Nathan Hystad - The Event

She was talking excitedly and even Natalia was grinning ear to ear.

“Let’s do this! Time to kick some alien ass!” Mary yelled, the word ass echoing down the mountain valley.

It was exciting to see her all ramped up like this, and I could still feel her lips against mine. I hoped no one noticed my red cheeks. This was no time for my emotions to get all stirred up. We had the human race to save.

“Natalia will come with me in my ship. You two go with Mary.” He clipped two small metal broaches on our collars. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t had a real shower in a few days, and my shirt, along with the rest of me, was utterly dirty.

“Nat, are you okay with that? I can go with him if you like.” Magnus walked over to her and took her hand in his. She looked tiny next to him.

She nodded and kissed him softly. I glanced over at Mary, and this time, I swear she blushed a bit.

Teelon moved to his ship. “She may have to do the flying. My time might expire before this day is through. I think I have internal bleeding, and I fear the worst. She seemed to have great understanding of flying, and I know she’ll be capable. I also showed her the weapons system, should the need arise. We’ll be able to communicate between ships; I’ve programmed that one to my frequency, which is hidden from the Kraski. You know the plan. Now let’s see this through.”

Mary explained how Teelon had implanted knowledge of the ship into their brains with a small cable. There was a small dab of blood on the side of her forehead. I couldn’t believe they could just download data into a human like that, but Teelon assured us the process had been tested, since the hybrids had need of the technology as well. Apparently, the data transfer wasn’t perfected, because Mary said there was a lot of it she didn’t quite understand, like the translation was cut short. Natalia nodded as she explained it.

“But you’re confident enough to fly it, right?” I asked, hoping we didn’t need to rely on the dying alien beside us. I wished there was something one of us could do, but we weren’t doctors, and internal bleeding wasn’t something we could help with.

“Yeah, I can do this for sure,” she said confidently.

“You got it, Teelon,” I said. “We’re ready.”

We lifted the heavy Shield to underneath the ship, and on Teelon’s word, we pressed the little metal buttons pinned to our shirts. The green light shone down again, and I was glad I had moved the pendant from under my shirt. It was glowing red hot. I could see Mary’s ring around her neck, plunging down her dirty tank top. It burned a hot green too. We floated upwards and it was the strangest feeling.

So this was what everyone had felt when they were taken less than a week ago, only for them, it was massively terrifying. For me, it was only mildly terrifying. I’d never been a huge fan of heights, but I could deal with them. I didn’t mind being on the Empire State Building or at the top of a ski hill, but the feeling of floating up, with no control and nothing under my feet, was a whole new level of odd.

Magnus seemed to be doing okay, and he was carrying the Shield device by himself, his huge arms bulging at the weight. I felt embarrassed to just be carrying the pack with water and food, and Carey nestled into my neck. He panted scared breaths on me as we rose. Mary was smiling wide, like it was the best ride ever. The view from here was undeniably gorgeous, but it was hard to focus on it at the time. Moments passed, the ground got farther away, and then we approached the ship. My instincts were to stretch my hands out over my head to keep from hitting myself on the ship’s underside. Instead, my hands just went through the wall, and soon my head did too.

It was the strangest feeling to move through matter like that. It was a technology Earth had never seen before, and I wondered when this was all over if we would have a new ally with Teelon’s people, the Deltra. There was so much we could learn from them.

My body emerged into the ship, and before that moment, I hadn’t really thought what the inside of one of them would look like. It was dimly lit, and the only detectable scent was the musk of us humans. The room we came into was quite spacious and had storage compartments lining the metal walls. The floor was also metal, polished smooth and shiny.

“Teelon adjusted the air levels to be breathable to us. They and the Kraski have similar breathing element percentages as we do, which biologically is extremely interesting. My father would love to learn more about that.” Mary paused at that, as if she just remembered her father was somewhere up in space at that moment. “I hope he’s okay. This way, guys.”

“Dean, wanna give me a hand with this thing?” Magnus asked.

I grabbed an end and we lowered it to the ground, away from the tractor beam, or whatever it was called. Anywhere on this ship would be safe. All we had to do was make sure it stayed turned on, as long as we got it onto their mother ship.

We followed Mary down a hall. The whole place had an ominous, sterile feeling to me, and I had a flashback to Janine’s time in the hospital. I shook it off as we approached what could only be described as the cockpit. There were two seats facing a large dashboard of glowing controls. Otherwise, there was room to stand, and not a lot else.

“How do we see out?” I asked, and Mary hit a button, causing the wall in front of us to go transparent. The viewing port was at least ten feet across and four feet high. We could see for miles down the mountain, and the Peru day was shaping up to be a beautiful one with clear skies, but we wouldn’t be here to enjoy it.

“Wow. Are you sure you can fly this thing?” Magnus asked.

“I’m Air Force. Of course I can,” she said with a smirk. She was sexy when she went all cocky like that. She tapped a button and told us it was for communication. Magnus settled into the seat and held it down.

“Nat, Teelon, we’re ready to fly the coop. Are you guys good? Over.”

There was no crackle, just a clear, crisp voice. “We’re good. Follow us up. We’ll lead the way.”

The smaller ship hovered above us and soon we were jutting after it. The ride was a little bumpy.

“Well, I said I can fly it. Just takes a while to get used to the thrusters. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. No visible exhaust points… it’s almost like there are little thrusters all around the ship, so you can hover and move any direction, with more accuracy than a helicopter. It’s amazing,” Mary said, excited.

We rose up and the land below us got smaller and smaller.

“I always wanted to become an astronaut someday. I know it sounds silly, but a lot of them come from an Air Force background. I didn’t have the required degree to make the switch, but it had always been an idea I’d had. That maybe one day I would go back to school. The government would pay for it. Then I’d apply with NASA.”

“Well, now you get to do something even better. Fly in space and save the world. That’s all in a day’s work for Mary Lafontaine.” I could tell she smiled when I said this just by the movement of the back of her head.

We rose higher and higher, picking up speed as we went.

“Why are they going to just let us board again?” Magnus asked.

“Teelon used their communicators from the ship and told them there was an issue with the device being shut down. That the three Kraski were coming back because they were exposed to it and needed medical attention. He’s sure they’ll send another ship or two down to investigate things, but by that time, we’ll have dealt with them.”

“They must really think Teelon’s people are docile if they let them roam around in their own ships,” I suggested.