She cycled up the engines, set a nav waypoint far to the northeast and piloted the transport up to cruise altitude before she hit the autopilot controls. She placed a call to a steakhouse in her favorite city, reserving their best booth table for ten o’clock that night. Her status at that restaurant was already high, but the worldwide news of their adventures had elevated her standing to a whole new level and she marveled at how quickly her recent disgrace had been forgotten. She guessed there might have been a worldwide UN-imposed media ban on anything negative. The next call she placed went through on video to Paterson, who was with his wife on the UN base there.
“Yo,” he said, as he sat back in view of the datapad he was using and took a long pull on a bottle of what looked like European lager. “How’d it go?”
“Emotional, dude. Emotional. I’ve told him to hit you up for a ride when he needs one, that cool with you?”
“Sure,” Paterson answered, “you’re not coming back here?”
“Nah,” Brandt said as she leaned the seat back and put her boots on the sticker reminding UN personnel not to eat or drink in the transport’s cockpit. “Got a dinner reservation in Manhattan.”
“Eating alone?” Paterson asked, drawing out the words in a theatrical accusation which he deployed in unison with rapidly moving eyebrows.
Brandt smiled. “I may have to call a lawyer before I answer that.”
Epilogue
“If you’ll observe, I’m about to begin,” the German scientist, Professor Schülz said. The autopsy was being witnessed live and via video link in a dozen other countries in all of the world’s territories. By invitation, a team of scientists from the newly-formed and highly distrusted Middle Eastern Alliance were there, although behind plexiglass and escorted by a small team of CP operators from the European territory.
“Notice the tough carapace is difficult to penetrate using traditional edged tools,” the pathologist went on, performing the autopsy on the dead Va’alen brought back by Brandt, like it was a maestro’s masterpiece as he worked a scalpel down a ridged seam before giving up and lifting a small laser cutting torch. “So, I will carefully open up what appears to be a growth line between two parts of the hard exterior.” Silence reigned as very few of the watchers breathed when the tiny surgical tool sliced a path through the unbroken shell of the hostile alien’s corpse,
“As you will see from the redacted reports,” he went on as he worked, having practiced the speech in the days leading up to the privately televised event, “this subject was killed by another alien capable of telekinesis and other, as yet, unknown abilities.” How he would love to get his hands on one of those specimens and pick apart its brain, with the hope of recreating the ability to unlock the potential of the human mind.
He kept such thoughts private and concentrated on his task as he finished a cut with a theatrical flourish, before beginning another.
“Note the humanoid somatotype, yet with clearly insectoid influences, such as the enlarged body encased inside a shell-like carapace and, of course, the additional pair of limbs to make this creature six-legged. Spreaders, please.” This last he added as an aside to his assistant, an American doctor of similar qualifications and experience in their field of xeno-pathology, but with less renown, as the American had yet to earn a literary prize for their research papers. He placed the edges of the spreaders forcefully inside the cut made down the center of the alien’s chest and activated the small motor that cranked them open. As it moved bit by bit, he made additional, small cuts with the laser torch to ease the way until, with a sinuous crack, the chest popped open.
The American scientist let out a noise like a weak yelp and stepped groggily away from the operating table to steady himself against the wall.
“Hhrrrrgh,” he let out, trying to stop the contents of his stomach appearing on the eternal record of the first alien autopsy, “Hhhrrrrrgh!”
“Control yourself, please, Herr Carter,” the German doctor said peevishly, as though the involuntary urge to vomit was one that any human could control. “If you cannot control yourself, please kindly leave my operating room in order that you do not contaminate the specimen.”
“Hhhrrrrrrrrrrugh…” Doctor Carter replied as he fled the room. Schülz surreptitiously swallowed the sudden influx of saliva in his mouth as he heard the faint sound of splashing out in the corridor.
“As I was saying,” he went on, “oh… oh, um, I er… cut the feed. Turn off the cameras now!” he hissed, his face pale and his words breathless. Outrage erupted from the speakers and the live audience until the plug was pulled and the plexiglass whited out to blind anyone not inside the operating theater from the specimen on the table.
“What is it, Doc?” an American soldier in armor asked with concern, one hand on the butt of his pistol.
“You won’t need that, I’m sure,” Schülz said as he recovered himself, “but I’m not sure our new friends have told us the truth.”
The soldier was confused, but he leaned over and looked anyway. His own stomach flipped at the stale, rotten, ammonia smell of the alien’s insides, but he blinked away the tears in his eyes and looked inside.
Instead of the internal organs that he was expecting to see, he saw a small, and very dead Kuldar.
END OF BOOK 3 OF THE EXPANSION SERIES
Books by Devon C Ford:
After It Happened:
(Also on Audible)
1 – Survival
2 – Humanity
3 – Society
4 – Hope
5 – Sanctuary
6 – Rebellion
The Leah Chronicles (After It Happened):
(Also on Audible)
Andorra
Piracy (announced for 2019)
New Earth:
1 – ARC
Defiance:
1 – Genesis
2 – Erebus (announced for 2019)
Burning Skies (Multi-Author series):
1 – The Fall
2 – Fallout (by Jacqueline Druga)
3 – (by Chris Harris – announced for 2019)
Toy Soldiers:
1 – Apocalypse
2 – Aftermath
3 – Abandoned
4 - Adversity
Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3 Page 26
