The Guard (6 page)

THE SHIP BARELY MAKES IT BACK TO MY ORCHARD
base in Georgia. I fly beneath radar and try to stay in cloud cover as much as possible along the way. By this point, the acceleration is hardly faster than that of a car or motorcycle—the battery is almost dead. The crystals are fading.

I manage to get the ship parked in the big old pecan-processing plant in the back. I guess it’s technically now a hangar.

Most of my energy and resources are immediately focused on figuring out how to get—and keep—the ship up and running for good. I start installing various adapters and fuel lines I’ve created over the years, hoping that all my work hasn’t been for nothing. I go over the research I’ve swiped from the Dulce computers to see what the scientists have been doing to try and repower the drives. I manage to connect the crystal
housings to an electrical output just like they’d done in Dulce. If nothing else, that should buy me a few days’ worth of power.

The only reason the ship doesn’t have my full attention is because one of my sensors picks up some strange activity on Mark James’s old burner cell phone. I’ve been monitoring his communications since I got involved with him on the website, just to keep tabs on him. It’s something I’ve done with everyone I’ve worked with from the blog—though Mark is definitely the person I’ve gotten closest to. It looks as though someone has sent him messages from “GUARD” telling him to meet up with them. Communications that definitely didn’t come from me.

Somewhere, Mark slipped up. The enemy has found him.

I try to warn Mark, but I’m too late. Fortunately, he manages to escape from a team of FBI agents still loyal to the Mogs, but at the cost of his gear, his truck and, from what I can tell, a bit of his mental stability. And he was shot in his arm as he fled the ambush, though he swears it’s just a flesh wound. He’s stressed out, lost and feeling hopeless. When I talk to him on the chat client I built for “They Walk Among Us,” he sounds depressed. I’m suddenly worried that he might give up, even after all he’s been through. And I can’t have that. Not now that I’ve gotten so used to him always being in
touch. I realize that he’s the only person I talk to on a regular basis. He’s the closest thing I’ve had to a friend since Zophie died. So I do my best to try and remedy these things with a new vehicle and directions to Yellowhammer Ranch. That all seems to perk him up a bit.

At Yellowhammer, Mark connects Purdy’s stolen laptop to some computer equipment I left behind, allowing me to copy the entire contents of its hard drive to cloud storage. I isolate Purdy’s files and begin a full-fledged attack on their firewalls and security—cut off from the rest of the Mogadorian and FBI networks, I have no fear of being caught as I break into every hidden corner of his hard drive. What I discover is a wealth of information about MogPro and the specifics of the Mogadorian involvement with the US government. As I work, Mark finally manages to get in contact with Sarah. As Mark thought, she’d been traveling with the Garde. She’s an invaluable source of information, and the link to my people here on Earth that I’ve been searching for.

Things seems to be going smoothly.

Which is why I shouldn’t be surprised when everything falls apart.

I’m installing a new power line in the ship that will use the primitive fuel sources on this planet when I get a message from Mark saying that he’s screwed up and thinks the Mogs might have a lead on Yellowhammer. He asks if he should abandon it completely or go back
for his notes and files. I tell him it’s his call.

He heads back to the ranch with Sarah to pack up. I’m left to wait for word from him. I pull up the cameras at Yellowhammer just in time to see him and Sarah rush inside and start packing.

Then everything goes black. I can’t reestablish a connection. All I’ve got are monitors full of static.

My heart falls into my stomach.

Every second that passes makes me more impatient, more worried that I should have told him to leave everything and run from Alabama. As I wait, I pull up a program on one of my monitors: the controls to the bomb planted underneath Yellowhammer Ranch. At what point should I assume the worst and detonate the fail-safe, keeping the Mogadorians from getting any of Mark’s notes? What if I set off the bomb too early and end up killing Mark and Sarah in the process? In that moment, alone in my safe house, all I want in the universe is to see Mark’s name appear on my cell phone. He’s been my eyes and ears for the past few months. We’ve been in constant contact.

I can’t lose him.

Nor can I believe that JOLLYROGER182, the “Aliens Anonymous” user who referred to Mogs as “janky-looking assholes from another planet” in his first message to GUARD, has become a valuable asset not only to the Loric cause, but to me personally.

The clock ticks. I stare at the button that will destroy Yellowhammer. I wonder if I have it in me to press it after all this time. Would I risk sacrificing Mark and Sarah to keep information from falling into Mog hands?

Relief bursts through my skull when my phone dings. It’s a text from Mark, saying they were attacked but are all right.

I call him back on one of my burners that has a voice modulator built in. My voice comes out electronic, distorted on his end of the line.

“How far are you and Sarah from the house?” I ask when he answers.

“I don’t know. Maybe a mile? I can still see it in—”

I click the button. There’s static on the line as Mark’s microphone picks up the sound of Yellowhammer Ranch exploding.

“That should take care of any Mogs remaining on the property and thoroughly wipe our tracks,” I say.

Mark doesn’t sound too thrilled about the fact that he’d been sitting on top of a bomb all this time, but I’m too focused on typing to pay much attention to his concern. Instead, I tap into his truck’s built-in GPS and input the coordinates to the Georgia safe house.

It’s time to move forward in the fight against the Mogs. To join my fellow Loric.

The first step is to finally reveal myself to Mark and Sarah.

When Mark and Sarah show up, they look stunned—likely due to a combination of seeing me, the ship and the automated weapons that target them when they trip my security system. The incredulous silence doesn’t last, though, as they begin to ask a million questions. I assess the situation and prioritize; Mark is feverish, and the bullet wound in his arm is completely infected. The first thing I do is give him a shot of the antibiotics I’ve got stashed away with other medical supplies. He’s fine with that. The next part, less so.

“Motherffffff—” He holds out the “f” as I splash the injury with rubbing alcohol.

“Is he okay?” Sarah asks. She stands a few feet away from me, and I can see the concern in her eyes, not just for Mark’s condition, but for the fact that someone she doesn’t know is treating it.

“He’ll be fine,” I say. “The antibiotics will do most of the work. He should be back to normal in a few days.”

“But I’ve got a big game tomorrow, Coach,” Mark says flatly.

“I’m confused,” Sarah says. She turns to Mark. “You didn’t know she was a woman? Or
Loric
?”

“I just thought that since GUARD was so good with computers . . . ,” Mark starts.

She narrows her eyes a little.

“What?”
Mark asks. “Okay, yes, I just assumed she
was a dude. My bad. I guess ‘GUARD’ is technically gender neutral.”

“You’re from Lorien.” Sarah says this more than asks.

I nod.

“And being older . . . you must have been there when the planet was attacked.”

I nod again, slower this time. Sarah’s face seems to soften.

“I was on a different ship than the chosen Garde,” I say. “There were only a few of us.”

“Ella . . . ,” she murmurs, and the name stops my heart.

“What do you know about her?” I ask, taking two long steps until I’m towering over Sarah. “Have you met her? Is she with Number Four?”

She shakes her head.

“The Mogs took her,” she says slowly.

I swallow hard. “And Crayton? Did they take him too?”

“Crayton,” Sarah whispers. It takes a few seconds for her to place the name. “No. I’m sorry. . . . He was killed a while ago. In Spain, right before Ella joined the others.”

The shock of all this must register on my face, because suddenly Sarah isn’t looking at me like she’s afraid I’m going pull a blaster on her. Instead, she’s got
a hand on my back and a chair under me before I even realize that I’m sitting down.

“Of course,” she says. “I should’ve realized you didn’t know. You were on the other ship with them. Oh God, I’m sorry.”

My hands shake. I wonder how Crayton died—protecting Ella, no doubt. Where could she be now? What might they be doing to her? My hands shake as I try to figure out what to do next.

The Chimæra they call Bernie Kosar rubs against my legs in the form of a dog, staring up at me with a long tongue hanging out. His tail drums against the floor.

“I think he likes you,” Sarah says.

I crouch down, looking into his dark eyes.

“I knew many of your kind once,” I say, thinking back to those days that seem so long ago, when Zophie and Crayton and tiny baby Ella and I were all cooped up in our ship with a dozen Chimærae. “I hope to see more of you again one day.”

He lets out a little whine and licks a salty tear from the side of my face.

“Uh, if it’s any consolation,” Mark says, “it sounds like Ella turned out to be a total badass? Like, apparently she was at Dulce and caused some damage.”

She was at Dulce. When? How close was I to her?

I wipe my cheek with my sleeve and look over at Mark. He’s shifting on his feet, his forehead wrinkled
with concern. I think he’s trying to make me feel better.

“Yeah, so, anyway,” he continues, nodding to the back of the hangar. “Maybe you could show us the inside of this thing? I’ve never been in a spaceship before.”

I smile a little. “Keep your eyes open, Jolly Roger, and maybe you’ll fly it one day.”

“HOLY SHIT,” MARK SAYS AS WE STEP UP THE
metal ramp and into the ship. “I mean . . . holy
shit.
”

“Wait until you see her at top speed,” I say. “If I can get her to run on Earth fuels.”

“Fingers crossed,” Sarah murmurs. Her eyes are wide as she looks around.

“Superstition won’t get this beauty up and running. I was just putting the finishing touches on the new fuel line when you two arrived. Let’s see if I was successful.”

“You mean we’re going to take off right now?” Mark asks.

“No. I’m just going to start up the engines, with any luck.”

He looks a little nervous.

I tap on the instrument panels when we get to the
cockpit. They slowly flicker on. The ship hums to life around us.

“That seems like a good sign,” Sarah says.

“Here comes the real test,” I say.

I touch a few more of the controls. The ship slowly begins to lift off the ground. Beside me Mark clutches the back of one of the mounted chairs in front of the controls and whispers a dozen curses.

We’re a few feet off the floor and hovering inside the hangar when the entire craft starts to shake, then suddenly drops a few inches, causing my two human companions to cry out in alarm. But the ship recovers. It levels itself off until all systems look normal.

“By Lorien,” I murmur. “I think it’s going to work. The ship’s running off the fuel line I’ve installed, plus we have a few days of backup from the charged crystals.”

“That’s . . . good?” Sarah asks.

“It’s very good,” I say.

I set the ship back down and power off. Mark looks a little shaky on his feet. There’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“I think I should probably sit down,” he says.

Sarah touches his forehead. “His fever’s breaking.”

I take them back down and into what used to be the foreman’s office when the hangar was still a processing plant. Now it’s filled with computer equipment and monitors.

We start to trade information. We learn about each other.

I give Mark and Sarah an abbreviated rundown of my history, leaving out the parts about me using Mark or tracking all of his communications—though, by the look on his face, I’m guessing he’s figured that out by now. Sarah gets me up to date on the latest with the Garde, who they are and what Legacies they’ve manifested. She tells me everything she knows about the Mogs. It’s easier to get information now that I don’t have to use Mark as the middleman between us or avoid talking about my identity. I learn that not only has Malcolm Goode been found, but his son, Sam, has joined the fight. I can’t help but smile at this, to know that Malcolm has been reunited with that little boy from outside his office. I can’t say that they’re safe in the middle of all this, but at least they’re together.

I ask a lot of questions about the girl Ella has become and find out that she is a strong, sensitive young Garde. Just the kind of person I imagine Crayton would have wanted her to be. Sarah has spent a significant amount of time with her, and I can tell that she’s worried about Ella as she speaks. That she cares for her.

“Everything happened so fast in Chicago,” Sarah says, her eyes looking off into the middle distance. “Ella was having some kind of vision and then suddenly the Mogs were there. We were overpowered.”

“Mogadorian scum,” I mutter.

“We’ll get her back.” Mark grins a little. “And we’ll waste a bunch of those pale freaks along the way. Ashes to ashes. Dust to—”

“Really, Mark?” Sarah asks.

“What?” His eyebrows draw together for a second. Then he relaxes a little. “You’re right. I should have saved that for after we’d killed What’s-His-Ra or something.”

Sarah doesn’t say anything, just smirks a little and rolls her eyes.

She turns to one of the monitors at her side, one that’s tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station. Her eyes get wide, and several small sounds come from her mouth, but no actual words form.

“Oh, come on,” Mark says quietly, concerned. “It wasn’t
that
bad. Sarah?”

“Oh God,” she manages.

Several of my computers start beeping, telling me that something important has happened. That news is breaking.

“Sarah, what is it?” Mark is by her side in a few swift steps. And then he too is unable to form words.

It’s only when I join them that I realize what’s wrong.

A giant Mogadorian warship is hovering over New York City.

“It’s happening,” I murmur. “The invasion has begun.”

It’s not just New York; the ships are everywhere, over cities across the planet. We watch the news in shocked silence until Sarah’s satellite phone rings, and we all move at once. As Sarah speaks to Number Four, I spring into action, opening my laptop. Reporters are starting to talk about some sort of conference at the UN—something that’s been alluded to in MogPro documents I’d uncovered on Purdy’s computer but never really understood. This invasion is so much different from Lorien’s: there is no fire or missiles. At least, not yet.

“I think they’re going to pretend to be diplomatic about this,” I say.

“That would explain why they’ve cozied up to the government so much,” Mark agrees. He pulls a laptop out of his bag—the one I gave him back before he tried to get into Dulce—and starts typing.

“Get me everything damning you have about the US and the Mogs that you haven’t sent me. If the Mogs are going public, so are we. It’s time to tell this planet everything we know. I want this info on the front page of every website, every—”

“Way ahead of you,” he says with a grin. “I’m sending you a zip file that includes the worst of the worst of MogPro
and
a collection of the most relevant posts I did for ‘They Walk Among Us.’ Some I haven’t even proofed or uploaded yet.”

The files show up on my screen. They’re the perfect
complement to the info bomb I’ve been putting together myself over the last few years.

“This is great, Mark.” I nod to him.

He shrugs. “I’m not letting these dickwads try to pull a fast one on the human race.”

“It sounds like the others are on the same wavelength,” Sarah says, hanging up from her call. “Sam just sent us some video. Footage of John using his powers to heal someone and some clips of Mogs shooting. I was thinking we could make a video or something to explain what’s happening?”

“That’s good,” Mark says. “We could link all this MogPro info from it. GUARD—I mean,
Lexa
—could you, I don’t know. . . . push a video to the front page of YouTube or something?”

“Easily,” I say. “You two focus on getting that ready. I’m going to take care of a few last-minute adjustments to this ship and make sure she’s ready for travel. And fully stocked—I’ve accumulated an arsenal of weapons here.”

Mark bangs his fist against the desk he’s set his laptop on.

“Dammit,” he says. “I was going to use that video of John going all Superman and jumping out of my burning house, but I can’t find it.”

“Of course not,” I say, tapping on my computer. “I scrubbed that video from the internet as soon as it
came to my attention. I also managed to crash the cell phone it came from. Here, I just sent you a copy I saved for my records, along with some other images and footage I’ve collected over the years.”

As I start to walk away, I hear Sarah whisper to Mark.

“She’s good.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he says back.

I start a final inspection on the new fuel line for the ship, trying to cram days of work into a few hours. I pause only when Sarah starts shouting, and I watch on television as fighting breaks out at the United Nations. Number Four is there, looking powerful and unwavering as he faces Setrákus Ra, the leader of the Mogadorians. Sarah is pale as she watches but doesn’t say anything. When the TV feed cuts out, she just nods.

“I’m ready to record the voice-over.”

They get back to work. So do I. Hours pass, and when I finally take a break for water and an energy bar I find Mark and Sarah still huddled around Mark’s laptop.

“Hey!” Mark says. “Come look at this!”

He and Sarah scoot apart as they bring up a video to full screen and hit play.

“This is our planet, but we are not alone in the galaxy.” Sarah’s voice comes through the speakers, cool and measured, as the video zooms out on a picture of the Earth. The footage switches to the YouTube clip of
Number Four and then to him hovering his glowing hands over someone I hardly recognize as the secretary of defense. John appears to be healing him. Sarah continues.

“There are aliens among us.
Good
aliens. Refugees from the planet Lorien. This is John Smith, one of the Loric Garde—a boy blessed with incredible powers. He fights for Earth now. It’s his home.”

The video switches to clips of Mogadorians with blasters herding humans around on what look like the streets of New York.

“The ships above our cities now are not friendly. They are the Mogadorians—the bad aliens who destroyed John Smith’s home world. They have come here to enslave us and to take Earth for their own. They have even found allies in our own government.”

Various documents and bits of text pop up on the screen—I recognize them as MogPro files. The footage suddenly switches to a graphic showing the locations of the Mog warships. It looks like a screen grab Mark took from one of the news stations.

Sarah concludes: “We are not alone. They walk among us. We must join forces with the Loric and fight the Mogadorians.”

The video ends.

“So, if they click anywhere on the video, it takes them to the website and to all the files we’ve put together,”
Mark says. “And there’ll be a link in the description, obviously. Do you think it’s okay?”

“It’s the best we can do on short notice,” Sarah says. She bites her lip as she stares at the screen.

“It’s great,” I say. “Upload it to ‘They Walk Among Us,’ in case the video gets pulled.”

When it’s uploaded, I manipulate a few lines of code and algorithms so that the video is at the top of every internet search and all over the front page of YouTube. The number of views skyrocket over the course of a few minutes, faster than the counters can keep up with. Even with everything that’s happening across the planet, the video spreads. Mark says it’s “gone viral.” In a world suddenly full of questions, we, for once, are able to offer some answers.

Before long it’s being shown on news stations across the globe.

I may have had doubts about many things on this planet, but the way information spreads here has proven to be more impressive than I could ever have imagined.

Mark continues tapping on his computer while Sarah tries futilely to get Number Four on her satellite phone. She never takes her eyes off the news. Night falls. I go back to working on the ship. Ideally I’d have some time to take it out for a few tests before storming into battle, but I don’t have that luxury now—not with warships
parked over cities across the globe. Still, I take the time to triple-check my work and run every diagnostic test I can think of. The last thing we need is a systems failure in the middle of a fight with the Mogs.

It’s light outside when I’m finally satisfied with my work and come back out into the hangar. Mark is slumped over the desk, mouth open as he sleeps, snoring softly.

Sarah gives me a weak smile.

“He passed out while refreshing the view counts. I figured he could use the rest.” She stares at the phone in her hands, and it’s obvious she still hasn’t been able to get in contact with Number Four.

“From what I’ve seen of him, Number—John is quite the impressive Garde. I’m sure he’s still fighting.”

Sarah nods a little. “Yeah. Of course he is.”

She gets quiet, and it feels as though the energy has been sucked out of the room. After being alone for so long, I am perhaps not the best at small talk. And so I grab a couple of bottles of water from a mini fridge and slam one down next to Mark’s head. He jumps, springing to life.

“What? Where?” His eyes dart around and his breathing quickens until he remembers where he is. “Oh, right. What’d I miss?”

Sarah’s phone starts ringing before either of us can answer.

“It’s him,” she half shouts as she jumps to her feet. “He’ll know what’s going on in New York.”

“Right on cue,” Mark says through a yawn. “Our ET savior.”

Sarah answers on the third ring. Her face is bright—hopeful despite everything going wrong across the planet.

“John?” she asks, breathless, and the few seconds before the voice on the other end of the line responds are an eternity.

“All right.” Mark rolls his chair over to me. He stretches his arms over his head and cracks his neck. “What now?”

“I’ve waited years for this fight to arrive.” I point to the ship. “I say we join the rest of the Garde and show the Mogadorians what this old girl can do. There’s no use hiding in the shadows anymore.”

“Hell, yeah. Let’s kick some Mog ass.”

“It’s time we take the fight to them.” I turn to Mark. I can’t help but smile a little. “I want to see if Ella remembers me when we free her.”