Flight (3 page)

They did nothing to her that would
leave permanent physical damage. But they taught her, even as they
performed what could only be described as torture, how to endure.
How to think clearly, how to react, how to not react, and how to
maintain her identity. The techniques used were meant to break her
spirit, to make her feel like she had somehow lost her humanity and
should simply submit to those inflicting punishment on her, and she
was taught how to withstand those same techniques.

It had been a week of pure
hell.

Not everyone passed.

She did.

She knew what to do in this
situation now, and mouthing off to the guard had been idiotic.
Macho. Brain dead. She wouldn’t do it again, and the pain in her
head and hands would remind her.

When Eva got back up on her knees,
she rotated a little so she could see the jeep and what was
happening. Mark was on his knees on the other side; she could just
see his head. A guard stood a distance away from him, a gun pointed
at Mark’s head. The guard who had stopped them was in the jeep,
holding up the carbine he’d found. A female guard, unarmed, came
out of the booth. The machine gun was trained on them
now.

“You need any help over there?”
Mark called. There was no way he could get to his guard. They’d
both be dead in seconds.

“I’m fine,” she yelled back. No
go.

“You both shut up!” her guard
screamed.

Eva put her head down and her arms
over her as he lifted the butt of his rifle to hit her
again.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, making it
sound as helpless as she could. She could take more beating if she
had to, but it wasn’t fun and she’d be sore in the morning. She’d
rather not.

The blow didn’t come. She peeked
up through her hair, which had fallen forward over her face, and
she could see the female guard’s hand on the barrel of her guard’s
weapon. Her guard pulled his rifle roughly away.

“Back off, Lizzy.”

“Calm down, Shay.”

“They’re terrorists. They’re up to
no good. We should just shoot them now.”

“We’re not going to shoot anybody.
We’re going to handcuff them and search their vehicle. Lindsey
already called it in.”

Shay shrugged away from her and
raised his weapon at Eva. The female border guard, Lizzy, put her
hand on it again and pushed it away. He shoved back at her and
pointed the weapon at her briefly. He moved it immediately,
pointing it at the ground.

But the damage had been done.
Lizzy eyed him with hatred.

Eva suddenly worried that this guy
was going to start shooting, even if on accident. She moved her
foot off the back of her other foot and tensed for a
spring.

Shay stepped back, keeping his
rifle pointed at the ground. Lizzy glared at him, then produced a
pair of handcuffs from her belt and moved behind Eva. She took one
of Eva’s arms and put a cuff on it, then moved Eva’s hands down
behind her back and cuffed them together. Eva’s last chance at
fighting was now gone. At least for the moment. The female guard
moved over to Mark and did the same to him.

10

“Here’s the message from the
Hrwang, sir. I’ve been recording everything.”

Lieutenant
Commander Purcella, communications technician aboard the
Beagle
, flipped a couple
of switches to play back the message for Stanley, and an alien
voice filled the command cockpit. It sounded vaguely
American.

“Vessel in orbit around the fourth
planet. Vessel in orbit around the fourth planet. Please have your
commander contact us on this band. Please have your commander
contact us on this band. This message will repeat at regular
intervals.”

“That’s the third message, sir.
It’s been repeating every fifteen minutes.”

Why hadn’t the
idiot told him sooner? Stanley thought. The incompetence of
military personnel never ceased to amaze him. The
Beagle
would have been
better served if it had been crewed solely by scientists and
engineers.

“Let me listen one more time,” he
said gruffly.

The lieutenant commander
complied.

“I need pencil and paper.” Stanley
felt the importance of what he was about to do. He was going to
speak to aliens. He wanted to make sure he did everything
correctly. These were beings of immense intelligence and
importance. Stanley’s world, the Earth, had spent decades to
establish two tiny bases on Mars, four residents in each, and these
aliens had crossed interstellar space.

It was
incomprehensible.

All the physics that had been
postulated for crossing the void between stars turned out to be not
possible. There were no wormholes, no warp fields, no way to bend
the space-time continuum. Yet the Hrwang had found a way. He
couldn’t wait to talk to them.

Lieutenant Commander Purcella
returned hurriedly with pencil and paper. Commander Irina Samovitch
followed him, in uniform, the silver oak leaf of her naval rank
gleaming as if she had just shined it. Stanley’s military
second-in-command knew how to irritate him like no other person
could.

Stanley composed his message, read
it, crossed some things out, added words, read it again, made a few
more changes, read it a final time, then took a deep
breath.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“When I point to you, sir, just
speak into this microphone. The rest of us will keep quiet,”
Purcella explained.

“Then what?”

“Then we wait, sir. It’ll take
fifteen minutes for our message to get to them, then fifteen
minutes for us to get a response.”

“Okay.” Stanley took another deep
breath to calm himself. His hands were sweaty and shook a
little.

The officer flipped several
switches, then began counting down on his fingers. When he got to
one, he flipped a final switch, turned a dial, and pointed to
Stanley.

Stanley paused.
He wondered why all the controls on the
Beagle
were physical, not touch
screen. Radiation, he reminded himself.

He had to quit stalling. It was
time to speak.

He read his notes.

“This is Captain
Stanley Russell of the UN exploration vessel
Beagle
in orbit around the fourth
planet of our solar system. We call it Mars. We are a scientific
space ship and we are eager to...” Stanley shook his head at the
next phrase. How could they exchange information with the Hrwang?
Beings that could travel between stars could probably swat
earthlings like bugs. He improvised.

“...to learn from you. We are
eager to learn what you would share with us, both scientifically
and culturally.” He went back to his script. “We await your further
contact.” He made a cutting motion, his hand waving in front of his
throat, and Purcella flipped a switch.

“Whew,” Stanley blew out loudly.
“That’s done. I was so nervous.” He grinned at the two in the
cockpit with him. Purcella offered a weak smile and Irina just
glared. It reminded Stanley to be business-like. He stopped
grinning.

They waited.

Six or seven minutes after
Stanley’s broadcast, they heard a message start.

“That was quick,” Stanley
said.

“Vessel in orbit around the fourth
planet. Vessel in orbit around the fourth planet. Please have your
commander contact us on this band. Please have your commander
contact us on this band. This message will repeat at regular
intervals.”

“I don’t understand,” Stanley said
after the broadcast finished.

“They haven’t received your
message yet, sir. They’re broadcasting every fifteen minutes. It
might even be an automated signal,” Purcella explained.

“Right. Gotcha.”

Stanley felt a
little foolish. Even with the grumpy Commander sitting next to him,
he was excited. Too excited to think straight. He knew there was a
thirty minute turnaround on messages with Earth. It’s why they
never tried two way communication. The
Beagle
always bundled up its
messages and sent them at once. Houston usually did the same. In
fact, he remembered chiding his communications officer on not
waiting for a response from Houston when they first lost contact
with Earth. The memory made him embarrassed at his current
behavior. He really was too excited.

Fifteen minutes later they
received the automated message again.

“Does that mean they didn’t get my
message?” Stanley asked.

“I don’t think so, sir. We need to
wait fifteen more minutes.”

They waited. Stanley wished he
could share his excitement with someone else. Aliens from another
star system. Another world. Their culture and their science and
their art would be so different, so unique. So alien. And he was
going to talk to them. He grinned.

Fifteen more minutes came and went
and there was nothing. They waited a couple of more minutes, and
there was still nothing.

“They got it,” Stanley said. “What
do you think, Commander?”

Irina still looked sour. “I think
I want to know why we can’t contact Earth.”

He ignored her. Just a military
Nervous Nellie.

“Message, sir.”

Lieutenant Commander Purcella
sounded as nervous as Stanley’s second-in-command. He flipped a
switch.

“This is the Lord Admiral of the
Fleet of the People. You may designate me simply as ‘Lord Admiral’.
How may I designate you?”

Stanley and his crew waited. There
was no more.

“What’s he talking about?” Irina
blurted.

“He wants to know what to call
me?” Stanley asked. “And then we have to wait thirty more minutes
for a response?”

“I believe so, sir,” Purcella
said.

“Okay. Turn me on.”

Purcella flipped a switch and
dialed a dial. He pointed at Stanley.

“Hi, um, Lord Admiral. This is
Captain Stanley Russell. You can just call me Captain Russell, or
Stanley, if you prefer.” He paused, then said, “Umm, looking
forward to speaking with you, Lord Admiral. Captain Russell over.”
He made the cutting motion and Purcella flipped another
switch.

“Now we wait thirty minutes,”
Stanley said in an authoritative voice. Purcella nodded and Irina
looked out a port window.

She eventually grew visibly
frustrated and left. Stanley watched her go. He didn’t want to
leave. He wanted to be right there when the reply message came in.
The commander returned almost half an hour later, just before the
message did.

“This is the Lord Admiral.
Captain, there are two designations that we have no translations
for. What are the meanings of the words ‘Stanley’ and
‘Russell’?”

There was nothing else.

“That’s it? We waited thirty
minutes for that?” Stanley was beside himself. “What is going on?
What are they talking about?”

“Just tell them that’s your name,”
Irina said. “Sir,” she added belatedly.

“Okay, fine. Whatever.”

Purcella readied for transmission
and pointed at Stanley.

“Lord Admiral,
this is Captain Stanley Russell. The word ‘Captain’ is my rank, my
designation, as commander of the
Beagle
. ‘Stanley’ is my first name.
Sometimes we call it a given name, since our parents give them to
us. ‘Russell’ is my last name, or family name. It’s my father’s
name and I inherited it when I was born. What is your name, Lord
Admiral?” He signaled to cut.

“I guess we wait again. I’m going
to go get some water to drink. Let me know if another message
arrives. Perhaps they won’t wait for a response.”

“Yes, sir,” Purcella said. Stanley
bolted and made a beeline for the corridor to atmospheric
chemistry.

11

Jayla had to get her sister to a
hospital.

She had no idea where one was. How
do you find something without a phone? She’d never even learned how
to read a map. The map app on her phone gave verbal directions. She
just followed them.

Her phone’s service stopped while
they were up on the mountain at her father’s cabin, and although
she half expected it to come back while they drove back to
civilization, it never did.

The small road from the community
where the cabin was located turned onto a highway, and she knew she
needed to head south, which was down, so she turned left. That
highway dead ended into a bigger highway and she remembered turning
right onto the smaller road, so she made another left.

Jada just sat in her
seat.

Jayla tried blasting music from
her phone in the SUV and it made the highway feel less lonely, but
Jada didn’t react, not even when Jayla played her sister’s favorite
songs. She turned her phone off and sang instead, more to keep
herself entertained and distracted than to help her sister. Her
sister just sat there.