As they descended through the atmosphere, Jacob realized a big flaw in his plan. The other nations didn’t want countries like Russia and China to get their hands on the ship, and fighters had been launched from every conceivable military airport around to intercept them.
Not wanting to kick off even more hostilities, Jacob quickly calculated the location where he wanted to go, then he stopped the ship’s descent and transitioned into the center of Red Square.
People screamed and scrambled away as the ship appeared fifteen meters overhead and started lowering quickly. Jacob opened the back ramp a few feet from the ground, and one of the drones awkwardly climbed out.
Once the drone was safely on the surface, Jacob brought the ship back up to fifteen meters, then transitioned to Beijing, then back down to Tiananmen Square, where a similar scene unfolded.
He was gone again before the local military forces could respond to the drones he left behind, and the next time he appeared, he was somewhere over Nevada.
Jacob almost expected to hear a snide or snarky comment from Katherine, but she had gone back to the station, not at all interested in the political necessities required to collect Franky. He couldn’t blame her; he didn’t want to go through all this bullshit either, but this mess was partly his fault, and while he despised Franky, the man didn’t deserve to be dissected and studied.
He wouldn’t call this a rescue operation, however. It was more like retrieving a fugitive. Once Franky was secured, he would be banned from using drones or accessing station resources until he proved himself, which wasn’t going to be easy considering all the nonsense he pulled.
As he was trying to get his bearings in Nevada, a part of him focused on the two windows connected to the drones. The Russians were pointing AKs at him and screaming for him to get on the ground, while the Chinese military had surrounded his drone with armored vehicles, and seemed to be waiting for someone with more authority to tell them what to do.
It was an odd juxtaposition between the two communist nations.
A third window showed the positions of all of the aerial combatants. He winced because his actions hadn’t been quick enough to stop the fighting. Thankfully, it looked like all of the opponents were now withdrawing since he was no longer in the area.
According to the communications that he was intercepting, nobody was all that happy about what he had done, but he hadn’t dropped off drones blindly. He had programmed the sensors on the ship to look for the transport and its very unique alloy that was used in most Concord technology. It had picked up five distinct locations across the globe.
There was the main crash site in Brooklyn, another in Russia, deep in Siberia. The third was in the Hengduan Mountains in China. The US seemed to have a cache of items stored in Colorado, while the last, and second largest signal came from Silicon Valley. Jacob didn’t know why parts of the ship were scattered across the globe, but he didn’t want anyone to know that he knew where every piece of the ship was.
What he did notice was that Area 51 didn’t house a single spec of the alien technology. What it did have was a lot of anti-air defenses and military forces, all waiting for him to land. The President wasn’t even there. The man had never left his bunker below the White House.
Instead of dropping into the middle of the trap, Jacob appeared over the Vegas strip. Unlike the other appearances, folks there were taking out their phones, snapping pictures, and just staring in awe while he descended.
Another suited drone stepped out of the vessel, and when Jacob rose above the buildings this time, he reappeared near the moon.
“That should keep them from getting any funny ideas,” he said with a chuckle as he focused mainly on the drone in Vegas.
The others had been taken into custody, which was exactly as he had predicted. He hoped that once they realized the drones were just robots, they would move them to the same facility as the other alien signals.
Jacob didn’t actually care if those countries had components from the ship, but he did need to verify what they did have. Hopefully, they would show him willingly; if not, he would put Barry’s new programming to the test and see if his drone modifications were worth the effort.
Predictably, the crowd in Vegas swarmed his drone once they realized he wasn’t there to hurt them.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Are you truly an alien?” an extremely drunk woman yelled.
Damn, lady, it’s not even noon.
“No,” Jacob replied.
His response opened the floodgates, and he was bombarded with all sorts of questions. Most of the questions he was happy to answer. Eventually, the military showed up and pushed the crowd back. Once some space was made, an annoyed-looking soldier approached him.
“The President is awaiting your arrival back at Area 51,” the humorless soldier replied.
“Sorry about that,” Jacob chuckled. “I’ve never been to Vegas. I figured I would visit before you locked me up and threw away the key.”
The soldier didn’t even blink at the accusation; he simply gestured to a black armored SUV, and while none of the guards had pointed weapons at him, that didn’t mean he didn’t have weapons pointed at him. His sensors picked up at least twelve lasers aimed in his direction, not to mention two military helicopters circling overhead, their weapons trained on him as well.
Jacob stepped inside the SUV without hesitation, and the door shut and locked behind him. The back was completely walled off from the front of the vehicle, but Jacob could see the driver’s thermal signature through the thick steel box surrounding him.
***
By the time they were done trying to obscure his whereabouts, he had been moved for nearly a full day. It was all completely pointless, since he could track the drone’s signal and knew he was in the same Colorado facility as the transport parts, but it was interesting to see how much effort the US government put into hiding his location.
When he was finally let out of the SUV, he found himself in a rather large and windowless room. There weren’t even any doors that he could see, which slightly complicated matters and made him wonder how they had gotten him and the SUV in there or the driver back out.
He found his answer in the high ceiling overhead. Two thick doors closed in the center, a good ten meters up.
“Was all of this really necessary?” Jacob asked into the empty room.
He didn’t actually expect a response, but a loudspeaker near the ceiling blared to life. “This is for our safety and yours,” a feminine voice replied. “You lied to us.”
“How so?” Jacob asked as he looked around the room. It wasn’t empty as he first thought. He spotted a bed that was welded to the floor, as well as a small table and a single chair, both secured to the floor, much like the bed. The chair seat did rotate, so that was nice of them.
“You said you were human, but our scans show that isn’t true. What are you?”
“Hmm,” Jacob replied. “I don’t recall ever saying that I was going to appear in person. You must have misunderstood. I can explain if you would like to talk face to face, so to speak, but until then, I think I’ll just sit here and wait silently. I’m a pretty patient dude.”
The woman tried to ask him more questions, but Jacob just ignored her. She sounded extremely curious, and he suspected they would give in before he did. Since the US drone was locked up, he focused on the drone in Russia. They hadn’t moved it to the same location as the Concord materials, which was annoying. He would have to bring the ship in closer to that site to scan it in more detail. That could wait, however. Unlike the US, the Russians were actively interrogating him.
He had been giving them the same answers for over a day, but they didn’t seem happy with his responses and had yet to go forward with their threats to dissect him. A lot of that hesitation had to do with just how terrified everyone who spoke with him was.
Jacob didn’t quite get why people were so damn afraid. Sure, he had arrived aboard an alien ship capable of travelling between stars, but it wasn’t like he had taken a single hostile action since arriving. The only thing he had done was defend himself against the satellite weapon.
Maybe that was why the Russians were so worried, or maybe it was just the thought that an alien race could arrive at any moment, and there was nothing Earth could do that freaked them out so much? Not that anyone would come. Earth was just another planet, and there were trillions of those. It was also deep inside the Dead Zone, making it a less-than-appealing planet to live on, even if the races of the Astryx were willing to conquer it. Jacob didn’t think that was likely to happen, however. As a council of species, they seemed more likely to integrate new species.
Seeing as Jacob wasn’t getting anywhere with the Russians, he moved to the Chinese. They had been the most diplomatic, which Jacob found odd. That didn’t mean he hadn’t been locked up. They had moved him to the same mountain fortress as the alien materials, which made things easier, and so far, they had only asked him basic questions.
“Why are you here, Jacob?” the slim Chinese interrogator asked.
“I’m glad you asked. I’m here to collect someone. I’m sure you’re familiar with the crash in Brooklyn?”
“So this was a friend of yours?”
“Not exactly. It’s complicated, but I do need to collect him.”
“Then why come to China, Jacob?” the man asked. “We do not have any of the alien wreckage or a body to give you.”
“I thought we agreed not to lie to each other?” Jacob asked.
Before the interrogator could respond, Jacob held up a hand. The chain attached to it rattled against the desk, but Jacob ignored that. “I don’t care that you have parts from the ship. I just need to verify they aren’t specific components. If you agree to let me scan the items you collected, you can keep everything else, and I’ll be on my way. I might even be inclined to help you puzzle out how to make your own.”
The man seemed to be concerned about his request, so Jacob tossed that last item in there to sweeten the deal.
“I’ll need to speak with my superiors,” the interrogator finally replied.
“I’ll wait,” Jacob said.
Once the Chinese interrogator left, Jacob moved most of his focus back to the ship and continued to study the fifth site in Silicon Valley to see if he could narrow it down.
He was still intercepting all sorts of communications, but nothing he read so far indicated that the US or the other governments were working with anyone outside of the government. He would need to ask about that when they finally came to speak with him, because he needed to inspect every site and recover all of the data storage cubes.