Making the Galaxy Great

When the front and the rear doors of the van suddenly flew open, the Yrreans scattered like a flock of sparrows startled by the sudden arrival of a hawk.

Jason hurriedly shoved Kuh-Re’s card back into his shirt pocket. There was no point in running, because there were soldiers with guns surrounding the vehicle. He heard a window smash in the front of the van, followed by a fearsome volley of profanity from Tina.

“Out!” shouted one of the soldiers. Then he repeated himself in case anyone had failed to understand. “Out! Now!”

Jason and the others climbed out of the van and faced an array of rifles. And behind them, Dr. Ashwood, McCauley’s mother, stepped out of a large military-green truck blocking the alley in front of the van. Jason turned his head and saw an identical truck blocking the other end.

Dr. Ashwood shook her head and pressed her lips together so tightly a single atom would have struggled to squeeze through. “Mr. Fleming, I knew we’d find more trouble if we continued to follow you. I told them when Angela first brought you to the base that they should have wiped you. You’ve been a gigantic pain in the ass.”

“Hey there, Dr. Ashwood, great to see you, too” Jason replied. He felt a hole open in his stomach as he realized A-69 must have found his car overnight and planted more trackers. Once again, he had brought trouble on everyone else.

Dr. Ashwood took a small appliance that looked like a TV remote from one of the big pockets of her lab coat and pointed it at each one of the prisoners in turn.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes and . . . no, not that one. She’s human. Put her with them.” Grace was shoved over next to McCauley and Jason. The Yrreans were hauled toward one of the trucks while Jason, McCauley and Grace were cuffed.

“Thank God for our Haku partnership,” said Dr. Ashwood. “They had a little issue back on Dalus with Yrreans trying to sneak onto their land disguised as Haku. Sound familiar?

“We’re working on a bigger version of this,” she continued proudly, “that would let us scan an area the size of several acres.”

“Wow,” said Jason. “And I thought ultra high-def TV was cool.”

McCauley shook her cuffed hands as if she were trying to break them apart. Clearly, nobody could get under her skin like her own mother. “What are you doing out here chasing refugees instead of working on one of your goddam lab projects?”

Dr. Ashwood stared at her daughter in mock dismay. “Refugees? You almost sound compassionate. I didn’t realize you cared about anybody beside yourself.”

“Like mother, like daughter,” said McCauley.

Dr. Ashwood’s eyebrows drew together like a curtain of menace. “Oh, but the thing is, I do care. I care about my country, and my planet. If the world finds out about the aliens and their technology, it’ll be utter chaos. And that’s not the worst of it. Can you imagine what would happen if terrorists got hold of some of the technology we’re testing — like the new body armor? There’d be no such thing as a suicide bomber, because they could detonate their devices and simply walk away. Multiply that by all the other technology we’re examining and you might as well stow away on the next Haku transport. We have to maintain control over who has access, and keep these — this knowledge —a secret.”

Jason raised his hands, as if he were back in school asking to be called on by the teacher. “But what if we could feed everybody and drive cars using water and first responders could save everybody in a burning building without worrying about getting killed themselves? Maybe nobody would want to be a terrorist.”

Dr. Ashwood rolled her eyes. “And we could all live in peace and harmony? Sing songs together?”

Jason tried another angle. “Why do you get to hoard the technology? There are probably lots of smart people all over the world who could do a lot more with it than you and your handful of lab nazis.”

Dr. Ashwood’s eyes narrowed. “All over the world . . . that’s another problem, isn’t it? Suppose the Chinese take a piece of Marjan technology and invent something new that undermines our economy, or makes our military obsolete?”

“So when do you finally share any of it with the world? Who decides that? You?”

Jason was about to go on, because he was just getting warmed up, but Dr. Ashwood pulled a small pulse pistol from another of the seemingly endless pockets in her coat and fired it in the air. Somewhere above, she must have grazed the side of a building because powdered red brick showered down a few feet behind her.

“Does he ever shut up?” Dr. Ashwood asked her daughter.

“I’ve gotten used to it,” McCauley replied. “I even kind of like it.”

Dr. Ashwood squinted at her daughter. “Maybe they’ll let the two of you have adjoining cells at Moredale.”

Moredale.

The word echoed in Jason’s head. For a place that didn’t officially exist, he was hearing it mentioned a lot. He told his legs to stop shaking but they trembled like weeds in a stiff breeze. The alley was one long shadow and there was a faint smell of urine and he did not want to die there.

“Except you’re not going to make it to Moredale,” Dr. Ashwood added.

McCauley grunted angrily. “You can’t do this, Mother! Even you can’t just kill private citizens. Maybe me but not them. Fleming’s got a daughter. There are people out there who’ll be asking questions.”

“And Grace’s uncle owns the Schnitzelberg Brewing Company,” Jason added.

Dr. Ashwood shook her head. “Which is why we’re strictly following due process. We’re arresting you both for smuggling illegal aliens . . . from Central America. We found several at your little mission by the way.”

Jason glanced at Grace. He was still discovering what a busy woman she was.

“Unfortunately,” continued Dr. Ashwood, “You were working with my hothead daughter, who is a decidedly bad influence. The three of you tried to escape, and even shot at one of our men in uniform.”

Dr. Ashwood took her pulser and shot the soldier nearest to her in the leg. He groaned and fell to the ground.

Jason felt his asshole puckering. Dr. Ashwood was certifiably, play-with-her-own-poo crazy.

“So once you became armed fugitives,” Ashwood continued, “the three of you died in a shootout. Tragic.” She motioned to one of the soldiers she hadn’t yet shot. He tossed his rifle and it landed at Jason’s feet.

“Don’t touch it,” said McCauley. “She wants you to have it in your hands when they shoot you.”

Without taking his eyes off Dr. Ashwood and the soldiers with their weapons, Jason spoke sideways to McCauley. “I think maybe the reason you’re angry all the time isn’t because you’re hard-wired that way. It’s because your mom is a psycho bitch. I’d be angry, too, if I had to grow up with her.”

The comment seemed to strike a nerve with Dr. Ashwood, and not a happy one, if she had any. Without a word she raised her pulser and aimed it at him. McCauley shouted and charged at her mother. Jason cringed as Dr. Ashwood pressed the button on the top of the pulser.

Nothing happened. The pulser didn’t fire and McCauley collided with her mother and knocked her to the ground. She raised her cuffed hands, ready to strike, and five soldiers raised their rifles. But everyone froze in place as the alley suddenly lit up — as if it were noon on a sunny day instead of late afternoon on a cloudy one.

A small, silver, almond-shaped craft descended straight down into the alley and stopped a few inches above the filthy, smelly, damp pavement. An opening appeared and Kuh-Re stepped out.