The Gathering Storm Read online

  “So, I set my horizons lower, married her, and got her to the U.S. She became a citizen while pregnant. We had our sons, one after the other, and were talking about a daughter. I was going to retire and work for some think tank, as I had made some good contacts over the years. I managed to make Full Bird, was looking for a Reserve assignment so I could bow out gracefully.”

  He drank again. “Then, the fucking Squids showed up. Now, I have three stars, going on four, no family, and a near impossible mission.”

  He looked directly at Torbin. “This is it. I got this assignment because I speak Russian, can get things done, follow orders, and–if I do say so myself–I am one motivated individual. Torbin, if this fails, we putter along for a few decades, maybe a century. We revert back to a pre-industrial society, and all of ‘this’ becomes the stuff of legends. That is, if the Squids just don’t decide to hunt us all down. If we succeed and can really hurt the Squids, find some way to start wiping them out, the survivors will probably leave. Or, if we believe our friend the Director, they will accept us as equals or the top of the food chain again.”

  He paused for a moment, in reflection. “Or, we die trying. It isn't the worst thing that can happen. Existing as an intelligent side of beef, waiting for our slaughter, that’s hell.”

  Torbin waited for the General to finish, then he asked, “General, why aren't you a Marine?”

  General Reed laughed. “Funny you should ask that. My father told me he would be proud of me if I chose the military as a career. But, that he would kick my ass around the block if I joined the Marines.”

  “Why, Sir?”

  “My Grandfather had been at Iwo Jima. He told my Dad stories that had a lasting impression on him about charging up the beach. My Dad said he did not raise a son to be cannon fodder.” They sat and drank for a while longer. Finally, the General said, “Thank you, Captain, for the excellent company. Now, I believe it is time to turn in for the evening.”

  “Thank you, Sir, for the excellent scotch.” Torbin rose, saluted. “General, I don't consider myself cannon fodder. But I will charge up a beach for you, for all the humans left. Just say the word, Sir.”

  General Reed looked at him. “I know you would, son. That is why you’re here.”

  “Now, hit the rack, Captain. We have another busy day tomorrow.”

  “Aye aye, Sir.” Torbin turned and left. General Reed sat at his desk for a few minutes, deep in thought. He then put his wife and children’s picture away, finished his drink, and stashed the bottle.

  He wondered again what a normal day would be like.

  CHAPTER 9

  KEY WEST, FLORIDA

  El Segundo: “He is here, my Sire and Lord.”

  Lord Neptune. “Good. Ensure the Director is brought here most haste. I have much to discuss with my most favored human.”

  - Excerpts from the Literary Works of Royal Princess Akiko, Free Japan Royal Family. Transcription of translated intercepted communications between Tschaaa Lord Neptune, Lord over North America, and his Tschaaa Second in Command, known as El Segundo.

  -

  As General Reed was preparing to leave his office, Adam Lloyd was just returning to his. He flopped lengthwise on the well-cushioned sofa. Damn, he felt tired. Maybe he was getting too old, though late thirties had not seemed old at all six years ago. The never-ending possibility of winding up as a cut of meat caused premature aging.

  “Director, are you back?” It was Mary Lou. She had the morning off, but trooper that she was, she came in and stayed around until he returned. She still had on her office attire of blouse, skirt and high heels.

  “Yes, Mary Lou, I am. Finally. Murphy’s Law was in full effect today. You can take off– I need to unwind and make some notes from my meeting with Our Lordship. But first, please come here.” He stood up as she approached, and gently grabbing her shoulders, kissed her softly. He let her go. “Thanks for caring and checking on me.”

  Mary Lou smiled. “Any time, Adam.”

  Just then he heard a knock from the Mary Lou’s office and heard, “Hey Boss, are you back?” It was Kathy.

  Mary Lou started to say something, but Adam responded first. “Yes Kathy, come in for a moment.” Mary Lou immediately tensed up, and stepped back. Adam thought for a moment that she was almost getting into a self-defense stance. He would have to keep an eye on this “relationship” between her and Kathy. Kathy entered and shot Mary Lou a look of challenge before flashing her signature smile at Adam.

  “Just wanted you to know, Boss. Major Grant tried to work my butt off, but I survived, and loved every minute of it.”

  Adam smiled. “I told you that you would do just fine.”

  “Well, thanks for the chance, Boss. I can tell you’ve had a long day, so I guess I will see you later. Goodnight, Boss. Goodnight, Mary Lou.”

  “Goodnight, Kathy,” Mary Lou replied with a little too much syrup in her voice.

  “Sleep tight, Kathy,” Adam said. Kathy winked at him, turned, and slinked away.

  Adam caught Mary Lou staring at Kathy’s ass as she walked away. “A penny for your thoughts.”

  “She tries too hard. She wiggles her ass every chance she gets for effect. I don’t trust her.”

  Adam gently put his left hand around her waist. “Hey, who’s in charge here?”

  “You are, Director.”

  “Have I done pretty well so far?”

  “Adam, this isn’t about you, it’s...”

  “It’s about the competition, isn’t it? Kathy isn’t your biggest competitor, my work is. I care about you, and I’m still very attracted to you. But in the end, I still care about the mission most of all. I am still focused on what needs to be done, and no new sexual object–no matter how distracting you think she is–is going to change that.”

  Mary Lou blushed a little. “I’m sorry, Director.”

  “No need to apologize. Oh, and Adam, not the Director, will be in bed later on. I expect you to be there also. The sooner I can finish here, the sooner I will be there.”

  Mary Lou gave him a bit of an impish smile, and kissed his cheek. “See you later.” She departed for the attached suite.

  Adam sighed. Things seemed more complicated. Starting with the Professor’s wife, continuing with his trip to meet their Lord, today had been one pain in the ass after the other.

  The Chief had given him a ride to the small boat dock at the most southwestern point of Key West. Adam rode in the ex-U.S. Postal Service four cylinder Jeep in the left seat, steering wheel on the right. The Chief had the 50 caliber Sharps rifle he had recovered during his last scavenger trip, rounding up the most recent new human arrivals. After dropping off Adam, he was headed to the firing range to test out some Sharps reloads and plink a few practice rounds with his .45 automatic. They pulled up to the dock, and Adam got out, taking his briefcase and satchel from behind his seat.

  For the umpteenth time, the Chief had asked, “Need me to go along, Boss?”

  “No, Chief. Our Lordship still only wants one human at a time talking to him. If I get whacked someday, you’ll get the chance to tell him the news. And then you get to do that until you get whacked.”

  “Well, Boss, I guess I’d better keep you breathing, because I have no desire to meet the lead Squid by myself.”

  “I guess that means I’m the one stuck for the time being, then.”

  The Chief put the Jeep in gear. “Be careful Boss. I’m not there to hold your hand.”

  “Loud and clear, Chief. I’ll ping you on the radiophone when I head back. Have fun shootin’.”

  “Always, Boss. Always.” With that, Chief drove off, leaving the Director to the business at hand. Adam carried his satchel and briefcase to the open fisherman tied up at the dock. The boat was supposed to be maintained by the Conch Republic as a symbol of their connection to the base. But one look at the boat and Adam knew that someone was either getting lazy or purposefully ignoring maintenance.

  He opened his satchel again, checking
the contents. It contained two bologna sandwiches, a greenhouse apple, two Conch Republic near beers, and a bag of stale pretzels (for seasickness nausea), just in case he became stranded. He’d eaten a leftover cookie and a couple of soda crackers, and drank a full glass of purified water before leaving, just enough salt and water to ward off dehydration or other heat-related problems.

  Also in the satchel was a sawed off twelve gauge with two black powder rock salt loads. In a small shoulder holster he wore a five shot replica of a .31 caliber Colt Baby Dragoon pistol, also loaded by the Chief with five black powder loads.

  The black powder was to create enough fire and brimstone to scare off any wandering Squid juvenile or early teen who felt a need to prove themselves with a human in a boat. The Tschaaa did not like sulphur and flame coming in their general direction, despite their transition to land, so it was used to scare off the young. Their early development in the ocean of their world was sans fire, other than underwater volcanic activity. Therefore, like most wet-skinned species, they did not like sources of heat too close. Despite their evolutionary development they kept some old intrinsic fear from their days as a more primitive species. The shot and rock salt was also effective for deterring anyone who might want to engage in some low level piracy.

  Adam started up the open fisherman and soon realized just how rough the twin engines were running. He swore, and pinged up the Chief on his radiophone.

  “Yeah, Boss.”

  “Chief, this so-called boat may make it there and but not back. I don’t have the time to screw around, so if you don’t hear from me in about five hours, send somebody out toward the Marquesas Keys looking for me. Otherwise, you’re stuck with my job.”

  “Will do, Boss. I’ll light a fire under the Admiral’s ass as well. They get enough stuff from us that keeping the agreement about the boat should be a given.”

  “Roger that. See you later, Chief.” The boat untied, Adam headed out with all the due speed he could muster. Marquesas Keys was at one time a series of tiny islands and reefs in a circle in a national wildlife refuge almost due west of Key West. Just a tad under twenty statute miles away, it was now a huge circular domed shaped complex of several stories, mostly underwater. It was nicknamed Squidville, as humans had seen few Tschaaa structures up until its building. Around it and the Dry Tortugas were a series of large Tschaaa breeding areas, crèches or beds in and near the many local reef structures. The domed complex itself housed Tschaaa versions of workshops, construction factories, laboratories, development centers as well as landing berths for both air and sea craft.

  Here resided their Lordship, named by himself in homage to human mythology as Lord Neptune, king and ruler of the great seas.

  He had a great sense of humor, especially for the absurd. Adam wished he could pronounce his given Tschaaa name, but Lordship “Neptune” had insisted, stating, “Do not waste your time. Our translators work fine translating our voices to human speech. Your attempts to speak our language would just make us laugh so hard we would get nothing done.”

  Adam believed him. The one thing the Lordship had been from day one in their relationship was honest to a fault, no matter how cruel the truth can be at times.

  Adam managed to make the trip in just under an hour, with the twin outboards badly overheating the last mile. He nursed the open fisherman up to the entrance dock he always used, and managed to get it shut down and tied off before the engines seized. Waiting for him was a young adult Squid Adam had named El Segundo, after a character in a western movie he had seen years ago. Adam was probably one of the few humans who had learned to tell Squids apart fairly accurately.

  El Segundo had been meeting him for almost a year now, and had taken the human’s nickname as his own. The Tschaaa wore no translator, just giving him a “welcome” sign with his two “social tentacles” that Tschaaa used in greeting. Since these two appendages were also the ones used for sexual intercourse/primary impregnation, Adam often mused what humankind would have been like if men waved their genitalia at each other as a form of “welcome”. Then again, humans were far more concerned with sex and their sexuality, as they were far more driven by their perpetual base urges.

  Humankind’s attempts to deal through social mores with their three sixty-five day a year sexual “season” was a constant source of wonderment and mirth to the Lord Neptune. The Lordship believed the limited time that male and female Tschaaa were ‘in the mood’ for sexual relations gave them more time to deal with more intellectual pursuits. After all, they did achieve interstellar flight before mankind.

  Adam stashed the sawed off twelve gauge under the boat seat, along with his small pistol. He kept a cheap but sharp knife on his hip, and brought the satchel and briefcase. He walked along the walkway constructed for items the Squids preferred to keep fairly dry, while El Segundo swam alongside. The Tschaaa could travel on land, but were so much more efficient in the ocean that there was where many preferred to remain. The fact that Earth’s gravitational pull was about five percent more than their home world gave them another reason to prefer water locomotion as well.

  He walked through the entrance way into what at one time would have been through the Keys’ series of small land masses, but now was directly into a huge dome, ninety percent of it under water. The dome, “Squidville” to the humans, now covered almost all the above water reefs, mangroves and spits of the Marquesas Keys Refuge. How many stories were below sea level, Adam was unsure, but it was at least several. It was a good fifteen minute walk to the doorway into the Lordship’s throne room and work area. Once he reached the doorway, he was on his own.

  Adam walked slowly up to the Tschaaa Lord’s receiving area. In a sudden flash of light, a large image was projected on the nearby curved wall. He heard a loud booming human voice.

  “I am the great and powerful Oz. Do not arouse the wrath of the great and powerful Oz.” And there was Dorothy and company projected on the wall. Shit. He’d been watching old movies again. Lord Neptune loved to view, study, and just enjoy all forms of human pre-Invasion mass media. Tschaaa films, books, other informational media often resembled National Geographic travelogues and science tapes, with large historical musical dramas, similar to human operas, relating some of the greatest incidents in Tschaaa history. Fiction, other than the young’s versions of Grimm’s fairy tales and Aesop’s fables (intended to instruct also) did not exist.

  Making up stories for ‘fun’ was seen as a waste of time or mental aberration, which was why, had His Lordship not been so much more advanced than the other Tschaaa in his ability to handle Earth and its humans, he probably would have been sent to the Tschaaa form of a mental hospital.

  Tschaaa did enjoy jokes and humor, but most of it was along the line of slapstick, practical jokes, and the occasional “your mama is so fat” street insults, usually by adolescents and to other adolescents. Adam just knew that if the Tschaaa had such a thing, His Lordship would have been a combination standup comedian and writer for situation comedies, and be very successful.

  His Lordship was reclining in a large, modified hot tub. Though amphibious, the Tschaaa still preferred their original liquid environment. He was waving his social tentacles in signs of complete mirth and laughter. Adam knew he was also blowing bubbles from his gill slits, a sign of pure belly laughter. Adam approached him, smiling; palms open toward him in a sign of mirth also.

  “Ah, Director! My favorite human. I see you noticed my new entrance images. I found that film of yours just the other day. Such a prime example of human fantasy.”

  The translator produced a human voice that reminded Adam of a combination of Shakespearean-trained actors from the London stage. Adam knew that Lord Neptune never did anything by chance, and probably spent many hours coming up with the right Lord voice. To human ears, Tschaaa speech itself sounded like a combination of porpoise clicks, sperm whale tones and hissing. Although reproducible with computer enhanced technology, human vocal chords were not designed for that type of commu
nication, and there were a few sounds above and below the frequencies that human ears could not distinguish. As had been proven in the study of whales, certain of these frequencies and tones in ocean water could be heard for miles, resulting in excellent long range communication. Thus, when the Tschaaa adolescents and young left their Crèche birth areas to roam the oceans as part of growing up, were never really out of earshot of adults.

  Adam chuckled. “Yes, your Lordship, The Wizard of Oz is a movie classic. Tell me, are you thinking of changing your ‘human name’ to The Wizard?”

  The Tschaaa Lord laughed again. “No, my Director. Although I am great and powerful, I definitely have no need to hide behind a curtain. Now, human, come closer and have a seat in the chair provided. I have much information to impart to you, and I imagine you have some updates for me.”

  “Yes, Sir. But first, I have something you will like.” Adam reached into the satchel and produced a couple large stalks of sugar cane.

  Tschaaa eyes were very large, and extremely sensitive. Lord Neptune knew what Adam was removing from his satchel before it was completely in view. “Ah. Some more of that delicious sweet cane. Please, hand it to me.”

  His Lordship reached out a social tentacle to Adam and gently took the sugar cane from Adams proffered hand. He placed one stalk up, out of the hot tub, and then gently fed the other into his mouth, hidden from view by facial tentacles. “If for no other reason than this delicious cane, I think I have convinced the greater majority of my fellow Lords that humans can be of greater service than just sources of meat.”

  “You could not grow sugar cane yourself?”

  “Outside of the natural environment, it would probably not be the same. We can grow many things in our organic tanks and vats, but the results are never as good as those things produced naturally. It is also why we never grew any Tschaaa young in the tanks, not to mention it would seem... perverted I think is a good word. The grays, some bipedal warriors, those who you call front men, are the only higher life forms we have attempted. We eventually found or produced enough breeding pairs to result in natural growth of the cyborg warriors–robocops you call them–and other human relations, as natural growth produces a much better product.”