Ashland 297: The Alien Agenda

by Donna McDonald

  Kyra smiled and put her hand on her husband’s chest. A cybernetic heart beat within his body, but it beat for her. “Do you ever wish you had a normal wife?”

  “Are you talking about my normal wife who just today informed me that aliens have always existed for real and lived on Earth? How could that be a problem?”

  “One day I will learn to stop asking you rhetorical questions.”

  “Honey, I’ll take you like you are. This is your normal and I like it.”

  Kyra laughed when Peyton pulled her from her seat and started dragging her out of the lab.

  4

  “Cyborgs can fly faster than un-modified humans. You’d think astronauts would have been the first to be modified.”

  Kyra shrugged at her cybernetic husband’s comment. She knew the answer, but explaining it to Peyton in a way he wouldn’t resent was the challenge.

  “Cyborgs are more susceptible to solar flares and electromagnetic pulses. You’re shielded from such things, but if your shielding failed while in space, you’d be in far more trouble than a full human who just needed to wretch and recover. You can’t have a mechanical astronaut and a mechanical ship failing at the same time.”

  “I’m not sure your logical is sound.”

  “It’s sound,” Kyra answered with a snort.

  They both watched with interest as the flight simulator stopped moving on the mag rollers beneath it and slowed from Mach 5 down to a full stop. A suited astronaut stepped out of it and peeled off his helmet before retching into one of six waiting trash receptacles. Two more astronauts followed the first out and did the same. Soon all the trash receptacles were in use.

  Finally, an unsuited astronaut exited the simulator. She was wearing nothing more than a pair of normal coveralls and a helmet connected to a portable oxygen pack. She calmly flipped her helmet mask up and looked at the others with a mild disgust she was doing her best not to show to them.

  Kyra heard Peyton chuckle beside her as the woman walked among her fellow astronauts and offered moral support for them having survived the Mach 5 ride.

  “She’s saying the right things to them, but I’d love to hear what she’s really thinking,” Peyton said.

  “I read she’s so used to traveling at high levels of speed that she doesn’t bother wearing an anti-compression suit. Does that make her badass enough to handle the situation?” Kyra asked in a whisper.

  “I remain unconvinced. She survived Mach 5, but I thought you said the woman could handle Mach 8,” Peyton teased.

  Kyra grinned. “Dia’s records say she can, but I don’t think the other astronauts would have survived that level of speed. Few people can fly beyond Mach 3 with their facilities remaining intact. Her companion astronauts all survived Mach 5 so they must be fairly advanced in their training. Not at her level, obviously, but none of them got carried out of the simulator. All in all I’d say that’s not too shabby for humans.”

  She and Peyton watched as a man in a flight uniform walked out to speak to Colonel Daniels. Her gaze immediately swung in their direction and nailed them both at once.

  Peyton grunted over the glare directed his way. “Well, she knows we’re here. I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Kyra.”

  “And I hope Colonel Daniels is more reasonable than she looks. That glare looks like she means business,” Kyra answered.

  “Yes. She would make a great Marine.”

  Kyra rolled her eyes at the comment. “I think Colonel Daniels makes a great Astronaut. I understand her Air Force Colonel rank is the same in the World Security organization. They leveled rank across the various militias of the world.”

  “Bet if you ask her, she’ll say she’s Air Force. She’s old enough for that to matter to her. No one over thirty likes being leveled into one military.”

  “The woman is forty-seven, Peyton, not a hundred. You said that crap about Lucy too. Do you remember what Lucy told you?”

  Peyton chuckled. “Yes, but how much credibility can you give an Army Captain’s snide comments when she so obviously prefers Marines in the bedroom? I think that proves my argument, Dr. Winters.”

  Kyra pushed on Peyton’s arm, but he was as immovable as a brick wall, both literally and figuratively. “I will never understand military rivalry. You’re all on the same team.”

  “Lots of people play football too, but no two teams play it the same. You can’t trump my argument because I’m right.”

  Kyra rolled her eyes again and shut up. She loved Peyton as much as it was possible to love someone, but there were some things about him that she would never understand.

  Dia pulled off all her gear by the time she reached the two people waiting to see her, and swiped a hasty hand through her short hair. The simulator hadn’t bothered her stomach, but these two people showing up out of the blue to visit her made her want to barf up her breakfast. There was only one reason she could think of for them to be there.

  “Good morning, Colonel Daniels. I hope we haven’t come at a bad time,” Kyra said with a small smile.

  “Dr. Winters and Captain Elliott—you two look just like you do on the com. It’s a pleasure to meet you both in person. Call me Dia,” she said as she stuck out a slightly trembling hand for them to shake.

  “Please… call us Kyra and Peyton,” Peyton politely ordered as they shook hands.

  “Sure. Okay,” Dia said as her tension rose. Over the years she’d gotten tougher and better at not showing her emotional reactions—a shielding that wasn’t easy for any female to master. She’d managed it though, and it had taken her far in her career, but thoughts of Ashland reduced her to this unsteady state in under two seconds. “Scott said you wanted to see me.”

  Kyra nodded. “Yes. We have some news for you about your husband. Do you think we can go somewhere and talk?”

  Dia swallowed hard and nodded. She wanted to know what they had to tell her, but it would have been better if they’d showed some sign of Ash still being alive. Instead, they’d both frowned when talking about him was mentioned. That pretty much told Dia what they had to say would not be good news, but it was only polite to let them speak their words since they’d come all this way to see her in person.

  “Scott told me to do what I needed to do today. There’s a conference room down the hall…” she began, but stopped when Kyra Winters shook her head.

  Kyra reached out and put a hand on Dia’s arm. “We’ve got a story to tell you and the fewer ears the better. You will need some time alone after we’re done. I know this is a very intrusive request, but can we talk at your residence?”

  Dia felt every cell in her body go on instant alert. “Sure,” she said as casually as she could.

  Peyton lifted his wrist. “I had one of my men get the coordinates for us. Can we meet you there in about twenty minutes?”

  Dia stared for a few seconds. They’d done their homework on her. They probably thought she deserved special handling because of who she was and what she did for a living. She almost wished they’d just offer their apologies for Ash’s death and leave her to grieve him. But that’s not how these things worked—not even in the post-war world. And she wanted to know how it happened. Didn’t she?

  “I’ve waited a long time to learn the truth,” Dia said. “I guess another twenty minutes won’t matter.”

  They added nothing nor did they respond to her except to say they’d see her shortly.

  Dia watched them leave then went to tell Scott to activate the leave of absence request she’d been planning to take for over a decade. If they had any part of Ash that she could bury, she was taking his remains to where they’d spent their honeymoon. Those two weeks away would be the closure she’d never gotten after the war.

  In her most honest moments, Dia admitted to herself that she’d been planning to deal with Ash’s death all along.

  Now it looked like she was going to finally do so.

  5

  Dia made them all coffee, and now they sat at her dining table mak
ing small talk while they drank it. This cozy domestic scene with the two famous cyborg champions was more surreal to her than the first time she’d seen the round globe of Earth from the pilot’s window of the Discovery 13 shuttle she’d flown to Moonbase Orion.

  She leaned over her coffee and dropped her gaze to the table’s smooth surface before finding the nerve to lift it again. “After all this time, the suspense is killing me. Just tell me the truth. Is Ash dead?”

  Kyra stared at the woman and blew out a breath. “It’s… well, it’s hard to know where to begin.”

  “Just say yes or no to the dead question. That’s the answer I’m looking for and the one that matters most,” Dia commanded.

  Kyra opened her mouth, but Peyton beat her to finding something to say.

  “Some part of the man known as Ashland Daniels, aka the cyborg known as Ashland 297, is still alive,” he said.

  Dia’s head jerked up. Alive?

  She held up a hand. “Wait… what do you mean some part of him?”

  Kyra sighed. “Yes and no don’t really apply to your question, but it’s still only fair to tell you that the man you married is never coming home to you. The Ashland Daniels you knew is gone, but they have preserved a form of him. Your husband was used for a military experiment that exceeded his conversion into a cyborg.”

  Dia turned her head away to keep from swearing. “You’re using polite speak for news I’m suddenly sure I don’t want to hear. I read about the horrors that happened to war prisoners. Have all Ash’s human body parts been harvested? You might not want to tell me that’s the case because it makes me want to go kill the people who did that to him.”

  “From what I’ve discovered, nothing happened to your husband without his permission.” Kyra sighed and leaned forward to mirror the woman all but draped face down on the table. “Your husband volunteered to go into a special program—a very secretive one. If he hadn’t chosen to enter the secret program, they would have sold him as a Cyber Husband. Your husband chose not to do that. I feel sure he had reasons that made sense when they forced him to make that decision.”

  Dia straightened and nodded. “I prepared myself for Ash going into the Cyber Husband program. I sold our house and most of our belongings to raise the funds I would need to buy him. I even sold his air jet, which I knew I would catch hell for doing once I got him back. I used to tease Ash that he loved his ride as much as he loved me. But he never showed up in the Cyber Husband program. Like the sentimental idiot I am, though, I still have all the money I saved to buy him. I’m not sure what that says about me.”

  “It says you’re a loyal wife who sincerely wanted her husband back. Spending that money would have meant you had given up on that goal. Your actions make perfect sense to me,” Kyra said.

  Dia nodded. “Yes—that’s how I viewed it. I had no intentions of giving up. I guess I still don’t. I want to know what’s happened to my husband. I’ll try my best to maintain while you tell me. With the shape my stomach is in, I’m glad now that you insisted we come here. I may have to go be sick.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t have better news, Colonel Daniels,” Kyra said as she dug in her bag until she found a small round disk. She lifted a finger to her lips when Dia’s mouth opened to ask what it was.

  “Talking to the families of missing cyborgs is never easy. Kyra and I wanted to come tell you in person,” Peyton added to make sure she was paying attention to what was happening.

  Dia’s gaze went back and forth between them. “If you consider the version of Ash I married to be dead, please just tell me flat out. Knowing his heart lives on or his brain’s been put into an android body will not be helpful to me.”

  “Very well,” Kyra said, putting her finger on the device. “The Ashland Daniels you knew is gone.”

  Dia heard the words. They pushed her upright in her chair. Her instincts instantly rose to deny them. “I… I… damn it, I think I really will be sick. ”

  Peyton reached out and clamped her wrist. “If there was ever a time in your life to be strong, this is it, Colonel,” he whispered.

  Kyra flicked the switch, and a field rose into the air to fall around the table. It closed the three of them inside. “There. We have five minutes of privacy. It’s all we can risk without raising suspicions.”

  “You assume I’m being monitored by someone?” Dia inquired with narrowed eyes.

  Peyton leaned closer. “You are definitely being monitored, and they bugged nearly every room in your domicile. Your Soviet boy toy’s job was to distract you well enough to make you give up your search for your husband. I’m sorry to be so blunt, Colonel Daniels, but we have little time to tell you the truth. You need to listen to us while you can.”

  “Are you sure about Sergei?” Dia demanded. Her mouth was dry with shock and nerves.

  “Yes,” Kyra said, putting her hand over Peyton’s drawing the woman’s attention to her. “Listen closely. The real reason we came to see you in person was to tell you that the military and the UCN put your husband into an alien hybridization program. He’s been there for over a decade. He’s alive, but he’s not the man you remember.”

  “He’s… what kind of program is he in?” Dia asked.

  Peyton let go of her wrist. “An alien-human hybridization program. Your husband was genetically modified as part of some interplanetary project to ensure the survival of multiple species including humans from Earth. The aliens running the program are planning to send your husband to another planet as soon as the UCN gives their clearance for it. Kyra stopped them from setting a date for their departure until we could tell you first.”

  Dia glared. “Do you know how fucking crazy this sounds?”

  “Yes,” Peyton and Kyra both answered together.

  Kyra drew her hand back and talked faster. “Aliens have been here on Earth for thousands of years. The hybridization program has existed for at least the last two hundred. From what I read in their reports, they never got enough volunteers to do the right amount of genetic manipulation until a decade ago when the World Security Organization—formerly our military and the UCN—gave them thirty Cyber Soldiers. Ashland Daniels was one of those cyborgs and the only one on the list with any family still looking for him.”

  “Why didn’t they tell me where he was?” Dia whispered as the horrifying shock sunk in.

  “Because you wouldn’t have stood for your husband’s fake volunteering is my guess,” Kyra whispered back. “The privacy field is dying, Dia. If you want more information about this situation, come visit us. Please don’t look into this on your own. I don’t trust our current government not to get rid of you just to shut you up. They are adamant about keeping the aliens and the hybridization program a secret. You’re a high-profile person and valuable as an astronaut, but that might not stop them from taking your life if they think doing so helps the greater good. They’re masters at rationalization. Trust me.”

  The privacy field sputtered and died. It also left them staring at each other in a crisis moment. Trust was not something any military person ever gave easily, but Dia lived by her instincts. Kyra and Peyton had more to lose than to gain by what they shared with her.

  And Ash… God, poor Ash. What if it was all true?

  Dia sat for a full minute then rose from her seat and walked to the erasable memo board on her refrigerator. It was another remnant from her old life where she and Ash had each other. He used to leave her sexy love notes on the board. She hadn’t been able to toss it out.

  She scribbled at the bottom and blocked most of it with her body in case of cameras. Two days, it read. After Kyra and Peyton nodded that they understood, Dia used her shirt to erase the words. Then yelling an obscenity, she snatched the memo board off the refrigerator, tossed it to the floor, and then stomped on the remaining pieces to break it. Afterward, she picked the pieces up and put them into the recycler while continuing to curse.

  The sound of the pieces crunching into recycled dust bought her a few more seco
nds of processing time for the bomb Kyra and Peyton had dropped on her.

  Aliens? Was she honestly supposed to believe their government had deals with people from other planets?

  Sure, she’d seen her fair share of UFOs in her space flights, but her control group on the ground had always explained the sightings away. She’d always been told there were higher levels of flight programs than hers and that the sightings were experiments she wasn’t cleared to know about. She’d never pressed for more information because pressing had seemed pointless to her. None of the UFOs had ever engaged her craft.

  In the last decade, she’d gone along with just about anything because Ash being missing was a hundred times more important to her than unidentified crafts that could go Mach 30 or faster.

  Kicking the recycler to vent a tiny portion of her anger, Dia washed her hands in the sink. She would leave no traces of DNA for any government snitch to use against her.

  Damn. Sergei was plant? Hadn’t she suffered enough disillusions in her life?

  She’d tell her parents and Ash’s parents that Ashland was dead and that she needed to get away for a while. Then she’d do whatever she felt it necessary to do—as soon as she knew what the hell that was.

  Panting from her kitchen dramatics and an anger that couldn’t be unleashed without repercussions, she turned back to Kyra and Peyton.

  “I guess I need to make arrangements for my husband’s official death to be registered. His parents need to be told… and fuck… I guess that’s on me as well. Why don’t the two of you get the hell out of my house so I can get on my shitty life? The Dia Daniels meltdown show is officially over.”

  “We understand your anger and wish to offer our condolences for your pain, Colonel Daniels. We’re sorry the news we brought wasn’t better,” Kyra said.