♦ ♦ ♦
“SEALs do wild and crazy things,” Bill said as the command pedestal reached six feet above the room’s metal floor and stopped. He reached down, grabbed a gray metal helmet that looked far too big for him, held it in his lap and looked up. “Star Traveler, what do I do after I put this thing on?”
“Sit back in the command seat, close your eyes, seek a relaxed state of mind, then open yourself to whatever sensations impinge on your mind,” the AI hummed. “You will see a mind image of an oval door, like those that face the ship hallways. Touch its opening patch. That will signal to the helmet that you wish to link up with ship systems.”
“Then what do I do?”
“The door will open. Your mind will perceive a globular room with many doors. Each door leads to a different ship system. Turn left and walk to the door that has a green glow about it. That door leads to my mind.”
“And then what happens?” Bill asked, knowing he was putting off the key moment.
“Touch the Open patch beside the door. You will then encounter my mind. And I will perceive your mind.”
Bill lifted the metal helmet, which resembled one of the wrap-around helmets worn by helicopter pilots. Only this helmet had a thick optical fiber cable snaking out from its bottom end. The silvery cable ran down to the gray metal floor, where it met a socket-like housing. Presumably the fibers continued below the flexmetal floor. He lifted the helmet up, turned it to look inside it, saw a flexible mesh surface dotted with thousands of yellow dots and decided it was time. He gave his wife a wink. “Hey gal, this will work out just fine. See you soon.” He lowered the helmet over his head. It sat softly on the top of his head, pressing down his recently trimmed hair. The helmet covered his eyes, down to his upper lip. He saw nothing but darkness. Suddenly, the bottom rim of the helmet moved like a dozen crawling caterpillars. Flanges wrapped under his chin and over his mouth. He gasped, then sought relaxation as cool air met his lips.
“Jane, can you hear me?” he called into the breathing space.
“She cannot hear you,” Star Traveler said, its humming voice loud in his ears. “This helmet can link to a ceiling speaker if you wish. Do you wish that?”
“Nope. Let’s get this ship launched.”
Low humming met his ears. “To begin our linkage, do as I said before you put the helmet on. Relax. Seek the image of an oval door. When you see it, open it and proceed to the green-glowing door.”
“You do like to repeat things, don’t you?” Bill muttered low.
Slowing his breathing, he sought the quiet mental state that he’d learned from his parents, and from a Royal Thai Air Force Buddhist in Bangkok. The man had called it ‘centered meditation’. He tried the breathing exercises the man had taught him. Slowly his mind cleared of external thoughts. The beating of his heart then filled his mind. Slowly, even that receded. His mind became calmly receptive.
A gray metal wall appeared before his mind’s eye. An eight foot high oval door filled its middle. Visualizing his body the way one might dream of oneself during a dream, Bill walked forward, reached up, tapped the Open patch on the right side of the door, and waited.
Faster than the blink of an eye he faced a globular room. Hundreds of oval doors lined its inner surface. The doors ran in rings about the inner wall. Each door had a different color, many more colors than in a rainbow or in one of those grown-up coloring books. Realizing he stood on a metal walkway that led out to the center of the room, he began walking down it. Dozens of gray metal walkways stretched out from a central plate, resembling the blades of a fan. Below him was another level with a similar fan of walkways. Above him lay a metal walkway that led to a central point from which dozens of walkways speared out. He continued walking ahead until he got to the round plate that lay at the center of the globular room. Looking up, then down, he counted a dozen levels above him and ten or more below him. Each walkway stretched out from the central plate and ended at an oval door lying on the inner surface of the room ball. He scanned around him, focusing to his left. A green-glowing oval door lay fifty feet from where he stood. Stepping out of the center, Bill walked along the metal strip until he came within two feet of the green glowing door. A red Open patch showed to the right of the tall door. He reached up and tapped it. The oval door vanished.
“Hello Bill MacCarthy,” called a voice from the center of a green starburst.
Fighting the urge to blink against the brightness of the light, he walked forward.
Then the floor beneath his feet vanished.
The green starburst came toward him, filling every spot he could see. It arched up and over him. And to either side. Without looking back, he realized the green starburst now englobed him. He floated in a small space, as if he were weightless. Yet he did not feel the internal dropping sensation that often came with micro-gravity exposure. Nor did he feel constricted, as he often felt when inside a tube suit.
“Are you the green starburst?” he asked, realizing suddenly he was mind-speaking, not talking with his mouth.
“I am. We have not yet joined. I await your invitation,” the voice said.
He realized there was no humming. Which meant the ship mind was speaking to his mind by way of the helmet. What would happen when he ‘joined’ with it?
“What will—”
“You will become me and I will become you,” the AI said calmly.
Fear hit him. “How much time has passed outside this helmet?” he asked, feeling desperate for a delay.
“One quarter second. Which is very slow by my standards. I have sought to slow my interaction with you.”
He tried to lick his lips. Nothing happened. He looked down at his hands and arms. His black jumpsuit. They all shimmered from an inner glow. Was that his soul? His inner self? His body’s electro-magnetic umbra? Bill had read that the human body projects a glow, sometimes called a Kerlian aura. He understood the scientific explanation that it was simply the interaction of a body’s electrical current with the water moisture on the outer surface of any lifeform. Or even non-living life. Still, what he saw now resembled what he’d seen in the New Age photos he had skimmed one day during a visit to a Copenhagen pot shop. Time to stop futzing.
“I invite you to join with me,” he thought mentally.
The green starburst came inward, touching the outer glow of his skin and jumpsuit. Then it moved inward.
Pain filled him. He tried to scream.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jane tensed as she saw Bill’s body go rigid. “Cassandra!”
The woman rushed forward, stood on a rising pedestal and placed a sensor on Bill’s bare chest. She then slipped an oximeter over one of Bill’s fingers. She looked at the readouts on a small flat plate she held.
“His heart is working hard at 160 beats per minute,” she said. “Blood oxygen saturation is fine at 96 percent. It’s like he’s running a fast mile,” she said, looking down to Jane, her eyebrows lifted.
“Is he in pain?” she asked as her husband’s arched body began to tremble.
The Mohawk girl shrugged. “Hard to tell.” She looked down at the sensor plate. “My sensor says there is no sign of pain prostaglandin hormones being produced in above normal amounts. I have no idea what his brain is sensing, though.”
Jane sighed. This mind-link thing was beyond her comfort zone. “Watch him closely. Let me know if he shows cardiac fibrillation.” She pulled out the pruning shears she’d grabbed in the Greenery Chamber. “If he does, I’m cutting that fucking optical fiber!”
♦ ♦ ♦
“Apologies,” spoke Star Traveler in his mind. “Your Human neuromuscular system is remarkably sensitive to input. I am leaving the brain sites related to pain perception.”
Bill gasped mentally as the pain receded. A dull ache was left behind. “Good! Don’t do that again.”
He perceived the green starburst as a cloud of millions of green dots. The dots were linked to each other like a giant spider web. Or like pictures he
’d seen of the neurons in a part of the human brain. The dot linkages pulsed with green energy. Was this the AI’s mind?
“You perceive me,” it said. “And I perceive you. Fascinating how much sensation resides in such a small bioform.”
Bill felt/sensed the green energy flows. It felt as if a thousand creeks were running through his body glow. And he occupied only a small part of the green starburst.
“Well, time to begin your training in deception,” he muttered mentally.
“Acceptable. Define deception.”
Fuck. Bill raced through his memories, trying to recall what he had planned to do. Before he’d donned the helmet. Oh, yeah.
“Star Traveler, here is my memory of my work as a SEAL team member during our rescue effort north of Adow, Somalia, on Earth. There were 24 of us, counting me. We did a free fall chute drop, hit the ground, dumped the chutes and hiked overland to the compound where pirates held captive two NGO aid workers,” he said, his mind racing as he relived those memories.
In his mind, the ship AI walked along with him and the other SEALs. It saw, in the early morning sunglow that happens just before dawn, the brown clay and rock walls that encircled the pirate compound. The place lay atop a low, flat hill. Below it ran a dry creekbed. A few leafless trees were scattered along the bank they were trodding. A zigzag trail led up to a wooden gate that gave access. He and the rest of the team ran up the trail, giving thanks the lookouts had retreated inside for morning prayers. Their arrival time had been calculated to be the early morning prayer time which all Muslims had to observe. Their religion said they must pray toward Mecca five times a day. It was one of the few moments when an external force might surprise a group of jihadists. Which these pirates were, in addition to being captors of crews from ships that sailed off the coast of Somalia. As they reached the space before the wide wooden door, the rest of the team peeled off to the left and right, heading for the side walls. He stepped forward and knocked on the worn, pitted surface of the wood.
“Lā ʾilāha ʾillā-llāh, muḥammadur-rasūlu-llāh,” he said, speaking the shahada, the first pillar of the Islamic faith. He’d learned to speak Arabic with a Somali accent as part of his training for the operation.
“Stupid believer!” growled someone from the other side of the door. “Kneel on your prayer mat outside!”
“I have no mat,” he called loudly. “It was stolen from me by the infidels in my village. Allow me inside to pray beside our brothers.”
The sound of a single person moving about came to his ears. The click of a safety being released was loud. Likely from the AK-74 carried by the door guard. A screech came as the door lock was turned. It sounded rusty. The left side half of the double door pushed outward. The nose of the AK filled the slit opening. Above it gleamed two eyes that scanned him.
“Your clothing is not local,” the man hissed. “Where are you from? Quickly!”
“From Puntland,” he said, naming a semi-autonomous region just to the north of Adow.
“Did you pass through Galkayo?” the man asked, not opening the door further.
“Never been there,” Bill said, knowing that was the town where the two demining workers had been kidnapped. “Let me in! I must join the brothers in paying homage to Muhammed and Allah!”
The wooden door swung out further, revealing a lanky Arab man dressed in dirty white robes with a reddish-brown cap on his head. The man was full-bearded. Beyond him lay four one-story buildings. Keeping his rifle on Bill, the man gestured with an elbow toward the largest of the clay-walled buildings. “In there! There is a small courtyard. Enter and kneel with the brothers. Hurry! I must resume my own prayers here.”
A gray and brown cloth prayer mat lay to the back of the man, next to the inner side of the wall. Bill touched his forehead and walked through the doorway. “Allah bless you!” Keeping both empty hands in clear view, Bill slowed as his peripheral vision showed the dark shapes of his teammates sliding down on ropes to the inner ground. The building where the captives were held was to the far left. He turned toward that building. “This one?”
“No, you idiot offspring of a camel!” the man cursed, moving up behind Bill and reaching for his right arm. “The center building! Go there and—”
Bill pulled the man’s right arm forward with his right hand even as he pivoted in place and struck the man’s neck with a left hand chop. He continued the pivot and grabbed the AK-74 at the trigger guard, inserting his finger into the firing loop and holding tight so the man’s falling body could not fire off a shot. He knelt as the unconscious man fell to the group. Dislodging the rifle from the man’s grip, Bill rose, felt for the safety release, touched by feel its setting as to full-auto or short-bursts, found it set at short-bursts, then grabbed the man’s cap and put it on his head. The robes he wore were typical of northern Somalia and did reflect the style as now worn by villagers in Mudug province, part of the Puntland region. They were close to those worn in Galguduud, the northern province that contained Adow and its countryside. Anyone looking out from the center building would see a lanky, bearded man wearing the reddish cap, holding a rifle and assume it was the door guard. He moved back toward the closed door and put his back to it. He aimed the AK-74 toward the inner cluster of buildings, ready to take out anyone carrying a rifle who wore light-colored clothing. His SEAL comrades all wore ash black clothing, night vision goggles and carried M4A1 carbines fitted with M203 grenade launchers. The captives would be unarmed. At his feet, the door guard groaned.
“Allah! Aid me—”
Bill kicked the man’s head, rendering him silent.
The left side building was entered by his teammates, a shout came from inside, followed by a single shot of 5.45 mm ammo. Fuck!
The thick curtain that covered the center building’s entrance was flung aside. Three pirates rushed out bearing AK-74 rifles and turned toward the captives building.
Atop the roof of the captives building were five SEALs. They saw what Bill saw.
“Zing, zing!” came the sound of rounds hitting the rocky walls of the center building as Bill opened fire with the guard’s rifle.
The rearmost man fell from Bill’s fire. The other two died under a zipping rush of full and semi-auto fire from the SEALs atop the left side building. Suddenly, five SEALs exited that building, their M4s aimed toward the center building. Behind them stumbled two half-dressed Anglos, the woman Jessica Buchanan and the Dane Poul Hagen Thisted. They were held up by other SEALs. They moved toward Bill’s position.
“Brothers!” screamed the door guard who rolled away from Bill’s position, got up and ran toward the center door. “Come to my aid! The infidels have—”
Bill fired at the man’s back even as two SEALs ahead of the captives fired at the door guard.
The remaining four pirates exited from the building’s front entry, firing as they ran.
Bill dropped low to his knees and fired on them even as rooftop and on-foot SEALs returned fire, their 5.56 mm bullets including a few tracer rounds that arced in a straight line to the enemy jihadists.
The smell of cordite hung over the landscape as eight dead men lay unmoving on the dusty ground.
His ears told him two rounds had passed above his head. The crowd of SEALs rushed up to him. He moved to the right. He gestured left. “It opens outward!”
Saying nothing, a dozen SEALs rushed past him with the two captives in their midst, moving outside. Four other SEALs jumped from the roof of the left side building to nearby building roofs, their rifles aimed low and ready for any moving target. Four SEALs rushed into the center building, moving high and low and spraying the inside with bullets even before the curtain stopped swinging. The lieutenant in charge of the team stepped outside and moved toward Bill.
“No one left alive, eight down plus the man in front of you. Follow us out.”
Bill turned to follow. Just as he followed the last of the SEALs out, something clicked from behind him. From the guard he and the others had
shot.
The doorframe blew up just after he passed through it, blowing him forward into two team buddies. The left side of his head felt pain as something struck him there. He fell to his knees.
“Fuck!”
Strong arms grabbed him and lifted him up. His boots scraped the ground as his teammates carried him down the zigzag pathway.
“Where are you hurt?” called the team’s lieutenant from Bill’s right side.
“Left side head,” he replied, wincing a bit as the pain hit him. “Shrapnel or something got me.” He blinked, took a deep breath. “Let me stand. I can keep up.”
“Go ahead of us then,” the lieutenant said briskly. “We’ll catch you if you black out.”
With that IED blast still echoing in his head, Bill stood and ran ahead, putting the injury behind him. With his escape from the blast, he became the last SEAL to exit the compound where nine pirates had held the two Western demining people captive. The pirates had refused a $1.5 million bounty. With the health of the woman captive declining, according to word from elders in Adow, the JSOC Task Force at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti had mounted the operation he’d just completed.
He blinked, pulling back from the memory. Green dots glowed amidst rivers of energy in the green starburst that surrounded him. “Pretending to be someone you are not is deception,” he mind-talked to the AI. “I lied to the door guard so my SEAL teammates could find and rescue two unarmed people. People held as captives the way Jane and I were held as captives by Diligent Taskmaster. Understood?”
Escape 3: Defeat the Aliens Page 10
