The Black Planet (7 page)

Chapter 12

Kelly walked into the room.  Special walls had been constructed and painted to prevent the occupants going blind.  They sat with plastic bottles of water in front of them in silence.  One glanced his way but the man’s eyes were glazed over.  Kelly’s eyes ran over the eight of them in their tight fitting one piece suits that were a lighter colour than the crews.  He tried to sum them up; pretty came to mind, then handsome, beautiful.  They were all that and more; they were perfect specimens of humanity.  Now they were in shock.  They had barely been able to say much since they had been released.  Two of the women had actually fainted when they were told where they actually were.

He moved round to the top of the table and slammed the butt of his tommy gun onto its surface.  He had their attention now.  He turned to the biggest man who was sitting nearest him.  ‘What's your name fellar?’

The mans eyes began to glaze over and he looked away; he didn’t even see Kelly move.  Kelly slammed his head off the table, ‘don’t bloody ignore me boy, what's your bloody name.’  He barely gave the man time to answer before back handing him across the face and tipping him off the chair onto the floor.  ‘What's your fucking name, he screamed and kicked the guy in the guts.  The man began to retch but Kelly picked him up and slammed his head into the table again, ‘so help me god if you don’t answer my bloody question I am going to wring your scrawny neck like a chicken.’

‘Bloody hell,’ the man gasped, ‘Liddell, me names Liddell for god’s sake.’

‘Irish eh, black bog Irish I’ll bet.’

‘OH god!’

Kelly let him go and snapped his head round to the next man, ‘what the hell’s your name boy?’

‘Asher sir.’  The man was trembling as were all of the remainder of the group.

‘First name?’

‘Joe, Joe Asher sir.’

‘American huh.’

‘Milwaukee.’

‘Any English folk here?’  A very beautiful and cultured voice asked.

She was by far the best looking woman Kelly had ever seen in his life, he grinned, ‘what's your name kitten?’

She looked away as if trying to ignore him but Kelly was one of those people you just didn’t ignore.  Her eyes swung back.  ‘Lady Jane Montgomery Royce.’

‘A real lady huh?’

‘I most certainly am.’  She stuck her nose in the air in an autocratic manner that left him speechless.

Just then the doctor appeared, ‘what the hell do you think you are doing man?  I was told you were trying to kill someone.’  She saw the injured man and rushed over, ‘these people are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, they need peace and quiet, not a mad man yelling at them.’

‘Bollocks, they need a good kick up the arse is all.  I've seen this; whatever the hell you call it many times Doc, I know what I am doing.’

‘Really!’

‘Yup, you ever seen it before?’

‘Ah no actually!’

‘We called it shellshock, hell I've suffered from it a time or two myself.  A good hard kicking always sorts it out.’

She stood straight with her hands on her hips staring him right in the eyes, ‘you don’t say!  Well it doesn’t seem to be working very well does it now sergeant.’

‘Worked on me,’ growled the Irishman touching the inside of his mouth with his tongue.

Amanda jumped a little in surprise, ‘oh!’  Suddenly she noticed all of them were watching her carefully their eyes alert.

‘Excuse me dear, is that a British accent?’  Asked one of the women.

‘Uh, yes it is, Scottish.’

‘How nice,’ she smiled, ‘could you possibly fetch me a cup of tea dear?’

Amanda was shocked for a moment, ‘it’s not what I do here.’

‘Really, you're not a maid, how strange.  Never mind what is it you do?’

Amanda turned to face the woman, ‘I am a doctor, a surgeon.’

The woman looked shock, ‘you jest surely?’

Amanda found herself getting annoyed, ‘no I don’t jest.’  She turned her attention back to Kelly, ‘actually you seem to be doing quite a good job here sergeant, why don’t I just leave you to it.’

Kelly grinned, ‘sure thing Doc.’

One of the men began asking questions in a strange accent while one of the women began asking questions in French.  ‘What are they saying?’  Amanda asked.

The Sarge shrugged, ‘hell if I know.’

Lady Jane said something in fluent French and sent a scathing look at the pair of them, ‘she wants to know where her family is?’

Amanda turned her attention back to Kelly, ‘give me five minutes will you sergeant, I will go fetch some translators.’

‘Sure thing Doc,’ as she left he turned his attention back to the French woman, ‘tell her we have no idea.  If they were with her at the time there is a chance they may be here somewhere in one of those sleeping pods.’ 

‘Cup of tea sounds right nice about now,’ mused the Irish man.

Kelly sighed, ‘follow me then.’  They watched as he went to a bright hole in the wall.  ‘Coffee sweet and black please.’

He stuck his hand in the hole and it came away with a steaming hot cup of coffee.  ‘You seen how it’s done, go help yourself.’

Lady Jane tried next, ‘tea please, earl grey, one lump of sugar and a dash of milk please.’

She was delighted by her cup of tea until she tasted it, ‘oh uch! I don’t think they warmed the pot.’

‘It’s hot and sweet lady, be thankful,’ growled the Irishman.

‘Un chocolate.’  Cried the French girl and seemed to enjoy hers.  Eventually they were all sitting down with a hot beverage. 

Amanda arrived with a bag of silver earpieces.  She fitted them for everyone and activated them.  ‘Can every one understand me?’  There was an explosion of noise as those who couldn’t understand English all began talking at once.  She laughed, ‘I will take that as a yes.  I will leave you all to it.’  She nodded at Kelly and he returned it.

Of course now the questions began to come thick and fast.  Kelly answered them as best he could, ‘hey I don’t understand it all OK!  I am in the same damn boat as you all are.  I was fighting on a hill in Korea, then I'm up here with you lot.’

Lady Jane cleared her throat, ‘excuse me Sergeant Kelly, but if we were the cream of humanity being sent to a far flung distant world, then why on earth were you there?’

He found himself grinning, ‘I never said you were the cream of humanity only perfect specimens of it.’

She smiled in that infuriating way of hers, ‘same question.’

He laughed, ‘I woke up after they kidnapped us and broke free.  I managed to kill a few of them before they knocked me out again.  I was being sent to their home world as some form of punishment.  To be experimented on by their military.’

‘I see, so you are in fact a criminal.’

He laughed again, ‘no kitten, I'm a soldier and as these people are our mortal enemies I was simply doing my job.’

‘My name isn’t Kitten sergeant it’s Lady Jane, please try and remember that.’

‘What were they going to do with us?’  Asked a Finnish guy.

‘From what I can gather they were either going to breed you or mush you up into a paste to extract some kind of enzyme from you to make a serum so that they can survive in our universe.’

He shuddered, ‘sounds awful.’

‘So what now?’  Asked the Irishman.

‘Glad you asked bud.  These people who have rescued us are in desperate need of help and I told them we would pitch in.  It’s the least we can do to thank them for saving out lives.  They are working their asses off to save the rest of the people in those sleep chambers.  These people are pulling thirty hour shifts, having a few hours sleep and doing it all again.’

‘How the hell can we help Sarge? Their technology is well beyond us, Lady Jane there had never even seen a bloody vending machine before,’ snorted the Irishman.

‘We won’t be doing anything sophisticated, but tell me what year you all from?’

‘1976,’ the Irishman told him.

‘1923,’ cried out Lady Jane in alarm.

‘67’

‘99’

‘86’

‘63’

‘2010’

‘72’

‘And I'm from 1950,’ admitted Kelly, ‘the year is now 2023.’

‘Oh my god I'm over a hundred years old,’ squeaked Lady Jane.

They all had a good laugh at her expense, it was a lot for all of them to take in and someone suggested another hot drink.  The Irishman wanted a whisky but that was out so they settled for another cuppa.  When they had time to think it over Kelly decided it was maybe time to move on.

‘For you guys who have been kidnapped in the past ten to twenty years I doubt if the transition will be all that hard,  for some of us it’s going to be a lot harder.  I have been awake a day longer than all of you and have found out that I still have family at home that know of me.  I suspect you all might be the same.  I'm sure the captain will do his best to find out.  For now though we have a job to do.’

‘Really, I hope it isn’t manual labour,’ Lady Jane raised an eyebrow.

Kelly grinned, ‘listen kitten, we weren’t the only people who were kidnapped.’

‘Abducted,’ interrupted a very pretty Greek girl from the 70’s.

‘What!’ growled Kelly.

‘Aliens abduct people, not kidnap them,’ she shrugged.

‘Let’s not get technical,’ Kelly growled, ‘there are a thousand others like us and over a thousand dead.  The crew are bagging up the dead and preparing the living for transport back to Earth in their sleeping units.  However there is evidence that there were a lot more than that once.  There is a room where prisoners were stripped before being stuck in a sleeper.  Off that room there is a deep hole where their clothes and personal belongings were thrown, and your own of course.  To find out how many people were actually taken we need to get into that pile of clothing and sort it all out.  We will be looking for people’s identities that kind of thing.  Everything will be bagged.  I have been told the clothes will be recycled.  There will also be items like this.’  He slapped the Tommy gun, ‘you find something like this you call me over and I will deal with it.  Be careful, anything at all you are unfamiliar with give me a shout.’

‘Wait a moment,’ Lady Jane hesitated, ‘what did you mean by our clothes?’

‘Exactly what I said; you went into those sleeping units naked.’

‘I was naked,’ she squeaked.

‘Oh yeah!’ he grinned.

‘Oh no, you did not look!’

‘I most certainly did kitten.’

She was shocked and furious, the French girl giggling didn’t help her temper either.’

‘You are a beast and I am going to report you to the British consulate.’

‘You are a long, long way from a British consulate Lady, now let’s move our asses, we got a lot of work to do.’

They followed him off the ship to the room which had already been prepared for their arrival.  The nanobots had rearranged the room so that the there was only two long tables.  A large machine stood down one end at the centre of the room.

Kelly hesitated, ‘OK, this is different.’

‘Then let me explain.’  A feminine voice spoke in their ears.  More than one of the jumped in surprise.

‘Who the hell is this?’  Kelly demanded.

The voice was soothing, ‘please do not be alarmed, I am the ship you were on but a moment ago.’

Kelly frowned, ‘I heard you could talk but I thought you had to be plugged in or something.’

‘That is true however as everyone is very busy I had a small transmitter implanted into the ear pieces that you now wear so that I can guide you in your efforts and explain what needs to be done.  I will transport large piles of clothing into the middle of the room.  There are small black boxes on the table.  If you put any items you find into the small box they will be sealed and labelled with any identification you find.  Simply read out the name of the person if you can or lay any identity against the end of the box and it will read it.  Sergeant Kelly will deal with any arms and munitions that you find.  Please lay any such weapon on the top table sergeant and tell me what you wish done with them.  Once the clothes have been searched for any personal items and have been removed please slide them along to the end and simply push them into the machine at the end.  I will do the rest from there.’

‘Don’t you want us to try and piece the clothes together to see how many people there were?’  Asked the Greek girl.

‘That will not be necessary.’

‘Then how will you know how many people have passed through here?’

‘I will simply count all the shoes and divide them by two.  That should give me a rough estimate of the amount of people who have been processed.’

Kelly grinned, ‘yeah that’s smart.’

‘I also realise that many of you have been out of touch with the happenings on Earth since your abduction.  I have substantial files on Earths history; please feel free to ask any question of me you wish.’  A large pile of clothing appeared in the centre of the room.  ‘Gloves have been provided for the handling of the clothes.’