by Trent Falls
It was then that a low rumbling caught his ear. It was a rolling baritone growl from the sky – and it was getting louder. The source of the sound seemed to change as the roar grew louder.
John looked up to the sky and saw the source of the sound. Two atmospheric jet fighters, likely Xen in origin, were flying in lead / wing man formation. The jets were taking a long bank across the sky and were slowly descending. The shape of the jets grew more recognizable as they flew closer. They were descending and on their way towards John. They were Xen fighters.
John realized very quickly what was happening. He was paralyzed with fear. The jets were too close for him to escape the inevitable. A pair of oblong canisters fell from the wings of both jets; four canisters in total. The dumb ordinance fell with gravity alone, toppling end over end on their way to John. John knew exactly what the canisters were. He whimpered, knowing that he had no chance to survive the attack.
The four napalm canisters hurtled towards John. He had seconds to live.
“NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” John awoke in terror in his chair, his eyes shooting open in the same panic he experienced as a child in his dream.
“What the fuck?!?” a twenty something man with dark hair pulled a gun on John.
John’s eyes remained wide open. For a fraction of a second he could still see the napalm canisters falling. Where was he? He looked around at the rows of seats around him. They were all steel framed and covered in blue fabric. He was in an airliner. No. As he turned his head to the right he could see the cabin was much too short. He was in an interstellar transport, a shorter Class 2 passenger ship. Less cabin, more engine – greater speed.
“Put that fucking thing away.” An aged man with a short beard scolded the younger man pointing the gun at John. “You’re going to shoot a hole in the dam ship.”
John’s eyes followed the man with the beard. He looked to be in his mid forties, probably the same age as John. His dark beard was well kept, as was his hair. He seemed to take deep breaths as he moved, as though he was worn down and tired. His face showed some age as well and a bit of acne scarring from his youth.
John’s eyes shot around again, this time in more desperation. He found Julie sitting a few seats away in the row he was sitting in. She was looking at him with a severely worried expression on her face.
What was wrong? How did they get there? The lightning gun. It was a stun weapon.
John looked Julie over quickly. She seemed to be okay. Nothing seemed bruised or broken. Aside from the concern on her face she seemed okay. John saw, though, that her right hand was handcuffed to the hand rest of her chair.
John raised his right arm quickly only to have it stop short by a painful steel clamp on his wrist. He was also handcuffed to his chair. His left was shackled as well.
“Don’t worry, no one here is going to hurt you.” The man with the beard replied in a baritone voice.
John scanned the cabin again. The man that had pulled the gun on him had replaced the pistol in a holster at the right side of his leg. Three others, all younger than the man with the beard, were interspersed through the cabin. They were all wearing simple black fatigues. One was working over a very large nylon sack near the front of the cabin. He was stuffing gear into the sack. One piece of gear was a section of the silvery white armor John remembered from the attack at the spaceport.
He was remembering.
Others in the mercenary crew were seated far away in other chairs in the cabin. One of the black fatigued men sitting two rows back and several seats to the starboard was reading a book. ‘Candide’ by Voltaire? John’s eyes shot back to Julie.
“You okay?” John asked her with the true concern of a parent.
Julie nodded her head slightly. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“We’re not going to hurt you.” The man with the beard repeated.
John’s attention turned back towards the man with the beard. If he could only get up out of that chair. “Who hired you?”
“I don’t talk business with the objectives.” The man with the beard smirked.
“Was it Euler? Come on. Tell me.” John demanded.
“I said I don’t do small talk. I only do what I’m hired to do.” The man with the beard replied.
“You’re a marine. You were in the war. I can tell. You’re fucking one of your own. You know that, right?” John glared at him.
“Don’t give me that shit! You’re a schoolteacher, John.” The man with the beard smirked knowingly. “The war’s over. You being a history teacher should know that after the war’s over it’s all about making money. And I’m making money!”
John took a deep agitated breath. He didn’t like that this man knew so much about him.
“So what was up with the stun rifles?” John asked. “Why not use live ammo? I’m guessing whoever wanted you to nab us wanted us alive.”
“Pretty observant” the man with the beard smirked with a bit of sarcasm. “No, we weren’t anxious to kill cops. That wasn’t part of the deal. And we have assurances that neither of you will be harmed. That was part of our deal as well. When this is over you will both be returned to Earth safely.”
“Who told you that? The Xen?” John stared at the man with the beard.
The man with the beard didn’t reply. He simply stared at John for a while and walked away. John watched him and his men. They looked to be getting ready to leave. Two of the men were packing their gear into giant black nylon duffle bags. The man with the beard walked over to his two subordinates to make sure all was going well.
John took the opportunity to look over at Julie, again making sure that she was okay.
“You sure you’re alright?” John asked his niece quietly.
“Yes.” Julie replied in a nervous hushed tone. “I’m fine.”
John’s eyes jumped around the cabin to see if he was being watched. “What happened to Alex?” he asked in a low tone.
Julie mouthed the words rather than speaking ‘He got away.’
“You sure?” John pressed her silently.
Julie nodded.
John took a deep breath. He tested the cuffs on his right wrist. They were solid; police issue steel cuffs. The steel frame arms of the chair were also sturdy. John didn’t have any kind of tools to pick the lock.
He looked around the cabin. All of the signs and lettering within the cabin was in Russian. He knew the style of ship he was in but not the model. He had been out of the colonies a long time. He used to be able to tell what kind of ship he was in usually after a few minutes. Of course, the number of ship and the number of ship makers had probably tripled in the last ten years. All the same there was nothing he could see in the cabin that would help him.
“You think they’ll really let us go when this is all over?” Julie asked plainly as she looked out at the black uniformed mercs working near the cabin exit.
“I don’t know sweetie.” John exhaled deeply. He looked down for a moment and shook his head. “I’m sorry you got involved in all of this.”
Julie looked over at her uncle. She seemed to have a cool, almost emotionless expression. “It’s okay. You did your best. We’re still here anyway, aren’t we? Still alive?”
John stared at Julie for a while. Something in her seemed tougher. Maybe she was just overwhelmed and tired. Maybe she had become numb to all the chaos around her.
“We’ll get out of this.” John renewed his own optimism aloud while reassuring her. “I know we’ll get out of this.”
The man with the beard appeared again from the passage ahead of the cockpit. He carried out two more short black duffle bags and set them next to the pile of gear they had near the starboard door hatch.
“Where you guys taking us anyway?” John ventured to ask aloud, looking directly at the man with the bead.
“We’re not taking you anywhere.” The man with the beard replied. “We got a ride coming for us. We don’t really know where you’re going. That wasn’t part of the deal.” The man with the beard
continued working over their gear. He pointed out one of the black bags to one of his younger subordinates. “No, no! Make sure that’s secure.”
The younger merc adjusted a strap on the bag.
“No, that one too.”
The younger merc adjusted a second strap.
“God knows we don’t want our gear flying every which way in a cargo hold!” the man with the beard walked back towards the short passage leading to the cockpit.
The four foot wide passage to the cockpit was very short, probably six to eight feet in length, covered in aged white panel coverings. A door slid open at the end of the hall for a moment. John could hear one of the pilots counting down – in Xen. The door shut again, cutting off the sound of cockpit noise.
An old Russian transport shuttle piloted by Xen; John would have found the idea strange a week or so earlier.
The Russian transport ship was shaped like an elongated box. Its topside panels were long and tapered out into an angle, as though the box had been compressed on one side. Three large drum shaped main engines pushed the vessel forward through space.
Another ship was pulling along side of the transport. It looked like a large submarine with a cluster of six large hexagonal pulse thrusters at its back. The sub-shaped vessel pulled up cautiously alongside the Russian transport. Over the course of a few miles, a few seconds, they matched speed. A tall docking collar extended out from the side of the grey sub-shaped transport. The collar had a wide padded border, allowing a soft initial contact. Powerful magnets within the ring energized once the soft seal was attached, pulling the collar in tighter against the Russian transports hull.
A green light went on within the Russian transport near the inside of the outer hatch door. The man with the beard’s face was partially illuminated green by the light, revealing a bit ore of the detail of the old acne scaring on his face. He depressed a red button on a call box set into the wall. “We’re good to go.”
The door to the cockpit slid open again, allowing the noise within to filter back into the cabin again. A pair of voices said a few words to one another. One voice spoke with a Xen accent. The other was a familiar human voice.
John’s eyes widened, taking on an angry glare as Scott Euler walked into the cabin from the passageway. With him was Lieutenant Zao in a blue-grey Xen flight jumpsuit. John held his angry gaze at Scott. Euler walked up to John, maneuvering to stand in the next row in front of him.
Euler pulled back and punched John in the face. John’s head spun with the blow. Julie yelped at the sight of it.
“That’s for Andrew Rochette.” Euler noted, glaring down at John as he rubbed his knuckles.
The blow caused John to cut the inside of his cheek against a tooth. He spit out the blood onto the cheap industrial carpeting of the cabin. He looked back up at Euler again with a small cut on his cheek.
“If I wasn’t chained up I would return the favor.” John sneer at Euler.
“I see you boys have some catching up to do.” the man with the beard smirked. “See y’all later.”
The man with the beard pushed the release for the hatch. The seal hissed before the inner door of the airlock slid open. The lights of the interior of the short lock illuminated its white panel walls red. The outer door hissed open, allowing his men to start hauling their gear out through the collar tunnel.
Euler continued to stare at John as the man with the beard and his men continued to haul their equipment out of the ship. They stared each other down until the black uniformed mercenaries finished hauling off their gear. The man with the beard was the last to leave, pausing at the open hatch to the airlock.
“Our business here is concluded then?” the man with the beard noted to Euler.
“Yes.” Euler concurred without taking his eyes of John.
“See ya around then.” The man with the beard said finally, pulling himself through the airlock hatch and sealing the door behind him.
With the mercenaries gone, only John, Julie, Euler, and Zao remained in the cabin. Julie’s blue eyes turned to look quietly at her uncle, then over towards Euler.
“The greatest discovery by humankind… and you and Dekker hold out on us.” Euler noted with great disappointment.
“You killed Max Dekker!” John growled back to him in an accusatory tone. “You and your new buddies killed him and everyone on his ranch.”
“We gave him the opportunity to come peacefully.” Euler noted. “He had a considerable defensive posture. Things got out of hand.”
“His ranch was on the edge of the frontier! Of course it was well-defended!” John argued harshly.
“What’s done is done.” Euler noted finally.
“And kidnapping my niece?!? What did you think you’d accomplish with that?!?”
“When the word reaps the benefits of contact with an advanced alien race, no one will mind the means used to attain that knowledge.” Euler argued.
“The Norn? Come on, Scott! The Norn are a myth! You’re digging yourself in deep over a daydream!” John pushed him back.
“DON’T INSULT ME AND TREAT ME LIKE A FUCKING MORON , JOHN!!!” Euler screamed, taking a step forward to stick his face at John’s. “We’ve seen Dekker’s memories! We know about the guardian! The rock creatures! Noah Bradley! All of it!!!”
“What are you talking about?” John asked with apparently genuine confusion. “We went looking for Lyle Ramirez. Bradley died on the expedition. We found nothing. That’s it! You think we found the Norn?!?”
“I know you found them, John! I know they exist! Shit, I saw you there!” Euler raged back with certainty. “I wouldn’t have gone this far if I wasn’t sure they existed!”
“No, here’s what happened, Scott.” John argued. “You discovered what you thought was a Norn artifact. You took this evidence to the EEF and they shut you down because, well, searching for the Norn is a fool’s errand. You then took this information to the Xen high council. You convinced them to back this expedition. They spent a lot of money on you and your mercs – dedicated lots of resources. You’re pressured to produce results, so you strong-arm Dekker. His people are well armed and chaos ensues. Yet despite all this Dekker tells you nothing because the Norn are a fucking myth and he has nothing to tell you. So you send Rochette to Earth to try and recruit me. When I say no you up and decide to kidnap Julie to get me to cooperate.” John looked at Euler then at Zao. “Am I right?”
Zao raised an eyebrow silently. It was a remarkable story by John as much of it was accurate compared to what had happened.
Euler let John’s words sink in. They were a bit frightening in their accuracy. For a second Euler allowed himself to wonder if he was, in fact, wrong about the existence of the Norn. He took a deep breath, lowering his eyes and then raising them again to meet John’s.
“Well, whatever the case, we have the coordinates of the planet.” Euler grinned. “We’re to rendezvous with the Xen vessels already searching that system. We’ll soon find out who’s right.”
John took a deep breath to vent his frustration. “You’re wasting your time. We didn’t find anything on that planet.”
Euler walked away from John towards the front of the cabin. A small screen stood at the front of the cabin mounted to a wall covered in light brown fabric panels.
“You know, I blame myself.” Euler looked away and smiled. “I should have gone to talk to you myself. Rochette wasn’t the best salesman. I think I could have made you believe if I had gone to Earth instead of him.”
“I would have told you ‘no’ all the same.” John replied flatly. “I was happy on Earth. Content. I was done with all of this business years ago.”
“Don’t treat me like some asshole, John.” Euler looked back at John. “I knew you in the war. I mean, how many times did I save your ass? You wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for me.”
“I know.” John replied with sincere gratitude. “You don’t think I’d forget something like that? I’d be dead if it weren’t for you, I k
now that. But killing Dekker and his men? I mean… how could you do that?”
Euler thought about it for a moment, looking away for a while before looking back at John. “They were in the way.” Euler noted without remorse. “We’re talking about the next evolutionary phase of mankind, John! Think of all we could learn from the Norn! All the lives we could save. Unlocking the great riddles of the universe.”
“How many people need to die for the sake of that knowledge?” John asked. “Does that really make us civilized?”
“Don’t lecture me, John.” Euler sneered back. “You killed nearly half my men.”
“To get my niece back! You think I wanted to do that? You think I ever wanted to pick up a gun again and leave Earth?!? No! But I tell you what, you threatened to hurt my family. If I had to do it again and kill ALL your men I’d do it!”
Julie sat on the perimeter of their argument and shuddered. Both men were accomplished soldiers. She had a small measure of an idea of what her uncle had done during the war, but it was impossible for her to see him as an accomplished killer. Euler and her uncle were two old soldiers talking about old times; old times that described much death and violence. Her ideal image of her uncle was tarnished by the truth. She struggle to not hear what they were saying. She tried to understand her uncle even if it was difficult to do so.
“I’d kill you too, Scott, if it came down to it.” John stared back up at Euler with a deadly serious face. “Which is exactly what will happen if you hurt Julie.”
“Don’t preach to me John.” Euler replied in a calmer tone. “I knew you during the war. You had a talent for killing. You had a taste for it. There isn’t much difference between you and me.”
“There is a distinct difference between you and I, Scott!” John countered. “You got a taste for the killing. I’ve fought with… everything I’ve done since the war.”
Euler held his gaze on John for a while. He took a deep breath and looked away. “I have my share of nightmares, John. We all pay a price.” Euler walked back towards the short hallway leading back up to the flight deck. “Rest up. It’s a long trip but our next stop will be the system where you searched for Lyle Ramirez.”
