Warm Welcome
by Bill Bowler
|
Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
On board the alien spacecraft, now passing through the orbit of Neptune, Krag had Jack Blunt’s press conference, with a four hour delay, up on screen. Subtitles in Krag’s native language appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Krag turned to Darshak: “I see we have translated their language.”
“Yes, sir, except for one word: ‘bushwhack’.”
“And these bipeds are the most advanced species in the system?”
“So far as we can tell, sir.”
“Their thought process is highly irrational.”
“They are fearful and ignorant, despite their intelligence. Potentially quite dangerous, even with their crude level of technology.”
“Not much of a welcome.”
“They seem to be looking for a fight,” said Darshak.
“We had better prepare to make contact,” said Vlas.
“Before mistakes are made,” said Darshak.
“Program the oral translation modules so we can speak to them,” said Krag. “I’ll get to work on our message of greeting.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
For two days, the Moon Base continued tracking the alien ship while the U.S. Space Force remained on high alert. On the third day, the blip crossed Mars orbit and tripped the Operation Overwatch tripwire. The Space Force Moon Base silos opened and the nuclear armed missile batteries locked on target.
On duty in the Moon Base command and control center, U.S. Space Force Specialist E-4 Guardian Nick Butkis acknowledged an incoming signal and was startled to see the image of a humanoid reptile appear on his computer monitor. Nick was even more surprised to hear the harsh guttural sound of the alien creature struggling to form words in English. The dialog took place with three-minute delays.
“We come in peace. Repeat. We come in peace.”
Nick muttered under his breath, “Right...” He connected to Moon Base command. “Are you seeing this, sir?”
“Roger that. Encrypt and forward to HQ, requesting instructions.”
When the message forwarded from Moon Base was received by the Space Force Strategic Warning and Surveillance Systems Division at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Massachusetts, the watch officer alerted his immediate superior, a colonel in the security service. The colonel placed a call to General Ralph Spackle’s adjutant, who informed General Spackle, currently in command at Space Force HQ at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
General Spackle unlocked the steel drawer in his desk, took out the red phone with the secure line, and placed a call to President Elvin Dorfus. Dorfus convened an urgent meeting of the National Security Council at the White House. The entire process took seventeen minutes.
The National Security Council members filed into the Situation Room and seated themselves around the conference table. Jack Blunt hit a switch and the large screen on the wall lit up, displaying the in-coming feed: the image and sound of a dangerous-looking alien reptilian growling and barking.
The men in the room struggled to decipher the distorted audio.
“This is nuts!” said General Spackle.
“What’s he saying?” asked President Dorfus.
Jack made it out first. “He’s saying, ‘We come in peace’.”
General Spackle muttered to himself, “Sons of bitches...”
President Dorfus spoke up. “Not very original, are they?” His comment generated nervous laughter around the room. “What’s our reply? Ralph? Jack? What’s our best move?”
“Leave this to me,” said Jack. He turned on a microphone that was patched in, through Moon Base, direct to the alien ship. “Who are you? Where do you come from? Why are you here? What do you want?”
After a tense thirteen minute delay, the alien reply was received: “Request permission... unarmed landing party... transfer to Earth surface. Talk.”
Jack muted his mic. President Dorfus looked uncertainly around the room. “Jack?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Ralph?”
“I don’t like it. Too risky.”
“We have to give it a try,” said Dorfus. “It’s like they’ll be under a white flag. Right, Ralph?”
General Spackle sighed with deep resignation. “Affirmative, sir.”
The President nodded and Jack turned the mic back on: “Permission granted. Landing coordinates will be provided. Over and out.”
On orders from Washington, the Operation Overwatch missile cordon was lowered, the nuclear warheads disengaged, and the order to stand down was issued. Specialist Nick Butkis and a team of military scientists and technicians at the darkside Moon Base continued tracking the alien spacecraft as it passed Mars orbit and began final approach towards Earth.
The saucer established geo-stationary orbit over Washington, DC. On board the spacecraft, Krag, Darshak and Vlas, began preparation to descend to the surface. Krag would meet with the Earthlings while Darshak and Vlas remained on board the shuttle craft at the landing site for security and backup. The rest of the crew remained on duty on board the mother ship.
In the saucer medical bay, Darshak used a laser scalpel to make a small incision, and inserted a subcutaneous microchip into Krag’s forearm. “We’ll track your location at all times, sir. If you get into trouble, just press down on your arm like this, and the alarm will sound here. We’ll get to you as quickly as we can.”
Krag replied, “I hope it won’t be necessary.”
A large crowd had gathered behind temporary barricades erected along the Mall in Washington, DC. They watched in awe as a silver egg-shaped shuttle craft descended silently through the cloud cover and came to rest on the grass not far from the Washington Monument. Chain-link fencing and barbed wire, concrete barricades, heavily armed troops and armored military vehicles surrounded the spot.
A hatch opened in the side of the egg. The crowd gasped in awe and fear when a seven-foot tall, uniformed reptilian alien emerged from the shuttle craft. Soldiers with their weapons trained on the alien, were shocked by his appearance. Four Special Ops commandos approached the alien and escorted him to the open door of a waiting black SUV. The alien leaned over and squeezed in. The SUV pulled away with a motorcycle escort, and drove towards the White House.
A White House guard frisked the alien and took “it” into the Oval Office where President Elvin Dorfus, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Ralph Spackle, and National Security Advisor Jack Blunt were waiting. When the alien appeared in the doorway, towering over his security escort, President Dorfus blanched. “Oh my God...”
Jack muttered under his breath, “Jesus F...”
General Spackle glared but said nothing.
President Dorfus regained his composure and addressed the alien. “Welcome to Earth.”
The alien struggled to reply in heavily distorted English. “Here by... accident.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dorfus. “Where are you from?”
“Mission. Research. Anomaly in our star system. Ship trapped... pulled... into alt-verse. Searching for... way back.”
Elvin glanced around the room. No one appeared to be buying the alien’s story.
“Well, of course, we’ll do everything we can to help you. We’ll assemble the strongest possible team to search for this, um, anomaly and to help you return home. In the meantime, please, you can remain here on Earth as our guest.”
“Return to ship,” the alien growled.
With the slightest of gestures, General Spackle nodded “no” discretely to President Dorfus.
“Of course, of course.” The President smiled. “We will maintain communication.” Dorfus turned to the White House guard. “Please return our guest to his landing craft.”
At the corner of Fifteenth Street and Constitution Avenue, a black van swerved in front of the SUV carrying Krag back to the shuttle and blocked the way. Six special operatives in SWAT gear and ski masks, armed with M10’s, leaped from the van and trained their weapons on the SUV.
The door of the SUV opened and Krag stepped out, his reptilian face betraying no emotion. No human could read his thoughts.
“Hands in the air!”
Krag raised his hands. One of the special operatives pushed Krag to the ground, face down, knelt on his neck, and handcuffed his arms behind his back. Krag offered no resistance. Another operative injected Krag with a powerful sedative, and shoved him violently into the van. As the van sped off, Krag lost consciousness. A soldier in the back of the van patted down Krag and felt something small and hard under a fresh scar in the green, scaly flesh of the alien’s right forearm.
With a combat knife, the soldier cut open the fresh wound and with the tip of the blade, removed the micro-chip. He bandaged the alien’s arm, which was now leaking a thick greenish fluid. The van raced north on Wisconsin Avenue to a CIA black site in Bethesda, Maryland.
* * *
Krag lay sprawled on the concrete floor of a small bare cell with no windows and a single heavy steel door with a closed, barred grate. He was blindfolded by a bag tied over his head, handcuffed and shackled in chains. He lay still, breathing shallowly, recovering from the sedative, conscious but groggy. A foul smelling bucket and a pile of dirty rags lay on the floor beside a filthy sink with a dripping faucet. An electric cattle prod, a power drill, and a metal box lay on a crude wooden table in the corner next to the sink. A large iron meat hook extended from the concrete ceiling.
Two burly military contractors in camo, boots and ski masks entered the cell, hoisted the alien to a standing position, lifted him up off the floor, and hung him from the hook by the short chain on his handcuffs. Hanging by his arms, feet off the floor, the alien groaned as he came to.
One of the guards opened the cell door on its creaking hinges, and two nondescript CIA psychiatrists entered the cell.
From the metal box on the table, one of the CIA psychiatrists removed a small, metallic disc. “They found this in its arm.”
“What is it?” asked his colleague.
“Don’t know.”
“For Chrissake, it could be a tracking device! Get it out of here! Won’t that bring them here? Can we disable it?”
“Maybe. But we can also send them on a wild goose chase. They don’t know we’ve removed it. Let’s have our boys in the lab take a look and see if they can’t hack it.” He handed the micro-chip to one of the guards, who turned and left the cell. “All right, let’s get to work.”
The CIA psychiatrist removed the alien’s blindfold.
“What is the true purpose of your mission?”
Krag gazed at the psychiatrist with dull, clouded yellow eyes as his mind emerged from the drug fog and began to focus. He replied in a soft, low growl, struggling to find and form the words. “Accident. Lost.”
“That’s a lie, isn’t it? I know it and you know it. The truth is, you’re conducting reconnaissance. You’re the advance scouting party for an invasion force, aren’t you? Where is your attack fleet?”
“No attack fleet.”
The CIA psychiatrist nodded to the military contractors standing by the cell door. They lifted the alien off the hook and forced him into a kneeling position on the concrete floor. One of them jerked the alien’s head back, the other soaked a dirty rag in water and put it over the alien’s face, covering his nostrils and mouth. Then he filled a jug from the faucet and poured a stream of water onto the rag. The alien began to choke and gag. After a few moments, the CIA psychiatrist gave the signal. The contractor stopped the water and removed the rag. Krag gasped for air.
The psychiatrist resumed his questioning. “Now, I’ll ask you again. Where is the attack fleet? When is the invasion to begin?”
The alien gasped for breath. “Accident. Lost.” His stomach turned and he began to retch.
The CIA psychiatrist stepped back quickly to avoid being soiled by the alien fluids. He washed his hands at the sink faucet and signaled the contractors. They hoisted the alien back up and hung him again from the hook in the ceiling. One of the contractors picked up the electric cattle prod from the wooden table and turned it on. The prod sparked and sizzled.
* * *
Krag lay prone on the floor in a corner of the cell. His handcuffs and shackles had been removed and he had ugly burn marks on his abdomen. He slowly came to, groaned, struggled to a sitting position, and leaned back against the wall. Every joint and muscle in his body screamed in pain. Alone now, he slowly unwound the bandage on his arm and discovered the chip had been removed. He slumped back against the rough concrete wall of his cell.
On board the shuttle craft, still at rest on the grass near the Washington Monument, Darshak and Vlas anxiously tracked what they thought were Krag’s movements.
“Why has he not returned?” asked Vlas. “Where is he going?”
“I don’t know,” said Darshak. “He would contact us with any change in plans or sound the alarm if he was in trouble. But I still don’t like it.”
“What should we do? We can’t just sit here, can we?”
“We need more information,” said Darshak. He opened a cabinet, strapped on a utility belt and slid a small piece of gear onto his wrist. Vlas watched in silence as Darshak powered on the wrist device. His image dissolved, grew transparent, as if made of rippling water, and all but disappeared. Vlas heard Darshak’s voice.
“I have his signal. Wait here for me.”
When Darshak opened the door and disembarked from the shuttle craft, he was scarcely visible despite the spotlights trained on the alien craft. Transparent and unseen, he slipped through the gap between two sentries, and headed towards Krag’s current location. It was not far.
Darshak crossed the Roosevelt Bridge on foot and made his way north to the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. The building was dark after hours. A security guard at the side entrance received a blow to the head from an unseen source and collapsed unconscious to the ground.
Darshak silently followed the tracking signal down a corridor and upstairs to its source: a locked room on the second floor. He short-circuited the electronic lock with a simple tool, opened the door, and found himself in an empty laboratory. On a table, beside a neat array of electronic tools and implements, he discovered the tracking chip.
Vlas was pacing back and forth in the shuttle, when the door slid open. Darshak powered off the cloaking device and came into view.
“I found the tracking chip, but not Krag.” Darshak’s voice was grim.
“These Earthlings cannot be trusted!” cried Vlas.
“No,” said Darshak.
“Where is he? What have they done?”
“We must prepare for the worst. It is time to speak to them in a language they can understand.”
“What do you mean?”
* * *
Copyright © 2022 by Bill Bowler
