Making the Galaxy Great

As Jason plodded out of Ambling’s office, carrying the weight of corporate ineptitude on his back, he saw Evie hurrying toward him with a worried look on her face.

“Jason, she’s here. That agent, from the other night. And she doesn’t look happy. And she has a gun.” Evie stood with her hands on her hips and made a scowl that was actually a fairly good impression of Agent McCauley’s usual frozen expression.

His chest tightened. He’d been expecting McCauley to return to his house on Saturday as soon as she’d discovered that she’d grabbed the wrong item from his house. Why wait till now?

He took a deep breath and walked toward reception, and realized that Evie was walking with him. “You probably shouldn’t come,” he told her. “I’m the one she’s not happy with.”

“I just don’t like her,” Evie responded, as if this were justification enough.

“Agreed. But you don’t want to be on the bad side of a federal agent.”

“If she is one.”

They found Agent McCauley looming at reception. She looked straight out of central casting for a federal agent, with black slacks and black blazer. The right side of her blazer was slightly pulled back and her weapon was conspicuous in a holster attached to a cross-body strap. Nadine stood behind the desk, wide-eyed with terror.

“Jason . . . She has a badge . . . She said she needs to see you. Her name is—”

“Agent McCauley,” Jason said. “Great to see you again.” He hoped his voice wasn’t quivering too much.

McCauley’s eyes drifted from Jason to Evie. “Ah, it must be bring your daughter to work day.”

Before Jason could say anything, Evie responded. “You know, now that I see her in the light, she really does look ninety.”

McCauley’s right eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly. “Mr. Fleming, I need a word with you. Perhaps we could step outside?”

“Jason, we don’t want any trouble in here,” Nadine stammered. She wrung her hands as though she’d just been handling raw meat. “If you’re in trouble with the law . . .”

I will be when I murder you, he longed to tell her.

Jason held his breath, glanced at Evie, and followed Agent McCauley through the door. It was a sunny afternoon and Jason got an instant headache gazing across the ocean of parking lots and indistinguishable buildings that comprised their industrial park. It had been many years since the company had moved from its original headquarters, a nineteenth century brick building with a cast-iron facade that had mysteriously been gutted by fire. A handsome insurance settlement had allowed the company to relocate to the suburbs.

McCauley stopped suddenly. “I need the fucking device.” She scowled at him, hands on her hips as if she was doing an impression of Evie’s impression of her.

“If you return my grandmother’s brooch, which you stole from my house the other day.”

Agent McCauley reached in her pocket and handed him the brooch. “The device.”

“It’s in my car.”

They walked to Jason’s car and he unlocked the driver’s door and reached down where the controls for adjusting the seat position were located. He’d attached the holographic device to the side of the seat with an adhesive strip.

As he handed McCauley the device, he said: “So this is it? I’m supposed to go back to work and pretend I didn’t see what I saw?”

“You’re better off, Mr. Fleming. Just be glad—”

It was pure luck that Jason happened to glance past McCauley and see the man several cars away who suddenly raised both arms and pointed something at them. He wasn’t a butt-faced alien; just a run of the mill East European-looking man in a badly fitting gray suit.

“Down!” Jason shouted as he grabbed McCauley and pulled her to the ground behind the still-open door of his car. Though he hadn’t heard anything, he suddenly felt a sharp pinch on his left arm.

Before he could even wince in pain, Agent McCauley had unholstered her own weapon and was aiming it at the suited man, who slid behind a car a few yards away.

“Behind!” Jason shouted as a second man in an equally bad suit and much heavier than the first one squirmed between two cars and took aim at them from the opposite direction.

McCauley turned and fired, almost without looking. She and Jason were pressed together like Spam and her gun was inches from his head but it seemed to have some sort of silencer, because he heard nothing more than a sort of hum when she fired it. If they’d used it at his high school track meets, nobody would have known when to start running. At virtually the same instant, there was a bright flash above them them and a section of the door frame peeled off Jason’s car, curled up and burned like a piece of paper on the pavement next to him.

Someone wasn’t shooting bullets.

“What the hell is that?” he cried. “A laser?”

“Pulse weapons,” said McCauley. “They’re not supposed to have those. Get in!” As Jason started to climb in she pushed him from behind so that he tumbled all the way into the passenger seat. A spasm of pain from his shoulder tore through him with such force it took his breath away.

“Fuck me, that hurts!” His left arm was literally smoldering. It smelled horrible, too, like a badly overcooked steak. And it appeared that the burning edge of the skin was advancing up and down his arm from the site of his wound.

“You’re hit,” McCauley said as she climbed into the driver’s seat, shut the door and pressed the ignition. “I’ll drive.”

Then she glanced down at the center console. “It’s a stick shift.”

There was another explosion and burning shards of glass rained down on Jason. Half of his windshield was gone.

“Really? Doesn’t anybody drive a stick shift any more?” he said. “Just get in the back!”

He barely noticed that her extremely firm buttocks brushed against his face as she climbed into the back; he was more concerned with the searing pain in his arm as he lifted himself into the driver’s seat. Luckily, he’d backed into the parking spot, so he lifted his head just enough to see over the dashboard, threw it into first gear and hit the accelerator, just as the rest of his windshield exploded.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled as more shards of molten glass fell on his arms and lap – as well as all over his leather upholstery. “Fuckers!”

Jason reached second gear and nearly hit one of the gunmen before he jumped aside.

“Don’t turn here,” Agent McCauley barked from the back seat as they raced down the main access road that wound through the industrial park.

Jason winced as he held the steering wheel with his left arm so he could shift again. “Where are we going? I vote for the ER.”

“No hospital,” she told him. “Up here, take a left.”

“I’ve been shot!” Jason insisted. “I gave you the hologram thing and I promise I don’t care if it is all about aliens, or demons from the thirteenth dimension. I need to get to the hospital before my whole arm burns up.”

“They wouldn’t know how to handle that wound,” said McCauley. “You’d probably die.”

“What? Are you kidding me right now?”

“Please shut up and drive. Turn left again here, then a quick right. Right there.”

They had turned onto an old two-lane highway that wound past a succession of new subdivisions overstuffed with faux-Tudor and faux-Colonial houses and a few that were simply faux. Jason looked at his rearview mirror and saw a dark-colored car a few hundred yards behind them.

“Is that them?” he asked between clenched teeth. His arm was on fire and he was starting to feel lightheaded. He glanced in his mirror again and saw an arm reach out of the window of the car behind them. There was a bright flash but apparently the shot missed his car.

“Yes, that’s them,” said McCauley. “Drive faster.”

Jason pressed the accelerator almost to the floor. He gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands and tears filled his eyes from the pain. The car became airborne several times as he negotiated the curves in the road.

“Who are those guys?” He finally got around to asking.

“Need to know basis,” said McCauley.

“I fucking need to know!” shouted Jason. “They shot me!”

“Just drive please,” said McCauley. “You want to live, don’t you?”

“Shit!” Jason shouted when they rounded yet another curve and nearly drove up the tail pipe of a pickup that was only slightly exceeding the speed limit.

“Pass it!” McCauley demanded.

Jason was already in the oncoming lane. Unfortunately, a gray minivan was in the same lane, traveling in the opposite direction. Jason swerved in front of the pickup. The sound of horns coming from both of the other vehicles trailed behind them.

Seconds later, the sedan carrying the gunmen reappeared behind Jason’s car as he was tearing into a long uphill curve.

“Not much further,” said McCauley.

They reached a straightaway and it was a flat out race between Jason’s car and their pursuers. Jason’s car was winning when suddenly McCauley yelled for him to slow down.

“Turn by the sign for Kirk Lumber.”

Jason saw the large white sign with green letters a quarter mile ahead on the right.

“Slow down,” McCauley repeated. “Do you see the sign?”

“I see it,” said Jason. He slowed down just enough to let the car behind them get closer, but he was still doing more than eighty.

“We have to turn by the sign!” McCauley insisted.

Just a couple dozen yards before he reached the sign, Jason downshifted. Then he downshifted again and made the sudden sharp right. His car just missed skidding into the ditch that ran along the main road.

The car following them was not so lucky. As Jason watched triumphantly in his mirror, it fishtailed several yards before landing in the ditch with a tremendous metallic thud.

But the adrenaline rush faded and Jason felt himself becoming dizzy. The burning pain had now spread from his arm into his hands and legs.

A large gray corrugated metal building was ahead of them, but it was encircled by an old stone farm wall, with a gate. He heard McCauley saying something, but not to him, and suddenly the gate opened.

She told him to keep driving straight.

“Where do I park?” he asked.

“Just keep driving.”

“There’s a building in our way.”

“Now, here! Turn left!”

There was nothing on the left but an empty pasture, but Jason was too weak to argue. Then suddenly the ground opened up and and they were driving through a brightly lit tunnel that wound down into a large underground garage.

“Stop the car,” McCauley told him.

Jason complied. The entire garage seemed to be spinning. There were people running toward the car, some of them in military uniforms. McCauley was yelling something, but not to Jason.