Katherine knocked on the door and waited.
She glanced at the sensor in her vision, and yup, the agents who had brought her were still standing around, keeping watch. It was annoying to be chaperoned like this, but she wasn’t really given much of a choice in the matter.
The US government made it a condition before they allowed her to speak with her former friends. They were afraid that some psychopath would take a shot at her or try to kidnap the drone or that she might cause problems. They didn’t care about her or the drone; they cared about the deal they were trying to cook up with Jacob.
Not that she would let someone attempt such a thing without getting her own licks in or that it was even likely to happen, considering the drones were quite heavy. The extra bulk was nice, although she did miss her body. At least they weren’t locking her up and experimenting on her.
She knocked again, this time harder. “Sally! I know you’re in there, I just want to talk!”
Katherine followed the thermal signature of her reluctant former friend as the woman finally unlocked the front door.
“So, Gretchen wasn’t lying, you really are alive?”
“I am,” Katherine admitted.
“Why come here?” Sally demanded. “Have you come to rub this in my face the same way you did with your other successes?”
Katherine winced at that. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for every horrible thing I did to you.”
“Is that supposed to be an apology?” Sally asked. “I was your best friend since grade school, but the moment you got any success, you turned into a fucking monster. Then, when I tried to tell you to stop letting people control who you were, you told me I was jealous and cut ties with me. I thought, fine, you don’t want to listen, that’s on you, but you couldn’t even let the fact that I moved on go, could you? The snarky texts, tagging me every time your little cosplays got featured. I even changed my number and blocked you, but you still found a way to send me every one of your achievements. So no, I’m not going to accept that poor excuse for an apology, or any from you, so kindly…FUCK OFF, and stay out of my life.”
Her childhood best friend slammed the door in her face, and Katherine turned around and walked back to the car.
That put Katherine’s attempts at mending bridges at zero out of four, and she suspected the rest weren’t going to go much better. At least Sally hadn’t said that she was glad this happened to her. To be fair, Gretchen’s hostility had been warranted, since Katherine had slept with her boyfriend just to prove that she could take him from her anytime she wanted.
She really was an awful fucking human being. Why had it taken an alien abduction and the destruction of her body to get her to see that?
As she got in the back of the black SUV, she debated giving up apologizing and just going back to the station. It would be so easy to leave behind her past life and make something new, but that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She had always done the easy thing, and look at where that got her.
With reluctance, she provided the next address on her list. Maybe her estranged parents would be a bit more understanding.
***
Politics suck!
Jacob groaned as he looked into the mirror, his eyes dark and baggy, making him appear as if he hadn’t slept properly in weeks. With a sigh, he stopped his little pity party and restored his normal resemblance. He didn’t get tired, but he wished he could, because the governmental entities on Earth had been dragging their feet for the last three months about how to handle the distribution of alien knowledge Jacob was willing to provide. None of them could agree on a course of action, and he hadn’t even gotten to the types of technologies he was willing to help them develop.
The original meeting he had at the twelve colleges had been filled with jockeying, but the minutiae that came after were so much worse. If it hadn’t been for his ability to escape back to the station and work while they argued and debated endlessly, he would have had a second mental break that would have made the first one he went through while alone aboard Melody look like a nice evening nap in comparison.
While he wanted to remain civil, his patience was hitting a wall. He had shit to do and needed to collect the data cores. The only reason he had refrained from swooping in and grabbing them so far was that the US had agreed to let him inspect the recovered ship and other artifacts shortly after the initial summit. Jacob was surprised to see just how much of the vessel had survived. It had crashed through multiple buildings after all.
While the ship’s propulsion, reactor, and FTL systems had experienced extreme damage, most of Franky’s data storage cubes had survived the impact.
It hadn’t taken scientists long to figure out what the cubes’ functions were. When Jacob arrived at the research facility, the first thing he saw was Franky’s glitchy and confused avatar on the monitors. The man’s consciousness had survived, but there was certainly something wrong with him. Losing chunks of your memory could certainly have that effect.
Jacob could have rescued him then and there, but he decided to leave the man. It was a fitting punishment for what he had done, and honestly, Jacob wasn’t sure what he was going to do with Franky. He didn’t even know if rebuilding his mind was an option, or if that was something he wanted to pursue. Returning Franky to his old self would just mean having to deal with the old Franky once again. This might actually be an opportunity to make Franky a better person.
Stolen novel; please report.
Tinkering with the man’s mind was something he would have to consider carefully.
When he visited the research facility, he also learned about the attack from one of the scientists after making an offhand comment that some of the storage cubes looked to be missing. The man hadn’t known much, so he was heading somewhere to get the full story.
Jacob’s watch beeped, and he looked at the time; his drone was arriving at the White House. The President had finally agreed to an in-person meeting, and Jacob had some questions that needed answers.
Jacob replaced his avatar in the drone just as the vehicle stopped. He got out of the SUV, thankful that he had ditched the space suit. While they had scans of his body, and knew it was robotic, seeing just how crude it was actually surprised many people. Aside from the power core, maybe a couple of the sensors, data storage, and communication systems, Earth had comparable robotics tech and even some that were superior. Now, Barry’s drones might have turned some heads, but probably less than he assumed after seeing some of the other secret projects squirreled away at the research center.
To think that humanity had found a crashed Concord fighter buried in the Arizona desert for over a thousand years. It told Jacob that Concord knew about Earth and its inhabitants long before Melody was set to arrive.
Jacob knew it was a Concord ship because it was comprised of the same bronze-colored alloy as the transport. The US had managed to reproduce the alloy in recent years, thanks to metallurgical advancements, but it was top-secret and was slated to be used as the hull material for a new hypersonic plane that was set to replace the SR-71 Blackbird. That was all thanks to the thermal resistance and stability of the material—which the scientists had named BX-94—that far exceeded that of titanium.
He wasn’t surprised that the first application of such a material was for a military aircraft. He wondered what they would name the stuff Melody was composed of? It was the spiritual successor to the BX-94, so maybe BX-100? Jacob liked round numbers, so yeah.
Jacob cut off those errant thoughts as he was led into the Oval Office. President McConnell rose from his seat and offered his hand, but then seemed to think better of it. Before he could retract the offer, Jacob reached out and shook it gently, which finally relieved the tension in the room and got the Secret Service guards to relax slightly. They still held their fingers on odd devices tucked into their overcoats, which were probably designed to render the drone inoperable, but Jacob didn’t mind.
“Please have a seat.” The President gestured to a very sturdy-looking chair that must have been brought in for this meeting, because it clashed with the other décor.
Jacob obliged, and he wondered if he had ever voted for the man sitting across from him. He couldn’t recall voting at all, so that memory was gone, not that it truly mattered anymore.
“We finally get to meet face to face,” the President said, smiling. “So, what did you wish to discuss?”
“I’ll tell you as soon as the other party arrives.”
The President seemed confused. “I think I would recall adding someone else to this meeting agenda.”
A knock came at the door, and a Secret Service agent entered. “Mr. President, Daniel Roberts is here.”
“Wha—”
“—Send him in,” Jacob spoke over the president, earning a flicker of annoyance from the leader before his politician smile returned. “I took the liberty of inviting him.”
An older man, with a grey buzz cut and deep frown lines, stepped into the room wearing a casual business suit. He stopped momentarily to take in the scene. “Mr. President, I’m not sure why I’m here.”
“Neither am I,” the President added tersely. “Jacob, care to explain why you invited a retired military officer to the white house?”
“Uh-huh, retired,” Jacob replied sarcastically. “I know all about why the Major General was asked to retire.”
The President shifted slightly in discomfort, but didn’t deny Jacob’s words, so he continued. “As to why he’s here, well, he refused to speak to me over the phone and told homeland security that someone was trying to get state secrets out of him, so I had to do something else to get his attention.”
“You called me at three in the morning asking about top-secret information. What the hell did you think I was going to do?” Roberts demanded.
“Why are you trying to get information out of the former General?” President McConnell asked in concern.
“I was able to put bits and pieces about what happened in Brooklyn together, but I need to know exactly what transpired,” Jacob admitted.
Roberts looked to the president for approval, and McConnell sighed before nodding.
What followed was a textbook military report from the older man, who was still standing at parade rest.
When the man finished the story, Jacob sighed in annoyance. “I thought as much, but I had been hoping I was wrong.”
“Wrong about what?” the President asked.
“Let me ask you a question instead,” Jacob said. “Has the US sent any of the alien artifacts to a company in California called Redline Dynamics?”
“No…but Redline is one of the nation’s biggest providers of military hardware,” the president replied. “Why?”
“I believe they were responsible for the attack,” Jacob said.
The president shook his head and laughed. “That’s not possible. They have multi-billion-dollar contracts with the US Department of Defense. Our research into the artifacts would have made it to them first.”
The President had just lied to him. Did he know something? Jacob decided to continue as if he didn’t know the man was lying.
“I can assure you, it is possible, Mr. President. When I was dropping off my drone at Stanford, my ship detected a stockpile of the material that the ship and its components are made from underneath Redline’s campus in Silicon Valley.”
Jacob chose to hide the fact that he could detect the material from pretty much anywhere on Earth.
There was a creaking sound, and Jacob glanced over to see Roberts clenching his jaw tight in anger.
“Sit down and relax, Daniel,” the president said with a sigh. “You’ll blow a god damn blood vessel at your age.” He waited for the former general to comply before turning to face Jacob again. “What you say is troubling, Jacob, but I can’t just take your word for it. I’ll have to forward the issue to Homeland Security so they can open an investigation.”
“I’m not asking for you to open an investigation, Mr. President. I’ll recover the items myself.”
“Now, listen, son. I can’t allow you to go traipsing across our nation doing as you please. We have laws.”
“I wasn’t asking for your permission, either,” Jacob said. “I wouldn’t have even told you about my plan if General Roberts had taken my call. My ship has already arrived at the target location to retrieve the stolen goods. I’m just here as a courtesy to give you a heads-up. I hope this doesn’t impact our talks. Oh, speaking of, you and the other leaders have,” Jacob mimed looking at a watch. “Five days to reach a consensus, and then I’m leaving the system.”
Damn, it felt good to be on the other side of the power divide for a change. Jacob left an avatar behind as the president went on about the legal ramifications of such an action and was now plummeting through the air in the combat drone.