The president noticed us and waved us over to the large table. She was a striking woman of middle years, jet-black hair in a conservative ponytail for the meeting.
“Welcome.” She smiled widely, and if I didn’t know better, she was genuinely happy to see us. She gestured to the empty chairs. “Please, have a seat.”
The other people around the room stopped their conversations and came, taking seats on the far side of the table.
“Would anyone care for refreshments? Coffee, tea?” she asked. I found myself taking an early liking to her. Where someone else might expect someone to do their simple tasks for them, she started pouring us coffees and passed the cream and sugar over to Magnus.
I sat down, sandwiched between Mary and Natalia. Magnus and Mae finished the group off to our right. I held my cup of coffee in my hand, waiting to see why we were here. I glanced at the rest of the group and thought some of them might be familiar, but I wasn’t sure. There was a man in uniform; a lot of medals hung from his breast. Before I could guess who they all were, Dalhousie stood up. The room was silent as she took in a breath.
“We have to talk about the threat at hand. We asked you five to come for your insight. You are the saviors of our race. We owe you so much. Everything. It’s because of your efforts that we’re here today. First off, we want to make sure you have everything you need. If there is something you’re lacking, let me know and I’ll personally take care of it if I have to.”
“One of the others left behind might have saved you,” I said, unsure why I felt the urge to say anything.
She shook her head, and a few others did as well. “I don’t think so. We were hours at most from driving into the sun. It was all on you.”
Over the course of the year, we’d found out there were eleven others left on Earth. Their stories were close to the same as ours, and they were from all over the world. Clusters from Africa, Australia, and even two from Canada. The closer the hybrid to the Shield, the more effect it would have on their health. The ones who tried to land in the southern US, or South America, died in weeks, sometimes. Turned out the ones from Canada were only a day and a half behind us. They arrived to find the Shield gone, and a few alien corpses. I tried to imagine how crazy that must have felt, and how gut-wrenching. They wouldn’t have known what happened or if anyone had succeeded. They found out a week later as the massive black vessels broke atmosphere and lowered to the Earth once again.
“Thank you for your generosity, Madame President,” Mary said.
“Please, call me Patty,” she replied. “Allow me to introduce everyone. On my left is General Joshua Heart. Beside him we have Jeff Dinkle, our head of White House Communications,a position formerly know as Press Secretary.” The man nodded at us, and I realized where I knew him. He had a talk show on one of the major news networks, where it wasn’t unheard of for him to discuss extra-terrestrials, or outer space in general. Not the farmers’ fields and drunken farmer interviews, but more of an intellectual, theoretical discussion-type show. There were a few sleepless nights a few years ago where I could recall being bleary-eyed and watching his show, thinking it unlikely we weren’t alone. Boy, was I wrong.
“Across from you is Allana Lockley, and her partner in crime, Harry Middleton. I’ll spare you the old-world titles they would have had within the government. They are our resident physics wizards, and finally, we have Clare LeBlanc and Trent Breton, engineers like none other,” Patty said, smiling wide.
It was an odd mix of people for us to be meeting with.
“You’re probably wishing I’d just get on with it.” She waited, and when no one replied, she continued. “We’re creating something of an Earth Defense Unit. We have delegates from around the world coming this week to convene and figure out a plan. The world will soon have a unified government. The one thing this Event has done is take down borders. Crime is down, we have space for everyone, war is almost non-existent, and we’re going to work as one to build a stronger world. One we’re going to protect with our lives.”
Magnus and Natalia were nodding, being sucked in by her words. I was getting a small knot in my stomach as she spoke, and Mary squeezed my hand.
“What does this have to do with us?” Mary asked.
“We need your help.” There it was, the favor, as if we hadn’t done enough for them yet.
“What exactly do you need from us?” I asked.
“We just want you to be on the team. The defense team. You four did something so amazing, and it showed strength, resolve, tenacity, and intelligence. Mae, you helped convince the others to save us, and continue to lead your kind. Perhaps sooner rather than later, we can have them intermingling with the rest of the world, rather than caged like they are. We’re sorry for the way it has to be now.” Patty looked sympathetic as she spoke.
Mae’s eyes glistened a little as she took it all in and responded. “We actually understand, and if I can be honest, appreciate the treatment. Most of us were ready to die and kill your kind just because we were trained to do it. We may not have thought it was right, but most of them are good people, and do want to be members of society. I can’t say that all of them are cooperating, but we’re keeping tabs on them.”
I drained the rest of my now-cooling coffee and set the cup down, the noise a little jarring in the pin-drop quiet room.
The man who’d guided us down here walked over from his spot by the door, and slid a panel on the wall, revealing a large flat screen. He touched it on the lower left side and a video loaded.
“What you’re about to see is what we’ve been working on for the last year. If we’re going to have a shot at defending ourselves, we have to be prepared,” Patty said, voice climbing as she spoke.
The video started playing and the camera showed a shot from the ground, probably filmed with a military vehicle driving. It was of a massive desert landscape, possibly in Arizona or New Mexico, or maybe even somewhere else in the world. As they moved along, we got sight of a huge building. It was hard to tell the actual size of it from this perspective, but I was guessing at least five hundred thousand square feet. Beside it was one of the gargantuan transport vessels. It sat on the ground, juxtaposition to the light sand, a black monolith looking out of place on our world. I thought back to the first time we’d encountered one of them in space, some way away from the sun. That’s where we met Mae… after killing all her counterparts. I had a lot of blood on my hands and wondered if there was any way I could decline whatever position they were going to ask me to fill. I knew I could never go back to being an accountant after all of this, but… I could be something else. I’d had enough of killing, that much I knew.
They got closer, and as they stopped, a vehicle akin to a large golf cart came to greet them. The camera showed the president and General Heart getting off the Humvee, with Harry and Clare in the cart. They loaded up into the unit and large bay doors slid open. Inside the building hovered one of the gray ships we’d flown in. The Kraski ships were there. Beside them were some black ships, similar in design.
“It turns out there were a dozen of these vessels in all the transport units,” she said, the camera showing them all lined up inside the huge open room.
“What are those?” Magnus asked, pointing at the black ships on the right side of the screen.
Patty smiled. “Those are prototypes. You see, the team here has reverse engineered some of the technology we found. It was quite amazing. I’ll let Clare describe it a little better.”
Clare stood up, her face turning a light shade of red before she started speaking. I wasn’t sure if she was nervous or just excited. “The things we found were quite remarkable. First off, you flew these ships.” She nodded to Mary and Natalia. “You know how amazing it was to fly something that doesn’t lurch or toss you around as it speeds up or slows down. These inertial dampeners, as we call them for a lack of a better term, are quite impressive. We learned how to simulate it and have tested it in our own units. After a few faulty runs, and a couple banged-up test pilots, we have it down to a tee.