by Terry Mixon
The crew on the plane was dead, executed. He found a body in the hangar, too. Based on the dead man’s uniform, it was someone from French customs. That would be the man on his mother’s payroll.
He had his men carry the lone body into the aircraft and clean up the blood. That would give them a little while longer to examine everything. At three in the morning, no one was thinking their best. It might take until shift change before the people here realized they hadn’t seen the dead guy for a while.
Nathan made a call and got someone capable of piloting the plane on the way. If he could keep it from being found, that would lessen the heat on his mother, and thus on him.
The security system hadn’t done one thing to protect his mother, but it had recorded the murder of the crew. Now he had faces to go from. Neither of the men was the bastard he’d framed and kidnapped.
The plane had external cameras, too. The one on the door caught a good view of the man of the hour waiting for his mother, as calm as could be. She must have been blind. That guy didn’t look like a customs man at all.
He was about to shut it off when he stopped and backed the video up. Inside the hangar was a small van. Not the kind normally used around an airport. It hadn’t been there when they’d arrived.
He couldn’t see the license plate, but the make and model was clear enough to one of the native Frenchmen.
“This vehicle got out of the airport somehow,” he told one of his men as the new pilot pulled up. “Someone in security here could get the plate. Find that person. Pay them whatever you need to.”
They’d stashed the bodies in the cargo hold. He’d have someone at the new destination get rid of them. As a sop to the pilot’s sensibilities, he’d taken the time to wipe the blood and brains off the seat and console.
He’d probably missed some, but it would have to do.
“Take off as soon as you can and go to Moscow,” he ordered the pilot. “I’ll have someone meet you there. Do what they tell you, keep your mouth shut, and you’ll be back here tonight with a lot of money in your pocket.”
After the jet started, warmed up, and headed out, his man came back and climbed into the back of the van.
“I found someone willing to work with us. Here’s the license number. I made sure he got a good look at the driver’s face, too. If there are any questions about tonight, he’ll point the man out.”
“What about us?”
“We’ll never come up in his report.”
Nathan nodded appreciatively. “Very nice. Now all we need to do is find a dirty police officer with access to the traffic system. Surely every camera in this town is wired to report where a vehicle has gone.”
In modern Paris, the nanny state kept track of everything. The same for London and other major cities. That was why he preferred stolen vehicles and hats that obscured faces.
The data on where that vehicle went could tell them a lot. The man had probably dumped it, but that might give them an area to search for clues.
“Already done,” his man said with a grin. “They dumped the van, but my guy spotted the driver in another vehicle a few blocks away. He traced the car to an apartment building parking lot.”
He handed Nathan an address.
“You’ve done very well,” Nathan said. “As of right now, you’re my new team leader. I want extra muscle at that building and for us not to be tracked going in or out.”
The man nodded. “We can have everything in place in an hour.”
That might just be the longest hour of his mother’s life.
* * * * *
Jess sat beside the pilot as they winged across to the dark and foreboding ship. In the pale starlight, it was a black shadow. The console on Freedom Express must have been amplifying the ambient light. She couldn’t see much at all.
She could tell one thing. It was big. Really big. They made passes along its length so the cameras could record everything. It was more than a kilometer from stem to stern.
None of the areas she saw looked to have a docking clamp—and the odds were almost certain that one wouldn’t have worked for the lifter—so they landed on the hull near what looked like an airlock. Thrusters held the ship down as they exited. The pilot would wait near the ship for them to come back.
The airlock design was different from what Humanity Unlimited used. The door looked short and wide. That made sense if this was a ship designed for heavy-worlders.
Harry had brought an armed team of his people, Ray Proudfoot, and Emily Adams. They might need their expertise. They didn’t need them to unlock the airlock. It cooperatively slid open. The compartment was wide enough for all of them to fit in.
“Everyone remember where we parked,” Ray said.
She had to smile. “Use the chalk to mark any place you turn. Point the arrows back toward the ship.”
“Good idea,” Harry said. “That will make things easy to understand when we’re running for our lives.”
“You have a serious case of pessimism,” she said. “Be confident.”
“I am confident. Confident that we’ll be running for our lives. It always seems to go that way.”
“Not helpful.”
Jess waited for the last of the boarding party to come inside and hit the switch to cycle the airlock. The outer hatch slid ponderously shut and the inner one opened. The chamber beyond was initially dark, but the lights slowly came up. They were dimmer than she expected, and a little redder.
“Maybe the color is indicative of—” she started to say, but the gravity plates came on and slammed them all to the deck. It felt as though the ship were rapidly accelerating, but she knew it had to be the heavy-worlders’ gravity.
Even raising her head was a strain. “We should’ve…thought of this.”
“Everyone okay?” Harry asked. “We have to be very, very careful. It feels like I have two people on my back.”
Getting to her hands and knees was a strain. “Holy God, there’s no way we can explore anything like this. I can barely move.”
“I think I can go a little ways,” Harry said.
“Maybe I can do something about that,” Ray said.
“Anti-gravity belts?” she asked. “Those would be awesome.”
He laughed, though it sounded more like coughing. “Nah. I did some looking at the gravity system on Freedom Express. Let me try something.”
Placing one foot carefully in front of the other, he made his way to the panel beside the door. He tapped it and it came to life. She couldn’t see what screen he navigated to, but the gravity let up until it felt about right.
The relief from the team was palpable.
“That’s got it,” she said. “Thanks. But won’t it do the same thing as soon as we walk out of the room?”
“That depends on what I find in this little locker,” he said as he came back over to the airlock. He opened a panel with drawings of the three styles of human. Inside were necklaces. He pulled out a number with regular humans emblazoned on the metal tab that sat about chest high.
“Put these on,” he said as he handed them out. “The grav plates are supposed to read them and adjust the field accordingly.”
She gave him a narrow eyed stare. “And why didn’t you mention these up front?”
“I forgot,” he said sheepishly. “I’m not used to dealing with these things. The findings are in my notes. I submitted them to the scientists to add to whatever summary they put together.”
“Any other little surprises we should know about?” Harry asked.
“I’ll let you know if I remember any.”
He shook his head with a smile. “I’ll go test the hall.”
A few cautious steps out into the hall proved the engineer’s theory. They could walk without gravity crushing them to the ground.
Harry looked both directions down the corridor. “Which way?”
“Damned if I know,” she said. “Let’s try forward.”
She set off toward the front of the ship with everyone else behind
her. If they found directions inside, maybe her helmet camera could decipher them via the translator.
* * * * *
Queen slowly became aware that he was alive. His thoughts bounced around inside his head like the ball in an arcade game, but at least he wasn’t dead.
He lay in a regular looking bed with an IV stand beside it. There was some kind of thick mat wrapped around his torso. That didn’t seem right, but all he knew about gunshot treatments was what he saw on television.
There was surprisingly little pain. He’d expected something like this to be debilitating. They must have him on good drugs.
Speaking of them, they weren’t in the room. Perhaps he could escape while they thought he was out of it.
The only problem was that he couldn’t figure out how to get the damned mat to come loose. He’d just have to take it with him.
Pulling the IV needle out was surprisingly painful and he bled like a stuck pig. The pillowcase was the only thing he could find to bind himself with.
He staggered a little as he headed for the door. There was something taped on the inside. A note.
You shouldn’t be up. There’s a guard outside the door and no fire escape. Lay back down before you hurt yourself. Cabot.
Dammit. Was the woman psychic?
A look out the window confirmed that they were on an upper floor and he had no way down. He supposed he could shout for help or write a message in blood on the window, but it was dark out and this didn’t look like the kind of neighborhood where people rushed to help one another.
But he wasn’t going to sit down like a good boy, either.
He opened the door, somewhat surprised that they hadn’t locked it. There was a man sitting in a wooden chair across from the door. He looked like every stereotyped villainous thug Queen had ever seen on TV: short, but heavily muscled, and bald as an egg.
The only thing that jarred this impression was the magazine the man was reading. It looked like a science journal. High energy physics or something.
“You shouldn’t be up, Mister Secretary.” The man’s voice was even deeper than Queen had expected. James Earl Jones deep.
“I’ve had about enough of this,” Queen said. “I want to talk to someone in charge or you can just shoot me again.”
The man smiled a little. “From what I hear, Brenda only threatened to shoot you. The gunman was with someone else. You’re a very popular man, by the way.”
He rose to his feet, setting the magazine on the chair. His head was still below Queen’s. Short and squat didn’t begin to do him justice. The man looked like he could bench press a car. Or tie recalcitrant government officials into pretzels.
“Now, back into the room and I’ll call the doctor,” the man said. “He can take that off, if it’s time, and then I’ll take you to see Brenda.”
Not happy with the outcome, Queen did as the man said.
A few minutes later, an Asian man in a lab coat came in. “Good evening, Mister Secretary. I’m Doctor Granger. Call me Todd.”
His accent was jarring. Queen guessed somewhere in the south. The rural south. Possibly on a mountain where they hadn’t seen regular people for a few generations.
“It’s the way I talk, isn’t it?” the man asked, obviously seeing something in Queen’s expression. “Happens all the time. You see one thing and get another and it makes you feel like you’re in the Twilight Zone. Well, maybe in this case you aren’t too far off.
“Before we begin, let’s lay out some ground rules. You might decide to get froggy and take me prisoner. Jackson won’t like that. He’s the rather large man sitting outside. Let me assure you, he’s even stronger than you think.
“Also, I have a black belt in three different martial arts. See? Stereotypes are good for something. I bet you’re inclined to believe me because of my appearance.”
Queen was amused in spite of his situation. “You’re quite the talker, Doctor Granger. Allow me to say that the name is jarring, too.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “How badly am I hurt? I actually feel pretty good.”
“I’ve thought of changing my name to Kawasaki, just to see how many people would buy into my tall tales of being a motorcycle mogul. My friends insist that I have a low sense of humor. I’m not really sure why. Let’s see what the autodoc has to say about your condition.”
He walked around the bed and looked at the back of the mat wrapped around Queen’s torso. “It tells me the damage has been repaired. I’d still be cautious about any sudden movements or heavy lifting, but you’re going to live. Of course, I already knew that. Let’s get this thing off you.”
He did something and the mat came loose. Queen saw a panel of some kind on the back as Granger wrapped it up and set it on the bed. The text was in the alien script.
“What’s an autodoc?”
“You know that story of Brenda’s you don’t believe? Well, this is an artifact from a long time ago that is still better than any medicine we have on Earth. It can fix so much that we’d be stymied by, and quick, too. It’s only 10 pm and you’re all better. Except for where you yanked out that IV. Let me tape that up.”
A look at his side showed no sign of an injury, other than a healed scar. It looked as though it had happened years ago.
“I’m going to have to believe this wild story, aren’t I?” Queen asked with a sigh.
Granger smiled as he stopped the bleeding with a folded piece of gauze. “That’s up to you, but I can guarantee you won’t be in any doubt by morning. That controller you gave Brenda is going to open a whole universe that we’d thought gone forever. That’s going to be for good and ill. Pandora’s Box, if you will.”
“Gave is a little strong of a word,” Queen said dryly. “She kidnapped me at gunpoint and stole it. She’s going to prison for a very long time when they finally catch up with her. You, too, I’m sorry to say. You seem like a nice enough fellow.”
The other man laughed. “I’ve been in prison all my life. So have you, but you didn’t have the perspective to see it. Come on. We’ll go open those eyes of yours.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kathleen screamed. She’d never felt such excruciating pain before. No matter how she struggled, it only got worse.
The sorry bastard who’d caused it stood in front of her with a smile. Holding her little toe in between his fingers. “You see? I can do whatever I wish to you and you cannot dream of stopping me.”
“I was already going to talk, you asshole! You didn’t have to cut my toe off!”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. At the very least, you’d lie or conceal information. Now you grasp the full penalty for trying to fool me.
“Let us begin in earnest. You had this scanned copy of a document in your luggage. What is it? What language is this?”
They’d torn her luggage apart and found the hidden compartment where she kept emergency identification and cash. She’d stashed a copy of the papers Nathan had sent there for study.
“If you’re so smart, you tell me,” she snarled.
He nodded, as though she’d shared some deep secret with him. “The arrogance of the infidel is legendary. You think me uneducated because I believe that the word of God came through the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. You think me an ignorant savage.
“Allow me to disabuse you of that notion. I have a Master’s degree in architecture. I know many languages, at least enough to recognize them, but I’ve never seen anything remotely like that. Shall I take another toe to prove how little choice you have in answering my questions?”
Her foot was still throbbing in agony from where he’d use garden shears to snip off her little toe. She’d rather not go through that again. Ever.
“It’s the language of visitors to our world.”
He frowned and shook his head sadly. “You really must think me an idiot. So be it.”
“Wait!” she shouted desperately. “I’m telling the truth! All the news about that ship visiting Mars, that’s my ex-husband. He found proo
f of people from space coming to our world a thousand years ago. That’s just one piece of it.
“I have a crashed ship in my lab in the United States. The government confiscated it. It’s true. Every word.”
He set the shears down and looked at the paper more closely. “What is this map? It seems to be of the area around Paris. I’ve seen medieval documents that had similar drawings of the area. It was founded in the third century after Christ, on him be peace.”
“We think there’s a base down there. One left undisturbed for over a thousand years.” She sure as hell didn’t want to tell him that, but she’d like to keep the rest of her toes. God forbid if he started in on her teeth.
“And these markings?”
“Numbers. Twenty of them ranging from zero to nine. We’re not sure what they mean.”
He considered her for a moment and then picked up her computer. “What is on this? More information?”
“Yes. Scans of documents, pictures, reports. It’s all there.”
“Unlock it.”
She typed the password and unlocked the encrypted drive. It booted up.
He set the computer down and handed her a pad and pen. “Write down the password.”
His tone really pissed her off. He already believed that he was going to roll over her from now on. No, she didn’t think so.
She wrote down the password, but it was a trick. It worked, but after three uses, it wiped the drive clean. And she’d just used it once. She’d had the operating system modified for just such an occurrence as this. Let him think he’d won.
He folded the password and slipped it into his jacket with the map. Then he had her tell him where the images of the ship were.
He stared at them, mind blown. She could see the wheels spinning, but getting no purchase.
“Islam does not speak of people from other worlds,” he said at last. “I’m unsure if this is blasphemy or not.”
“That’s your problem, not mine. Sometimes you have to adjust what you believe based on the evidence.”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out the alien key. The thin sliver of metal gleamed in his hand. “What is this?”