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“Good luck to you both,” she said as she walked around her desk.
“Please come with us,” Ice said. “I have so many questions.”
Alana sat down and nodded. “Sure, how about you go fix your little ship and come back to see me when you’re all cloaked up again, okay?” She opened her laptop and decided to pointedly ignore them until they left.
Storm tapped his watch a few times. “Sir, His Venerable believes it might have been sabotage. We have to go before the ship is discovered.”
“I’m sorry, Alana,” Ice said. “You may be the key to my planet’s survival. We need your help.”
Alana sighed and looked up at Ice, about to tell him to go take a flying leap off his uncloaked ship and leave her alone. But he waved his hand in front of her face, and the world went black.
Chapter Three
Ice should have considered his actions a little more carefully before he incapacitated Alana. Now they had to take an unconscious woman outside and walk with her all the way to their ship. It would have been much better if he’d persuaded her to go with them. There just hadn’t been time.
Storm moved to lift her from the chair and scooped her up into his arms. “We must hurry.”
“I have a hard time believing that no one will find it suspicious if you carry her like that the entire way.” And they’d be right. It was suspicious, because they were essentially kidnapping this woman.
“What choice do we have?” Storm said, already at the door.
Ice wanted to argue, but Storm was right. If they could be sure that their particle beam would work in earth’s atmosphere, they could be aboard the ship in seconds. As it was, they couldn’t take the risk. They didn’t have time to worry about appearances. They could almost certainly outrun any humans, but he wasn’t sure about their weaponry. If they moved fast enough, perhaps that wouldn’t be an issue.
They left the shop and walked away quickly, just short of running. A man walking a dog watched them coming and asked, “What’s going on?”
Already someone was suspicious. That wasn’t good.
Storm shook his head. “My female companion fainted. We must get her medical attention quickly.”
The man frowned and pulled out a communication device. Ice fought the urge to rub his nose.
“Did you call nine-one-one?” the man said.
“No time,” Storm said. As the man started to protest, he waved a hand in front of his face, letting the disruptor chip in the palm of his hand render the man unconscious.
As soon as they reached the edge of the paved street, they ran. Storm only had to use the chip with two more people, both in a park. They located the cloaked mobile cruiser and rushed to it. They had to leave before the humans took notice.
With hurried urgency, they
boarded the compact cruiser. Ice strapped an unconscious Alana in an empty seat as Commander Storm prepared to take off. Her head lolled on her shoulder, and her dark silky hair caught his attention. A person with dark hair was almost non-existent in Crimea. Centuries of tinkering and perfecting their genetic material led to the extinction of certain traits. Alana is beautiful, he thought to himself. Strange, new feelings curled out on the back of his head; feelings to which he was totally unaccustomed. But Storm’s curses pulled him back into reality, sobering him at the urgency of their situation.
Ice quickly took his seat and strapped himself in. The cruiser’s engine hummed quietly and a second later, with a shiver and renewed jolt, they lifted off, slicing through Earth’s atmosphere with supersonic speed towards the Campania.
They all stared at the evidence with great dismay. The ambassador and the high-ranking crew members crowded the Command Station at the Campania’s main bridge. The alert that Grim had sent during the first-contact mission was even more dire than Ice had anticipated.
Ambassador Grim wrung his hands in exasperation. “It has to be sabotage,” he declaimed. “If one thing had gone wrong, I’d consider that pure chance. But look at everything that’s happened.”
A short-haired Crimean lieutenant with turquoise eyes snapped to attention. Lieutenant Eagle Windbane, Campania’s XO touched the screen and brought up another display. “There’s more. Our fuel reserves. Someone manipulated the manifest and gauges to appear that we departed with full capacity. Earlier, the maintenance team checked the reserves manually and noted the discrepancy in weight and usage. At present, we’re flying with low reserves.”
“What about backup fuel?”
“That also had been rendered obsolete. We’ve been given utility compact energy instead of ship fuel.”
Ice regretted kidnapping Alana even more now. Not only would she not be able to help his planet, she would most likely die with them in the cold void of space. Damn, there was so much he wanted to ask the female human now that he had his hands on a genuine live specimen. Humans. The holy grail of their civilization.
“Our mission,” Storm said, “is to bring back knowledge that will save our civilization. We may not have enough fuel to get home, but we have to find a way to complete the mission. It is imperative that we not fail.”
“If I may, Commander?” Rain asked timidly.
