I used the monofilament blade to hack out a metal hole. I reached through, yelping as hot metal burned my wrist. I unlocked the door, opened it, drew out my hand and shoved the door open.
I charged in to find another door. I tried the handle and it turned easily. I charged into a small piloting compartment—and stopped in shock.
A small alien creature was perched on the pilot’s chair. It had a monkey’s tail, but it was the size of an orangutan. The face was more human looking than Philemon’s face. The alien had a fringe of fur around his face, like the fur around our parka hoods. He had long arms like a gibbon and wore clothes over an obviously furry body.
He seemed frightened. He was no more than four feet tall and maybe weighed eighty pounds. I noticed a slender cord attached to a manacle on his right wrist. The cord led to the floor and a lock. It smelled in here. Did the alien go to the bathroom here? I noticed a small port-a-potty to the side, and didn’t want to inspect it more closely than that.
The wound in my side had stopped bleeding by now, but it had soaked my garments with blood. They were also bloody from all the Ukrainians I’d killed.
The alien shrank back from me, trembling in earnest.
“You can’t kill him, Logan,” Jenna said behind me.
I scowled. I wasn’t in the mood for anyone telling me what I could or could not do.
“I pilot for you,” the alien said in a human-sounding voice. “Please, don’t kill Hap. Let Hap live.”
I finally noticed where we were. Outside the plane, I saw stars and the haze of the planet. I could see the curvature of the Earth. I went to the edge of the window and peered down, seeing Alaska. So, we had still been in North America.
“Hap good. Hap smart.”
I regarded the alien. It shrank back again as far away from me as it could get.
“Logan…” Jenna warned.
I almost told her to leave. What if she wouldn’t? I didn’t want to get physical with her, especially with all the blood on me.
“Hap—”
“Shut up for a moment,” I said.
The alien began to shake worse.
Jenna squeezed past me and tried to hug the alien. It bit her. She shouted, jumping back, holding her bitten hand.
Blood welled from it.
“You little bastard,” I said, closing in.
“Please, leave me alone. Hap good. Hap very good. Hap frightened of you.”
He tried to bite my hand too. I grabbed his throat before he could, shoving him against a bulkhead. Hap screamed as if I were murdering him right there.
“Let him go!” Jenna shouted. “He’s frightened.”
“He bit you,” I shouted over his screams. “Stop it,” I said, shaking him.
He screamed louder.
I squeezed his skinny throat. He made choking noises, finally stopping his screaming.
“Logan,” Jenna shouted, grabbing my arm. “Let him go.”
I released him, backing away.
The creature collapsed onto his seat, gasping, holding his throat.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jenna shouted.
“Me? He bit you.”
“Because you terrified him.”
I turned to her. “Do you see where we are? Space. The little bastard works for the Ukrainians.”
“They force me,” Hap said. “I good. I very good.”
“We won the fight,” she told me. “You have to start thinking again. Murdering everyone isn’t the answer.”
That was a low blow, especially as I’d just saved her life. Yet, maybe she had a point.
I took a deep breath, held it and slowly exhaled. I closed my eyes and did that several times. I needed to think. I had to reason out the situation. Coming out of a killing frenzy wasn’t easy.
Opening my eyes, I asked, “How’s your hand?”
“It hurts,” Jenna said.
“You frightened Hap,” the alien told us. “I realize you good. Woman is very good. I sorry for biting you.”
“You see?” Jenna told me.
I didn’t want to argue. In truth, I just wanted to sleep. I wanted to recuperate. But I didn’t have time for any of that.
I retreated to the navigator’s chair, sitting down heavily. I was sore in plenty of places. I’d strained muscles I seldom used. The bullet singe in my side still smarted. I’d taken multiple blows during the fight and had finally begun to feel them.
“Who are you?” Jenna asked the alien.
“Hap.”
I cleared my throat.
Jenna glanced at me. Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. I don’t know what she saw in me, but maybe she didn’t think I would attack the alien right away. She moved back toward the open door.
“You’re an alien,” I told Hap.
“A good alien,” he said.
“How did you get to Earth?”
Hap got a shifty look in his eyes.
“You’d better tell me the truth, you little creep. You’re not out of this by a long shot.”
“Everyone threatens little Hap,” he said, glancing sidelong at Jenna.
She seemed to catch his act, opened her mouth anyway and closed it slowly.
Hap seemed crestfallen at that. “The big man hurt me.”
Jenna said nothing.
“Hap is so unlucky,” he said.
“Answer my question,” I said.
Hap regarded me. “I come to this world seven months ago. I work for other aliens.”
“Give me some names.”
“Unguls,” Hap said.
“Who was in charge of the expedition?”
“Unguls.”
“That’s the wrong answer.”
“You no understand,” Hap said. “Bad aliens out there.” He made a vague gesture upward. “Bad aliens get angry with Hap if he talk too much.”
I laughed hoarsely. “I’ll get angry with you now if you don’t talk enough.”
His tail went limp on the seat. He hesitated and finally whispered, “Min Ve. I work for Min Ve with letter of marquee.”
That was what I’d thought. Hap had belonged to the privateer.
“What did you do for the Min Ve?” I asked.
“This. Hap good pilot.”
“How did the Ukrainians capture you?”
“I in base when they come and shoot last Unguls. Very bloody. Hap agree to work for them. Hap…”
“Go on,” I said.
“Hap teach them things.”
“Like sensor devices that can track alien vessels?”
“Like that, yes,” Hap said.
I pointed at his restraint. “They didn’t trust you much?”
“No. They bad men.”
“Did you give them a reason not to trust you?”
Hap looked me in the eye and solemnly shook his head.
I didn’t believe him. If Hap had worked for the Min Ve, he was probably as mercenary as the Unguls and Jarnevon. I remembered that blue-skinned alien. She’d been as vicious as she was beautiful.
“How many space planes do the Ukrainians have?” I asked.
“Two,” he said.
“Do they have other aliens working for them?”
“Hap not know.”
I glowered at him, but at that point, I was tired of bullying the puny alien. He was a liar. He also had tech skills, including piloting this space plane.
I motioned to Jenna. We backed out of the piloting compartment.
“Wait. Do not forget Hap. Free me, please.”
I ignored the alien and moved to the first compartment with Sergei’s headless corpse.
“I’m not sure what to do next,” I said.
“I know what we have to do,” Jenna said. “We have to land at CAU headquarters. We have to let them interrogate Hap.”
I was certain the same interrogators would want to hold me in a small dark place, asking a thousand questions. I didn’t trust the CAU.
“You have a responsibility to—”
; Jenna abruptly stopped talking as she lifted off her feet and slammed her head against the ceiling. She lost consciousness, I saw, as I slammed my head against the ceiling. At that point, the space plane began to plunge toward Earth.
-34-
A form of weightlessness had taken hold of the interior of the plane. My head rang and my eyes blurred. I was dog-tired but I had a good idea this was Hap trying something clever.
I grabbed the top of the door, propelling myself through the short corridor and into the piloting chamber. To my astonishment, I saw that Hap was gone.
I scanned high and low, and right and left. He was gone all right. The wrist restraint was still in place, lying on the piloting chair. The bracelet wasn’t bloody, and the end of the metallic cord was still attached to the floor ring.
I had an idea of what must have happened. The only thing that made sense was that Philemon or Kazz had used the teleportation machine in the Guard ship, transferring Hap out of the space plane to somewhere else.
But if they’d teleported Hap, why hadn’t they teleported me? What was their game? Why not teleport Jenna and me back into the Arctic Ocean prison?
I floated to the seat and examined the wrist restraint more carefully—and caught motion out of the corner of my eye.
I turned in time to see Hap flying past me out of the hatch. He used his tail to help propel him. The alien moved gracefully in the weightlessness.
Nevertheless, I growled low in my throat. The little creep must have figured out a way to unlock his manacle. I shot out after him, crashing against the side of the door so hard my left shoulder throbbed.
I manhandled myself through, pushed into the first compartment and saw Jenna and the headless corpse—and its head—floating against the ceiling, although in different locations. Hap had already reached the hatch, darting through, shutting it behind him.
Frustration and a sense of urgency moved me. I wanted to stuff Jenna in a seat and secure the seatbelt. That might take too long, though. Hap seemed to be on a mission.
Clawing the tops of the seats, I pulled myself past Jenna and past what used to be Sergei Gromyko. The hatch was locked.
With a roar, I used the monofilament blade, hacking an opening.
The next compartment swarmed with the dead and globules of blood. It made me sick, but I had to ignore it. I saw no sign of Hap. This time, I scanned more carefully.
I noticed a floor hatch. Something twisted on the handle. Could that be a locking mechanism? I bet Hap had already crawled through that hatch.
Gathering myself, I pushed off. I was like an indifferent pool player, thinking he knew how to hit a billiard ball with the cue ball, only to see the hit ball carom off in a way he hadn’t expected. Jumping for a point while weightless seemed like it should be a snap. It wasn’t. The motion of the plane must have added to the mechanics of weightless maneuvering.
I tried to sail to the hatch, made it to a different spot and jumped again. Finally, I tried the floor-hatch handle. It was locked. Like before, I hacked an opening and raised the hatch, pushing myself into a large compartment.
I saw Hap. The creep was inside a sealed tube. He saw me, grinned like a devil and flipped me off with his long-fingered hand. Then, he zipped down the tube into something I couldn’t see.
This monkey alien had had a plan. I sailed to the tube and looked through the bottom opening.
Hap secured himself into a rounded apparatus, pulling straps over his shoulders. His thin fingers played over a control panel. A small clear bubble dome moved over his head. At that point, a hatch dialed open. I could see the hazy atmosphere and Earth below.
That was an outer hatch.
Hap peered up and saw me watching. He waved, kissed his hand and flung it out at me. Then he stabbed a button.
A large object slid out of the area and through the hatch into low Earth orbit. It was the size of a regular dump trunk. To my astonishment, exhaust blew out of the back of the object. Hap maneuvered away from us to destinations unknown.
All the while, the space plane continued to plunge toward Earth.
-35-
I floated through the plane, reaching Jenna, dragging her off the ceiling and securing her into a forward seat. Afterward, I returned to the piloting compartment.
I swept the manacle aside and sat down. I sure could have used Rax about now. The little crystal had helped me through many hairy situations. The controls—what did I know about flying a space plane?
I began experimenting. It turned out that orbital flight wasn’t that much different from the hover-pads I’d driven in Greenland. That was a long way from figuring out how to reenter the atmosphere and land, though.
In ten minutes, by judicious trial and error, I returned gravity to the plane. It did not seem as if we were plunging into the atmosphere anymore. Had the sense of plunging earlier been due to the cessation of gravity?
I continued to study the flight panel. By degrees, I began to feel that I recognized certain controls. What would account for this familiarity—?
This must be another of the tricks I’d learned when I’d put the Polarion circuit over my head. These controls had similarities to the vehicle I’d piloted out of the underwater base. It might be possible for me to pilot the plane back down to Earth after all.
If the plane had other features, though, like sensors, weapons, that sort of thing, I didn’t know how to activate any of them. I could fly and possibly land without crashing, but that was it.
I did figure out how to put a grid map on a panel screen. It showed that we were flying south, heading over the Pacific Ocean beside Canada.
I wanted to reach Iraq. I believed the ancient Sumerian site held something to help me find a beach that held ancient machinery the Eshom would use.
Would the Eshom know about the ancient machinery? I suspected it would. Otherwise, why would the Polarion machine have taught me about it?
I had the feeling there were more undercurrents at play than I realized. Kazz and Philemon, the Eshom, the Ukrainians and now Hap. How did they connect? Kazz and Philemon had sunk the Swordfish. Before that, the two proto-men had been on the underwater base. Well…I didn’t know they had, but that seemed more than likely. Sergei Gromyko had shown up twice…and had he somehow died twice? Hap had just scampered away in his escape pod…
I rubbed my forehead. I needed Rax more than ever. I could have used Argon, but would prefer Rax. I would rather have the Guard ship than this Ungul space plane.
If I woke Jenna, she’d try to talk me into giving myself up to the CAU. I had no intention of doing that. I’d watched enough sci-fi movies to know you couldn’t trust a government agency. I’d just be a cog to them, one they would want to figure out how best to use.
No thank you. I’d been in the Marines. I admired the Marines, but I’d learned in the past six months that I preferred trusting myself to having anyone giving me orders.
I suppose I believed in the old saying: “If you want something done, you have to do it yourself.”
I didn’t know if NORAD or something else was tracking the space plane, but that was a good probability. I’d just have to keep moving faster. The bigger question was whether Kazz and Philemon were tracking me.
I decided to risk it.
Thus, using the grid and clumsily maneuvering the plane, I turned us toward Southeast Asia the best I could. Better to stay over the ocean as much as possible. Crossing the orbital space of China or Russia seemed like a bad idea.
After that, I sat in the pilot’s chair until my eyes drooped. I tried to keep awake. The stench from the port-a-potty made my nose twitch. Was the smell worse than before? That seemed wrong. Didn’t a man become used to a foul odor over time? That would seem to indicate the smell had gotten stronger.
I tried to pry my eyelids open. Instead, my chin rested against my chest.
I had a slight moment of panic. Something seemed wrong. I should be able to stay awake. The smell from the port-a-potty had become awful. That sho
uld have forced my head up.
I pried my eyelids up one more time. The controls before me seemed blurry. Why should I find it this difficult to see?
I tried to surge up. I failed. My eyelids closed until I must have fallen asleep…
Sometime later, a man said, “You have slept long enough, my American friend.” He shook my shoulder.
The voice and even the accent seemed familiar. I sat up with a shout, opening my eyes, turning to see a big revolver aimed between my eyes. To my bafflement and shock, I found Sergei Gromyko, with his head attached to his body, aiming the gun at me.
-36-
“No way,” I said. “I’m not buying this. You can’t be real. I must be hallucinating.”
Sergei shoved the end of the barrel against my forehead. The cold metal was all too real. Before I could try to grab the gun, the Ukrainian stepped back sharply, sitting in the navigator’s chair.
He no longer wore camouflage gear. He had on a regular brown military uniform and officer’s hat. He had shiny black shoes and there wasn’t a mark on his neck. The same high cheekbones showed, although there did seem to be flecks of gray in his eyes that I’d never noticed before. There was no blood on him, not a mark of combat.
“You’re going to have to explain this,” I said. I didn’t like the shakiness in my voice.
He waggled the gun. “I hold this. Thus, I hold more than the ace. I have all the cards.”
I glanced at the hatch. It bore the marks of the monofilament blade. I glanced at my belt. I still had the knife. Those things were real. They had happened. I regarded Sergei again.
He’d crossed his legs and sat back in the navigator’s chair. The gun never wavered from aiming at my chest, though.
I rubbed my forehead. The dead did not come back to life. Only Jesus had done that, and he’d been the Son of God. How, then, could I explain the man sitting before me?
I couldn’t explain it.
“Do I detect fear in your eyes?” Sergei asked.
That pissed me off. I’d already beaten him. I—I cocked my head and tested the air. It no longer stank as it had earlier. I looked around and spied the port-a-potty.
How did I know that’s what it was? It had smelled bad before and I’d assumed the chained monkey-alien had urinated and defecated in it in some fashion. I hadn’t inspected it, though.
Invaders: The Chronowarp Page 13
