First Contact: Book One in The Deepening Series (A Space Rock Opera Romance Adventure)

by Kelly Brewer

  “Yes, yes… I’ll tell, I will… everything… horrific…,” he whispered, gasping. He coughed weakly, recoiling at the recent memories. His labored breathing came in short gulps. “When they… are… in your head… you’re in theirs… too. They don’t hide what they… think… or what they are. I seen their hate! So much hate… I don’t wanna be here… no more. We’re all gonna… zero…”

  He whimpered, shivering, trying to pull the covers over his face with claw-like hands. Tears streamed down the grooves burned into his cheek.

  “These… those… ugly… stinking, have been around us… all around us!”

  Steve’s eyes started rolling wildly, asynchronously. Mooney thought he would eye-roll himself into oblivion.

  He nodded to the nurse who injected the antidote, hoping the fragile man could handle it. Taut muscles relaxed instantly.

  “Ohhhhh, uhhhh…” Groaning and…

  It worked! The tight ball relaxed. Joints and bones popped, returning to their more natural position. He went from knees on either side of his chin to the fetal position.

  “Oh, God, I know what you’re doing… don’t save me… please don’t… let me go…” Relief and terror poured out at the same time.

  “Ok, Steve, soon, my friend,” Mooney soothed.

  Continuing calmer, eyes closed, “…around…. awhile, I don’t know how long. They know… us, our history, our minds, our bodies. They like… smell what you’re thinking.” His ruined hands tried to cover his ravaged, hairless head.

  Chin tucked, his scabbed dry lips smacked, craving moisture. The sweet nurse dripped a few drops of water on his lips and changed out the fifth IV bag. Steve lost consciousness again. Mooney nodded for more stimulant. The doctor grimaced at the nurse who grimaced at her unconscious patient. Another squirt of Ritalin revived weak twitching, but his eyes leveled off when they opened.

  Mooney wanted to know, “Why are they here, Steve?”

  “They’re after someone! Out here. We are on… Mars right? I think they’re afraid of… someone. Not sure who… why… but they want us all, out here, dead. We’re too close… to something.”

  His tongue tried to wet deformed lips, searching for water. The nurse began dripping a cool, soothing trickle that he absorbed more than drank.

  “Please, please send me back home… to die in Arkansas. Put me in jail. Whatever. Everyone out here is going to… z z z zero.”

  He wept, wishing for death.

  “Stay with me, Steve. You’re doing so good. Keep talking. You can rest in a minute.”

  “They’re… just… air, grinding… or something, something… less than human. You can’t fight them. If… you smell them… it’s too late.”

  He closed his eyes, depleted, trying to flee his ordeal.

  The detective let him rest awhile. He checked droid apps to see if they detected anything unnatural around them. Nothing.

  Mooney pressed, after another squirt of go juice. “Who are they? Where are they from? Please, Lathrop, stay with me. What else?”

  Doctor Frank tried to end the session, but Mooney pushed on. Lathrop was a gold mine that could collapse at any second.

  Lathrop raged in his daze and pain. “How the hell do I know who they are?? They’re from… further out… further back… in time…”

  He remembered something. “Last thing I remember was it caught me going to Shug’s place… wanted his formula… said he breathed it and wanted it. They knew I could get it.

  Shug showed me how… to make it…’twernt hard. They read Ol’ Shug’s formula from me when they… when he… it… took my mind. I think I cooked a lot of it since… for a long time… I only know cause of the berry stains on my hands.”

  He looked at his burned hands, the deep tissue still stained by belladonna berries.

  “Juice gets under your skin and you’re not even supposed to get it on you… Shug said they was poisonous,” he said, teeth chattering. He slept a moment, then revived, remembering.

  “I… I… I musta been making a lot… I don’t remember… they made me. I remember their… the pain of their thoughts, so full of hate… for a a a a witch… a Curzzed One… afraid… someone here… seeking their… treasurezzz.”

  Exhausted, Steve slept for an hour. Those watching over him thought he looked peaceful for the first time. When he opened his eyes for the last time, the detective was right there.

  He reached weakly, fluttering away. Mooney grabbed his hand gently.

  “They fear.… uzzz… uzz... our water… our…”

  He exhaled his final pint of carbon dioxide, half-smiling.

  Mooney stopped recording.

  The detective reviewed his rap sheet. Lathrop had been a Centre student briefly, but flunked out. Wanted to be a jump pilot but could not handle dark jumping. Some people just couldn’t. There was no real consensus why.

  Antisocial recluse since returning home. Petty theft and misdemeanor drug distribution. Burglary of a habitation. Not hardcore, but he had been working towards it.

  Something had forced him against his will to dark jump, forced his own medicine on him, forced him to mass produce mass murder, and then tried to hide behind him.

  His psyche had collapsed from enslavement, torture, and overdose. Death was welcomed to the snarl of his scorched, clenched, haunted remains. This man died miserably. Mooney was rattled by the contents of the confession and the degraded state of the confessor.

  The detective had interviewed him over several hours, Lathrop fading in and out. The final report was produced throughout the daylong interview.

  Each planetary delegation was sent the following incredible video summary:

  “The ‘alleged’ aliens are ‘allegedly’ trying to remain hidden in order to find someone. Lathrop claims they’re also attempting to undermine our progress, the Deepening in general and planetary operations specifically. Our growth must scare them. There is a death squad of unknown numbers among us, possibly infiltrating every light-year county. I think it’s safe to assume they are everywhere. They have some type of defining odor. I thought I smelled… something sweet and rotten.

  “They are killing at will out here, no mercy. Bodies are piling up. We are out of room in these station modules to store them all. We need a solution to that quickly. Fortunately all the corpses are frozen.”

  Detective Mooney paused, trying to make sure he really wanted to keep going. “The creatures, or whatever, touch or infect or inject the drug with razors of some kind. Lathrop had thin cuts and scabs all over him when we found him. Death by a thousand drug-laced stings. His toxicology and Detective Grisholm’s autopsy indicated a high level of the poison in both. They were both murdered.

  “Venue security should watch points of contact with the public. Ticket takers, concessions, janitorial, even security personnel. I don’t know what to tell you to look for. They might be vulnerable in one area. Water. Lathrop thought they were concerned about water. Same as us. No idea what that means.”

  He slowed, shifting his thoughts to full conjecture. “I suspect they have co-opted one or more human organizations. Co-exist comes to mind. Their CEO recruits the weak and insane for their terrorist purposes, which they deny. That seems to be the alien MO as well, I guess, I don’t know… I’m just rambling.” The detective was exhausted.

  He paused, looking at his feet, then shook his head, looking directly at the camera. “I think our enemy has caught us flat-footed. Again, I recommend full-scale war readiness in all precincts, especially Neptune. Our furthest space station is our most vulnerable.”

  Mooney left the hospital with more questions than answers. Those questions would have to wait until after he got some rest. He ate a bite of freeze-dried pudding, climbed into his police cruiser, laid the seat back, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  Circling Neptune, Gina.baby at his side, Dock watched the
detective’s report. He thought of a few things the beleaguered detective left out.

  Dock could have added to the report more about Darius Lathrop’s second cousin, about Steve Lathrop’s unfettered fall. They had told Steve he would get rich selling Happy across the solar system, and they would help him avoid detection. Greed, desperation, and zero neurologic shielding soon created a zombie slave.

  Dock could have revealed they are toxic to humans and always several step ahead of them. He recalled witnessing Steve with his alien handler in a dark stupor in a darker corner at the Jupiter pre-show. The dry, hissing, cold creature psychically and pharmaceutically suppressed Steve’s fear response, while leaving him neurotically terrified. It was ghastly.

  Dock had spotted the man’s symptoms immediately.

  The trillionaire was a mind slayer too.

  He confided in Gina, “We accidentally intercepted their dry buzzing speech while perfecting neurologic shielding technology. The On-Looker, whatever the hell that is, occasionally spoke across the hydrogen-rich solar system and seems to be the center of their universe. Yet many of their intercepted communications were unintelligible.

  “The best we could figure, they spoke all human languages plus many more. Which we took to mean they were active on all seven Earth continents.”

  His outdated Ro-mans disappointed him. Translating the rest of the alien language had eluded them. More reason to have a bot bonfire once Gina’s sisters got sorted out.

  He smiled at her and put a hand on hers, gazing out at the view of Neptune’s deep-blue, methane-rich skin. “A few startling details were gleaned from their use of known languages. The aliens masked their human interaction so they could remain hidden. I began re-examining history. Classical literature certainly did hint at their existence.

  “Anyone who gets a whiff of them is blown away. ‘Glory be the Ziz,’ they incessantly buzz in their unbounded, common mind. They’ve been manipulating man at will, guiding us since the dawn of man’s existence.

  “They are a vapor with some substance. They control air currents on a large and small scale. Generating hurricanes on every planet is a favorite sport. On Earth, many airborne diseases are spread by seeding the swirling weather monsters by some unknown mechanism. Chemtrails across Earth’s atmosphere trace their dark influence. The aliens manipulate Earth’s atmosphere using our ‘human’ technology.”

  He couldn’t help stepping in alien dogma either.

  “They obsess over the ‘Accursed One,’ a human they are deathly afraid of. Apparently, he arose from the American South about twenty years ago. During that time, they’d formed many deadly hurricanes against the southern U.S. to try to take him out, churning out as many storms as possible without raising suspicions or being photographed by human aerial reconnaissance. Despite all of their destructive efforts, the On-Looker’s fear of the ‘Accursed One’ has never lessened in intensity. ‘The Accursed Water Witch is still alive.’ His threat looms large in their gritty consciousness, and now he’s here, among them. They are deeply panicked!”

  He trailed off. Many promises were made if Dock would help remove the threat.

  A deal had been struck. Sort of.

  Dock stood and walked around the ship’s command center, inspecting Ro-man work spaces for information and cleanliness. He raised his shielding before contemplating his next move.

  Unbeknownst to earthlings, Earth was already under attack. The technology on Earth had been given to us to hasten our demise if the need arose. Subversively, they had begun eliminating ‘the water-demonzz’ at the source, one Spike at a time. An amazing strategy, Dock fretted.

  He had hoped to discover their weakness before the final scenes played out. A weapon was being forged at one of DockInHaus Inc.’s many facilities on Earth. He’d didn’t think he’d get the chance to test it before it became necessary to use it. Earthmen were many things, but Dock would not allow those gritty, grasping bastards to destroy his people to save theirs.

  His people.

  He could have told Mooney all that after watching his report. But what would be the fun in that? It was risky, but…

  War was inevitable. And profitable.

  After a few hours of sleep, Mooney awoke, troubled. He had a bad feeling about all this. There was too much he didn’t know. Steve had been a witness to humanity of ‘First Contact,’ if he was telling the truth. But all the detective had was the doped-up hillbilly’s deathbed confession.

  Could he risk believing Steve? Could he risk not believing him? The delegations would debate the Lathrop Report, then make their decisions, but Mooney would activate everything he could.

  And he needed some kind of weapon.

  Time to get closer.

  Mooney also had a feeling Dock knew something.

  His clever alien banter gave it away.

  CHAPTER 84

  Granny Kep-io

  Wedding, T-minus 16 hours

  Jupiter is Mercy’s world. All her life was there. Her few favorite things were there, her herb garden, her pets, her memories, even her mean mom.

  She had trained there since a child, learning to fly every form of spacecraft ever produced, a natural astronaut, born to it. She never imagined not being able to go back.

  That door was closed.

  Separation from her Jovian home base felt disconcerting. And it confused her anger that the one she thought loved her most made going home impossible.

  Her new partner was a man she had only known for a year and a half. Dad was there for her, but it was not the same. She could not talk to him about… girl things. She knew he loved her, but the tycoon was and always had been about business. Her older sister would just lecture and jibe.

  That made her Granny Kep so much more important now. She watched her more closely. Cooking, sewing, gardening, tending her cows on the crucial feedlot stock ships, the woman was always being productive. She had helped her with her first herb garden, and Mercy had been growing one ever since. She looked forward to growing one back at Kyle’s place, their place, on Earth. It was sure to be more robust than the puny ones grown in the coldness of space.

  Gran had always been a quiet woman, yet constantly working with her hands. She would make clothing for people she had yet to meet. Upon meeting someone with a need, she would hand over a year’s work to them, free of charge. Mercy considered her one of a kind.

  Kep was with her in her bedroom, making last-minute adjustments on the colorful dress Kyle’s production company had built. It was uncomfortable in some spots and Kep was sewing in silk buffers.

  “Granny, did Mom tell you what she did to me and Kyle when he came to visit? She… she…” The words were not going to come out nice so she held them back. She was not sure if Gran had been in on it.

  Granny Kep raised her right eyebrow in a sarcastic glance. Her son Franco had taught that same smirk to his daughters Mercy and Aporue.

  “Yes. I knew what she would do. I know all about it. It happened to me and my husband before we married. I don’t approve. I told Sylvia, ‘No! Don’t do it.’ Anyway, she do it! I’m sorry.”

  The old woman continued when she saw her granddaughter was speechless.

  “It’s an old Mediterranean custom, designed to open woman’s eyes before marriage. A bride’s unrealistic expectations are then lowered. The husband is humiliated from the beginning, giving woman more power. It supposed to give young women an advantage throughout marriage. A memory to beat husband with, when need arises. I find it barbaric. I find it unproductive. A love killer. I’m sorry you endure that.

  “Kyle seem a nice man. I hope you don’t be mad at him. It is a custom born of bitterness. He will be true from now on, I think.”

  She never stopped stitching as she explained.

  Mercy was shocked again. She assumed Granny had been a part of the scam! What a relief! The woman had been a victim of it h
erself. She felt sad for her.

  She burst with pride when she confessed, “Kyle didn’t fall for it. He walked away. I’m so proud of him.”

  Granny stopped sewing then. She turned an astonished moon-face on Mercy, mouth agape.

  “Really? Baby! Oh, I’m so happy for you! Come here!” She reached out her chunky arms and Mercy fell into them.

  “I’ve never heard of single man that passed the ‘fell’ test! No, not in all my years! You sure he walk away?” She was suddenly skeptical.

  Mercy beamed. “Yes, Mom made me watch it on a hidden camera. He didn’t even touch them. I’m sooo mad at her for doing that! Ooohh! But, now that I think about it, she did do me a favor. She showed me who Kyle wasn’t! He wasn’t disloyal. He wasn’t a liar. I suppose I could thank her for that.”

  She was unsure. It was such a mean, contrived thing to do to both of them, thanking her seemed counterintuitive.

  Kep asked, “Them? She sent more than one little tramp after him? At the same time or at different times?”

  “All at once.”

  “My… he is strong. I like him better already! Good for you!”

  After a pause, Gran sighed. “It’s been a tragic tradition for as long as I remember among our clan. She thought she doing you a favor by making your man fall at your feet. Instead, the favor was to show he could stand. I’m so proud of him! And happy for you.”

  She cried.

  “Your mother loves you. In her mind she not trying to harm you. Try to find something positive about the experience, use it to mend your relationship. Kyle knows you watched?”

  Again the sarcastic glance as she resumed fussing over the tiniest bridal dress details.

  Mercy shook her head no. “He’s so busy. He’s done such a good job of protecting all of us, his family. I didn’t want him to worry about my family betraying him. I haven’t told him yet.”

  “That’s fine, fine. It can wait. When I was young, my marriage was arranged by my parents. I was given to an Egyptian prince who was fifty-five years old. I was fifteen. He kept armed guard round me all the time. All the time I felt like a hundred eyes watching me! He was a nice man, but I was secretly glad he died when I was twenty-two. I was sent back to my family in Morocco where I learned to raise cattle. I have been much happier with them.” She was not completely honest.