by Nate Castle
He led them into his house.
“I’m gonna make an example out of you. I’m gonna film this shit and send it to whoever you work for. To show them what happens when they mess with Ole Rupert.”
He set up a video camera on a coffee table, got the angle correct and pressed the ‘record’ button.
BLAHHH-SHOUIE!
Logan let out a magnificent sneeze and really made sure to exaggerate the length of the ‘shouie’. This gave Hank just enough of a window to hop up into a squat position and dive at Rupert, taking him down hard from the legs. Rupert pulled the trigger of the 12-gauge as he was going down, but Logan was thinking ahead and rolled to his left following the dramatic sneeze to avoid being in the line of fire. Hank wriggled the shotgun free from Rupert’s hand and quickly got back on his feet, with the gun now pointed down at Rupert.
“Real or fake,” Hank said to Logan.
“Huh?”
“The sneeze.”
“Oh, it was fake. I’m real glad you took that as your cue to attack or else I’m not sure we’d be alive right now,” Logan said.
Hank got up close to Logan’s ear, who was now standing next to him and the two whispered back and forth for a minute.
“It’s your lucky day Rupert. We’re going to keep this gun, but we will spare your life. I hope you learned a lesson though about not judging a book by its cover. When someone goes out of their way to try and help you and your response is to shoot them, you’re one sorry soul,” Hank said.
“There is a brown paper bag that contains money right here on your kitchen counter,” Logan said,” I would advise that your use it get your water turned back on.”
They left the house, feeling good about not killing Rupert. They easily could have justified it, since he was seconds away from taking their lives, but sometimes the ‘do nothing’ approach was most satisfying. Logan thought back to the in-depth case studies he had in one of his college business classes. You would have to make a bunch of decisions and eventually come to a solution to complete the case. In many of the decisions, students would overthink things and change major aspects of the fictitious company’s structure. Logan would often choose “Do Nothing” as his decision and the professor would point out that oftentimes that was the correct decision to make.
The hardest part of the job was transporting the two motors from the Joe’s Grab ‘N’ Go to the White House motor pool parking lot. They eventually found an old beat-up car at Joe’s that ran, and loaded the motors into the trunk. When they got to the motor pool, Clyde found a rolling tool chest that he wheeled over to the bus and went to work disassembling the motor that was currently in the bus. He gave Aaron some instructions and Aaron went off to where the semi truck was located and did the same thing. They had to work together when it came to swapping in the new motor, because it was a two man job lifting and holding it in place.
Within four hours, the two had both the bus and the semi running. One more stop to pick up the alien leg and then they were back at the White House to show off their new vehicles.
11
Isolated Incident
“Let’s get down to business here. How are we going to stop the Fadothials?” President Taylor had re-entered the Zyrgian craft and was sitting with Clearokyt and General Kaplan.
“We will set up a force field that won’t allow them to enter your planet’s atmosphere,” said Clearokyt.
“Really, that’s the big exciting plan?” General Kaplan said.
“Yes. Any species with a koluna biomass rating of 0.0012 or greater will be not able to enter the planet once the force field is in place,” Clearokyt said.
“I’ll take your word for it, but that doesn’t help us out because the Fadothials have already breached the atmosphere correct?”
“Also having to do with their koluna biomass rating, the Fadothials can’t stay on Earth for more than twelve hours at a time. When their time is up they have to exit the atmosphere to a ‘neutral’ zone and basically recharge their bodies.
“And you know this how?”
“We’ve been tracking their movements and behaviors.”
“So you’re saying if we set up these disks then the Fadothials won’t be able to enter Earth. Will this be a permanent solution?” President Taylor said.
“It depends on many factors, but there is a chance that it could be a permanent solution. Let’s reconvene in two hours to start the placement of the disks. In the meantime you should get teams together,” Clearokyt said.
President Taylor nodded and walked to the exit of the craft, with General Kaplan following suit. They walked in silence even when they were out of the craft until they felt they were out of earshot from the craft.
“Obviously I wasn’t go to say this in the meeting, but I think that plan sucks. It’s the equivalent of ‘playing not to lose’. We need to put some counter measures in place, in my opinion,” General Kaplan said.
“I’m with ya,” said President Taylor, “Are you thinking Hank-style counter measures? Or is that too extreme?”
‘Definitely. If he could develop some weapons like he did last time, I would feel a lot better about fighting the Fadothials.”
“The key is going to be finding out what substance to put in the bullets that will kill the Fadothials. Do we use the same boron and silicon mix? The drawback is that might harm the Zyrgians as well.”
“I hope the people in Riverside will be a bit more pleasant than the folks in the Desert,” Shelby said. The plane touched down at the Municipal Airport.
“You’re preaching to the choir. I’ve about had it with these jerk-offs not showing any respect,” Hank said.
A tap on the shoulder interrupted what Hank was going to say next.
“Are you Hank? You have a call from the White House, come to the cockpit,” the guy must have been the pilot of the plane. Hank followed him to the front of the plane and was handed a telephone receiver when they arrived.
‘Hank?’
‘Yup, whatdoya got?’
‘This is Kaplan.’
‘What’s up brother’
‘We just had a sit down with the Zyrgians’
‘No shit!’
‘They want us to help put up a force field that will prevent the new aliens from entering our atmosphere or something. It doesn’t sound like a very aggressive plan though, which is why I’m calling you.’
‘Yeah, that sounds depressing.’
‘Will you be able to build new weapons for us?’
‘Oh, I’d love to. Same formula as last time?’
‘Maybe, maybe not, we might try putting a new chemical in this batch. I’ll get one of the girls in the lab to start running some tests and then I’ll circle back. How’s it going out there?’
‘It’s going. Not the most enjoyable mission but we are getting the job done.’
‘Alright. Be safe and I’ll be in touch again soon.’
General Kaplan ended the call and Hank’s end of the receiver went silent.
“What the heck?” President Taylor said.
At the edge of the White House property a semi truck with a trailer and a bus were approaching. Their natural reaction was to take cover, in the event that this was an attack. Both him and Kaplan darted inside the nearest building entrance, but came back out when they realized Clyde and Aaron were the drivers.
“What the hell you guys doing?” General Kaplan said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“We thought it might make more sense to have a couple of rigs, you know, to make life easier,” Clyde said.
President Taylor noticed something tied down on the semi trailer.
“What’s that there?” he said and pointed.
“An alien leg. Probably a Zyrgian leg to be more specific,” Aaron said.
“You just stumbled upon it?” Kaplan chimed in.
“That is exactly what happened. We brought it back so that a team could look at it, you know, maybe gather some useful intel from it,” Clyde said.
“This might be our ticket,’ General Kaplan said, “I bet there’s a high chance that this Zyrgian leg has some Fadothial DNA on it, and if so maybe Christina can identify what substance we need to put in Hank’s new bullets.”
“Good find boys, I’m glad you brought this back here instead of leaving it behind,” President Taylor said.
“No prob—“ Aaron couldn’t finish his sentence before he was cut off by Kaplan.
“Don’t say it ! That’s the biggest pet peeve of mine, when people say ‘no problem’. Especially when I used to go to restaurants and the waiter or waitress would say ‘no problem’ after I thanked them for a water refill. I would always think ‘it better not be a problem, considering it’s your job. And if it is a problem, then you and I will now have a problem too.’ The bottom line is I don’t like when people use that phrase.”
“Hey Kap, when I first saw the truck and bus approaching, the first thing that popped into my head was that we need some better security around here,” said the President, “Not only do we have an alien conflict, but we also have the IHL humans who might come around at some point and we can’t have them just stroll in here and shoot the place up. Can you get a security team together?”
“Right away. I’ll be back,” General Kaplan said.
“I just received some sort of large file, my computer is downloading it now,” Christina said to Cade from inside the lab.
When the file was finished downloading a video player popped up and the video started playing. At first they couldn’t figure out what they were watching, because it was a surveillance video, but eventually a body came into the frame. It wasn't human and it wasn’t Zyrgian. It stood around 7 feet tall and was two-tone red in color. Covering its chest area were maybe fifty small tentacles. This alien had two legs. Its facial features seemed out of the ordinary. It had one large eye that was open, and five more eyes that weren’t open, positioned in strategic spots around the head. It was almost as if the alien would only use the eye that was closest to what it was trying to look at. Instead of a mouth, this creature had an area below the eyes with many tiny holes, none of the holes looked big enough to eat food, for example. The holes formed a circle shape, and looked like when someone puts an audio speaker in a wall and has a casing around the speaker with holes to allow the sound to project from the wall.
The video shifted to a new scene, where again the same thing happened; an alien appeared in the frame, with very similar physical features to the first one. Christina paused the video and looked at the slider bar control. The video appeared to be over three hours in duration.
“Holy toledo, I am fascinated by this new alien group and all, but I don’t know if I can watch a surveillance video for three hours,” Cade said.
“We have no choice. Don’t worry we’ll take turns watching it. Obviously whoever sent us this video wanted to show us something, so we need to find what that is,”Christina said.
“Do you think the Zyrgians sent this to us?” Cade said.
“With almost 100 percent certainty.”
“Why don’t we just ask them then? At the next meeting they have with the President.”
“Because that would be too easy. Maybe what they’re trying to show us is a phenomena that they don’t know how to explain,”Christina said.
“Ahh shit, I think they’re on to us,” Logan said.
So far the Riverside, California mission had gone better than the Palm Springs one. The residents who they delivered the money to hadn’t been resistant nor asked too many questions about the origins of the money. Logan and Hank were on the third floor deck of a seven story apartment building and spotted some commotion off in the distance down below.
“Let’s see how this plays out,”Hank said.
A black SUV pulled up to one of the houses that they had just visited. Two men got out and knocked on the door. The middle-aged couple that Logan and Hank had delivered money to answered the door and the two men grabbed them by the neck and drug them out into the street. The couple was questioned for a minute but must have not provided the right answer because suddenly guns were drawn. Logan and Hank were too far away from the scene to provide any assistance. One man had a pistol pointed at the man, while the other man forced his handgun into the women’s hand. He kept his hand enticed with the women’s though so that she had no control over where she aimed the pistol. He moved her aim to the right so that she also had the gun pointed at her boyfriend.
A loud popping sound echoed and the boyfriend dropped like a sack of potatoes.
“God damn it! Do you think she pulled the trigger because they made some sort of deal with her?” Hank said.
“I doubt it. I think she pulled the trigger because they forced her to. They had her hand wrapped around the grip and it looked like the one man gave her whack on her forearm with his own pistol causing her to tense up and squeeze the trigger,” Logan said.
They expected the women to be shot next, but instead the men grabbed the gun from her hand and headed back to their SUV and drove off.
“That’s even worse than her dying. Knowing that she killed her boyfriend and having that on her conscience,” Logan said.
“Time for Plan B, I think our money distribution plan will no longer work, except in the off chance that what we just witnessed wasn’t at all related to us delivering money to that couple,” Hank said.
“The fact that they are driving around in cars now means they definitely have some skilled people working for them. C’mon, I think if we climb up on the roof, we will have a wide angle view of the surrounding area. We might be able to spot that SUV and see where it’s headed,” Logan said.
12
Uncanny Abilities
“Completely off topic, but we’re running out of meat on campus. Why don’t you build a makeshift box for that trailer and then take a few strong hands with you to round up some cattle?” General Kaplan said.
“Right on man, that’s right up my alley. Aaron and I will get a box built within the hour. You want us to butcher the cows too, or bring them back here first?” Clyde said.
“And why you are familiar with butchering cows, I’m not sure. I’ll let you decide on that one,” General Kaplan said in an amused tone.
“How’s it coming in here?” Christina said.
She had pawned off the surveillance video to Cade for a few minutes while she went to check on Sierra, who was in a massive room a few doors down from Christina’s lab. Sierra had a team of ten highly trusted individuals and they were working on a project that very few others knew about. Sierra was looking plump, she was scheduled to pop out her and President Taylor’s baby in the next couple weeks, but she refused to take time off. She said working on projects like this one was therapeutic for her.
Following the last battle with the Zyrgians, most of the alien crafts the humans had in their possession had been damaged or destroyed. Sierra was already ahead of the curve because her team had already built an alien craft from scratch a few months prior. Duplicating this process was becoming easier with each new craft that was produced. In addition, a few of the old crafts were able to be repaired because the exterior damage wasn’t major.
There were a couple reasons that this project was to be kept classified. One, they didn’t want people getting any creative ideas or a false sense of hope that these alien crafts could act as a liaison for personal gain. Many people on campus had not yet earned a high level of trust.
And reason number two, and arguably the most important reason to keep the craft development top secret was so that the Zyrgians didn’t find out. Not only was the design of the new crafts stolen from the Zyrgians, but a few of the old Zyrgian crafts were still in human possession. The Zyrgians wouldn’t be happy to hear this news. Also, the fact that the humans had a side project going on meant that they weren’t ‘All-In’ when it came to the Zyrgians plan on how to defeat the Fadothials. There was still a lack of trust between the two groups.
“We are cranking these pupp
ies out, on average at one craft every three days,” Sierra said.
“I’m glad to see that at least one of our projects is thriving!” Christina said, “And the roof issue?”
“Oh yeah, we took care of that, made it retractable, so when we need to fly these crafts out of here, all we have to do is crank a lever to open the roof,” Sierra said.
“Fantastic, let me know if you need anything or if you want a break. I’ll be in my lab down the hall,” Christina said.
“I’m supposed to get picked up here within the hour,”Hank said,” What’s your plan, are you coming with?”
“No, I’m going to stay. It’s bugging me that we haven’t solved this IHL problem. I’ll come back to DC though as soon as I can,”Logan said.
“Alright brother stay safe safe out there,” Hank said and brought it in for a hug.
Logan made a mental note of where the black IHL SUV had parked before coming down from the roof. He had a handheld walkie talkie and used it to request a meeting with any and all in the relief group who had special skills when it came to computers.
Thirty minutes later he was sitting in a community center building with ten others discussing options.
“We have to do something that will make the IHL guys start killing each other, take that thought and run with it,” Logan said.
One of the Europeans named Preston spoke up, “A system-wide hack that causes the upper level management to think that the mid-level employees are funneling money from the IHL account to their own personal ones. That should stir the pot quite a bit mate.”
“I like it. If we can duplicate or run variations of that idea as well, then we’ll really be in business. Anyone have questions or concerns about this?”
“Nope, we each just need a computer that’s up to standard and we can get started,” Preston answered for the group.
“Right. Come with me, I know of a place,” Logan said, leading them out of the room eventually ending up at a Homeland Security annex.
