The Cagliostro Chronicles (18 page)

“I’m sure she is Mark, but I’d really like to just get one night of observation in on her.”

“I really do feel okay.” Ariel reiterated, this time a lot more docilely.

“Look, let
’s just let her stay in her room tonight and tomorrow I may have to fly to Washington, at least that’s what I’m assuming is going to happen. If I do, I’ll take the Stargrazer while the Cag gets refitted. She will report back here at 0900 tomorrow, guaranteed. Whoever is on can watch over her then. Is that okay with you?”

Troiano sighed and shook her head, “All right. Take her. But if she exhibits any signs of trauma or anything else that you would consider odd, you call me and I’ll get her back in here on an anti-grav gurney
faster than you could say ‘admitted’.”

Mark nodded grimly, “Absolutely.” he agreed with Dr. Troiano.

“Good, now go, both of you. Get out of my medical bay, and nothing strenuous. You both know what I mean,” she called after them as they exited the medical bay and entered the maglovator.

“That wasn’t fun
,” Ariel murmured.

“No it wasn’t, and that wasn’t the Doctor’s fault. What’s the matter with you? She just wanted to look after you for a night to make sure you didn’t have a concussion or something she missed the first time around.”

“I-I know, but you know how I hate hospitals.”

“Ari, this is not exactly ‘Mercy General’. This is a small ship, with a finite number of crew and medical staff. It wouldn’t have hurt you to stay a night under the Doctor’s care.”

She put her arms around his neck and looked up at him with her big blue eyes, “Aww but I wanted to stay with my Captain tonight,” she answered playfully.

She leaned upwards and kissed him, and he re
turned her kiss.

“This doesn’t excuse you from spending tomorrow with Troiano. I want her to look after you
,” he admonished sternly.

They exited the maglovator and headed towards his quarters.

“Stay in my quarters tonight, I want to be near you.”

She shook her head and immediately had a disgusted look on her face, “Seriously Mark, all kidding aside, you really are mother henning me you know.”

“Go on get inside, and get ready to go to sleep.” He grunted as he opened the double door with a wave of his hand in front of the palm reader on the door’s edge.

The instant they entered the darkened room, Ariel knew
immediately that something was wrong.

“Mark!” She turned and shouted as a dark figure that blended in perfectly with the pitch black of the room tackled Johnson and sent him sprawling in
to the darkness.

Ariel screamed
as Mark rolled away with whatever was atop him in the dark room. She hit the wall panel repeatedly for the ship wide communication web as well as the lighting control, but nothing worked.

Meanwhile Mark rolled to avoid getting clawed by his adversary
, who hissed and spit repeatedly at him. Claws raked his shoulder and he let out a grunt before he finally unfolded a right cross to where the things head should have been. He impacted with…something. It felt like some kind of jaw, but definitely not human.

He began hitting it repeatedly as Ariel stood just within the doorway, unsure of what to do. She placed her hands upon the sides of her head and began to concentrate, but what her mind felt when it reached out and touched the thing that was trying to kill her lover was a mind of something other than human. It was almost all predator and it was thrilled with the hunt
. The battle it now fought seemed to bring the vile thing glee.

Ariel tried to invade its mind, to hurt it psychically, but to no avail. It ignored her, as if its brain was not evolved enough to notice what she was doing to it. She reached for her blaster
, which hung by her belt, but was afraid to use it for fear of hitting Mark.

Meanwhile the man so much hope and need rested upon continued to fight for his life. The beast slashed towards his throat, but somehow
, his vision adjusting to the dark, Mark saw it coming as he swung his upper body away from his attacker, who merely scratched the floor. Mark swung a quick right cross to  the side of its jaw and spun it sideways, then he hit it again, and twisted its body off of him as he did.

Mark
scuttled away, getting to his feet quickly as the seemingly feral creature leaped at him again. This time, Johnson was ready; he sidestepped and parried the beast’s outstretched hands, shoving it off balance as it passed by him so it landed in a heap against the wall.

Almost instantly the thing was on its feet again, as the room suddenly blazed to fully lit from complete darkness. The creature was horrific, a true unearthly beast. It was jet black and shiny, with skin like armor. Long talons and slavering reptilian jaws along with a jagged bone-l
ike tail completed the picture.

S
tanding in the doorway now was not just Ariel, but Dan, Red and Eddie. The beast saw them and hissed loudly as it bent closer to the floor. Then it quickly leaped toward Mark once again, claws outstretched, but before it could cover the few feet between them blaster bolts rang out from the opened doorway. Three in total, Eddie fired first then Red and finally Dan. Each shot was close upon the other and all three hit their mark. The monstrosity fell to the carpet, and lay there steaming through three holes in its chest.

“What the hell
is that thing?” Eddie shouted.

“Eddie, I have no idea. I want to know how it got in here in the first place though.”

Red and Dan walked over to the creature and poked it with their feet, while they held their guns upon it.

“
Well it’s dead now, whatever it was,” Red confirmed.

“Yeah
, I kinda got that.” Mark replied sarcastically as Ari moved to help him wipe up his blood from his shoulder wound and the scratches he had suffered at the beast’s claws.

Ari then tapped her right sleeve and spoke, “Medical emergency, Mark Johnson’s quarters.”

Troiano’s voice replied, “On my way.”

“Hey boss,” Dan suddenly spoke, alarm weaving its way into his voice, “
you better take a look at this.”

Mark
moved past Ariel, who followed him back to the side of the room where the creature lie, and he stopped short, his eyes now as wide as Dan and Red’s. Eddie still stood by the door, guarding in case the creature had a partner.

As
the three men and Ariel looked on, the creatures form began to shimmer and almost melt before their eyes. Jaws dropped in unison as it began to shift into a familiar form.

“General Abruzzi?” Mark exclaimed in surprise. But then its flesh flowed once again, back into the nightmare creature it was, before finally melting into a puddle of gelatinous goo at their feet.

“Well I guess you two ain’t stayin’ in here tonight,” Eddie murmured.

“Now we know what happened to the General’s imposter. It was never a clone at
all; it was a shape shifter of some kind.”

“Whatever it was that thing stinks.” Red complained as he covered his face and backed away from the still quivering puddle.

“Ugghh, it smells terrible.” Ariel agreed as they all moved into the hallway.

Mark touched his sleeve, “I need a security team, life sciences in hazmat gear
, as well as maintenance, to my quarters immediately.”

Dan looked into the room and shook his head, “It’s gonna be a long night. You shoulda told those guys to bring clothes pins for their noses too.”

***

Twelve h
ours later, the Stargrazer landed in Washington, D.C. Mark, Dan and General Abruzzi exited the ship and were hustled off to a meeting in the Pentagon, one that was being broadcast to every civilized nation on Earth.

Mark,
Dan and the General entered the meeting chamber, a circular room with a matching meeting table at its center. Already seated were the President and Vice President, along with certain congressmen, senators, generals and other high-ranking officials.

“Mr. President, senior staff members.” Mark
began, nodding as he entered the room with Dan and Abruzzi a half step behind him. Abruzzi saluted.

“
General, Captain Johnson, Mr. Sledge.” the President answered.

Mark pause
d a moment then began to speak, “You have all been briefed, so I won’t waste any of your time recounting my mission to a galaxy an almost incalculable distance away from here. But the fact stands that not only did we find General Abruzzi there, the real General Abruzzi, we also found a shape shifting…thing had taken his place and then tried to murder me aboard my own ship last evening. The real General was held captive as I’m sure you all know by now, for at least several months, to as many as three years. Now since neither he nor I have slept much in the last forty eight hours we both need to make our points and do so quickly.”

Around the table men look
ed to each other and began to murmur amongst themselves. Johnson allowed this for a few seconds before he cleared his throat to get their attention. “Gentlemen, please, time is of the essence here. We cannot waste what we have of it arguing amongst ourselves. Whether any of you in this room or watching around the globe realize it, we are about to go to war, and for the first time it is not with one another. Aliens are coming for us, one and all. Beings from a galaxy that we could never reach were it not for my magno-disc engines.”

“So are you saying it is your fault they are here and coming for us?” a senator from Massachusetts shouted suddenly.

“No senator, they are coming here because they know we pose a threat to them, if we ever get out of our own solar system that is.”

Another senator, this time from New York asked,
“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the end of the world
, gentlemen. Life as we know it is about to end. And whether we are on the victor’s side of this war or the losers is up to us as a world. These aliens, of which I have only met, what I would term as the workers or foot soldiers, so far, are a purple skinned race with hair that appears to be very much like lettuce. Hence my people have begun to refer to them as ‘Salad Heads’, and what these salad heads want is to subjugate our world.”

“But why?
” a congressman from South Dakota asked, incredulously.

“The answer
, sir, is simple, they fear us. They fear our technology as well as our supposed bloodthirstiness. They seem to fear our ability to make weapons beyond our space faring ability. But beyond that, I have to assume they want to strip mine our planet and turn our survivor’s into slaves, which is what I was pretty much informed of. This is no joke, distinguished sirs. They are coming here; the only question is when and how.”

“What do you mean ‘how’?” one of the senators asked.

“By how I mean are they coming en masse? Or as they have up until now, surreptitiously.”

“
How long do you believe they’ve been hidden here, Johnson? I’ve read your report and saw your vid-feed yesterday. What is your first hand assessment?” an Admiral asked.

“
Admiral, they have been here for years. In fact if you turn to page forty six of your briefing report, you will see the information we have been able to gather over the past two days about the base my crew managed to destroy under the Blue Ridge Mountain range in Virginia.”

“This is insane!” The Vice-President leapt upwards
, and exclaimed excitedly, “Do you mean to tell me we have had an alien race living under our noses, mere miles from the capitol of this nation? I’ve read your report, but I find it farfetched and unbelievable to be honest.”

“
Whether you believe me or not, they were living here Mr. Vice-President, but they were here for a reason, to spy on us. To keep tabs on us, and to undermine our space program. They did not want us to reach for the stars. I have to assume they came to our world after our nascent space program reached the moon over a hundred years ago. They watched us and I’m sure they sabotaged our space programs around the world since they arrived here, whoever they truly are.”

One congressman got to his feet to interrupt
. He waved a flabby hand, which set his many chins flapping as the light within the chamber reflected off his gleaming bald head. “I find this all very hard to believe,” the congressman began with a southern drawl. “Do you mean to tell me that an alien race has nothing better to do then keep tabs on us? A race that must be small and insignificant to them by a space faring and technological standard? Why would they bother with us? What harm could we possibly do to them? How would we even know of their existence?”

“I can answer that,”
the President turned and faced the congressman, “The Hubble V tele-satellite in orbit around Pluto was taking deep space photographs when it saw something that at first our top men thought was a simple comet, or rather a group of them, all exiting an unnamed solar system incredibly far from here. Only after several of the top men in many different scientific fields had examined the photographs did we realize what they were. In fact if not for Mr. Johnson’s expertise we would still be scratching our collective head over this one.”

“Yes,” Mark chuckled slightly, “
this was something we should have realized, but being the scientists that we were, we completely ignored the obvious. It was in fact, too much for our small minds and fragile psyches to consider. For the very first time we would have to seriously acknowledge we were not alone in the universe.”

“Get to the point Johnson
,” the same congressman coughed again.

“Very well, we had witnessed a fleet of ships leaving a solar system, and traveling faster than light. They appeared to be streaking celestial bodies, meteors or comets, but in truth they were great star spanning vessels, a fleet of them
, and the only reason I was able to ascertain this was that their rate of speed, based on what we were able to see, did not compute. They were so far away that they should have appeared to be barely moving. Instead their great streaks of light across the star speckled backdrop of the universe actually brought them to our attention.”

“
Yes, and when this information was brought to my attention I knew we as American’s, and as Earthmen, had to discover what was out there as quickly as possible, for the sake of everyone on this planet,” the President finished.

“Which is why the President sent my crew and I on a secret mission to a world we had pinpointed a lot of activity coming and going from.”

“This is all too fantastic to be real,” the Vice President shook his head and spoke almost to himself as he looked away. “You mean to tell me, Salvatore, that you sent these men away on a matter of national security and you couldn’t even inform me of it?” He whined, his voice gradually growing higher in pitch as his anger grew.”

“Stand down
, Todd,” President Scaleia ordered sternly, “These people saved my life as well as General Abruzzi’s. From now on they have carte blanche as far as I’m concerned.”

The vice president huffed and puffed, throwing his chest out as he paced around his seat, before finally sitting back down.

Mark instantly seized the moment, “This is not the time to fight amongst ourselves. This goes for all of you watching around the world also. Now the time has come for all of mankind to act as brothers, as family, to defend our world. If you want to go back to killing each other when all of this is over and done I sure as hell won’t try to stop you. But for now we have to work together, otherwise life on this big blue marble is over.”

“But what can we do?” A voice coming over the monitor said with an Indian accent.

“That part is simple,” Mark began as he flipped a switch on the table in front of him, activating a holographic display that sprang to life in the center of the room. In the display was the schematic for a new type of engine, the magno-disc engines that powered the Cagliostro and the Stargrazer both. “We build these, on double shifts around the globe building and outfitting every damned ship we can find with them.  And once that’s done we take the fight to them.”