Chapter 4

The day had come for the expected meeting with Admiral Tompkins. Since I have not found a way to become invisible and have yet to make my presence public, I am limited to traveling at night. So I flew to the recruiter's office, arriving shortly before sunrise. I sat on the roof and watched the sun come up, waiting for the recruiter to arrive with the Admiral.

Shortly before 0800 I heard a vehicle pull into the parking lot. I peaked over the edge of the roof and saw the recruiter's truck parking by the back door of his office. Earlier that night Al and I had discussed the method of meeting with the Admiral. I have already made my opinion of the recruiter known so taking him out of the equation as quickly as possible was part of the plan. So we had decided that if the Admiral arrived separately then we would abduct him, sort of. What we had agreed to do was to put on our disguise fly down from the roof, grab him around the waist and bring him to the roof.

With the money I had confiscated from the drug dealers I had purchased a couple of safety harnesses. I swooped (for lack of a better word) down and grabbed a screaming Admiral and deposited him safely on the roof.

"My apologies Admiral for scaring you, but it has become necessary the remove the peon from the equation. Here put this harness on, we're going for a little side trip."

The Admiral gave me a strange look when I said that the peon must be removed. "Removed? Are you saying you are going to kill Charlie?"

"No, sir. Not at this time. But I know he is an agent for the CIA. I will remove any obstacle that stands in my way of reaching my ultimate goal. Whether it be him or someone else. If you do not wish any one to be harmed then I would suggest that you and your people take a passive approach to me and my goals rather than a hostile one." With that said I helped him cinch up the straps on the harness and attach it to mine.

I noticed his active thoughts and looked him in the eyes and said, "Admiral we will be flying at about 1000 feet. If you continue along that line of thought and remove my mask to see my face I will pull the emergency releases and watch you drop."

Without saying a word he looked away, so I leapt into the air and shot straight up. Without an altimeter I could only guess at where 1000 feet would be.

Meanwhile, back in the recruiter's office the peon was beyond worrying about the Admiral not arriving on time and began calling the Pentagon. Finding that the Admiral left the same night he got his call he assumed that something bad had happened, so he made his second mistake; he called his superior at the CIA headquarters. That effectively put me on their radar so to speak; something that I did not want to happen yet.

"The recruiter Gunnery Sergeant Charles Harrison is dead." I told the Admiral.

"SO YOU CAN SPEAK TO PEOPLE'S MINDS." He shouted above the road of the wind.

"You need only think what you want to say and I can read it in the forefront of your mind." I told him.

"How did he die?" Tompkins thought to me.

"I stopped his heart by blocking the signals from his brain." I responded.

"Why?"

"Because he called the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and informed them of my existence. I was not ready for that to happen just yet. I will not allow any government agency to impede my progress."

"You do know that they will replace him with another agent, don't you?"

"Yes, sir. But it will be one that may or may not know of my existence. And if he or she does know of me they will not have met me and therefore not know what to look for. I could dress as a civilian and approach them and they would never know. That will effectively make them less of a threat at the moment. I will have to live with that for now."

For the next few minutes we flew northwest into the mountain chain north of the city. Admiral Tompkins brought up the fact that there is a small airfield just east of where we were flying and that we were high enough to be seen on their radar. I told him I had already though of that and did not worry about it as we would be seen as a small flock of birds and would not raise an alarm.

I spotted a small clearing and began our descent. Upon landing I released the clamps on the harnesses and dropped them to the ground. The Admiral stumbled a little to regain his footing then asked, "Who are you and where did you come from?"

<It would be easier to explain if you would allow me to take control of your speech center and speak to him through you. This way you will hear at the same time and I will only need to explain once.> Al suggested.

"Okay; just as long as you return control to me when you are done."

<Agreed.>

"Since humans can not overcome gravity without mechanical means it is easy to assume that I am not human and not from Earth." I explained. "In making that assumption you would be both right and wrong."

"Would you please explain the paradox? Are you or are you not human and are you or are you not from Earth?" he asked, still not understanding.

"I will endeavor to explain as best I can so that you may understand. Several decades ago the race that created me sent me to this sector of the galaxy to scout it for inhabited planets. You see my people are at war with an insectoid like race that has been invading planets inhabited with non-space faring people and enslaving them. Using them to rape their own planet of its minerals; then moving on to do the same to the next planet they find. Their mothership is bigger than your natural satellite and carries billions of their species as well as their ships, equipment and manufacturing facilities. Their motherships are completely self-sufficient except for the lack of natural resources. So they rape planets for their resources. Unfortunately for humanoid species they are slave labor as well as a source of food for the Aleons (pronounced uh-lee-awns).

They originally came from the planet Aleon IV in the galaxy you call M33. My people are from this galaxy the one you call 'The Milky Way'. The Aleons attacked our planet 3000 of your years ago. But we were already a space faring species and had several ships off-world"

"So you're not human?" Tompkins asked incredulously.

"What you see before you is human. I am an artificially created bio-mimetic life form integrated into a human brain. I control trillions of nanobots floating through the bloodstream. Together we have enhanced and augmented the entire infrastructure of this body and brain to make what you see before you. Now that the brain is functioning at 100% the potential has increased exponentially. Abilities that are not inherent in my creators have manifested in this human body."

"If you are integrated so fully into the brain why do you refer to yourself as a separate entity?" Tompkins asked.

"I chose not to overwrite the existing consciousness. The human you see is still the commander of this vessel. Since my creation I have been a ship's artificial intelligence; I still remain in that capacity."

"So what is the name of the human you inhabit?"

"I am not at liberty to disclose that information at this time. His identity must remain secret for the foreseeable future."

"Okay, I'll agree to that for now. Go on with your explanation about the Aleons."

"By the time the crew of my ship had heard about the invasion, it was over. There were over 12 billion inhabitants on my species' homeworld. When my ship had returned to the home system to within sensor range there were about 8 billion inhabitants left on the planet all working slave labor to mine the resources of the planet. We learned later that the others had been taken for food. That is when a message was sent to all remaining ship in the quadrant to declare war on this species. When all ships were accounted for and gathered together in a nearby system a council of the commanding officers was convened. There they decided unanimously to not only declare war on the Aleons but to wipe out the entire species from existence. Normally we are against genocide but feel because of their ability to breed we realized that if any were left alive that they would return to there current course of action."