deafening wail as it tore the contacts from Ultraa's forehead and stumbled backwards on its spindly legs, stumbling about in shock.

"Alert! Alert!" it screamed. "Renegade Enforcer on this world! Renegade Enforcer! Alert the Worldmind!"

Instantly Ultraa was awake and on his feet, staring the intruder down.

"What the - ?"

Through the doorway the thing bounded. With any pretence toward stealth abandoned, it moved with remarkable alacrity, hopping from one prehensile leg to the next at blinding speed, its tiny red eyes flickering in all directions.

Ultraa triggered his powers of super-speed and flight and streaked out into the hallway after it.

By the time both the hunter and his prey had descended to the mansion's lower level, Lyn was up and running down the stairs as well, a bathrobe wrapped tightly around herself.

"What's going on?" she called after her partner.

"It's that - that thing you found," the blond man replied, back on his feet again and running. "It was in my room! Now it's heading for Esro's labs."

Lyn caught up to Ultraa where he stood outside the now re-closed reinforced lab door. The intruder was visible in the other room through the thick resin-glass panel, up to something. Ultraa was tugging and banging on the door, to no avail.

"What was it doing?" Lyn asked, tension filling her voice at Ultraa's obvious distress. "What's it doing now?"

"I don't know," he replied. "But whatever it was doing - whatever it is - it's not good." He shook his head as if he were having trouble waking up. "I think it said something about a 'renegade Enforcer' and 'alerting the Worldmind.'"

Lyn frowned at this. "It knows about Vanadium. It's some kind of spy from his. . . people, or world, or whatever. It has to be."

Ultraa nodded. "That's about what I figured."

The intruder was now hunched over a computer panel, more than half of its arms attached to the interface, while the spherical part rocked back and forth, its many lights blinking rapidly.

"What if it's trying to send a message home now?" Lyn asked. "What if it tells Vanadium's old boss what he's doing here now?"

Ultraa just shook his head. "I let you and Esro worry about those kinds of specifics," he said. "All I know is, it was messing around with me - in my head, I think, and I'm really sick of that, after some of the things I've been through lately. So -" He ran a red-gloved hand over his stubbly chin, frowning. "- I don't think we should let it talk to anybody now."

Lyn nodded. "But I think that's just what it's trying to do," she pointed out. "That console ties directly into Esro's mainframe. It could probably beam a message halfway across the universe from inside there." She pursed her lips. "It probably also can access al sorts of global defense information, national security secrets, and - "

"Okay, okay, I'm convinced," he shot back. "So, how do we get to it, then?"

Lyn looked around, thinking rapidly. Then she smiled and stood stock-still, staring intently at the wall next to the window. Bringing up her second sight, she could instantly detect the flow of energy - of information - through the various conduits and cables within the wall.

Reaching out with one delicate hand, she brushed her fingers against a specific point. Lighting flared all around - on both sides of the wall.

The intruder screeched again and fell back away from the wall, its legs in the air, rolling around on the floor like a bug on its back.

"What are you two doing in here?"

The familiar voice from behind the two heroes caused them to whirl about.

A bleary-eyed Esro Brachis, millionaire inventor and genius, shuffled into the room, his suitcase still in hand. His thick, brown hair stood nearly on end, and his trademark Hawaiian shirt was rumpled and stained.

"Remind me never to take the red-eye flight home again," he was muttering. "Strange stuff always happens when I do that."

"You're not going to believe this, but. . ." Clapping his friend on the back, Ultraa quickly filled him in. Meanwhile, Lyn all but hid to one side, embarrassed over her role in the affair.

Esro just shook his head at the story. "After everything we've all been through over the past several months, you think this is going to freak me out? Come on!" He moved forward to a small panel set to one side of the door. Flipping it open, he began to type instructions in through the tiny keypad set inside.

"You should have known this, Lyn," he muttered as he worked. "I think I showed it to you a while back."

"You did. I did."

"Well, it always works," Esro replied. Grinning, he closed the panel and gestured toward the door. "It's the override for - "

"For what?" Ultraa asked, watching intently as absolutely, positively nothing happened.

Esro frowned. "Hey - that should have worked. It - Huh." He rooted around in the panel's innards some more, while his two teammates watched and waited. Ultraa looked at his watch; Lyn tapped her foot.

"I don't believe this," he said finally. "That thing - it's overridden my override!"

Lyn sighed. "I told you."

Esro shot her an aggravated look and kept working.

The intruder had crept back up toward the computer console again. Lyn stepped forward with a growl and zapped it through the wall again, purple lightning flaring all around. The robot screeched, backing away, but seemed to recover more quickly this time.

"There!" Esro exclaimed after another minute's work.

"What?"

"I've, um. . . overridden. . . the overridden. . . override."

"Yeah, whatever."

Lyn pushed past him as the door slid open. The creature rushed forward, tiny red eyes flaring as it practically growled its fury. Reaching out with both hands, she zapped the thing with two massive bolts of energy, sending it slamming back into the opposite wall.

"I remember when you used to just put force field bubbles around your opponents," Ultraa noted as he came in behind her.

"Yeah - I'm branching out a little," she shot back.

The final battle itself was not terribly dramatic or exciting. Surrounded by three foes, the alien intruder made a half-hearted attempt to fight, then seemed to trigger a self-destruct within itself and, with a muffled "WHUMP," collapse to the floor.

"Thus ends the threat," Lyn proclaimed dramatically. "I wish all our fights were that easy."

Esro stood over it less than two seconds later, already into "scientist" mode, poking and prodding it with a thin silver rod.

"I sure don't know what it is - or was," he observed. "I'll bet Mondrian's seen one before, though."

Ultraa nodded. "Having an alien starfleet officer on the team does have its advantages, from time to time." He gestured to the wrecked machine. "Just make sure you lock the thing away securely. Dead or alive or. . . whatever it is. . . I don't want it getting loose a second time."

"Yeah, no prob - hey, a second time?"

Esro cast a suspicious glance Lyn's way. She pursed her lips and then whistled innocently.

Minutes later, Esro had deposited the remains of the intruder on a work table. He turned to pick up a hand-held scanner as Ultraa dropped tiredly into a chair, and Lyn cast her gaze far and wide for any bowls of popcorn she might have left lying about the day before. Thus no one was looking up when an odd accent rumbled through the lab.

"Eh? What's all this, then?"

Otto shambled in through the open doorway, tattered bathrobe nearly covering his grizzled frame, a mug of coffee in one hand.

Inevitably, at that moment, the alien intruder lit up and sprang to life again with a deafening roar, its vicious arms swinging out wildly.

Otto staggered back a step.

"GAAAAH!"

Not thinking twice, he hurled his hot coffee onto the alien machine.

The intruder sparked and popped and screeched and lurched and then collapsed once more into a dead heap.

The others stared at the scene, transfixed with amazement.

Lyn looked at the remains of the intruder, then at Otto, then back at the remains. She opened her mouth, thought about it a moment, and closed it again.

"Well, we must have weakened it," Ultraa said, scratching his chin uncertainly.

"Oh, yeah," Esro agreed. "We must have cracked open a vital compartment or something. . ."

"Definitely," Lyn concurred. "It was all but dead already. Definitely."

Otto stood over the now definitively dead alien machine.

"I'm going to try not to take that as a commentary on the quality of my coffee," he muttered.

Orange and green fluids began to ooze from the sphere's cracked shell and pooled on the floor. Otto looked on with an expression of unvarnished disgust. Then, after a few seconds, he glanced up and shot the others a withering look.

"Which this isn't part of my duties, you should know," he grumbled.

The others just stared back dumbly.

"But maybe I can find you a broom or something," he added, before shuffling back the way he'd come.