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Omega Quatrain 2. "In the west, near the rock mount, a load stone pulls opposing sides closer. The fallen signals war and guidance for the coming maelstrom."
A loadstone is a magnet, which may connect to a powerful magnetic anomaly Eddie detected in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. We suspect it's the source of several mysterious satellite blackouts that have been baffling authorities. Could the loadstone be a Gua weapon designed to disable earth's defenses?
I was starting to have doubts, until something dropped out of the sky. Had a feeling "the fallen" that "signals war" just made its first appearance.
With Eddie complaining all the way, we hiked deep into the mountains. Found a device putting out high-magnetic readings but no one running it. Left the device and headed in the direction of the crash site.
Found a fire, something had crashed, could have been a satellite or maybe a ship? Couldn't tell which yet. And we found something ... or someone, too.
Joshua -- nothing like a little destruction from above to bring out our recently estranged ally. Joshua was interested in a specific piece of the wreckage, so I distracted him, sent Eddie to pick up the junk before Joshua could get away with it. Joshua wasn't thrilled to see me - he'd decided he was gonna fight Mabus on his own since I'd refused to kill the alien Anti-Christ in Jordan's body.
Asked him why he was there? Joshua said he was investigating Mabus' new pet project - a vessel that had cloaking and spy capabilities. Joshua had shot it down. Said there was nothing of value left in the wreckage, told me we were both wasting our time.
He was bluffing. No way he'd take the ship down for the heck of it, not with the Second Wave coming any day. Joshua thought the crew must have been incinerated in the crash but I'd noticed a footprint in the dirt leading away from the site.
Joshua was definitely hiding something, but what?
Eddie couldn't figure out what the "box" he'd lifted from under Joshua's nose was used for but he was gonna try to figure it out. Figured Joshua knew we had it but he'd taken off instead of trying to recover it again - he must have really been after the survivor. Left Eddie with the device and went after Joshua. Didn't need his cooperation to figure out what was going on. It was obvious Joshua wanted to play this the hard way. Good, I'm used to the hard way.
While I was searching the woods for Joshua, Eddie made some headway with the box - said there was a substantial amount of electromagnetic resonance coming off of it - just like we'd seen in quantum pockets. Could've been some kind of portal - Eddie would need more time.
Heard an explosion up ahead. Headed in that direction. Then I heard Joshua scream. Found the Gua crewmember first. She was cocky, told me it was her lucky day -- she was gonna finish Joshua and one-one-seven back-to-back. Joshua howled again in the distance. Sounded like he needed my help. Took the pilot and went looking for Joshua - he didn't answer any of my calls. The alien taunted me - told me Joshua had already dissolved. Didn't think so, Joshua was tougher than that.
The alien said the vessel she'd crashed meant the end of mankind - didn't matter that they'd lost one, the Gua had dozens of the ships ready to strike the earth. She tried to pull a mini-grenade on me, turned the tables on her and pocketed it myself.
Headed back to the crash site with the Gua prisoner, found Eddie who'd figured out what the "box" did. It was a Gua flight-recorder, a lot like an earth plane's black box, except this was a 3D version. We entered a "duplicate cockpit" inside a quantum pocket the box created - whatever happened in the real world was recorded in the parallel dimension inside the box. Eddie'd already lived through the crash simulation and didn't want to do it again. We scanned the flight recorder to help us figure out what else Joshua was looking for.
Had to drug the alien pilot with salt to get her to talk. She said the ship had carried a warhead ten times as powerful as any human nuclear weapon. Didn't make sense, a bomb of that magnitude could destroy the entire planet - the Gua would have nothing left to live on. But the pilot said this bomb had no fallout - humans would die and the Gua would move right in.
But why would Joshua want the warhead? Why would he keep it from us?
Left Eddie with the drugged-up Gua and found Joshua. He was next to the warhead, almost dead, his wounds too severe to self-heal. Using a wonder-drug I'd taken from the pilot I was able to bring him back but Joshua was still pretty weak. Asked him what he planned to do with the warhead?
He said, right now, Mabus had the element of surprise on his side, take that away from the Guahead and the planned invasion would fail. Joshua was going to set off the bomb. Earth would believe they were being attacked and unite -- the Gua would have to reconsider their strategy, maybe go home.
Joshua felt the ends justified the means. Hundreds of thousands, even a million of human deaths are better than nineteen million Mabus promised. Joshua didn't want to see his own side slaughtered. This was war.
I called it murder, and no way was I gonna let Joshua get away with it.
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First Wave (1998) - 3x19 - Black Box