Making the Galaxy Great

Jason dove toward the bushes at the edge of the gravel road. As he hit the ground there was an explosion. Was he hit? He rolled onto his stomach with his arms extended, holding L’harra’s pulser. There was a smoking pile of sizzling metal debris on the gravel between McCauley and the Yrreans. Behind Jason, a small tree was now just ashes but he himself seemed to be unharmed.

One of the Yrreans raised her arm and aimed at McCauley. Jason fired the pulser and an orange flash streaked toward her. He missed her weapon arm, but she staggered and yelped in pain. That was long enough for a second pulser blast, this time from McCauley, to send her fluttering away like a wad of smoldering trash. The second Yrrean raised a weapon but never had a chance, as McCauley efficiently dropped her with a quick shot to the head.Jason pulled himself to his feet, holding his left shoulder, which had hit the ground hard. He stared at the two dead Yrreans. McCauley waved to get his attention, her own eyes burning almost as hot as a blast from her pulser.

“We need to get out of here fast,” she said. “They’ll send somebody else, and they won’t stop to ask questions.”

Jason continued to stare. “Two more dead bodies. Our body count tonight is up to five.”

McCauley let L’harra’s lifeless body drop to the ground. Her chest looked like coals in a barbecue grill. “Six,” she corrected.

Only then did Jason realize that while he dove for the bushes and the drone fired at him, it also fired at McCauley, who had used L’harra as a shield while she blasted the drone.

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

“They were going to kill us,” she reminded him.

Jason nodded. She was right, of course, but he still wanted to puke. “In my wildest dreams,” he muttered, “I never thought I would try to kill somebody. And that somebody wasn’t even a human being.”

“Fleming, you need to get a grip.”

Suddenly night turned to day. The Yrrean shuttle seemed to have turned itself on and began to glow brightly, like a blue star. In a moment, it rose above the tree line, then simply vanished.

McCauley motioned toward the car. “We need to go — now. I think their ships get called back if they no longer detect life signs from the crew. They know we killed their people.”

Jason gestured toward the three dead Yrreans. “We’ve got more work for that cleanup crew of yours.”

McCauley already had her phone to her head. “Pretty sure the Yrreans will be back to take care of this mess themselves.”

With the shuttle gone, Jason’s car started normally and they took off in a cloud of dust and gravel.

“You okay now?” asked McCauley.

Jason felt like smacking his head to chase away the terrible images that were stuck there.

“Okay? No, I would say that okay is the opposite of what I am. You know, I was at the swimming pool this afternoon and now I’m driving away from a bunch of dead people. And, by the way, did we just cause some kind of interplanetary incident?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Just drive.”

It was only a few hundred yards before they reached a gate that separated the gravel road from a two-lane highway. Jason frowned. “I don’t really want to drive my car through the gate. I know it works in movies, but—”

“Hang on,” said McCauley. She opened her door and walked to the gate. When the road was finally quiet with no headlights visible in either direction, she fired her pulser. The lock, and a good portion of the gate, disappeared in a shower of sparks.

“Which way?” he asked when she returned to the car.

McCauley looked at her phone and pointed left. “Back to base, so we can tell them what we found out.”

As soon as they were on real pavement, Jason pushed his foot down on the accelerator.

“So, where’d you come up with that diving and shooting move?” asked McCauley, as if they were just out for a drive and she was making conversation.

“Paintball with Shelby. Oh shit! Shelby.” Jason used his hands-free system to call Shelby.

“Dad?”

“Hey honey, how’s it going?”

“Where are you?”

Jason glanced at McCauley. If Shelby had any idea . . . “I’m in a big ugly concrete building that looks like it was made out of gray Legos.”

“What about Agent McCauley? Is she there?”

Jason glanced sideways at McCauley. “She’s in the bathroom. I think the Indian food last night didn’t agree with her.”

McCauley raised her hand in a fist. He could hear Shelby laughing and saying something to Evie. “Here — Evie wants to talk to you too.”

“Serves her right,” said Evie as soon as she had the phone. “Hey, are you okay, Jason? They’re not torturing you or something, are they?”

“Depends on your definition of torture. They keep asking me the same damn questions they asked last time. It’s just total bureaucracy.”

“They don’t think you did something wrong, do they? I don’t trust that crazy b—”

“No, no. Don’t worry,” Jason assured her. “Listen, I know it’s getting late. Shelby can probably get to bed on her own and there’s bound to be some sort of semi-edible crap in the freezer that she can heat up. She’s pretty self-sufficient.”

“Forget about it,” Evie said. “We already had dinner. We roasted the onions and potatoes we got at the farmer’s market, and baked some chicken you had in the fridge. Oh, and Shelby found some mozzarella so we tossed that in olive oil with those nice heirloom tomatoes.”

Jason realized he was starving. “You can cook?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“Nothing surprises me any more.”

“Huh? Well, get home soon.”

After he’d hung up, McCauley said, without looking up from her own phone: “She sounds perfect for you. If only she was old enough to vote.”

Jason exhaled as loudly as he could. “She’s twenty-six.”

“Says who? You know I can look it up.”

“I admit, I was a little surprised—”

“Dammit, Fleming! Something’s wrong. I can’t reach anybody at the base. All my texts are coming back undeliverable.” She tapped a couple of times on the phone and held it up to her ear. “Let me try Michael again on his lab phone. He was supposed to be working there tonight.”

Seconds later, she shook her head and held out the phone. “This network is currently unavailable due to excess call volume . . .” Jason heard a voice say.

“That’s our emergency message,” she told him.

“What kind of emergency? It’s because of us, isn’t it? Because of the dead Yrreans. And the dead Russians. And the dead Haku.”

“Turn around,” said McCauley. “You should go home.”

“We’re maybe three minutes away from A-69,” he pointed out. “At most.”

“I don’t care. I’ve got a bad feeling and you should just get home to your family. I mean, your daughter and what’s-her-name.”

At the next cross street, Jason geared down and made a U-turn. As he executed the move, McCauley asked: “A minute ago, did you just say A-69?”

“Yeah. Sounds cooler than Area 69. And I refuse to call it ‘the base’.”

McCauley shook her head. She tried again to contact someone, anyone, at Area 69, without success. “Goddammit! What the hell’s happening?”

Suddenly a section of the sky above the highway disappeared, then reappeared. Jason looked up through the windshield. An immense triangular silhouette glided silently overhead from right to left and continued until it had passed out of sight beyond the tree line.

“That wasn’t a shuttle,” he said when his pulse had returned to normal.

“No,” McCauley agreed. “It looked like a Haku ship.”

“But it wasn’t cloaked.”

“No, and I don’t think it was a transport vessel.”

“Why wasn’t it cloaked?” Jason insisted.

“Well, if I could get through to A-69 I might be able to tell you.”

When they reached Jason’s house, McCauley hopped out of the car almost before it stopped. Jason remembered that he was still wearing the holographic clip on his ear.

“Wait. Don’t forget this,” he called to her.

As she reached for it, Jason suddenly pulled it back. “What does this little green light mean?”

McCauley huffed impatiently. “That it’s recording.”

“So, it was recording what was on yours even though I turned off the view?”

McCauley’s browed knitted together. She touched the small device on her left ear. “Yeah . . . since I forgot to turn this one off, too.”

“And what did it record?”

McCauley snatched the device from Jason’s hand and grinned at him. “Absolutely everything!”

They were standing on the sidewalk under an immense gingko tree in Mrs. Ralston’s front yard. McCauley twisted a tiny lever and an image appeared in front of them, in the air — a control panel, with icons that looked vaguely like the ones on Jason’s TV remote. She jabbed a finger in the air and numbers appeared and quickly wound down toward zero. She stopped it at 30:00, then jabbed at another icon and watched one the Yrreans recoil from Jason’s errant shot before incinerating when McCauley finished the job.

Jason’s breath grew short and rapid and he squelched the urge to vomit. “Does it go back any farther?” he gasped.

McCauley jabbed the air twice again. Suddenly, there was the Yrrean from the shuttle, standing in front of them in the dark under the gingko tree: “. . . allow me to apologize for the actions of L’harra. We’re aware that she attempted to spread false information.”

McCauley poked rapidly at more holographic icons while Jason looked on. “Can you upload it or something, so the Colonel can see it?” he asked.

She glanced at him impatiently. “Oh! Why didn’t I think of that? I must be a fucking moron.” She continued to poke the air for several seconds, then angrily stopped and swiped her hand sideways, which made the hologram vanish.

“Dammit! It won’t work. It’s like it’s blocked or something. I’ll have to drive this over to A-69.”

“I’ll drive you,” Jason offered.

“No, you stay here with Shelby and Evie.”

“You know her name.”

“Just please shut up, Fleming. I’ll call you later.” McCauley sprinted to her car and seconds later her taillights disappeared around the corner at the end of the block. Jason took several long breaths and then ran up the steps of his house. He needed to see Shelby. He needed to see Evie, too.