An Alien Rescue

by Gordon Mackay

  Scott passed over the English/Scotland border, noticing the new fence and walls that divided the two countries. Scotland had taken on a new roll at an early stage, it seemed, as the English government had passed away in an instant. The Scottish Parliament hurriedly moved itself into action, recognising the danger it was about to find itself in. The Scots were a population of hardy people, a race who had provided the world with first-rate engineers and scientists from time immemorial. The proud Scottish Army Regiments that Whitehall had attempted to disband had amalgamated with the country’s police, forming a formidable force to be reckoned with. It was this move that stopped anarchy in Scotland, with new laws quickly voted in to the country’s constitution to help thwart any attempts to overrun those who supported the Executive. Execution was one of the new bylaws, with many being convicted and shot or hung for crimes against the state and its people. The border between England and Scotland was heavily protected on the Scots side to prevent hordes of refugees from crossing. Gangs of immigrants tried to gain access by following aged drovers roads, mistakenly believing the enforcing army couldn’t possibly cover all the land between the two countries. They were sadly wrong, with many bodies left unburied as a powerful deterrent to any who might try and follow the same routes. The black-hooded carrion-crow now thrived in this part of the world, feasting on the dead and breeding like never before. The Scot’s formed new agricultural establishments, one each for the various regions. Each establishment was responsible for growing and harvesting cereals and livestock within their boundaries, concentrating on whatever was best suited for their particular soil. Black-marketeers were publicly hanged in Edinburgh’s ancient Grass-Market area, resurrecting a Dickensian time from the annuls of Auld Reekie, the Victorian-era name for Edinburgh. The same city, with its own castle and elevated city with its centrally situated extinct volcano called, Arthur’s Seat, had become a strong foundation for the survival of the Scottish Clans, a country that moved with the times and did not scare easily. People worked hard for very little, understanding their nation relied upon the strength and will of its population. Oil was still being drawn from off-shore wells, piped to the former petrochemical complex at Mossmorran, in the nearby county of Fife, instead of a much closer refinery. The refinery at Grangemouth was eventually surrendered to the sea, but only after an extensive fight to protect it. Massive concrete bunds had been constructed around the Plant’s ailing perimeter, aided in their fight against flooding by constantly running pumps. The end was inevitable, resulting in an oil contaminated Firth of Forth estuary. The refinery’s life had been long enough to enable completion of the modified Mossmorran project, whose own supply line was by road and rail, across the Forth Road and Railway bridges. The rail bridge had been built during the Victorian era and was a recognised engineering marvel, but the effects of a rising salt-laden sea were taking its toll on the paint-stripped steel. Its future life was in jeopardy as severe corrosion was all too obvious. Fast setting concrete was being added to the bridge’s lower supports whenever an extra low tide would allow but these were few and far between. The transported fuel-oil was stored in a heavily guarded depot, built deep into the Lothian Hills beneath the newly planted fields of ploughed land that had only ever known grazing sheep. Scottish roads were still open, but only used by vehicles on official business or moving supplies and workers. Electricity flowed to hospitals, essential factories and engineering workshops, with the nearby nuclear PowerStation at Torness generating more than enough for Edinburgh’s needs. It too had been surrounded by high and dense concrete bunds to thwart the sea and its tides. Scott was immensely proud to see the successful work and organisation of his countrymen, knowing he belonged to such a potent body of people. His view glazed over as he was drawn away, zooming off at a frightening speed towards the north-west … and back to Skye.

  The entire vision shook Scott to his foundations; the frightening scenes he had just witnessed or hallucinated caused his kneeling body to sway a little too far. The imagined sight of watching the hostility and sometimes futile courage of the many who toiled the land appeared to have weakened him. He keeled over with a dull sounding thump as his centre of gravity crossed his threshold of balance. The suddenness and force of the impact was totally unexpected as the rock and grit smacked him in the face like a Prize-boxing punch, snapping him out of the semi-dreamlike state he was in. He regained his senses with a series of curses and spitting-out dirt. He tasted sea salt from the muck as it dissolved in his saliva before hitting his taste-buds. Struggling to sit upright, he shook his head as if to assist the return of his senses. Rubbing dirt from his face, he felt for any damage with sensitive fingers, regularly checking his fingertips for evidence of blood. Thankfully, there was none. Fully regaining his composure, while carefully scraping what felt like gravel from the corners of his eyes with a finger nail, he recovered from what he considered a momentary daydream or lapse of sanity. The awful and horrendous sights he’d seen forced him sit still and silent in mesmerised contemplation. The visions of death and destruction had seemed so real and horrifying in their futuristic implications, wishing with all his heart it was only a silly daydream. The sights and the sounds of all he had seen were too horrible for any mortal man to bear, but what could have caused him to see such a vision, he wondered. Having collapsed in a seaward direction, before sitting up in a dazed state, the cliff was much less than a metre away. The realised sight of the edge’s closeness and the lengthy drop beyond persuaded him to crawl away on his hands and knees, putting some immediate distance between it and him. This was all about his imagination going off at a tangent, he considered. Tiredness had made him feel confused, he guessed. "I'm a silly sod sometimes," he joked with himself.

  The sea’s swell was heightening as the tide had turned, where an increased sound of crashing waves could be heard as they hurriedly splashed between the wreck’s twisted ribs.

  A thought entered his head, almost as quickly as the blink of an eye. He wondered, if global warming could reach such heights, might the vision he just experienced become factual? He understood that any areas of inhabited land at or close to sea level would find itself beneath rolling and advancing waves, leaving any displaced community to locate somewhere else. His knowledge of the world and its growing population struck him like a hammer on an anvil, his head reeling at the thought of millions upon millions of people crossing a forever shrinking land surface, all trying to survive the advancing tide of transgressing seawater. It would take much more than a Dutch boy sticking his little something into a leak to keep the rising levels at bay, he thought. If King Canute couldn’t do it, we’ve got no chance, he humorously thought. He imagined a sandy beach with a magnificently dressed and bearded idiot sporting a shiny crown sitting on a throne. With an outstretched arm, the King repeatedly commanded the tide to turn, failing miserably as the water reached his royal toes. Scott smiled with a short-lived grin, raising his knees to meet beneath his chin. He continued spitting while resting his head, feeling dirt grind between his teeth. The idea of a submerging surface, a shrinking land with a lot of refugees seeking refuge had never occurred to him before, so why should it now? The green and cold looking sea with its white-mane crested waves rolled peacefully across the bay’s width. Bright orange buoys bobbed helplessly between the waves, marking the position of lobster and crab catching creels on the sea-bed. It was a sight of peace and tranquillity, a picturesque view that focussed gently on his retinas. How could such a sea cause so much widespread misery? He sat for longer than intended, eventually rising to face the prospect of packing his belongings and setting off for home, but only after another expedition around the area. He didn't find any fossils but met a Bristol University lecturer who had taken a group of students on a field-trip to Skye. After an interesting conversation, where the tutor agreed there weren't any interesting fossils to be found there, Scott headed back to his campsite.

  Frell turned to Drang and telepathically informed him it was time to depart. They had st
ayed on guard for two days and all seemed to be safe “Apart from that little mishap near the cliff’s edge, where he slipped and fell, he seems fine,” she said. She felt there might be a bit more to the fall than just a simple accident, but as he had recovered and put some distance between himself and the cliff's danger she thought nothing more of it. As for the humans who had arrived further away, she surmised, they seemed preoccupied with whatever they were doing and presented no risk to Scott.

  Drang nodded to the command, pausing for a moment longer while watching Scott’s image on the monitor before returning his attention to their ship’s control panel. He would also miss Scott. He had never met or known such an individual and admired his courage, bravery and ingenuity with the deepest possible respect. He could never forget him and hoped he would be available to escort Frell back to the small rocky isle should the opportunity arise again, which he was certain it would. Drang secretly hoped it would be sooner rather than later.

  “He did appear to have a very high level of psychic awareness about him,” Drang added. “His ability to communicate by telepathy was most extraordinary too.”

  Frell gave Drang’s comments some careful thought before replying, “Yes... , he is a very extraordinary person… in many ways.”

  Drang nodded again, seeing a happy glint in her eyes and knowing why. He smiled and initiated their departure.

  The little ship’s orbit was breached as their programmed destination commenced. Small tears appeared in Frell’s eyes as the craft began its departure, forming tiny rivulets running down her golden cheeks. She had never known such sadness, it was a feeling of losing something and someone so dear and personal to her, almost as if she were losing a part of her own body or something inside was breaking. Frell swept her blonde hair back over her shoulders while hiding the fact she was also wiping away tears. She hoped Drang had missed the action as her love for the man being left behind was strictly forbidden among her kind. Drang saw her action but chose to ignore it, for he too was filled with sadness. And besides, was Frell not Scott’s lover, he considered. It may be a love that shouldn’t be, thought Drang, but he could see no reason why he should do anything to prevent it. He was just as human and could feel the sorrow she was obviously experiencing within her breaking heart. It was such a powerful and emotive force that his own reaction was to try and speak about anything in order to take her thoughts from her loss and onto something else, anything except the fact she might never see him again.

  “I don’t think Scott will locate many fossils from the area where he is at present,” he commented.

  She turned towards him. “I’m sorry? What did you say, Drang?”

  “Fossils,” he replied, “I don’t think Scott will find many around the area where his tent is located.”

  She reached across the Control panel to touch a few illuminated buttons. One of the three slightly elevated screens above changed from showing their present position in the surrounding solar system to one of the local strata where Scott now fumbled with his belongings.

  “You’re right, Drang, they’re there alright, but deeply buried beneath the upper basaltic lava flows. He’ll need to try somewhere else if he wants any relics from Earth’s ancient history.”

  “Unless he can remove many tonnes of solid rock with his bare hands,” Drang added with humour to lighten the situation.

  Frell released a heavy sigh and turned her gaze downwards. Her body ached slightly from the passion she had shared just a few hours earlier in the ship’s lounge area. How she wished she could turn the clock back, even for only a few earth hours.

  “Oh well”, she said quietly, resigning herself to the fact that Scott was gone and she was heading back to their base. She looked around her, remembering all the little movements made by her lover as he first entered the Flight deck area, remembering the look of surprise followed by the clear admission of suspicion written on his face when Drang first appeared. The little red hat being placed on his head and the explanation of how it would protect him on the lunar surface of Earth's moon. Him pouring his clenched fist of precious black lunar dust into the small container made from the ship’s own structure.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed as she realised the missing metal will be noticed when the ship’s dismantled back at base. Drang picked up the exclaimed worry and quickly suggested one of the ship’s metal cups would make up for the loss. “It will not be missed,” he insisted.

  “Oh, Drang, you’re such a great help,” she said, considering his idea. I, we, couldn’t have managed without you; I doubt if any of us would have survived the ordeal with the Grey commander either. Like Scott, you are also a great warrior,” she stated proudly.

  This pleased Drang enormously. Scott and his influence made him feel like a different man, dragging out all his hidden courage and mighty fortitude. His debt of gratitude to Scott was so large; Drang doubted if he would ever be able to repay him.

  The small ship was almost clear of Earth’s solar system, heading back into the heraldic communications traffic of space. The silence of Earth’s isolated system was extremely unsettling, especially when the Grey Empire could use it for their personal and definitive advantage. The ship’s log, regarding their final encounter with a Grey ship and its sad demise, was ready to transmit. The information regarding the battle and its end-result would be known and considered well before they arrived back at their Mothership. What kind of welcome would they receive, she wondered. She had just captained a craft that had caused the destruction and deaths of another craft and its cloned crew, something no other member of her colony had ever done before. She felt party to murder, even though she knew it was a case of either them or us, she carefully considered. While wishing it was otherwise, she accepted it.

  A blinding flash of green light appeared throughout the Control Room. Various panels with their flashing buttons and switches were instantly extinguished into confusing darkness without any kind of warning or automatic announcement of impending failure. No alarm sounded and the abrupt absence of power supplies persuaded Drang in an instant they were under direct attack. He recognised the enforced power-shutdown as similar to his experience with the Grey Empire’s energy neutralising ray while previously on Earth’s moon. He knew they were in serious trouble as the ship’s motion stabilisers began to fail and the momentum of stopping very quickly could be felt.

  “It’s the Greys!” shouted Drang as he played the dead control panel keys and switches in the hope of resurrecting their ship’s internal energy source. He continued his attempts to reroute non-functioning commands through various channels until a monotone and mechanical hailing voice commanded them to refrain from attempting to escape.

  Frell looked at Drang with concern across her face. He tried to appear brave but felt he couldn’t fool anyone. Reluctantly, they both sat down and waited for the inevitable to happen.

  Chapter two

  After packing the tent and his untidy belongings onto the rear of the bike, the much-loved motorcycle was kick-started into a resounding roar from its black-enamelled twin cylinders. With a small cloud of blue smoke and sweet smell of Castrol ‘R’ Racing oil blown from the blackened end of the twin-exhausts, the blades of grass behind each silencer bent over and away with the pulsing and throbbing force inflicted upon them. Scott was beginning his departure from the island with great reluctance because he felt he was leaving something of great value behind, something vitally important to his life. He recalled bathing in the cold sea a short time before, watching more than just a few blonde hairs unpeeling from his sticky and sweaty torso before gently drifting away with the current. He wondered why the memory had returned so vividly while trying to make some sense of it all, realising it was a complete puzzle to his newly troubled mind. He wracked through his recent memories of his island stay but couldn’t think of what it might be; and for the life of him was unable to reach any kind of sensible conclusion. “Oh what the hell,” he said to himself, “I guess I’m just tired.” With that statem
ent no sooner said, he opened the throttle and headed for home.

  The long drive, after his unsuccessful fossil finding expedition, was as unhindered as that when he had driven to Skye a couple of days previously, convinced it was only two days ago. It was the Burger-Van staff and fellow customers who let Scott know he was a day out on his reckoning, which confused him enormously. They thought it was funny, laughing heartily at his confused state of mind. He didn't.