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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Horror
eBook Description: What if you were picked to wage an almost hopeless battle against all the demons of Hell? OMEGA, a supersecret organization of billionaires who have dedicated their fortunes to benevolent causes, have discovered that the stories of Hell and its demons have a real basis--for millennia ago Earth was infiltrated by monstrous aliens who have risen over and over again to positions of power and influence where they could so suffering and death across the planet. OMEGA selects Dave Duqayne and Mike Havelin, former U.S. commandos, to head a strike team in a desperate attempt to locate the top aliens and destroy them. But Duqayne and Havelin, lifetime buddies, both fall in love with Lillian Hart (daughter one of OMEGA's zillionaire backers). Then, when Duqayne is attacked and nearly killed by the demonic aliens, he is subjected to a brain operation that enables him to turn against the aliens and become OMEGA'S super weapon. The result is wild talents and glimpses of things never known before that play havoc with his love life. That's when Lillian discovers the only way she can follow him into his new dimensions is by committing herself to witchcraft. Meanwhile, the aliens have learned of OMEGA and David's team and are marshalling their overwhelmingly superior forces to blot it from the face of the Earth. The Alpha Trap is another astonishing blend of physics and metaphysics by the trail-blazing author Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry said he'd "wait in line" to get a story from.

eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/PageTurner
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2006

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Stuart J Byrne's David Duqayne Series

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [640 KB], eReader (PDB) [209 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [212 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [187 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [190 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [250 KB], hiebook (KML) [445 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [260 KB], iSilo (PDB) [174 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [217 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [252 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [287 KB]
Words: 57693
Reading time: 164-230 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Three hundred and sixty days of sunshine per year had stamped this section of the Mojave with the inimitable mystique of typical desert wilderness--sweeping concave seas of baked sand and sage misting into time-frozen pre-Cambrian tides against naked and subtly distant ranges which were somehow beautiful in their dreaming sorrow, eternally haunting the wanderer with their purpled mirage of secrets to be told when Man was dead.

Here, south of Death Valley and west of Baker, was the restricted Fort Irwin military reservation. For some years now a tracery of jeep, "six-by" carrier, Euclid, Tournapull, and crane tracks, had pointed from Fort Irwin across the sands and flash-flood bajadas to a simple landmark which was known to cartographers as Drinkwater Springs. Slightly beyond this point of reference was an inconspicuous ten-acre area that had been fenced off and posted as "radiation contaminated." This was a ruse to arouse an instinct of self-preservation in any chance trespassers, for the simple reason that the sand-camouflaged "deck cover" would not support a man with certainty.

When the State Department's Army-converted V-22 tilt-rotor lowered toward the center of the fenced-in area, acres of "sand" dropped away miraculously into a huge well-shaft. Per the Goldstone tracking station, this was timed within twenty-three minutes before a certain unfavored country's spy satellite would rise above the horizon. Up from the cavernous depths rose an entire flight deck of the type used on the largest aircraft carriers. Antlike figures of signalmen waved bright flags. The big copter settled easily onto the vast deck, and the entire structure lowered rapidly. The "sand" canopy rolled back into place above the visitors, and to right and left of them the girders and floor plates of level after level flashed upward.

The "Tank" on level J-sub-1 was also known as the Scenario Room. Buried beneath the bottom level of the entire installation, it was so heavily shielded that the Tech Corps had concocted a legend for it: "Only God or a very educated electron could even crawl through the coax linkages.... "Of course such materialistic views were merely the farthermost landmarks of a limited empirical science. Just how far lead shielding, ECM interference and ion-plasma "shell" chambers could go in counteracting so-called psi-phenomena was a moot point. At least the complex hatch-and-tunnel routine for getting into Omega's ultimate Sanctum Sanctorum was sufficiently exotic to satisfy the psychological needs of a standard power ritual.

Some of the less-endowed representatives of the Joint Chiefs were smugly impressed by a mother-pat sense of super-security; whereas the more highly endowed were sobered by the conviction that nobody really had a fix on the situation--and as far as God was concerned, His switchboards appeared to be over-saturated with the basic issues of containment. The world was FUBAR with its Russian roulette of population explosions, energy crises, Third World insurrections, and free lance terrorism--but all were parlor games compared to the fact that Armageddon had entered, snickering....

Lights dimmed in the Tank's small amphitheater. The panel rasters warmed up. Coded signal patterns flashed. Each panel viewer had four small screens, a built-in TV, and voice pickup. Beyond the panel bank in a wall-sized well or recess, a canted map of a quarter of the world became visible under black light. In Northern California, a red light suddenly gleamed at them. At all positions, monitor I came into focus. Five charter members of Omega's secret "Lodge" stared back at them. With their chairman and chief, John Anthony Hart--now present in the Tank--they were known simply as The Council; but between them they represented a sizable chunk of the Free World's technical-industrial capacity, not to mention enough financial muscle to stagger the money markets of the world.

On the world map, Washington blinked red. For each viewer, monitor 2 came to life and four members of the U.S. Senate Security Committee faced them. London blinked red, and each monitor 3 lit up with the proper face and form of the MI-7 Chief, tweeds and all.

Twelve hours prior to this moment an Omega Condition Three had gone out. In accordance with a two-nation ultra-secret "scenario" covering this incredible contingency--it was tantamount to saying "in case of devils"--a handful of pin-sized diodes, in three widely separated time-sharing computers, gated the octal logic which triggered a gigantic defense linkage. The global tendrils of emergency connections were data-linked, micro-waved, and satellite-relayed far and wide into maximum-security cabler units tied in to "Project Omega."

Across the United States, millions of slumbering citizens were unaware of subtle electro-mechanical movements in hundreds of ICBMs resting in their silos as warheads were remotely armed. From its underground bastion in Colorado Springs, NORAD obediently alerted SAC, without yet knowing the objective, while thousands of National Guard posts and police/ sheriff headquarters throughout the nation wondered what was up. They were suddenly on standby for invoking Martial Law at a moment's notice, wherein the most specific feature was to be an absolute blackout of the Press. Panic was the main thing to watch for in case of an information leak, but few men on Earth knew that the thing called the "Stone" was the other chief factor in the crisis equation. The Stone was now prime target. To "somebody" out there it could even be worth the risk of World War III, or Armageddon itself.

But if the probe came, the highest knowledgeable echelons of the world were still not ready. Certainly if the traditional layman in any part of the world had known what was going on that following day beneath the timeless face of the Mojave Desert, there would have been a mass wandering in the streets, a panic migration to the hills, or a total collapse of Wall Street--among many lesser evils.

"I don't like it, J.A.," came the clipped voice of Senator Cain from monitor 2 while addressing John Anthony Hart. "Your boy isn't cleared for an action of this magnitude."

"That's in case of snafu," snapped Hart, a small, leathery dynamo of inexorable causality. "If somebody taps his brain he won't know what we know--at least not about the Stone."

"We hadn't thought, over here," interjected MI-7 with a Balaklava tone of commitment, "that a 'snafu' factor would be considered in this operation. Where will Dr. Brockway be?"

"Right next to my boy, as Cain prefers to call him," retorted J.A. "Look, gentlemen, David Duqayne is very close to me..."

"Too close," interrupted the senator. "In fact that's one of the reasons why I'll be at the Westhaven hearing."

J.A. ignored him. "I'm practically using him like bait in a tiger trap. But it's the triggering point we've got to have!"

"Small price," said Cain, "for all the panic he's caused."

"But there's his motivation--he wants to prove his point! Of course we have to take the stand publically that he's pretty spaced out on the Kettleridge matter, but on the security level we have to have that proof. Actually his whole ingenious plan has provided a possible chance for a breakthrough. He doesn't know it, but Omega will be standing in the wings for this performance."

"Not to mention some of our own intelligence," added Cain.

"This is too much of a blur for me, J.A.," complained a Pentagon general. "I can't find a peg to hang my hat on. What's the hard core of it all? Where are these way-out scientists in your outfit? What's their analysis?"

"Some of them died," said J.A. with grim emphasis, "along with some top brains from the other institutions, and a V.I.P. group of Government experts."

"You mean--"

He nodded. "That's right--the Stone. Weeks of careful observation with high-tech precautions--but it wiped out half the facilities without a sound. It opened windows on things you wouldn't want to talk about. One survivor lost his mind, probably blasted by the horror of contemplating what might happen if that thing fell into the wrong hands. How would you like to have an enemy playing with extra-dimensional wormholes, or maybe diddling with Time itself?"

"You're getting deep, J.A.," cautioned a Lodge Council member.

"Oh we all know it's Diamond Level classified, but under present pressure, and considering the bewilderment of the uninformed, it's tough to keep walking around it. General, when you have Diamond security clearance, you will be able to see what was recorded. In the meantime, just thank God that damned thing has been buried for 50,000 years." However, he did introduce his scientific adviser and asked him if he could contribute anything enlightening for the general, or for anyone else who might be on the network biting their nails in confusion.

The prematurely gray-haired but ruddy-faced physicist next to J.A. addressed the monitors brisky. "With the Nieuwald discovery and the death of Dr. Kettleridge--I mean the way he died--science has virtually been scrabbling for a new model of the universe. We've practically had to scrap our psi-particle theories and junk the principle of quarks, unless they can be revised. After all, gentlemen, 'e' does equal mc squared! That means that matter is energy and energy is matter. For the first time, we've been forced to face the full implications of this fact. Since bio-plasma, quantum pairs, and black holes, we've been looking at the possibility of whole new systems of higher energy states--and now that the Stone is in our hands--"

"Come on, Conrad!" urged J.A. impatiently. "Translate it for them!"

The physicist squared his shoulders and leaned forward as though bracing himself for an ordeal of revelation. "All this is saying that practically nothing is supernatural--there seems to be cause and effect for everything. A lot of the old semantics will have to go. Much that we have always regarded as superstition is of course just that--as interpreted by the primitive mind. Nevertheless, all those old concepts seem now to be based on heretofore unrecognized factors which relate to a far bigger picture of the universe."

"I still need a translation!" insisted the general. "Even modern technology," confessed the scientist, "has been relatively in a sort of medieval darkness--until now."

"All right," Hart cut in sharply as he glared challengingly at his panel monitors. "You want a real translation? It goes something like this, gentlemen: We've stumbled onto something too big for our britches and we don't dare let go..."

"That's what I'm getting at!" interjected the general adamantly. "The main point is the Stone.. We're hanging onto that, regardless!"

"The 'regardless' part is the main question," interrupted a council member through monitor 1. "An interesting dilemma. Can a discovery be so great--even in its undeveloped form--that it's worth the risk of extinction?"

"It could be extinction now if we don't hang onto it!" protested the general heatedly.

"If you're talking about paying the price, Paul," Hart answered, "that's what Jason means by dilemma. This is total commitment for the human race, if you want something to hang your hat on! No holds barred. We found something priceless. Apparently the original proprietors have been around here for ages, a form of super-ultra intelligence we never suspected or conceived of. Now that they know we've got what they want, they're emerging...!"

"But who or what are they?" asked the general in red-faced frustration. "How many? Where? What have they got that we--"

"Plenty!" interrupted Hart. "You know how Kettleridge died. And that's why Dave Duqayne is a sitting duck right now! This is Pandora's box, and we don't dare tell the public about it. We have to meet this crisis on a new international level that must remain invisible--a global echelon that they may never know about, from here on in...."

"I see," said MI-7 from Trafalgar Square. "We're talking about a Sixth Estate--a secret government hidden from the world. Hmm. I don't mind telling you, gentlemen, that both the P.M. and the Crown are gravely concerned--"

"Concerned!" exclaimed J.A. incredulously. "Who the hell isn't? We've just hung out the bait and our mysterious quarry is starting to respond. We don't know if we're dealing with demigods or demons. Why else would there be an Omega Condition Three, for God's sake? With the Stone we've either stumbled across the Golden Fleece, or it's a direct connection to Hell! Whether for good or evil, gentlemen, the old points of reference are gone--the lid is off!"