Easily a head shorter, Vogthner was taken aback by the general’s two misaligned eyes. Not wanting to offend the officer, he chose the right eye to sustain his visual contact with. Vogthner said, “Some Humans are more tolerable to be around than others, I suppose.”
“No, Chancellor, that is a fallacy,” Chiv said. “And there lies the crux of the problem. There are some of you who have lived amongst these barbaric alien Humans far too long. You have become overly indoctrinated in accepting their primitive society. Look at you. All dressed up, wearing that absurd humankind costume.”
Only then did Vogthner notice the small energy pistol gripped within one of the general’s claws.
“His Eminence Overlord Skith has personally spoken to me of this issue,” the general continued. “How Phase I deployments here, many thousands of you, have, over the past two years, become contaminated. Coming into such close contact with these fetid Humans . . . well, we should have expected as much. But I must be honest with you. The killing of so many of our brethren Earupitans, mostly marshals, in the township of Armonk . . . well, it was quite difficult.”
Vogthner had heard bits and pieces, rumors mostly, of what recently occurred in two far-away townships—some kind of mass killing spree. But he had never believed it. He had not been informed by his superiors that any such thing had occurred. Since when did Earupitans scheme to kill off more Humans, and even their own kind? It was unheard of. But studying General Chiv, now standing before him, he realized it was all true and a deep sadness gripped his heart. In truth, he liked this place. He even liked several of the Humans who lived here and had been looking forward to this maybe being his forever home. “So all the Phase I personnel across the globe are to be eliminated?”
General Chiv shrugged, then nodded in assent. “But I wanted to handle this one aspect . . . you and me . . . personally. As one of the few Mannarians living among us, I thought you should know . . . soon all of your kind, along with Humans, will be stricken from this world. The mere thought of off-worlders like you breeding with our kind, our females . . . well, it sickens me.” He raised the pistol and pointed it at Vogthner’s chest. “Any last words, Chancellor?”
It was clear to Vogthner this truly was the end. The only real decision to be made was how he would go. “Yes, just one thing . . . a Human phrase I learned just recently: Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” With that, Chancellor of Communications Sleept Vogthner took a step backward into the empty void behind him. Before falling, he had enough time to catch the utter look of surprise in General Chiv’s wide open, cockeyed stare.
chapter 23
The kitchen wall phone began to ring. I answered, “Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Good to hear you’re still among the living!” I said.
Donny chuckled. “That rousting was total bullshit. But whatever . . . all’s well that ends well.”
“You hear from Matt?” I asked.
“Yeah, he’s here with me. Think he got the worst of it. Looks like he has a broken nose. But hey, are we still on . . . um . . . for bowling tonight?” Donny asked.
Bowling was our code word for holding another late-night meeting. “Yeah, but not all of us will be able to make it. Our out of town expert player has been held up with an injury. Could take a few days to recover. But I’ll call around, make sure the rest of the bowling team’s here to practice anyway.”
“Got it. Hey, you hear about Ronald—”
I cut him off, knowing the line was probably tapped. “Let’s talk later about that.” I glanced over at Karen, now walking into the kitchen. “You up for bowling later tonight?”
Furrowing her brow, she shook her head. Then, as if changing her mind, she nodded. “Yeah. I think that might be good for me. I’m in.”
Once I’d hung up the phone, I felt we needed to finish our talk about Ronald Gant. “So, as you can see, Jhally wasn’t in any condition to go about killing anyone. It may end up being one of those things we never quite figure out. But I’m sorry for your loss, Karen.”
She stood at the threshold into the kitchen, both arms wrapped about her. I had the feeling she just wanted to leave. Be anywhere but here with me. “Hey, I’ve got a bunch of monotonous chores to do around here. You don’t need to stick around.”
“You want me to leave?” she asked, her voice soft.
“No, of course not.” I said, surprised by her answer. “Um, you want to help?”
She nodded, “What do you want me to do?”
“I need to feed Jhally soon. Could you head on over to the barn? Pluck one of those lobsters out of the trough. Just be careful, don’t let its pinchers grab a hold of you.”
She smiled and said, “I’ll be careful,” then left through the front door.
I headed back to my brother’s bedroom. Jhally awoke midway through my changing of his bandages. Through half-open eyelids, I saw him fighting to stay awake. I’d given him another dose of painkillers and he was fading fast.
“Your flight training must continue, Brian,” he murmured, his words slurred.
“I agree, but that little stunt of yours put the kibosh on that.”
Once his momentary confusion passed, I continued, “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out? That you’d killed Gant?” Jhally closed his eyes, but I could tell he was still conscious. “Six miles there and six miles back on foot, no wonder your stump got so jammed up.”
“He had proof . . . of your Takebacks. Photographs, documents, in his home.” I wasn’t surprised. “You . . .”
“Destroyed . . . everything,” he said
“That’s all well and good, but I believe our time is running out, Jhally. And you’re in no condition to play flight instructor.”
He swallowed and said, “You will have to take my place.”
“That would be like the blind leading the blind.”
“I anticipated this setback. Go to Shredder Five. I preprogrammed a virtual mentor for you . . . just sit in the forward seat.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I shook his shoulder. “Hey . . . still with me? You want to try to eat something?”
Jhally’s faint breaths had turned into soft snoring. He’d fallen into a deep sleep state.
I left the house to look for Karen in the barn. Tell her to forget about the lobster for now, but she was nowhere to be found. I checked over by the stables and even went up into the hayloft. Halfway down the ladder, I wondered if she had decided to go home after all. Then my eyes caught a flickering of light on the other side of the barn, shining within Shredder Five’s cockpit.
By the time I climbed up onto the craft’s wing, the canopy had been retracted and Karen was waving me closer. “Get over here!”
Seated in the forward seat, she said, “I just wanted to steal a moment in this ship. God, I miss flying. Then suddenly things started to come alive in here. I heard Jhally’s voice . . . and then he was here, like right in front of me. Well, not really him, but a projected virtual version of him. He was giving me instructions.” She looked up at me, her excitement contagious.
I smiled back at her. “Jhally told me about that. He wanted to make sure we’d still continue with our training until he was back on his feet.”
“You mean foot,” she corrected.
“Ha, ha,” I said, smirking.
“Can we go through the training? Together?” she asked.
I looked at the virtual projection of Jhally. His image had either frozen, or maybe paused when Karen opened the canopy. “I think it’s meant for a solo pilot seated in the front seat.”
She pursed her lips, then suddenly leaned forward. “Get in! Step in behind me. I’ll sit on your lap. We can both watch it, learn together.”
About to protest I realized it just might work. Since Gaps were far larger than Humans in size, there probably was room enough for two. “H
old on.” Climbing down from the craft, I sprinted toward the far end of the barn and slid the two rear barn doors open. By the time I returned to the Shredder, I was out of breath, huffing and puffing away.
Standing below Karen, she waved me up to come sit behind her, then leaned forward, giving me a bit more room in which to maneuver. Settling myself down in the seat, she looked back over her shoulder, catching me looking at her perfect rear end. She rolled her eyes then sat down on my lap. Tapping a button, the canopy began to slide forward, soon enveloping us within its tinted enclosure.
We listened as Jhally started up again, going through much of the same information he’d conveyed to me the previous night in person. It was a good review, though mostly I was distracted. Karen’s hair tickled my nose and I could smell her fragrant strawberry-scented shampoo. She turned her head back and asked, “Are you even paying attention to this?”
“Of course. “He’s going over the flight’s various controls.”
I felt the warmth of her trim body perched snugly atop my lap and had to really struggle to concentrate on Jhally’s voice.
Then his voice stopped. I peered over Karen’s shoulder and saw the projection had again been halted. She’d figured out how to pause the virtual training lesson.
I took that to mean she wanted to talk. Karen often was an introspective girl: Her mind always spinning—working overtime.
“I think we should talk about us,” she said, not turning her head around this time.
“Us? Karen, there hasn’t been an ‘us’ for a long time. Ever since you broke things off—”
Nearly turning around in my lap, she exclaimed, “Me?!”
“You told me this wasn’t working. You said you didn’t see our relationship moving forward,” I said.
She looked back at me as if I were speaking a foreign language.
“I never did feel I could compete with your husband. That you’d ever want to make room in your heart for someone else.”
“So, let me get this straight . . . you thought I was breaking up with you?”
“You were breaking up with me,” I said back, defiantly. “Weren’t you?”
Karen slowly shook her head side to side. “No, I was not. It wasn’t me who wasn’t ready for a relationship, it was you. You’d lost both your parents and your brother in a matter of months. You were so saddled with guilt and heartache you just closed yourself off and became a rock emotionally.”
I listened to her, wanting to protest, to tell her it was she who’d been closed off, not me. But now I wasn’t sure. I looked up and our eyes met.
“Do you know how shattered my life was . . . after you left me that night? How long it took for my heart to stop missing a beat just hearing your name? Damn it, Brian, I was in love with you!”
I let that sink in. I thought about everything she’d said. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe it was me? I do know one thing . . .”
“What’s that?”
“I never stopped loving you. I haven’t dated anyone else. I spend every night with the various Takebacks groups, vetting the new applicants, and overseeing their individual crimes against the Gaps. Making sure they have skin in the game. I’ve had no life since we—”
Karen suddenly leaned forward to get up off my lap. Shit! I’d said something wrong. But if she were going to leave, storm off, she needed to open the damn canopy first. Resigned to the fact our conversation was a total clusterfuck, I reached for the button. Karen slapped my hand away. She wasn’t trying to leave; instead, she had turned completely around atop my lap. We were now face to face. Placing a finger over my swollen, split lips, she gave me a mischievous smile then kissed me. Gently and tender at first, our passion grew ever hotter from there. We made love seated together in Shredder Five’s cockpit. All the while, the paused virtual projection of Jhally looked on. Once it was over, both of us sweating and out of breath, Karen leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Can we still fly this thing . . . together?”
“I think that can be arranged.”
She reached into her back pocket for her cell phone, then held it out at arm’s length.
“You do know cell phones don’t work anymore . . .”
Karen rolled her eyes and I heard the telltale click of a photo being taken.
“Do you think making love in a Gap Shredder constitutes us having skin in the game?” she asked, showing me the selfie she took of the two of us. The image left no doubt we were seated together within a Shredder cockpit.
“But how are you going to forward that picture to me without cell service?”
She shrugged, “Hmm, good question.”
chapter 24
Now airborne, we took turns at the controls, listening to, and watching Jhally give virtual flight instructions. The Shredder was surprisingly easy to fly. Intuitive and forgiving, its maneuverability was remarkable. With my right arm wrapped around Karen’s waist, my hand snugly grasped the center control sphere. I eased the ball to the right—turning it ten degrees in the process. Immediately, the Shredder responded—the fuselage angled on its centerline axis and we banked into a slow turn, three hundred feet midway across the Polk property. I let my hand drift lower and the craft, in turn, descended so fast my stomach lurched.
“You have to employ a subtle hand with this vessel,” Karen said. “Give it to me. It’s my turn, so stop hogging the controls.” She tapped my hand away from the center control sphere. And so it went in the air for close to five hours. We followed Jhally’s virtual mini-training instructions several times until there was nothing more to learn. The rest of the time we explored what the lightning-fast ship was capable of. What we hadn’t learned, would need Jhally’s help with, was how to use the onboard navigation AI. Also, how to initialize the various weapons systems.
“We should head back to the barn,” I whispered into Karen’s ear.
“I’m having too much fun to go back,” she said, “but I do have to pee even more so . . . so I think you’re right. Mind if I take her in?”
“Not at all,” I said, as I kissed the nape of her neck.
—————
Karen headed home once we’d landed the Shredder back inside the barn. Mort and I then made a quick trip into town for groceries, plus a few other odds and ends. When I arrived back at the house, I was surprised to find Jhally sitting up in bed. I could see he had taken it upon himself to clean his bloodied stump and change the bandage. He was working an ear puck device—his upper body partially obscured by the bluish HUD display. We’d retrieved two pucks from Marshals Black and Clark after they were killed in my barn. Jhally kept one of them, and the other went to my hacker buddy, Mike Post. Mike had ingeniously hacked the devices’ code so not only Gaps could operate the devices, but Humans too. The update to the code had gone out all across the Prime Network making all ear pucks universally compatible across the globe—maybe even the universe. Jhally had disabled both the identification and TBGLU functionality, so the two units couldn’t be tracked. It made me a little nervous to see Jhally using the device, but at this point, if he was going to screw us, there wasn’t much I could do about it.
“Feeling better?” I asked, looking in on him.
“Yes, thank you. My fever has subsided. Pain is manageable.”
“I got you a present.” I held up an adjustable aluminum crutch I’d just purchased at a medical supply store in town. “You’ll have to configure the size to fit your own height.”
Jhally eyed the crutch. “I could have used that a year ago.”
I shrugged. “Didn’t know you were tromping around the property at night back then. But if you don’t want it, I can take it back.”
“No, I will be able to utilize this item until my leg grows back.”
I looked at his stump. “How long do you think that will take?”
“About three weeks.”
“That’s incredible!” I then cringed. “I guess I really blew it, suturing up your leg in past months like I did.”
Jhally asked, “Did you enjoy your time in the Shredder?”
“I did,” I said, wondering if he somehow knew about Karen’s and my impromptu lovemaking. “It’s an amazing craft. Thank you for the virtual instructions. I’m getting the hang of it, I think.”
“That is good.”
“But there are a few things you left out of your instructions . . . like the use of the navigational AI and initializing the weaponry.”
Jhally seemed to ponder on that. “That last functionality will best be demonstrated in person. One mistake could be catastrophic. Deadly.”
“Well, whenever you’re up to it. So you ready now to slurp down a bug or two?”
That suggestion seemed to brighten Jhally’s mood. “Yes, I think two would be good. I seem to have regained my appetite.”
After feeding Jhally, I began making phone calls to my Takebacks—letting each of them know that tonight would be another late-night training session get-together, under the guise of team bowling. There were more than a few moans and complaints about my last minute notice. Halfway through my call list, I had an incoming call.
“Brian!”
I recognized the voice but didn’t say anything.
“Okay . . . fine, Polybius.”
“That you, Titus?”
“Have you seen them?”
“What are you talking about? Seen who?” I asked.
“All the Gap troops at the outskirts of town . . . thousands of them. An obvious deployment, how could you not know what’s going on there?”
My mind flashed back to the open-air troop carriers I’d been seeing of late. “They’re probably only performing military exercises. I wouldn’t give it too much—”
“Then why have they constructed a compound? And that big ginormous igloo-thing being assembled?”
“Igloo? Titus, I honestly don’t know what the hell you’re rambling on about. In any event, we’re getting together for a bowling meeting later—”
The Hidden Ship Page 13