Alien Storm

by Ken Bebelle

  Bells spoke up around a mouthful of pancakes. “You gonna wash your hands before you eat?”

  Keenan looked at his hands and the thin, iridescent green film coating them. He flexed his fingers, getting a light tingling sensation for his effort.

  “Actually, Dr. B says it won’t wash off. Something about how it bonds to my skin. She said it’ll wear off over a few days.”

  Bells shivered. “Freakshow.” She returned to demolishing her plate.

  Gunny set his mug down. “I haven’t read the report yet. How did the test go?”

  Keenan stared at his hands. They seemed very far away from him just now. It had been a whole day already, but he could still feel the odd sensation of the alien weapon in his hands.

  “It was weird. I mean, the test went fine. The weapon fired fine. Obliterated the target, actually. Stan was a little bent about the mess, even with Dr. B there to talk him down.”

  He made a fist with his right hand, watching the knuckles turn white.

  “It just felt--odd. Even just picking up the thing. It wasn’t cold. At least, not in my hands. I felt the cold here--” He patted his right arm and shoulder. “--but not where Dr. B put the biofilm.”

  Gunny held Keenan’s gaze. “It hurt you, son?”

  “No, no. At least, not in the way you’re probably thinking. It just felt...wrong. It felt like that damn gun was alive, Gunny. Like it was going to turn around and bite me.”

  “Maybe we should have let Harding test it.”

  Keenan smiled thinly. “That guy. He’s a piece of work. You’d have thought it was Christmas morning when the gun discharged. We’ve barely managed to fire the one rifle the one time, he’s already talking about mass production plans. Dickhead.”

  Just thinking about the spook got Keenan’s blood boiling. He looked down at this hands again, uncomfortable with alien biofilm coating them. But it was a means to an end. Now he could use that fucking blaster. That Ringhead blaster had been bought and paid for by the blood of his team. Ham, Lefkowitz, Ducky, and Chavez. All gone, killed at the fucking Needle. He picked up his coffee and took a swig to settle down. Gunny seemed to sense his mood and went back to his pie, and for a minute, the table was quiet except for the clinking of silverware.

  Two bites later, Gunny started talking. “You know, Kennedy is going out on Operation Pick Up Sticks in Canada.”

  Keenan swallowed a bite of pie and washed it down with a swig of the dark brew. “Yeah. I was wondering about that.”

  Keenan had been up north for a while now, and he would have been the logical liaison for this little jaunt.

  Gunny put down his fork. “Well now, the reason we didn’t send you is that we had a shipment of shiny new Ravens last week.”

  Keenan let out a low whistle. Those were hard to get. Right out of Experimental Projects Division and allegedly with cloaking tech that could mask the aircraft from Ringhead detection.

  “That’s right. They are impressive. And if they do half the shit EP swears they do, we’ll have a significant boost in our ability to fight these bastards.” Gunny smacked the table in emphasis.

  Bells looked up from her pancakes. “Oohrah,” she mumbled and then went back to attacking the sausage.

  Gunny continued. “Course, we wanted Kim to fly the bird up to Vancouver. And Kim and Kennedy are like two peas in a pod. So Kim flew up Victory and Whiskey team.” He paused to take a forkful of pie and chewed thoughtfully.

  Keenan would love to get into one of those birds. “So EP sent us one?”

  Gunny snorted. “Son, do you think the Colonel would be satisfied with just one Raven for his Wolves?”

  Bells shook her head. “Nuh uh.”

  Keenan shrugged. “Those cost, what, two hundred million each? Not exactly pocket change.”

  “Yeah. You got that right. Why do you think Colonel’s on the horn with Senator Jackson all the time?” Gunny’s face took on a sour expression.

  Keenan’s eyebrows lifted. He always wondered what kept Colonel Phillips busy during the day. He recalled several trips to DC back when Phillips first brought him on board. It had felt vaguely like he was being paraded around by a proud parent. Senator Jackson’s name evoked a distinct memory of a sharp-tongued woman in a severe suit eyeing him like a slab of meat. That’s right, she was on the appropriations committee. Keenan might just be a grunt, but he wasn’t stupid. The Wolves didn’t run on good intentions and willpower. Somewhere backstage, there was always money changing hands. Guess the Colonel had managed to shake that money tree.

  Bells set down her fork with a slight clatter on her empty plate. She picked up her napkin and blotted her lips with a firm pat. Keenan watched as she flagged down Ellie with an enthusiastic wave. “Could I get a slice of that blueberry sour cream pie?”

  Gunny looked startled and then dug into his melting ice cream with a serious focus. Keenan did the same. While he ate, the thought about the Raven. Having a way to evade Ringheads was exactly what he would need when he went after Cam and Jonesy. He didn’t think the Colonel would clear that mission though, not when the Dubs were up to their eyeballs in problems right now. And he’d need to wrangle a pilot. Other than Kim, he didn’t know the pilots very well. He’d left his trusted pilot, Giamello, up at the Yukon base. It had made sense at the time, since they were closer to the action. But now Keenan was wishing he had all his closest confidantes with him because he needed to make a plan and he needed some serious help.

  As they settled up their tab, Gunny’s tablet pinged. He checked it and frowned. “Keenan, Bells, I’m going to head back to Camp but you just contact the Depot when you want to leave and we’ll send someone out for you. Stay in Reno and finish up that list I gave you.”

  Three

  Flight Lessons

  Cam hated being alone in the dark.

  Being on a night mission with her team, that was exciting. Being in bed at night with Keenan, that was loving. But being alone at night, that’s when Cam’s mind couldn’t settle down. Self doubt, insecurity, and fear. They liked to crowd her mind and keep her company when she had no other company. They were shitty roommates. That’s why she rarely stayed at her officer’s quarters back on base, eschewing the solitary room unless Keenan was coming to stay with her.

  Keenan.

  The need to be with him burned an aching hole in her gut, even as the emptiness around her sucked the breath from her lungs. Space seemed to stretch away from her, casting her into the depths of the endless void. Lost in her dark thoughts was where she needed him the most, to anchor her reality and keep her focused.

  Her mind rewound to The Talk. Over a year ago, she’d flown to New York to spend leave with him. That time had been very different, the playfulness of their prior romps burned away by urgency. She knew their time was running out. He seemed to notice the almost panicky need in her lovemaking.

  “Cammie, relax.” She’d never let anyone else call her that. But Keenan had always gotten away with so much, his easy charm and genuine affection soothing all affronts. The intensity of his eyes, so warm and green. She couldn’t resist his vibrant spirit, the balance she so desperately craved.

  She clung to him in the dark, afterwards. Moonlight through the window washed the hotel room in stark shadows, a poor substitute for the electric skyline the city was famous for. Just another war casualty. Even in the dim light Keenan’s eyes sparked with their own inner light as he talked about his latest assignment.

  “Cammie, the Hail Mary Project. They don’t tell me much, but I can tell they have something. Something big. It could end the war.”

  Cam had shaken her head. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  His gaze was fixed on the dark ceiling, seeing a future that was hidden from her. “I’m serious, baby.”

  Ever skeptical, she snorted. “They haven’t even figured out how to activate that blaster you brought back from the Greedle.”

  She knew where it was all headed. They were losing this war of attrition. Friends and
family would continue to die. But she had let Keenan talk. He was the big idea person, not her.

  “Think about it, the war could be over.”

  That had seemed impossible to her. His optimism spilled out from him, but the memory of her pain kept it from soaking into her.

  He turned to look at her, his eyes like blazing emeralds. “I want to marry you, Cammie.”

  Cam knew it was foolish. But the question had evaded her defenses and torn into her heart, releasing emotions she’d long had under tight control. Her common sense never stood a chance. She’d told him yes, and let herself begin to imagine a future with him, and without war.

  Stupid. Look at me.

  Cam studied the pebbled blue texture of her skin and grieved for her future with Keenan. Her eyes closed and she let the pain flow through her, hollowing her out. She didn’t know how much time passed. I’m empty.

  Cam waited for her old demons to creep in. But they didn’t show up. But there was no room now. Just Cam and the ship. Or at least, what was left of the ship. She’d taken some heavy damage when she’d blasted out. Cam could still sense her jumpship’s hull and to some extent, see beyond it. But she’d lost all contact with the mothership. That was good. Mother can’t reach me.

  Unlike the previous times Cam had connected with the ship’s console and lost herself, Cam had been present for every word Mother forced out of her mouth. It wasn’t like having that feeling of floating Cam got from the ship. No, having Mother in her mind was like being shackled to a wall.

  Mother’s smothering presence had swamped her, shoving Cam down. Jonesy had talked to Cam, his words triggering memories and images that strengthened Cam. Jonesy.

  Cam sagged against the embrace of her restraints as unshed tears burned her eyelids. She’d left Jonesy behind. Her stomach started to hurt, clenching and pulling at her. What are they doing to him? What will Mother do to him? A low moan of pain left her and now the tears fell freely, scalding her cool skin.

  I should have stayed. Now Jonesy was alone with that monster. Cam rocked slightly back and forth, as much as her restraints would allow. They almost seemed to loosen with each sway of Cam’s body. She was running from the aliens she was supposed to fight. Away from the teammate she was supposed to protect. The weight of her anguish pressed down on her. She was bone-tired, heartsore, and strapped, standing, inside a fucking alien ship. She couldn’t even sit down to cry.

  The slab behind her rippled, the surface shifting and squirming under her. Her eyes widened in alarm as her legs were lifted up and in moments the surface had resolidified, now in the rough shape of a captain’s chair.

  Cam tensed and slowly relaxed now that the chair had stopped its movement. The coils holding her in place seemed looser now.

  In opening her eyes, she’d lost her external sight and the now familiar sight of the jumpship’s dim interior greeted her. She looked around her, but other than the chair, nothing else seemed to have changed. No user manual had magically appeared before her. Cam gritted her teeth, and settled into the chair. At the very least, she could try all this crazy while sitting down.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and exhaled a sigh of relief when she could ‘see’ again. Cam felt the familiar out-of-body sensation hit her, just like when she’d connected with the consoles on the mothership. It was almost an astral projection, and she had the jumpship’s view of herself in the chair. Cam held the view longer than she ever had before, and studied the workings of the jumpship. She was no engineer, and she didn’t understand how the ship worked, but she knew the ship was interacting with her.

  If only she could figure out how to give the ship commands. Cam wished she could click her heels together a few times and say, “There’s no place like home.” But the jumpship wasn’t going to take her to Kansas. Instead, Cam thought about maps, trying to visualize a map of North America from a bird’s eye view. It was surprisingly difficult. Stupid! She’d studied countless topo maps but those were just isolated mission locations. In frustration, she smacked her forehead against its alien strap.

  To her surprise, a series of circular signals lit up in front of her, like a holo display. Her rising excitement fizzled rapidly when she realized she couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

  “Great. I need a Ringhead decoder ring.” Her hoarse voice rang hollow in the empty jumpship.

  At her words, the restraints around her wrists began to tingle and then loosen. Am I supposed to do something with my hands? Feeling foolish, she rotated her wrists, thumbs out. As if turning dials, she made small spinning motions with her fingertips. The signals in her view changed as well, a notch appearing on each circle. Cam stopped her movements and rotated the opposite direction. The notches turned.

  Holy shit. It’s working. Cam turned just one dial this time and felt the ship yaw to port. On instinct now, she punched forward slightly with the other hand, and the ship heaved to.

  If only she knew what direction to go. Resting her forehead against the alien coil, Cam tried to relax and make contact with the shipmind. The adrenaline of her escape from Mother had long since drained out of her and the weight of exhaustion pulled on her. Her shoulders rolled forward in fatigue and her head felt like it was filled with bricks. I’m so tired.

  Her stomach growled at that moment. Cam let out a laugh but it sounded more like a whimper. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. And then she thought about Jonesy again, the two of them tearing into the chalky protein bars they’d found. Those bars had been so awful she’d barely managed to choke down half of one.

  What she wouldn’t give for a real meal. Dad's famous banana pancakes. Bacon. Coffee. Keenan was such a coffee snob, patiently grinding beans and steeping the grounds. The memory of the aroma was acutely painful. Cam felt ridiculous, her belly should be the least of her worries.

  The visuals of the shipmind shifted and a rapid fire series of images spun around her. Whoa! Slow down, girl! Cam tried to jerk her head back, struggling to keep up, but it was like trying to drink from a firehose.

  Most of the images made no sense to her at all, flickering past her in such rapid order. Here and there she could pick out clear images of bizarre alien creatures, and fantastic landscapes that had to be from other planets. The shipmind yanked her mind-first, through a waterfall of images and ideas. Her breath hitched as nausea bubbled up her throat, angrily clenching her abused stomach.

  Cam wrenched her eyes open. The images stopped, leaving smeared afterimages like strobe flashes in her eyes. She leaned back against the chair, waiting for her heart rate to slow. How was she going to get this to work? She had nothing in the way of supplies. She had to make this work.

  She closed her eyes again, feeling the odd transition as she slipped into the shipmind. The process was already getting faster, like slipping into comfortable shoes. Her senses opened again, and this time she called up the ship controls at will, the myriad of holograms floating before her. Hey girl, take it easy on me this time.

  Cam cracked her knuckles and took a steadying breath. The ship began to shift slowly under her control. Something was wrong with the starboard side of the ship. Controls on that side behaved in fits and spurts, sluggish. Her vision on that side blurred when she tried to see there, and she felt a dull ache there. She sensed the damage, but she couldn’t figure out if she could fix it. She would have to make do.

  The ship pivoted slowly. As it came around, she saw that she had already drifted a significant distance from the mothership. True to her vision from within, the mothership was truly massive. The scale of the main ship loomed so gargantuan, her jumpship was dwarfed in comparison. Cam simply couldn’t conceive of anything so large as a ship, it was bigger than any air or space port she had ever seen.

  The harsh light of the sun cast the ship in sharp relief. The same dark blue-gray color of all the alien tech dominated the structure. Bright blue lines traced their way vertically through the maze of antennae and protrusions on the surface. Cam followed the lines with h
er eyes until they converged to a point on the underside of the mothership.

  A chill ran down her spine as she finally saw the whip-thin structure extending from the intersection of the lines. Compared to the mothership it was impossibly thin, and yet seemed to support the entire structure. It was as thin as a needle.

  She cursed softly into the quiet. “Jesus Christ.” This monster of a ship sat at the top of the Needle? She continued to follow with her eyes, tracing the thin structure until it disappeared into the cloud cover. At least now she had a dim idea of where she was. Not too far from home, it seemed, and yet impossibly far away.

  The need to get back home burned like a white hot star in her chest. Strapped to the table on the mothership, Cam had thought about dying. Better to die by her own hand than suffer through more torture from the aliens.

  Remembering Keenan, who’d always accepted her unconditionally, Cam sobbed in despair. She’d brought Keenan home before to her crazy family, more than a little afraid of how that first meeting would go. Her little brother Ernesto had warmed up immediately, bombarding Keenan with questions about military weapons and strategy. Funny how Ernie never asked her that stuff.

  That macho attitude of her dad and brothers didn’t sting now. The injustice of it before had always chafed at Cam, causing her to move out as early as she could. Her older brothers Ricardo and Miguel had been worse, asking Keenan when Cam was going to settle down and start popping out babies.

  Keenan had handled it all like a champ, and then proceeded to talk sports to distract them. She’d fallen hard for Keenan then, seeing him slide easily through her family’s shit and come out roses. The Faceman in action. Cam’s eyes watered, the pain of missing Keenan stinging anew.

  She would never fit back into her old life. Cam didn’t see a white dress and bouquet in her future. I’m not that woman anymore.

  But getting mindjacked by Mother gave her a new perspective. She might be different, but would never be like them. Where it counted, her thoughts, her feelings were all still human. Cam would never rest until she freed Jonesy from Mother. Memories of her team from Camp Glenn rushed at her and then vanished, hollowing her out, creating a vast emptiness within her that she would only be able to fill with one thing. Revenge.