As he reached the outer limits of the planet’s thin atmosphere, Adam spotted two contacts on his screen moving to intercept. This had been expected. He made no attempt to evade; rather he watched to verify their intent before taking action.
Since the Cassie-1 had been originally built and owned by the Juireans, Adam had elected to save one special feature of that lineage — the ship’s original transponder. On Silea, Adam had a new primary transponder installed that masked the ship’s Juirean identity, otherwise everywhere he went local officials and luminaries would be swarming all over him and the ship, trying to make an impression and curious as to why a Juirean official would be arriving unannounced. The new transponder, although highly illegal, had solved that problem.
But with a simple flick of a switch, Adam once again activated the Juirean transponder. Almost immediately, the two ships on his screen slowed. Then they paralleled his course for a moment before finally veering off.
Even though he had no love lost for the Juireans, at times it was good to be the King!
After setting the coordinates for Castor, Adam shed the alien-blood-stained pressure suit and took a quick shower. He then dressed in a t-shirt and jeans and then went to the ship’s small galley for something to eat. He took the plate of bland-tasting brown mush to the stateroom.
The stateroom aboard the Cassie-1 was the only internal part of the ship that screamed opulence. Designed so a high-ranking Juirean could travel in luxury, it was huge, measuring twenty meters square, with a full-size bed to accommodate the seven-foot-tall Juireans, a private bathroom — grooming station, they called it — and an office area sporting a large metal desk and a four-meter long couch.
The trip to Castor would take two days, and was the headquarters of Seton Amick, the gang leader who had hired Adam for the Bundnet hit. So after finishing his meal, Adam lay down on the couch and propped a pillow under his head. He had carried the boonie hat into the room with him, and now twirled it on his hand absent-mindedly. The floppy-brim hat had been made custom for him by tailors on K’ly. In fact, he had spent most of his first contract fee at the tailor shop. He had them make ten pair of jeans, several white and olive-colored t-shirts, a couple of polo-style shirts, two light jackets and two pair of rubber-soled boots. As he figured, even though he had to live in an alien-dominated universe, he didn’t have to dress like one!
As he lie on the couch, Adam didn’t close his eyes. Instead, his gaze focused on the bulkhead at the end of the couch.
The wall was covered with various pieces of paper and plastic, each holding a clue of some kind as to the location of Earth or the Klin hiding place in the Fringe. For the past nine months, when he wasn’t off exterminating some smelly alien creature, Adam could be found scouring the Library or following other leads trying to track down the location of his homeworld. It was a nearly impossible task, and yet without even this activity and its thin sliver of hope, Adam Cain would have long ago placed his precious MK-47 to his own head and pulled the trigger…
Since being abducted nearly nine months before, Adam Cain had had a birthday. He was now 27, and as he lie on the couch, he began to reflect on his recent past — as well as his prospects for the future.
In the blink of an eye, Petty Officer 2 ^ nd Class Adam Cain, U.S. Navy, was at one moment on a mission in the Hindu Kush Mountains separating Afghanistan from Pakistan, and the next he was waking up in a hibernation pod aboard a deserted Klin starship. That was where he had first made contact with Kaylor Linn Todd, the gruff, yet experienced interstellar mule-driver who had rescued him from certain death at the hands of the Fringe Pirates.
Along with his co-pilot Jym, the two aliens had offered to help Adam find his way back to Earth, a mysterious planet in its own right, located somewhere in the unexplored Far Arm of the galaxy. However, as Kaylor salvaged the Klin ship, he removed the ship’s computer core — a crucial piece of information he withheld from Adam — and hid it in an asteroid belt in the Nimorian system. The computer core contained not only the location of Earth, but also the secret location of the Klin, a race of beings who the galaxy-ruling Juireans believed they had exterminated 4,000 years before. Once the Juireans had learned of the computer core’s existence, they had sent all the power their empire could muster at the two mule-drivers and Adam, the sole survivor from the Klin ship after its attack by the Fringe Pirates.
In the course of tracking down the core and avoiding the Juireans, Adam had met up with the leader of the Fringe Pirates, the only other Human he had encountered since leaving Earth. His name was Riyad Tarazi, a former Islamic terrorist, who himself had been abducted six years earlier. Tarazi provided a wealth of knowledge regarding this strange, new reality Adam found himself in, having not only survived for all those years, but actually rising to the top of the pirate hierarchy in the process.
It had been Riyad who had told Adam a startling truth, that when compared to the capabilities of the vast majority of aliens, Humans were about as close to supermen as they came. As he explained, Humans combined the traits of quickness, strength, coordination and intelligence better than any other creature he’d yet encountered. That was the reason Riyad had been able to challenge the other pirate captains for their positions, until he finally stood at the pinnacle of their ranks.
Adam had experienced this so-called superiority himself, first in a gunfight with the lizard-like Rigorians, and then in his escape from a jail cell in the Nimorian city of Gildemont. Using his superior strength in the lighter-gravity world, Adam had indeed felt like Superman, nearly able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and the like.
Yet this superman complex was easily explainable.
As the months went by, Adam learned that nearly all the planets in the Fringe had lighter gravity than Earth, making him appear stronger than any of the natives. He also found that Human bone structure was thicker and stronger than that of the various alien races in the region. This gave him added toughness and durability. And his quickness and coordination simply came from his training as a Navy SEAL, plus his natural athletic ability.
Yes, to others he may appear to possess super-powers. But as Adam Cain finally began to drift off to sleep, feeling the aches and pains from his encounter with Bundnet and his mechanical suit, he knew his mortality was very real and his super-abilities simply a product of fate. Still, he had no qualms with using them to better his fortunes…
As always, his sleep was fitful and filled with painful visions. His reality had been unexpectedly ripped away, taking from him his beautiful young wife Maria and their three-year-old daughter, Cassie. His disappearance, while on a clandestine mission in Afghanistan, would have brought about a heart-wrenching uncertainty to his family and friends. After awhile, the Navy would have closed the file on him, declaring him officially MIA. Of course by this time, the action would have been more symbolic than functional, since long before this all who knew him would have long ago accepted the fact of his death.
It was for this reason that Adam so strongly despised aliens. He had not asked for any of this to happen. He had not volunteered to be an astronaut and travel the stars. Instead, he led a simple, happy life back on Earth that he was perfectly content with. But that had all been taken from him.
By aliens.
Adam had spent many days, if not months, conflicted as to his ultimate fate. If he couldn’t return home to his wife and kids, then what was the reason for going on? He was utterly alone, more alone than any Human on Earth could possibly imagine.