The aliens call themselves a word he couldn’t so much as try to pronounce. At least not yet. He was still working on that. Even at first glance, it sounded disturbingly grizzly. For what seemed like a full minute, he felt a bitterly cold chill down and through his spine as he read—the sensation penetrated all the way to his spinal cord (tingling painfully!) and quickly from the base of his skull to his pelvis. What’s worse was the fact of ‘who’ they were working for—or ‘with’? he wondered. Someone identifying themselves only as under the code-name “Boss”. This wasn’t a ‘name’, or, frankly, a supposedly ‘hidden identity’ he hadn’t heard before. But still. That could be virtually anyone! His mind ran amok with possibilities about who ‘Boss’ could be, or who they might be. He didn’t dwell on the notion for more than a couple of seconds. The fact that was most alarming was that whoever “Boss” was, they were communicating with these aliens using some kind of original encryption that left some of the data blacked-out like an Intelligence report that anyone with a military background would recognize as a security measure to permanently and indefinitely prevent anyone else from learning something the report’s author didn’t want them to know about, for whatever reason. There were two lines of seeming jargon between legible text—maybe this was a coded image of “Boss”?. . . When he reached the end of the text, Smith snapped and looked at Heyes, “Get me Command. Now.”
She nodded and snapped, “I’m on it!”
Then, Smith immediately looked up at Connors. She was still wide-eyed and nodded subtly.
“See what you can do about recovering that image,” Smith commanded, handing the display back to Connors.
“I already have, Commander. I checked with The Union military and intelligence mainframe—three times,”
This was assuring to Smith. Connors pointed to her screen. Smith felt compelled to step up to the station and look at what she was pointing at—
“The subject’s name is ‘Christopher Quake’. He’s a human warlord,” And whose criminal background was on the interstellar level, and even a brief scan of the terrible things that monster (she subconsciously opined) was responsible for made her sick to her stomach.
Jeeez! Smith gasped hard at what he was reading, looking at the cold, sharp look on the image on the left side of the screen. This wasn’t just a warlord he was looking at, this had to be some kind of terrorist. Quake’s criminal record populated to the right of the image—the list was so extensive it reached from the top to the bottom of the screen in less than a second. . .attempted murder, assault, treason. . .He decided he was looking at a monster. He was wanted by virtually every Earth-based government and military on-record for nearly the same reasons. Smith’s thoughts immediately professionally turned to Aaen as he wondered where the aliens were taking him, and why—“Send this data to Hayes. Hayes! Transmit this data to New Horizon, on the double!” He suspected Captain Aaen Winter has become a terrorist hostage. Smith quickly anticipated the Shadows were about to take on a more direct tactical role in this situation—
“Sir! I’ve got Command on a secure channel!” Heyes declared over her right shoulder.
Smith rushed to the front of the bridge and took the handset. “Odyssey X.O.”
“The aliens are descending rapidly! Current trajectory indicates they’re heading for the south-eastern ocean next to the second-largest continent in the southern hemisphere!” Jones declared.
“Hold your course, Wilson!” Smith commanded. There would be no man left behind—
Hayes quickly relayed the data to New Horizon using an encrypted written message.
“They’re changing course again! Heading for the planet surface!” Jones declared as she uploaded the sensor data to the viewscreen. A fine, blue line started on the alien ship’s bow and extended and curved all the way to a predicted landing zone.
Smith folded his arms as he returned to the center seat, the data was still uncomfortably rolling around in his head like a couple of cold informational ‘kidney’ stones. He was worried—scared, even, that he could potentially lose a valuable and renowned crewmate. That alien ship’s armaments bordered on the equivalent of a dreadnought—a class of ship that he understood were made few-and-far-between for a very good reason, but only so many alien races had the resources to build even one. He considered the possibility of opening fire, but that would put them at risk of being detected by them—and if they were so. .dizzyingly out-gunned, that would put this ship and this crew at higher risk. One he quickly decided he couldn’t justify. His thoughts immediately turned again to the Shadows. In the Navy, when special operators are on board—that says something. And that changes everything.
A fire formed on the bow and ventral sides of the alien ship as it pushed through the planet’s atmosphere. It’s defensive matrix kept the hull intact through the searing heat, and then the ship passed through the stratospheric cloud cover, circled once, then hovered briefly and gradually over a large forest-like area a football field away from a long stretch of mountains. The trees and brush tossed and fluttered beneath it as the ship descended below the canopy—
“Confirming alien ship touchdown,” Jones declared. “The sun will be down in a few hours. I recommend heading for the ocean and then submerging to avoid lighting conflict with dusk.”
“Take us down, Wilson,” Smith commanded.
Odyssey followed their target in a near-perfect wide spiral down to 10,000 feet and then leveled out above the dense, dark cloud cover—watching as tactical indicators highlighting their target followed the target to the surface of the planet, exactly where the computer projected its course would take it. A massive dirt plume spread from beneath the target like an atomic explosion; a doughnut-shaped plume of air shot from beneath the target because of the force of the ship’s blunt, flat landing. Smith wondered, where the heck are they going?, and continued watching the viewscreen as he commanded, “Hold position, here. Keep us in the clouds. Maintain silent running. Jones, keep trying to find the captain,”
“Roger that,” Wilson and Jones replied in turn. Both were becoming professionally all-the-more concerned about their C.O.’s safety. No one wanted to lose a crew mate today, or ever.
. . .There are those clicking sounds again! Aaen lifted his head amid the pitch black darkness, trying to adjust his eyes to better see whatever might be visible. . .this effort proved to be useless—then a bright light became visible in front of him about fifty feet away. It was getting taller by the second. Aaen’s eyes were rapidly sore from the blinding white light, but he squinted at it (mildly lessening the pain shooting from the back of his eyes), and noticed a tall, blurry, dark humanoid figure appearing from the right-hand-side, seemingly turning to face Aaen—it started walking towards him as a second figure, slightly shorter than the first, appeared from the left. . .the second figure was carrying something in its left hand.
Aaen began trying to pull his hands free—the restraints were too strong and seemed to pull back proportionately with his every effort, as the first dark figure sharply grabbed him by the shoulder and by his face. Both grips felt like long nails digging into him wherever he felt pressure. Abruptly, he felt his head forced to the right.
The second figure pressed some kind of metallic device against his neck, and then Aaen felt an electric charge surge through his body, and some kind of fluid coursing through his veins. As the sensation spread, he became increasingly drowsy until he felt weak—so weak that his extremities felt weak and flimsy, almost numb. Aaen heard multiple sharp, subtle metallic clicks, and then the pressure on his wrists sudden stopped, and then his weight fell into four large arms. Aaen still had a little feeling in his ankles and his feet—he could feel he was being dragged by his arms. More clicking sounds. He was too weak to open his eyes, much less raise his head and look around at what was going on.
A sensor alert sounded. Jones snapped, “I’VE GOT SOMETHING!” she eyed the flood of data appearing on her screen. She immediately began analyzing the data as Smith turned in his chair.
“Did you find the captain?” he asked.
“I’ve got a faint bio-sign reading coming from the. . .twentieth deck. . .” her face came to within six inches of her screen as she continued, “Getting lower. . .moving aft. Looks like he’s leaving their ship!”
“Wilson! Descend to nine-five-zero-zero feet!” Smith commanded.
“Aye!” the order was carried out in seconds. “Winds are picking up! I’ll be able to keep us at this altitude for a few minutes before we have to ascend or land, cap!”
“Very well!” he reminded himself that the new sleeker, more aerodynamic hull would undoubtedly help buy them some time as he turned around and continued watching the viewscreen—it was pouring rain, heavy winds (40 miles-per-hour), and he noted two taller, dark figures were taking Aaen forcefully to an entrance in the side of a mountain. The two figures were escorted by at least—ten?—similarly-looking dark figures. Aaen looked like he had been beaten badly. His hair was a mess and the narrow visibility angle of the right side of his face revealed someone had punched him, possibly multiple times, judging by the red and yellow bruising below and near the underside of his eye. . .
“Winds are picking up, cap! Do we ascend or land?” Wilson asked directly.
Smith’s first thought was to remain hidden until the Shadows came back. . .
“Cap, there’s a deep lake about three clicks to starboard. It’s deep enough we could hide there,” Jones declared. Smith eyed the data about the lake, and then made a decision.
“Wilson, take us to the water. Make your depth one-five-zero,”
“Make my depth one-five-zero, aye!” Fifteen seconds later, Odyssey had changed course and submerged. The rain still hit the hull, but as much as the hull was not visible, the fine mist from the rain pounding the dorsal section of the outer hull would have otherwise been on the only distortion visible. He deployed the landing gear for stability. “Landing gear’s down.”
On deck two, Dimitri kept his office door closed while multiple Interplanetary Shadow Forces operators were busy changing out of their space suits and into their combat attire and checking their weapons and gear. Changing their attire took less than a minute. Once this was done, half of them began assembling and preparing their weapons and doing comm channel radio checks; the rest were collecting their specialized computer equipment that they would take to Odyssey’s bridge—all led and commanded by Storm. In a few minutes, it would be time to begin handling business.
*****
Steve H. told Jordan Foutin, "You are the next Tom Clancy. You really are a gifted writer."
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