“Well, she liked that,” Elvis said, laughing as he sat down again. He turned to a soldier standing by the kitchen and said, “Same again, bartender.”
Elvis turned his chair around so he could straddle the seat as he leaned on the chair back watching the alien. He was mesmerized by Stella.
A young lieutenant walked in and froze in the doorway. Instantly, the alien bristled, all its appendages stiffening like swords and spikes.
“Easy, girl,” Elvis said in a soft voice. “It’s OK. We’re safe. We’re among friends.”
Whether the alien understood his words or just the tone of his voice, Bower wasn’t sure, but Stella relaxed and went back to examining the serving line. She was opening drawers and cupboards, just as Bower had seen her do on the factory floor.
“It’s OK, Frank. Just don’t make any sudden moves,” Jameson said.
“Is that… Is that…”
“Yep,” Jameson replied. “Apparently it is.”
The young officer never took his eyes of the alien. He moved cautiously, slowly stepping over to the far side of the table next to Jameson.
“Are you sure this is safe?” he asked quietly.
Elvis smiled, saying, “If you don’t shoot at her, she won’t tear your arms out of their sockets.”
Bower wasn’t sure that helped.
“We’ve got to call this through,” the lieutenant said. “Command is not going to believe this.”
“So what happened back there?” Jameson asked. Bower could see him looking intently at Elvis and his withered arm.
“We were overrun,” Elvis began. “I lost my arm while sheltering from an RPG. Stella gave me a new one.”
“So, what?” Jameson asked. “She carries spares?”
Elvis laughed, gesturing to his elbow as he said, “It was a bloody mess. Somehow, she regrew my arm. I don’t know how.”
Elvis looked to Bower.
“I saw it, but I can’t explain it,” she said, somewhat lost for words.
“From there,” Elvis continued. “I hot-wired a truck and we came here.”
Jameson scratched the side of his head. Bower could see the look on his face. He must have known Elvis was compressing an inordinate amount of detail into just a few words, but he let that slide. He was clearly impressed. Having an alien before them was just too fantastic. There would be time for a proper debrief at some point, but not here, not now.
“And Bosco?” Jameson asked.
“They killed him,” Elvis replied, cutting in rapidly before Bower could say anything, not that she would have.
On one level, it was a lie, Bower knew that, and yet Elvis was right to blame the warlord. It may have been Stella that carried out the sentence, but the sentence had been passed by Adan and his men. Elvis wasn’t being forthcoming, and Bower understood why, he was protecting Stella. Given the creature’s menacing, threatening appearance, the last thing anyone needed to hear was that she’d shredded a US Ranger in barely a second. And yet Bower couldn’t leave the details so scant. She was determined to say more while being careful not to implicate Stella.
“Adan captured us,” she said, and Elvis shot a fierce look at her, clearly wanting her to shut up. “They murdered Bosco in front of us. He never stood a chance.”
“And the alien?” Jameson asked.
The lieutenant sat down next to Jameson. Bower could see the glazed look in his eyes. He might not be up to logically resolving the various aspects of this puzzle, but Jameson was.
“They threw us in with Stella. We don’t know where she came from or how they captured her, but she was there when we got there, trapped on the ground floor of an abandoned factory.”
“And Adan captured her?” Jameson asked, pulling at the threads of the story. “You’re sure of that?”
“Yes,” Bower replied.
“So you saw Adan alive?”
“Yes.”
Elvis had his lips clenched.
“Do you know how or when Adan died?”
Bower shook her head.
“We heard he was killed by a woman, a foreigner.”
Bower looked down, avoiding eye contact with Jameson. She was afraid if she explained her part in Adan’s death she’d inadvertently give away Stella’s part in Bosco’s death.
Jameson wasn’t satisfied, the tone of his voice revealed that, but the lieutenant was as he smiled, saying, “Well, it’s exceptional work. You’ve escaped in the confusion surrounding the general’s death, and you’ve freed an alien. God knows what we’re going to do with… her, but you did the right thing, and that is to be commended.”
The soldier returned from the kitchen carrying a plate with several packages of food wrapped in foil. Like Jameson and the lieutenant, he approached the table so as to keep the flimsy structure between him and the alien. You have no idea how fast she can move, Bower thought, but she didn’t want to spook them so she remained silent. If they felt safe approaching from that direction, all well and good.
“Is there anything I can get for…” the soldier asked, his sentence trailing to a stop midway.
“Another jug of water,” Elvis replied.
Bower was fascinated by the presumption with which Elvis treated Stella. They had no way of knowing what Stella needed. Another jug of water was a good guess, but it was only a guess. And yet that could have been like a Mars Bar for the alien creature; hardly something that would provide any real nourishment. Bower doubted Stella could make use of terrestrial proteins. Perhaps raw materials like water and the silica in glass were best, but they really needed Stella to tell them what she needed.
“OK,” Jameson said. “Well, it’s damn good to have the two of you back, even if you have brought home a stray. McCallister and I are going to have to call this through.
“I’d like to ask you to stay here. You’re not under arrest, but I’d rather the three of you didn’t go wandering around. There are toilets over there, and we’ll get you anything you need, but for now, just stay put while we figure out what to do from here.”
“Roger, that,” Elvis replied.
“OK,” Bower said, feeling it was important to respond for herself.
Jameson and McCallister got up cautiously, taking pains not to scrape their chairs on the linoleum and make any excessive noise. Stella appeared to ignore them. As they left, Bower could hear them talking excitedly to each other in the hallway.
For her part, Stella had found a potted plant, an indoor palm no more than two feet high. Extraterrestrial bugs ran along Stella’s outstretched arms, examining the leaves, trunk, soil and the pot itself. She seemed particularly interested in the soil.
Bower poked at the food packets on the table.
“What is this?”
“They’re MREs,” Elvis replied. “Meals Ready to Eat.”
As unappealing as they looked, Bower was past caring. She tore one open and began eating something that tasted vaguely like corned beef and sweet corn mixed with a limp, leafy green vegetable that had long since lost its green. Whether it was spinach or okra, it tasted precisely how it looked, disgusting. Truth be told, Bower was aware that taste was a function of expectations, both in terms of sight and smell before the tongue ever savored any flavor, but she couldn’t see this pre-cooked meal as desirable for anything other than the raw consumption of calories.
Elvis tossed one of the MREs across the floor toward Stella. The package slid over next to the palm. The alien probed the plastic, tearing it open and examining the contents for a few seconds before turning back to the palm.
“Well, what do you know,” Elvis said to Bower. “MREs are now MRAs, Meals-Rejected-by-Aliens.”
He laughed, taking a bite out of something that looked distinctly like compressed cardboard.
Chapter 15: Evac
Time dragged.