The Bonding (32 page)

The MP’s looked at each other in dismay.
“That’s impossible, Captain,” said the Corporal. He turned to the others. “You
guys saw her go inside last night, and we immediately started walking around
the house, right?”

“Yes, sir,” they all agreed.

“Captain, I think she’s still in the
house, sir,” the Corporal insisted.

Captain Gates looked back towards the
house. Janet’s dad was still standing in the doorway. Gates walked back up to
him. “Mr. Shelby, we need to check the inside of the house please.”

Janet’s dad stepped aside. “Be my guest
Captain, but you’re not going to find my daughter here.”

Two of the MP’s searched the downstairs while
the Captain and the other two MP’s went upstairs. Janet’s mother was at the top
of the stairs.

“Mrs. Shelby, I’m sorry,” Gates
apologized, “but I have to search the house for Commander Shelby.”

“Didn’t my husband tell you that she
left?”

“Yes Ma’am, but the MP’s are insisting
that she’s still here. Sorry, Ma’am, but we have to look.”

“Well, before you go too far, Captain, we
have a house guest that I need to wake up before you barge in and scare the
life out of her.”

“A house guest?” Gates questioned.

“Yes, a young lady who is
like
a daughter to us. She came to visit when she heard that
Janet was here.”

She knocked on Gayla’s bedroom door. The
door opened and the Captain’s jaw dropped when he saw how much she resembled
Janet. He turned to the Corporal.

“Is this the lady you saw last night?”

“Hello, Corporal,” Gayla said, pulling
her robe around her.

The Corporal smiled and nodded to Gayla,
then looked at the Captain. “Yes, sir. She’s the one.”

The pale expression returned to Captain
Gate’s face, and he felt slightly sick to his stomach. He knew that it was
completely his fault that he hadn’t introduced the MP’s to Commander Shelby. He
dreaded the next phone call that he had to make, and could see his career
ending in the very near future. He apologized to Mr. Shelby and his wife, then
he and the MP’s left.

Janet’s mom turned to her husband. “Do
you think she’s okay?”

He nodded. “You bet she is. But it’s not
over yet. She’s going to get Tarku.”

At Area 51 General Redding was on the
phone ordering a squadron of attack jets to surround the base. It would take at
least thirty minutes for them to scramble and arrive, but Janet’s ship was
quickly descending into the atmosphere.

In less than a minute she arrived. Her
ship hovered over the flight line in front of the hangar complex, where she had
previously entered with Captain Gates. Employees, who were used to seeing very
strange spaceships, gazed in awe at the huge ship silently floating above the
ground. Its dark green metal and mammoth size made it an ominous sight. It was
larger than the entire hanger and the building next to it. Some of the people
ran for cover, fearing that the ship was dangerous, while others stood and
stared. Janet watched everyone on her monitors.

She knew that her radios were so advanced
that they could not communicate with anything on the Earth. However, back at
Padgett, when she took the soldier’s uniform, she had the foresight to also
take his radio. She keyed the microphone.

“General Redding, this is Commander Janet
Shelby. I am demanding the immediate release of Tarku or I will begin leveling
this complex.”

She waited about fifteen seconds and
keyed the radio again. “General Redding, this is Commander Janet Shelby, and I
repeat, either immediately release Tarku, or I will begin leveling this base.
This is my final warning.”

Another minute passed and she touched her
console. From the bottom of the ship, a bright, blue beam of light shot out
from the ship to the water tower. The tank exploded, and the flood of water
slammed against the buildings and out onto the flight line. Everyone who had
been standing and staring at her ship fled for cover.

The blue light was a kularon beam, the
ship’s main defense system. When one of these beams strikes an object, it
begins to rapidly vibrate the molecules, similar to a microwave oven, only
amplified over a billion times. The result is an immediate, catastrophic
explosion of the molecules. Her ship was capable of firing kularons at multiple
targets at the same time with deadly accuracy.

Once more she keyed the microphone on her
radio. “General Redding, the next shot will not be at a water tower. Release
Tarku or have your base destroyed.”

Inside the base, below the ground, the
guard on duty in the guard shack was calling to the General on his radio.

“Sir, this is Sergeant Gardner. There’s a
lady on the radio demanding the release of the alien, Tarku. She is hovering
over the flight line, in a large spaceship, and just destroyed the water tower.
She is threatening to take out the whole base if you don’t let him go, sir.”

“What frequency is she on, Sergeant?”
Redding asked.

“Channel one of the field radio
frequency, sir.”

The General switched his radio to channel
one. “Commander Shelby, this is General Redding.”

“It’s about time, General. Release Tarku
or lose your entire base.”

“Commander, you better think long and
hard about what you’re doing. There will be serious consequences,” he warned.

Tarku had sensed Janet’s presence and was
trying to communicate with her through the bonding. She felt him and knew that
he was in a room on the lower level. He told her to fire a tolpak at what she
thought was the main power center. This would neutralize the base electrical
system and shut down all power.

She felt his thought and smiled. Tarku
smiled too and moved near the door. He placed his hand on the knob. The door
was electrically locked, and he knew that as soon as she fired the tolpak the
door would open.

Janet keyed the radio again. “Serious
consequences? Is that what you said, General? Well here’s some serious
consequences for you.”

She fired the tolpak at the main power
station and everything electrical at the entire base instantly shut down. The
lower level, where Tarku was, went pitch black.

“Holy shit!” one of the men guarding
Tarku said. “What the hell is happening? I can’t see a fucking thing.”

“Neither can I,” another said. About ten
seconds later the emergency light batteries began to recover and dimly
illuminated the corridor.

One of the three men, who were guarding
Tarku, sensed something and turned to check the door. He ran right into Tarku
and looked up in horror. Tarku smiled, then swung his huge hand, and knocked
the guard into the wall. He fell to the floor, unconscious. The other two tried
to raise their rifles, but Tarku snatched them right out of their hands and
slung them down the corridor. The men turned to run, but Tarku grabbed each one
by the back of their necks and slammed them together. They limply fell to the
floor and didn’t move. Tarku ran down the corridor, heading for the Annunaki ship.

This was the first time that anything
like this had ever happened at Area 51, and the backup generators, which hadn’t
been used in years, were not immediately coming on line to restore power. Only
the battery-operated systems were working, and even they weren’t operating at
full capacity. Tarku knew that he needed to act fast.

The General was furious and barked
commands into the radio. “Gardner, where the fuck are the fighters? I want that
ship brought down, right now!”

“They’re on the way, sir. They should be
arriving any minute.”

“What’s the status with the alien? I want
him locked down tight.”

“The cameras are all dead, sir. I don’t
have any way to see him, and the guards aren’t answering the radios. I think
the power surge knocked them out too.”

“You fucking idiot,” the General growled.
“We’re talking on the radios aren’t we?”

“Y-y-yes, sir.”

“Then there’s nothing wrong with them.
Get a detail of armed men down there right now. That son-of-a-bitch is loose
and I want him stopped. Orders are to shoot him if necessary, but just wound
him. Do
not
, and I repeat, do
not
kill him.”

“Yes sir, General. I’ll get the men down
there right away, sir.”

Outside, the fighters arrived and blazed
past Janet. Janet had already anticipated them and activated the electronic
defense shield around her ship. The General had directed the fighters to use
whatever means necessary to disarm and down the spaceship.

“Base, this is Panther one. We are locked
onto the bogie and firing missiles.”

“Base, Panther two is also locked and firing.”

“Roger Panthers one and two. Fire away.”

The two aircraft simultaneously fired
their missiles. Inside the ship, Janet heard the computer blaring a proximity
warning, but ignored it. She knew that there were no weapons on the Earth that
could penetrate the shield, not even a nuclear blast. The fighter pilots
watched their missiles hit the target and explode. Everyone cheered the direct
hits, but the cheers changed to worry when the smoke cleared and the spaceship
remained unscathed.

“Base from Panther one. The missiles had
no effect. That’s the heaviest firepower that we have. What do you suggest?”

“Panthers from base. Hit it with
everything you have. Maybe a whole series of hits will bring it down.”

Suddenly the radio crackled with Janet’s
voice again. “General Redding, you’re not going to hurt my ship, no matter what
kind of weapon you throw at it. Now release Tarku or I will continue taking
apart your base.”

The General called Gardner again. “What
is the status with the alien?”

“Sir, I sent ten armed men to apprehend
him. They’re searching for him right now, sir.”

Tarku heard the scuffle of the
approaching men and grabbed a long, metal pole from the scaffolding around one
of the spaceships. The soldiers were between Tarku and the Annunaki ship, searching
every room. As they approached, Tarku jumped out and began swinging the pipe.
With one swipe he took out three of the men. Another swift action downed two
more. Two others raised their guns and Tarku hit them with the pole. Their guns
flew across the room with the men flying right behind them. One of the three
remaining men snapped off a shot that hit the pole. Tarku threw the pole like a
javelin and it went right over the man’s gun barrel and knocked him to the
floor. Tarku swung his body in a low circle, with one leg straight out and
knocked the last two men’s legs right out from under them. He ran down the
corridor and stopped in a large side room. This one contained the Annunaki
space ship. He looked up at it and smiled.

“Okay, General. You want to know how this
works? I’m going to give you a full demonstration.”

He climbed on board and touched the
control console. The ship came alive. He closed the door and retracted the
landing legs. For the first time in decades, the ship hovered, ready for flight.
Tarku touched the console and Janet appeared on his monitor.

“Hello Janet, you look as beautiful as
ever.”

She looked up at the monitor and couldn’t
believe her eyes. He smiled at her. “Tarku, where are you?”

“I am in the Annunaki ship, preparing to
leave this place, but I need some assistance.”

“And where would you like me to make an
exit?”

She had felt his thoughts correctly. “The
main hangar,” he replied. “That is where the elevator is that connects all of
these corridors. The entire floor of the hangar is an elevator.”

The proximity alert sounded again on
Janet’s ship. “Warning! Impact in two seconds!” The fighters came in with
another round of missile strikes, joined by even more fighters. They had called
for an entire squadron to join them, armed with more potent firepower. They
were like a swarm of hornets around her, trying their best to sting, but not
having much success. Tarku heard the proximity warning as she talked with him.

“Having some problems up there?” he
asked.

“Nothing that I can’t handle.”

Janet touched the console again, and
another kularon beam flashed through the air, hitting the hangar like a bolt of
lightning. The roof exploded, disintegrating into powder. People scattered like
cockroaches from every opening.

The fighter jets continued their
unrelenting, but futile missile strikes. Janet watched them on the monitors as
she maneuvered her ship directly over the hole in the hangar roof.

“General, this is Commander Shelby. Have
you not figured out yet that you don’t have any weapons that can harm my ship?”

“We’re not done with you yet, Commander,”
the General smugly replied. “Your shields can’t hold up forever, and then we’ll
clip your wings. I think you’re also forgetting that we still have Tarku.”

“Oh really, General. You’re positive about
that last point are you?”

The General quickly got on the radio to
his troops who were searching for Tarku. “What is the status of the alien?”