Tasty ass?
Oh, this little fucker was so going down.
“I’ll handle this,” I told Joe.
“Be my guest.”
I marched over to the console behind Brock and spun the chair around so he faced me. I yanked the headphones off his ears, leaned in close, and growled, “I’m right here, you little shit.”
Brock gave a yelp and fell out of his chair, landing hard on his out-of-shape, not-so-tasty ass. He stared at us in outraged disbelief. “How did you get in here? You’re not supposed to be in here! I’m totally gonna fire all my stupid guards.”
I grabbed him by his shirtfront and yanked him to his feet. “And you’re not supposed to try and kill the people sent to rescue you.”
He smacked my hands away and glared at me. “I didn’t ask to be rescued. I like it here. Besides, Dad only wants me back because I’m a stupid wild card.”
I grabbed him by his shirtfront again and shook him. “Did you kill Nathan and Bunny?”
“No,” he said with a note of petulance only an entitled teenager could summon. “They’re locked up until it’s their turn to play.”
“Play? You’ve killed people!”
The little creep had the nerve to shrug as if his little half-assed Hunger Games were no big deal. “You guys are supposed to be good. You’re supposed to be the best. That’s why my father sent you, right? Because you’re the best. The last ones he sent weren’t that good. So they died.”
My eyes narrowed. “You’re gonna show us where Nathan and Bunny are. Then we’re gonna get a plane here to take you back to California. Although I’d rather leave you here with the crocs.”
“How about you stay here with me?” Brock looked me up and down in a way that made me long for a steaming hot shower. “You. Me. That tasty ass of yours. We could—”
I coldcocked the kid with a right cross that knocked him out and back into his captain’s chair. He’d be out for a while.
Joe gave me a thumbs-up and grinned. “What do you know, Ash. You really are good with people.”
Dana Fredsti is an ex-B-movie actress with a background in theatrical combat (a skill she utilized in Army of Darkness as a sword-fighting Deadite and fight captain). She is the author of the Ashley Parker series, touted as Buffy meets The Walking Dead, as well as what might be the first example of zombie noir, A Man’s Gotta Eat What a Man’s Gotta Eat, first published in Mondo Zombie and edited by John Skipp, and more recently published as an e-book by Titan Books. She also wrote the cozy noir mystery Murder for Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon, is coauthor of What Women Really Want in Bed, and has written several spicy genre romances under the pen name Inara LaVey. Additionally, Dana has a new urban fantasy series, Spawn of Lilith, with Titan Books, the first coming out in 2017. She also has a story in V-Wars 4: Shockwaves.
ATOLL
BY JONATHAN MABERRY
-1-
“Something has crashed on an island south of Hawaii,” said Mr. Church, frowning at me from the videoconference screen in my office.
I was not dressed for a teleconference. I was wearing ancient, ragged board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with images of old fifties roadside diners on it. My feet were bare and propped on the edge of my desk next to an open take-out box of Wahoo’s fish tacos. Five empty bottles of Gift of the Magi golden ale I’d brought back to the Pier with loving care from the Confessional in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, just up the road. The Magi has spicy hops balanced with moderate malt sweetness and an aroma like nuts and honey. It also has 12 percent alcohol and I was on my sixth.
It’s entirely possible that Church did not have my full and undivided attention.
Two teams of enthusiastic and talented college women were playing volleyball outside of my office window and I had Art Pepper blowing cool jazz from the four Bose speakers in my office. The Pier was nearly deserted except for me, my big white shepherd, Ghost, and a few disgruntled employees who had to man the battlements on a gloriously warm Saturday in December. Quite frankly I couldn’t care less if Air Force One had crashed in my own parking lot.
“As I recall,” I said, “we have a field team in Honolulu. They love playing with boats. Send those guys.”
“I did,” said Church.
“And…?”
“We’ve lost all contact with them.”
I sat up. “What?”
“They are the third investigating group to have visited the island since the crash,” he said. “Following the crash, the Coast Guard tried to contact members of a small Nature Conservancy research team on the island, but they were unable to make contact via radio or satellite. A Coast Guard cutter was dispatched and they launched a drone for flyover. The live feed from the drone terminated as the aircraft crossed into island airspace. Contact with the cutter was lost within minutes. A navy ship, the USS Michael Murphy, an Arleigh Burke — class destroyer, was within three hundred miles and it sent in a Seahawk helicopter, which has since vanished along with its crew of six. This occurred four hours and ten minutes ago. The Michael Murphy was ordered to maintain station fifty nautical miles from the island until the DMS can send a team.”
“What do we know?” I asked. “Do we have an eye in the sky on this yet?”
“Yes,” said Church after the slightest pause. “And that’s why this has been handed over to us.”
The screen split into two windows and the second showed a good-quality satellite black-and-white image of Palmyra. Church explained that it was one of the Northern Line Islands, and was about a thousand miles due south of the Hawaiian Islands and about a third of the way between Hawaii and American Samoa. The nearest continent was thirty-three hundred miles away. Nicely remote.
Palmyra Atoll is in the middle of nowhere. Seriously. Nowhere. The whole thing was a bit over four square miles, with sand and forested land wrapped around a seawater bay. It might have once been pretty, and parts of it still were, but it was scarred by a long trench that started from the southeast tip and drove inland for half a mile. Sand had been pushed up on either side of the trench, speaking to the force of the impact, and there was evidence of a forest fire that destroyed a lot of palm trees. The trench was shaped like a big spoon, with the bowl part of the spoon being the final impact point.
In the center of the bowl was an object.
Big. Triangular. And definitely not a chunk of space rock.
I recognized that shape and it immediately turned me cold frigging sober and dropped the temperature of my blood to that of ice water.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“Yes,” said Church.
“It’s a T-craft.”
“Yes,” he said. “But it’s not one of ours.”
“Whose?” I demanded. “The Russians? The Chinese?”
Several of the world’s superpowers had been conducting a very quiet arms race to launch triangular-shaped craft like this, based on technologies recovered from places you might have heard of. Kecksburg, Rendlesham, Roswell. Like that.
Yeah.
Exactly like that.
Church said, “I don’t believe this craft is of local manufacture.”