Bill gave her a tight smile, then waved at Cheryl to bring his mug. Behavior that he knew would tell Alicia he was trying to avoid her probing. “Big secret yes. One you will have a hard time believing. And as much as I admire those tits of yours, I won’t say a word until everyone else is here.”
Alicia tilted her head, her expression bemused. “You don’t sex tease me ever. Not even after your live-in gal left you. Now you have my attention. Can I join you in a mug?”
Bill held up two fingers as Cheryl headed their way with a single mug. She turned back and drew another mug. As the bartender headed their way, Bill wondered if the loud country music echoing from the room’s rafters would be loud enough to cover what he had to tell Alicia and their buddies. “Join me. And you’re right, that was a piss poor diversion. Did you bring your travel bag?”
“Did,” Alicia said, elbow gesturing to her left. “Got my Sig Sauer in it. Will this surprise of yours require active shooting?”
“Not tonight,” Bill said. “Anyway, you’ll love the weapon I found for you. Better than your Sig Sauer or my Federal Ordnance .45.”
Alicia lifted a sandy eyebrow. “I’ll believe that when I see the weapon you ‘found’ for me. Uh, does this weapon come full auto, semi-auto? Domestic or overseas?”
“Neither, and it came from farther away than Israel,” he teased.
Alicia’s intense scan of him got even tighter. “Well, here come four of the guys. The rest can’t be far behind. You’ll talk then?”
Bill had noticed the arrival of four buddies from the corner of his eye. Ranger, Marine, Air Force and a SEAL. The three men and one woman thumped over to their cluster of tables, each shouldering a travel bag and curious looks. In their own manner, each gave him a Welcome Back nod, wink or grin.
“Well Bill,” called Cassandra Welsh as she sat down opposite him at the far end of the tables, “you been gone too long to be hunting pussy. What gives? Private contracting overseas?”
The three guys who knew him all too well laughed at Cassandra’s lewd tease, then sat between him and her on the side wall bench. They were Mark, Frank and Stefano, all retired from active work in the Rangers, Marines and SEALs. He blew a raspberry at mohawk-haired Cassandra.
“I’ve been traveling, yes. Private contracting no. The rest, you will have to wait to hear about until the other guys arrive,” Bill said, grabbing the mug of beer that Cheryl set down in front of him. He lifted it and took a long suck on it. Synthetic beer produced in the Blue Sky’s Food Chamber was okay, but nothing beat the fresh cool taste of beer straight from the tap.
His fellow SEAL fixed pale brown eyes on him. “You’re hiding something. Something bigger than a stay on the beach at Papeete or the coast of Queensland. As I’m sure Alicia noticed early on. You’ve never called everyone and told us to show up here with a travel bag and a promise of a wild adventure story,” Stefano Cordova said, looking him over while taking his own inventory of Bill’s body language.
He nodded. “You’re right, bud. I’m hiding something.” Bill waved at Cheryl to bring over some pitchers and mugs. “But like I’ve told Alicia, won’t say anything until everyone is here. It’s not something I wish to repeat five times over.”
“Why not?” called Frank Wurtzman, who they all called ‘Gunny’ thanks to his demob as an E7 Gunnery Sergeant from the Marines. The big barrel of a man shrugged wide shoulders that made a loose jumpsuit look tight on him. “We’ve all repeated our own fun-time lies lots of times. Part of drinking, being properly buzzed and trying out new lines to impress the sheilas.”
Cassandra and Alicia chuckled. They well knew the boisterous habits of their vet crowd, being made up mostly of men who’d seen too much action and too much death in far off places. The front door slammed open loudly, surprising two young sheilas at the bar island. In walked the remainder of his buddies. Catching sight of Bill and the rest, they headed straight for the table cluster.
“Now you’re in for it,” muttered Mark Neller as the heavy-set Ranger grabbed one of the beer pitchers delivered by Cheryl and began pouring foamy beer into the mugs of Alicia, Frank, Cassandra, Stefano and himself.
At the front of the saloon Bill was struck by how at ease the four men looked as they walked strung out sideways as if mounting a skirmish. Each took a seat on the bar-side of the table cluster, their manner casual, irritated, bored or pissed depending on whom he looked at. Chris Selva of the Rangers was the most casual of them, giving a nod to him, Alicia, Cassandra and the rest. Bob Milley, the group’s other Marine glared at him and sat down next to Cassandra, muttering something to her. Whatever it was, it was obscene enough to make her flip him off. Howard Dunford of the Air Force looked irritated. Master Chief Joe Batigula actually smiled at Bill as the overweight man sat between Howard and Chris.
Bill held up both hands in the surrender gesture, drawing surprised looks. “You’re all here. Which is great. And I promise I’ll not piss around with my secret adventure story.” He gestured at the three pitchers of beer that sat on the three tables. “Fill a mug, dump some tequila in it for a chaser if you wish, and gather round a bit close. Cause what I’ve got to tell you cannot go beyond this crowd. Leastwise, not before midnight.”
Stefano frowned as he lifted a mug of beer to his lips. “What happens at midnight? None of us have a curfew!”
“Damn right!” growled Bob, his bulldog face looking around. “Who’s got the tequila? I need a chaser.”
Alicia handed a hip flask to Bob, who grabbed with it a glare. The Ranger lesbian grinned, pulled down her black t-shirt to show some cleavage, and said “You’ll never get any of this!”
“Fuck!” grunted Bob, shaking his head. “You’d never spread it for any real man!”
Frank knocked his knuckles on the table loud enough to stop the byplay that had been part of the group’s chatter for the three years they’d been meeting every Friday night. “Enough bullshit and macho chatter.” The Marine Gunnery Sergeant looked his way. “Bill, glad to see you back after being vanished for nine months. You had Joan worried. Uh, what happens at midnight? And why does it relate to you spilling your story?”
Bill pulled out his iPhone 6 and laid it on the table. The action drew the attention of his nine buddies as they all knew how much he hated carrying mobile devices around, and how much teasing it had taken to get him to buy a smartphone. He tapped an app icon on the phone’s touchscreen.
“At midnight East Coast time, or 10 here in Denver, President Melody Hartman will make an address to the nation from the Oval Office.” He glanced at the faces of his fellow vets, people who had known danger, death and the idiocies of desktop generals. He loved them. They’d pulled him through when his live-in left him after one too many nights of her waking up with his hands around her throat as he relived an IED nightmare. They’d supported him when he got the news of his parents dying in a Louisiana bayou. And most of them had gone fly fishing with him on a creek up near Boulder. Two women, seven men, all retired from active duty but none of them able to leave the combat memories behind. Most were SOF-trained and all had dealt with deadly gunfire. They liked drinking together, playing rummy games, tossing darts in the back of Jack’s saloon, or joking about which sheila at the bar island might be a good fuck. The chatter and joking covered the reality that none of their relatives understood the work they had done, or the toll it had taken on each of them. Now, he was about to add to that toll. “The Prez is going to tell everyone what I’m about to share with you nine tonight.” He tapped the icon a second time, causing a blue and white image to fill its screen. Bill lifted the iPhone and angled it so everyone could see the image. “What does this look like to any of you?”
“Earth from space,” said Howard, his shaved head gleaming pinkly under the tube lights of the ceiling. “So what?”
“Wrong, Howard,” Cassandra said as she looked from the screen to Bill. “That is an orbital view of Earth taken from about 200 miles up, just above the equator. It’s similar to what can
be seen from the ISS station. Right, Bill?”
“Very correct,” he said, tapping another icon on the iPhone to draw up a new image. He showed it around. It got lots of raised eyebrows. “Who are these folks?” he asked.
Alicia fixed amber eyes on him, her expression puzzled. “Those are the seven members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Our former service heads. They look to be seated at a display table in . . . in Building One of Peterson Air Force Base. I’ve been there! Why the hell were they at Peterson rather than at DOD in DC?”
“Yeah,” muttered Frank, raising thick black eyebrows. “Kinda strange for them all to be in this state. Is that image recent?”
“Yup,” Bill said, lowering the iPhone to the table and nodding to each of his buddies before returning to Frank. “Gunny, they were all here, today, at Peterson, to talk with me and the Air Force captain lady who I’ve been hanging with these last nine months. We called them from orbit.”
“Bullshit!” growled Bob, slamming his mug on the table hard enough to draw a quick look from Cheryl at the bar island. The man, who still wore a sidewall haircut, looked pissed. “Bill, you hate the brass. You’ve hated them ever since the sods took you off of SEAL field duty. You’re the last person to be chatting up the Chiefs!”
His fellow SEAL Stefano fixed an intense look on Bill. “Bob is right. You hate brass. You hate taking orders from keyboard generals. But I can tell . . . you’re telling the truth!”
Mark looked curious. “You said they talked to you and this gal from orbit. Did you get a ride up to the ISS for some kind of special operations deal?”
Chris, the third Ranger in the crowd, squinted at Bill. “You’ve picked up a deep tan since you were here last. Did you get that from being in space? Out with it!”
Bill smiled, tapped a third icon on the iPhone, then showed the image to everyone. “What does this look like?”
“The bar scene from the first Star Wars movie!” yelled Alicia, her tone wondering.
Frank nodded. “Yeah, some Star Wars thing. So?”
Bill put the iPhone down on the table and leaned forward. “So, those are the Aliens I’ve worked with over the last nine months. They became crew on the spaceship run by my wife, Captain Jane Yamaguchi of the Air Force. And the Prez is going to tell the nation, and the world, that Earth will soon be under attack by six spaceships run by Aliens who have been visiting Earth to capture folks camping out or hunting in wilderness areas. Which is how Jane and I got captured by these nasty buggers.” The crowd at the table had gone deathly silent. “We escaped captivity, fought the Alien crew, captured the ship’s cockroach captain and took over their spaceship. We renamed the ship as Blue Sky.” He tapped another icon and held up the iPhone. “This is how she looks from the outside, up in orbit, which is where she is right now.”
Frank groaned. “Buddy, you hit your head while out fly fishing? Those pics can be found on the internet. Hollywood does wild stuff these days with digital imaging. Did your ex’s departure send you round the bend?”
Stefano grimaced. “Bill, never known you to lie or make up stuff. You seem to believe what you’re saying. But it can’t be real. Why you doing this? With us?”
“Yeah,” called Master Chief Joe, his blue eyes looking over Bill. “You SEAL guys got your secrets. Like we all do. Spec ops is like that. Me, I just did fast boat drug busting in the Coast Guard. But even I know the stuff on your phone is made up fantasy!”
In the background, Alicia and Cassandra were looking at each other, then looking back at him. Alicia clapped her hands loudly, silencing the muttering from the crowd. “Bill, this Jane Yamaguchi you said is your wife. And Air Force. Does she work at Peterson?”
“She does. Did. Until we got kidnapped by these Collector Aliens,” Bill said, feeling tired by the open dismay of his vet buddies. They’d always stood by him in the past. Why couldn’t they believe him now?
“Thought so,” Cassandra said, leaning forward and acting intensely alert. The woman who cut her hair to a rooster-tail Mohawk dyed orange fixed blue eyes on him. “Met her during some work I did at Peterson. For NORAD in Building Two. We met at lunch. She does satellite tracking and ASAT alert watch, right?”
“She did do that at Peterson,” Bill said, putting the iPhone down on the table.
Alicia tilted her head, looking at him the way an eagle might look at a rabbit. “Same way I met her, while on an intel consult at Building One. Was with my Lorilee at the time. My gal pulled me in for some supersecret chat with Air Force intel folks of the 21st Space Wing and their 721st Mission Support Group. To scope out some Chinese ASAT activities. Had to do with modernizing the ITW/AA weapon system. And now she’s the captain of this spaceship of yours?”
“Yup.” He’d noticed the other folks at the table had quieted as Alicia and Cassandra confirmed one part of his story.
The sandy-haired Ranger nodded slowly. “Fine. You know this Captain Yamaguchi. You got married to her. Congrats, I think. So why are you telling us this tall story? Why did you tell us to arrive with travel bags?”
Beyond their group the music and floor dancing made a nice sound buffer. The Friday night regulars had swarmed in after the last vets had sat down and no one was paying them any attention. He tapped on the iPhone and showed its image to them all.
“I promised you a great adventure story. Well, you’ve heard bits of it. Got kidnapped by Aliens, fought them, captured their spaceship and found friendly Aliens who now make up our crew.” Bill looked around, hoping his serious expression would wipe the skepticism off the faces of his buddies. “Yeah, what I said sounds crazy wild. But it’s real. Tonight the Prez will tell everyone what I’ve just told you. But I called you all here for more than telling you I found a great woman who agreed to marry me.” He jiggled the iPhone. “This is an image of the transport spaceship that dropped me off tonight. At my sister Joan’s house. It’s very stealthy and can be mistaken for a meteor, thanks to the white glow it gives off due to it using a magnetic field repulsion spacedrive.” Several of his buddies blinked at hearing words he’d never used before with them. “I called you from orbit for one specific reason. Me and Jane have a good crew to run and fight our starship. But we lack a boarding crew. Combat-trained folks. Well, today the JCS approved Jane’s plan to send three-man boarding parties against each of the six Alien spaceships that will arrive above Earth in about 50 hours. You nine could make up three of those boarding teams. The other nine are being recruited at MacDill in Florida.” Bill grinned. “Any of you folks willing to hightail it off to space and help me and Jane kick Alien butt and capture some spaceships?”
“Wow,” muttered Mark.
“Crazy,” said Howard, though he said it with a wondering tone.
“Prove it,” grunted Bob the gray-haired Marine.
Bill noticed that of his nine buddies, five had raised a hand or a thumb to volunteer. Those on board were Alicia, Cassandra, Frank, Stefano and Joe. Still to be convinced were Mark, Howard, Bob and Chris. He stowed the iPhone in the pocket of his windbreaker and grabbed his backpack. “I’ll prove it. Jump into your cars and follow me out to Standley Lake. In the woods on the north side of the lake is where my transport spaceship is parked. Its pilot is on the lookout for me to show up with some buddies. You all game?”
Everyone agreed to follow him the few miles to Standley Lake. Putting down forty bucks for Cheryl, he led the way to the back hallway and the parking lot out back. Where all of them had parked even though most had come in through the front door.
The night air was cool, which was normal for early fall in Denver. Being a mile up made a difference between day and night temps. Behind him came the tread of three sets of boots. One he knew as belonging to fellow SEAL Stefano, who’d gone fly fishing with him several times. Looking over his shoulder he caught sight of Frank and Alicia. They smiled.
“Figured we’d ride with you in your Wrangler,” Frank said.
“Right on,” Alicia muttered. “Ain’t gonna let you out of my
sight until we see this fancy spaceship of yours!”
Stefano winked at him, his expression amused in the dim glow of the parking lot lights. “I believe you. Figured you might need a lookout, what with carrying your .45 and all.”
Bill pulled open the driver’s door of the Wrangler. “You’re all welcome. Sharing rides means fewer cars on 100th Avenue. Which I prefer. Really don’t want the campers in North Open Space Park to pay lotta attention to us as we head out to the western cul de sac turnaround.”
Alicia chuckled as she got into the rear seat with Frank. “Well, the campers might pay attention to this white-glowing spaceship of yours!”
Bill started the Wrangler’s engine and pulled up to the exit onto Lowell street. Behind him came three other cars loaded down with his remaining vet buddies. He pulled out and headed north, aiming for the intersection with 100th Avenue. “The campers will call it fireworks or a UFO. Leastwise until they tune into the president’s midnight address.”
“Uh, Bill,” called Alicia. “Today I heard YouTube chatter about something strange showing up on the internet. Said it was design specs for an interstellar starship that used a spacedrive called Alcu . . . uh, Alcubi—”
“Alcubierre spacedrive,” he finished. “Yup, that’s from us. It’s the stardrive that allowed us to visit Alien star systems and travel 50 light years in two days. A big deal. The JCS chairman was kinda pissed when Jane shared the specs with the internet, after also giving them to the Space Command at Peterson.”
“Sounds pretty buff,” Stefano said from the shotgun seat to Bill’s right. “So, you use this magnetic thingie to get up to orbit, then head for a star using this Alcubierre spacedrive?”
“Yup,” Bill said. “We’ve got a Navigator, an Alien woman who looks like a giant flying squirrel. She gets help on setting course from the Blue Sky’s ship mind. It’s an AI that is smarter than anything you ever saw on Star Trek episodes!”
Escape 2: Fight the Aliens Page 4