Exiles

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  From there, they made their way down a long corridor, finally stopping at a door—which proved to be the door of a cell.

  “I’m damned if I can figure out how they found us,” she muttered for perhaps the fiftieth time. “I mean, it isn’t as if they had the chance to put a tracking device on us.”

  Madelyn glared at her for a moment. “You know damned well they found us because I called Robert. Well, tried to call him,” she amended.

  Claire stared at her in stunned surprise. “You didn’t!”

  Madelyn’s lips tightened. She dragged in a calming breath and released it slowly. “Yes, I did. But I was careful not to stay on for more than a minute! They couldn’t possibly have tracked the call that fast … could they?”

  Claire considered that for a few moments. “Doesn’t seem likely, but if you did and they found us that must be it. It isn’t like any of used our bank cards or anything.”

  Maddie chewed her lip.

  Claire noticed the guilty expression. “Oh my god, Maddie! You didn’t!”

  “I need to know that Robert is ok!” Maddie snapped, clearly fighting tears. “Honestly, I tried not to get either you or Nick involved. If you hadn’t followed me they wouldn’t have caught you!”

  Anger suffused Claire. As if Maddie was so stupid she couldn’t figure out that bringing the damned government goons to the same town where they were hiding wasn’t going to get them all caught!

  She struggled with her temper for many minutes and finally managed to tamp it enough to realize her sister had been too focused on her fears for her husband, Robert, to really think logically. That didn’t make it right, but she knew it hadn’t been intentional. Finally, she managed a reasonably off-hand shrug and expelled a long-suffering sigh. “It’s ok.”

  Maddie burst into tears. “No, it isn’t! God knows what these weirdoes have in mind! I need a foot up my ass for taking chances when I knew it might get you and Nick caught ….”

  Claire slid across the hard bunk where the two of them were sitting and put her arms around her sister. They’d had a nightmarish ride on a plane that seemed designed strictly for transporting inanimate objects—like tanks—and then another long night time drive and finally been settled in a cell as horrible as the one they’d occupied on the ship. “I understand.”

  Madelyn cried harder.

  “I probably would have done the same thing.”

  Madelyn made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “And I probably would have kicked your ass!”

  Claire snorted. “You might have tried.”

  Maddie sniffed her tears back. “I’m so worried about him, Claire.”

  Claire felt guilty that she hadn’t even given her poor brother-in-law a thought. “He’s a brilliant scientist—way too valuable for them to consider doing anything …. Harmful.”

  Maddie sniffed back her tears, pulled away and looked at Claire hopefully. “You think?”

  Claire tried to exhibit more confidence than she felt. “He can’t do their work sitting in a cell, can he? They probably just … Maybe they’re intercepting his calls? Or maybe they confiscated the phone? Who knows? He was working on a secret project. Maybe he made that breakthrough he was talking about and they didn’t want to take the chance of it leaking?” That sounded good! Claire could almost believe that herself.

  “I hadn’t thought about that!” Maddie gasped, considering it for a moment before she smiled tentatively. “You think that’s it?”

  “I’m sure it’s something like that,” Claire said, ignoring the guilty twinge she felt for comforting her sister with statements she knew were complete fabrication and could be lies. But what was the point in Maddie suffering over imaginings? It wasn’t as if Maddie knew either!

  It was actually almost a relief on many levels when they heard the approach of footsteps beyond their cell door and someone stopped outside. Claire’s heart leapt jarringly in her chest. She pulled away from her sister to stare wide-eyed at the door as a key was inserted and the lock turned.

  A soldier stood outside who looked to be about fourteen—funny how young people began to look when you passed that milestone!

  “Come with me, please.”

  Claire blinked at him, glanced at Maddie and then looked at the soldier again. “Who?”

  He flushed faintly, proving his youth was more than imagination. “Both of you.”

  At least he’d been polite! Feeling more hopeful that they weren’t about to face a torture session, Claire got up shakily. Madelyn got up, as well. Catching Claire’s hand, she squeezed it. They exchanged another nervous glance as they left the cell. The soldier indicated they should proceed to their left, towards the elevator that had brought them down. He followed them until they entered the elevator cubicle and then keyed the level in from the outside.

  “It would really be nice if this meant they were letting us go,” Maddie muttered.

  “You think so?” Claire asked doubtfully.

  “No. Just saying.”

  “Oh.”

  Two soldiers met them when the elevator stopped and the doors opened. Claire balked, for all the good it did, when she realized they meant to separate them. “What’s going on? Why were we brought here? I demand to know what kind of charges they’ve invented to justify taking us against our will and holding us without due process!”

  “Come with me and you can ask,” the soldier responded.

  “I’d rather stay with my sister!”

  “Ma’am, you’ll have to come with me.”

  Claire felt threatened just from the way he made the statement, as if he was hinting that ugly things might happen if she didn’t cooperate.

  She still felt like both she and Maddie would be safer together, but she didn’t want to push them to get forceful with her or Maddie.

  She was escorted to a room that didn’t look a lot bigger, or different, from their cell except that it didn’t have a toilet or bunk and it did have a table and two chairs.

  Despite the fact that it looked like a police interrogation room, Claire immediately felt better. At least there wasn’t a straight backed chair and torture equipment!

  The man who entered the room after she’d sat for so long her butt was numb was dressed in a black suit that instantly made the term ‘men in black’ leap to mind.

  He sat down and extended a hand. “I’m special agent Miller.”

  Good manners compelled Claire to take the offer—not spit on him—but she damned well wasn’t going to shake hands with one of the bastards that had kidnapped her! And she just wasn’t comfortable with behaving trashy and spitting on him. Instead, she glared at him. “Don’t try the good cop shit on me! I’m not your friend. You had me kidnapped and violated my constitutional rights and I want to know why the hell I’m being held here—wherever here is!”

  “Terroristic connections ….”

  Claire felt her jaw drop. “Oh that is total bullshit!” she exclaimed when she’d caught her wind. “You’re trying to say you can romp all over my rights because you’ve decided I have terrorist connections? When the hell did that happen?”

  “The reports we had was that there was an underwater terrorist base and that you had joined the terrorists.”

  “That’s a damn lie! You didn’t hear any damn such thing! My sister reported that I’d been abducted by aliens and you sent two teams to raid the alien fortress for whatever technology you could steal!”

  He sat back in his chair and stared at her thoughtfully for several moments. “If you’re trying to excuse your behavior by pleading mental incompetence ….”

  Claire leaned toward him. “I don’t have to excuse my behavior! I haven’t done a damned thing and you damned well know it! And don’t try that mental bullshit on me either! I know y’all cleaned out the map room of that city Maddie found and I also know you had soldiers all over the alien base!” She glared at him. “Is that what this is about? You think you can brainwash me and my sister and convince us none of it happened t
he way we thought it did so you can enjoy the technology you stole without anyone knowing how you got it?

  “Or do you think you can make dozens of people disappear and get away with it? Because you will not get away with it. There were over a dozen college students with Maddie on her dig. Their parents are going to be screaming the walls down in Washington when they realize what you’ve done!”

  “Who may have been taken by terrorists …,” Agent Miller said with a smirk that made Claire long to leap to her feet and plant her fist in the middle of it.

  Maybe the chair? It would really hurt her hand …. “You bastard! What did you do with them?”

  He shrugged, lifting his hands. “Why Ms Collins! We’re your government. We haven’t done anything with them. You’d have to ask your sister. Obviously, this was a recruitment, not the dig she’d convinced the students of ….”

  Claire stared at the man in disbelief, wondering how he could look so completely normal when he was a total monster. Oh my god! Dante! We’re in deep shit! Help!

  She hadn’t really expected a response. She was so stunned when she felt Dante’s presence that it took her crucial moments to grasp what he was trying to communicate to her.

  Where?

  She looked at the agent as he scooted his chair back and got up. “We’ll talk again when you’ve had time to consider how uncomfortable you’re going to be if you have to take up permanent residence in that cell, Ms. Collins.”

  Claire ground her teeth. “That’s Dr. Collins to you, dickwad! Where am I? What is this place?”

  Instead of responding, he rang a buzzer. The soldier that had escorted her from the elevator appeared and, without a word, escorted her back to the elevator.

  Madelyn looked as thoroughly ruffled as she felt when she joined her at the elevator. “I don’t suppose the bastard you talked to told you where we are?” Claire asked urgently.

  Maddie seemed to wrestle with her temper. “He didn’t say a hell of a lot after he accused me of being a terrorist. I cussed that bastard for every low down son-of-a-bitching thing I could think of! I demanded a lawyer! I told him I wasn’t telling him shit!”

  Claire looked at the stone faced soldiers. “Where are we?”

  “Step inside.”

  “Fuck you!” Madelyn said, but she moved inside the elevator. “I’d use highbrow insults, but what would be the point of talking to you above your mental level?”

  “Dante is trying to find us!” Claire said in a harsh whisper as soon as the doors closed. “But I don’t know where we are, damn it!”

  Maddie considered it as the cubicle began to descend. “It took a hell of a long time to get here and they had to stop for fuel. I’m guessing one of the bases in the middle of the country. Maybe even Area51.”

  A secret base! I don’t know where! Maybe Cheyenne Mountain? Maybe Area 51? Dante? Dante?

  * * * *

  The flight from Ireland to Guantanamo Bay was so swift that Nick was certain they were lying when Dante and Galen informed him they were approaching the base … until the F-16s started bird dogging them.

  The squawk on the radio was hard to ignore, however. “Unidentified aircraft! You are approaching restricted airspace. Turn using vector ….”

  “They’re deadly serious!” Nick said when neither Dante or Galen seemed inclined to obey the order to turn around.

  “Yes,” Dante said, “But if Claire is there we must go there.”

  “We aren’t going to do her any good if we get shot down!”

  Nick had hardly gotten the warning out when the jets began to fire on them. Instantly, alarms all over the alien vessel began to sound and a voice, not human and not speaking any language Nick had ever heard, began to speak. His educated guess, however, was that it was a computer reciting damage reports. Dante confirmed it with a curse Nick also didn’t recognize.

  “The shields are weakening. We will have to abort.”

  Nick wasn’t keen about that idea either. “Can’t we just … beam them up? I know you have something like that! I’ve seen you use it.”

  Dante and Galen exchanged a look. “It is not magic,” Dante responded dryly. “We must have a fix on her coordinates in order to utilize the transporter and we have no idea where she is or if she is even here.”

  “So beam us down!” Nick snapped. “Or just me! I’ll find her!”

  “That also is not possible,” Dante responded tightly. “If we lower the shields to try it, we will be debris at the bottom of the sea. In fact, they are likely to breach the shields if we remain here much longer.”

  Galen shook his head and uttered something in their language. The ship instantly responded by shooting straight up, climbing until they had left the fighters behind.

  “What now?” Nick demanded.

  Dante frowned. “Now we must find another way.”

  He was silent for a little while, but although Nick thought he must be trying to figure out a way to breach the security at Gitmo, when he spoke it seemed clear that that was far from the truth.

  “She does not believe that she is here.”

  Nick stared at him blankly. “She …? You … talked to her?”

  Dante wanted to claim that he had. He wanted to claim a far stronger link to her than actually existed. “In a sense. I reached out telepathically. She responded. But she does not seem to know where she is.”

  Resentment swelled in Nick. He struggled for a few moments and finally managed to tamp it. “Well, maybe what we need to do is to find a place where you’re getting … uh … the strongest signal? From what I understand, there are several secret bases around the middle of the country.”

  Dante exchanged a look with Galen and both of them shrugged.

  “It is as good a place to set down for repairs as any and we are more likely to make it there than to one of our bases,” Dante said calmly.

  Nick stared at him blankly. “You’re saying …?”

  “The ship is damaged and cannot maintain altitude. We will land—somewhere—one way or another.”

  “I’d suggest the White House lawn—to demand they hand over Claire and her sister—but I’m not sure we’d make the impression we want if we couldn’t take off again,” Nick said dryly.

  Dante eyed him thoughtfully. “That is not a bad suggestion,” he mused.

  Nick gaped at him. “You’re not serious? Did you miss the part about us not being in a position to negotiate if we can’t take off again? And that’s even supposing we could land at all! They’ll shoot us down before we can get within sniffing distance of the White House! The bombardment we just got is nothing compared to what they’ll lob at us if we threaten the White House and the President!”

  “We must negotiate a treaty and possibly an alliance, however,” Galen said pointedly. “Your president is one of the most powerful leaders. We should discuss the matter with him.”

  Nick stared at him, torn between outrage and disbelief. “The most powerful,” he ground out.

  “All the better,” Dante pointed out.

  “And not likely to negotiate anything if you piss them off by landing this thing on the front lawn of the White House.”

  “We will land and while the computer is repairing the ship, we will convince them that we are sincerely offering friendship,” Galen said calmly. “The computer estimates one to two Earth hours to complete repairs. That will give us enough time, I believe.”

  Chapter Eight

  It went against the grain to petition the humans for the safe return of his woman and her sister, but he could not think of another way that was not more dangerous.

  The petition itself would be dangerous, of course, but he thought it very likely that they had already deduced that Claire was important to him and he would not be tipping his hand. He thought that it was probable that the possibility of her importance to him was one of the reasons she had been captured and was being held.

  The other being a need to know the ‘enemy’ and what their plans might be.
<
br />   And hopefully they would be able to satisfy that particular need with a meeting between them.

  It seemed certain that the attack they’d observed when they had gone to search for Claire and found Nick was not an isolated event. The gods had already turned the changelings upon the humans and set their plan in motion—and they still were not certain what their ultimate goal was.

  Possibly, the gods simply wanted the angels removed as guardians since they made no attempt to hide their opposition to the overlords at every turn, but he was not comfortable with that simple conclusion. The gods were feared by the majority of the members of the assembly. It seemed likely that if the gods had petitioned to have them removed it would have been done. The members might have balked and argued since the angels were chosen to start with because they seemed the most perfect for the job—principally because they were not afraid of the gods and empathized with the humans enough to protect them when necessary and balance out the need to control them with the need to preserve the species.

  But he thought it was enough to know at this point that they were as much a target as the humans. They could not be blindsided—more than they already had been.

  They still did not have an exact count of the angels that the gods had turned, but it was certain that it was enough to warrant an alliance with the humans. The gods had declared war on both species and would move into the open as soon as they were sure they had weakened the defenses of both.

  They were fortunate that the computer was able to affect repairs of the cloaking device before they rendezvoused with the other angels that they had summoned. It was no part of his plan to be blown out of the sky and even a combined shielding of many vessels would not insure that they wouldn’t if the humans began to blast away at them again.

  In any case, the humans were as prone to exploit weaknesses as the gods and to hold them in contempt. If they were to have a chance at forming an alliance they would need to appear strong and as if they had no real need of the alliance but were extending a hand in friendship.