Lieutenant Colonel Jeremiah Rubicon Ames slid into the passenger seat of the two-man skiff. He adjusted his Ethereum life support unit, checking the readout. It was good for the next eight hours.
"You comfortable?" his pilot asked.
Ames nodded to the orc. This was the first time he'd met Adjutant Dahl’Grom in person. The large green alien had a broken tusk sticking up on the right side of his lip. His hands moved quickly for being so large as he entered commands into his ship. It dropped out of the bottom of their docking pod and slipped into its course.
There were no windows on the ship, only readouts with statuses that meant nothing to Ames, even though his system-enhanced brain translated everything. He sat back in his seat.
"How long until we reach Earth orbit?"
"Hour and a half," Dahl’Grom said, which matched what he had promised previously, but Ames liked to be sure of these things. That gave him five hours in orbit to handle everything, maybe a little less, to give him a safety margin for getting back.
It would have to be enough. This trip was costing every bit of money he could safely funnel away from their Phase Three exploit without getting caught. He also couldn't afford to be gone from Threshold much longer. Dahl’Grom had promised to hide his disappearance, and the system was used to him popping into the Lotus Eater level to commune with Kronos. With luck, it would think that was where he had gone. But he couldn't count on luck, not with the stakes so high.
"So," Dahl’Grom said as he looked at the readouts, "for the next hour, convince me why I should persuade my higher-ups to take on more of you humans. They agree in seeing the utility of some of your combat team, such as Twofeather, although they are worried Team Twofeather is too headstrong."
"They're not wrong there," Ames agreed. He also doubted that Team Twofeather would ever sign on with one of the three major conglomerations that had arranged for Earth's Reality Engine exploit. But that was a matter for another day.
Grom's company worked for a company that worked for a company that was owned by a partial subsidiary of Alabaster Sky. From what Ames could tell, the Galactics took Earth business tactics to whole new levels. He had initially hoped that perhaps the Earthlings would be able to win some victories in the boardroom. Now it looked like they would be playing for a draw there.
It was a good thing they were so strong on the ground. Ames needed to make sure to keep that advantage going for as long as he could, through Phase Three and beyond. The future of the human race depended on it.
He allowed himself a grim smile at that thought. Ames had never been a philanthropist, had only thought about the bigger picture when it came to the needs of the United States Armed Forces and their various objectives. It wasn't until his first trip from Threshold up to the Hub, seeing the surface of Ganymede below him and beyond that, Jupiter with its banded storms, that he had realized he was playing for keeps. And so, when the system had offered him a dozen or more different classes, there was only one that seemed right for him.
He knew Shad and Major Twofeather didn't entirely trust him, which was wise of them. In part, he had kept them at arm's length deliberately. It was good not to have all of your eggs in one basket. Any basket with Twofeather in it was already overloaded.
Ames and Dahl’Grom discussed some of their possible visions for the future, Ames stressing the way the Earth crafters had all picked up recipes granted by the system or the reality engine with incredible ease. Ames pitched their usefulness hard. "I've looked at it. Most of your crafters spend a decade or more in an apprenticeship before they're able to produce anything of value whatsoever.”
Dahl’Grom grunted. "Your engine cheats. This is known. We would not have come here had we realized how badly. We have not had a reality engine this unbalanced in many years. Not since the first time the soulless took part.”
That was how most of the aliens referred to the Grignarians. Ames had met a couple of Grignarians himself. They were a repulsive species, not nearly as humanoid as almost everyone else he had met, which made sense if the aliens' origin story was true and most species had evolved from a common ancestral progenitor race, but left the Grignarians out on their own.
Still, Ames wasn't one to judge, despite the aliens talking about soul coins this and soulless that. As far as he could tell, the only one who knew whether or not a man had a soul or what it was worth was the Almighty himself. And He hadn't been poking around here lately. If He had, He hadn't let Ames know, and it seemed like He should have.
Dahl’Grom broke off their discussion to enter a few commands into his computer. Despite having a neural interface with his system, Dahl’Grom seemed to enjoy using screens and controls not too different from what Ames would have expected to see on a fancy Earth billionaire's pet rocket project.
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"All right," Ames said. "You left our satellite network intact, right?"
"Didn't see any need to spend the resources to take it out," Dahl’Grom replied.
"Then we need to connect in. I've got to communicate."
"As promised, I can make that happen.” Under Ames's direction, he spent a minute or two handshaking and making confirmations before saying, "You've got a connection now."
Ames punched in a phone number he had memorized by heart. It connected almost instantly. A man spoke. "This is not a recognized number."
"No, but this is a recognized speaker," Ames said. "Lambda, alpha, nine. Delta, blue, seventeen. Orange, gamma, gamma."
After a second, the voice said back stiffly, "Origination code recognized. Passphrase?"
"Full want and need are mingled herein," Ames recited.
"Accepted. How may I help you?"
There was no excitement in the man's voice, even though he must know who Ames was. Ames cast around, trying to think of who would be quickest to respond to his various needs. "Punch me through to Major Drumheller, will you? Tell him it's a priority alpha, alpha, one."
"That's not a real code," the man said.
"I know," Ames said. "But tell him anyway."
Drumheller and he were — almost friends. They had been captains together, doing intelligence work overseas. He had joked about the need for a code that meant, "Really, this is urgent, and don't let any of the assholes know." Ames only hoped Drumheller would remember now.
Fifteen minutes later, he was on a conference call with Drumheller, two old Army contacts, two from the CIA, and one man in the FBI that he had never met but Drumheller vouched for.
"I have very limited time, gentlemen," Ames said crisply. "I'm sure you all know where I've been."
"Yes, sir," Drumheller said.
"I've got some important updates." He ran through a quick list of information that he wanted Earth to know that he wasn't certain the aliens were passing along. Then he said, "More importantly, about 9,000 of the abductees are going to be coming back for an eight-hour visit 24 hours from now."
That got a quick series of yelps.
"Exactly," Ames said. "I don't know what will happen if anyone on Earth tries to interfere, but it won't be good. I suggest contacting all of our allies and urging them in the strongest terms to make life pleasant for the returnees. They've got a very big job ahead of them, and anyone who makes this worse for them should be considered an enemy of all human kind. I’m not even joking, gentlemen.”
"We could keep a lid on it until it happens," one man suggested. "That's the only way I can think of to prevent them getting mobbed. We don't have the resources necessary to take care of them all."
"They are taking care of all of you," Ames said quietly. "Make it happen. I've got the list encoded, and I'll transmit it to you at the end of my call. Find their loved ones. They'll be returning to the exact spot they left. You're going to have to brief the families thoroughly to let them know the abductees won't be able to stay and the families won't be able to go. But if I were coming back, I'd want a chance to actually speak with my loved ones."
"It'll leak on social media."
"Then deputize the local police to run interference. Get the damn National Guard out if you have to," Ames snapped "You have no idea the hell that a lot of these people have been in for the last year. The ones who are coming home are the ones who have been fighting their asses off for Earth. The only reason we stand a chance of not just becoming a goddamn alien colony is because of these people.
“Now, about 300 of them have earned enough alien good conduct points that they're getting a 72-hour pass and not an 8-hour pass. Those ones, I want you to give the VIP treatment to. They could be coming down anywhere. I've got a few locations for some really top hitters. Find them. Make sure anything they want, they get. Hotel suites. Baseball tickets. A visit with their high school girlfriend. I don't care. Make it happen."
Drumheller spoke up. "I understand, Colonel. I've been watching all the official videos and the ones you smuggled out to us." He hesitated. "Is Team Twofeather coming?"
"Yes, and I happen to know exactly where they will be. You get your best men on them. No, wait." Ames paused. "You get my best men on them. Can you find Klaus and Emmerhall?"
"I think they're on assignment," Drumheller said doubtfully.
"Then you've got about 18 hours to get them back and ship them to Southern California," Ames said. "There's a little girl who spent the last year doing things most grown men I know couldn't handle. She's coming home for a visit, and I want it to be a good one, because it might well be the last time this little girl ever sees Earth."
One of the CIA men started to protest about sharing information with allies, and how this would reveal they had sources on Threshold. Ames ignored him and kept talking. "You've got a daughter, don't you, Drumheller?" He knew the man did.
"Yes, sir. She's 16 now."
"Well, Sage is 12, and she's never going to go to high school or have a prom or get embarrassing photos posted of her on social media for all her friends to laugh at. So I want you to make that up to her right now."
"It'll happen, Colonel," Drumheller promised.
"All right, let's get back to a few more pieces of business.”
He heard their sighs of relief over the phone and smiled grimly. That was intelligence men for you, more comfortable with the fate of nations than little girls. “I've heard from the news videos that the UN is making noises like they should take over being the Earth government because the aliens will respect that more. That's bullshit. Most of the alien governments are puppets of various conglomerations. They don't care if you own 50 square miles or 50 solar systems. They care who sells you your oatmeal and coffee. So you can let the important decision makers know we can keep ignoring the UN.”
“Like we've been doing for the last 80 years,” one of the CIA guys said, and a couple of the others laughed.
“What you should be doing is—” Ames spoke, barely stopping for the next three hours and change until his alarm rang.
Then he bid farewell to his colleagues, punched up the data packet, and sent it into Earth's systems. He took a deep breath before sending his second unencoded data drop to his ally, along with a clear warning to wait at least 96 hours before posting.
"Let's go," he told Dahl’Grom.
"You're cutting it pretty fine," the Orc said.
"That's just how I like it."