He walked around the corner of a building and down a sidewalk. He had ditched his burner phone right after his disastrous interview, so that Slade and his GSA heavies couldn’t track him. But he really, really wanted to talk to his mom. Nothing to do but head off to his corner in the park, juggle up some cash, and buy a new burner.
Half an hour later, he was talking to one of the nicely-frosted blue-haired ladies who held down the front desk at his mom’s place of residence.
“Tanner Springs Assisted Living Center. How can I help you?”
An image of his mom’s pink Tanner Springs sweatshirt popped into his head. He asked for Laura.
“Just a moment, sir.”
Drew sat on the sidewalk, gas fumes pummeling him.
“Hello?”
Drew coughed. “Hi Mom.”
“Well, aren’t you a stranger. Drew?”
“Yes, it’s me,” he replied, grinning. She knew who he was. It had been years since she remembered his voice.
“Where have you been, young man?” There was a tone. Not anger. She never got angry. Not really. No, irritation perhaps. Or frustration.
“I’m in Portland, mom.”
“Is Sir with you?”
“N...no.” His voice broke, holding back a tear. It was strange. Why would he be so emotional? He had just seen his mom not so long ago, like he always did. And for her to mention his dad, well, who cared? So why all of a sudden did he care? “Dad’s not here.”
“Are you okay? You sound sad.”
“Mom, I have something to tell you. I – ”
“Is it about this business in space?”
He fumbled with the phone. “What? How do you know about that?”
“I’m watching the news right now.”
Why did she sound so different? So aware? Something didn’t compute.
“Did you see me on the TV, Mom?”
There was a brief pause, her voice low, almost inaudible. “Do not come here.”
“Excuse me?”
She brightened, bouncing back to her usual boppy tone as if she’d never mutter a warning. “Why would I see you on TV?”
He frowned. “You mentioned you were watching the news.”
“Who is this?”
“This is Drew.”
“My son?”
He rubbed his eye with his finger. It was just a glitch in the code. Something repeating, from eons ago, when she was sane and sharp and full of sass. “Yes, mom. It’s me.”
“This place is crawling with government operatives.”
Drew jerked back. “Are you okay, Mom?” She must be repeating words she was hearing on TV.
Her voice was low, urgent, fast. It was also muffled. Drew had the distinct impression that she had her hand over the mouthpiece, so no one could hear her. “Your dad isn’t a good guy. He never was. I’m sorry I left you in the dark, but it was necessary. It was for my survival, as well as yours.”
Drew glanced around looking for answers. “Mom, are you watching a movie?”
“Drew, is that you?” Back to her normal, space-cadet tone.
“Yes, Mom. Are you watching a movie?”
“No, the news is on. Did you see the news? They are showing a guy named Drew Avera on the news. That’s the same name as my son. It’s a re-run. This Drew person is speaking with Colonel Slade Roberson with the Global Safety Administration. Slade is acting nice, but he’s not. Can you believe the Drew Avera on the television has the same name as my son?” She sounded if she was shocked, but there was a kind of theatricality about it.
If he hadn’t known any better, Drew would have said his mom was doing a damned fine job of carrying on two conversations at once. One was with him – calm, informative, sharp; and the other was for the benefit for the people in the home. What had she said? The place was “swarming with operatives?” Could they have stooped that low? To spy on his demented mother?
“Did you know they have found structures on Callisto?” she said. “That’s a moon orbiting Jupiter. They also say that they’ve had this set up for about fifteen years and have galactic ships in place all over the country to take politicians and their families off-world. Did you know that, Drew?”
“Uh...well...no.” Where was she getting this? What did she mean? The puzzle pieces drew closer together. That would make sense of the equipment he’d seen underground in Texas. How the hell did she have intel like that? “Are you – ”
“Be careful, Drew. You are involved with higher than high level officials and a black-ops military with more sophistication and advanced technology than you could dream.”
“Mom, are – ”
“Is this Drew, my son? How old am I?”
Drew wiped his brow with his forearm. He was perspiring, something he’d done quite a lot lately. “Can you get an attendant on the phone?”
“I’m in no need of an attendant. Thank you, Drew.” She lowered her voice again. So low he almost couldn’t hear what she was saying. “Not on the phone, you hear me? Not on the phone. In person. Find a way to get here, without anyone knowing you’re visiting. Have a wonderful day, okay?” She hung up.
He frantically dialed again. The phone blared a busy signal. He re-dialed. Busy.
He phoned WNN Chicago.
“Hello?”
“Hobbs? Get me a plane ticket to Charlotte and send it to my masked email address. I’ll print it off at the library.”
“Drew, that’s not in our contract. We don’t do those things, unless it’s an emergency.”
“This is an emergency.”
“What is it?”
He didn’t want to tell Hobbs his suspicions. If he blurted out the fact that he didn’t think his mother had Alzheimer’s, he might put her in even more danger. It was incredible, what she’d just said. He had to find out how she knew what she knew. He had to get to her.
“Drew, listen...”
Drew stood and started pacing. “No, you listen. I just made you a God damn fortune, not that you needed it, but I put WNN more on the map. You owe me. Get me a ticket or I’ll scream to hell and high water that Hobbs Howell was not going to air this story because you thought that people were too stupid to handle it.”
“I never said such a thing.”
He didn’t, or at least not in front of Drew. Didn’t matter. Drew gambled with the truth. “I have you on a phone recording. I record everything.”
“I never said...” Hobbs hesitated.
Drew figured Hobbs couldn’t recall when or where, but probably realized that at some point he had said those words.
Hobbs sighed. “I’ll get on that. Expect a ticket within an hour. How are you going to get to the airport?”
Good question. “You’re going to get me a taxi. Have him pick me up at the Belmont Library in Southeast Portland.”
“That’s it?” questioned Hobbs.
“That’s it.”
42
June 8th, 2018 ~ Underfoot Black, Grenada
Donny looked as surprised as Jaxx to see Rivkah, when she burst through the door, waving a rifle. The scene that played out was as depressing as it was predictable: Rivkah fought like a dervish, while the guards kept piling on and on and on until they had her pinned and subdued. She was removed and no one – not Donny, not Slade, not the guards who escorted Jaxx to and from his bunk – would tell him anything about her whereabouts or condition. He hated them all.
Jaxx tried hypnotizing himself in his room, but it never worked. Slade had said something about there being tech buried in the walls of Donny’s office, but that was back when he was lying about implanted memories. The reason he couldn’t hypnotize himself was: auto-suggestion. He’d been trained, Pavlov-style, to respond to Donny’s voice. He knew that. Still, it was a bummer that he needed Donny in order to travel back through his own damned memories. He needed to do something about that. If I lie down, imagine I am in Donny’s office, and regulate my breathing, perhaps I can trick myself into an altered state. I’ve heard that dweeb coun
t me down enough times; I can probably conjure up his voice, so it feels like he’s taking me in…
All it took was his head hitting the pillow. He didn’t even need to hear Donny counting him down.
Jaxx landed on the forest canopy’s floor with a thud, a portion of his parachute slipping through the branches and landing on top of him. He pushed the parachute away. It was ripped to shreds. He unstrapped, pressing the rescue beacon on his belt, sending out a signal to Star Cruiser Liberty in hopes they’d send a rescue mission for him.
To his surprise, he wasn’t too beat up. A couple of cuts in his jumpsuit pants had reached deep enough to scratch a few bloody lacerations on his leg, but they were minor. His lower back was a bit sore, nothing he couldn’t deal with.
He climbed out of his ejection seat and trudged forward, away from his starfighter’s wreckage a few clicks behind him and toward Rivkah’s burning wreckage. Maybe she was alive somewhere near her downed craft.
The forest was one big shadow under the canopy of trees. The air was humid. A mix of jasmine and soil tickled his senses.
A bush swished back and forth next to him and something scurried off deeper in the brush.
He was on a planet he’d never been to before. Hell, he’d never been on any planet but his home, Earth. He unholstered an Interstellar Photon Gun, IPG-14, from his belt, a weapon he’d never used in his life. Apparently, it shot photon bolts along with orange tracers. The bolts were nearly invisible, but the tracers, harmful as well, allowed for better targeting and aim. You’d know exactly where a photon had been shot by the tracer that followed. That way, if you hit your target, you knew where to aim your next shot.
Then again, it worked both ways. It would be best if the enemy had to look where the shot came from, instead of knowing the exact location. He turned off the tracer rounds. To be well hidden in enemy terrain was more valuable than gold.
He held his gun out, cautiously moving around a spiked tree. He touched the spike then pulled his hand away when an insect, a scorpion on pumped-up hyper-steroids, jumped out from behind the spike and hissed. Jaxx reeled back and reflexively pulled the trigger.
The bug splattered, leaving a gooey mess on the tree inside a newly-created circular burn indentation from the IPG-14 blast.
He stood, breathing hard. “Calm down, Jaxx.” He could feel his heart beating in his throat. “Relax.”
If a bug could scare him that easily, Rivkah might get a hole in her chest if she came out from behind a tree and accidentally startled him. He pushed the thought away, squeezing his free hand into a fist, pushing his nerves as deep down as possible.
He stepped over a rock and brushed a low hanging branch aside. It was full of a reddish-orange fruit. Or perhaps that was a flower that had yet to blossom.
He inched his way silently across the forest, the heat getting to him. Spots of perspiration spread across his jumpsuit. He needed water but the Taiyonians were probably looking for him and in force. If they had a Search and Destroy Team, he didn’t have much time to find Rivkah, locate a hiding place, and wait for a rescue team; if one was even on its way.
“Just keep trekking,” he whispered.
Pushing aside a palm leaf and ducking a thick branch, he took a long stride and felt his foot fall into thick sludge. A rabid cry pierced the forest and mud splashed across Jaxx’s torso like someone tossing a can of paint at him.
He instinctively back peddled, his forearm coming up and covering his face.
A trumpet sound mixed with a low, whining drone – not unlike bagpipes – erupted in front of him and a tentacle lashed out, connecting with his shoulder.
Jaxx flung his arm back, losing his IPG. He heard it bounce across the ground as he tumbled and landed on his back.
The large tentacle loomed and whipped back an instant later. The earth lifted in front of Jaxx and an animal, with a bulky frame and a tentacled nose, emerged from the slime. Its eyes were almond-shaped and blue, its body like a hippopotamus. It leaped forward, landing just in front of Jaxx.
Jaxx slowly sat up, putting his palms out. He hoped that was the universal symbol for slow it down, buddy. “Whoa, back up, beautiful. I don’t mean any harm.”
Its tentacle slowly extended and gave Jaxx two gentle pats on the top of his head, then sidestepped him, walking away over a small hill.
“What in the world...?” Jaxx wiped himself off, looking in every direction. If the Taiyonians hadn’t known his exact location a minute ago, they did now.
He picked up his IPG and hurried to a boulder that sat at the base of a hill. He crouched behind it, watching and listening for movement – any indication that the enemy was near.
Nothing.
Not even an alien bird whistling.
The battle, the crash, and the strafing of the city might have driven the animals into hiding. Or they could all be in shock, like that hippopotamus-looking creature padding away from him, even though it could have crushed him with a couple of well-placed hoof-stomps.
Jaxx raced up the hill, staying low.
At the top, he spotted smoke spiraling into the air from Rivkah’s crash. He turned, figuring he’d see the same from his crash, then ducked to the ground. A craft hovered over his crash site. The smoke continued to billow up, black and nasty. A beam blasted from the belly of the craft, extinguishing the fire beneath. It spun, its nose pointing in Jaxx’s direction.
Jaxx crouched lower, then crawled behind a spike-less tree, and rested his back against it. The craft was quiet but he could still hear it. Then it stopped.
He eyed the sky through the breaks in the branches. He could see the craft hovering a hundred feet above him. It ascended another hundred feet and sped toward Rivkah’s crash. Jaxx stood and made his way to the top of the hill, watching the craft extinguish Rivkah’s expanding fire.
The craft moved south and lingered over the canopy, at least two clicks away.
That must be where Rivkah is.
Jaxx hiked harder and faster than he ever had in his life. In the 20 minutes it took him to reach the position where he’d seen the alien craft, he’d seen enough alien flora and fauna to make his university colleagues mad with jealousy. He’d barely given it a second glance. All he cared about was getting to Rivkah. And finally, there she was. He held back, surveying their surroundings. He didn’t want to crash into her hideout and give her away, if she hadn’t been found, but neither did he want to approach if she had been taken prisoner. There was too much at stake.
He eyed her. She had positioned herself under a small, low outcropping. Trees and fern-like brush surrounded her. She was well concealed. If it hadn’t been for dumb luck, he would have passed her, still creeping through these alien woods. He headed in her direction, lifting one foot over a golden-hued shrub and the other leg over a gooey, green puddle. No telling what might fight and what might flee.
Rivkah clutched her leg just below the tourniquet she made for herself. She looked weak and in excruciating pain, though she didn’t cry out or complain. She was the very definition of stoic.
He took another step, then stopped in his tracks. There was movement on the outcropping above her. He slowly lifted his IPG and went to one knee, his stomach hardening, holding back his trained trigger muscles, because every inch of him wanted to pull the trigger.
“Don’t move!” he yelled.
A figure was standing on the ledge directly over her. It was a man. He had long black hair. He was Asian in appearance, wearing black pants and a blue coat that flared into a cape, lined in red. He jumped from the outcropping and onto the forest floor. A Roman scutum-style shield, which protected the entire body, materializing in his hand.
Rivkah abruptly let go of her leg, cringing in pain. She lay on her side, which took her out of Jaxx’s line of sight.
Jaxx pulled the trigger.
The man crouched and held the shield out, directly in front of him. Blue electricity spun violently at the shield’s center, absorbing the shot. The man peered around his s
hield, seeming somewhat surprised.
He gave a nod at Jaxx, waiting for another shot. When none came, his shield disappeared and he slapped his fist in the palm of his other hand, holding it at his heart. He dipped his head in a short bow, then dashed off as quickly as he had come.
Jaxx rushed Rivkah’s position. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she panted in pain. She looked up at Jaxx, reaching for him. He’d never see her so vulnerable, so pale, so...scared. She was losing blood. The only thing he could think of was that they needed to leave this planet and now in order to keep her alive.
He slid in next to her, feeling her forehead. She was burning up. He placed his index and middle finger on her neck and to the side of her windpipe, checking her carotid artery. Her pulse was slow, barely noticeable.
“Rivkah, can you hear me?”
She nodded her head, her eyes fluttering closed. He gently slapped her cheek a few times in quick succession, doing his best to keep her awake.
“Stay awake, Rivkah. A rescue team is on its way.” He didn’t know if that was true, but wanted to keep her hopes alive. “Stay with me. They are almost here.”
“They...are...not.” Her voice was soft and shaky; as weak as her pulse.
He checked her leg. Below the tourniquet was a large gash. Blood was gushing everywhere, pooling on the ground. The tourniquet was too loose.
She was bleeding out.
Jaxx reached down her leg, untying the tourniquet. He slipped it off her leg and rolled it tighter, then retied it around her leg, making sure he squeezed the tourniquet. The blood now dripped. He didn’t fix it, but at least she’d bleed out slower.
Shit happens but this was the first time real shit had happened to him in the Secret Space Program.
He looked around for something that would cauterize the wound. Maybe he could hold up a broken branch and shoot the upper portion with his IPG. That would get the branch scorching hot or disintegrate the targeted portion of the branch altogether. Didn’t matter. He had to give it a try.
Atlantis Quadrilogy - Box Set Page 21
