by Dean M. Cole
Jake spun on him. "Goddamn it, Richard! Enough with the fucking jokes, already. Someone really did get killed over this shit."
Richard's head snapped back as if Jake had slapped him. To his credit, the sergeant didn't flinch.
Richard raised both hands. "I'm sorry, Jake. That was thoughtless of me." The elevator doors opened, Richard motioned for Jake to enter. "Bear with me a little bit longer."
After a moment, Jake shook his head and walked into the elevator. Still fuming, he studied its interior walls. All four surfaces were brushed stainless-steel with no discernible fixtures or buttons. The doors slid closed, and to his surprise, the elevator went down from the ground floor.
Richard merely smiled with that maddening humorous indifference.
The elevator continued downward. Jake felt the pressure building on his ears. Pinching his nose, he performed the Valsalva maneuver. His ears popped and the pain subsided. "How the hell did that computer know me?" he asked again.
Richard pinched his nose in an apparent effort to clear his ears too. In a nasal tone, he said, "For the last twenty years, the military covertly scanned all recruit's retinas."
"How?"
"A camera built into the ophthalmoscope the doctors use for their initial entry exam, snaps a shot of each retina. It's added to the recruit's file and to the master database."
The elevator slowed and stopped. The doors opened, revealing a modern hallway, its design far removed from the comparatively ancient architecture of the Pentagon—now an unknown distance above them. Another pair of serious-looking guards flanked a double door at the end of the hallway.
The walls and doors were highly polished black onyx, trimmed with brushed stainless steel.
Jake recognized the type of flooring. "There must be a lot of computers on this level."
Richard looked surprised. "What makes you think that?"
He pointed at the floor's grid of panels. "That's a raised floor. The underlying crawlspace is used to distribute chilled air and run cables between server racks."
"Astute observation."
They approached the doors. "So, what is this place?"
"I could tell you." Richard pointed at the larger of the two guards. "But then he'd have to—" Seeing Jake's warning glare, he stopped mid-sentence. "Sorry."
In a deep, humorless monotone, the mountainous guard said, "Captain Allison, Captain Giard, IDs, please."
Taking their cards, he passed each under a laser scanner. It beeped twice. Nodding, he returned them. "Please proceed, sirs."
Turning, Richard reached out, placing his palm against a panel next to the doors. A red glow emanated from the pad. It beeped like the one upstairs. "Good morning, Captain Allison," the computer said. The double doors parted. Noise from the busy room beyond flooded the quiet corridor.
Richard walked through, and Jake followed. Inside, the architecture was identical to the entry hall, but on a much larger scale. While the corridor was empty, this area was teeming with activity. Personnel, both civilian and military, scurried about.
It looked like NASA's Mission Control. Large monitors adorned the far wall while rows of computer consoles filled the large chamber's center.
Jake scanned the room, surprised to see so many foreign uniforms. Strange accents and languages were interspersed in the bustling room's din. Whatever it was, it had to be a multilateral, multinational effort.
He turned to Richard. "Again, what the hell is this place?"
Smiling, Richard pointed to the back wall.
Turning, Jake saw a beautiful scene on one of the large monitors. The image feed came from a camera orbiting high above the planet. The video quality was amazing, like looking through a window into space. Earth's curving horizon filled half the image. Irregular halting movement drew Jake's attention. One of the stars in the image's right side appeared to be moving. Then it blossomed to fill half the screen. To his shock and bewilderment, no one in the control room reacted to the development.
Looking around the room, mouth agape, his pulse quickened. Confused and angry, he turned back to the monitor, and glared at the ship that had killed his wingman. It darted out of frame, its extreme acceleration leaving only a hint of its departure direction.
Jake was dismayed that those who had obviously seen the spaceship continued with their tasks. He turned to Richard, only to see that same infuriating smile on his face. Jake blew up. "What's so goddamned funny?". Then he realized Richard wasn't grinning at him, he was looking over Jake's shoulder.
A familiar voice spoke up from behind him. "It's about time you got here, Captain."
Jake turned and came face to face with his suddenly not-so-dead wingman.
Standing in the bustling underground control room, Jake stood with his mouth agape. Head spinning he stared at Lieutenant Victor Croft. A mix of emotions and confusion flooded his thoughts. "What the hell?"
"Well, it's good to see you too, Captain," Vic said, laughing.
Victor's chortling broke through Jake's shock. He grabbed the young man in a bear hug, nearly crushing his reanimated wingman. "Holy shit, Vic! You … you got out after all. Thank god!" Jake shook his head. "I thought … hell, I knew you were dead," he said, finally setting him back down. "Why didn't you—"
"Let's move this to the conference room," Richard interrupted, placing a hand on Jake's elbow and nodding toward the control room's occupants.
Jake turned in the room's abrupt silence. While the appearance of a strange ship hadn't phased the assembled personnel, the reunion had brought all activity to a standstill as everyone watched.
Confused and unsure of what to say in spite of all the questions running through his mind, Jake looked from the onlookers to Richard, to Victor, and then back to the large monitor. Overwhelmed, he allowed Richard to guide him to a door on the side of the control room.
After climbing a flight of stairs, they passed through another door into a conference room. A long table surrounded by chairs occupied its center. A glass wall separated it from the control room.
Jake walked to the clear wall. Watching the activity below, he again felt overwhelmed. His mind raced with a multitude of questions.
Moving to stand on both sides of him, Victor and Richard joined Jake at the window.
Richard said, "It's a lot to take in."
"You think?" Jake shook his head and turned from the window. He grabbed a chair and fell into it. With his back to the conference table, he looked from Richard to the strange control room and finally to Victor. He struggled to comprehend the developments of the last five minutes. "What the hell is going on here?"
"Lieutenant Croft," Richard said, pointing to the head of the table. "Please debrief the good Captain."
Vic walked toward the end of the table nearest the door. "I still don't know the whole story, but I can tell you my part of it."
Richard nodded. "That's fine, Lieutenant."
Jake stared at him. "I'm all ears."
"Ok," Vic said. Sitting down, he turned to Jake. "As you know, when that ship showed up, everything went to hell. When it got too close, I lost control of my fighter."
"Yeah, me too," Jake said, nodding.
Victor also nodded. "I figured that, when your fighter rolled on top of mine, but when it left, mine didn't recover like yours did. Somehow, its departure threw me into an inverted flat spin. No matter what I tried, I couldn't recover it."
"So, you were able to eject after all."
"Nope," Victor said, with an indecipherable grin.
***
— Fifty Hours Earlier —
"Oh my god!" Victor screamed over the radio. With a white-knuckled death grip on the controls, he fought to rein in the violently shaking fighter. He keyed the radio transmit button again. "The stick is … beating up … the inside of my thighs."
Through the building roar of turbulence buffeting the airframe, he heard Jake over the radio. "Get away from the ship."
"I don't know … if I can hold on," Victor said, hi
s voice straining as he was thrown against the harness.
Multiple caution and warning lights illuminated, filling the cockpit with their red and amber brilliance. Blaring from his helmet speakers, squealing horns and mounting static drilled into his head. In a cascading collapse, system after system crashed. Still struggling to control his bucking fighter, Vic looked from the flashing warning-lights to the strange ship. "Get the fuck away from me!"
Panic's icy fingers gripped his heart. He squeezed the radio transmit trigger. "My systems are going down. Every damn warning light is flashing!" he shouted into the building static. He couldn't tell if the radio transmitted.
"Mayday, mayday, may—" he screamed. His helmet audio cutoff mid-word as all electrical systems crashed. The cockpit lights faded to black, and the screaming static evaporated.
The fighter's electrically actuated flight controls locked up. Victor struggled with the stick, but his aircraft remained unresponsive. He looked across to the strange ship. "Move!"
A shadow crossed his cockpit. Looking up, he froze. Upside down and on a collision course, Captain Giard's fighter loomed overhead, blocking out the moon.
"Come on!" Victor screamed. Looking across the narrowing gulf, yanking futilely against the flight controls. He tried to slide lower in the fighter's ejection seat.
Light flooded his cockpit, banishing the fighter's shadow. Dragging his eyes from the impending doom and surreal image of Jake looking down on him, he watched the strange ship's ethereal ring of lights grow blindingly bright, then it flashed away from his jet.
A tremendous shockwave threw Victor against his restraints. "Shit!" Somehow the ship's departure knocked his fighter into a flat spin. Knowing Jake was only a few feet away, he cringed.
Alternating waves of light swept through the cockpit as his spinning fighter emerged from under the shadow of Jake's airplane. Looking up, he saw Captain Giard's F-22 rolling away. Victor's momentary elation quashed as his fighter tumbled inverted.
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!" his quivering voice squeaked into the dead radio. "Damn it!" he screamed, pounding the lifeless instrument panel.
Following his emergency restart procedures, he flipped switch after switch to no avail.
Knowing he was running out of options and time, he looked up from his upside-down fighter to see the Nevada desert floor way too close. In panic's icy grip, he frantically clawed at the ejection handles. An eternal second later, his fingers wrapped around them. He yanked with all his might.
Nothing! They didn't budge.
"Fuck!" He tugged and yanked several more times
Still nothing!
Inverted, knowing death was imminent, Victor tilted his head back to watch the desert race up and devour him. He blinked, not believing his eyes. The strange ship had returned. It was outside, falling in formation with his fighter. "What the hell?"
Looking past the ship, he realized they weren't falling. They were still descending but at a much slower rate. "Shit," he whispered.
Vic's heart skipped a beat as a loud explosion ripped him from his awed trance. As if belatedly reacting to his ejection handle pulls, the canopy's jettison bolts exploded. Victor squeezed his eyes shut and ducked his head, bracing for the anticipated rush of wind, but it never came. Opening his eyes, he watched the separated canopy float away as if it were in the zero gravity of space.
In spite of the slow-motion fall, Victor could feel the desert growing closer. "Time to get the hell out!" He actuated the seat-belt release, intent on a manual bailout. As soon as the harness unlatched, he felt an odd tugging sensation in his abdomen. Before he could react, Victor was yanked clear of the fighter. "Oh shit!" He flailed, belatedly grasping for a handhold. All senses screamed free-fall, but there was no wind, and the desert still wasn't rushing up.
The tugging sensation increased, pulling him across the narrow gap. In an adrenaline-induced temporal disconnect, he perceived the half-second crossing in slow motion. Bridging the gap, he watched the ship's incredible pulsing, multicolored, ring of lights pass less than two feet overhead. Reaching out, Victor's hand grazed the ethereal beams. For a fraction of a second, it felt like the center of the ship contained the mass of a black hole. Caught in its tremendous gravitational field, his hand slammed down like a metal rod to a magnet, but the instant it passed out of the light, the force evaporated. However, the gentle tugging sensation in his gut persisted.
Passing beyond the ring of lights, Vic flew under the strange ship. Like a hole in the sky, it loomed over and ahead of him, obscuring half the world. Its barely perceptible black mirror skin appeared to absorb almost all light that fell on its surface. Heart racing, he threw his hands up to absorb the imminent impact.
Just as Victor was about to hit, he heard tearing paper, and the skin in his path vaporized. He floated into the ship, and the skin resealed, plunging his weightless body into a silent mind-swallowing void.
Hyperventilating, he floated in darkness. His panicked mind raced as he tried to comprehend what was happening. Wide-eyed, Vic snapped his head left and right in a desperate search for visual clues.
Nothing.
Something touched the sole of his boot. Victor screamed. After a moment of panicked flailing, he realized it was the floor. Gravity was returning. A few seconds later, he crouched on a textured metallic surface. Still in complete darkness, Vic reached overhead. Finding no obstructions, he slowly stood.
"What a panty-waste," his mother chided through a mirthless laugh.
"Not now, Mother," Victor whispered. Looking down, he shook his head. Now that her pestering persona had setup camp in his thoughts, she'd not soon stop. In the deafening silence, his heart pounded like an express locomotive. "Pull it together," he whispered. Closing his eyes, Victor held his breath in a desperate attempt to rein in his terror. After a few seconds and with no further comments from his overbearing maternal mental hitchhiker, he exhaled. Feeling calmer, he extended his arms sideways and ahead, probing for a wall. After a moment, he realized he could see his hands as dark silhouettes against a dimly glowing background.
Facing away from the wall he'd passed through, Victor edged forward until his hands brushed against a surface. As he swept them left and right, the ivory glow intensified, revealing he'd passed into a small oval-shaped room. A gray floor formed the only flat surface.
"What the hell is th—?" The wall vaporized under his fingertips as a tearing paper sound echoed through the small space. Victor jumped and stumbled backward, not stopping until slamming his back into the outer skin.
Blinking and panting, he stared at the new opening. A six-foot section of the wall had dematerialized, creating a doorway leading deeper into the ship's interior. Beyond, impenetrable darkness swallowed the light from Victor's small room.
Standing, he studied the door and dark void beyond. As his eyes adjusted, he began to perceive soft light in the next chamber. It was much larger than his small oval-shaped room.
Inching forward, sure any moment a fanged alien would pop out and snatch his life, Victor worked his way to the opening where he froze, unsure how to proceed.
The disembodied voice of his widowed mother chastised, "Come on, pussy, grow some balls!"
The woman's nagging and berating began in earnest during Victor's eleventh year, following his father's untimely death. Every time she found her only child unworthy of the title: man of the family, she showered him with insults, belittling Vic in front of friends and family alike.
In his head, her unending denigration continued. "You pansy, if they wanted you dead, you'd be a crispy bug stain on the desert floor."
Goaded into action, he crouched and poked his head through the opening for a quick scan. Inside, he discovered a large circular room that appeared to span the entire width of the ship.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, his heart skipped a beat. Three figures stood in the center of the large space. Victor was on their left. They weren't looking in his direction. Although, in the darkness he couldn
't be sure.
Thinking of Neil Armstrong's famous words, he extended a trembling leg into the ship's main cabin. One small step, my ass.
Not comfortable with the thought of sneaking up behind unknown aliens, and unwilling to shout 'Here I am!' he turned left, planning to follow the curving exterior wall until the aliens acknowledged his presence. Or eat me.
Before Victor finished his third step along the curved surface, the entire wall—a full one-third of the ship's horizontal circumference—vanished. The view outside shocked him into momentary paralysis. Recognizable from any altitude, the brilliant lights of Las Vegas receded over a shrinking curved horizon. Looking down between his boots, Vic saw the black void of the Grand Canyon slide into view. Finding himself precariously balanced on a ledge miles above the surface, broke his paralysis. Launching backward, toward the middle of the ship, Victor landed gracelessly on his ass. He crab-walked a few feet farther before dawning realization froze him.
If the wall had vaporized, he'd have been sucked out. Vic didn't know their exact altitude, but he knew they were already well above an airliner's cruising level. Judging by Earth's curvature, they were gaining more altitude every second. Considering the contained pressure differential, he knew there must be something physical present. Either the wall had turned clear or a forcefield was in place.
Loath to let any gaff go unnoticed, his mother chimed in. "Sure, just sit there, pussy. I'm sure the big scary aliens are duly impressed."
Victor shook his head. He could practically hear the spittle flying from her pursed lips. Subvocalizing, he said, "Shut up, mother." Gathering himself and steadying his nerves, Lieutenant Croft stood and crept back to the wall. Looking down, he could see they had climbed above the atmosphere, reaching orbital velocity and altitude in the few moments it took him to clear the small room. Looking back to its opening, Victor recognized it as an airlock.
The acceleration must have been incredible, but he'd never felt the ship move. Somehow, this vessel's interior was disconnected from inertia. Thinking of how they'd pulled him into the ship, Vic realized the ship must also control gravity.
