Jim arched an eyebrow. “That was more than a little bumpy.”
“Well, Melissa called that one,” Chris interjected.
“We’re all fine. But that landing should help prove our point that we stumbled on this ship and don’t really know much about it.” Jim stood and faced each of them in turn. “This is really important. They took us to a hidden base with no roads. If they think we know too much, we’re never getting out. If they think we might tell somebody about this, we’re never getting out. If we get too smart with them, Chris, what do you think it going to happen?”
“We’re never getting out?”
“Exactly, now let’s go give the Air Force an alien ship and get out of here.”
MPs waited for them when the hatch opened. They wore aviator sunglasses despite the cloudy day. Jim stretched out his hand. “Hi, I’m--.”
The one on the left, a no-nonsense looking soldier named Long, grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. He felt the handcuffs click around wrists. The others start to protest. “No, we’re not putting up to a fight.” He twisted his neck around to look at the soldier now behind him. “We’re not putting up a fight. Take us where you’ve been ordered.”
“You’re not the one giving orders around here,” Long said. “We’re giving the orders. You’re going to the Detention Center where General Jenkins is waiting for you.”
A smile escaped his lips, but he quickly suppressed it. They walked to a squat, windowless building at the far end of the runway. Jim expected the interior to be dark and forbidding, but the lights shined in every direction, banishing shadows. Jim blinked against the glare. The sunglasses made sense now.
He blinked several more times, but the lights created afterimages in his sight. They followed a hallway until they reached a series of old fashioned jail cells. The MP’s pushed the others into a cell. Jim started to follow, but Long held him back. “Not you. The General is waiting for you.”
“It’s going to be okay guys. Just do what they say. I’m sure I’ll be right back.”
Long pushed him again. “No talking.”
Jim’s eyes slowly adjusted to the bright lights, but the blurry rings still plagued him. He fought the urge to rub them. With the cuffs, it would just lead to frustration.
Long led him down a series of turns. Were they going in circles? The building didn’t seem that large from the outside. At last, they came to a steel door. Long opened it with a key and pushed him inside. The interior looked like the interrogation room from a bad cop movie. The guard pushed him into one of the metal chairs.
Long knelt beside him and unlocked the handcuffs. “Thanks, I could really use to move my-.”
The metal clanked against the chair and then clicked back around his wrist. He leaned forward. Nope.
Long exited without saying anything else. Jim looked around but the room was empty. He tried to move his seat, but it seemed to be set into the concrete floor.
He couldn’t be sure how long he’d been there when the door opened again. He half hoped it was Long with lunch. But a shorter man in a blue Air Force uniform entered instead. Jim was rusty on his insignia, but it didn’t take a genius to know that those two stars meant business. The name tag read JENKINS.
“Good afternoon, sir. Petty Officer Jim Bromley. I’d salute, but, uh.” He yanked his shoulder to produce a clank of chain against chair.
“I know who you are, Bromley. Pulled up files on you and that bunch you call a crew. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“Well, I wouldn’t really call them a crew. More like my employees. As I’m sure you already know, we’re just construction workers. We were digging a pit for a foundation and found something in it.” He related the story as best he could, making sure to minimize the aspects of the ship’s response to them and throwing in an extra dose of fear about the entire experience. He didn’t have to stretch when he described the events of the lab.
“You say the machine healed an old fracture? We’ll have to get some x-rays to verify that.” Jenkins’s face was as placid as a lake.
“Uh, sure. Just let me know what hospital you want us to go to.”
“Don’t worry about that. We have state of the art facilities here. Your every need will be taken care of.” Again, the general let slip no sign of emotion. The man would make a good poker player.
“Okay, so x-rays and then we can go?” Jim tried to play the same game, hoping that the desperation didn’t show in his voice.
Jenkins leaned forward. Finally a crack in the steely facade. “See this is where we have a problem. You’re holding back from us.”
The game of wills broke and genuine shock escaped him. “I told you everything. The alien spaceship is right there.” Jim nodded his head in a random direction. His normally good sense of direction completely failed him in the byzantine complex, and one guess was as good as any. “I’m sure you could send a satellite or something to the moon to see the base. Or, at least what’s left of it.” He gulped. Destroying the base had felt so right at the time, but now it could be seen as trying to hide it. Shit.
The general waved his hand. “We already knew about the base. We’ve already been to the base. It’s been there a thousand years as well as the eggheads can tell. But it was cold, and airless, like the rest of the moon. Nothing like you described. How did you activate it?
“We didn’t. It was functioning when we got there. It even took over control of our ship, err, the ship.”
“See, that brings us to our next problem. When you landed, you disabled the ship so it wouldn’t operate for us.”
“I did not. Everything was still running when we stepped off and your goons arrested us for no cause.” The guy seemed to be a master of pressing Jim’s buttons, and he lost any semblance of controlling his temper. He yanked at the chains, but they wouldn’t give.
“You’re lying. Best case, you destroyed it when you crashed and nearly destroyed my base. But that would mean that I believed that you just found it in a hole. If you ever want to see daylight again, tell me the truth.”
There is was. The implicit threat laid out in the open. Jim had only one key fact left to provide, but it was even more incredible than the rest of the story.
“It seemed to respond to us. Like it knew who we were and we belonged there.”
Jenkins cracked the briefest hint of a smile. “Well, it that’s how you want to play it. I have some other business to attend to.” He stood and the door opened for him. Once through, it clanged shut, leaving Jim alone in the sparse but brightly lit room.
He expected Long to come back for him, to place him in a cell with the others. He could count on the rest to keep their heads, but he hoped that Chris was behaving himself.
Time ticked by. The minutes became an hour and then two. Or at least as well as Jim could figure. Like pretty much everyone else, he relied on his cell phone for the time and that had been confiscated before they’d even entered the jail. There was no sign of Long, or Jenkins, or any kind of food or water for that matter.
As hours passed, Jim found himself licking his lips, trying to keep them moist in the dry mountain air. He tried to sleep, but the lights kept waking him. He wished he could cover his face with his arm. Or lay his head down at all, for that matter. Jim realized belatedly the general’s game. Psychological torture. If they wore down his will to resist, he’d give up the information they wanted. Except that he already had. And they didn’t believe him.
Finally, a full day’s worth of excitement and the boredom of waiting alone got the better of him. His eyes still ached and purple light seeped through his lids, but blessed sleep overtook him.
He was back on the bridge of the ship. The others were with him, but something wasn’t quite right about them. A woman he’d never met sat at the fourth console.
“There’s no sign of the Razak on the comms, dear,” she said.
“Or on sensors, Captain,” the one who wasn’t quite Melissa said. “We appear to have l
ost them.”
“That’s good,” not-Bobby grumbled. “Warp engines are completely fried. I’m getting an estimate from the repair bots and, and you’re not going to like it.
“Well, what is it?” Jim found himself barking.
Bobby’s head hung. “The bots really weren’t designed for this. It’s well above their level of sophistication.”
“Just, spit it out, Wridir.”
“A thousand years, Captain.” Silence hung in the air.
Chemogg, the woman who was apparently his wife in this dream, spoke first. “We could try the distress drone. Get word of our situation to Fagare command.”
Jim shook his head. “The Razak will pick up the warp signature and find us. Then they’ll kill us and everybody on the planet below. What is it called again?"
“Earth,” Melissa answered. “Populations are human, but just barely. They’re pretty barbaric down there.”
“They just need time to develop. If the Razak find us here, they’ll plague the planet just for spite. We’ll go down, bury the ship and integrate with the populace.”
“I’m not living with a bunch of barbarians,” Melissa yelled.
Jim stood up and faced her down. “You will, Kaar. You will or I’ll lock you in this ship before we bury it.”
Melissa, or Kar, withered. “You know I don’t do so good underground, Jum.”
Jim, or Jum, nodded. “Then we’re in agreement. Launch one drone set to build a mini-base on their moon. By the time the Resolve is repaired, our ancestors will be more Earth than Fagare and they’ll need training.”
“Captain,” Kaar called. “Collapsing warp bubble.”
All heads pivoted to the viewscreen. “Razak?”
“It’s too small. It’s... Shit, it’s a smart missile. Must have locked on before we jumped.”
“Wridir, get us to the surface now! Setor, try to shoot it down.”
“Ain’t no one shot down a smart missile before,” Chris, who was Setor, protested.
“Well, you’ll get to be the first. Even if you can buy a few minutes to get us to the ground.”
They descended through the planet’s atmosphere. The warp nacelle hadn’t been the only thing damaged and the life support struggled to keep the ship cool as the thickening atmosphere buffeted again their hypersonic craft.
Chris/Setor shot wildly but the missile deftly avoided everything he could throw at it. Jum had heard rumors that the AI in a smart missile had reached a predictive ability so tuned that it could see a full second into the future. The missile avoided another shot. If Jim could have gotten a message out to Fagare command, he’d let them know, it was more like two seconds.
They cleared the cloud banks. Ahead, mountains broke the horizon. Sensors showed small tribes of humans living on the sparse ground. Behind them, the smart missile continued to close the distance.
Chris leaned back. “Guns are overheating. There’s nothing more I can do.”
Jim nodded. “Wridir, get us to the ground now.”
Bobby didn’t respond save for madly pressing buttons on his console. “Safeties disabled, Captain.” He pushed his joystick down, and the ship dropped like a stone.
The smart missile lived up to its name, already diving before they had started. Shit, maybe three seconds.
The altimeter numbers counted down faster than he could read. The readout on the missile’s distance dropped faster. It would be a near thing.
“Hundred meters to surface. I need to slow us down,” Bobby said.
“Negative. As hard a landing as won’t kill us.”
“If I don’t slow us down, the landing will kill us.”
“And if we do, that missile will.”
The ship hit the ground and bounced before digging into clay a full ship’s length away. “Everybody evacuate, now.” Their seats sank back into the floor in an instant and they ran for the cargo hold. Jim pressed his hand into a panel. Chemogg stopped and stared. “Go, I’ll be right there. I just have to lock down the ship. Only our blood descendants will be able to operate it.”
“I’m not going anywhere without--”
The missile missed the ship. Jim knew this because he was still breathing. But the blast from where it impacted the ground nearby propelled the ship into the air. Metal crunched and twisted as did Jim’s gut.
“The door’s jammed, Captain.”
“Then find something to pry it open, damn it.”
Setor ran off to his room and returned with a plasma rifle. The barrel was as big around as his arm. “Picked this baby up back at Recon Seven. Been dying for a chance to use it.”
They stood back as Chris/Setor ran aimed. The pulse of hot ions shot forward but simply bounced off the hatch. They dove to the ground as the blast diffused across the room.
“Everyone okay?” Jim rose to his knees and looked around.
“Yeah, copy, uh-huh.” Three affirmatives. But that left...
“I’m hit,” Chemogg croaked. She pushed herself up, her arms wobbling as they strained to support her slight frame. Jim was at her side in a flash. “I’ll find you a med drone.”
She shook her head. “We sent the last one off for that base, remember?”
Jim cursed. If only they’d been better stocked. If only they’d had more time. If only, if only. “You’re going to be okay.”
“No, I’m not and we both know it. Just. Just take me outside. I want to feel sunlight on my skin again before I die. It’s been too long since we’ve been planet-side.”
While they talked, the others jammed the wedge shaped gun stock into the door jam. The thought crossed his mind that he should make sure that Setor had engaged the safety. But the idea quickly fell below the sea of turmoil. If Chemogg died, he didn’t want to go on.
She seemed to read his mind. “You’ll find somebody new. You have to. Only your blood descendent can captain this ship once it’s repaired. But there won’t be one if you don’t have children.”
Jim woke with a start. The dream had felt so real, so vivid. But something bothered him about it, like a primal fear of something just below the horizon.
The distress drone. That had to be what they’d accidentally jettisoned on the way to the moon. If that was the device his ancestor had been concerned about, he’d just brought the Razak right to Earth’s doorstep.
Jim fought again against the chains. He couldn’t escape the chair and couldn’t move the chair. Everything in the room was locked into place. They hadn’t bound his feet however. He kicked at the table, grateful for once for the heavy steel toe boots that OSHA required him to wear.
The resulting clang echoed through the room and hurt his ears. He kicked again. He repeated this over and over, hoping that the racket escaped the walls.
Long opened the door. “Quiet down in there,” he shouted.
“Get General Jenkins,” Jim said. “I’m ready to talk.”
Long’s face changed from annoyed to shocked before he returned to a mask of malevolent boredom. The door shut.
Jim debated whether or not to go back to kicking the table when the door opened again. This time, Jenkins entered. He sat down without speaking and stared at Jim.
“We may have accidentally alerted the aliens who shot down the ship a thousand years ago.”
The general’s poker face was alive and well. “Tell me about this enemy.”
Jim relayed the events of the dream as best he could. This time he didn’t hold back and talked about his and his crew’s roles in the past.
“You should have told us this in the first place.”
“We didn’t know any of it. I dozed off and the memories just came to me. That must have been what that lab on the moon was talking about.”
“Regardless, we don’t have a moment to lose. Tell us how to activate the ship so we can figure out how to build more in time to face this enemy.”
“You don’t have time,” Jim protested. “They will be here in...” His eyes rolled back as he worked out math that he did
n’t even know he understood. “A week. We have a week to figure out how to defeat them.”
“Then you don’t have a moment to spare. Tell us the secret to operating the ship.”
“Stop it, you creep.” Jim’s head turned at Melissa’s voice. He looked around but the room remained empty save for him and the general.
“Hey, those are private thoughts. You got no right intruding on them,” Chris responded.
“They don’t feel very private,” Bobby said.
“What kind of trick is this?” Jim demanded. “Where do you have my crew?”
Jenkins stood. “Don’t change the subject. I know you are controlling the ship somehow, even from here. Not ten minutes ago, your ship tried to leave. If we hadn’t chained it to the ground, it would have taken off without anyone in it. Probably trying to go get help.”
Jim hung his head. What did he mean by that?
“Look, I didn’t want to do this, but maybe somebody on your team will respond better. Maybe if we use some ’enhanced’ interrogation techniques. The girl seems like she’ll break pretty easy.” Stepping up to the door, he rapped on the metal plate. When it slid open, he said, “Take her to the other room.”
No response came except for the plate sliding shut again.
“Can you guys hear me?” Jim said.
Now it was the general’s turn to turn his head. “They can’t hear you. The cells are on the other side of the building.”
“Yeah, we can, dad,” Melissa said. Paying closer attention this time, he realized that he didn’t actually hear her response. Maybe he didn’t have to speak his either.
Resolve (Lost Fagare Ship Book 1) Page 5