The Final Call

by Craig A. Falconer

  President Slater stepped forward to ‘explain’ everything to him while Tara looked around in wide-eyed shock, a far more natural actor than Dan would ever be. Emma wasn’t there and neither was Clark, so she joined Dan near the podium.

  Dan stepped forward after hearing what the day was all about and delivered a few well-practiced lines to summarise his time on New Kerguelen and to stress the point that the Messengers were keen to engage in full diplomatic relations moving forward. This went down well with everyone, from the media to the politicians, but things stepped up a gear when he called the Messengers out from the craft and they made themselves visible.

  None of the attendant politicians other than John Cole had ever seen an alien up close and personal, but all were aware of the power of this moment and called on their lifetimes of experience to look calm even if they weren’t.

  “My brain is back to normal,” Dan said. “No more of the finger-zapping power they gave me that night, and I’ll be happy to take any kind of tests regarding that. Our friends from New Kerguelen are likewise content to be tested — respectfully and non-invasively — particularly in the hope of developing a reliable translation device to enable deep conversation with no requirement of ongoing physical connectivity.”

  “Dan,” William Godfrey said, stepping towards the microphone with Slater’s permission. “President Slater just informed you about the new ICA that’s just been announced, as well as its primary goals and operational structure. But a few minutes before you arrived, she also announced something that wasn’t in that short recap.”

  Slater, in on this innocently-motivated stunt, was tremendously glad that Godfrey had seized this opportunity for a few minutes in the brightest of all global spotlights. She could act and she could lie — after all, her ascent to the top level of American politics had involved little else — but Godfrey’s surprise was altogether more natural.

  “And what’s that?” Dan asked. By this point, he had encouraged the Messengers, who were also in on everything, to shake hands with the attendant leaders. These images were incredible and would be replayed endlessly around the world, but Dan did a good job of pretending to be intrigued about a ‘surprise’ job offer he had already decided to accept.

  After lies and deceit had done so much damage in recent years, Dan almost felt as though he was drawing a line under everything by making this whole thing as perfect as possible with the whitest of all lies and deftest of all deceits.

  There was no guilty conscience, because no one was losing out and he wasn’t doing anything wrong. As Emma framed it, in fact, Dan was doing something very right by leaving his traditional insistence on ‘hard truth, no matter what’ to one side and instead publicly returning to Earth in a way that would minimise any threat of future conflict while more immediately bringing warmth and joy to billions.

  “National representatives have already voted overwhelmingly to offer you the position of the ICA’s Chief Planetary Liaison,” Godfrey grinned. “Given your present company and your revelation that they are seeking diplomatic relations, I’m hopeful your decision is an easy one.”

  Dan smiled right back and raised a thumb to the cameras. “I guess I’ll give it a shot.”

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  V plus 9

  Stevenson Farm

  Eastview, Colorado

  Although dubbed the wedding of the century by a celebrity-obsessed media which had been longing for this day since the unlikely coupling first became news, the matrimonial union of Dan McCarthy and Emma Ford was a deliberately low-key affair.

  Their lives had been a whirlwind in the months since Arrival Day, as the monumental day when not one but two alien motherships arrived on Earth had come to be known. Dan’s position as the ICA’s Chief Planetary Liaison brought incredible media responsibilities for the first few weeks in particular, and since then he had been back and forth to New York on multiple occasions to oversee votes on several resolutions. The most interesting and headline-grabbing of these regarded the upcoming assistance mission to New Kerguelen which would see an extensive international team of engineers and scientists directly assess the planet’s so-called Great Shelter before returning shortly thereafter to assist in its repair.

  Four humans currently lived on New Kerguelen as ambassadors, two leading scientists from former GCC members states and two from former ELF nations. The GCC and ELF no longer functioned as they once had, with both having been consumed by the ICA in a manner that wasn’t completely unlike when Earth’s major national space agencies had been consumed by the ill-fated GSC.

  With the ELF serving as the ICA’s Eastern division and the GCC its counterpart in the West, there was no longer a need for John Cole’s previous position of ELF Western Secretary. As someone with a foot in both camps — trusted by Ding for joining the ELF in the first place and trusted by Western leaders for the role he played in subduing Jack Neal during his discussions with the Squadron — Cole had hoped to be selected as one of the ICA’s ambassadors to New Kerguelen.

  This was unacceptable for obvious reasons, primarily Cole’s well-earned reputation for making culturally offensive faux pas and rash decisions, and it took an intervention from William Godfrey to talk him out of applying for the role. Godfrey promised to assist Cole in a return to frontline British politics, something the latter wanted more than anything but knew he couldn’t successfully pursue without his former boss’s support.

  Crisis after crisis had conveniently befallen the lame duck Prime Minister David Hearst in the interim, and Cole was simply biding his time until Hearst — a non-entity on the international stage and barely viewed with any more respect at home — finally bit the dust.

  Two very special guests of honour sat in the front row alongside Emma and Dan’s closest friends and family, and no one was in any doubt that this would be the first human wedding attended by extraterrestrials.

  Dan thought it might have been funny to talk the familiar Messengers into wearing specially tailored tuxedos, but although Emma laughed at the idea she quickly vetoed it. The tunics were simply what the Messengers wore; as she told him, anything else would just look wrong.

  The wedding wasn’t an official state occasion or even a particularly large gathering, but it was exactly what they both wanted. The small guest list was one of few compromises, with the only individuals present who weren’t close friends or family being the un-omittable William Godfrey and Ding Ziyang — Dan’s colleagues at the ICA — as well as the increasingly amiable President Slater.

  Clark was Dan’s best man, of course, and Tara Emma’s maid of honour. Their budding and potentially life-complicating romance was the best-kept secret in Colorado, with an unbreakable agreement in place to keep it from Dan and Emma until after they returned from their honeymoon at the very least. After three months it felt like anything but a casual fling, but it still wouldn’t have been fair to do anything to distract from the wedding until it was all in the rear-view.

  There was no commercial media presence in Eastview and an exclusion zone was in force around Phil Norris’s property, with drone-watchers on duty and a bounty on offer for any they successfully spotted in the skies overhead.

  A large public security operation was also underway, even though the once-troublesome group of anti-contact terrorists known as GeoSovs had been positively routed by a unified international crackdown that left no stone unturned and left nothing to chance. Contacts and text messages from Jack Neal’s phone provided many initial leads that exposed the GeoSovs’ global web of cells and sympathisers, and Poppy Bradshaw was now just one of several hundred incarcerated former members having been caught red-handed by a string of messages which confirmed her involvement in the plot to take President Slater hostage.

  Tara, for her part, had firmly requested that those who knew about her own kidnapping kept it to themselves. As she told the few who knew, the last thing she wanted to do was live her life as a victim in everyone else’s eyes — she had survived Jack Neal’s
demented scheme, and she refused to be defined by it.

  As the wedding ceremony continued, it became clear to the guests that the couple had written their own vows. Emma delivered hers first in a voice that almost sounded nervous, which made the sweet words all the sweeter in Dan’s ears.

  His second thought, after how wonderful they were, was that his own were going to struggle to follow them.

  “It really wasn’t easy figuring out the best way to word everything I want to say,” he began, glad he’d decided to open with some humour, “mainly because my usual speechwriter has been tied up with a project of her own.”

  Emma’s lips crinkled in amusement. She wore a one-of-a-kind TARA COUTURE dress, modern and elegant, which would become an instant classic.

  “It’s also difficult to know where to start,” Dan went on, “because the world has thrown a lot at us in the past two years. And when that wasn’t enough, the universe decided to throw a comet at us, too!”

  Clark roared in laughter, wondering where the hell Dan had found all of these lines.

  “But we didn’t just survive everything that came our way. No… we got stronger, and we got closer. When you said yes, I thought I had everything I wanted. When I found out we’re going to have a family, I knew that’s everything I’ll ever want. I’m the luckiest man in the world, and you make me happier than anyone has any right to be. The last thing I want to say is this: People always say we should count our blessings, and I’ve tried and tried and tried. But as soon as I get to one, there’s nowhere left to go… because Emma Ford, you’re the only blessing I’ll ever need.”

  Emma tried not to cry and almost succeeded. She was glad she had gone first, at least, knowing now that she otherwise couldn’t have gotten many words out without blubbering.

  Under the watchful eyes of the warring politicians they’d brought together and the visitors from another world they’d introduced to their own, Dan and Emma looked only at each other as they waited patiently for the I do’s.

  They felt at home among the friends and family who had helped them through so much — from Henry, Phil and Mr Byrd to the quiet but loyal Timo Fiore, as well as the friendly faces of Billy Kendrick and Trey Myers who were visiting from well out of town — and if such a bright future wasn’t coming their way they would have wished to freeze this perfect moment in time.

  The crystal clear sky overhead would come alive as an ocean full of stars when the day turned to night and the party kicked into gear, and there was nowhere either of them would rather be than under it together.

  When they both said “I do”, Dan felt like pinching himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Another part of him didn’t want to take the risk just in case he really was, such was the disbelieving gratitude he felt in the moment.

  With the verbal commitments made and barely a dry eye to be seen, only one thing remained.

  At the edge of a cornfield where everything had changed more than once, the biggest and best change of Dan McCarthy’s life was happening right now. There was no better place to make the step from one life to another, he thought; no better place to embrace a future brighter than any he’d ever dreamed possible.

  This thought and every other was soon consumed by the warmth that flooded over him as Emma Ford’s lips parted only slightly and she whispered two words as they moved in for the kiss:

  “Hashtag blessed.”

  Author’s Notes

  Thanks for reading Not Alone: The Final Call.

  At over half a million words, this trilogy was a major undertaking. I wrote the first book on faith, not knowing what kind of audience it would find or how it would be received, and within a few short months I was blown away by its success. I’m still humbled by all the kind words people have sent my way and posted in reviews since then, and I’m grateful for every single one.

  Writing Second Contact brought a lot of pressure but I enjoyed every minute, and the same was true with The Final Call. This time there was some added pressure of knowing that the end of this book was also the end of the series. I wanted to take you to New Kerguelen and I wanted to give Dan and Emma the ending they deserved, so I hope those last few chapters have left a smile on your face after the roller coaster that led us there.

  One thing I always steered away from in this trilogy was playing it safe. The initial revelation of the hoax in Not Alone drew some fairly strongly worded comments from readers who at the time felt like I had deceived them in the same way Richard Walker deceived Dan, but we all know now that the meeting with the real Messengers wasn’t too far away. In Second Contact I stuck with my long-held plan for the Il Diavolo’s cometary threat despite not knowing if some readers might find that too much of a departure from the core ‘alien’ aspects of the story. Again, though, we know that it all came full circle.

  The story you’ve just read is the story I had in mind for The Final Call all along, but in writing it I did have to push aside two specific doubts:

  1) Could New Kerguelen ever live up to the expectations that have built up in readers’ minds over the course of three long books?

  2) Would readers see Dan’s newly granted powers of telepathy and telekinesis as too fantastical?

  But rather than side-step the doubts by leaving those interesting elements out, I tried to face them head-on by making the story as exciting as I could at every turn while staying true to the original vision.

  In a world of social media and reality TV where attention spans are supposedly shrinking by the week, you’re here at the end of a long sci-fi trilogy and you’re still reading my notes. That was what I kept in mind when doubts tried to creep in: you liked what I’d written so far, and you weren’t going to roll your eyes and close the book if a new story development seemed too ‘out there’ at first glance. I knew you would let the story play out, trusting that I knew where I was going, and now I can only hope that you found the journey worthwhile.

  When I sat down to write Not Alone in 2015, I wanted to give readers more than they expected. I sit here four years later knowing that I gave each book my all and hoping that you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.

  I really appreciate that you gave the first book a chance and stuck with me to the end. Please consider sharing your thoughts with other readers by reviewing the books on Amazon, and please also know that I’d love to hear from you.

  For updates on my writing and future books, you can sign up to my email newsletter by clicking here.

  You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook via the links below, and for far more personal interaction and discussion you can join my Facebook fan/reader group by clicking here.

  Thanks again, and keep watching those stars!

  Craig A. Falconer

  Scotland, May 2019

  www.craigafalconer.com