“What did you do?”
“I ran back to the Jeep, but Rob missed it, was still asleep. So I called a girlfriend for a ride and went home. And I broke up with Rob the next day.”
“And that was it?”
“Yeah. But I never told anyone, not even my girlfriend. It just sounds too weird and places you firmly in the looney category. I figured maybe it wasn't real, you know, like maybe I was drunk, too, but I wasn't. I wasn't scared, either. It was just like watching an airplane that moved differently.”
“Hard to say what it was without being able to examine it.”
“Yeah, I guess. But that's what I saw. And since I didn't have proof, since it sounded so crazy, I just tucked the whole thing away. But just imagine where a ship like that could take you.”
“I'm sure there's websites with support groups,” Jeff said. “Or...”
“Or what?” Jordan said. “Maybe I need a therapist?”
From behind them, white halogen lights approached, riding high, probably a large pickup truck. Jeff pulled over onto the shoulder. A black Suburban passed them. Jeff got back on the road and drove on. Jordan didn't say anything. A few miles further, there was the Suburban again, now stopped in the middle of the road with its lights off.
“Look out!” Jordan screamed.
Jeff couldn't pass to either side without going down into a ditch. He stomped the brakes and his truck skidded and stopped with maybe fifteen feet to spare between them and the Suburban. Jordan braced herself with both hands on the dashboard. Her bag flew to the floor of the cab, its contents emptying around her feet.
Jeff's truck lights went out. The engine died. Jeff turned the key but the engine didn't do anything. Like the Suburban, Jeff and Jordan were now parked in the middle of the dark road, a haze of tire smoke hanging about them.
From the other vehicle, a man got out. He was mostly in shadow, but Jeff saw what looked like a pistol in his hands.
“What the hell,” Jeff said.
He tried the ignition again. Nothing. The man walked closer with the weapon now raised and pointing at them.
“Come on,” Jeff yelled at his truck. He thought the key might break as he turned it and turned it again.
“It will be okay,” Jordan said in a strangely calm voice, as if she were speaking to a child weathering a nightmare.
Jeff looked at her. “What?”
“It will be just fine,” she said. The strange smell rose again inside the cab, this time stronger. Lilacs. A green glow came from a phone-sized device laying among the spilled items from Jordan's bag. Jordan smiled and said, “We're safe now.”
From above the man in the road, a large dark sphere descended like a soap bubble. It came down until it was just above him then stopped dead still, as silent as a falling leaf. Its surface began to shimmer with a dull glow. The man dropped to the asphalt and pointed his weapon upward towards the sphere. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.
The man was yelling something unintelligible, like a made-up language.
The door to Jeff's truck flew open. Outside, the darkness took on a rough shape, big, with two massive arms and two pins of lights where eyes might be. The thing, whatever it was, grabbed Jeff and pulled, but his seat belt held fast. Jordan unfastened it. Jeff gave her a disbelieving look as the creature lifted him out of the cab.
“You'll be okay,” she said. “They're friendly.”
***
Jordan watched as the dark form snatched Jeff from the truck as if he weighed no more than a small sack of groceries. It carried Jeff across the street into denser darkness, and they disappeared in a blur of motion. Jordan got out and ran to the floating sphere, which hovered several feet above the road.
“Let me in!” she yelled.
The sphere shimmered once. Then the surface of the ship darkened, the glow gone. Jordan waited and watched as the sphere rose with impossible speed and vanished into the quiet night.
She hopped and waved. “No!” she shouted. “Come back! I'm here!”
After a moment, both vehicles on the road came back to life, headlights throwing walls of light onto the trees lining the street. The two engines idled as if nothing had happened. The man from the Suburban stood up. He brought up his weapon and pointed it at Jordan.
“This isn't what's supposed to happen,” Jordan said.
He squeezed the trigger, and the weapon spat a yellow bolt that knocked Jordan to the street and sent her somewhere beyond the land of consciousness.
CHAPTER 14
WHEN THE CONSOLE PINGED, Oliop sat up and examined the data screen. The Head Grey's ship was about to return to the Galactic Commons, the Grey's secret mission to Earth now over. The large elevator that held the Grey's spherical ship appeared out of nowhere with barely a sound, completely filling the receiving space reserved for it. Lights flashed along the elevator's surface and then went dark. The elevator's bottom opened up, revealing the underside of the Grey's craft.
“Oliop,” the Grey said from a speaker in the console. “We're out. Move the ship to my hangar. ”
Oliop decoupled the Grey's ship from the elevator's sling. This elevator was enormous, with enough room for three more ships of similar size. Oliop hit a few of the levers on the console. The automatic docking machinery took over, clamping onto the Grey's ship with mechanical arms and lowering it out of the elevator. The arms carried the sphere to a conveyor system that ran below the transportation terminal. It moved the ship along and out of sight. Oliop remotely closed the elevator's bottom. A steady green light from the console and a bright chime confirmed a job well done. Oliop smiled, pleased with himself.
The Grey and Whistle emerged from the elevator out of a side hatch and descended a ramp.
“Sanitize the elevator,” the Grey said. “And erase the logs.”
“Did you have a good trip?” Oliop asked.
The Grey ignored him and walked off towards the lower hangar levels. Whistle lumbered after it. Once they were out of sight, Oliop breathed a sigh of relief.
He entered the elevator. Through its side door, he came into a large crew compartment that could transport a score of average-sized citizens and a dozen Whistle-sized. He saw the elevator's empty ship's bay through an open hatch. His fingers hesitated over the control panel that would trigger the auto scrubbers and sanitizers. Can't have uninvited microorganisms in the city, can we, especially since they might demand a vote in the Galactic Commons once they attain sentience. Obey the Grey and avoid the wrath of Whistle. But what was the Grey up to? The other Vendetta members were content with the automated transportation system's typical lack of scrutiny and didn't need Oliop's expertise. Even the Grey had journeyed to the human world before without the Committee's knowledge and hadn't needed his help in cleaning up. Which meant there was something to clean.
He reached into his tool pouch and pulled out his favorite particle sniffer. It produced a pleasing tone when turned on, which he did. Ding! He proceeded to prowl the surfaces of the elevator, waving the sensing nozzle of the sniffer to and fro.
“A trace of Whistle,” he sang to himself. “A trace of Grey. And nothing, nothing else today.” The sniffer detected no foreign particles. The elevator was clean. But what would the same test show when given to the Grey's bubble ship? That ship was gone, detached, moved along, and now locked up safely in the Grey's proprietary hangar space. And the Grey hadn't allowed him to scrub it clean.
Once outside, he ran the automated cleanup processes for the elevator. Much easier than doing it with a mop. He plugged a hand-sized computer into the console. “Applet Executed,” his computer read. Oliop disconnected it and put it away. Now this elevator held no record of ever being used in the past several hours. With his tail, he twirled the particle sniffer. All done here.
As he powered everything down, he flipped the sniffer into his null-space tool belt and pushed it into place. And there, as if it had been there all along, was the human's staple gun. Oliop's face scrunched. He took the sta
ple gun out, looked it over, clicked it. A staple ejected onto the floor. He put the staple gun back into his belt. It stayed put. Oliop closed the tool belt and shrugged. He grabbed the staple and pocketed it.
He headed down the ramp towards the Grey's private hangar. Several different colored lines ran along walls and floors, interfaces for Galactic Commons HUD navigation, allowing citizens to find their way through the warrens of the complex transport zone. With a wrong turn, one could wind up inside a species' hangar with crushing artificial gravity or an incompatible environment. Some races had nonlethal (them's the rules) but extremely irritating defense systems protecting their ships and trade goods. Each hangar was invitation only, sovereign spaces of the many races that belonged to the Commons. The more responsible beings kept their private hangars locked, as did the ones with valuables and secrets. Oliop could access most of the hangars, given enough time with no one watching.
Oliop ignored the colored lines on the floor. A terminal offered to install the Commons navigation HUD app. It was free, installed wet into whichever visual receptacle a user preferred, or downloaded to any number of devices that helped Commons members get around. But Oliop worked here and knew his way around, one of the few sentient flesh and blood maintenance personnel among a larger body of automated bots. Oliop ignored the terminal. With confidence, he maneuvered down corridors and descended tubes and ladders.
He passed by a few Commons residents heading towards or away from their hangars, all hurrying along, engaged in business, and uninterested in a janitor and his doings. One broad centipede of a creature almost ran Oliop down. Oliop stepped aside as she passed, her coterie of smaller multi-footed arthropod suitors jabbering at her and literally running each other over to be the closest to her. Oliop waited for them to be out of sight before ducking down a branching corridor. On the next level he passed a monopod maintenance worker with a single tentacle that was busily degaussing the railings and decks around the transportation complex. It didn't notice Oliop slink past. Farther along, as per everywhere else in the city, maintenance bots puttered past doing any task that residents declined to do. When Oliop got close to the Grey's hangar hatchway, he paused to sniff the air. His fur flattened. His feet rolled as he approached the big door. His tail glided behind him in rhythmic sine waves.
No other beings in sight. He didn't smell anyone, either. Oliop limbered his fingers.
The Head Grey's hangar's single door was the only pedestrian entrance. A sign display identified the hangar's resident species, with information links and scroll-downs providing atmosphere protocols and other bits detailing the Grey species' specifics and contact information. The atmosphere inside was listed as Galactic Commons Standard. Most could breathe inside without assistance. One sign flashed “Come Back Later” in big, white letters. Oliop detected a not-unpleasant odor of Grey-world fruit emanating from the sign for the edification of the olfactory-oriented species.
He touched the door's open button. “Locked,” the door said.
Oliop punched in the maintenance passkey. “Locked,” the door said again.
Tried his copy of his maintenance overseer's key. “Locked.”
Tried the Head Grey's key code “Unlocked.”
He had acquired this last code during one of the Happy Alien Welcome Committee meetings. Oliop got bored during those meetings, and it's not stealing if you don't actually take anything but just make a copy and don't break anything getting the code and don't get caught during the process.
The hangar door swished open. Whistle stood just inside the portal. Her large frame took up much of the doorway's space. She grabbed Oliop by the front of his mechanic's suit and hauled him up.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” she asked. The squeaky quality of her voice was gone. Each word now popped in the air with a bass boom that made Oliop's bones vibrate.
Oliop eeped. “I didn't,” he said. “I wasn't...I wanted to see if the Grey needed me.”
He gulped. Whistle held him close. The black shadow of a brute didn't breath or make a sound as she glared at him.
Then, “Go away,” Whistle said.
She tossed him out into the hallway and keyed the door's control, leaving Oliop in a tumble on the floor. Before he could say anything, Oliop heard a human scream coming from somewhere inside the Grey's hangar, a sound cut off when the door closed.
CHAPTER 15
AFTER SHOOTING JORDAN with the stunner, the man unceremoniously shoved her into the back seat of his Suburban. Things for Jordan went from black to fog to a sharp ache all over as she came to. A burnt taste swam through her mouth. A plastic zip tie restrained her wrists in front of her. With effort, she finally managed to sit up, made more difficult by the rolling of the large vehicle into each turn of the country road.
The man ignored her as he drove. He wore a grey pea coat. Clean shaven. White guy. Big. The last bit of a cigarette smoldered in his right hand as he steered, but he never took a puff. He wore dark tinted glasses that were too dark for anyone to see the road through at this time of night; yet, he drove along without a care. She didn't see any weapons inside the cab, so she doubted this was a sheriff's department vehicle. No console radio or dash camera or computer, either.
The Suburban also didn't have a back passenger barrier.
Jordan reached forward with both bound hands and grabbed a water bottle from a cup holder. The man didn't seem to notice. She wrangled the top off with her teeth and took a drink. Her head hurt from having hit the pavement after getting stunned. The water tasted tepid, but at least it washed the metallic taste out of her mouth.
“So am I under arrest for something?” she said to the hulking figure behind the wheel.
She eyed the doors. As far as she could tell, they were standard. The locks would open when the door handle was pulled unless the child safety feature was engaged.
“Hey, douche bag, I asked if I was under arrest. Who the hell are you?” She was confused and angry, and this guy wasn't saying anything. Even more infuriating, the Grey was supposed to have taken her along with Jeff.
“Just relax, Ms. Rivera,” the driver said. “You're safe now. Safe from them. And I'm taking you someplace even safer.”
“What do you mean?” she said.
She gave a tug at the plastic bindings, but they held her wrists tight and cut into her skin when she tried to pull at them. She felt around the back seat and the foot wells but found nothing handy with which to free herself.
The driver continued to keep his attention on the road. The headrest on his seat came below his shoulders. She backed into her seat and kicked forcefully into the back of the man's head with both feet. The kick slammed him into the steering wheel. His sunglasses and cigarette flew. The vehicle swerved briefly, but he corrected, pumping the brakes and pulling off onto the shoulder.
He turned and looked at her, his face in shadow. “Don't do that,” he said. Then he calmly recovered the dropped cigarette and put it out in the ashtray.
“Or what?” she said, shouting now. “Going to taze me again? You have no idea what you did back there. You're in big trouble, you know. I work for them, and you are messing with their plan.”
A car passed them, its headlights briefly illuminating the cab. Maybe it was a trick of the light thrown inside the vehicle, but his eyes momentarily held a multifaceted red twinkle. “And what, exactly, is their plan?” he asked.
Jordan sat in silence. Those eyes. But he turned away, found his glasses, and put them on. He pulled back onto the road.
“Again, I'm taking you someplace safe,” he said. “Don't worry, I work for the government.”
“That's what I was afraid of,” she muttered. “Let me know when I get to call my attorney.”
***
Someplace safe was, to Jordan's best estimate, a three-hour drive into the Central Valley. She saw enough highway markers and signs to place them south of Sacramento around a town named Galt. The child locks were indeed engaged as nothing happened when she tried to pull
the door open. She sat and thought about her options. The man drove on in silence, never taking his eyes off the road, not even looking back at her once during the remainder of their trip.
Jordan felt a bit light-headed as they drove. She fought sleep. But as the hum of the road gave way to the crunching roll of gravel, she returned to crisp alertness. The Suburban now bounced through a few choice dips and potholes. The gravel sound was replaced with the uneven din of a dirt road. They bounced even more. Looking outside, Jordan made out dirt embankments and a few neat rows of trees. A small sign read “airport” with an arrow pointing in the direction they drove.
She examined the seat and driver in front of her. The only thing she hadn't tried was bringing her arms around over his head to strangle the man. Only the thought of his eyes stopped her.
The sight of a dark row of hangars made her heart thump and her throat tighten. The place looked abandoned. The headlights revealed graffiti tags that decorated the old white paint of the building. The shadows held dark wrecks of things bent and broken. If ever there was a real estate space for the commercial zoning of serial killers, this was it.
The driver stopped and got out then opened the door for her. Behind him, a single bright bulb switched on, throwing light onto the side door to one of the hangars. The door opened. Two people came out, one man, one woman. They were both dressed much like the driver, in jeans and grey jackets. They also both wore their dark glasses at night.
“Don't try to run,” the driver said.
He helped her out and walked with a hand on her shoulder, guiding her towards the other two. She heard a steady babble of frogs and crickets from the darkness.
“You're late,” the other man said in a flat voice.
“Was there a problem?” the woman asked, her voice also devoid of emotion or true concern.
“No,” the driver said. “Just an unforeseen complication not of our making. A delay.”
“Then we'll adapt,” the second man said. He turned to the woman.
A Beginner's Guide to Invading Earth Page 8