by Nick Cook
‘You mean your micro mind ship is trapped in the landing bay?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely. It’s a complete pain in the bum.’
‘Whoa there,’ Jack said. ‘We’re talking about the all-knowing omnipotent super-being called Lucy. Surely you could just hack Delphi’s systems and open the launch bay doors yourself?’
‘I could, but that doesn’t mean that I should, Jack. If I took that step it would be a direct challenge to Alice’s authority. I thought we were in the business of building up a relationship based on mutual trust here?’
‘Yes, of course we are,’ I replied, although in my current mood I was tempted to say to hell with the consequences.
‘Maybe she’ll come round eventually, especially when she’s had time to think it through,’ Jack said.
‘Well, it’s already been two days and she doesn’t seem to be budging even the slightest,’ I said. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact.’
‘I agree,’ Lucy said. ‘If anything, she’s hardened her position on the matter. And at some point the Overseers will recover the Tic Tac and any alien alive or dead on-board. There is some news there. I’m afraid I believe they may be close to finding what they’re looking for.’
‘How could you know that?’ Jack asked.
‘Because…’
The images flashing on the wall screen started to slow down. I began to pick out soldiers and military vehicles as the photos skimmed past, many from social media feeds such as Instagram and Facebook.
‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the searches you’ve had Delphi running, Lauren. As you can see, many of these photos were snapped by locals. And they’ve showed increased military activity in the area, not less. That suggests something has been found out in those woods – or they’re close to doing so. If they get their hands on a downed Tic Tac, you can guarantee it won’t stay there for long. We can’t have much time to get to the crash site before they whisk it away.’
‘Damn, this is so frustrating,’ I said. ‘We bloody well need to do something now.’
‘Well, I’ve got another bit of information that may help. Delphi’s search has just turned up something that might be enough to change Alice’s mind.’
A fluttery feeling filled my stomach. ‘Seriously? What is it?’
‘This…’ Lucy replied.
An Instagram image of a dark wood filled the screen. It took me a moment to spot a pale shape in the gloom as it disappeared behind a tree. It was a human-like figure with a large head and dark almond-shaped eyes.
I put my hands over my mouth. ‘Oh my god,’ I said through my fingers.
‘Is that an alien?’ Jack asked, his forehead ridging as he peered at the image.
I turned to him, my eyes wide. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely. That’s a Grey alien, the same species that’s rumoured to have been on-board the crashed UFO at Roswell.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’
‘Nope. That image fits every description there’s ever been of them. But are you sure this isn’t a fake, Lucy?’
‘Checking that now…’ Lots of tiny squares appeared over the image, flicking round like a swarm of flies. ‘No, I’m not seeing any composite artefacts that would indicate this has been faked.’
‘So not Photoshopped in other words?’ Jack asked.
‘Basically yes. Although this could, of course, be an elaborate piece of disinformation deliberately put out there by the Overseers. Perhaps a child dressed in a bodysuit. However, it’s highly unlikely they would want this level of publicity. This photo will attract every UFO hunter in the whole world – the very last thing the Overseers will want at such a sensitive time.’
‘Where and when was this taken?’ Jack asked.
‘Last night in an area called Egyptian Hills just to the south of Lake Crest.’
A buzzing sense of anticipation grew inside me. ‘Have you got any more evidence we can put in front of Alice to try to change her mind?’
‘Nothing yet, but I’ll continue to keep an eye on Delphi’s searches.’
‘Then this will have do,’ I said. ‘Let’s call a meeting with the team and show this to Alice. Maybe a united front from us will make her rethink her decision.’
‘A genuine Grey sighting has to tip the balance,’ Jack said. ‘And if we managed to find the Tic Tac before the Overseers, it could change everything. Even Alice has to see that.’
I beamed at him. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this.’
‘Yeah, me too.’
Together we headed for the door.
‘Absolutely not!’ Alice said as she sat at the head of the meeting-room table, once again staring me down.
‘But how can you say no to this?’ I said. ‘We have what looks like a genuine sighting of a Grey – who presumably escaped the crashed Tic Tac. And you can bet the Overseers will be on its tail. We need to get in there and rescue it before they find it, or you can guarantee they’ll disappear it away to whatever facility it is they use for studying these things.’
Mike nodded. ‘And with so many people swarming into the area because of this sighting, we’d be a lot less conspicuous now.’
Niki placed the tips of his fingers together. ‘Certainly from a mission-profile perspective this helps to reduce the risk.’
‘But not completely,’ Alice said. ‘And with the exception of Ruby, Lauren’s team will all be on the Overseers’ watch list.’
‘Maybe so, but they’ll be expecting them to turn up at the micro mind site, not chasing an alien sighting,’ Jodie said.
Alice nodded. ‘Exactly.’
I gave her a puzzled look. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘They won’t be expecting you there because it’s not your team’s priority, whereas locating the next micro mind is. That’s my point.’
‘OK then, how about this,’ Jack said. ‘Rather than us, Niki could send another security team in to recover the alien, as we’ve discussed before.’
But Niki was already shaking his head. ‘We’re already fully stretched with our intelligence-gathering missions as we try to locate the next micro mind.’
I nodded. ‘Then it’ll have to be us.’
Alice crossed her arms. ‘So what would you have me do? Give up on trying to find the next micro mind, so you can go alien hunting? Or do I have my priorities the wrong way round here? You tell me.’
I glowered at her. ‘You’re making this an either/or decision. But it doesn’t have to be like that. You could even just send one person.’
‘It’s got to be worth a shot,’ Ruby said.
‘No, this conversation is already over,’ Alice replied. ‘We need to keep focused on the bigger priorities. The chances of you successfully finding this Grey are minimal, especially as the Overseers already have the whole area crawling with military. Never mind the other UFO hunters looking for it out there.’
I felt my face growing cold as a simmering feeling of fury started to take hold of me again. ‘You don’t know that, Alice. Besides, we have Lucy on our side. She has to tip the odds in our favour of us finding that Grey before anyone else.’
Alice gave me a hard stare. ‘And what it Lucy gets shot down? As so nearly happened in the encounter with the Astra fleet? Do you really want to chase a whim and endanger this entire world’s future?’
The chill turned to heat in my blood as I stood up and leant my hands on the table. ‘You know full bloody well this has nothing to do with a whim. I’m sorry, but you’re letting your personal feelings get in the way of your decision-making process.’
The colour drained from Alice’s face as she stared at me.
Everyone’s eyes flicked between us as if we were two tennis players on a court smashing the ball at each other.
A ruby blush began to spread up Alice’s throat towards her ears. She gave me the barest headshake, turned her wheelchair round and disappeared out through the door. This had so become a thing of hers – to leave a room when she was in the middle of an argument.
; But as I watched her go, a bubble of guilt rose up through me, despite my anger. I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned her personal feelings, but I couldn’t help myself. Now there’d be no hope of getting Alice to reverse her decision.
‘Can someone tell me what just happened?’ Niki asked, peering at me.
‘You’d better take it up with Alice,’ I replied, trying to avoid his searchlight gaze.
‘I see…then if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see what I can do in terms of damage limitation.’ Niki got up and walked after Alice.
‘Well, that went well,’ Lucy said from her monitor screen.
‘But we can’t just sit by and let that Grey be captured,’ Mike said.
‘Then we do something,’ Lucy said.
‘How exactly?’ Jack asked. ‘It’s not as if we can get out of here.’
‘I know Ariel is out of commission, but what if we borrowed another craft?’ Mike asked.
‘As speed is of the essence, we would be better off in an X101 rather than an Armadillo. Just saying,’ Ruby said, a slow smile filling her face.
‘That would be great apart from the fact Alice has all the landing bay doors locked down,’ Jack said.
‘A well-placed C4 charge could sort that out,’ Mike said.
‘Hey, respect, buddy,’ Ruby said as she fist-bumped him.
‘No one is bloody blowing anything up around here,’ I said.
‘Tsk, tsk, will everyone please calm down?’ Lucy said. ‘Look, the locked bay doors won’t be a problem if we really are going to do this.’
My eyes snapped to her. ‘But what about everything you said about building trust?’
‘Oh, Lauren, I’ll burn that bridge if I have to – if you are determined to do this. And with all due respect to my AI sister, Delphi, I can easily hack round her security protocols. I can also give you full access to any craft you want to take for this little day trip.’
‘You can, but do you really think that you should, Lucy?’ Mike asked.
‘Well, gorgeous, of course I do. But this decision has to be everybody’s.’
I looked at us all gathered round the table. ‘What do you say, guys? Let’s see a show of hands if you think we should do it…’
Hand after hand went up, including Lucy’s, until we finally got to Ruby.
She chewed her gum. ‘You realise I’m not exactly thrilled to be disobeying Alice, or Niki, who is effectively my commanding officer?’
‘I don’t think I heard anyone issue you a direct order, Niki included,’ Jodie said, smiling.
‘Hey, good point.’ A grin filled Ruby’s face and she stuck her hand up. ‘Let’s do this, amigos.’
Chapter Eleven
We headed along the red-painted corridor that indicated this was a restricted area, with Ruby and Mike taking the lead and Jack and me at the rear. Jodie had gone off, saying she had something we should take on the mission with us.
I felt certain that my supposedly relaxed expression was actually shouting, Hey, look at us, we’re about to steal an X101! But apart from the odd nod and smile from a couple of technicians we ran into, no one tried to grab any of us in an attempt at a citizen’s arrest.
We’d already stopped off at the weapons locker and suitably equipped ourselves. Mike had insisted on bringing a dart gun, nothing lethal as he had a strong moral aversion to killing anyone, to which Ruby had raised her eyebrows. I had my trusty Mossad .22 LRS pistol for whatever we might run into. Ruby had given me a look of respect. She’d helped herself to a sniper rifle that broke down into parts and was now stowed in her rucksack. According to her, with it she could shoot the ‘’nads off a gnat at eight hundred yards’. That probably wasn’t an idle boast, coming from her, our very own weapon expert.
I immediately tensed as I spotted a surveillance camera pointing straight at us when we reached a junction in the corridor.
‘Lucy, please tell me you’ve got that camera sorted?’ I said into a discreet mic clipped on the collar of my jacket.
‘Yes, all over it like a bad case of nappy rash,’ she replied through the earbud I was wearing. The small electronic device was placed so deep into my ear canal, no one else would notice it with a casual look.
‘How so exactly?’ Jack asked. He and the others were wearing matching earbuds, set to a private channel to avoid anyone eavesdropping.
‘Right now anyone from Niki’s team who happens to be looking at that camera’s feed will see nothing but an empty corridor,’ Lucy replied. There was a pause. ‘Ah…’
‘Don’t ah us! What is it?’ I asked.
‘You’re about to get company. Two guards are heading straight towards the junction you’re nearing from the left-hand side.’
Ruby glanced back at me. ‘Will you guys please look more chilled? Otherwise they’ll know something is off right away. What did the hurricane say to the coconut tree?’
‘Huh?’ Jack said.
‘You heard me. What did the hurricane say to the coconut tree?’
We all gave Ruby a blank look.
She grinned at us. ‘Hold on to your nuts – this ain’t no ordinary blow job.’
Mike and Jack laughed hard as the two security guards rounded the corner. The taller of the two stuck his hand up to stop us as they approached our group.
‘Hey, you shouldn’t be down here unless you’ve had security clearance.’
Still grinning, Ruby turned back towards him. ‘Hey, Alex, my man. It’s all cool. I’m doing some X101 training with the newbies here.’ She hitched her thumb back over her shoulder at the rest of us.
Role playing or not, I had to suppress a spike of irritation. I’d give her newbies.
‘Don’t tell me, you haven’t bothered to fill in the paperwork?’ the shorter guy said.
I recognised him as one of Ruby’s drinking buddies from the Rock Garden.
‘Nope, sorry, Craig. But I promise I’ll do it immediately afterwards.’
‘I’ll still need to see some sort of authorisation, or you know Niki will give me hell.’
‘I’m on it,’ Lucy whispered into our ears. ‘Get him to check on his radio for a security clearance.’
Ruby gave the guards a straight look. ‘Just call it in and you’ll see we’ve got clearance.’
Craig nodded and unclipped his radio. ‘Hey, I have Ruby and three others from her team in Launch Bay Twelve. Have they got authorisation to be down here?’
‘That’s affirmative,’ Niki’s voice replied. ‘All part of a training exercise.’
Jack traded a discreet wide-eyed glance with me.
‘OK, understood,’ Craig said.
Ruby crossed her arms. ‘Told you.’
‘Yeah, you did. So go and knock yourself out with an X101. What were you all laughing about just now?’
‘Oh, that old joke about coconut trees and blow jobs.’
Both security guards laughed. ‘Same old Ruby.’
‘Yep, that’s me,’ she replied, grinning. She snapped a mock salute as we headed past them.
Despite the smile I managed to give both men I only felt myself relaxing when we rounded the corner and were out of their view.
‘Lucy, that was one hell of a good impression of Niki,’ Mike said into his lapel mic.
‘Yep, I am so multitalented I should be on the stage,’ Lucy replied.
‘Maybe you should,’ Mike said, shaking his head at us.
At the end of the red corridor was a heavy-duty circular blast-style door with the number twenty-three stencilled across it in white. Next to it was an electronic security pad. We hadn’t even reached it when the numbers on the pad started lighting up by themselves.
‘Let me deal with the door for you,’ Lucy said.
A moment later clonking came from the lock and the door rolled sideways, disappearing into the wall.
‘Nicely done, Lucy,’ I said.
‘No problem at all, my little sunflower.’
Ruby snorted.
I glowered at the back of R
uby’s neck as we stepped through the doorway into a circular launch bay. The door rolled back into place and the locking mechanism clunked.
On the landing pads at the bottom of the launch shaft before us stood two X101s, the high-speed reconnaissance electric-powered aircraft of Sky Dreamer Corp. The nearest one had its cargo doors already open. There was a third craft on a landing pad too: an Armadillo, a heavily armoured and larger variant.
‘I would say take an Armadillo,’ Ruby said, ‘but as speed really is of the essence we’d better go for an X101,’ Ruby said. She gestured towards a large closed metal door to the side of the launch bay. ‘That’s the store containing kit needed for field missions. Lucy, any chance you can deal with its lock too?’
‘Do you really need to ask?’ Lucy replied.
There was a clanking sound and the heavy metal door swung open.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to set to work on opening that launch bay door,’ Lucy said.
‘Great, I’ll get the X101 ready for take-off whilst you guys go and grab what you need,’ Ruby replied.
Jack leant towards me. ‘Just remind me who is in charge of this mission?’
‘Don’t worry, I can so handle her,’ I replied, but I knew I might have an issue on my hands. Ruby was exactly the sort of person to take over given half the chance. But, as I’d learnt from the Machu Picchu mission, I needed to find a balance between listening and telling people what to do. Leaning too far one way or the other would piss people off.
I turned to Jack and Mike. ‘Let’s get loaded up. We need to be ready for anything.’
They both nodded as we walked into the store. Much to my delight, inside were racks of equipment filled with every type of clothing imaginable, from body armour to wetsuits and everything in between. There were also racks of field rations and extensive medical kits. At the back of the store, behind a very solid steel door, were boxes of extra ammo and heavy steel containers full of grenades.
‘This place is a prepper’s dream,’ Jack said, gesturing at everything around us.