Chapter 8

Sarah reached the top of the hill, where the women ahead of her had stopped to stare at a giant, open field of flying saucers at the top of the next hill. Maggie was right. Those weren’t just new airplanes but real flying saucers. She’d be an idiot to think anything else.

The closest few saucers had trapdoors folded down from their middles, like inverted submarines, and a red-headed man in the same green uniform as the Major and Lieutenant stood beside one. From here, he looked like an action figure.

“Major!” Lieutenant Fairfeld’s voice quivered. “Major, they’re coming!”

Sarah turned to look down the path. The lower part of the castle extended over the valley’s river, and the door they’d left through was at the bottom of this grassy hill. Two men were down there now, following their path: unmistakably the four-armed man and Mr. Marshall. Behind them, other big men filed out the door.

“Run to the waving man! Hurry!” Major Patrick pointed once and led the front of the crowd.

The back of the crowd pressed forward. Everyone ran. They jammed up at rocks on the edges of the trail. Sarah took off, fast and agile enough to dodge between the others, around the trees to the side of the path, and over the rocks the path skirted.

She made it to the front of the crowd when someone shrieked beside her.

Maggie.

Sarah turned back to help, but the jostling herd behind bowled her over. She smacked into the ground.

The others thundered by. All Sarah could hear were smacking footfalls, heavy panting, and garbled complaints. She wrapped her arms around her head to avoid getting kicked again. Behind her, Maggie cried out with every kick or trip that landed. The crowd thinned, and suddenly, a shadow didn’t hit her.

She peeked up.

Lieutenant Fairfeld hauled Maggie to her feet, distracted as he watched over his shoulder. Then he righted her, too. “Major!”

“Get to a kaxan and get them loaded in!” Major Patrick shouted back.

He sprinted ahead.

Sarah took a couple steps to follow, but stopped when Maggie fell again as she tried to put weight on one leg.

“Come on! We've got to run!”

Downhill, the four-armed man and Mr. Marshall—and their backup—were getting closer.

Maggie saw, too. She pushed Sarah away. “Go!”

Sarah took another step but stopped. Maggie had to know she wasn't getting out; their captors were now closer than the saucers—they'd have to sprint uphill faster than the long-legged, unhurt men to even arrive, let alone climb in.

But they had to try.

She scooped an arm under Maggie's and steadied her on her better leg. Sarah's own legs throbbed, but she'd been ahead of Maggie, sheltered in the lee of where the crowd had broken around her.

They didn’t get far.

The big men’s breathing was quieter than the women’s, but their steps hit harder and faster on the path’s loose stones.

A dark hand closed on Maggie’s arm at Sarah’s back, ripping out some hair as he whipped her away. The imbalance threw Sarah right into Mr. Marshall’s sweaty hands. He turned with her to face the four-armed man.

Waiting for directions.

Mr. Marshall was working for the four-armed man? He’d lied. Instead of good aliens and bad aliens, there were only tricksters trying to suppress her protests and gain her cooperation.

She'd decided wrong again. They were all going to die by slimy neck lumps.

The four-armed man whipped Maggie around by her upper arms, heedless of her cries or inability to support herself. He watched the reinforcements closing in. His barked commands sliced through the air. “Halt sie! Halt sie!”

Mr. Marshall and the four-armed man turned to watch the reinforcements pass and gain on the last women running uphill.

Sarah watched in horrified fascination as the armored men closed the gap. In the front of the pack, Major Patrick and the college girls made it to the top and climbed into the saucers while the stragglers passed the halfway point.

Gunshots rang from the hilltop, echoing in the valley, each explosion making Sarah jump in Mr. Marshall’s unperturbed grip. It didn’t last long. Major Patrick’s voice carried down, something about not hitting civilians. If that wasn’t worth the risk, did it mean this wouldn’t be so bad?

How could it not?

The four-armed man stepped closer and offered Maggie’s battered form. “Nehm es!”

Mr. Marshall shifted his sticky grip on her, and she saw it wasn’t sweat but blood. She gulped.

Marshall hung Maggie's slim body over his shoulder, finally taking the weight off her legs. She didn't seem to mind; she'd passed out.

Sarah shivered. This was bad. Real bad.

Whatever happened next, whomever they chose to host the alien queen, they'd choose from a smaller pool—and Mr. Marshall had already picked her out. She'd have even less of a chance than Maggie and everyone else.

Mr. Marshall and the four-armed man still watched their goons chasing the straggling women.

This is my only chance. While everyone watched the other women, no one watched her.

I'm sorry, Maggie.

Sarah swung her arm around Mr. Marshall's wet grip, breaking free. And she ran. Past the four-armed man. Past the place where Maggie fell. Her toes dug into the dirt path's errant scree through her socks, and it cut further into her feet. She didn't care.

She had to run.

She aimed for smooth rocks and mossy patches, weaving like a mountain goat. Mountain goats beat creepy men up paths to flying saucers, right?

She passed the first goon walking down the woman in the apron. He lunged for her, and the woman broke free. Sarah heard her footsteps scrabbling behind. Then her scream. A wrench of cascading pebbles.

Sarah kept running. Three more men to pass.

The next didn't even try. He kept his meaty hands clutched tight on the woman in the floral blouse, but his dark eyes fastened on her. He yelled ahead.

Uphill, the crime-faced guy from her saucer turned around. He sneered and spread his scrawny, long arms, blocking the whole path.

Half off the path anyway, she vaulted onto a big rock and steered wide.

Just a little faster…

He hit her back, plowing her into the dirt. She slid. Scrambling to right herself, she elbowed him in the jaw and wriggled out from under him. She got to her feet. She pushed off. He caught her ankle, and she slammed back down.

But that was okay.

Up on the crest, three silver flying saucers retracted their landing gear. The next minute, they darted into the sky and winked into the distance. Gone.

The Air Force was supposed to save her, was supposed to save all of them. They'd sure saved themselves.

Rockefeller crossed his arms when Stokely stopped him outside the hangar’s conference room. Right down the hall from Colonel Marshall’s office, it didn’t seem worthy of being shown off, but Stokely had already proven him wrong today. He raised his eyebrows and fought back his assumptions.

“Remember, Andy, it was over twenty years between the last sighting and when they shot down that Gertewet’s kaxan. It’s easy to lose focus in that time.”

“Not with the right leadership,” the Colonel grumbled.

“Regardless of leadership.”

“I’m remembering. Open the door, Charlie.” Over the years, he must have seen dozens, maybe hundreds of conference rooms, some shabbier, some chic-er, all sharing a certain plain mutability designed to aid focus. What was one more? Stokely clearly thought it had meaning, so he tried to keep an open mind.

Stokely opened up a game room.

To call it anything else denied the mere existence of every single piece of furniture and decoration present. Beyond the barstool-lined ping-pong table, a flying-saucer-themed pinball machine inhabited the corner in front of him. Movie posters filled the back wall over a line of spare barstools: Close Encounters, ET, and Independence Day. He took a step inside and discovered a kitchenette along the right wall, complete with counter space, sink, and refrigerator.

His gaze settled on the duct tape tracing out boundaries on the ping-pong table. “This is a room for serious meetings?”

“This is a room for a lot of things.” Stokely crossed to the refrigerator and extracted a can of Diet Coke that he held out to Rockefeller. “This room has always been used for the project personnel to gather and exchange ideas, so, yes, it’s for ‘serious meetings.’ But the project ran for over twenty years without detecting anything, and in all that time, the crew waited for craft that their friends, families, and fellow airmen didn’t believe existed.” He waved his empty hand at the whole room. “They dealt with the stress creatively.”

Colonel Marshall intercepted the ignored drink and stashed it back in the fridge. “And invited derision by doing so. NFI-Com wouldn’t give us half the trouble they do if they took us seriously.”

“Who’s that?”

Apparently unfazed by the banned beverage, Stokely settled atop one of the barstools, where the cushion had been split and repaired with red duct tape. “The National Freedom of Information for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights and of Citizen and National Security Commission.” He paused for a breath. “They were charged by Congress to provide oversight on matters pertaining to the extraterrestrial threat. They report out on Black Book’s activities.”

Torn between the unorthodox seating and his own unprofessional inclination to lean against the game room’s wall, Rockefeller crossed his arms and planted his feet. “Why haven’t I heard about them?”

“They only report to those of us who are already read in.” Stokley counted silent names on his fingers, reaching an impressive total of three. “I guess there aren’t many of us left.”

“You haven’t missed anything. They’re not the most wholesome people.” Colonel Marshall settled herself onto a seat a couple barstools over from Stokely.

So, they were a tarnished pipeline feeding information from a moldering project to a declining coterie of old men. Did none of them realize how vital this work was? To impede it by restricting information was criminal. If it were fixed so the right people had access to the right information, how would that change everything? What could Black Book do with distinguished personnel and a professional environment?

“Colonel, you’re in charge of this base. Why not fix the décor?”

She heaved a heavy sigh. “I almost have. Every three months or so, I look into it again. But the table is a couple hundred dollars, the chairs are a hundred each. All the quotes for removing the kitchenette and painting the hall are over five grand.” Her eyes coursed over the space. “And every time, I think, ‘We’re not ready to face the Kemtewet. We need to focus on detection and defenses.’ So, the money goes to better use. We have to have a way to combat the Kemtewet here on Earth before they ramp up their activity.”

Her arm rested casually on the table, but her fingers clenched the edge in a death grip. “We might be out of time.”

“Why? What do you think they’re going to do?”

“Whatever the hell they want if we can’t detect them.”

Rockefeller paced around the ping-pong table, thinking, trying to ignore the pinball machine’s bright colors and cartoon aliens. “Do they want anything besides the thirty people a year?”

“They might. Thirty a year was the baseline estimate established in the ’40s and ’50s. They quit coming after that. The pattern changed. Who knows what they want now.”

He stopped with his back to the pinball machine. “What do you think they might do?”

“Maybe they decide they want three hundred a year now. If we can detect them, we can shoot down the ones within our missile range and contact other bases to address other areas.”

“Once you stop them from taking people,” he said, facing Stokely, “how do we stop them from coming?”

Stokely froze. “You want to open peace talks with them?”

“The only wars that ever ended without discussion were ones where the losing side got eradicated. That’s unacceptable. Senator, what pressure can we leverage to bring them to the table?”

Stokely sat back, and his eyes focused beyond his surroundings on the hypothetical. “We’ll have to establish communication first. Once the team brings our abductees back, maybe we can send them out with a message.”

Colonel Marshall screwed up her face. “’Stop taking our people or we’ll tell Mommy’?”

“Advanced technology or not, a nuke is nothing to laugh at,” Rockefeller reminded her.

“Unless it is. Maybe the same technology that keeps human passengers alive in an accelerating kaxan can stanch a nuclear blast. We don’t know that.” She pushed to her feet and leaned toward him over the table, pushing down on it as if grounding her aggravation. “You’re talking about escalating a conflict with an enemy of unknown capabilities. You don’t escalate something until you know you can finish it.”

“We can’t just do nothing.”

“Of course not. Now that we have kaxan, we’ve been trying to expand our intelligence on the Kemtewet. Once we do, we’ll know ways to hinder them, maybe stop them completely.”

“What if we backed their enemies? The General’s alien must already know how to fight them.”

“That’s great.” The Colonel crossed her arms. “Except they need bodies, too. While we defeat our enemies, how are we going to defend ourselves from our allies?”

“The same way they do?”

“By already having a brain-sucking worm?”

“Colonel.” Stokely shot her a reproachful glare then swiveled on his seat to face Rockefeller. “Andy, we don’t know much about how they fight, except that it seems to involve a lot of subterfuge. I don’t think there are battlefronts like in traditional wars.”

She nodded. “They’re not fighting for territory; they’re fighting for philosophy. That changes everything about how a war is run—we saw that in Vietnam.”

Rockefeller turned to pace in front of the movie posters and pinball machine. “We’re going to need their help one way or another. We might as well admit it early and figure out how to deal with them.”

He stopped, staring at a fleck of crud on the grisly carpet. “Where do they even come from?”

Rockefeller looked up to find them both staring at him as if he were insane. “What?”

“They come from another planet; what more do you need to know?” Stokely spread his hands helplessly.

“That’s the problem.” Rockefeller shook a finger at him as if the Senator embodied the topic. “They’re from another planet and the human body is ridiculously complex; how do they take it over if they didn’t even start here?”

“We don’t know. That’s why we need to get out there exploring.” Colonel Marshall stared into his eyes as if she could bore into his soul. “If we found out what planet they started on, maybe we could learn more about their biochemistry and, if we knew more about their technology, find ways to defeat them.”

“You really think you can do that? Deconstruct an advanced alien race and find out what makes them tick in time to do any good?”

The Colonel straightened. “I know we won’t if we don’t try.”

“Then why haven’t the Gertewet already done it?”

“Why wouldn’t we release polio against the Nazis?” Stokely answered. “Because in the end, it’ll hurt us, too.”

Rockefeller nodded and redoubled his pacing. “We’re not Gertewet.”

“Thank God,” Colonel Marshall breathed.

“Maybe we can work with them closely enough to find their weaknesses, and then take them all out.”

The Colonel smiled.

Stokely stared at them, mouth agape. “Are you crazy? First off, that’s cruel. Pure, unmitigated genocide. Secondly, that’s not how you keep allies. What if you succeed and find you need their help with some bigger, badder alien? And third, how? General Marshall and his symbiont only pop by twice a year, if that. That’s not enough to keep in touch, let alone discover a brain sucker’s Achilles heel and then kill them all off.”

“What if we studied it, the General’s alien, next time he popped by?” Rockefeller scuffed his shoe on the grimy utility carpet. Not that he wanted to dissect a potential ally of the moment, but if it could help, he’d push for it.

The room fell silent. Rockefeller caught Stokely studying the Colonel out of the corner of his eye. She avoided their gazes.

“It’s your uncle,” Stokely murmured.

“Was.” She shook her head. “I just can’t figure how we’ll keep him here. He knows everything and everyone on this station—and then there’s the Gertewet’s ruthlessness. And, yes, an ally has seemed more important than a study subject, but how much of that was the alien influencing us?”

“Maybe we can have both,” Rockefeller suggested. “The General as an ally and a second to study. He can’t be the only one out there.”

“Just the only one that comes here.”

“Then we’ll need him to take us to the rest.”

“Or bring another here.” Stokely frowned. “Maybe we can offer them something so tempting, they have to come.”

They all met each other’s eyes, thinking the same thing. Earth had one resource the aliens clearly wanted.

Colonel Marshall stood up. “No.”

“We don’t have to give it to them!” Stokely promised.

It felt dirty to even consider handing over human beings for alien possession. “They’ll want a sample in good faith.”

“We only need one alien. After they find out we took their guy, they’re not coming back, anyway. We don’t have to give them hosts.”

“Then how will you keep the ally?”

“Family.” Avoiding their eyes, Colonel Marshall settled onto her barstool. “If there’s anything left of my uncle, he’ll keep coming back either to visit or because he assumes he can order me to let the other Gertewet go. Either way, he’ll be back.”

“Great.” Rockefeller clapped his hands together. “Once you bring Maggie back, you’ll try to catch an alien for study while still maintaining an alternate information source. Then we’ll see how to approach them about leaving us alone.”

Rockefeller shook his head. Listen to him. He sounded absurd!

But if this was the rabbit hole Maggie fell down, he was going in all the way. “What can I do to make sure you get her back?”