by Dayton Ward
Her colleagues. Holy crap.
Looking up at the sound of the voice, Heffron saw Mestral standing on the farmhouse’s front porch, just outside its main door. Despite the early hour, he was already dressed and groomed in what she had learned was his usual impeccable fashion in a dark gray suit, white dress shirt, and gray-blue tie. Only his hat was missing, affording Heffron a look at his black-gray hair and the tips of his pointed ears. The hat came off for the first time shortly after her arrival with him and Koroma following their rescue of her from the MJ-12 “custodial community.” That was when Heffron learned the truth of Mestral’s identity and origins as a visitor from another world, Vulcan.
“Good morning, Mestral. You can dispense with the title. I was fired, remember? I’m not a director anymore.”
She was at first concerned about his story of having lived on Earth in secret since 1957 following the crash of his scout ship in rural Pennsylvania. The ability to hide with such success from the apparatus that was Majestic 12 and its various tenant organizations over the ensuing decades was a bit disturbing on some level, though mitigated by the obvious evidence that Mestral was not a threat to the planet or humanity. Just the time they had spent together in this most remote of safe houses had been enough to convince her of the Vulcan’s sincerity. Several evenings had been spent sitting by the fireplace in the house’s great room as she listened to Mestral recount his journeys from place to place, observing like the scientist he was all manner of human technological and societal development while doing his best to remain anonymous.
Heffron also learned that he even had been allied with one of MJ-12’s now long-defunct initiatives, Project Blue Book, during the 1950s and 1960s, aiding case officers from the United States Air Force to investigate alleged sightings and encounters with extraterrestrial visitors long before she was born. Mestral described several of these tales as he worked with people whose names Heffron vaguely recalled from archived reports and other documents detailing Majestic’s activities over the decades. All of this came before his chance encounter with the predecessors to Natalie Koroma, Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln, whom Heffron herself had met decades ago, and his decision to assist these mysterious Aegis agents with their own assignment here on Earth. She was at first taken aback by the seeming arrogance and presumption that aliens from another world would take such an active interest in Earth. Once Seven and Lincoln explained the purpose of their mission, and the very real stake they had in its success due to their own human heritage, Heffron began to appreciate the scope of the effort to which they had committed themselves. Seven in particular was, figuratively and literally, a rare, special breed of person, one of scores of humans born on a planet untold thousands of light-years across the galaxy and trained over the course of generations for this task. He had devoted his entire existence to the betterment of Earth and humanity. As for Roberta Lincoln, she had abandoned any semblance of a normal life in order to join Seven’s cause, consigning herself to toil in obscurity toward a goal that she might not even live to see realized.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The quiet evening talks with Mestral had been most illuminating, as she learned ever more about people like Seven and Lincoln, and Natalie Koroma and Jonathan McAllister—the latter having been injured with such severity that his time here on Earth had been cut short. Each of them, like her and the uncounted men and women who had pledged themselves to the mission of Majestic 12 over the decades, had answered a higher calling to service, but even that duty seemed to pale in comparison to that undertaken by Seven and his colleagues. It was during these contemplative sessions with her new Vulcan friend that Heffron was forced to admit with no small amount of regret and even shame that, from Mestral’s point of view, humans had not always comported themselves in the best manner, and for all the amazing leaps in science and technology, there remained significant work to be done in the area of learning how to live in peace and harmony with one another. While there had been some advancement, there seemed to be very little progress. Despite their apparently unlimited potential, were humans ultimately a lost cause?
Let’s hope not.
“I knew you’d be up already,” she said, shifting in the rocker as Mestral moved from the door toward an adjacent seat. “But if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were getting ready to head off somewhere.”
Mestral lowered himself into the other rocking chair. “I am preparing to depart for Washington. Since we liberated you from the Majestic facility, we have been attempting to monitor their activities with respect to you. We investigate any communications where you are mentioned and follow up on any actions stemming from those missives. We have discovered them to be quite guarded with any information pertaining to you, but we are confident they have not ceased their efforts to find you.”
Nodding, Heffron sipped her coffee. After a moment, she said, “I don’t expect Markham to ever stop, not while there’s any chance of tracking me down. If it takes him the rest of his life and he has to search every inch of this planet on foot, he’ll keep looking until he finds me.” She paused, regarding the sun, which was just now beginning to creep over the distant hills. “I guess this means I can’t go home for a while, if ever.”
“That is unlikely, at least until such time as your standing with Majestic 12 can be revised to a status that is agreeable to all involved parties, especially yourself.”
Smiling, Heffron chuckled. “You mean something we can all live with? I’d be happy to just be able to go home and be left alone to enjoy retirement. Maybe take some of that money I’ve stashed away all these years and buy a house on a beach somewhere where a cabana boy has a fresh drink any time I hold out my hand. I could live with that.”
It’s good to have goals, right?
“What about Brinalri?” she asked.
Mestral replied, “I was unable to ascertain his current location. However, I have accessed a series of electronic messages that refer in vague terms to a prisoner having died during an escape attempt. No identities or revealing characteristics were included in the message, though there were questions and confusion regarding proper disposal of remains, which were inconsistent with my understanding of common human practices pertaining to such matters. This suggests the subject of the missives was not human.”
“Damn it.” Heffron shook her head. “He came all that distance across space, and for what? To die in some hole in the ground that most people will never know even existed.”
Whatever reply Mestral may have delivered went unspoken when the front door opened and Natalie Koroma stepped onto the porch. She was dressed in faded jeans, a teal button-down blouse, and black running shoes, and her black hair was pulled into a ponytail. As usual, she wore no makeup, and Heffron noted the concern in the young Aegis agent’s eyes.
“We’ve got company.”
Both Heffron and Mestral pushed themselves from their rockers, and Heffron could not resist looking out from the porch to the lush green grass covering the gentle slope of the hills. What was she expecting to see? Teams of Majestic agents storming the farmhouse? A squadron of attack helicopters maneuvering for a strafing run?
“You’re sure?” she asked, shrugging off her robe and leaving her dressed in her sweatpants and matching shirt.
Koroma nodded. “Yeah. The Beta 7 picked up unusual ship traffic off the coast on the far side of the island. Definitely out of the ordinary, and that’s before you add in the military comm signals the computer detected.”
“Uh-oh.” Heffron felt a cold chill beginning to course down her spine.
“Exactly.” Koroma looked to Mestral. “The signals are encrypted, but the Beta 7’s chewing on them right now. We need to start our evac plan.”
Stepping toward the door, the Vulcan replied, “Understood.”
Heffron followed the two agents back into the farmhouse and watched as Koroma moved past the fireplace, where logs where already burning and warming the room, to where the Beta 7 supercomputer
was visible. The stone wall that shielded the mechanism had dropped into the floor to reveal the array of controls and monitors. It was obvious that the machine was far more advanced than even state-of-the-art military computers. Quite comfortable operating the equipment used by her and her people as a consequence of her work, Heffron could appreciate the Beta 7’s design and interfaces. She was confident that with its voice recognition protocols and artificial intelligence algorithms to assist her, she could be well-versed in its operation after just a week or two of training. Then she might well avail herself of the computer’s vast wealth of information, to say nothing of its apparently direct access to the enigmatic benefactors who supported Koroma and Mestral, provided them with their equipment and other resources, and watched from afar as events unfolded here on Earth.
“Computer, what’ve you got?” asked Koroma.
With a feminine voice Heffron almost found soothing, the Beta 7 replied, “One armored transport helicopter, likely V-22 Osprey or variant, moving in this direction. Estimated time of arrival, two minutes, thirteen seconds.”
“How does it know that?” asked Heffron.
“Communication signals are being transmitted between the inbound vehicle and its support ship.”
Mestral asked, “How many people are aboard the helicopter?”
“Unknown.”
Koroma said, “You can bet it’s more than three. I don’t remember the details, but I think Ospreys can carry twenty to twenty-four fully-loaded combat troops, but I’m betting they’re coming to snatch us, so they’ll need room for us.” She shrugged. “Figure twelve to fifteen troops, at minimum.”
“What do we do?” asked Heffron.
Any reply Koroma or Mestral might have made was lost when every light and piece of electrical equipment in the house went dark or inert. Even the Beta 7’s control panel and displays deactivated, its sudden loss of power startling Heffron.
“Uh-oh,” said Koroma. “This can’t be good.”
A low hum broke the near silence inside the house, accompanied by a soft blue glow that played across Mestral’s face and emanated from a device he had extracted from a pocket of his suit. It was small and rectangular, and the Vulcan was holding it before him like a camera.
“Some form of electromagnetic pulse was employed against us,” he said. “It has temporarily incapacitated all unshielded electrical equipment in the immediate area, including the house and the barn.”
“That’s bad, right?” asked Heffron.
Koroma shook her head. “The Beta 7 shut itself down as a safety precaution. It’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
“I believe our visitors will not grant us that interval,” said Mestral.
“No kidding.” Koroma waved toward the front of the house. “If we can get to the barn, we can still use the transporter.”
Feeling adrenaline beginning to pump into her bloodstream in anticipation of the coming intruders, Heffron considered what the next few minutes would require. The mysterious “transporter” used by Koroma and Mestral to bring her here was secreted in the barn behind the farmhouse. Like the Beta 7, it was hidden behind a stone wall designed to protect it from outsiders. Heffron guessed that twenty to thirty meters of open ground separated the farmhouse’s back porch and the barn.
A long way to go if somebody’s hunting you.
“Do you have any weapons?” When Koroma did not answer but instead eyed her with doubt, Heffron could see the disapproval in the agent’s eyes. “Tell me you have some kind of weapons locker here.”
Koroma drew a deep breath before nodding. “Yes.” She pointed to a closet in the room’s far corner, which Heffron had assumed was a coat closet of some kind.
“Really?”
“It’s just me and Mestral,” replied Koroma. “And we both prefer not to use firearms, if necessary.”
“That’s nice,” said Heffron. “I want one anyway.” Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned to see Mestral carrying an unfamiliar pistol-like object in each hand. To her, they resembled stun guns of the sort employed by law enforcement and the military.
Scowling, she asked, “What are those?”
“Nonlethal measures,” replied the Vulcan. “They fire bolts of energy that disrupt neural impulses in humanoid targets, rendering them unconscious.”
“And they work?”
“They are most effective.”
Heffron shrugged, extending her hand so that Mestral could give her one of the weapons. “Good enough for now.” If she ended up using the thing against whoever was coming after them, she would be sure to avail herself of whatever armaments they might be carrying.
“Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” she said, dividing her attention between the odd weapon in her hands and Mestral and Koroma. “But you need to know that there’s no way I’m letting Majestic take me again. They’ll have to kill me.” She delivered the last words with what she hoped was an emphasis that communicated her unspoken meaning.
Because I’m sure as hell going to kill them if that’s what it takes, but I’m not going back.
“What if they’re waiting for us outside?” she asked.
Koroma smiled, bobbing her eyebrows. “We’re not going outside.”
Allowing herself a small sigh of relief, Heffron returned the smile. She should have known the agents would have some kind of contingency plan even for something like this.
Then, her breath caught in her throat as she heard voices from somewhere outside. They were faint, but not too distant.
Oh, damn.
• • •
“Where the hell are they?”
Dressed like the eleven men and women he commanded in black military fatigues and carrying an M4A3 assault rifle, Gerald Markham knelt behind a small rock cluster jutting from the damp grass along the sloping hillside and peered through the weapon’s optical sight. Even with thermal mode activated, the sight’s illuminated aperture showed him no sign of anyone moving inside the stone farmhouse or the barn behind it. On the other hand, it did reveal to him the herds of sheep scattered among the distant hills, most of them roaming about in the early morning and availing themselves of the rich green grass all around them.
“Oscar Three Sierra,” he said for the benefit of the comm unit tucked into his right ear. “This is Leader. Do you see anything?”
A quiet voice, belonging to Lieutenant Derrick Sapp of the United States Air Force and detailed to Majestic 12’s security force, replied, “That’s a negative, Leader. All quiet. You suppose we spooked them?”
Markham hated to admit as much. This assault—at least on a general level—had been in the planning stages for more than a year, ever since Markham had become aware of Kirsten Heffron’s relationship with the mysterious beings who seemed eager to guide and inform her from the shadows. Who were these people? Where did they come from, and who did they represent? A foreign power, or a party from another world, as Heffron believed and had admitted during more than one of her interrogation sessions?
The plan to find Heffron—and, by extension, her rescuers—had solidified after the director’s liberation from Majestic’s high-security asset community located on a small, unnamed, and otherwise uninhabited island east of Guam. The island did not even appear on maps, and MJ-12’s information technology and communications oversight divisions ensured that any photography collected by orbiting satellites was scrubbed of imagery that might reveal the location of its network of clandestine installations. This had led Markham to wonder how Heffron’s saviors had even managed to find the H-SAC in the first place. Perhaps they had access to MJ-12 information or even personnel, which by itself was disturbing.
You can’t do anything about that now. You’re here. They’re here. Find them.
It had taken them nearly a week to trace and confirm the source of the still unexplained transmission that had been tracked from the H-SAC to this location. Satellite imagery provided insight into the seemingly innocuous farmhouse, which sat all
alone on this island off the coast of Scotland. As far as Markham and his people could tell, aside from the sheep and whoever lived in the house, this area of the island was uninhabited, isolated from the few thousand people comprising Arran’s population. That, at least, made things easier so far as launching a military strike on the target location, which presented its own set of challenges. Despite being located in the middle of nowhere, it was determined that the house and surrounding area employed a full suite of intrusion detection systems, including some technology with which Markham was not familiar. Nothing like it was known to be available anywhere, or on the drawing board in the case of the military or even Majestic. Satellites also had detected subsurface thermal blooms indicating a power source of some kind, which by themselves would not be unusual, but coupled with the transmission raised flags of concern for Markham. This had to be the base of operations for the agents who had rescued Heffron, and there was a distinct possibility that seizing it would yield him and his people access to a new source of advanced, even alien technology that could be exploited for any number of reasons.
Taking out the power source had been an easy enough feat, thanks to the targeted electromagnetic pulse generator Markham’s team had brought along. MJ-12 scientists made quick work of studying the device taken from the Eizand craft captured over a year earlier, training Markham and a select group of agents in its use. This was the first time it had been employed against a live target in the field, and so far it had performed as expected.
Too bad it can’t scan for bodies. That’d be nice right about now.
Shifting his position, Markham turned his attention to his companion, an air force sergeant named Scott Reu. “Power’s still off, right?”
The sergeant, crouching like Markham behind the rise, indicated the pulse generator strapped to his chest. He pointed to a gauge set into the device’s shell. “According to this, it’s all quiet.”
“Damn it,” said Markham, spitting out the words. “They must have known we were coming. Probably picked us up on radar or something.” Until he got inside the farmhouse and had a look at whatever technology was hidden there, he had no way to know what sort of advanced detection equipment these people might possess. Laying claim to the house would be a nice prize, but only in consolation. For this mission to be a success, they needed to capture Miss Heffron and her benefactors.
