CHAPTER FIVE
“Still no sign of them, sir,” dispatch reported.
Silas growled in frustration and slammed his hand into the side of the copter. “Get me President Harrison.”
“Yes, sir.”
Silas waited impatiently, staring out the window into the darkened fields, wondering where the invaders had gone and what they were doing to his commanding officer. Some horrendous torture for information, no doubt.
“You’re on with the President, sir,” dispatch said.
“Mister President?” Silas asked. He puffed his chest out a little more at the thought of addressing the President himself. A dark day for Fairhaven, but a great one for his career.
“Who is this?” the President said. His voice was hard to hear through the interference.
“Corporal Silas, sir. I’m sorry to inform you that the aliens abducted Captain Dorian and I’m in charge of the task force.”
“What?! Where the hell are they?”
“We don’t know, sir. We’ve been searching the area for hours, but they must have some means of eluding detection. Earlier we located and attacked them, but they managed to disappear long enough to grab the captain and disappear again.”
“Are you telling me you can’t find them, Corporal?”
Silas swallowed, not out of fear, but frustration. His glorious moment wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. “Sir, I was the first man they abducted. They violated my mind before I escaped. Diamond City is my jurisdiction. It was my city they ravaged. I assure you, sir, it is not for lack of trying.”
“I have to call the President of Orland in another hour, Corporal. Do you suggest I tell him we can’t find them?”
“No, sir. I suggest that looking any further would be useless. We need to change tactics.”
“And what tactics would you suggest?”
“This is a sparsely populated area, sir, with only a few hundred in the entire province. We have a timestamp on their last known sighting and we know how fast they can move. We have a target range.”
“You want me to blanket the area with napalm?”
“No, Mister President. I want you to nuke it.”
Danni waited until the copter was right underneath them before she flew up into the air holding Priya and Dorian in either arm. One brief struggle later, Dorian was piloting the copter while Danni buckled into the co-pilot seat and Priya sat in the back.
“You’re controlling their descent, right?” Dorian asked Danni suspiciously.
“Yes…” Danni said. She would have been happy to have let them die, but she was bowing into peer pressure.
“I only agreed to help you on the condition that you wouldn’t kill any more of my people.”
“Need I remind you, Captain, it was your side that fired the first shot, and your side that murdered my entire crew in cold blood.”
“That wasn’t my choice, Cayale.”
“That makes me feel so much better.” Danni relaxed slightly. “They’re safely on the ground. Happy?”
“Ecstatic,” Dorian said blankly. He picked up the radio from its charger and held it out to her. “Now get on the squawk and report an engine malfunction in the auxiliary turbo and request permission to return to base.”
Silas sat at the base commander’s desk shuffling reports and growing more agitated by the moment as the lieutenant entered the office with more papers.
“I, ah, take it the President denied your request, sir?” the lieutenant asked stiffly.
“We’re still here, aren’t we?” Silas shot back. He had always respected Harrison from afar, but his first conversation with the man had been a disappointment.
“Yes, sir.”
A helicopter thundered overhead and landed on the tarmac at the far side of the strip.
Silas pounded his fist on the desk. “The damn fool doesn’t understand what we’re facing… these aliens are unstoppable! Every second we waste means more land we have to target. We have to nuke this entire area now!” He looked up from his desk to see the lieutenant staring out the window. “What’s so damn interesting out there, lieutenant?”
“Nothing, sir,” the man said. “I’m wondering why that helicopter crew is carrying all that gear into the VTOL.”
“What?” Silas snapped, leaping up from the desk to the window. He watched a helmeted trio climb into the jet, clearly one man and two women. “It’s them!”
Dorian banked the VTOL jet and narrowly avoided a stream of cannon fire from the ground. “That was close. You two comfortable back there?”
Danni grumbled. Priya sat in her lap, crudely strapped in against her body. Neither was happy with the arrangement. “Shut up and fly, Captain.”
Dorian smirked in spite of himself. “Sorry we don’t have any three seaters.”
“Will they be able to track us?” Priya asked.
“I’ve turned off the FOF, which means they’ll have to make radar contact to trace the bird. I’ll fly us nice and low. That way they’ll only get the occasional hit. Then I’ll enter a commercial lane and disappear into the confusion.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Danni said.
Silas sat in the back seat of his VTOL jet in hot pursuit. “Any more contacts?” he asked the pilot, attempting some semblance of patience.
“Yes, sir, should be on your scope right there,” the pilot said.
Silas looked at a confusion of small screens filled with code. “I don’t know how to read these. What does it say?”
“Contact bearing north-west, sir.”
Silas felt a tight ball form in the pit of his stomach. “There’s nothing out that way but the ocean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re not heading for the water. It’s a misdirect. There’s only one place they could be going. The capital. They’re after the President.”
“Sir, Corporal Silas has arrived at the residency,” an aide said.
President Harrison didn’t move as he regarded the display screens arrayed before him in the Situation Room.
The aide cleared his throat. “He’s demanding to speak with you immediately, sir.”
Harrison sighed. The man was a loudmouthed jarhead incapable of rational thought. Dorian had been much easier to deal with. “Very well, let him in.”
Security agents reluctantly let the doors open. Silas shoved his way in, closely followed by a pair of additional agents. “Mister President,” Silas said urgently. “We need to move you immediately, sir.”
“Shouldn’t you be out looking for the invaders, Corporal?” Harrison asked coolly.
Silas didn’t flinch. “I don’t have to, sir. They’re coming here... for you.”
Harrison struggled not to ridicule the man, but he had to project professional authority. “And what makes you say that?”
“They were last spotted headed north-west out of the fields, sir.”
“There’s a lot of cities out here, Corporal.”
“But what would they want there, sir?” Silas asked with a raised voice. “Where was the first place they went to? They know about the Treaty. The moment after they crashed, they made a bee-line for one of the devices. We shot them up before they could do anything, but they grabbed Captain Dorian after that and turned course straight for here!”
Harrison studied him for a moment. Perhaps the fool had a point. “What do you think they want?”
“You, sir! They’ve already abducted me. They can get in your head, read your thoughts, probably even control you. That’s what they’re coming for, sir. They’ll make you into a meat puppet to do their bidding, like they’ve done with Captain Dorian.”
Harrison thought Silas was veering off into melodrama again. “To what end?”
“To start a war with Orland! All it would take is one incident and the Treaty would level the entire planet. They could destroy us all without firing a single shot.”
The President leaned back in his chair. “Let’s say I believe you, son. What do you suggest I do about it?”
“They’ve stolen a jet, sir. We need to establish a no-fly zone around the capital and shoot down any trespassers without hesitation.”
“Sir, we can’t do that, not without more proof,” one of the generals spoke up.
Harrison looked at the general. “And what if the corporal here is right?”
“At the very least, sir, we need to change your location,” Silas offered.
It was a reasonable precaution. “Very well, I—”
One of the technicians shot up to his feet. “We’ve spotted them, sir! They’re on the Lethe and heading downriver, right here for Diamond City!”
Harrison raised his eyebrows in legitimate surprise. “It appears you were right after all, Corporal.” Though probably not about the meat puppet part.
“Sir, we need to get you into the bunker ASAP,” one of the generals said.
“Let’s go,” Harrison said absently, nodding to himself. It was important to project calm at this time. A frantic retinue of agents and staffers hugged closely to the President as he was escorted into a waiting room which opened into a tight tunnel. A rail car waited at the mouth of a steep drop into darkness.
“Mister President! Mister President!” Silas shouted, desperate to be heard over the din.
“Yes, Silas?”
“We need to exercise our nuclear option, sir, immediately!”
This again? “There’s five million people living in Diamond City, Corporal!”
“That’s nothing compared to the death toll if the Treaty is violated, sir.”
“I’ll not waste so much life so freely. We have endless battalions lining the streets of Diamond City; let’s give them a crack at it.”
The exhaust nozzle kicked up an angry spray as the VTOL jet flew meters over the river.
Priya nervously pushed against the sides of the fuselage, crushing Danni behind her. “Shouldn’t we be going a little higher?”
“We’re trying to avoid radar tracking, Jennings,” Dorian said patiently.
“But wouldn’t it be really easy to, ah, dip down a little…?”
“The good captain knows better than that,” Danni said with an edge to her voice. “And even if he does try something, I’ll pick up the intention before he has a chance to do it.”
“I’m not interested in suicide at the moment, thank you,” Dorian said. “I’m trying to protect my planet. Fortunately for you, that means getting the two of you off of it as soon as humanly possible.”
The jet wildly veered to the right to narrowly avoid a vast supertanker slowly churning its way downriver. Priya yelled and crushed Danni back into the seat again.
“Would you relax, Jennings?” Danni snapped.
“Sorry,” she said with embarrassment.
Their jet cleared the bow of the tanker. Directly before them lay a pair of smaller cargo ships driving close to each other. Dorian spun the jet onto its side and shot through the narrow gap in-between the ships.
Priya frantically pointed forward. “That one has guns!”
“Damn,” Dorian muttered to himself.
Their jet passed the ships only to reveal a battleship waiting for them at broadsides. Before Dorian could even maneuver, the ship fired a full salvo. Danni threw up a TK shield but the explosive shells demolished it and scored through the fuselage. The metal loudly reverberated as shrapnel pinged through the jet. Danni managed to keep the cockpit protected, but the rest of the ship got shredded.
“We’re going down!” Dorian shouted, frantically trying to bank higher into the air.
“Get us as close to the Palace as you can,” Danni said loudly over the alarms.
“We’re putting down in the river! If this jet crashed into the city, it could kill innocents!”
“I don’t have much power left, Dorian. I need to get as close as possible!”
“I don’t care!” Dorian shouted, and smacked the eject button.
The rail car slowly ran along the track and deeper into the earth. Its engines groaned nosily as it towed the President’s retinue to safety.
One of the generals walked up to the President holding a radio to his ear. “Navy reports the hostile destroyed, sir.”
“Don’t believe it,” Silas interjected. “They’ve pulled this trick before!”
“I’m inclined to believe Corporal Silas,” Harrison said.
Silas stared at the general. “Trust me, sir, they’re still coming.”
Danni flew into the city at high altitude with Priya and Dorian tightly holding onto her belt to leave her hands free. They crossed over land and into a forest of skyscrapers.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much armor at one place in my life,” Dorian mused out loud.
Lining the streets of the city below them were nothing but heavy tanks and military jeeps. As they grew closer to one of the elevated highways, the tanks arrayed there opened fire. Danni made an elaborate loop to dodge the hastily aimed shots.
The second salvo hit closer to home. Danni punched away the shells that would have connected with her bare hands. “I can’t keep this up… at all,” Danni panted.
“Then I suggest staying out of the sky,” Dorian said.
Danni dropped like a stone. She stopped their descent only moments before touching to the ground right in the midst of a shocked company of soldiers standing listlessly around a tank aimed towards the heavens. They barely had time to register their surprise before Danni took off, sprinting along the road at speed and sailing past the endless security blockades.
The rail car shuddered to a halt. The President’s group hastily moved through massive armored doors which slid shut behind them.
“They’re moving along the ground now at speeds too fast for anyone to target them,” one general reported.
Silas grimaced. “Mister President, we can’t win this battle with conventional arms. We need to nuke the targets before they get in the tunnel!”
“They are headed straight towards the Palace, sir,” one general observed uncomfortably.
“You can’t do that; there’s five million people here!” one outraged suit said.
“It’s five million or five billion!” Silas shouted. His face had become distended with stress and covered with a thin sheen of sweat. “These aliens are unstoppable. They’ll destroy the entire planet if we don’t stop them here and now!”
“Restrain yourself, Corporal, or it’ll be done for you,” the President said. Silas had made some correct points, but Harrison felt little affection for the man.
“You’re wasting time! Every second brings them closer to us!” He lunged for the quiet aide with the nuclear briefcase who always accompanied the President. “We have to hit them now!” Silas wrenched the briefcase out of the aide’s hands and roughly fumbled with the combination lock on it.
“Arrest him!” Harrison shouted as a bevy of guards threw themselves on top of Silas and tackled him to the ground. The soldier had clearly had a mental break; this was beyond any acceptable behavior.
“No!” Silas screamed as they wrestled the briefcase away from him.
“I want him in handcuffs!” the President shouted over the rabble.
“Sir, we lost contact with the men in the Palace,” one guard reported quietly into Harrison’s ear. A few seconds later there was a loud boom against the armored doors.
“We’re too late,” the panicked general shouted.
Doom. Doom.
The President nervously looked around. Funny how a little personal danger made crazy notions sound plausible. “Do we still have the nuclear option?”
The more restrained generals eyed each other nervously. “Yes, sir.”
Harrison nodded stiffly to himself. For the good of the nation, and the world… though at this point it would probably mean death for him. “Very well, let’s…”
The metal doors screamed in protest, causing them all to cover their ears. The guards lamely attempted to raise their weapons as the center of the doors distorted and twisted apart wide enough to emit one person.
Within seconds the guards were all unconscious with their guns on the ground and the three intruders stood before a trembling but defiant President.
“President Harrison, I presume?” the blonde woman panted, poorly attempting to mask her exhaustion.
“I… I won’t cooperate with you!” Harrison nervously shouted. He’d seen the images, but still, the mundanity of this very human-looking woman being an extraterrestrial boggled the mind.
Dorian stepped forward. “Mister President, I realize this is irregular, but these aliens mean us no harm. They just want to get off the planet.”
Had Silas’ insane meat puppet theory actually been correct? “I’m not talking to you! You’re not Captain Dorian, not anymore! They’ve hollowed out your head and put their thoughts inside!”
The dark-skinned alien stepped forward and smiled politely. “Mister President, we’re not here to threaten you. We haven’t done anything to Captain Dorian. We’re trying to find a peaceful solution to our situation. We know about the Treaty. We understand why you attacked us. I realize how overwhelming this all is, but you must believe me when I say we haven’t come here to harm you. We came to make a peaceful diplomatic contact, not start a war.”
The President gestured to the ripped doors. “You call this peaceful contact?” As if the situation couldn’t get any more bizarre, now the other alien was preaching diplomacy and understanding!
“Hey!” the blonde alien stepped forward. “You fired the first shot! You murdered my crew and then hunted us to the ends of the earth!”
The dark-skinned woman put her hand on the blonde’s wrist and pulled her back. “All we ask is that you let us depart in peace. But I also want you to know this situation doesn’t mean that we still can’t become friends… after the proper reparations have been made.”
The blonde snorted but said nothing.
“As I said in our initial message, we represent a great coalition of worlds called the Great Alliance, a group held together by cooperation and trade, not by force. We would welcome you into that brotherhood… if you could make peace with your enemies.”
The President sputtered. “Make peace with Orland? Are you mad? They’re savages! Conquerors!”
“You’ve been separated for two centuries. Surely, they could have changed in that time?” Harrison said nothing. The dark-skinned woman held her clenched hands together to her chest. “If you could let go of the past, let go of old hatreds, and look to the future, you could ensure the safety of all your people.”
“Could you simultaneously deactivate every single MAED device without the enemy becoming aware of it?”
She paused. “No.”
“Could you shield us from the bombs while you moved in an occupation force to subdue the Orlanders?”
“Of course not.”
Harrison shook his head. “Then we have nothing to discuss. Do what you will with me, but I’ll not aid you willingly.”
The woman smiled. “Mister President, even if you’re uninterested in making peace, we’re still going to need safe passage for our rescue craft, which is probably already waiting outside your asteroid field.”
“Clause Five is quite clear on the matter, ma’am. Any aliens must be destroyed immediately. Aiding and abetting them is a violation of the Treaty.”
Dorian cleared his throat. “Mister President, there is an easy way out of this.”
“I can’t trust a word you say, Captain. You’ve been compromised.”
“Then listen to logic, sir. They’re holding you hostage against your will. You don’t have the power to resist these implacable alien invaders. You’ve been forced to deactivate the orbital defense grid against your will, which allowed the aliens to escape in their waiting ship. Despite our noblest, well-documented efforts to catch them, they got away. I’m sure even the Orlanders will be content with that.”
Everyone fell silent for a moment while the President mulled over the offer. No one noticed Silas stir back to consciousness on the floor, hidden in a pile of sleeping security guards. He flexed his hands, still cuffed in front of him, and slowly looked around.
“No, it’s too risky,” Harrison said finally, shaking his head. “If Orland discovers the truth, it could mean an end to everything. I can’t allow—”
“Mister President, please!” Dorian pleaded. “These people are peaceful explorers, and we’ve murdered and hunted them. They blindly stumbled onto our cursed world through no fault of their own. A doom may lie over our heads, but there’s no reason it should condemn them as well. Let them go and live in peace. They haven’t committed our sins. Let them go.”
“Traitor!” Silas slurred loudly, raising himself up with one of the guards’ dropped pistols in his hands. He aimed for Dorian, but his aim was off; he fired the stolen weapon straight at the President.
Harrison shouted in alarm and fell back to the ground, throwing his hands over his face. The gunshot echoed loudly in the enclosed space. He opened his eyes to see the bullet aimed for his heart hovering in the air.
“We just want to get out of here, Mister President,” the blonde alien said patiently, before sending the bullet flying away with a wave of her hand.
Harrison stared at himself wide-eyed, patting himself all over with his hands to see if he was uninjured. “Thank you,” he said finally.
It was nighttime when the GAN rescue shuttle descended out of the sky and alighted on the roof of the Presidential Palace. Danni stood firmly on the deck with a pistol shoved into the President’s neck, surrounded by a retinue of armed guards aiming at her and a media crew filming the entire event for the benefit of Orland.
The hatchway of the shuttle extended downwards, spilling white light onto the roof.
“Don’t be getting any cute ideas about shooting at us once we’re in the air, either,” Danni snarled to Harrison. “I’ve placed a microscopic bomb in your body that can be detonated from a thousand kilometers away.”
“You win, you monsters,” the President shouted. “Get the hell off of our planet!”
“We won’t be back,” Danni shouted as she ran up the ramp with Priya.
“We’ll come back someday, I promise,” Priya said warmly to Dorian, minutes before the shuttle arrived.
“Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t,” Dorian said. “We’re a mess you’re better off without.”
“It’s you I’m worried about. If your people haven’t developed FTL technology, that means your enemies have. And from what we’ve heard of them, they won’t use it peacefully.”
“That’s our burden, not yours.”
“Man has a point, Jennings,” Danni observed. “Not like we can legally intervene militarily.”
“We can do something,” Priya said, looking halfway to Danni. She turned back to Dorian. “Goodbye, Captain. Thank you so much for your help… I don’t know what we would have done without you.”
“I don’t either… are you sure you didn’t mess with my mind, to make me help you?” He said it with a smile, but the question was clearly serious.
Priya smiled. “No, I promise.”
“Do you need blood, sirs?” the pilot of the shuttle asked as Danni and Priya stepped inside. Priya collapsed into the first open seat she could find. The entire affair had been traumatic and overwhelming, but it was finally over now. She felt relief wash over her.
“We’ve been better, Lieutenant,” Danni said. “But not now.”
“What’s our ROE, sir?”
“Leaving the way we came; in peace.”
“The President has agreed to deactivate the defensive grid and let us go,” Priya said.
“And we’re trusting him, sir?” the pilot asked.
“Yes, we are.”
Danni plopped into the chair behind Priya, swigging a flask she had been supplied with. “Get us out of here, Lieutenant.” The ship ascended through the atmosphere. “Well,” she said after a moment. “Good to be back with the GAN.”
“God, that was so close,” Priya said. “I don’t know what we would have done if that crazy corporal hadn’t taken a shot at the President like that.”
“Yes, that was convenient. That’s why I altered his aim, so he would hit the President instead of Dorian.”
Priya nodded for a moment and then did a double take when she registered what Danni had said. “You did what?”
Danni chuckled. “You didn’t think he was actually going to miss by that much, did you? Or that he would wake up at such an opportune moment?”
“You went in his head?” Priya wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Royals had to be very careful with how they treated Mundanes, but it had been a life-or-death situation…
“He was a little unhinged from our last encounter. Didn’t take much.”
“I… you… I’m at a loss for words.” Priya decided not to argue. It was a combat situation and that was Danni’s arena, not hers.
There was another brief silence between them. Danni cleared her throat uncomfortably and lowered her voice. “You should talk to Alex when we get back.”
Priya smiled sadly. She’d forgotten about Danni’s heart-to-heart amidst all the running around. “And why would I do that?”
“You almost died. How would you have felt if you never got that resolved?”
“I don’t think I would feel much of anything, being dead and all.”
“You know what I mean.”
Alex hated talking about his father. He was only one when he died and had no emotional connection to him despite Priya’s attempts otherwise. It was the surest way to shut down any progress between the two of them. “I appreciate the sentiment, but things are the way they are. I don’t want to make things worse by bringing it out into the open.”
“It’s your life… but I think you’re making a mistake.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Priya said warmly. At the time she’d figured Danni had simply been trying to keep her talking and alert. But to bring it up now, it seemed like she legitimately cared. It was a pleasant surprise. “So… does this make us friends now?”
Danni snorted.
A few days later Priya returned home to Parid. The shuttle landed on the roof of the Federal City-sphere. Priya disembarked a few moments later.
“Mom!”
She looked up in surprise to find Alex waiting for her in the lounge. She broke into a wide smile. “Alex!”
Alex stood up and awkwardly hugged her. Priya returned it with a tight squeeze.
“I, uh, heard you were almost killed out there,” Alex said.
Priya laughed in spite of herself. “That’s right.”
“Well… glad to see you made it back okay.”
“Thanks, honey. I love you, you know. It’s important you know that.”
Alex shifted uncomfortably. “I know, Mom. I love you too.”
She felt his discomfort and felt embarrassed, but found more words spilling out anyway. Words she’d been mulling over on the flight home. “I’m so proud of the man you’re becoming. And I know your father would be as well.”
“I know, Mom.” She could tell he didn’t want to be hearing this and was wondering how much longer he would have to hug her.
Priya looked deep into his eyes. “We don’t talk anymore.”
Alex avoided her piercing gaze. “I’m at school. The military kind.”
She squeezed his arm. “You can still call. I need you to call. You’re all I have left of your father, you know that?”
He nodded dutifully. “I’ll call more often. Promise.”
“You never talk about him. If you ever want to…”
Alex took a long breath. “Look. I don’t want to sound insensitive, but… I was one year old when he died. I have no memory of him whatsoever. I don’t feel the grief that you do. I’m trying to be a good son, but… he doesn’t hold the meaning for me that he does for you. I’m sorry.”
Priya hugged him again. It hurt to hear those words, for her son to feel nothing for his father, for the love of her life. “I understand. But it’s important you know who your father was. I can tell you about him.”
“Okay, Mom,” he said dutifully. “Maybe put it in a letter or something…”
“I love you.”
Alex was cleared embarrassed when he said “I love you” in return. “Okay, I’m going to detach now. We’re getting looks.”
Her confession had clearly done little for Alex, but Priya felt a weight lifted off her chest saying those words aloud to him. Hopefully with time, and a little more maturity, Alex would be ready to hear those words again and understand them. In the meantime, she would have to accept the relationship they had and continue to chip away until she could change his mind. That was her specialty, after all.
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