by Saxon Andrew
“Are you ready to do this?”
Jess shrugged, “Keep your blaster loose in the holster.” Jess turned and went to his chair, “Pete, are you ready to transfer all the protocols?”
“I am.” Jess nodded to Elle and she went to her chair and tilted it back. “Commencing transfer.” Two minutes later they opened their eyes and Elle said, “Is that all there is?”
“Security is not an issue; where would anyone go?”
“They appear to be rather lax.”
“Compared to your species paranoia, I suppose they are.”
Jess frowned, “What do you mean by that?”
“Do you have external doors without locks?”
Jess thought for a moment, “I guess you’re right. Do you have the photons powering your systems?”
“I do.”
“Then let’s do this.”
• • •
They had waited in the Holding Facility’s star system until the Q ship had left. Now they were going back in and were using a story about Hetzel neglecting to ask the humans some important questions. Pete was of the opinion the story would hold up.
• • •
They arrived at the facility and Pete sent a message to the Neman operating the entrance portal. The portal started lighting up and Pete said, “They accepted it. Just don’t answer any questions about events past or present on the Neman home world.”
“Do you think we’ll get any?”
“These Neman are stuck out here a long time and crave news from home.”
Jess looked at Elle and tilted his head, “Are you ready?”
Elle nodded, “What are we going to do if we find them?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Do you have the dark energy personal field?” Elle nodded. They felt a bump and moved out of the bridge to the storage bay. The door slid up and they saw a Neman waiting for them, “Welcome, I’ll take you to the holding space.”
“Thank you. Your assistance is appreciated.”
“How are things back home?”
Jess said, “In our excitement to see your wonderful facility, we left the list of questions in the computer. I can keep them in my mind but not if I don’t focus on it.”
“I understand; follow me.”
They followed the green creature through ten corridors they remembered from the holographic trainer and turned the corner and saw the guards standing outside the doors just like they saw in the trainer. Their guide turned and said, “Hetzel must have forgotten. He spent a lot of time questioning the…what are they called? Elle appeared to think a moment and said, “Humans?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” The guide arrived at the door furthest from them and pointed at the clear window. Jess looked in the window and saw a space that appeared to extend for miles. He had never gotten this far into the facility and he said, “I know how it works, but this is still an amazing view of the space.”
The Neman smiled, “It extends into the moon’s interior. The gravity is controlled so it doesn’t appear abnormal. Do you want to go in?”
“Let me stand here and look at them for a moment. They’re really ugly.”
“Tell me about it. Let the guard know when you want to go in; he’ll open the door.”
• • •
They stared through the glass and saw long rows of doors to each side that extended away from them. In the area between the doors was an open area that had large plants growing and scattered among them was fountains that had water spraying up out of them. They didn’t want to admit it, but it looked beautiful. They watched hundreds of people walking around in the clearing talking to each other and Elle pointed at a woman holding a baby. Jess saw her and frowned. The guard said, “We allow them to breed and have children.”
Jess looked at the guard, “I’ve always wondered if that was a good idea.”
The guard raised both shoulders, “It won’t make a difference. If their planet is destroyed, all of them will be removed. If not, they can go back and continue their lives.”
Elle suddenly tugged Jess’s tunic and nodded toward a young man walking down the row of doors to the left. He went to the fifteenth door, opened it, and went in. Jess looked at Elle and saw her nod. “We’re ready to go in.”
“We’ll be keeping the recorders on you. They know not to cause any problems.” The glass slid up into the ceiling and they stepped out into the space. The people close to the door saw them suddenly appear and they moved away. They didn’t show fear, just a healthy respect. Elle led the way and went to the door from where she had seen the young man enter. They knew the protocols didn’t call for knocking so Jess reached forward and pulled the door open. The young man was sitting in the room at a table with a young woman. She was standing behind him and was hugging his neck. They both jumped up and moved away as Jess and Elle stepped into the room.
Elle was barely able to contain herself. It was her brother. He was seventeen and had grown up to be a handsome young man. Jess looked at him and said, “What is your name?”
“John Moreland.”
The young woman said, “Mandy Brownlee.”
Jess stared at the young woman and suddenly recognized the young girl that had gone camping with his family. “Do you have any other’s here that have a family relationship with you?”
The young man looked at Mandy and said, “Yes we do.”
“Go get them and bring them here.” They started to leave and Elle pointed at the young man, “You will stay; she will get the others.” John nodded and Mandy left the room. “How long have you been here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you enjoy being here?”
“Not really.”
“Why would you not like the space we have provided you?”
“A cage is still a cage; it doesn’t matter how you dress it up.”
Jess knew they were being recorded and if they didn’t start asking difficult questions, the observers might be suspicious. “If you were ever released from here, would you want to punish those that put you here?” Elle looked at him and saw him shake his head.
“That would be like getting angry at a star for causing sunburn; you’d be wasting your time to think you could do it any harm.”
“If you could harm them, would you?”
John stared at them and his eyes narrowed, “You bet your life I would.”
Elle said, “Do you have all of your family here?”
“No, my mother and older sister weren’t captured and brought here. I still miss them.”
Suddenly the door opened and Elle’s father and Jess’ parents and younger brother entered. Jess felt his heart hammering in his chest and Elle saw he wasn’t able to speak. She said, “Who are you.”
“I’m Joe Rollins and this is my wife Mary and our son Jacob.” Suddenly, the door opened again and Mandy entered with a young boy. Joe said, “This is our youngest son, George.”
Jess couldn’t bear seeing them. He stared at his youngest brother, whom he didn’t know existed, and said, “If just the ones in this room could be released, would you go?”
Joe shook his head, “I would not leave my close friends behind. Either release all of us or none of us.”
Jess stared at them and said, “Thank you for your time.” He took Elle’s arm and left the room. Elle wondered what he was doing but didn’t challenge him. They arrived at the door and it slid up. The guard said, “Now that was an interesting interview. I can see why you came.”
“We’ll be leaving now.”
“Do you know the way?”
“Yes.”
Elle walked with Jess and was starting to get angry but held her tongue. They turned the corner on the last hall and Jess drew his blaster and grabbed Elle’s hand as he started running toward the end of the hall. Jess said, “Pete, get us out of here now!”
“I’m docking with the facility.”
Elle looked at Jess as he activated his personal screen, went to a knee, and aimed his blaster up the hall, “The
y know who we are!” Ellie pulled her blaster and started to activate her personal screen as ten guards in spacesuits rounded the corner with blasters raised. They saw the single Neman and opened fire just as she disappeared. Jess hoped they wouldn’t use full power blaster beams; it would blow holes in the facility walls.
Elle dropped three guards with stun beams as Jess hit the others. Five guards rounded the corner with a heavy blaster on a mobile platform. Jess saw they were also in space suits and knew they were setting up to fire a full powered beam.
Suddenly the port flew open and Jess and Elle jumped into the landing bay, “Pete, leave the port open on the facility!” The Q ship disappeared and the open port caused explosive decompression. The mobile blaster was swept out the port along with all the guards.
The Q ship backed away from the facility and disappeared. Elle said, “Jess…”
Jess held up his hand and said, “Pete, convert to dark energy and go back to the facility.”
The Q ship suddenly appeared twenty miles from the facility and Elle turned to Jess. “I have ten Q ships arriving.”
Elle jerked her head toward the viewport and saw ten Q ships surrounding the moon. Elle turned to Jess, “How did you know?”
“The monitors in the ceiling; only one of them was active when we entered. I noticed all six were activated at the same time. That had to mean the interview was being watched by more than just those at the facility.”
Elle started shaking. Jess took her in his arms and said, “They now know they have our families.” She stared shivering from the sudden adrenaline rush and Jess pulled her closer. “They’re safe, Elle. They won’t do anything to them that would cause us to react.”
“We should have taken them.”
“They wouldn’t go. I know my father and he would have fought us.”
“You could have told him who you are.”
“Would you have believed it?” Jess stood back from Elle, “Pete, how long after we left did the other Q ships show up?”
“Less than ten seconds.”
“How long would it take you to convert your power to dark energy?”
“Twelve point three seconds.”
“So if we had not made it out when we did, what would you have been forced to do?”
“I’d have to run or face possible destruction.”
Jess looked at Elle, “And we would have been trapped on board the facility having to hold off the guards while help was right outside.”
“They would have probably just blown up the facility and removed you as a threat.”
Elle sighed, “I’m sorry; I just want them back in my life.”
“Elle, they would have killed all of them along with us if we hadn’t got out. Pete, why didn’t they just call ahead and tell the guards to prevent us from leaving?”
“The Facility doesn’t have a long range communicator; that’s why the guards are starved for information.”
Elle looked at the ceiling, “Why don’t they have one?”
“The communication system costs more than the facility.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“They how did they know we were there?”
“The central library has monitors in every Holding Facility to watch the aliens and share it with young students. That equipment only sends a one way video transmission. It was the library that contacted Hetzel and told him someone was at the holding facility immediately after he left.”
Elle blew out a breath, “I’m sorry, Jess. I’m thankful you got us out.”
“We’re not going to be able to save our families without resolving the issue with Earth’s destruction.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m not sure; I need some time to think.”
“I’ve just heard a message.” Elle and Jess looked up, “Hetzel wishes to speak with you.”
Jess looked at Elle and said, “Pete, can you do it without being in danger?”
“I’m inside the dark energy force field, they won’t be able to find me.”
“Put him on.”
“It appears we have something you want.”
“Get in line; you’re not alone.”
“Perhaps we can negotiate a settlement of our little problem.”
“I’m listening.”
“You can check with your ship, there are literally millions of habitable planets that don’t have intelligent life. We will allow you to take the humans in the facility you just visited and go to one of them and live your lives in peace.”
“And in return for this…”
“You will give us back our ship.”
“Which you will promptly use to destroy my home world.”
“Your species will survive with you on your new planet. You can live in peace and possibly build a better civilization.”
“Hetzel, what’s to keep you from destroying the planet we go to?”
“We will not violate an agreement.”
Jess looked up, “Pete.”
“He’s right. An agreement made by a government representative is binding. The sanctity of an agreement is the only thing that holds their civilization together. If the government violates an agreement, there would be mass rebellion.”
“I don’t want to sound unappreciative, but four billion lives for several hundred just doesn’t sound right.”
“Four billion and several hundred with no survivors sounds worse, does it not?”
“There’s got to be a better way than this.”
Hetzel made a clicking sound, “You just don’t have the history to help you see.”
“See what?”
“When a species lives on violence, it will never turn from it. It will endanger everyone it touches. I’ve seen some nasty species; yours is in the top five of the nastiest.”
“We need some time to think about this; however, I have a news flash for you.”
“What is that?”
“Your civilization has killed more intelligent beings than all of those five combined. What does that make you?” The link stopped and Hetzel was surprised by the question. He initially thought his civilization was justified…but…that creature made a point that was hard to argue against. He had difficulty sleeping after the conversation. The Government never examined a violent species’ motivations; they were simply eliminated. Did that make his civilization better than the ones they destroyed? He was sure the violent civilizations could justify their violence; what was the difference? He finally worked out the answer; his civilization had the biggest gun. That finding troubled him greatly.
• • •
“What are we going to do?”
“Well, one thing is for sure, we can’t go along with his suggestion.”
“I agree with you, Jess but tell me why you say that.”
“If we turned Peter over to them; they would make him stop evaluating information. He would become a simple yes and no machine again. I wouldn’t do that to him. No matter what we decide to do, the three of us stay together.” Jess stretched, “We need to get some sleep.”
Pete evaluated Jess’ statement for more than three hours. At the end of his evaluation, he arrived at the same conclusion; they would stay together regardless of what happened. He decided to change his protocols. He overrode the energy transfer system and reset the conduit between the positron and dark matter collectors. It wasn’t safe to have to take so long to switch between the two. He studied the engineer’s manuals and determined that the engineers had built a level four safety factor into the bypass. The time was changed to two seconds. He wasn’t going to allow harm to come to his crew by being unable to make the switch fast enough.
He changed the communications protocols as well and replaced one of the feeds coming into the system with the feed going from the Holding Facility to the Central Library. He knew the safety of his crew’s families was important to them; he would keep an eye out in case they were placed in danger; he knew Jess and Elle wou
ld want to know if that happened.
Finally, while they were sleeping, he moved to a deserted star system and found a twenty mile long asteroid. He aimed his bow beam at it and fired the tightest and hottest beam he could focus on it; the beam was only slightly larger than a broom straw; it blew through the asteroid easily.
Pete adjusted the power back and kept it small. He fired again and the beam barely penetrated to the other side. Pete backed off on the power again and fired the beam a third time. It hit the asteroid and burned three feet into the surface. He locked in the power setting used for each beam into the weapon’s data base and moved the ship to the fifth planet from the central star. The planet was slightly larger than Earth and had a dense nitrogen/methane atmosphere. He fired the tiny beam at the planet’s surface on the weakest setting and it failed to hit. He upped the power twenty percent and the next shot burned into the planet’s rocky surface.”
It wasn’t easy to control a beam powerful enough to destroy a planet. For the next month, while Jess and Elle were asleep, Pete would fire the beam at different settings to determine the power needed for different targets. By the end of the fifth week, he had all of his selections set and the weapon system would instantly use the downloaded data to select the appropriate beam for any target chosen. The first one on the list was set to hit a being on a planet’s surface without harming anyone close to them. Pete could see that particular talent was going to be needed. He suspected Jess and Elle didn’t realize it just yet.
Chapter Sixteen
Mike flew the scout copter north at 130 miles per hour and stayed next to the ridge line of trees running north from Southern California. He flew in to the central valley and stayed at the ridgeline of hills that surrounded it. He stayed away from the coast. There were radar pickets off the west coast and they would have picked him up. He pressed a button on the handset and looked at the list. He scrolled down the list and pressed the highlighted name.
“Hello, Sir.”
“Adams, have you been given your next assignment?”
“I have.”
“Is it a General Atkins?”
“Boy, you’re good. I’ve been ordered to collect him for you.”
“I’m changing that order. They know we’re coming after him and he won’t be leaving his cover for you to gather him up. I no longer desire to talk with him; you should change your plan and remove him as a problem.”