by Unknown
“I don’t know yet, Mother, I just don’t know.”
Jo was sitting in her bedroom nursing Mary when the phone rang. She let out a sigh and worked her way around so she could reach it on the third ring. What happened next caused even little Mary to stop for a moment.
“Well, good evening Mrs. Wilkes. It is so nice to hear your voice after all these years,” came Brana’s voice over the phone line.
Jo froze a second before answering. “I understand you are a general now.”
“Yes, the times have been very good for me and for you from what I have seen,” he said pleasantly. “Is your husband at home?”
Jo began to get angry. This man was holding her son as a hostage and he had the gall to be so pleasant and so patronizing. But she knew she must control her anger, for Timothy’s sake. “I’m sorry, general, but Mike is even now trying to get some of the things you have required of us. I know he has gathered several of the items, but we want to make sure you are satisfied the first time so that Timothy can come home,” she said. “May I give him a message?”
“How very intelligent of both of you to understand my wishes. I really have no desire to harm the boy. As a matter of fact, he is soundly sleeping in his room even now. But I hope you will not try and deceive me, or he may suffer such a terrible fate. You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
Jo blanched at the thought of Timothy under Brana’s whip. “Believe me, we know exactly what might happen and have no other thought but to get him back safely. I remember very well what you did to us before.”
“Ahh, you see, lessons can be learned,” Brana said. “As for your husband, I do have a message for him. In exactly three weeks from today I expect to see him at the Hotel Koratis in Koratis, Guilama. Some of my men will pick him up in his room there and escort him to me. He is to bring all the things I ask, and if so, I will have them both back to you within a few days. He is to come alone and I will know if one of your ships comes where I am. If that happens, I am afraid you will lose both a son and your husband. Do you completely understand?”
Jo felt herself gripping the telephone receiver with all her strength. “I understand fully, General,” she said.
“Very good. Then I would expect you will be packing up shortly afterward. Since I do not want you, the Alliance, or any other aliens spreading unwanted influence on our world, once I am in control, you and your kind will not be welcome, so I would suggest you make your plans.”
“You seem very sure of yourself, General. What makes you think the people will want what you suggest?” she asked.
There was a chuckle at the other end. “I learned a long time ago that the people are weak. They need a strong leader to give their lives true meaning. They need goals, objectives and discipline. I will give them that, and in time, they will appreciate it,” he said. “And that includes even the arts you have been trying to poison them with.”
“Surely you are not threatened by music or literature,” she said.
“Not in the least, but they distract people from their work and their duty. Perhaps someday, but not now, and not yours. And by the way, I understand you were planning a special celebration during the sixth anniversary of your Alliance’s arrival here. I believe you should cancel it.”
“Why cancel it?”
“Let’s just say it would annoy me, and you know quite well how I react if I am annoyed.”
Jo stared at the receiver with growing hate. This man had to be stopped, in any way possible. “I understand, General,” she said carefully to mask her anger.
“Very good. Then you just go to taking care of that new baby of yours and do what you women do best. And make sure you tell your husband my instructions. Three weeks,” he said.
“I will tell him, General.”
“Good bye, Mrs. Wilkes.”
“Goodbye,” she said. She held the receiver even after she heard the click on the other end. She hung up the phone. “Bastard,” she said. Then looking down at Mary she saw her daughter staring up at her with her blue eyes. She seemed to be asking what to do next. Jo smiled at her daughter in reassurance. “Don’t worry little girl, Mom is not that big a wimp,” she said. Jo was rewarded by Mary starting to nurse again and closing her eyes. She even had what looked like a little smile on her face. Jo chuckled. “I guess that’s what I needed to know,” she said as she picked up the phone. After dialing the number she remembered, she waited for an answer.
“Hello,” came a tired voice on the other end.
“Hal, this is Jo.”
“Jo! How’s the little mother?” came the cheerful reply. “Any word on your son?”
“I’m doing great Hal, and we still haven’t heard much yet, thanks. Hal, we need to get the orchestra together for some rehearsals.”
“Rehearsals? I thought the concert would be postponed,” Hal said.
“Let’s not Hal. Now more than ever, I want this celebration to go on,” she said.
Mike and the other men had spent seven hours learning the finer controls of the Catalina and were totally exhausted. By midnight, they were streamed back home to get some rest and make some final plans of their own. Mike returned to find Jo hard at work on her own plans. He gave her a tired kiss on the cheek.
“What are you workin’ on?”
“The anniversary celebration. I need to get things started,” she said without looking up.
“I thought you were going to put it off a while?” he joked.
“Not after my little talk with Brana,” she said, then put her work down and looked at him. “Mike, he called me a couple of hours ago. He demanded you appear at the Hotel Koratis in Koratis, Guilama, in three weeks. I guess he figures it will take you that long just to get there. He says just bring what he wants and he will get you home. Then he threatened Timothy, you and every other Alliance rep here,” she said. She even laughed a little. “Then he had the nerve to tell me I could not do my concert because it would annoy him! Can you believe that? Annoy him! Mike, that bastard has to be stopped. You and your guys get down there and do whatever it takes. And while you’re doing that, I will be up here showing that jerk that we won’t be pushed around,” she said defiantly.
Mike had rarely seen Jo this angry or this invigorated. There was a fire in her eyes he had seen only a few times before. He knew there was no stopping her. She radiated energy. Mike took her in his arms.
“I kinda figured you might do this. So let’s go after this guy together. You in your way, me in mine,” he said.
“I can handle that,” she said.
The kiss was passionate. Mike pulled back a little and looked in her eyes. “I love you when you’re angry.”
“Just as long as it’s not against you,” she chuckled back.
He hugged her hard. “We’ll get him, Mom. We’ll get him once and for all.”
“I know. Just make sure you come back to me,” she said.
“I will, just to have another waltz with you,” he said. Then he stepped back. “Besides, I have already programmed the Stagesim to support your concert. Just tell the computer to play Mike program 21 and it will do the rest on cue with your music,” he said. “Call it a little surprise from me to you.”
“You nut. What would I do without you,” she said.
“Get old and senile,” he said. “Waste away at some piano giving lessons to little brats who can’t tell one note from another.”
She poked him in the arm. “I doubt that. Probably find some sexy hunk of a man to sweep me off my feet.”
“Well, I guess I am good for something anyway,” he said with a smile as he lifted her off her feet and carried her up the stairs.
Jim Ramey had streamed the manufactured Catalina onto the lake beside Mike’s house in the early morning hours before sunrise. A team from the Lexington swarmed over the plane filling the oil and fuel tanks and making sure all the systems were working. Captain Dickson even streamed down to watch the progress. Ramey had invited him to take a tour. After a few minutes o
f crawling around the plane, Dickson sat in the pilot’s seat and looked around at the lighted instruments. Ramey sat in the other seat opposite him.
“It’s hard to imagine men used to fly around the planet in craft like this. It’s very ‘hands on’ in just about everything,” Dickson mused.
“She’s a brute,” Ramey said placing his hands on the yoke. “But from all I could see, she was one of the best planes to get a guy back alive. And it has everything we might need.”
“Indeed. I am just a little envious that I am not going with you. Flying through the sky in a plane like this would be a joy.”
“Mike thinks so,” Ramey smiled back. “And after a few hours in the plane, I am getting to enjoy a little flying myself. You should feel those two engines while we take off. It goes right through you.”
“We’ve become so insulated from the power we use; we have become unfamiliar with what it really does. But in a plane like this - you could feel the strength of the engines, the movement around the sky. You were a part of a greater whole,” Dickson mused.
“I’ll admit I have enjoyed it. Maybe after this is over we can take her up for a while and you could see for yourself.”
“Maybe so,” Dickson said. “Until then I will just have to sit back and watch.”
“I feel better that you will be watching what we do. It’s going to get a little lonely out there.”
“We’ll be watching. If something happens unexpectedly, we can have you up here in a flash,” Dickson said.
“Did Wilkes talk to you about his discovery?”
“Yes, and he came up with a good idea too. He intends to follow Mike’s guidelines and I will go along with it. Who knows, it might get the two back to speaking terms.”
“I know. It really pains me to see Mike turn away from his father, even though he was acting like a sot. Mike’s a good boy. I doubt it will last long.”
“I agree, so let’s just hope for the best. Now I must be getting back to the ship,” Dickson said getting up out of the seat. Then he paused and looked back, “But I will hold you to your promise for a flight after this is over,” he said with a smile.
It had taken most of the night for Mike and his crew to complete their training. An hour after they had left, Ashley Wilkes entered simulator number four. Without entering a program, the walls were a mesh of emitters simply giving an indication of the depth of the room itself. He strode to the center of the room.
“Computer, access historical files. I want to talk to someone who was considered what people called an “ace” in the Twentieth Century,” he said.
“There are over 200 individuals in the data banks that meet that description,” the computer responded.
Wilkes thought for a moment. “Modify the search to aces using propeller driven aircraft only. And I want to talk to one that many considered the best of the best, someone that proved himself time and again no matter what task,” he said.
“Programming complete.”
“Then run the program.”
The room changed to an old hangar with a number of World War Two aircraft inside. The doors were open and the field spread out before him. The sun shone brightly in the sky and glinted off the planes on the ramp. An older man walked up wearing an old leather jacket and blue jeans.
“Can I help you partner,” he asked with a thick West Virginia drawl.
Wilkes looked around the hanger but this old coot was the only one there. He looked into the old man’s intense eyes. They seemed to look clear through him. “I was looking for an ace from the war here,” he said.
The man smiled back. “Well, you’re lookin’ at ‘im,” he said. He extended his hand. “Chuck Yeager.”
“Ashley Wilkes. I really need your help with something.”
“What seems to be the problem, Pard?”
Wilkes spent the next 20 minutes explaining what was going on, Mike’s plan and his concerns about the shuttlecraft. “That’s why I asked to speak to an ace - someone who understands airpower. I know space, but not flying aircraft,” Wilkes said.
Yeager thought a moment. “That boy of yours is pretty smart. He’s got a lot of it pretty much thought out. But he does have a problem with those shuttles. The first thing you learn in a conflict is to hedge your bets. You always have ready fighters that can get up in a moment’s notice,” he said. “You can bet the farm that the minute those towers explode, those shuttles will be all over the sky around there.”
“Ok, I can believe that. Now what would you suggest?”
“Why don’t you put a couple of P-51s over that field? With the right pilots they can clear the skies of those space buggies without auguring in or even chipping the paint,” Yeager said.
“What does a P-51 look like?” Wilkes asked.
Yeager gave him a ‘do I have to hold your hand?’ look. “Right over here,” he said motioning toward the opposite end of the hangar.
The men wove their way between the parked aircraft and Yeager finally stopped beside a large single seat plane with a huge four-bladed propeller in the front. The skin was buffed to a shine, almost like a mirror. On the side was a large blue circle with a line extended through the center with a large white star in the center of the circle. Along the wing were the snouts of six fifty-caliber machine guns. The aircraft sat with its tail resting on the ground. A large clear Plexiglas canopy sat on top of the main fuselage. On the nose of the aircraft in bright orange letters were the words “Glamorous Glenn III.”
“This is my girl,” Yeager said patting his hand along the wing. “Trust me. You put a couple of these planes in the air and they’ll sweep the sky.”
“I believe you, Yeager,” Wilkes said, looking at the size of the openings at the end of the guns. “My problem is I can manufacture the plane, but we don’t have the time to teach some of my guys how to fly them,” he said.
“Then you got a problem,” Yeager said. “The P-51 is hell on wings, but with a novice she can auger you into the ground faster than you can blink. This is a real high performance airplane sittin’ here. Now if one of my buddies and I could get there, we could take care of business. But because I’m just a computer generated graphic, I’m stuck right here,” Yeager said pointing toward the ground.
Wilkes thought a moment. There just might be a way. He looked at Yeager. “Well since you are nothing but a computer graphic, I might just be able to get you in an airplane down there. You mentioned a second pilot. Got one in mind?”
Yeager grinned back. “Sure do.” He turned toward the offices behind the aircraft. “Hey Andy! Come out here a second!”
The door of the office opened and a man walked out with silver hair. He walked steady and straight with a lopsided smile that reassured Wilkes.
“This is Bud Anderson. He and I go way back. I figure between us two old tacos we can get the job done,” Yeager said with a grin. They talked a few more minutes and shook hands. Wilkes turned to leave the simulator as the program shut down and was saved. His next step was with the Captain.
Colonel Kenta sat back in his chair and sipped on his drink. The days were getting longer and much more hectic. Troop training schedules had been doubled and patrols along the river and around the perimeter intensified. So far there had been no trouble from either the natives or the Alliance. But Kenta was not lulled into a sense of security. He expected the Alliance to appear at any moment, and when they did, he wanted to be ready. The laser rifles had all been serviced and recharged. The men were trained in how to shoot them. Nothing could withstand that kind of power. The Alliance was much like their former commander. Big space ships and lots of boasting, but he had seen little to indicate they had anything superior to what they had in their inventory. He winced as the pain in his stomach intensified. It always did when he drank his cosgo, an alcoholic drink he had savored from his youth. After a moment, the pain subsided. Just my own nervousness, he thought.
The one thing that brought him joy was seeing how his friend had revived in the past few
days. With the capture of the Alliance child, he had visibly strengthened. He was in control and had the upper hand. Even though the large nations of the north were very powerful indeed, the general was right. They had become flabby and would do nothing to endanger the Alliance boy. Better yet, the assistant consul was bringing examples of Alliance technology to compare with their own. Within a few weeks, they would begin their campaign, first taking control of the other non-aligned nations in the south and then spreading north to eventually take control there. Within six months, a year at the most, General Brana would be ruler of two thirds of the planet’s surface. That would be when he would retire to a rich estate and live in peace.
The pain came back with another sip, but seemed more dulled this time. Kenta slowly exhaled as the pain subsided. He placed the glass down and looked around his room. It was just a simple room with a large closet, sitting area and bathroom. About the only luxury in it was his easy chair. But that is the way it should be for a soldier - sparse, hard, with few luxuries. Those would come later.
He thought for a moment about the little boy. He was a good boy. No whining, no crying, doing what he was told. He would make a good soldier one day. You could tell there was intelligence behind those small blue eyes. They had all known the boy was bored to tears in the small room he was kept in. Only the day before, he had given permission for the boy to accompany the guards on some of their duties. Even they seemed to like taking the boy around.
It was too bad that the boy would probably be a casualty of their operation. Kenta doubted that Brana would let them leave. But at least they were making the boy’s life more pleasant and he would see his father before the end.
Kenta found himself staring at the ceiling, daydreaming. He looked over at his desk and thought about the training schedules and assignments he must approve. With a sigh he got up from his chair and walked over to the desk. He sat down heavily in the hard wooden chair and began signing documents.