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I heaved a sigh of relief and dropped to my knees. He heard me. He listened.
A low chuckle from the AARO agent sent another chill through me. I’d always thought he was creepy, but this was a whole other level of disturbing. It was like he got some sick pleasure out of catching the Xalanites, something bordering on perversion. This sicko got off on the power trip from it all.
“Your unconditional surrender, for one thing. The location of any allies you might have hidden around here. And a direct line of communication to your superiors.”
Q’on’s superiors? Since he’d been exiled, he didn’t really have any superiors. The old leaders who kicked him off-planet had been unseated, and things hadn’t settled enough on Xalan for a new leader to emerge. Agent Wilson had no way of knowing this, of course, making Q’on’s next move tricky. If he admitted to the current political situation on Xalan, Agent Wilson might get ideas about taking over. If he lied about who his superiors were, the agent might sense that he wasn’t being truthful, and he might order his men to fire.
It was a total shitshow.
“This doesn’t bode well for relations between our people,” Hunir said, shaking his head. He stood beside me, watching the vital signs of the Xalanites on a display panel. They didn’t have video surveillance with them, so he monitored the scene this way.
I whirled around and stood, poking him in the chest with a finger. “Are you seriously worrying about politics at a time like this? He’s going to take them apart bit by bit just to figure out how you guys work! We should be focusing on getting them out of there, not how we’re going to patch things up between our species.”
He blinked slowly at me, totally unfazed. “Would the one not serve the other?”
“What are you talking about?”
Hunir shrugged. “If our species’ relations were doing well, your leaders would not allow this agent to harm Xalanites, correct?”
I froze mid-comeback as realization hit. “That’s actually brilliant!” I leaned in to the comm panel and spoke into it like an intercom mic, forgetting that I didn’t need to do that. “Q’on, baby, promise me you’ll behave until I can get you out of there. No fighting back, no name calling, just toe the line and do what they say. Can you do that?”
“You call him a child?”
Waving at Hunir to be quiet, I waited with bated breath for Q’on to respond. I couldn’t explain what I had in mind because I had no idea how long it would take me to accomplish my little half-baked rescue plan. He just had to trust me.
When Q’on’s voice echoed again, calm and even, I finally allowed myself to breathe.
“We will comply. It will take some time to arrange to meet your demands, but we will not fight back.”
“Thank you, Q’on. We’ve gotta go for a bit, but we’ll be back for you guys. Just hang in there.” Turning back to Hunir, I pointed at the navigation controls. “Sorry, dude, but you just volunteered yourself to be a diplomat. We’re going to have to leave for a while. If I give you directions, can you fly us where I need us to go?”
He nodded, and I rushed to give him instructions. We had one stop to make before we went to our final destination. I needed a smartphone and wi-fi access, so we had to find a small, out-of-the-way town where he could drop me off at a store. Once I had those things, we’d be set.
***
To my dismay, the range of the Xalanites’ comms was limited inside Earth’s atmosphere. Hunir explained that there was too much interference from our “primitive human devices” for them to maintain the signal more than a few dozen miles away. The only reason Q’on’s signal had made it to his friends on Xalan seemed to be that their signals were designed to travel faster in open space, away from anything that could jam them. We couldn’t listen in to what was happening at the AARO facility once we left the area. My nerves tied themselves up in knots while Hunir flew us to my goal:
The Capitol.
Yep. My dumb ass decided we were flying straight to the President. No wasting time with middlemen or lower-ranked politicians. Can’t go to the governor with this pardon; we had to go to the top. Here in the good ol’ U. S. of A., that meant the White House.
Through some random stroke of luck—whether that luck was good or bad remained to be seen—the internet informed me of a press conference being held by the President that very afternoon. Later than I was hoping for, but if fate was on our side, there would be congressmen, delegates, and press arriving throughout the morning in preparation. All we had to do was get their attention.
What better way to get the attention of the public than dropping a spaceship on the White House lawn?
Risky? Oh, hell, yes. It was risky as fuck, but it was the only plan I had. Odds were about even that we’d be shot on sight versus welcomed as envoys of Xalan, but what choice was there? We had to do something big to pull this off, something public. The AARO had less of a chance of pulling some sneaky clandestine bullshit if we popped out of the ship in broad daylight.
Before we landed, while we still orbited above the White House, I instructed Hunir on making himself look as harmless as possible. He removed all his weapons, and I even made him take off the medical devices he carried as a Xalanite field medic. We couldn’t risk the humans assuming one of those was a weapon as well, so off they went. No sharp objects, no electronics, nothing suspicious. Just basic clothes and shoes. Simple. Non-threatening.
I hoped that my arriving with him would help. I mean, if he’s got a willing human companion, he can’t be all bad, right? I even bought some normal clothes while I was picking up the phone, so I didn’t show up in Xalanite garb. The more human I seemed, the better. If I’d been wearing alien clothing, they might assume I’m a sympathizer or hypnotized or some other crazy shit.
The whole time we spent on this nutty plan, I fretted. What if we were too late already? What if they had started to autopsy Q’on while we were trying to save him? I didn’t know how long Agent Wilson would hold off in the hopes of speaking with the Xalanite leaders. That dangling carrot might not distract him for long. And once I allowed myself to think about it, I realized he only neededonelive Xalanite hostage to bargain with. The AARO had four bargaining chips. Three spares. We were playing Russian Roulette with Q’on’s life, and it terrified me.
My palms sweat as Hunir navigated the ship into position to land. Since it had more control and maneuverability than a human space shuttle, we planned on dropping straight out of orbit and onto the lawn. Bold, dramatic, and totally unmistakable. No one was going to say this was CGI or faked, especially not with all the press cameras I saw below us.
Well, okay, there might be some conspiracy nuts who will say it’s faked. But the majority will see it on live stream and realize shit’s going down.
First, the tiny little dots of people below us scattered beneath the shadow of the ship. Then, the Xalanite comm system picked up on the screams and shouts as we neared the ground. I hoped we weren’t giving any senior citizen visitors of the White House a coronary event with our surprise arrival. Finally, the military and Secret Service swarmed out of the building, creating a protective ring around the landing zone. They aimed a variety of weapons at the ship, but I’d already instructed Hunir to exit with his palms pressed to the back of his head. He didn’t like the idea of starting our negotiations with a surrendering pose, but I warned him that tough as his scales may be, our projectiles could probably tear right through them.
