Stranger Times

Your Battlefield Solutions Provider (Smackdown Entry #4)

May 13, 1982. Buenos Aires.

They split the sky and carved the earth apart, just to make an elevator.

Plaza de Mayo was a shattered ruin, with slabs of concretes resting in the windows of nearby buildings, and cars hurled about like the tiny victims of a child's tantrum. Smoke and concrete dust was only beginning to settle, and the faint moans of injured citizens carried in the gentle breeze.

But for Mariano, as he walked with a dozen other soldiers escorting Buenos Aires' mayor into the ruined square, none of that mattered.

What brought them here was a cable that rose into the sky. The cable was bent in a gentle curve like an ancient god's bow, and terminated in the heart of the now ruined square.

"Brigadier Cacciatore?" Mariano asked, resting his hand on the shoulder and gently guiding him to stop. Mariano hoped using the mayor's old Air Force title might make him more pliable to good advice. "I'd advise letting your security detail go first. We don't know what we're looking at."

"It's obvious, isn't it?" Osvaldo Cacciatore replied, pointing up at the impossible line that cut the sky in two. "The Americans are aiding the British, and they've deployed some weapon from space to do it."

Mariano scoffed. "I thought space weapons were illegal, sir. Besides, the British and the Americans have nuclear weapons. This seems like a somewhat, uh, convoluted way to make war."

"The Americans have been to the moon. There's no telling what they're capable of," Mayor Osvaldo rebutted, but Mariano heard the skepticism in the former Brigadier's speech.

"Perhaps it's a troop-deployment tool?" a member of the mayor's security detail asked. "An elevator to drop-off marines?"

Mariano missed a step, caught his toe on a piece of rubble and stumbled. "An elevator?"

"Yes sir," the soldier replied. "Don't know what else it could be."

Mayor Osvaldo laughed. "You have quite the imagination, soldier. Space Marines. Have you ever heard anything so absurd?"

Mariano disagreed with the Mayor's assessment, and pointed up ahead to where the cable terminated. "It's bored into the ground. Like a tether, sir."

"Up there!" That same soldier shouted, pointing his M1 rifle towards the sky.

Mariano's eyes followed the tether up to where its length disappeared and noticed a black bulge was descending along its length.

"Elevator," Mariano said, bewildered for a moment before he managed to pull his eyes away from the sight.

"Find cover! Mayor, back over there, behind everyone else! No one fires unless I order it!" I hollered orders at the special forces soldiers who served as the Mayor's security detail, and they moved with the expected precision of men who took their craft seriously.

Mariano ducked behind a nearby piece of ruined building and watched.

The black spot up in the sky grew over slow, agonising minutes. There was a red haze around the object that now descended along the cable, a haze Mariano recognised only because of his own experience as a pilot.

"It's descending fast," Mayor Osvaldo said, from behind Mariano. "You can see the heat around the object. It's falling faster than Mach 4."

Mariano looked up, and noticed what they mayor had pointed-out. A streak of white was left in the wake of the falling black object as it fell towards them.

Blessedly, just as Mariano began to wonder if they needed to flee, rockets began to thrust and slow the falling object down. By the time it was close enough to observe, the red heat had cooled, and the strange elevator had slowed to the speed of a parachute.