Charged - Book One (17 page)

“They think we’re harmless and they do not care,”
Danel answered.

Aaron reached toward the creature to touch it and its
body reflected a perfect image of Aaron’s hand when he was about
five inches away. As Aaron pulled his hand back, the reflection of
his hand faded slowly and he stood back for a second.

“Camouflage,” he said.

“Yes. It reflects its surroundings dead or alive, but
when they’re alive, the whole outer shell is like a mirror,” Collin
said.

“Can it reflect images other than its surroundings?”
Aaron said.

“Not that we’ve observed, but it could be
possible.”

Its head, or what was left of it, was a tiny diamond
shape. Its mouth hung open, full of hundreds of what looked like
little metal hooks. No tongue. Its arms were almost as long as its
body and hung down to the floor next to the table. Each arm slid
down into massive hooked hands. It had two grooves running down its
skull, which conjoined at what I thought was its chin. No ears, no
eyes, no feet. It didn’t stand like us. Its feet also slimmed down
into three large hooks. After a few seconds, I realized that the
large pieces of rubber-like material lying on the floor were
actually attached to its arms.

“It flies,” I said as the acid in my stomach was now
burning the inside of my throat.

Camouflage and it flies. This can’t get any
worse.

“Yes, it flies,” Danel said.

Aaron grabbed one of the three flaps attached to its
arm, inspecting it. He pulled out one arm across the floor of the
small room.

“That’s a fifteen-foot span,” he said, looking at me.
There were no bone-like structures within the flaps or between
them. It appeared that the flaps could be brought together or
spread apart for maneuvering capabilities.

“We didn’t find any reproductive organs at all. So
either they left their mates behind, or they are part of a hive
colony, or it’s possible they form reproductive organs in time of
need,” Collin said.

I could feel myself losing control. I staggered back
another step, grabbing the doorjamb to steady myself.

Aaron inspected a few more parts of the creature,
walked around it once and then paused, looking at Collin.

“It’s a killing machine,” he said.

Aaron looked at me and then back at the dead
monster.

“Kye, you find Jessica and bring her to me now.”
Aaron was serious and stern and furious.

“Wait!” I said, handing her the kennel.

“After you find her, can you put him in your
quarters, please?”

Kye bolted out the door with Zero.

I turned back around and looked at the thing that
killed Richie, Brian, Lolita and Marie. There was no mistaking that
the perfect slash to the back of his head was made by the sharp
hooks of this thing. This killed Richie and I couldn’t even
possibly imagine what Richie was thinking when this thing
approached him. My heart sank into a bitter, dark hole.

“You knew what murdered Richie and never said a
word.” I said, glaring at Danel. I knew he was the only reason Kye
hadn’t said anything, but he didn’t respond. Aaron and I just stood
there looking at him and the distrust was evident.

“You ordered Kye not to say anything didn’t you?”

“I simply asked her not to mention it, until we knew
how we were going to deal with the rest of them,” he said.

Aaron gave me a look that now was not the time and I
let out a deep breath and shook my head.

“Is the surface under attack?”

“No, it’s just us. It’s complicated.”

“No one topside is aware of this?” I said.

“Just us.”

“How many are there?”

“Twenty-four.”

Okay, twenty-four was not thousands; it was not
hundreds. Somehow, this was better, but I didn’t know how much
better.

I needed to shake the creature’s image from my head,
but I kept seeing that black hook swinging down and slicing through
Richie.

“How do we get out of here? How do you move food to
other stations?”

“Everything leaves from the entrance you came in,”
Danel said.

Not the answer I wanted to hear. I looked at Aaron
and he said nothing.

“I can give you something that will help you bleed
slower, coagulate faster,” Collin said.

This was an eerie statement. I let a scowl spread
across my face as I stared at him, “I might want to bleed
fast.”

He looked down for a moment.

“You realize you’ve screwed all of us,” I said to
Danel. “You should have told us about this from the start.”

“Yes, because you’re handling it so well,” Danel
finally responded.

I walked right up to his chest and looked up at him.
“You can’t handle what you don’t know about! We won’t be handling
this at all!”

I was yelling now and I didn’t realize it at first,
but Aaron had his hand on my shoulder and was pulling back on me.
Reluctantly, I stepped back and Aaron slid in between Danel and
me.

“Okay, so how do we kill it?”

Collin grabbed the dead creature and flipped it over
with ease, showing us the back of its skull. A motion I found to be
more than unnecessary. One of its wings became pinned under its
body in the process.

“It was shot in the head three times, obliterating
most of the skull, but there are still some of the contents left
here,” he said, pointing to the right side of its head.

“This one seems to be full grown. He’s six feet, nine
inches, but what’s really interesting is the brain. It has three
separate cavities.”

“Do not tell me that if I shoot this thing in the
head, it can still survive,” I said, not really wanting to know the
answer.

“Exactly. You must penetrate all three cavities of
the skull in order to stop full function. Close range should
penetrate all three… but you would have to be very close.”

“What about a shot to the heart or lungs?”

“There were no organs that I could identify. The
insides were filled with a black liquid substance. Its skeleton is
the outer shell; there was nothing solid inside of it, at least not
after it was dead. Just the brain was solid.”

“So how thick is its shell?” One more question I
wasn’t sure I wanted to ask.

Aaron went to the back of the room, grabbed a
screwdriver-like instrument from a silver metal tray and violently
stabbed the dead creature in the chest. The tool sunk in about four
inches. Collin didn’t protest and even seemed interested in Aaron’s
actions. Aaron then proceeded to do the same to the skull of the
creature. He first tilted its head to the left side, where there
was no damage and swung down with great force. The tool only
bounced off of it, leaving a small scratch.

“Precisely. As I was going to say, the skull has
almost three times the strength as the rest of the body,” Collin
said.

“Great,” I said, with a tone drier than the
Mojave.

Aaron wiped the tool off on his pants and put it in
his back pocket. Normally, Aaron almost never shut up, so his
silence meant he was also scared.

“And the military doesn’t know?”

“They don’t show up on any radar or scans,” Collin
answered.

“So if they look like mirrors, how do you know
they’re coming?”

“We see differently than you and so do our
scanners.”

I should have expected this answer. I wanted to leave
the room. I never wanted to be this close to one of these things
ever again. I could tell that Aaron shared my sentiment as I turned
my back to the creature and we proceeded out into the hallway. Just
then, Kye had appeared from around the corner and was headed toward
us.

“Where is she?” Aaron said.

“I couldn’t find her. I have several others looking
for her.”

Aaron seemed very concerned now, like he could
predict what was going to happen. This station was huge. It could
take hours for them to find everyone. Then I heard an announcement
over some kind of P.A. system. It was Lyra, telling everyone to
report in via the closest com immediately.

Kye put her hand on my shoulder and I realized that
she wasn’t terrified. She wasn’t trembling and she was worried
about me. I glanced at her quickly to study her expression and all
it said was,
I’m
sorry
. I noticed that Collin had
followed us out into the hall and wanted to continue discussing
what he discovered about the creature.

“You should see these things move. It’s amazing. It’s
as if they’re double-jointed in every joint. Their wings in full
span can rotate 360 degrees.” He was starting to sound just like
Aaron.

“You do realize they are coming here to kill us,
right?” I could help but put this fact in front of him.

He immediately stopped talking.

“Exactly how long have you been watching them?”

“Almost a month.”

“A month! You’ve been watching them for a month? Why
didn’t you dispose of them?” Now I was pissed.

“We’re not killers, Mr. Kagen,” Collin continued. “We
needed to know why they were here and if they were violent or
not.”

“Jesus Christ, man! Violent! They have six-inch
blades for hands! Did you plan on shaking it!” Collin was quiet now
and I was silently enraged as we headed back to the conference
room.

WHEN WE GOT BACK to the conference room, everyone
but Collin and I sat down. I started pacing and the image of the
creature stayed with me. I could imagine it moving, the back-hooked
legs flying forward, stabbing the ground and then the front-hooked
wings launching it into the air.

Collin cleared his throat to get my attention as he
continued.

“The three cavities in its head suggest many things.
Could just be backup systems, but I think they have three separate
functions. One does the processing, one does the communicating and
the third… we’re still guessing at.”

“Why are they coming here?” I said.

Danel and Kye looked at each other.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Danel said.

“They’re coming here to take the ship. They are
stranded here.”

“So just give them the ship! You said your planet was
destroyed. What do you need it for?”

“It’s not that easy,” Danel said, “we give them the
ship and they could come back here with three hundred ships of
their own and destroy the Earth. To make things a little more
difficult, remember that this ship is one part of a collective
whole. If they launch one, they launch them all. This station and
the other twelve would essentially blow twenty percent of the
Earth’s crust off. Every ship is embedded in the Earth, in your
glaciers, your mountains, canyons, national forests and reserves.
The impact of our departure on your world would be a cataclysmic
event. The device you had in your possession doesn’t just open
doors. If activated, it gets all thirteen stations out of the Earth
simultaneously in a matter of seconds. It was designed this way in
case we didn’t have enough time to leave again. And the device can
only be activated here at Station Thirteen.”

“So we brought it back here?”

“Yes, you did.” Danel was clearly now irritated with
me. His eyes tightened into slits as he stared at me.

“And it’s still here?”

“We couldn’t risk losing it again. It’s still
here.”

Aaron and I brought back the only thing that would
give those creatures a way out. I closed my eyes and shook my head
at my own stupidity. They were trying to get the box out of town
and we brought it back. I looked at Aaron and his expression
mimicked mine. We couldn’t give them the ship, even if it didn’t
activate all of them at once, it couldn’t happen and we both knew
it.

“It was supposed to be delivered to Station Ten,
where it would’ve been well protected.” Danel now closed his eyes
and sighed at the pathetic humans in front of him.

“How do they know about this ship?”

“Where are the other stations?” Aaron said before my
question was answered.

“How do they know where this ship is?” We had more
questions than we had time, so I blurted out the most important
one.

“Shouldn’t we be leaving?”

“These things are very fast. The surrounding terrain
wouldn’t allow us to keep up any speed that would outrun them. Even
if we could and my people go up to the canyon, they will be rounded
up by your government and our peaceful existence will be over and
eventually the other station would be found. I can’t risk it. You
and Aaron are welcome to try,” Danel said.

This was not what I wanted to hear. I wasn’t going to
leave Kye and Aaron wasn’t going to leave Jessica.

“We’ve contacted Station Ten; they are the closest.
Each ship has a distinct function. We are research and provide the
main food supply and they are artillery. They are on their way and
will be here in an hour and a half,” Danel said.

“Hour and a half? Those things will be here in forty
minutes.”

“I know.” His acceptance of the situation was more
than I could bear.

I remembered Kye telling me that they had no weapons
here. Surely, they had something.

“You do have some kind of weapons on this station?” I
now said, not wanting to hear anything but, “of course!”

Danel looked at Kye and Kye looked at the ground with
an expression that said it all. No weapons.

“Well, that’s great.” Defeated, I slumped back into
my chair, put my face in my hands and tried to recall how many
rounds I brought with me.

“Maybe they can’t operate the ship,” Aaron said,
trying to reassure me. There was a slight pause as Danel looked at
Collin to answer the question. Apparently, Collin had been doing
all the research on the creature.

“You know that third part of the creature’s brain
that we’re not really sure about its exact function?” Collin
said.

“Yes,” I grunted, with my face still in my hands.

“We think they can draw images from
us.”