The Zeta Grey War: New Recruits

by D F Capps

  “Yes, yes, I can do that.”

  Despite his eager and confident attitude, she was convinced this was not going to end well.

  “Okay. One other thing,” Diane said. “The craft is going to start shaking violently. You haven’t had the opportunity to adjust to it, so just do the best you can.”

  She cringed at what he was about to experience.

  “I can see the three dots moving up from the bottom of the screen now,” Andrews said. “There’s a thin red line sticking up from each dot.”

  Focus on what’s happening right now, she reminded herself.

  “Elevation indicator,” she said. “When the line goes up the saucer is above us, down is below us. No line means it’s the same altitude.”

  Her adrenaline rush had started.

  “So right now they are at six o’clock high, correct?”

  Her pulse rate accelerated.

  “That’s correct. You can drop the o’clock, sir. Six high is fine.”

  Time seemed to slow down during combat. She felt her awareness expanding as well.

  “Okay. I think I’ve got it.”

  She silently thanked Dr. Cowen for the meditation exercises. Maybe she could make it through this battle.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  She took a deep breath.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  Diane turned the jinking control on.

  “Oh my God,” Andrews said. “This is awful!”

  She started breathing hard.

  “Just concentrate on the screen, sir.”

  She checked to the left and the right to see if she could see any more saucers closing in.

  “The three dots are spreading out and the lines are shrinking,” Andrews said, tension clear in his voice.

  “They’ve started their attack run. Where are the dots now?” she asked.

  His voice was louder now. “Seven, six, and five. Almost even with us now.”

  Diane broke hard left and down. As she came closer to the ground she pulled up and swung left.

  “Ten o’clock high!” Andrews called out.

  Diane continued up and left, selected single fire, and pulled the trigger as the scout saucer swept across in front of her. The shots missed.

  “One, low.”

  She released the trigger, banked right and down, and squeezed the trigger again. The second scout saucer fired back at them, missing. Her third shot connected solidly with the saucer, sending it into a slow downward spiral.

  “Six even and two high!”

  She banked right and pulled up, firing again at the scout saucer she had missed before. Banking left and diving after the saucer she finally hit it near the left edge. The saucer banked away, dropping rapidly to the ground. There was a loud crack. The strong jolt pushed through her from her right as a light flash from the saucer behind her struck her wing.

  “Six high and very close!”

  She swung hard right, flipped the firing control to the two shot mode, and pushed the thruster to eighty percent. Letting her instinct guide her, she pulled the trigger. Both shots hit the saucer near the center. She glanced at her cockpit indicators. Her fighter craft was losing power, the controls were sluggish and they were losing altitude rapidly. She turned the radio back on.

  “Jink to base. Mayday, mayday. We have been hit on the starboard wing. We are going down. Baffin Island, six-two point four-five-two north, seven-one point nine-eight-four west.”

  There wasn’t enough time to repeat the location.

  “Copy, Jink. Backup is eight minutes out. We have you on satellite. Are both of you okay?”

  She swallowed hard. “Affirmative. Two bandits down, one saucer hit, but still functional.” She glanced at her watch. “Activating locator beacon in seven minutes, forty seconds. Jink out.”

  She shut off the radio.

  “Are we going to crash?” Andrews asked.

  She glanced one last time at the navigation display.

  “Where is the remaining saucer?”

  She glanced from side to side.

  “Eight o’clock high.”

  So behind and to the left.

  “How far from the center of the screen?” she asked.

  He hesitated. “About an inch?”

  Do the unexpected, her intuition whispered.

  “Okay, this is going to be close.”

  Diane used what power remained in her craft for a power dive straight down at the ground.

  “Shouldn’t we be trying to stay up?” Andrews asked.

  “Not with an active saucer behind us. The sooner we get on the ground, the better.”

  She had to get the cockpit as far away from the annihilation event as she could.

  “But . . .”

  She pushed the control stick forward.

  “Hang on!”

  Chapter 40

  Diane pulled the ejection lever. The cockpit with the canopy attached exploded out of the fighter craft and a drogue chute deployed from the back. The ground was rushing at them at a terrifying rate of speed when the main chutes deployed, violently yanking them forward in their seats. The shock wave from the fighter craft hitting the ground and exploding rocked them and drove them sideways. They crashed through the top canopy of evergreen trees and jolted to a stop as the main chutes caught on the tops of the trees.

  “Don’t move,” Diane said.

  They hung in the air, twenty feet above the ground. She squeezed a hand grip low on the left side of her seat, releasing the parachute cords from the cockpit. They fell the last twenty feet, landing on a foot-thick bed of snow over pine needles. The cockpit bounced, jarring them down into their seats. They landed tipped to the right. The canopy unscrewed from the cockpit and rose into the air at a sideward angle. She unbuckled her harness, scrambled out, and helped Andrews out of his harness. As he climbed out, she grabbed the survival kit from the cockpit and gripped his arm.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  He looked totally disoriented.

  “Nauseated and shook up, but, yeah, I’m okay.”

  Right, she thought.

  “Good. We gotta go, now.”

  She pulled him quickly away from the cockpit and threaded her way through the tree trunks.

  “Shouldn’t we stay here?” Andrews asked.

  Bright white light glared down from above the trees. She grabbed Andrews by the arm and tried to pull him behind a tree. A flash of light hit the cockpit. The blast from the explosion ripped Andrews from her grip and threw him into the snow eight feet away. Flaming pieces of metal and pine bark flew between the trees and sliced into the snow. A bent strip of metal from the canopy stuck out of the tree just beyond Andrews. She ran to him, checking for blood on his clothes. The force of the blast had ripped his helmet off.

  “Aaah!” Andrews said, as she rolled him over.

  “Sir, are you hit?” She frantically ran her hands over him looking for metal sticking out of his body. “Where does it hurt?”

  “What?” He looked dazed and disoriented.

  “Can you stand up?” she asked, pulling on his arms. “We have to get out of here!”

  Andrews groaned as he struggled to stand. “I think . . . ”

  “Can you walk?” She pulled his arm over her shoulder and started moving him forward. She spotted his helmet and picked it up. A four-inch gash ran across the top of his helmet, slightly in back of center. Edges of a fine wire mesh inside the helmet were torn open. She felt her eyes widen as she realized how close Andrews had come to being dead. She had to get him away from the crash site. Gradually his legs took over and he was walking on his own.

  They continued trudging on through the snow and bitter cold for three hundred yards. Diane pulled Andrews behind a large tree, opened the survival pack, and handed him a thin metallic survival blanket.

  “Wrap this around you. It will keep you from freezing and help hide you from their sensors.”

  He unrolled the thin sheet and slipped it around his sho
ulders.

  “Cover your head, too,” she said.

  Her hope was that the foil might help make up for some of the damage to the helmet. Andrews flipped the foil sheet over his head, glanced up, and said, “I never thought of myself as a foil hat kind of person.”

  Diane smiled and shook her head. He’s going to do all right, she thought. He’s certainly got enough guts.

  They pushed on through the deep bed of white snow with tan pine needles being pulled to the surface by their feet. After another two hundred yards she turned to the left for thirty yards, then doubled back for fifty yards. She handed him the locator beacon and her watch.

  “Stand with your back against this tree. When the watch reaches exactly 12:18, flip this switch. Then don’t move.” She handed him the helmet, wondering if it still worked. “Put this on over the foil blanket, it’ll help keep the Greys from reading your mind or planting thoughts in your head.” He put on the helmet.

  She took the .45 automatic pistol out of the survival pack along with the tactical flashlight and moved over three trees. She pulled back the slide on the .45 and slowly let it close, loading a round into the chamber. The tactical flashlight was a high intensity LED model used by Special Forces. She wrapped the survival blanket around herself and faced the tree, glancing around it once every few seconds.

  Three minutes later she sensed movement ahead and to the right of their position. In the dull light that filtered down through the trees from the saucer above she saw three small figures following the tracks in the snow. The beings appeared almost childlike, except for the large heads.

  Diane’s hand started shaking, her heart racing. In her mind she saw these creatures circled around Daniel, tormenting him, hurting him. Her breathing deepened. They took him, she thought. They took Daniel.

  One Zeta was walking in the tracks she and Andrews had made, with the other two spread out twenty feet on each side. They walked slowly, swiveling their heads from side to side, searching for any sign of their quarry.

  She was shaking now. How could she ever hold the pistol steady enough to actually hit one of them? She focused on Daniel again. You took my brother, she thought. Anger rose within her chest and flooded into her head. She clenched her teeth and glanced at Andrews. You’re not taking anyone else, she thought. The trembling in her hand slowly stopped.

  So far, they weren’t picking up her or Andrews’s thoughts or location. That was good. The creature closest to them stopped and turned in their direction. Crap, she thought, Andrews’s helmet isn’t working like it should.

  Andrews turned on the locator beacon. The closest Zeta began walking in their direction. It picked up the radio transmission, she thought, in addition to his location. The other two continued following the tracks in the snow. Twenty seconds, Diane thought, and our fighter craft are going to be here.

  The Zeta kept walking straight at them. It was now less than eighty feet away. She glanced around the tree again. The other two Zetas were now headed toward them, too, but still farther away. She felt totally wired from the adrenaline rush. Because of the helmet she couldn’t hear the slight crunching of the snow as the creature came within fifty feet of them. The closest Zeta stopped and swiveled its head from side to side.

  What does it see? Diane wondered. She glanced over at Andrews. He was breathing rapidly, his breath pushed out from under his helmet, and drifted slowly to the side in the frozen air. She couldn’t say anything to him—the creature was too close. She held her breath, counted to ten, and glanced around the tree again.

  The Zeta was walking straight for Andrews’s tree carrying something in its left hand. She glanced again. It was fifteen feet away now. She had a clear field of fire, no trees in the way. The horrifying thought that she was using the president as bait crossed her mind; not that she could do anything about it now. She raised the flashlight on the left side of the tree and the .45 on the right. She slid slightly to the right to get a better view.

  She switched on the flashlight, aiming it at the Zeta. It tried to shield its eyes from the bright light. She quickly aimed and fired the .45 as the little creature raised its left hand toward her. The bullet hit the Zeta in the head, throwing it backward into the snow. The other two Zetas started to run at her, then stopped. They quickly turned back for the saucer and ran in that direction.

  Our fighters are here, she thought. Two seconds later she heard several sharp metallic cracks followed by the sound of limbs breaking as the last scout saucer fell into the forest and crashed to the ground.

  She motioned for Andrews to stay where he was. He nodded and she headed off in the snow toward the crashed saucer, moving quickly from tree to tree. Between the trees she got a brief look at one of the Zetas as it reached the saucer. A shot from one of the particle beam cannons on a fighter craft sliced through the creature as it came into the open, dropping it to the ground. The other Zeta hid behind a tree. The fighters kept moving, sliding from side to side over the trees. The fighter craft fired their cannons, blasting holes through tree trunks, trying to hit the remaining creature. She knew the Zeta didn’t show up very well on the night sensors of the fighter craft. If it weren’t for the snow and freezing temperatures, it wouldn’t show up at all. She, on the other hand, would show up more of a bright red color on their screens, so she wasn’t worried about friendly fire hitting her.

  She closed in on the Zeta from the back as it jumped from tree to tree trying to avoid the cannon blasts. It raised the thing in its hand and fired it at the fighter craft, vaporizing three-foot diameter tunnels through the limbs of the tall trees. It moved to the right. Anticipating that it wanted to get back to the saucer she moved forward and left, staying behind tree after tree. After several cannon blasts from the fighter craft above, the creature bolted to the left. The Zeta paused behind a tree. Diane aimed and fired, striking it in the back of the head.

  She signaled three short blinks upward with her tactical flashlight to let the fighters know everything was clear, then she slowly approached the saucer. It was tipped on its side. The sharp edge was buried two feet into the snow, pine needles, and frozen ground. She looked for a door in the saucer, but didn’t find one.

  She checked the body of the Zeta Grey she had shot. It was lying still in the snow. A thin green fluid seeped out of the head, turning the surrounding snow bright green. She turned away as bile flooded up her throat pushing to be expelled. She stepped away, opened her face shield, and retched beside a tree. Breathing deeply, she spit the remaining bile out of her mouth. Diane picked up a handful of clean snow and put it in her mouth. It melted quickly. She rinsed her mouth and spit out the remaining fluid.

  Diane put her arm out and steadied herself on a large tree, breathing deeply until the dizziness subsided. As she became calmer, she closed her face shield, turned, and focused her attention on the dead Grey. There was an oblong hole in the snow beside the creature. She reached into the snow and extracted a flashlight shaped object with smooth, rounded edges and a row of three buttons running lengthwise in the middle of the device. This must be the thing that was vaporizing tunnels through the tree limbs, she thought. Could be useful.

  Diane jumped as she caught movement in her peripheral vision. She spun in that direction and aimed the .45. The Zeta hit by the particle beam cannon from one of the fighter craft was still moving. She approached cautiously, keeping the gun aimed at its head.

  God, these things are ugly, she thought. She got a whiff of the creature’s odor. They stink, too. Daniel must have been terrified by them when he was abducted.

  Diane glanced at the flashlight shaped object in her hand. All three of the Greys had one. Where was this one’s? She walked slowly up to the squirming creature, and checked its hands. Empty. She found the hole where it had been dropped and dug it out of the icy snow. The creature’s odor was definitely offensive. The closer she got, the stronger her revulsion. She shined her tactical flashlight on the creature’s head. Cat-like slit pupils in the large black eyes close
d quickly in the bright light. She jumped back. Her heart was pounding, her breath rapid and ragged. Her hands trembled as she aimed her gun at its head again. The thought of running away was tempting her. She looked at the two objects in her hand, and carefully slid them into pockets on her flight suit.

  It’s unarmed, she thought. At least I think it’s unarmed. How would I actually know?

  She crept closer to the thing and watched it wiggle from time to time. It could be just a nervous response—or seizures. Either way it was still dangerous. She looked at its flattened face, tiny nose, and small slit of a mouth. The eyes drew her attention. She couldn’t help but look into its eyes. I’m safe from telepathic influence as long as I have my helmet on, she reminded herself. Then she thought about Daniel again, trying to imagine what they had done to him. Anger and resentment mounted as she stared into the creature’s eyes. She pointed the .45 between its eyes. You may not remember or care about Daniel, she thought, but I do.

  She pulled the trigger.

  She retrieved the third weapon from the dead Grey fifteen feet from where Andrews was still leaning against the tree.

  She took off her helmet. He did the same. “It’s over,” she said. “We’re safe.”

  He breathed out heavily and bent forward, hands on his knees. “Thank you.”

  She saw the flickering light from tactical flashlights moving through the trees in the distance.

  “Over here!” She waved her flashlight back and forth to signal them.

  Chapter 41

  “We’ve lost four out of six fighter craft in the last two days,” Diane said. “If we go out again, I’m afraid we’ll lose not only our last two craft, but the crews as well.”

  Hollis nodded. “I understand your concern, Zadanski.” Sitting across the table from her in the debriefing room, Hollis glanced at his watch. 0200 hours. “We have ten more fighter craft arriving in approximately two hours. That’ll give us half a squadron. New pilots and RIOs will be here sometime tomorrow.”

  Diane was relieved that new fighter craft were arriving, but her encounter on Baffin Island weighed heavily on her mind.