by John Coon
“These look like tools, not weapons, to me. The female alien told us she came to Earth in peace. Shouldn't we take her word for it?”
“What if she's lying to us?”
“And what if I'm lying to you? What if I'm an alien in disguise. Are you going to fry and freeze me to see if I'm telling the truth?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Don't be ridiculous.”
“There's more to our galaxy than a bunch of hostile alien races,” Collin said. “There has to be more. Don't you see it?”
Sam wanted to see what Collin saw. He wanted to embrace blind optimism. Doing so required ignoring other important things he had already seen and heard. One soldier dead and three others wounded while tracking down these aliens. They were forced to restrain one alien in a chair inside his cell after he attacked Ned and Dr. Harter.
None of this evidence fit with an altruistic idea painting these aliens as peaceful explorers. He could not afford to simply accept what the female alien claimed without giving her words a second thought.
Neither could anyone else in the bureau.
“You need to be rational about this,” Sam said. “Don't throw away your career in the Earth Defense Bureau over an alien you just met.”
Collin slapped the pouch back on the desk and straightened up again.
“This is the most rational choice left. I can't stand by and watch y'all torture an alien who looks as human as me or you.”
Becoming a patron saint of another lost cause fit his personality to a tee. Sam first grew aware of this trait when they started working together at NASA. Collin never seemed content to relax while off the clock. He always plunged headfirst into volunteering for charity events in Houston. Save the whales. Feed the homeless. It did not matter. Once Collin signed his name on the dotted line on a petition, he invested body, mind, and soul into shepherding that cause.
His passion for social justice stood out as an admirable trait in most circumstances. This was not such an occasion. Sam understood what was at stake for Collin if he walked out the door and did not come back. Collin would realize the same thing if he were honest with himself.
“We need you here.” Sam did his best to soften his tone. “I need you here. Please stay.”
Collin took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with his shirt tail. He met Sam with a silent gaze, studying his face to discern if those words were genuine or a last-ditch attempt at flattery to avoid fallout from a principled objector quitting in protest.
“Can you promise me you'll take the necessary steps to protect the alien's rights?”
“I'll do what I can, but my hands are tied.”
Collin put on his glasses again. He closed his laptop and stuffed it into a computer bag.
“Then, my hands are also tied,” he said, shaking his head. “I'm sorry things have to end this way.”
***
Paige felt troubled by what the female alien said as she returned to her office. Her original relief at finally establishing communication with an alien soon yielded to trepidation over revelations arising from their brief conversation.
What the alien claimed made no sense to her.
How did their race contact a probe sent from Earth? Her story did not mesh with details Paige knew concerning the Peacekeeper Project. NASA and the Earth Defense Bureau spearheaded rapid construction of many deep space probes soon after the failed invasion in Travis. Both agencies worked together to compile an extensive list of potentially habitable near-Earth exoplanets as target destinations.
Bureau engineers worked day and night to reverse engineer power cells culled from the same Rubrum transport Paige used to escape from Travis. It offered a useful power source opening a door for probes to cover immense stretches of deep space at greater speeds. Destinations once taking an old school probe hundreds of thousands of years to reach were scaled down to mere decades of travel for newer probes.
Still, based on what the engineers reported, the transport she brought back owned no faster-than-light travel capabilities. This fact alone made Paige suspicious of claims that any Earth probe launched in the 2020s reached an alien solar system within 10 years of its launch date. The math did not check out. It had to be nothing more than a lie or a trick to get the Earth Defense Bureau to lower its guard.
Paige hoped Gen. Daly could shed some new light on the situation. She needed answers. The sort of answers she did not trust an alien to provide to her.
A broad smile crossed the general's lips as soon as he appeared on her phone's video call screen.
“It's so good to hear from you,” he said. “I trust things are going well in Utah. Have we made progress in tracking down the remaining aliens?”
“We've rounded up four aliens so far,” Paige said. “One ranger team also brought back a damaged transport vehicle. I suspect more aliens are out there who've eluded our grasp to this point, so we're still scouring the entire Wasatch Front.”
“Excellent! Can you determine if these are scouts ahead of an invasion fleet like we first suspected?”
She frowned.
“I don't know what to think.”
“Why do you say that?”
“We finally figured out how to communicate with one alien. It spun a tale of being a peaceful explorer. Claimed their race found one of our probes.”
Gen. Daly leaned forward and furrowed his brow.
“One of our probes?” he repeated.
“It can't be possible,” Paige said. “Our fastest probes haven't had enough time to reach an inhabited planet.”
Gen. Daly glanced down at his desk. He stared at his keyboard for a moment and then closed his eyes. Paige narrowed her eyes and tilted her head.
“Wait a minute. Are you saying it is possible?”
The general opened his eyes and lifted his head again. He leaned back in his chair, turned, and stared out a window in his office.
“It's possible we already reached a system within three or four parsecs.”
“How?”
“We salvaged advanced technology from a small craft that we seized when we neutralized a band of Chameleon aliens a few years ago.”
“Chameleon aliens?” A crease formed in Paige's brow. Nobody ever said anything about this alien species to her. “Why was I not briefed on this?”
Crimson flushed through both cheeks when he faced her again.
“The less you know ... about that situation … the better.” Hesitation gripped his voice. “It turned into a total mess.”
Learning Gen. Daly kept her out of the loop on a development this important did not sit well with Paige. She had no expectations of direct involvement in every single bureau mission but rooting out alien incursions was supposed to be her specialty. How many other secrets did he keep hidden from her? Now Paige could not help wondering how often she stayed in the dark on important matters.
It caught her by surprise. She hated surprises.
Paige shook her head and sighed. She resolved to have another chat with the general and voice her concerns once she wrapped everything up here in Utah. For now, though, there were bigger fish to fry.
“This technology you recovered, did it –”
“It allowed us to generate an artificial wormhole for a few seconds.” Gen. Daly said. He leaned forward and stared straight at his webcam. “We selected two planets from our Peacekeeper Project target list and tested it out on probes sent to those destinations. We wanted to learn if our wormhole could shave several years off their deep space travel.”
“Which planets?”
“The first one we sent to Proxima Centauri and the second went to 61 Cygni A.”
Paige leaned back and tugged on a lock of her blonde hair. His revelation only created more troubled feelings and confusion rather than bringing clarity to the situation. Both stars harbored potentially habitable exoplanets and each one lay within a four-parsec distance from Earth. She never stopped to consider that the female alien told the truth. If they were indeed peaceful explorers
as she claimed, why did they own Rubrum weaponry? Why make a secret landing in Utah with no noticeable effort to communicate?
None of it added up.
“Only one way to get to the bottom of this,” Paige said. “I guess I've got another round of questioning on my hands.”
“Best of luck,” Gen. Daly replied. “Let me know if you need anything else from me on this end.”
She ended the call and started on a return trip to the medical containment room. Paige's first instinct told her to interrogate the injured female alien a second time. Halfway between her office and the hangar, she stopped in her tracks. Paige looked down at her phone and smiled.
A better idea came to the surface.
This time, she would pay the other captured alien a visit. Paige planned to ask him the same questions. If these aliens were liars, she would catch one or the other in the act. It also meant getting clarity and obtaining a desired peace of mind that she was indeed pursuing the right course out here.
Before entering the hangar, Paige backtracked and stopped at the storage room to sort through new weapons and gadgets they confiscated from the other captive alien. She found a second small device resembling the one that the female alien described as a translator. Paige needed one of these translators if she wanted to make any progress in communicating with the other alien. She tucked it inside the same pocket with the Rubrum weapon she showed to the other aliens.
Paige hurried over to the hangar and straight down a corridor toward the other captive alien's cell. She flashed her ID badge at the guards, and they unlocked the cell door. An older alien sat on the edge of a small bed. His white hair only partially covered his head. He had a pointed nose and a small chin. Shackles bound his legs to a wall bordering the bed. The alien stared at the floor and did not bother to raise his head to greet his new visitor.
“Look at me.”
Paige clapped her hands to get his attention. The white-haired alien finally glanced up and shot her a caustic smile. A few words followed in his native language. She did not understand what those words meant, but his aggravated tone betrayed their intended meaning. Paige grabbed a chair from a small round table near the middle of the cell and dragged it over to the bed.
“I have questions. And you're going to give me the answers I need.”
The alien's face scrunched up when she spoke. He brushed his right hand across his ear. At once, Paige remembered the translator sitting inside her pocket. The rangers confiscated it from this same alien when they removed all his gear and weaponry following his capture.
“Are you searching for this?”
She held out the translator. The white-haired alien snatched it from her extended hand. He pressed it into his ear and looked back at Paige.
“That's better.” He bristled at her with an arrogant tone. “Now I demand to know why your soldiers ambushed me and brought me here.”
“Are you the one called Xttra?”
The white-haired alien recoiled at her mention of the same name the other alien shared earlier.
“I am Doni Zell, former minister of –”
“I don't really give a shit about your title.”
Doni straightened up and glared at her.
“I suggest, for your sake, you release me at once and return me to my ship.”
Paige cracked a slight smile at the alien's brazen demands. She shook her head and sat on the chair she placed in front of his bed.
“Why should I do that? You're in no position to make any demands.”
“This means you set a trap for us with that little probe you sent. So much for being peaceful. I knew landing here was a monumental mistake.”
“You're damn right it was a mistake. Now, my question is simple. Why did you come to Earth?”
“I keep asking myself that same question.”
Her eyes narrowed to a half-squint and an icy frown graced her lips. Doni smirked and turned toward the wall. Paige abruptly rose from the chair. She grabbed him by the jaw and jerked his head toward her again.
“We're not done talking. Why did you come here to my planet? What is your purpose?”
Paige let go of his jaw and gave his chin a shove with her palm. His head snapped backward. Doni scowled at her and rubbed his chin.
“Does it matter?” His tone grew agitated. “What do I gain from answering your questions?”
“Tell me what I want to know, and we'll talk.”
She took the Rubrum weapon from her pocket and held it up, so he saw it. Doni displayed no noticeable reaction upon seeing the weapon.
“You claim y'all came in peace. So, tell me, why do peaceful explorers have Rubrum weaponry?
His light blue eyes widened, and he licked his lips as soon as she mentioned Rubrum. More than a hint of fear crept onto the alien's face. She stared, unblinking, at Doni and brought the weapon down so it now pointed right at his throat.
“I know where this came from. I used one when I escaped from a Rubrum spaceship eleven years ago. Tell me where you got this weapon.”
Doni brushed a hand through his white hair. He silently studied the weapon for a moment. Finally, his eyes climbed up to her face.
“What do you know about Rubrum?”
“You tell me what you know first. Are you in league with that planet and that race?”
He answered her with a dismissive wave.
“Of course not. No one has seen or heard from a Rubrumian in many years.”
Paige shifted the barrel over a few inches and pressed the trigger. A blue laser bolt streaked past his shoulder and slammed into the wall behind him. Bits of broken stone struck the floor. A wisp of smoke wafted up from the hole.
Doni instinctively jerked his head toward the wall after the weapon discharged. He shuddered.
“I wasn't kidding when I told you I used this weapon before,” Paige said. “The next bolt goes through your brain, unless you stop screwing around with me and tell me the truth.”
“What did Rubrum do to Earth?” His tone grew more subdued. “They clearly did something awful to hurt you.”
Hurt did not begin to describe what those vile aliens did to Paige. She could not fully explain the depth of her rage and her pain even if she spent an entire year searching for the right words. Images of faces long gone flashed through her mind. Over the space of only a few hours, Paige lost too many people she loved to those awful creatures. No one should ever be forced to live this long while enduring this much pain.
“They stole my life.” Paige seethed. “And I will not rest until every remnant of Rubrum is erased from existence.”
Doni lifted his chin when she said these words and a subtle smile crawled across his lips.
“We have a common enemy.”
Paige lowered the weapon to her side again.
“If they're an enemy, why do you carry their weaponry? How do I know you're not still in league with aliens from Rubrum?”
Doni gazed down at the floor.
“I've heard a few things. Legends. Stories you tell a child to scare them into being good citizens and doing as they're told.”
“What sort of stories?”
He raised his head again and greeted Paige with an intense stare.
“They came to my planet long ago. They became embroiled in a civil war and turned soldiers into genetic monsters. We only eradicated them from among us after a great loss of life.”
Paige squeezed her eyes shut. His words dug up images she already struggled to keep buried. Prowling hybrids once chased after her inside a fenced plaza in downtown Travis. Their misshapen features and inhuman growls formed building blocks for nightmares long since her escape. Paige pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. Surviving those awful memories remained a daily struggle.
“You're more forthcoming about Rubrum than others who came to Earth with you,” she said, opening her eyes again. “Why is that?”
Doni scratched his neck and gazed down at the shackles encircling his legs.
&nbs
p; “They have more to lose than me from the secrets of Rubrum being uncovered. I can't imagine they want the true purpose of their mission to become public knowledge.”
Paige leaned forward.
“What do you mean? What's their true purpose?”
“Isn't it obvious?” Doni said. “They came here to cover their tracks. Their peace mission is a facade. They are one with Rubrum and belong to a secret order dedicated to inflicting terror on the galaxy.”
Paige's thoughts drifted back to the female alien in the hospital room. She did not fit the profile of an interstellar terrorist. On the other hand, maybe she worked as a sleeper agent tasked with lulling people on Earth into lowering their guard so an invasion force could strike the planet with swiftness and without mercy.
Two questions nagged Paige before she could fully embrace this scenario. Why did this alien appear so willing to turn against his fellow aliens? Did he have a hidden agenda?
“So, you're not astronomers peacefully exploring another planet?” she asked.
“Astronomers?” Doni bristled at her question. “No such thing exists among their order. This is a clandestine military operation. Their sole purpose is to gain greater power for themselves.”
“How can I trust you're telling me the truth? What evidence do you have?”
His eyes darted up to the camera recording their interrogation and then back over to Paige.
“I am a spy planted within their ranks to bring them to justice. If you will release me, I'll help you track down our ship and give you what you need to imprison them on Earth forever.”
She rose from the chair without saying another word. One alien or the other was lying. Paige left the cell feeling more conflicted about knowing if either one had told her the truth.
30
Calandra could not remember the last time in her life when she felt as much pain as she did right now.