Overlord Read online

  “Colonel, Will.” Gus held out his hand and shook the two officers’ hands. He stepped up and looked Ellenshaw over. “Professor,” he said, taking Charlie by the arm and ignoring his outstretched hand. “Your name is all over that damn research material Matchstick is porin’ over, and I need you to slow that boy down before he kills himself,” he said, half angry. “What is this about?”

  Jack and Will watched the exchange just as confused as Ellenshaw.

  “I know he’s been in Europa’s files from the Crypto department but he’s locked the file and we can’t get in. He’s classified all of his research with a security code.”

  “A situation that should have been avoided,” Mendenhall mentioned as he broke into the conversation. “Pete Golding should not have given Matchstick clearance to secure his own research material or files.”

  “Look, Niles has given over complete control of certain aspects of computer security directly to Matchstick…” Jack hesitated, not able to say too much. “While he does a special project.”

  Jack stepped up. “Gus, are you all right?” he asked, looking at the thin, frail shape of the old prospector.

  Tilly held a hand up and swished it through the air.

  “Ah, gettin’ old, is all. The Group doc, that Gilliam woman, said it’s exhaustion. ’Fraid that little shit in there”—he pointed at the new house—“has me worried beyond reason with his strange behavior. He ain’t been to the mine in two weeks.”

  They were interrupted by one of the civilian-attired guards as he came from the small garden hut that doubled as the main gate for the compound. He was carrying an armload of what looked like newspapers. Jack exchanged looks with Mendenhall as the guard stepped up to the four men.

  “Sergeant, Matchstick’s daily reading material arrived about an hour ago. I’ve checked them all for bugs and they’re clean. Should I take them to him?” the guard asked the Marine sergeant.

  Collins reached for them. “No, we’ll take them.”

  “Tell him now’s not the time to hold back secrets from friends, so give the little green bastard a piece of your mind, Colonel,” the old man said with a mischievous grin on his whiskered face. “You seem to be the only human that intimidates him anymore. The way he looks at me is like he’s in disconnect … Sorta sad-like.”

  A very tired Jack nodded his head and winked at Gus, then started toward the main house. All but the sergeant and guard followed. Charlie thought a moment and turned to Gus.

  “Gus, why haven’t you two ever moved into the house the people of the United States built for you?”

  Gus looked from Ellenshaw toward the large house. “All that place does is remind me about the many American boys and girls that lost their lives in order for us to have that monstrosity. Hell, the only reason Matchstick is in there now is because that damn Europa terminal wouldn’t fit into my old shack.” Gus’s gray eyes lingered for a brief moment longer on the Victorian house, then he abruptly turned and made his way back to the home he and a little green man from space had lived in happily since Gus had found the injured alien in the mountains eight years before.

  Charlie frowned, then turned and caught up with Jack and Will.

  “Gus is worried more than he’s letting on about why Matchstick is behaving the way he is,” he said as he adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses.

  Collins afforded the naive Ellenshaw a glance. “He’s old, Doc. Gus feels Matchstick is ignoring him because of this Gray problem. He’s lonely again, is all.”

  Will Mendenhall stopped before reaching the wide wraparound porch of the white-painted house. “I take it all of this stuff we’re hearing about secret plans for the president is what’s keeping Matchstick away from Gus?”

  “Maybe, but he always lets us know of what he needs. This latest is new behavior.”

  Two guards greeted the three men and showed them into the basement by hidden elevator. The Europa connection required every inch of four-inch, bulletproof-glassed space. Jack looked inside once the elevator doors opened and saw the mess beyond the glass. Newspapers and books were spread everywhere. The four desks were overflowing with material. Of Matchstick there was no trace.

  “Jesus,” Charlie said as he examined the interior of the closed off computer area, “what a mess.”

  Jack saw a pile of newspapers move and then settle. It trembled once more and then stopped again. He quickly adjusted the newspapers in his arms and entered his security code at the station beside the door. The glass panel hissed as it slid open and the three men entered. Collins gave the papers and magazines to Mendenhall and stepped toward the large pile of papers. He brushed some of them away and looked down to see a sleeping Matchstick on the floor, covered in his research material and maps. The little green man was snoring lightly as his small chest heaved up and down. Jack saw the large eyes underneath the opposing lids as they worked back and forth rapidly and he knew Mahjtic was dreaming. Not for the first time Collins wondered what would a small green alien dream about? Home? His slave days amongst the Grays? He leaned down to a knee and lightly tapped Mahjtic on the T-shirt-covered belly. He smiled when he saw he was wearing a Star Wars shirt with the wise old Yoda holding up a finger. Jack shook his head and tapped Matchstick once more.

  The black eyes sprang open in near panic. The small green alien looked at Collins and then recognition finally reached his very active brain. The alien smiled widely.

  “Hi,” he said in his raspy voice as Collins helped him to his feet. Matchstick closed the small white terry-cloth bathrobe over the T-shirt and hugged Jack’s legs. Then he went to each, Charlie first and then Will, and repeated the process. The three men exchanged bemused looks.

  “Here, I guess these are yours.” Mendenhall held out the pile of newspapers and magazines.

  Matchstick’s mouth formed into a small O and then he took the offered newspapers and started going through them quickly, tossing first one, and then the next away onto the already paper-covered floor. Then his almond-shaped eyes widened as he found the one he wanted. He held it close to his giant eyes and studied the headlines. Jack, out of curiosity, leaned over and looked at which paper held the small alien’s attention. He looked up at Will and Charlie.

  “The National Enquirer,” he said with a curious lilt to his voice. Matchstick dropped that one and then picked up the News of the World tabloid from Great Britain. He studied it and then with the gossip rag in his hand turned and went to a small table to sit and read. He completely ignored the three men as they followed.

  Matchstick suddenly started pointing and tapping the newspaper violently, then angrily threw the tabloid away from him. He placed his large head in his arms as lowered his face onto the tabletop.

  “Okay, Matchstick, what’s wrong?” Jack picked up the crumpled newspaper and examined the headline there.

  ENTIRE RESORT REPORTED DESTROYED BY STRANGE HURRICANE, it said. Jack held out the front page and showed Will and Charlie.

  “What are you working on, little guy?” Collins asked Matchstick as the small alien finally raised his head. “This have something to do with Overlord?”

  Will and Charlie exchanged looks as that code name was heard once again. They knew better than to ask Jack what it was, but the name kept popping up from time to time.

  Mahjtic didn’t answer as he stood and then walked toward the computer terminal. There was no voice synthesizer because Europa had a hard time understanding Matchstick’s English vocalizations, so he had to manually input all his requests through the antiquated keyboard, which the Green found immensely and frustratingly slow. He started tapping away with lightning speed with his long fingers.

  The three men exchanged concerned looks as Matchstick completely ignored them. Jack’s eyes watched Mendenhall as he pulled away some Hot Pockets wrappers and boxes along with forty or fifty empty Jell-O cups, then lifted a file from the debris-strewn tabletop. Will held it up so Collins could see it clearer. It was a Europa printout of a White House security briefing as deli
vered by the president’s national security advisor. Jack took the report.

  “Matchstick, you know your limits with Europa, don’t you? There was to be no, I repeat, no computer break-ins of any kind where the presidential chain of command is concerned, right? You have to go through channels, and that means Pete Golding.” Jack watched as his words seemed to have no effect. “Other than planning for Overlord, you still have limits. We can get anything you want, but we have to know why.” Jack turned and made sure his words weren’t overheard by Mendenhall or Ellenshaw.

  Matchstick suddenly started shaking as if he had become cold; his slim fingers stopped typing on the keyboard. The small being grabbed one hand with the other to control the tremors. Matchstick closed his eyes, sending the side-sliding eyelids to close from the temple area of the head. This happened several times in rapid succession, then Matchstick slowed and opened his eyes wide as he slowly reached for Jack’s hand.

  “Saucer?” was the only word he muttered in the soft and buzz-filled voice.

  “No, we haven’t found anything.”

  Matchstick still held Jack’s large hand as his head turned away in thought. Then he looked at the colonel once again, his dark, jet-black eyes intense. Collins hadn’t seen the small fella act this strangely since four years back, when he was having psychic nightmares about the events on the moon that led to the discovery of the alien and Martian technology that was recovered. Tech that eventually led to Garrison Lee and Niles Compton’s Operation Overlord plan. Only this episode looked to be worse.

  “None … of the ancient … crash sites … yielded a power plant?” Matchstick stumbled with the words.

  Only Jack knew any details about the Overlord plan, so Charlie and Will just listened. Part of the plan called for the acquisition of an alien-designed engine from one of the saucers, for what? Jack could only guess as neither Niles, Matchstick, the president, nor Senator Lee ever took him into their confidence on certain aspects of Overlord.

  “No, but we’re still looking. We have several more leads to follow up on.” Collins saw the eyes close and the head shake. Matchstick’s hand slowly released Jack’s own and he decided to go easy on the green guy for a moment. “Sarah’s in Uzbekistan right now and she still has to file a report on the Russian claim of 1972.”

  He saw Sarah’s name made the alien smile for the first time. He nodded his head as if knowing that Sarah was out looking for what they so desperately needed made his burden, whatever it was, far less than it was only a moment before.

  “Sarah,” Mahjtic said, repeating the name of a woman the alien had always liked. Jack had noticed that she seemed to have that effect on the strangest of people. Henri Farbeaux flashed through his mind and stuck momentarily.

  “Now, tell me what’s wrong. Will here says you’re not sleeping and working far too hard. Let us help with whatever it is. The saucer search isn’t what’s bothering you. You knew from the start it would be a long and maybe futile effort to find one. It’s something else.”

  Matchstick looked as if he were thinking, then pushed some of the old newspapers aside to find what he was looking for. It was a yellow file folder with 5656 stamped upon the front. Jack looked over at Will and Charlie; they too noticed it was also marked CRYPTO SCIENCES. Charlie stepped forward, took the offered file, and opened it. He quickly scanned a report Charlie had filed himself more than ten years before for a class he instructed at the complex.

  “Matchstick,” Charlie began, “you were supposed to be assisting us when your other duties allowed you to do so in the Captain Everett situation, and report on any theory of time travel you could possibly know about. Why are you delving into mass disappearances?” Charlie held the file up and Jack and Mendenhall saw the title of the report: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO ROME’S NINTH LEGION?

  Jack raised his brows and Will stepped up to the small desk, picked up another Crypto file from Charlie’s office, and opened it. He shook his head and then also held it up so Jack could read the heading of Ellenshaw’s conclusions as reported through Europa. This file was fifteen years old. ENTIRE CHINESE ARMY DIVISION VANISHES IN 1938.

  “Do these have something to do with the research you were assigned on the possibilities of time travel and how Captain Everett’s watch could be found in ice two hundred thousand years old?” Charlie asked. Collins touched the front page of the newspaper. “Are the Grays responsible for this?”

  Matchstick looked up into the face of the colonel and then his eyes narrowed. He shook his head in the negative, which threw Jack a curve.

  “Okay, what do you suspect?” Jack asked.

  Mahjtic stood and pushed away from his small desk, took Jack by the hand, and led him to the glass wall. Then Matchstick held up his long, thin arms for Collins to pick him up. Jack shook his head but lifted the small being into his arms and sat him on the window sill that looked out on the desert from the ground view of the basement. Jack didn’t care for the way Matchstick was acting. He looked out into the afternoon sun with his long fingers framing the sill.

  “Someone … has … a working power … plant.” His obsidian-colored eyes blinked against the bright sunlight as he turned to face the colonel.

  “Sarah and her discovery teams haven’t found one trace of any of the crash sites you sent her to. So I doubt anyone, anywhere has a working saucer engine.”

  Matchstick sat on the protruding sill and then eyed Jack. “Someone on this … planet … has a working power plant, and they … are … creating … wormholes.” Matchstick hopped down from the window sill and landed at Jack’s feet, then pulled the National Enquirer from the desk to show him the big hole in the ground where the Lebanese resort site had been. “Wormhole effect when … tunnel strikes the … surface of … the … planet.”

  “I’m not following your logic,” Jack said. Charlie and Will came closer as they too became interested in the theory the small alien was putting forth.

  Matchstick went back to his desk and with the keyboard humming his long fingers flew across the keys. Soon Europa was online to answer their questions.

  “Colonel Collins. It has been determined through debriefing that the technology of wormhole travel is complicated. When travel ends, the wormhole must not be in contact with the destination itself. The exit has to be situated no less than three thousand feet above the surface of target destination. If not, the destructive forces of the transit hole will produce catastrophic effects in the area where contact is made. By contacting the surface of target area the ground is pulled up and back into the wormhole.”

  “But what about these old disappearances, Matchstick? What do they have to do with this wormhole effect? I mean, they happened so long ago it seems moot.” Charlie Ellenshaw raised his glasses to study the diagram of an animated wormhole that looked exactly like an upside-down hurricane formation ending in a faster-than-light-speed funnel cloud.

  Collins looked at Ellenshaw and raised his eyebrows.

  Europa answered for Matchstick when the alien typed his answer.

  “It has been determined by the slave races of their home world that the wormhole effect is also a means of entering and exiting before IP contact is made. Exiting the wormhole before IP contact with the atmosphere of target area will whiplash the traveler inside to another time realm—thus the suspected experimentation with the alien power plant has affected the earth’s past in several key points.”

  “Boy, you have really lost me now,” Mendenhall said.

  Matchstick quickly typed in more commands.

  “The suspected power plant in use must be in an experimental stage as the nation using it powers it up. While miniature wormholes have been initiated by suspected engine, the knowledge to control the wormhole has not been fail-safed or regulated. Experimentation is creating wormholes that are thus far uncontrollable.”

  Again the three men exchanged looks of incredulity. Matchstick was getting frustrated. He typed in more commands and the Europa screen went to full illumination as an animate
d effect started. It was a wormhole as produced by Europa and her advanced graphics. The hurricane-like storm was spinning in a counterclockwise swirl. It would slink one way as a tornado would and then straighten. The animation showed the wormhole forming outside of Earth’s atmosphere, where it snaked across the screen like an undulating and angry snake. With a bright flash the end of the wormhole opened amid the violence of the storm in space and then a momentary funnel cloud formed. Several saucers flared out of the exit and into the atmosphere.

  “This is … a wormhole as … the Grays … use it.” He tapped more commands. “This is what … is happening … now.”

  On the screen the wormhole suddenly shot downward through the troposphere, then through the high cirrus clouds until the tunnel mouth slammed into the ground. In moments the wormhole started back up and everywhere—land mass, water, or mountain—the hole touched had gone back up with it.

  “I see.” Charlie lowered his glasses back down to his nose and studied the screen further. “You’re saying whoever is experimenting with this power plant isn’t using it right?”

  Matchstick closed his large eyes and then vigorously nodded his head so hard Jack thought it would fly from his shoulders.

  “And the experiments have caused these mass disappearances throughout our history?” Collins asked as he pulled up one of the small chairs and sat next to Matchstick. He looked deeply into his eyes, wanting to understand why the small alien was so terrified. After all, if someone had an engine from a downed saucer it would allow Matchstick and Compton the tools they needed for Operation Overlord—whatever that was. “How are these experiments with a wormhole opening up rips in time?”

  Matchstick typed more commands and then Europa tried her best to transcribe them.

  “It has been determined that the wormholes are being shut down too soon after contact with the surface of the Earth, thus the victims, or area of the strike, are pulled upward into the exit hole. When power is shut down the affected traveler will exit the wormhole at a point where it wasn’t meant to go. As the traveler moves through the wormhole an exit can be found anywhere in time; if the exit appears before it hits space the subject will be tossed out. The time frame runs backward from the initial point of contact.”