by Nate Castle
Noel began her spiel.
“Now imagine yourself in a world where you look out for the best interest of everyone else before yourself, and you are overly kind and thoughtful to others and willing to put your life on the line to save some complete strangers. In this world, all rules of society are followed and you find a way to stop those who don’t follow the rules. ”
Noel was standing in front of a crowd of maybe 300 people in what used to be the Bank of America building in Fort Worth, Texas. Her hypnosis technique seemed to be working, but in order to double check she thought she’d have a little fun with them.
“The code word is ‘bluejay’. When I say ‘bluejay’ you’re going to pull the person next to you in close and give them a kiss on the lips. This person would have been your high school sweetheart, but you never had the courage to kiss them. So this kiss needs to make up for years of lost time.”
She repeated the same statement again.
“Wide awake, wide awake, wide awake, wide awake.”
Slowly, everyone in the room came out of their trance and now were sitting up tall in their seats.
Noel gave it a minute before saying, “Thank you everyone for coming out to this very important Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, before I Iet you go, we have a bluejay in the room that needs to be addressed.”
At the cue word “bluejay”, everyone got up from their seats, found the person closest to them and pulled them in for a long exaggerated kiss. It didn’t matter if the pairing was two guys, two girls, or a girl and a guy, the subjects followed orders which was evidence to Noel that the hypnosis had worked.
“Alright everyone please take your seats one last time.”
She waited until they were sitting again before reciting a closing salutation to get them fully out of their trance. Without further explanation she walked to the exit doors at the front of the room, her armed escorts were waiting for her there.
Thirty nine minutes prior, Noel had walked up to the front door of the B of A building and knocked on the door. An IHL representative answered the door. Noel struck up a conversation with him briefly before her armed escorts popped out from around the corner and grabbed the man. As they walked through the building, towards a multi-purpose room, the armed escorts grabbed more hostages along the way, ending up with eight in total. Seven were dropped off in the multi-purpose room, with seven escorts plus Noel, while three took one hostage around the building and demanded that he led them to the boss of the whole operation.
The man sheepishly followed orders and led them to the head honcho who had a placard on his door that read ‘Dale McGuiness’. Who knows if that was a former employee at Bank of America or if this dufus had changed the name plate on the door.
“Sir, we need you to make an announcement over the loudspeaker that everyone is required to meet in the multi-purpose room located on the ground floor in five minutes,” one of the armed escorts said to ‘Dale’.
Dale, realizing that he didn’t have much of a choice since a gun was pointed at one of his associates’ head, did as instructed. Before long everyone in the building was in the multi-purpose room. Two armed escorts did a quick sweep of the building using heat sensors to make sure no one remained in the offices and were hiding. Noel started her routine before the escorts returned; she was concerned that the longer she made these people sit here, the more restless they might get and starting asking questions and causing problems.
The eight hostages were held out of sight from the rest of the crowd until Noel began—this meant that no one in the crowd besides Dale knew that there were hostages. They likely figured they were meeting in this room to hear a motivational speaker.
Reflecting back on how things played out during those thirty-nine minutes, Noel was grateful that it went as smoothly as she could have asked for. One detail that was overlooked was what if some of the IHL members had concealed weapons on them? They could have easily pulled out their guns if they had doubts about the true intentions of the impromptu company-wide meeting, and it would have been tough for her armed escorts to match up against 300 IHL members. Luckily though, that didn’t happen.
The White House was flooded with phone calls from all of the teams throughout the country that had successfully completed their missions. The secretary answering the phone created a checklist of the location each team was calling from. When the calls stopped, the list had all but one of the twenty-five locations checked off: Glendale, Arizona.
The secretary informed the President of this irregularity.
“All we can do is wait until the craft returns and hope that the Glendale team is on it,” President Taylor said.
It took ninety minutes before the craft landed at the White House. The teams exited. General Kaplan stood there anxiously waiting for Noel to show up and when she did, gave her a big hug, and led her on a walk across the grounds, asking her all about how things went.
Clearokyt came off the craft last, located the President and asked to meet with him on the craft because it was safer to speak there.
“I believe your IHL problem is solved. We had an unfortunate situation in Glendale. I believe this is what happened. Your team tried to hypnotize all in attendance, but for some reason it didn’t work. Audience members got suspicious, drew weapons and your armed escorts were no match for the large group. I’m sad to report that all of your team died.”
President Taylor put his head in his hands after hearing this devastating news.
“When I went to the extraction point to pick them up and the team wasn’t there, I knew something was wrong, so I landed the craft, went inside the IHL base and eliminated all of the threats.”
“What do you mean by eliminated?” President Taylor asked.
“I killed every IHL member in the building to avenge the deaths of the Glendale team, but also to ensure that the overall mission was a success.”
“Thank you for that, it means a lot,” President Taylor said before exiting the craft.
21
Beach Bar Rum
“Commander Mud this is First Sergeant Redeye do you copy?”
“Yeah, 10-4 Redeye, what’s your request?”
“When we get close to our launch zone, can you provide us with a countdown from twenty?”
“Yeah, I have your back Redeye. Admiral Gateway, Lieutenant Frost, and Corporal Sharpshooter, did you hear that, are you on our frequency?”
The craft pilots were Hank, Logan, Aaron, Clyde, and Christina (who was a last minute addition to the team because of her prior experience flying the crafts). They were having some fun with their codenames.
Hank chose Commander Mud as his codename and was the lead on the operation.
“20-19-18-17-16…” he began to count down.
They were close to exiting Earth’s atmosphere, making a beeline toward the trash trail. Flying in a V-formation, Hank’s craft was in the front with two crafts staggered on either side of his.
“4-3-2-1!”
Each one had their finger hovering over the appropriate button, and when Hank got to ‘1’ on the countdown, the buttons were pushed, releasing a small missile from each craft. These missiles, were about half the size of the ones he had just finished developing. The main distinction between the two types of missiles though was that this one didn’t contain the elements that would harm the aliens, boron and silicon. This missile was designed to kill by impact rather than by a poisonous agent.
Before the missiles were launched, Hank sent each craft a specific GPS coordinate. The pilot was responsible for inputing that location into the system and selecting to launch the missile to that location. There wasn’t too much critical thinking involved in this mission; the idea was that if the right general area was struck, the g-force from the missiles would cause the trash coming in to divert back in the direction of origin. The missile would continue on for a few miles after. Hopefully by doing this, the trash wouldn’t find its way back to the area again.
It sounded simple enough, but y
ou could always count on Clyde to try to get too fancy.
“Clyde, did you—“
Clyde cut off Hank before he could finish the sentence, “It’s Lieutenant Frost, get it right.”
“Frost, did you by chance shoot the wrong missile?” Hank said, “On my radar, I’m seeing four small missiles and one massive missile. Do you see my concern?”
“Oh yeah, but it’ll come back right?” Clyde said.
“Da hell do you mean ‘come back’?”
“After it has traveled its route, it will fly back to my craft and be ready to use again later. Am I missing something?”
“Yeah numbnuts, that’s not the way a missile works. It’s not reusable! So now if we have to face the Fadothials, you’ll be taking a knife to a gunfight, good luck with that one!”
Clyde didn’t answer, he must have felt too ashamed or embarrassed about his fatal mistake.
Hank knowing that they needed to end this on a good note for moral purposes said, “Alright soldiers, let’s forget about this. In 5000 feet we’ll turn around back to Earth, follow my lead. From my view, it looks like the trash is starting to deflect in other directions, so well done. I’ll be sending over new coordinates, make sure to input them so that you don’t have to manually navigate.”
A beeping sound came in each craft about twenty seconds later, indicating that coordinates had been received.
“Yeah this is First Sergeant Redeye. That was fun and all, but in all honesty, I sure am happy to be heading back to Earth. It was giving me the creeps being up there in untouched territory.”
“Amen brother. See you back on Earth. Over and out from Admiral Gateway.”
“Where are your right-hand men?” Clearokyt said to President Taylor.
President Taylor knew this question would come, and loathed having to answer it.
The more direct you are, the sooner this will be over. It’s probably a good thing that he brought this up now. He’s probably more understanding given that the recent human death was partially on his hands.
“They are out taking care of our little trash problem,” said the President.
“From the ground?” said Clearokyt.
“No from the air. They are flying crafts similar to yours.”
“Excuse me?”
“They reversed engineered one of your crafts, so they now have five, and the plan was to fly the crafts to a certain altitude and then shoot missiles at the flow of trash to divert its path.”
“And why haven’t you disclosed this crucial piece of information? The fate of the human race is in their hands. All it takes is for them to make one wrong move!”
“We decided as a group that this was the best solution to dealing with the trash. I planned on filling you in, but just when the guys were scheduled to leave, you were busy picking up the hypnosis teams, I’m sorry.”
“Call them right now and have them fly directly here!”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Craft to craft communication is possible, but communication from someone on the ground is not.”
“Unbelievable. To your knowledge, are they coming directly back after they deal with the trash?”
“No, they are going to scan the perimeter for Fadothial crafts and if located, they will fire at them. To our defense, we have felt that you have not been all that forthcoming with us. Yes you have helped our people, but we sense that there is an ulterior motive on your end.”
“I gotta put a stop to this,” Clearokyt said and touched his right arm with a finger from his left hand. His right arm lit up like an LCD screen. He typed a few commands in before the his arm dimmed back to its normal hue.
Jesus the alien has a computer lodged in his arm.
“I’m sending one of my crafts to run damage control,” said Clearokyt.
“No offense, but I would err on the side of caution. You might want to sit this one out. My men plan on shooting a missile that contains boron and silicon if they spot the Fadothials. That might be harmful to your people if you haven't yet developed a tolerance to that combination.”
Clearokyt left the room without another word. He appeared furious, but it was hard to read nonhuman body language. President Taylor only hoped that Clearokyt would get over it and not take out his frustration on the human population. He had a feeling deep down in his gut though, that the Zyrgians still needs the humans for something, which led him back to the overarching question, why were the Zyrgians helping the humans?
The sound of a door opening startled President Taylor. Out of a storage closet came Sierra.
“I’m so proud of you honey. You handled that situation really well. I know it must have been extremely hard being forthcoming about all that and not wavering from the truth, but it was the right thing to do. It’ll pay off in the long run. Come with me.”
She led him to the entrance of their bedroom.
President Taylor was still in a weird state of mind from the conversation with Clearokyt and not to mention the curveball that Sierra added when she revealed that she had been eavesdropping. He wouldn’t object to a bit of alone time with Sierra though, it was a good stress reliever. That alone time was cut short before it even began when they entered the room and saw two figures wrapped in the sheets, having the time of their lives.
“What on Earth is going on?” President Taylor said.
Noel was the first to turn and look in the direction the voice had come from, and the person on top of her slowly crawled forward until his head emerged from the sheets. It was General Kaplan.
“Bingo,” said Hank, “That’s what I was hoping to find.”
Realizing no one was next to him in the craft to hear his discovery, he repeated the message into the radio, this time adding more description:
“Look at your GPS and notice the seven irregular objects directly below us. Those have to be Fadothial crafts. I’m going to slow our speed down.”
“Hank what if they aren’t Fadothial crafts?” Aaron said, “By the way, I’m done using code names; it was fun earlier but right now we can’t afford to be screwing around.”
“One of us needs to do a quick flyover to confirm that they are in fact Fadothial crafts, “Hank said. “The others will maintain their current positions, or hover if you will.”
“I’ll do it,” Clyde said.
“Nope you’re on probation for the time being because of mistake you made with the missiles,” Hank said.
“I got this,” Logan said and branched off from the group of crafts, heading towards the ground. The crafts were equipped with wraparound windows. You couldn’t tell they were windows from the outside, but anyone inside had a panoramic view of what was going down outside.
I don’t want to fly too low to where they notice me and can easily shoot me down, but I have to get low enough so that I can get visual confirmation.
He felt fairly comfortable piloting the craft by this point. He pressed a button to manually override the virtual flight assistant and the ability to speak commands to pilot the craft, and lowered a joystick to descend. With his free hand, he pushed a lever forward to set how fast he wanted the craft to descend. Within a matter of seconds he was close enough to see through the transparent windows what was below. Seven crafts were parked, spread out over a two-acre plot of land.
Logan didn’t recognize these crafts as Zyrgian ones because they were much larger and the architecture was noticeably different. This was all that he needed for confirmation, and he immediately changed direction of the joystick to climb in altitude.
He got back on the radio as he climbed closer to other human crafts, “Affirmative, green light.”
“Alright boys and Christina, we only get one shot at this,” Hank said. “Release the missile into the launch chamber. Clyde, you’re S.O.L, but I guess release the smaller missiles into your chamber anyway. On my ‘go’ everyone fire. Aaron, you aim at the far left, Christina, one from the left, Logan two from the left, I’ll get the far right, and Clyde you aim somewhere in
the middle.”
They began their descent, with each craft spaced ten yards apart. The choreography would probably win a synchronized swimming competition; it was flawless.
1200 feet was the magic number for Hank, and when they reached that altitude, he said the magic words. The missile strike was on target. At the time when the missiles were expected to hit the Fadothial crafts though, Hank noticed five dots on the GPS map getting bigger.
No way in hell the aliens launched a counterattack before our missiles even reached them.
Hank’s thought was interrupted by Christina on the radio:
“We gotta move! Veer left! Our missiles have been deflected and are heading back our way!”
Veer left was apparently interpreted a few different ways. It resulted in Clyde’s craft brushing up against Aaron’s because he made a hard left turn which didn’t mesh well with Aaron’s gradual left. The impact sent Clyde flying across the interior of the craft, with no one to man the controls. He regained his balance in time to regain control and avoid crashing into the ground.
“Phew that was a close one! I guess I deserved that though!”
The team made it back to the White House grounds despite the close call with Clyde. Before Hank left his craft he zoomed in on his map to see what the exact location was of the Fadothial crafts.Youngstown, Ohio. Not that it mattered much, they could be here within about two minutes if they wanted, but it was nice knowing they were at least a healthy distance away right now.
When Logan visualized walking out of the craft, he was hoping to be greeted with cheers from a large crowd, saying ‘You did It’, but the reality was that they had failed. Instead of a large crowd, ten Zyrgians were standing there. Their leader Clearokyt stood at the front and didn’t waste any time before speaking.
“I hope you hooligans had your fun out there. Play time is now over though.”
