The Third Craft

by James Harris

  “Have a seat, H,” Stell said.

  H gratefully moved behind the desk, distancing himself from the queen. The woman filled him with dread.

  “H, the queen needs a base of operations.” He began to use the Voice. “I hope you don’t mind if she uses this facility.”

  “What does she need, exactly?”

  “She needs exclusive use of the Interrogation Room on the floor below.”

  “Not a problem,” H answered with a pleasant smile.

  “We will need some equipment brought in.”

  “Again, not a problem. This is easy,” H laughed.

  Stell used the Voice harder. “We will need to interview some people.”

  H’s eyes narrowed somewhat. “Who?”

  Stell produced a list and handed it to H.

  H stiffened after reading a few of the names. “Some of these are senior staff members – White House staff. That’s impossible. They won’t come here to be interviewed or anything else. These are protected personnel, close to the JCS and the President himself.” The list fluttered to the desk like a leaf in the wind. “Can’t be done.”

  Stell rhythmically rubbed his skull. “We need to talk to these people, H. You must help us.”

  Sweat began to form on the forehead of the senior administrator. His eyes became bloodshot with the strain of resistance. “I cannot allow these members of staff to be subjected to any risk. I won’t allow senior people to be recruited like this. You’ve gone too far. My God, it’s as if you want to take over the White House.”

  Stell pushed. “We just want to talk!”

  The queen was smiling behind the folds of her hooded cape.

  H looked from one to the other. His nose began to bleed as his mind screamed in resistance. His head felt as if it were in a vise.

  He cried out in pain and grabbed his head as if it were about to burst wide open. “No! No, Wixon, I can’t allow it. This has already gone too far!” He reached for the phone.

  Then a voice, no, a song, caught his attention. It was a favorite song from his childhood past. It was the same song his mother used to hum to him as he drifted off to sleep. How many years ago was that? Decades? A lifetime?

  The tune was so restful and reassuring. He knew he was safe because his mommy was here. She would never leave him. She would tuck him in and snuggle with him under the soft fluffy duvet. H smiled serenely at the perfect memory, staring at the handset in his hand.

  The queen never spoke. Her powers were such that to speak was child’s play. She rose silently and glided over to H’s shoulder. She placed a loving, motherly hand on his wispy, white-haired, partially bald head. He looked up lovingly, his eyes clouded. He reached out and took the spindly fingers and brought them to his cheek in a gesture of adoration.

  She stroked his skull and ran her white fingers through his gray hair. The phone began to drop from his hand. In a lightning fast gesture, she caught the phone and placed it gently back into its cradle.

  “Do you trust your mother?” she crooned.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you trust God and country?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you trust yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then trust us. We are here to help.”

  “I do trust you.”

  It began that day in 1988.

  The Abishot steadily integrated members of the political and military staff. They began to turn both low and high profile people into infiltrates: transitioned humans with shared alien minds.

  These hybrid people were under the control of the House of Abishot. Their agendas served two purposes. They went on with their daily lives as if everything were normal. However, there was an overall plan, a plot really, to subjugate Washington to their collective will. At this early stage, however, the infiltrates were like “sleeper” agents. They took little overt action.

  Stell had a more direct and nefarious agenda. He had the power of Washington and the Intelligence community behind him. His minions were in place, and they gave him political protection. He freely and boldly traveled the globe under the pretext of mending political fences when, in fact, he was destroying alliances and trust. He was clever. He pretended to be the bumbling American diplomat – the Ugly American. Relationships that had taken decades to build were destroyed overnight, thanks to his clever incompetence.

  The goal of the House of Abishot was to instill religious intolerance and regional chaos. They surmised that a factionalized planet would not put up much resistance to an invisible invasion of infiltrates. They would beg for new leaders. Everyone would be distracted.

  The key to polarization was to exploit religious differences and intolerance, and Stell did so masterfully. Deep-seated hatred was opened up like fresh wounds.

  He started in America, igniting the delicate balance of religious and social inequities that existed in several parts of the country. He pitted the Bible Belt against the liberal culture of San Francisco. He drove a wedge between the Democratic liberals and the religious right. He engineered a mocking criticism of rigid Christian beliefs by urbanites living in the major cities. His control of the media fuelled the fractionalization of the society.

  He transplanted his infiltrates throughout the world, and watched the growing number of religious atrocities and regional genocides grow and grow.

  The infiltration took much longer than the queen had estimated. Of the two hundred fifty orbs brought down from Gamma III, only half the alien Beings were converted in three years. Many preferred death to the invasion of their minds. They saw the hell that was Sargon at the end of its days. They understood the inhumanity of the invasion. Their minds were stronger than the Abishot had thought. They paid with their lives or their sanity, and thus consequently, both.

  The media was successfully infiltrated by those who would further the cause of the Abishot. The people, especially in the west, were under the illusion that they had free will. That was the secret to a “free press.” In truth, there was little freedom at all. Their direction and the headlines the next day were controlled by Stell and his people.

  CHAPTER67

  Joe threw the newspaper across the kitchen in disgust. “Are people that stupid? Can’t they see that there’s a pattern here? How can they believe this shit fed to them by the press! Just because it’s in print, they figure its true?”

  The date on the Colorado Sun Times was May 23, 1991.

  Hawk reached out his hand to Joe. “Easy boy! Stand down!”

  Joe paced the room. “We’re going to lose this … this war, this invasion by the Abishot. Look at Dad. He’s still not right. He can’t help us. At least not yet. And if he can’t help us, no one can.”

  “Yeah, still not right,” Hawk said, looking toward the bedroom. “He just lies there like he’s somewhere else.”

  “Try to focus on our own world and not some galactic invasion from outer space. We both have to defend our theses this fall, or have you forgotten?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Joe said with a resigned sigh.

  A strange voice penetrated their minds. It seemed to boom, and yet it wasn’t loud.

  Joe whirled and grabbed the back of a chair defensively. Hawk jumped to his feet.

  There, standing serenely at the bedroom doorframe, was a five-foot-tall alien with bleached white skin and the biggest black eyes the boys had ever seen. The eyes were bright and alert, reflecting the morning sun that shone in from the kitchen window. Membrane-thin eyelids flicked over them excitedly to protect them from the brightness beaming in from outside.

  “My boys!” the creature said, holding his spindly arms out wide as if the twins would simply swoon into them.

  They didn’t. They stood stock-still. “Dad?”

  Kor looked hurt. “Come here, will you? Give your dad a hug for God’s sake. What’s wrong with you?”

  Then he looked down at his thin white belly. He made a motion to cover it up with the nightgown affair that
he was wearing.

  “Geeze. Sorry, I forgot.”

  The twins still hadn’t moved.

  “I’m a new man, I guess. We now share Kor’s body. Sort of role reversal, you might say.” He paused. “Quit messing around, give us a hug!”

  It sure sounded like the dad they knew, even if it didn’t look like him. They moved toward him and embraced him woodenly. It was an eerie experience, almost repulsive. It was like hugging a frog, or some nonhuman creature.

  “That’s the ticket.” Kor looked around. Then his eyes spotted the newspaper. He picked it up, aghast. “This can’t be the date!”

  He struggled to catch his breath. “I’ve been out for three years?”

  “Out?” Joe said.

  “Out of body.”

  “You’ve been living here for the past three years. You’ve been comatose, bedridden all this time.”

  Grayer sat down hard as Joe quickly slipped a chair under him. “Three years.”

  “A lot’s happened.”

  “None of it good,” Hawk said.

  “Three years?” Kor ran his hand over his smooth head as if he still had hair. It was habit. He pulled his hand away, somewhat startled at the realization that he was Kor again.

  “It seemed like no time at all had passed. I was enjoying the state of Being so much, it was all I could do to come back. Please tell me what’s happened.”

  The twins groaned. “Where do we begin?” Joe said.

  As best they could, they highlighted the events worldwide that had the signature of Abishot treachery. They related the Narok’s puny attempts at slowing down the destructive progress. They were greatly outnumbered.

  Hours later, the phone rang.

  “It’s Justin Jones,” Hawk said. “I’m putting him on speakerphone,”

  “Justin, this is Hawk. We have some big news.”

  “Me, too. Tell me yours.”

  “I’ll let Dad speak for himself.”

  “Hail, Justin,” Kor said in the ancient tongue.

  “Is it truly you, Prince Kor? We hadn’t heard anything for so long, we feared the worst.”

  “Forgive me, all of you. I lost track of time.”

  “Well, you are back not a moment too soon. Stell has been engaged in some peculiar behavior. He has been traveling quite a lot abroad lately. He has visited every Middle Eastern country there is.

  “On the surface, it’s a gesture of good will from the State Department, which he claims to represent. But we believe it’s a planned attempt to undermine relations between various factions within the oil-producing states.”

  “His travels have a secret agenda?” Kor asked.

  “Oh yes. Our people suspect they have two goals. First, to destabilize the Middle Eastern region in order to give the U.S. an excuse to send in troops to restore peace. Stell has cleverly channeled government finances to support factions friendly to America and to undermine those that aren’t. On the surface it appears as if the goal is oil.

  “Since the U.S. needs the oil reserves that these unstable political regimes control, it would seem obvious that our government would seek to protect their future interests. That may be part of it, but only a small part. Stell has his own agenda. It involves having Stell himself take control over the policing of the area. Once Stell controls the military agenda of the region, he controls the oil wealth. He has top-ranking military infiltrates at his beck and call. What appears as a U.S. operation is, in fact, a maneuver by Stell to gain dominance over the world’s oil supply. And subsequently, the world’s power.

  “As for the second goal, Stell’s people have infiltrated many mosques to destabilize the world by inciting radicalism here in the Middle East and at home. Countless integrated mullahs have promoted and preached this radicalism. Elsewhere in the world, the Abishot infiltrates have wedged themselves into positions of power in government and the local evangelical churches.”

  “Instability will drive up the price of oil,” Kor said.

  “Intolerance and hatred is spreading. There are already upheavals in various countries along ethnic and religious lines. Fighting and genocide are waiting in the wings. The world will be calling out for stability and calm and Stell will be in the position to provide it.”

  “Where are you now, Justin?”

  “I’m in Beirut. It’s a gorgeous city. My hotel overlooks the sea. It reminds me of the Riviera.”

  “I see. This news is troubling. Religious fanatics are not only a danger to their own countries, but they will export their fanaticism.”

  “There’s more. A much more troubling discovery. One of our operatives, who has been tailing the delegation, reports the presence of another person, always hidden from sight. This mysterious person is keenly interested in the various fringe militant religious groups. The person consults with the main mullahs and, strangest of all, is a female.”

  Justin took a moment to catch his breath. “Usually the people in these organizations don’t pay attention to females. This time they do. They treat her something like a high priestess. She’s been spotted leaving secret meeting places late at night. There are rumors that she has somehow forced her will on the men and that they are her ideological slaves thereafter.”

  “Come on, this sounds a bit far-fetched, don’t you think?” Hawk laughed. “How do you know it’s a woman? I thought you said no one has really seen her?”

  “Not close up, that’s true. She wears a medieval-style robe and cape. Her face is always hidden.”

  “It could be a man.”

  “Unlikely, Hawk. She’s referred to as ‘the queen,’ according to our operative.”

  “We fear the worst, my Liege. We need you now more than ever to help us fight them.”

  “I’m here, Justin. I’m here. I just need to think.”

  Hawk looked worriedly at Kor. “Justin, is there anything else?” he asked.

  “No, I am continuing my surveillance on Stell’s movements.”

  “And this mysterious person? Are you watching her as well?”

  “Of course. They are seldom apart.”

  “How do you know you haven’t been spotted? Your Signatures are an easy giveaway.”

  “We’re careful.”

  “Justin, you get out of there, now! Get hold of your field operative and leave Lebanon before they spot you. Understood?”

  “We have a CIA operative that isn’t one of us, therefore she has no Signature tag. We can’t leave her here alone. Her cover is that she’s a reporter for the Washington Post.”

  “OK. She won’t give off a Signature. But warn her to leave at the first sign of trouble.”

  “Gather intell from a distance only.”

  “Understood. I’ll pass it on.”

  “Call me tomorrow. Same time. We’ll make arrangements to extricate you from the region. Are you still based out of Washington?”

  “Yes.”

  “Contact me here.”

  “Understood. Jones out.”

  The three of them stared at the phone as the line went “click” and then “click” again.

  “Did you hear that?” Kor said. “He’s been made! There was a second hang up. The double click means the call was monitored. They’re on to us!”

  “Maybe it’s just a bad intercontinental connection,” Hawk said.

  “No! Jones is in immediate danger. Where’s Alpha III?”

  “Boulder Municipal Airport not far from here. Joe and I have a rented hangar there for the Cessna.”

  “When was the last time you were there?”

  “It’s been three years. Right Joe?”

  Joe smiled awkwardly. “Well, I did take it for the odd flight, just to make sure she was running OK.”

  Hawk’s eyes narrowed at the new information. “And is she?”

  “Yup!” Joe laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “God I love flying that thing.”

  “Good for you, Joe,” Kor said evenly. “Because you’re flying her to Beirut.”

  “B
eirut? When?”

  “Now. Joe, get your things, we’re leaving. Hawk, you stay here.”

  Kor let Joe pilot the craft. He wanted to see how well he did, and he was in no mood to fly. Joe did well and Kor was proud. But they were too late.

  Jones and two CIA operatives were blown up in a roadside bombing just north of Beirut. They had been on their way to the airport. They had booked a flight to Washington. Their murders were reported to the CIA in Washington just moments after Joe and Kor took off from Los Alamos. One of their inside people called Hawk immediately, and he contacted the spaceship.

  Joe hovered to a stop about two hundred miles east of Bermuda. It was the middle of the ocean. He was angry at the news of the untimely deaths, and slouched in his command chair despondently.

  Kor gave a soft command and the walls and floor disappeared. They were like angels suspended above the blue-white planet below.

  “Justin Jones was killed because he was trying to help us,” Joe said.

  “Jones and his two operatives were experienced CIA people, Joe. This isn’t about us, this is about protecting everyone. Everyone in America, and everyone on the planet. We are all linked – remember our talks on the farm?”

  “I remember. But they have two hundred fifty infiltrates and we have five, now four. The odds suck.”

  “Maybe I can help even the odds.”

  “One man against two hundred fifty? Not even you are that good.”

  “We’ll see. Let’s start by eliminating some Abishot, shall we? Maybe we can entice Stell and the queen to scurry on home.”

  “You mean the infiltrates?”

  “I do.”

  “How will you find them?”

  “The Signatures, Joe. I can use the ship to scan for their Signatures. That’s how I’ll find them.”

  “Then what?”

  “What do you think?” Kor looked sternly at him. “You said it yourself: This is war.”

  “I didn’t say it, at least not out loud.”