Converging Parallels

By Stephen J Bannister

Accidently running a man down on a busy city street was not the way Samantha wanted to end an otherwise great day.
That collision will force her and Michael together, a pair the universe never intended should meet. That critical day will cost more than the pair could ever imagine—lives, love, tears, grief and blood as they fight law enforcement departments, government security agencies, the military and alien mercenaries in a quest to recover a hostage and the information she holds.
The extremely violent and tenacious mercenaries will stop at nothing to claim the prisoner as theirs and attain the rewards that go with success. Thousands of lives, human and otherwise are at stake if they succeed.
Set across Australia and the US will Samantha and Michael achieve their goal before they are captured or killed by any number of organisations that are out to stop them? Will they retrieve the captive and more importantly the information that is so vital to the lives of so many? Buy Converging Parallels, all 347,490 words of it, start reading and find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen J Bannister
• Release date: Jul 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463929063

Stephen J Bannister

Stephen. L West writes under the pseudonym of Stephen J Bannister. Stephen was born in the UK but moved to South Australia in the mid-sixties growing up in Adelaide. Enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy aged 17. Married in nineteen eighty. Joined the New South Wales Fire Brigades before moving back to South Australia.Started writing in the late nineteen-eighties creating technical manuals which led to dabbling in fiction. As an amateur astronomer with a lot of interest in other sciences, he decided to write his first science fiction novel.Stephen and his wife live on a two acre plot in the rural mid-north of South Australia. Their family has expanded to seven grandchildren.

Book preview

Converging Parallels

Stephen J Bannister

Published by Stephen J Bannister at Smashwords

Copyright 2021 Stephen J Bannister

Edited by Element Editing Services

Cover design by Clare Kemble-Jones

All characters appearing in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, most locations or persons living or dead is coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table Of Contents

Chapter One: An Anxious Delivery, a Ruckus

Chapter Two: Insertion, an Ugly Human

Chapter Three: A New World, a New Assignment, Johnno

Chapter Four: Port Augusta and a Dog with the Lot, the Big Smoke

Chapter Five: Impact and Opportunity, Ocean Palms Caravan Park, Fed & Emily

Chapter Six: Knife Fight, the Relationship Develops

Chapter Seven: Educated, a Trip North

Chapter Eight: Alice Springs, Computer Problems, Captain Callan

Chapter Nine: A Chase Ensues, Making Plans

Chapter Ten: Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, Another Chase, Flannagan Makes Contact

Chapter Eleven: Worrying News, Callan’s House, a Shootout

Chapter Twelve: Aftermath, Flannagan is Told Off, Weapons Retrieved

Chapter Thirteen: More Preparations, Target Practice, Pine Gap Visit, Departure

Chapter Fourteen: Reunion, Area 51 Air Force Facility

Chapter Fifteen: Hacking System, Flannagan sees a Movie

Chapter Sixteen: John Wayne Swaggers in, a Swim, Disturbing Discovery

Chapter Seventeen: Flannagan Writes a Paper, Albert McIntosh

Chapter Eighteen: A Fight, Flannagan’s Report, the Lower Levels, Preparations

Chapter Nineteen: The Pilot, Ethan Arnott, Callan Makes a Move

Chapter Twenty: Hot Pursuit, Tunnels

Chapter Twenty One: The Search Goes on, a Long Journey Begins, a Nasty Bar

Chapter Twenty Two: Lincoln County Sheriff, an Odd Couple

Chapter Twenty Three: Utah, Colorado, a Long Fall

Acknowledgements

About the Author

1. An Anxious Delivery, a Ruckus

‘Death is a distinct possibility, isn’t it? I suppose I’ll get it in the neck first,’ the commander of the deep space freighter muttered.

‘I can’t answer any of that, Captain.’

‘For all your smarts you still can’t tell the difference between a rhetorical question and a general one. I didn’t expect you to know the answer, I was speaking to myself,’ he replied with a sigh.

‘All the same, I’m not—’

‘Please, just shut up and allow me my thoughts, this situation needs thorough consideration.’

This was the first dialogue between the pair for a while, the captain had been staring out into deep space, its icy embrace encompassing the ship, the vacuous inky blackness stretching out into eternity, innumerable stars casting their wonderfully different coloured hues toward him.

Although he had appeared to be staring at their beauty from within the safety of his bubble, a thin veneer of transparent material, he hadn’t been seeing them. To a casual observer floating past it would have appeared as though he were in some form of trance, meditating, or dead, but his mind had been racing, he was far from calm.

He was as worried now as he’d ever been in his entire life, petrified. Petrified for himself and his crew. All spacefarers understood traversing the galaxy, travelling between planets and planetary systems, carried a high degree of risk. Flung off the surface of a home world and re-entry were extremely hazardous moments. And space wasn’t as peaceful as it looked, there were perils everywhere.

Cruising around inside a container put together by fabricators and engineers who would never travel in their contrivances was a risk those in the industry were prepared to take, to a point. They were happy to put every faith and trust in those who had built their interstellar habitats even if it meant they would never fully understand the machines they called home.

What was facing him now was different, it was one of those perils. He now had to factor into the mix a malevolence, a threat not understood nor planned for. An external menace that could see him and his crew in all manner of hurt.

Etched on his face was concern. He’d convinced himself, through rumours and stories, the pirates he believed were following his ship would not take kindly to him.

And it wasn’t just pirates open to boarding a vessel, terrorist organisations and mercenaries were known to indulge in similar practices, all of them were just packs of thieves, misfits, and murderers who saw freighters like his as soft targets.

Not only was he fearful for his own life but also the lives of his crew members. They were just a bunch of slobs paid to do a job. They didn’t deserve to die out here in the outer rim of the galaxy a long way from home and family.

Although it could be a terrifyingly violent and inhospitable place with many ways of coming to a grizzly end, he had always loved deep space, but dying out there had never been his intention. He had a baby at home who he had only met once, and he really wanted to get back to see her again.

‘Have you at least managed to identify the vessel trailing us?’ he said.

Somebody cruising past would have thought the master was talking to himself, the room he was occupying was empty, just him and the ship’s mainframe.

‘No, and I think there’s more than one which has yet to be confirmed, I’m still examining the information, it’s all a bit confusing,’ came the neutral response.

His brow didn’t so much crinkle but rippled. ‘Two!’ he could feel his anxiety rising. ‘Okay, the one ship you do know about, can you tell me anything apart from it’s following us. Information such as, is it keeping its distance?’

‘No and yes.’

What’s the use of you? the commander thought, drawing in a long breath.

He started drumming his seven, multi-knuckled fingers against the sides of his floppy cheeks as he considered their current situation. What to do?

The female voice was as aggravating as the incessant blinking red light on his dash t telling him exactly what he knew, an alien species, type unknown, numbers unknown, type of vessel unknown, was following them and had been from the outset, or at least one of them had.

He’d cover the light with something so he didn’t have to look at it, but the computer belonging to the annoying voice would simply nag him until he removed it. There’d be a protocol about doing such things somewhere, he was sure, and she’d be only too happy to remind him of it.

He groaned. The thoughts of his imminent death were clouding his judgement. He didn’t consider himself to be particularly brave, but he was prepared to put up a fight if he had to, even with their limited resources. He would certainly fight for the lives of his crew—outgunned or not.

His mind reluctantly turned to the job at hand, the type of job he hated. Not that he’d done too many of them, but those he had been involved with had all been the same. Long, tiresome, and wrought with danger brought about by the incompetence of those who had conceived the idea of getting non-military crews to do what specialists should do.

The crew had no training for such covert activities, nor was the vessel designed for it. If the experts wanted a crew to do what they were doing now they should have invested in the correct resources.

Why bother with an underfunded and under-resourced classified mission t from the outset? He would never understand it. If the right means weren’t available, then they couldn’t be important.

From the outset, he had to scrimp and scrape to meet their deadline. Planet hopping in the hope of finding sympathetic ears that would provide them with the things they needed. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have said they’d been set up to fail.

The commander recalled the answer to the question he’d asked before leaving, why aren’t the military involved?

‘It’s a difficult time with diplomatic tensions making negotiating difficult, using a neutral resource will give the secrecy and subterfuge necessary to complete the assignment.’

What a pile of steaming political shit that had turned out to be. Right from the start everybody knew about what was going on.

For a task considered highly sensitive, with the highest of security levels so only those who needed to know were aware, total discretion and secrecy demanded, there appeared to be one too many coincidences of bad luck, one too many unintended things had dogged them from day one.

At one stage they had come perilously close to losing their small package in a transfer from one freighter to another in an incident thought to be the act of sabotage. Then the egg, a term most used for this type of cargo, had developed electronic problems almost costing the life of the individual cocooned inside it. Again, it was a deliberate act, but he had no proof.

This cast suspicion upon a member or members of his crew and that was not acceptable, he didn’t believe they were in anyway responsible for the sabotage if that’s what it was. He trusted them, but in the end it didn’t matter, it was just another problem in a long string of them.

Thoughts and bitterness were rampaging through his brain as he sat slumped in his chair in the small pod of his aging multipurpose cargo and support vessel. Being a leader was lonely at times. He couldn’t discuss things with his pissed off crew, morale was almost non-existent. The ships AI prevented his crew, even him, from using external communications so there was zero contact with family and friends, the only exchange he could make was with the idiots who had put him in his current predicament.

‘Why . . . do these things . . . have to be . . . so fucking hard?’ he asked himself.

‘Again, I can’t answer that,’ the female said in her monotone voice. ‘And, you are reminded about the use of vulgar language, it’s clearly written in article—’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. It was another rhetorical question, I wasn’t talking to you.’

‘That may be the case, but it’s been logged.’

He shook his head and muttered something the irritating contraption couldn’t pick up.

His overly large feet were sitting on the edge of the console in front of him, his fingers stopped their drumming and instead supported his bulbous head. The red-light blinking, blinking, blinking.

The screen in front of him gave an approximate location of the pirates, or terrorists, or whatever they were.

Suddenly, a second signature appeared on the screen causing his head and wide shoulders to slump. What now? he wondered.

‘We have yet more company, Commander.’

‘No shit, I’m not blind.’

‘I wasn’t trying to suggest you are but merely—’

‘Whatever, just shut up.’

‘It’s the second time you have used inappropriate language, I shouldn’t have to remind you of the penalties.’

He clenched his teeth and fists trying to get himself under control. He looked at the console through scrunched eyes.

The two signatures were different and well separated, telling him the pair were not with each other.

‘Is it the second vessel you referred to earlier?’

‘No, it’s a third, the second vessel has found a way of masking itself, hidden behind an asteroid or something similar.’

Oh, how good is this? A third party has become interested in what we’re up to, did they send out invitations? he thought.

Time was becoming short, he didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on the issue any longer. All that had happened would go into his report so others far higher up the food chain would have to get on and do their jobs of finding out who was leaking information.

What he thought would happen was it would all end up in the can’t-be-fucked-too hard basket and nothing would ever come of it.

He was a shrewd captain with enough experience to know they were just watching his ship, but who were they? They weren’t ordinary pirates, they’d have boards him by now. Agents of a hostile government was a possibility. There were a few still out there. Presently, there didn’t appear to be any intent on interfering with him or his mission, but he knew appearances could be deceptive, it might simply be his antagonists were simply biding their time, waiting for one opportunity, the right moment to spring.

A small light on the console drew his attention, this one was blue. There was an incoming communique, for his eyes only.

He read it with growing dismay, having to read it again to make sure he had it right then a third time just to make sure.

Fucking fabulous, this is the job that just keeps on giving.

‘Destination approaching, slowing to appropriate speed.’ The metallic voice filled the small bubble he was occupying.

‘Thank you, estimated time?’ he asked.

‘Seven hours, six minutes and thirty-three seconds, Earth time of course.’

‘Of course. Thank you, again.’

Earth.

Of all places, a planet inhabited by mindless creatures most other species had little time for. Due to their lack of intelligence, something they were too arrogant to acknowledge, and their constant aggressiveness, if not to themselves then to others who had tried to make peaceful contact with them, most detested humans.

It was a wet and cold planet with few if any redeeming characteristics, and to top it off, the place was far out on the outer reaches of the galaxy where most believed it deserved to be. Out there with the other miscreants and arseholes. He’d heard rumours about them in the bars he liked to frequent.

As he reached for his internal communications mic, the two signatures of those following the ship disappeared, they suddenly winked out, leaving his screen blank. The red light stopped its incessant strobing.

Thanks for small mercies, he thought.

The blank screen didn’t give him any great comfort, they hadn’t followed him all this way just to leave them alone or simply run away. Like the other vessel, it meant they had found a place to hide. They were either awaiting further orders from whoever their masters were or placing themselves strategically so they could plan their next moves.

He picked up the radio handset. ‘Cargo bay, anybody down there?’ he spoke quietly.

‘Yes, boss, what’s up?’ The voice was dreary, tired.

Wait until you get the news I’ve just received, it’ll perk you up.

‘Start to prepare our little presents. We’re there.’

‘About time as well, homeward bound here we come.’

Nope, I don’t think so.

He sat back in his chair and wondered about how he was going to tell them about the communication he’d just received. They weren’t going home, they were staying put, hiding behind the planet’s moon as a support vessel for the cargo they were soon to deposit. Assuming it survived, the odds weren’t good.

No matter how he told them or what he could offer by way of a bribe, these new instructions were not going to go down well with any of his crew.

Why me?

A ball of dread formed in his stomach as he thought about the best way to break the news to them, dealing with confrontation didn’t come easy to him. He couldn’t order them about like military people, they had rights as independents, or so they thought. He would have to look at his contract again and pay more attention to the finer details.

***

As the vessel approached the small blue planet, the commander spent the last few hours of his time in his small bubble trying to reduce his interaction with the crew. It was a self-defence mechanism, if he didn’t have to look at them it might make it easier to break the bad news. It rarely worked.

He was brooding as he looked outward. It had been the stars to first drawn him to a life of cruising through the galaxy delivering the goods and chattels of a vibrant galactic economy. He never tired of them, but he was seriously wondering if he should be thinking about retirement.

He simply didn’t need the shit he was putting up with. There was the small problem of his partner, but nothing he could not sort out.

‘Time to destination is thirty Earth minutes, seven seconds,’ commander.

Her voice splintered his thoughts and startled him.

An oversized moon with its blue planet looming behind it started to fill his sight, he was so deep in his thoughts he didn’t notice it. From up here the planet looked alright but again, he knew appearances could be deceptive.

He sighed and stood up in the cramped enclosure before dropping down a hatch into the interior of the ship. His legs had gone to sleep, pins and needles numbing them making it hard for him to walk. He made his way to his quarters to prepare himself for delivery of the cargo and the message.

From his cabin he plucked a mic from the bulkhead and called down to the cargo bay.

‘How we looking?’ he asked.

‘All good, boss, just making the final preparation.’

The commander didn’t bother responding. He scrutinised himself in a mirror and saw for the first time just how old he was looking, crease lines where once it had been smooth skin, the few hairs he had on his face were now white. How he wished the planet below them was his own. Still, once they’d delivered the egg and its tender vessel, they could all relax a little, and if they were boarded there wouldn’t be any evidence, electronic or otherwise, to implicate them in anything.

Once the ship was in high orbit, the commander knew they had to act fast but with the greatest of care. Their own electronic signature would be detectable to the cretins on the planet, and those who were pursuing them would be watching proceedings.

He went down to the cargo bay to oversee the operation, it was more about making an appearance, it wasn’t a difficult task.

His footfalls echoed in the vast but empty chamber as he approached the two vessels and the small number of crew tending them. The space they were occupying should be full to the deckhead high above with all manner of containers stuffed with goods, but not on this trip. Just two small craft in a vast hold, it was ridiculous.

‘In position, Commander,’ the female said, her words echoing throughout the compartment.

They called the vessel an egg because it strongly resembled one, ovate in shape and smooth skinned. The other resembled a cigar and was larger—it had to carry two occupants.

He watched as the crew members pushed the two vessels into their respective launch bays and then released the tethers allowing the two ships to shoot off into the void.

Inside the egg was what appeared to be a human but wasn’t, in the other slightly larger craft were two humans who weren’t. It was the occupant in the egg who was of most importance, but the other two had to start the mission. It was a small but vital role.

A crew member said. ‘Ready when you are, boss,’

‘You should launch now, Commander,’ the annoyingly vapid voice declared.

The commander sighed then nodded giving his permission for the crew member to push a large red button. Warning lights started to flash. With a hiss of expelled air, the egg shot out of the hold on its guide rails at the precise angle needed for entry into Earth’s atmosphere. A couple of seconds later the second craft also launched.

He and the crew members turned to a large screen on the bulkhead and watched as the tiny objects approached the planet before they became too small to see. They reappeared when the pair hit the planet’s upper atmosphere turning into bright red streaks as they continued downward until suddenly blinking out.

‘Great, job done and dusted, now to the hard bit,’ the commander said under his breath.

He left the hold and requested the ship’s computer to announce all crew members were to meet in the dining mess in five minutes.

‘I wouldn’t want to be you,’ she said gleefully, which wasn’t possible, was it?

On the bridge, he punched in the coordinates to manoeuvre his freighter behind the large potholed moon. It was something he could have asked the AI to do but he liked to have some level of control and do the things he could do for himself.

In the dining room he continued to rehearse the words he would say to the crew in his head. How he delivered the news was not how he had practiced it.

Once he had finished saying what he had to reluctantly say, his crew members simply stared in disbelief at him, silence filled the room.

Went down better than I had imagined, he thought.

Then came the response he had predicted, albeit delayed. The two crew members who hadn’t been getting on well since the start of the journey, constantly sniping and niggling at each other, stared at their commander, and slowly stood.

‘Now, I know you’re upset, we all are, but let’s not do something I’ll regret,’ the captain said holding his hands up defensively.

The words had the desired effect, instead they turned to each other and glared across the metal table. Simultaneously the launched themselves at one another engaging in a brawling fistfight.

The rest of the crew started to intervene then thought better of it, instead, they turned their attention to their master and commander.

All at once they started shouting, squawking, and screeching at him in their native dialects making it hard for him to make sense of what the message was although he already knew—body language was unmistakable regardless of the species.

He backed up, his hands again held defensively out in front of him. This was not something he wanted to engage in, emotions were too high, he had little hope of calming them down.

The commander hastily went to his own cabin safe in the knowledge once they adjusted to the situation they would come around to their senses. For now, he was happy to let them deal with it in their own way. Besides, a punch on the nose was not what he wanted—he had enough trouble breathing through it as it was.

He lay on his bunk knowing the waiting game had begun. How long they would be there was unknown, but there would be a requirement for contact with the delivery at some point. It would give them all a chance at some rest and recreation, and once the engineers had stopped punching each other they could get some overdue maintenance done.

***

While the captain sulked and brooded in his quarters, the ship’s computer continued her assessments of the vessels threatening to intervene in their current mission. She swept the immediate space to gather as much information as she could, but with them hiding it was difficult. She would have to pass on anything she uncovered, with or without the captain’s knowledge and agreement, it would go to her other masters, she had more than one.

She wasn’t privy to the thoughts of the commanding officer, but they shared the same opinion, the vessels following them did not appear to be interested in hijacking the cargo vessel, not in the foreseeable future at least. She assumed it was the jettisoned cargo they were interested in.

All the alien ships were now in hiding, concealed from the humans and her. One was behind a large asteroid, another on the fourth planet in the system. The third she wasn’t sure of. The moment they had launched their cargo, all three would have watched and tracked the two smaller vessels to the point at which they would have landed on Earth’s surface.

Her sensors detected movements, smaller vessels approaching Earth. She calculated their trajectory and found their origin to be from the asteroid and the red planet. Her composite brain plotted their course, making corrections as the vessels drew closer to Earth. Within a minute she knew they were going to follow the egg and its companion vessel.

She engaged the internal cameras and watched the brawling and morose crew members as things slowly settled down in the mess. She thought about telling the second in command about what she’d seen but one look at her face told the computer she’d be wasting her time. Instead, she tried to contact the captain and inform him. He wasn’t interested.

She made a note in her internal log of his belligerence and lack of due care before sending her report.

2. Insertion, an Ugly Human

The night sky in the remotest parts of the Australian outback is spectacular, even for those with little interest in the heavens. There is very little artificial light and is one of the last places on Earth’s surface to be truly dark, as pristine as a night sky can be in the modern era. Natural sources were the only form of atmospheric light pollution.

Those living in the outmost places can easily follow the man-made satellites crisscrossing the darkness high above the Earth’s surface or follow the International Space Station as it rapidly crosses from one horizon to another. Observers mesmerised by the thought humans inside the craft were looking back down at them.

The Milky Way’s Orion Arm dominates the summer night sky, the constellation of the Hunter easily recognised, the belt and sword prominently sandwiched between the two giants Rigel and Betelgeuse. With no moon present, the melded natural light from thousands of stars can be bright enough to cast dim shadows on the desert surface. Under such pristine conditions, when very bright objects such as large meteors or meteorites flare across the sky, they are far more prominent and spectacular than when a full moon is overhead.

The fireballs arcing across the Western Australian desert night sky when the egg and its support vessel hit the Earth’s atmosphere were nothing short of astonishing, a staggering sight that could very well have been a once-in-a-lifetime event.

The small pair traversed from just above the southern horizon falling brightly in a blaze of white-blue light, a rumbling akin to a summer thunderstorm came with them. The ground lit up as though a road train had its full complement of spotlights blazing.

A trail of green-grey smoke wound out from behind the two ships as the outer skins started to delaminate, sacrificial layers design to ensure the integrity of the inner hulls.

People inhabiting some of the tiny towns dotted along the path of the falling vessels stopped and gaped at the sight above them, their mouths open in awe. Some tried to film the fireballs on their mobile phones with little success as the objects were moving too fast and were so bright the light overwhelmed the camera sensors. The odd dashcam of vehicles still travelling at the late hour briefly captured some images, but on inspection they would depict a bright glare moving very fast, nothing showed of what the objects were, they’d be nothing but a blur.

It only took minutes before phone calls from the public woke observatory staff and amateur astronomy club members as far away as Perth, Adelaide, and Darwin, all wondering what the objects could have been and if they had heard anything about them. When the astronomers were of no help, the witnesses came to their own conclusions—they must have been watching space junk breaking up in Earth’s atmosphere. Although it did not detract from the splendour of the spectacle.

The spectators continued to watch as the first fireball fell out of sight below the nearby horizon, its sonic boom faded but the slightly sooty smoke trail it left in the sky was still visible against the backdrop of stars. They watched as a second object fell to ground, close to the first.

A swarm of smaller streaks from the same direction followed, they also disappeared across the barren landscape’s horizon but much farther afield.

‘Three hundred klicks away for the first two, I reckon,’ an old man in baggy trousers and a flannelette chequered shirt with holes in both elbows said in his country drawl. ‘The others further out.’ He had a thin, tailor-made cigarette, bent in the middle, glued to his bottom lip.

‘Nah, the first two landed closer, you’re right about the others though,’ somebody behind him replied.

They were both wrong.

‘Holy crap, look at that,’ a man who was standing next to his wife said.

They had been pulling their caravan along the desolate road tiredly looking for a suitable place to spend the rest of the night when the lights had appeared. He had driven onto the dirt shoulder and the pair had gotten out, excited and reaching for their phones.

‘What?’ the first old man said, turning a scrawny neck toward the grey nomads.

The pair pointed to a different part of the sky.

More bright lights were arcing across the ebony expanse.

‘Ain’t seen that before,’ the old-timer said.

‘Seen what before?’ the woman asked.

‘Normally stuff comes in from the same direction, not all mixed up like this,’ the old man answered still looking up as the glow at the end of his smoke slowly went out.

What they didn’t see were fainter flares much higher up in the atmosphere which did not come to ground as the others had done. The occupants of those vessels seemed content to wait and watch the proceedings. They kept their altitude, their hulls slowly cooling until they faded from sight.

***

Seconds after launch, retro-engines had appeared from the hull of both vessels allowing the on-board computers and the support vessel’s CPU to collaboratively make the small adjustments necessary to navigate the ships to the ground.

The small but powerful motors screamed against the pressure and temperature as the air thickened.

Vibrations from the engines and the buffeting atmosphere sent shivers through both transporters strong framework as the pair started shedding as much speed as possible in preparation for what would be a rough landing, for the egg at least. Although they were slowing rapidly, the friction and increasing air density in front of both craft still gave off long, slender tails of flame and smoke which betrayed their location and direction.

As the small, oval ship continued to lose its height and velocity, its fiery tail eventually extinguished. As it did, the brightness of the hull began to fade leaving behind a red-hot glowing ball preceding a smoky stream. As its speed continued to decrease, the blazing red dulled until witnesses could no longer see it from the land below. Those people lucky enough to have watched the fireworks went back to whatever they had been doing. The caravanners climbed wearily into their Ford Ranger and restarted their search for a suitable lay by.

Regardless of the reduced speed, the egg still slammed into the ground leaving a large crater several metres deep. It bounced out of the hole it had created and slid for a hundred metres before hitting a small dune. The sandhill acted like a ramp and propelled the vessel back into the air before it again struck the florid earth creating another crater, smaller but still deep. It came to a smoking rest inside the depression. A gouge scarred the landscape behind it, soil and sand banked on both sides, broken vegetation littered the area with some of it set alight.

Due to its more complex construction, the support vessel did not hit the ground, it glided in gently and elegantly, its white-hot motors letting off vapour as they cooled. It hovered close to the egg and then touched down on the pebbly desert ground near the edge of the indentation.

No sooner had it landed when a narrow door slid open, the two human figures alighted. They were carrying a long, thin metal tray and a bag between them. The pair stood for a moment on the edge of the hole looking down at the egg, small tendrils of smoke coming from charred vegetation and superheated rocks.

‘Seems to have survived,’ one said without taking his eyes off the egg.

The other gave a small nod of his head. ‘We will see.’

They scrambled down the soft edges of the cavity and approached the hot hull then placed the tray and bag on the ground.

Although the pair resembled humans, they were automatons constructed to look as close to human adult males as possible. Their clothing resembled how a man in the desert would have dressed so as not to draw attention to themselves. They could both speak English, but had a limited vocabulary, just enough to get them through the first stages of a mission they were a small part of.

Made cheaply, the two synthetic individuals were disposable, each programmed to perform just one primary task—in this case to get the occupant of the egg out of its vessel and delivered to a predetermined place in a small nearby town—then leave.

The pair waited patiently, the hull was still too hot to touch but they had time. They couldn’t interfere with the cargo inside anyway, the vessel would tell them when they could.

Inside the casing in a comatose state was a construct strongly resembling a human adult male, a highly sophisticated, semi-synthetic and organic creation. It was continuing to undergo the final stages of its transformation from one form to another. It was a complex process and would not be complete for a few more hours. It was vulnerable, totally reliant on its two companions.

The formation of the being inside the egg had started many months earlier in a laboratory on a planet light-years from Earth. Only eighty per cent of the process would occur in the lab, the next ten per cent took place inside the delivery vessel, and the final ten per cent once it was in its Earthly environment—it would occur through a natural process.

To say the fabricated human was totally artificial, something very clever and complex created in a laboratory, would be incorrect. It was a convergence of living and engineered materials. The thing was very much alive. Its natural body compressed and shaped into something else. It gave this species a unique advantage in a hostile environment.

The two supports continued to wait as the hull gave up its heat to the cold desert air. It slowly changed colour to dull metallic grey, the same colour it had been before being ejected from the cargo vessel.

The egg finally sent a radio message to the manufactured brains of the patient pair causing an electronic switch to make a contact, they both approached it. One produced a small device he ran over the hull getting a reading on a small screen.

This part of the transformation was complete, they could now reveal the cargo inside the egg.

Using a remote control, one of them opened the hatch revealing the unconscious hybrid human lying naked on his back. He was breathing in the normal human way with both eyes shut, his nostrils flaring as he exhaled and his chest rising slightly as he breathed in.

To another sentient alien being, not an Earthling, the form would be ugly, such was the depth of contempt held for humans.

With some difficulty, due to the confines of the small craft and the occupant’s weight, the pair managed to remove their charge. Due to the complexity of his interior which resembled the anatomy of a human but was not the composition of one, he was much heavier than a normal mature human. His bones for one were much denser and made of a composite calcium alloy.

Once clear of the delivery vessel the two carers placed him on the metal tray and stood back looking down at him. One ran a scanning device over the body and read the screen.

‘Payload has survived entry,’ was all it said. Their part of the task would soon be at an end.

One shut the access hatch on the egg and then knelt next to the metal tray. It pulled out of its side a small device to work the stretcher.

Small motors wined into operation and the tray lifted a metre off the ground where it hovered, defying gravity.

The pair manoeuvred the stretcher out of the crater, both slipping and sliding in the steep, soft soil.

Walking as quickly as possible over the flat, rough terrain, they moved toward the unusually named town of Sir Samuel, a tiny township found on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert.

To call it a town was a stretch. It had been a reasonable settlement in the early stages of its long life, but it had slowly decayed to the point where it was nothing but a small collection of mostly derelict buildings.

An hour later they approached Sir Samuel with only the dim lights of the local pub glowing meekly in the distance, the rest of the town was in darkness. Even at this time of morning, there were a few truckies still up and about, and while they were content to drink the licensee was only too happy to serve them. She ignored the rules about opening and closing times so long as people behaved themselves.

The pair circumvented the few ramshackle buildings beyond the town’s graveyard so they could approach the pub from the rear. They used the back steps leading to the first floor so as not to be noticed.

At the rear of the building one of the automatons went to the pub’s entrance on the main street and entered the building and searched for a person known as a publican.

Three identically dressed men were sitting on high stools at a long bar, their elbows resting on the worn timber. Each of them turned their heads simultaneously and looked at the newcomer.

‘Publican,’ he asked abruptly.

‘Beryl, you’re wanted,’ one of the men called out with a slur.

A large, weary looking woman appeared from around a corner, a hand towel in one hand, and moved along the bar with its faded rubber-backed mats sitting on its top. She approached him as she wiped her hands.

‘Help you?’ she asked.

Searching its vocabulary for the right words, the automaton quietly told the woman of its need to book a room for a colleague who was a little worse for wear.

The woman simply nodded her head showing she fully understood and went about reserving a room for the person, no questions asked. She didn’t seem bothered three people would be walking about in the middle of nowhere with one of them drunk—or worse.

‘Follow me,’ she ordered with a movement of her head.

On a small counter around the corner from the bar was a reservation book. It watched as the woman spun the book around and pushed it forward. The automaton filled it in with some difficulty, its writing clumsy. When done, it pushed the book toward the publican who looked at the writing to ensure it was legible, she was satisfied.

The automaton told the publican where her guest was. She made a move toward the rear of the building, but it asked her to not bother herself, it and his colleague would deal with it. She seemed happy with the arrangement. She gave the man a quick nod and said nothing.

The key to the room had a large plastic tag with a number on it. She passed it over to the odd man who gave the woman more than enough money to cover her for board and breakfast for a night. It politely refused the change she offered telling her to keep the money in case her guest should be any trouble, which it assured her would not be the case. It added she should conveniently forget about the guest if anybody asked questions.

‘What guest?’ she asked with a wry smile.

The statement confused the man, but he said nothing. As it was about to leave, it turned back to the woman. ‘Mr Flannagan may seem a little odd, or mystified, by everything when he rises. There will be no cause for alarm or concern should he interact with you, it’s just his way,’ it told her.

‘No worries, mate. I’ve been in this game a long time, I’ve seen them all.’

It then left the manager to her business, making his way to the rear of the building and to his colleague.

Programmed to expect trouble, the pair took precautions to ensure nothing was watching. They then moved the still unconscious male up the back stairs and onto a landing where the key to the hired room opened the locked rear door.

A quick scan of the hallway beyond the door revealed all to be quiet so they quickly moved their burden into the hallway and into his room. They didn’t know their cargo would be the pub’s only guest.

The accommodation was typical of an outback hotel, a single room, a door to a balcony, a wardrobe, sink, table and chair and a dilapidated single bed. A globe attached to the end of a chain and a yellowing electrical cable hung from the centre of the sagging ceiling. They left the light off, their eyesight in the gloom was good enough to see what they were doing.

They left the key to the room on the table along with the bag holding the things Mr Flannagan would initially need once he was on his own.

They transferred him onto the bed creating a loud creaking sound as it took his weight, the tired springs complaining loudly. There was a poing sound as one gave way.

The pair stood next to the bed looking down at the still-unconscious man before one of them took some clothing from the bag and placed it in the wardrobe.

The other picked up the bag and with a last look around they left as quietly as they had arrived, their end of the bargain now almost complete, just two small jobs left. The thing called Flannagan was now on its own.

The automaton carrying the bag drew the publican’s attention and deposited it at the pub’s front desk. It ask her to give it to Mr Flannagan when he woke which she promised she would do.

‘Thank you,’ it said, and walked out of the premises.

***

The publican’s eyes followed the man’s back.

Well, wasn’t he just a little odd? she thought.

She stifled a yawn then shrugged as she made her way back to the bar happily finding two of the last three customers had already left for the night with the last remaining occupant concluding he’d also had enough. Her wishes had come true, she was tired to the bone and desperately wanted her bed, in another few hours her day would be starting all over again.

The patron bade her goodnight as she ushered him through the door and locked it after him. She paused, peering through the grimy glass. She watched as the truck driver took a leak on the front wheel of his prime mover, swaying as he did, before he climbed into the cabin, not without difficulty, and the bed which she knew would be at the rear of it.

Because the truckie had preoccupied her, she didn’t see the strange pair of men marching into the wilderness.

***

The two mechanisms made their way back to their craft noticing the stationary lights high in the sky, their enemies in this matter but it was difficult to tell. They could be mercenaries, or pirate, or terrorist, but they could not be sure, all they knew was they had fulfilled their requirements and the human was now on his own, free to complete his mission.

Their craft slowly lifted off with a small flurry of sand and dust, quickly gaining altitude before hovering high above the hole in the ground holding the empty egg.

Before preparing to accelerate toward the cold vacuum of space and the support vessel, one of them ran a finger over a pad on a control panel.

For a moment the egg glowed a bright and vivid cherry red before slowly vaporising, leaving no trace it had ever been there.

Still hovering several hundred metres above the desert sands, the two looked at each other then began their preparations to leave the planet. Their last task was now complete.

As one reached for the controls their craft exploded in a fireball sending white-hot shrapnel and chards of twisted metal out into the air. Thousands of tiny pieces of junk filled the sky which slowly started to rain down onto the scant vegetation below setting more small fires.

Smoke trails again filled the air but the process of destroying the craft was not complete, as chunks of it and the occupants it once carried hit the ground, the pieces continued to break down until there was nothing left. It was as though it and the two strange men had never existed.

***

When the Australian authorities, who were already on their way to the zone, allowed the scientists, astrobiologists, geologists, and a mass of both professional and amateur specialists who wanted to search for the item that had created the impact crater into the area, they would find nothing of what could have caused the hole. They all agreed total annihilation of the object had taken place, but two craters and a long trench would ensure heated debates.

***

There was no regret over the destruction of the two vessels, it was necessary. The commander of the support vessel and his superior’s understood humans were thick but not completely stupid. They had to take precautions, they were to find nothing of the egg, the two androids or their vessel. Reverse engineering alien artefacts was something humans liked to do instead of researching and developing their own technology, it was forbidden to help them in any way which meant taking no chances.

3. A New World, a New Assignment, Johnno

A dilapidated and faded metal sign stands just outside of Sir Samuel on the side of Goldfields Highway. It hangs by two lengths of rusty chain from a badly corroded inverted U-shaped frame. Bullet holes perforate it, the metal indented on one side of the hole and torn open on the other.

On this morning it was slowly swinging back and forth in a gentle, early morning desert breeze. Rays from the low sun were catching the sign, casting reflected light over the dry land around its perimeter as it lazily moved about.

The squeaking from its rusting hinges made a juvenile frilled-neck lizard nervous. It was trying to use the feeble sun to warm its body, but it held its ground listening intently, its little head twitching and turning.

A vivid golden-orange glow in the cloudless sky spread out over the flat horizon giving the impression of a raging bushfire somewhere in the distance. The landscape looked so dry and barren it seemed impossible any life could survive but looks were deceptive—the desert was very much alive. Although rain was sporadic it was not uncommon, when prolonged rain fell it brought life to the arid region in the form of gloriously coloured wildflowers. New growth on shrubs and trees would suddenly sprout. Miraculously, huge flocks of birds would return, especially if the normally dry lakes in the area filled with water. How the birds knew there was water in the lakes or where they came from was still a mystery, but they never failed to turn up and breed when the conditions were right.

The few remaining locals were optimistic a category-four tropical cyclone one hundred kilometres off the coast of Broome would dissipate once it hit landfall and then, hopefully, spread out and bring decent rain to the area. Then the tourists would come and with them their money.

As the sun continued its slow climb, the lizard’s cold body absorbed the radiated heat providing it with the energy it would need to hunt for its breakfast or to evade its many predators. It cocked its head in the direction of the slightest sound, apprehensively watching with keen eyes and listening for any sign of danger. When none came it continued to warm itself before it began scurrying about, foraging for bugs or moths, quickly pouncing when something came its way.

Small eddies of sand and dust blew in miniature whirlwinds around and against the bottom of the metal frame before entering the low scrub throwing small bits of dry dust, dirt, and vegetation into the air.

The bleached sign had once been dark green, it was slowly losing the battle with the harsh environment it had to endure. There were equally pale white hand painted words on it which were difficult to read:

WELCOME TO SIR SAMUEL

POPULATION 90

EST: 1896

HAVE A NICE DAY, PLEASE DO NOT LITTER

REMEMBER, DRIVE TO SURVIVE

The population figure quoted on the sign was recognition of good times a long time come, gone, and now well behind the town. The numerals were wide of the mark, but nobody had the will or inclination to bother changing them.

Past the sign was a lay by for drivers to pull into. On the dirt verge was a public noticeboard covered by a lean-to no longer quite upright. It gave information to anyone who happened to be passing through the bustling town once occupying the area. The board was in a similar condition to the sign—weather beaten.

Faded and yellowing brochures and advertisements tacked under a scratched and cracked Perspex cover tried to give travellers and visitors information, but the cover had a dirty tinge to it making it almost impossible to read anything under it.

The noticeboard would only serve to confuse any potential visitor as most of the advertisements referred to places long gone, fallen prey to either hard times or a lack of interest from the locals and truckies who frequented the area.

The main street of Sir Samuel, Goldfields Highway, was extraordinarily wide and divided the small township down the centre. Barely visible angled white lines denoting parking bays were down the entire length of the town’s street, but none were in use. Littering the small town was two types of cracked timber clad buildings, ones boarded up and deserted or others hanging onto a grim existence. Some of the structures had once been retail outlets but now the windows were filthy with years of grime making it impossible to see what was on the other side of them. Signs plastered to some of the windows showed closing-down sales which had happened well in the past.

Most of the stores or premises had at one time supported the goldmining industry. When the gold ran out most of the proprietors had run out with it. Tourism had supported the place for a short time but when it dwindled away the town all but died out with just a few locals remaining.

Some of the windows had large squares of knotted plywood hammered into the timber frames to prevent intruders and wildlife from using the construction as a home.

There had once been a single service station and workshop but that had shut down forcing motorists to buy fuel elsewhere. It wasn’t a problem for the long-haul truck drivers with their large fuel tanks, but most motorists had carry extra fuel.

The buildings still in use or occupied had an air of foreboding quietness about them, it was as though the Grim Reaper was loitering on the step common to each poorly kept front door just waiting for an opportunity to pass his sickle over the building, casting judgement on it and any occupants.

In blunt contradiction, the pub occupying one corner on Sir Samuel’s only intersection was doing quite well, even showing signs of some prosperity. Erected in the imposing 1800s-style Australian architecture, it was the town’s only hotel, the square building forming the centrepiece of the town. Built from timber and thick sandstone with a steeply pitched corrugated metal roof, it had two floors and brick chimneys strewn over the roof. Many of them had the sticks and leaves of bird nests protruding from their tops.

A continuous timber verandah forming a balcony encircled the building separating the floors. The loggia, supported by stout timber posts once painted red but now faded to pink, extended out as far as the gutter. Between the posts were old, well-worn hitching rails where thirsty station hands and miners had tethered their horses a century earlier. On certain nights, some locals believed they could hear ghostly whinnying, the publican thought it had more to do with the amount of alcohol they had consumed.

The pub’s rusting roof extended well past the boards and handrails of the balcony and formed a bullnose covering which kept the upper rooms gloomy and free from most of the outside light, natural air conditioning. Like the verandah, stout posts extending upward from the balcony’s timber deck supported the bullnose covering.

The top floor had the sparsely decorated guest rooms available for lease. Each had a door opening onto the balcony so guests could step outside and admire the view or get some air to help with their hangovers. More than one guest had stepped outside and thrown up onto the road below with little regard of the consequences to any hapless passer-by.

Dull and faded brewery stickers covered the double front doors leading directly into the bar from the street, some of the breweries hadn’t been in operation in over fifty years. Embossed on the sandstone lintel block above the door was the date 1897.

The bottom floor had a kitchen, the small reception area and the one bar where weary, dusty travellers and truck drivers could get the coldest beer for a hundred or so kilometres along with a decent meal at a very good price considering the cost of getting food to the isolated town.

Slowly rotating overhead fans circulated cool dry air through the bar, they would give very little relief from the heat as the day progressed, but it would be nowhere near as bad as it was outside. The thick walls had good insulation against the warmth, but as the temperature reached its maximum even the stone would give into it and allow the heat to permeate the building’s interior.

A similar establishment had once stood on the block on the opposite corner of the intersection, but it had burned down over seventy-five years earlier in mysterious circumstances. At the time two feuding brothers had owned and separately run the hotels. The locals believed the bad blood had eventually boiled over with not only the hotel burning to the ground but with the loss of the brother’s life along with three of his patrons.

The death of the brother had weighed so heavily on the surviving brother he had taken his own life in one of his guest rooms. He had put a shot gun to his mouth and had sprayed a macabre mural over one of the walls, the faint stain still visible to this day.

The local council eventually bulldozed the burnt-out remains of the second hotel and finely crushed grey stone spread over the site to form a crude carpark truck drivers could use for their long rigs. Although still too early to legally be open there was no chance the publican was ever going to turn away a customer. A truckie driving all night did not give a damn what the time of day it was, his working day was just finishing. Besides, the local bush cop, who had a beat of over a quarter of a million square kilometres, was not concerned so long as everybody did the right thing and the drivers slept off the effects of the alcohol before moving on. It was not uncommon for him to pull in for breakfast after a long night shift which he too was inclined to wash down with a beer.

The surviving hotel had fallen into many different hands over the years, but each publican had failed to make any decent money from it and had passed it on to the next hapless buyer.

The current publican was quite content with her life and was not out to make herself a millionaire. She had been running the establishment quite successfully for several years and had built a decent clientele consisting mostly of interstate truck drivers and people driving from the south to the north for the winter, their caravans in tow.

During her time in the middle of No-Where’s-Ville, she had come to like the peace and solitude of the area and the men and women who had become her regulars. They brought with them droll and sometimes absurd stories that always amused her.

One of the drivers had become her last lover but he had died in a road accident in Perth not long after the relationship had begun.

The last remaining inhabitants of Sir Samuel resembled their town—worn out, old-looking beyond their years, dusty and run-down. Most were elderly but there were a few middle-aged occupants. Even the younger inhabitants looked much older than they should have, their harsh livelihoods having taken its retribution on their appearances. Most had scratched a living from the land, but some had supporting businesses for the people on the local farms and stations running either cattle or sheep. A small number of prospectors still ran metal detectors over the pebbly ground believing gold was still under their boots even though nothing of value had surfaced since the turn of the last century. They persisted because they had little else to do, or no job to go to.

A stray dog, its ribs visible under the mangy tan-coloured fur, mooched about looking for the occasional treat a passing motorist may have thrown from a vehicle. The dirty-looking mongrel would eventually end up lying outside the back door of the hotel where he knew a bowl of water and a bone may be waiting. His owner could not be relied upon for a regular feed, so it was the pub or go hungry.

***

The ledger on the reception desk said the hotel’s sole guest was a Mr Michael Flannagan. He was still lying on the bed in the same naked condition as when delivered. The transforming activities undertaken by both his natural and engineered body were now complete, he was starting to gain consciousness.

The room had cooled during the night but was slowly warming as the day drew on. Small droplets of sweat were forming on his skin and trickling down his body only for the dull blue-and-white bedspread to absorb it.

With no overhead fan available for circulation, the air inside the room was still, becoming stifled.

The alien would awake as close to a human as possible, any resemblance to his natural amorphous state gone, although he kept his persona and intelligence. His natural body was labile making him and many of his species suitable for such tasks—as some liked to say, that kind was born for it.

What finally brought him awake was a combination of the growing light seeping into the