Franky cursed and stormed back to the engine area. “Stupid piece of junk, who even designed something so prone to failure?”
He kicked one of the broken modules out of the way and searched for a good one. When he didn’t find one, he started to panic.
“No, there has to be more. I’m almost there, dammit!”
In a fit, he kicked the machine that housed the FTL devices. The device flickered back to life, and he laughed in triumph.
“Finally, something works right on this hunk of junk!”
When Franky had decided to steal the ship, he hadn’t realized just how old and worn out the vessel was, but it wasn’t like he was flush with options. At least Jacob had left replacement parts on board. If not, Franky would have been trapped in deep space until the ship’s power ran out.
It was bad enough that he had wasted over a week floating out in the middle of nowhere trying to diagnose the problem when it first cropped up. He really should have done some more research about the vessel before he stole it, but he didn’t want to risk tipping his hand to Jacob.
It was hard enough sneaking into the virtual trainer to learn how to fly the ship, and that had required him to trick the AI into thinking he was going to apply for a pilot’s certificate. It was a good thing the AI was so stupid.
Now that the engine was back online, Franky hurried to the cockpit before the drive decided to fail again. According to the ship’s computer, he was nearly at Earth. One more jump should be enough to get him there, or at least close enough to make the rest of the trip through regular space.
He didn’t even bother sitting down as he entered the cockpit. There was no point; the FTL didn’t impart inertia. He reached over and activated the drive, and the ship entered the last leg of the journey.
If the drive failed again, that would limit the cards he had to play when he arrived, but hopefully, the other systems aboard the ship would be enough to earn him the sort of status he was looking for. His original goal was to lord his new power over Earth, but he soon realized that wouldn’t be possible. The damn ship had no weapons and thus no way for him to project his newfound power, so he had to readjust his expectations. That was fine; he suspected he would still come out of the deal richer than most people.
Ideally, that wealth would come with fine women, but without a body, women didn’t have the same appeal for him as they once did, which pissed him off to no end. Still, arm candy would be nice, even if he was forced to walk around in a tin can until someone built him a better body or figured out how to transfer his mind back into a body. If a mind could be transferred out, there had to be a way to transfer one back in.
He assumed the US would present him with the best offer, but Franky wasn’t a die-hard patriot. He would sell the vessel and everything he knew to whoever gave him the best deal, no matter who that turned out to be.
As the timer quickly counted down to emergence, he finally sat in the pilot’s chair. He didn’t buckle himself in yet. Franky would do that once he knew how far away from his destination he was. He didn’t want to have to unbuckle again if some system failed and he had to kick it into operation once more.
Besides, Franky had no intention of landing on Earth, not until he secured some guarantees. That would just give the powers that be too much leverage. He would reach out to his lawyer and have the man set up whatever was needed to secure his future.
He just hoped the logs he pulled from the science drone that abducted him were accurate. He didn’t want to waste time approaching Earth from millions of miles away. Luckily, the ship’s computer asked if he wanted to adjust the last jump automatically to account for planetary movement.
That seemed like a no-brainer to him since he didn’t understand all the math involved, so he accepted.
Franky watched in anticipation as the final seconds ticked down. When the ship transitioned back into normal space, he expected to see Earth in the distance or the ship to be in orbit. He did not expect to see a cityscape rapidly rushing toward him.
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Panic flooded through him, and he reached for the controls, but he wasn’t strapped into the seat, and the gravity of the planet made his robotic form slide forward uncontrollably.
Before he could correct that or adjust his course, he slammed into the console, breaking off the control stick. Moments later, the ship crashed into Franky’s old apartment complex, tearing through the building and continuing its downward course, shearing through building after building until it finally crashed into the street below.
He wasn’t aware of any of that because the first impact had destroyed the drone and severed the power to his data storage.
***
General Daniel Roberts flipped through the news on his tablet as his Humvee sped toward Brooklyn. Three jets roared overhead moments later, temporarily drowning out the audio.
“—Reports of a terrorist attack in Brooklyn. Multiple buildings being struck by a plane—”
He flipped to the next station.
“—Eyewitnesses say the ship appeared out of nowhere!”
The next was a less reputable news outlet, but they sometimes got things right that others didn’t.
“—Alien invasion!” the talking head screamed and gesticulated wildly at a blurry cell phone image showing something crashing through one of the buildings.
He turned the news off. “What do we know so far?” He asked his chief of staff.
“Not much, General. Satellite footage shows the vessel appearing from thin air, then slamming into the apartment building moments later. Its one of the buildings flagged by Homeland Security ten months ago during that alien abduction hoax.”
“Hoax?” Daniel asked. “Does this seem like a hoax to you?”
“No, General.”
“What about our ground forces?”
“Police were the first on the scene, followed quickly by fire and rescue, then the National Guard. Marines arrived shortly after that and are setting up a perimeter.”
The conversation stopped as two military transport helicopters flew past them overhead, flanked by four Apache attack helicopters. They were all headed toward the growing smoke cloud in the distance. Daniel had been in Manhattan for an oversight committee meeting when the emergency call had come in. He was no longer a field officer, so he should be heading back to base instead of heading toward the chaos, but he had to see this mess for himself. It would also have taken longer to drive back to the base than to drive to the scene, so he made his motorcade clear a path as they sped toward Brooklyn.
“Deaths?” Daniel asked.
“Unknown at this time, General,” the chief of staff replied. “The analysts have a rough estimate of two thousand based on how many people were living and working in the buildings struck by the alien ship. The number could be higher, since we don’t know how many people were in the area during the attack.”
Whatever the news outlets decided to label it, it was a disaster.
Daniel had seen the satellite footage. It didn’t look like an attack to him because the ship radically adjusted course toward the ground after slamming into the first building. If the vessel hadn’t shifted course, it would have done far more damage before it finally crashed. To him, it looked like whoever was flying fucked up and tried to correct their mistake but didn’t have time.
“And the vessel?” he asked.
“It broke apart, but the biggest portion broke through the street and buried itself in the subway. We’re unsure if it is still intact after the impact with the ground, but our people are already collecting any loose debris. The troops are also searching people as they flee the area. Some were already caught with souvenirs. We won’t get it all, but we should contain most of the alien wreckage.
“And our allies?”
“My source in the President’s office says that some are demanding access to the site. China and Russia are demanding the same, but they have also stepped up their nuclear readiness.
“What a fucking mess,” Daniel spat.
It was bad enough that people thought the US military had aliens squirreled away in Area 51, which was patently false. The alien wreckage they dug up in the 50’s was stored in an unassuming warehouse located in Colorado. Studying what was left of that small single-occupant vessel had pushed human technology forward by quite a bit. Computer chips, touch screens, cell phones, avionics. Most of the actual tech had been trashed by age, but there was enough left to point humanity in the right direction.
Unfortunately, there was only so much the ancient ship could tell them after sitting buried in the desert for over eight centuries.
None of the remains were able to answer the question of how the ship arrived on Earth or where the pilot had gone after crashing, only that the pilot had survived and apparently wandered off or was dragged off by someone or something.
Now that an actual alien ship had crashed on US soil, things were going to become tense. Everyone was going to want access to the vessel, or at least deny the US from hoarding it. Thankfully, others would be handling those diplomatic issues. Daniel’s only concern was keeping the site secure and finding out why the aliens were there.
Homeland security might have been able to convince the populace that the abductions were a huge hoax, but that wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Having a ship appear and then crash into the same building where someone was abducted live while streaming on the internet couldn’t be a mere coincidence. “I want all of the information on the other abductees that Homeland Security is tracking. There has to be some common denominator that we’re missing.”
His chief of staff nodded and quickly sent a text. “I’ll have the data for you shortly after we arrive at the FOB.”
Daniel nodded and settled in for the rest of the drive. It was likely to be the last chance he had to relax for the foreseeable future.