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The Moose Jaw Incident
Chapter 10
X: The Best of Me
When Drummond and Xe Doll got back to the cockpit, Dolly was ensconced in the pilot's seat, driving the plane with great aplomb and concentration. Sappho was in the right seat, a radio operator's headset perched on her dark curls, a distant expression on her face as she concentrated on her dialog with someone on the radio.
"Hey," said Drummond to Dolly by way of greeting and announcement of their presence. He waved Xe Doll into the engineer's seat and moved over to stand behind Dolly, his forearms resting on the back of her seat. "Is this safe?"
"Yeah. Apparently somebody figured out that their shooting at us made us a hazard to navigation, so they got on the radio and told us they wouldn't shoot at us, but please pay attention to where we were going. I think they're hoping we'll run out of gas soon."
"Hmm." Drummond acknowledged, absorbing that and trying to reconcile it with the recent events off the plane's port wing. "They shot Melissa," he announced with a suddenness that surprised even him.
Dolly twisted around, her green eyes finding his, wide with horror. "You're shitting me."
Drummond shook his head. "And I don't know why it should shake me. I mean... After what they did to you and Cally just two weeks ago, I know these--people (if you want to give them that much credit)--are capable of some pretty nasty stuff. And even when she was supposedly on our side, I didn't much like Melissa.
"But even so... I mean... Xe was trying to drop her out the door as gently as it's possible to drop an unconscious body out of a moving airplane and this bastard riding along ahead of our wing in a Humvee picks up an M-16 and drills Melissa. Single shot. From the amount of blood on the runway, it must have missed the heart, but hit a major artery. The bastards!" His eyes clouded up and he choked on a sob.
Dolly stiffened for an imperceptible instant, then, with a glance ahead, she reached out to the control panel and threw the master control over to the copilot's position. "Take over, Sappho," she barked, not waiting for the poet to grab the yoke, but surging up out of her seat and stiff arming Drummond backward out of the cockpit and into the galley.
"What am I supposed to do?" Sappho demanded, a note of near-panic in her voice.
"Just drive," Dolly rasped. "It doesn't matter where. Well, it does. Don't get too close to the terminals or any hangars. Try to avoid moving airplanes if you can." She pulled the cockpit door shut behind her and turned to face Drummond. She rammed up against him, a fierce and tiny figure holding his bearish presence at bay, knocking him against the galley cabinets with an impact that rattled racks and bottles.
"You can't do that!" she hurled at him in a low growl. The urgency in her voice was palpable. "You have to maintain your command presence. This unit may only be two and a half effectives, true. But, if we're going to survive, it's your responsibility to keep us alive. If you let morale go to shit because of some self-indulgent crap, then... then... Oh, I give up! I don't know what! Snap out of it! Get a fucking grip!"
Drummond's whole body jerked, her words hitting him harder than her fists ever could. "Maybe you should be in command," he said with an unnatural calm in his voice. "You seem to have better control of the situation."
Dolly refused to even consider it. "No. No. No. We agreed a long time ago, remember? I'm the weapon, you're the hand on the grips. I can be your XO, but I can't... I can't always do everything that's necessary or right, even when I know I should. You can. You do. Sappho told me what you said about the day you and Trav broke into that nest in Columbus... how you really wanted to just go off and kill 'em all, but you had to... you..." And it was her turn to choke up. And his turn to buck her up.
"Hey! Dolly! No time for that now! Remember? We're in deep shit and we're all counting on nobody but us to get us out of it. Now, Game Face, Ms. Dolly."
Dolly nodded, setting her jaw and sniffing away her tears. "Right, Chief. Game Face. Let's go kick some alien/clone ass!"
"That's my Dolly." She was already turned back toward the cockpit, her hand reaching for the handle of the door, when he tapped her on the shoulder. "Hey!" He said softly.
She whirled with a sob and flew into his arms. She took three shuddering breaths while he made soothing noises and stroked her gently. Then she leaned back with a brave, but wet-eyed smile. She gazed intently into his eyes for a moment then leaned toward him and kissed him on the mouth.
"Better?" he asked.
She nodded. "Yeah. Sorry. Let's go." She slid out of his embrace and turned back to the cockpit door.
"Yeah. And, Dolly... Thanks."
"Any time." She paused. "And... Chief..." her voice was steady, but she didn't turn to face him.
"Yes, Dolly." His reply was soft and firm.
"You do have a plan, right?" She closed her eyes and did not hold her breath.
"Right," he said, answering both her spoken and unspoken questions.
"Good." She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and opened the door smartly, marching into the cockpit with her characteristic heads-up, here-comes-Dolly strut.
Drummond followed her more slowly and with less of a show of confidence, but, he hoped, a confident air nonetheless. He also hoped that he hadn't just lied to Dolly in telling her--if not in so many words--that they were going to be OK.
Xe Doll was leaning casually on the back of the right hand seat, staring intently at the bewildering array of knobs, dials, and switches in the ceiling overhead. "...and these are all duplicated on that panel back there, right?"
"Right," Sappho answered without looking up from the taxiway ahead. "All it takes is flipping the master switch--that three-way I showed you--at either position to switch control from one to the other. It means everybody has to agree on who's in control, but so long as you follow a clear chain of command..." she paused and looked over at Dolly, who nodded as she slipped into the left seat again " ...there shouldn't be any problem with that."
Drummond took the hint and cleared his throat. "Right." He said. "So what's our situation?"
"We're traveling down a taxiway parallel with runway two-seventy. (That means we're rolling West, if that signifies anything at the moment.) Our ground speed is about twelve miles an hour. I think. Why these things aren't marked in Kph I do not know. There isn't a country in the world that is officially on the English standard, not even England..."
"Sappho." Drummond said softly, "You're babbling."
"Sorry. I'm not as used to this kind of crap as you spy types are."
"It's OK," he said, projecting all the power he could into the simple declarative sentence. "We're all a little rattled. This was supposed to be a pleasure trip and it took us all by surprise. You're doing just fine. You were saying?"
"I've been talking with the tower. By the way, we're in Canada. This is a private field about an hour by road west of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan."
"Southern part of the province, if memory serves," Drummond mused.
"Right. Just west of Regina, the capital. And, as it so happens, my home town. Moose Jaw, that is. The nearest town to this airfield is a little hamlet called Swift Current, apropos of nothing at all. Anyway. Seems the aliens bought this place up lock stock and barrel about a month ago. Kept most of the key employees on, but replaced nearly everybody else with their own, er--people." She flashed him a grin.
Good, he thought. Humor returns to a shell-shocked crew. An excellent sign.
"The radio op in the tower is one of the locals. He's not entirely--shall we say, thrilled?--with the new regime. He keeps sneaking in these little remarks. It also turns out that he's a big Xena fan. Dunno how he got wind of who we are, but maybe it can help."
"If I could get somewhere he could see and hear me, I could impress the shit out of him by doing the Xena yell and some flips or something... if I could do the yell and the flips," Xe Doll said sourly.
"That may be a very good idea, Xe," Drummond said, pointedly ignoring her attitude. "No... not that exactly, but something like. We've used Dolly's looks to play on people's sympathies before. With the two of you together, we could potentially have a trump card there. Good thought."
He clapped his hand on her shoulder and left it there a bare instant before stepping sideways to take up a position similar to hers behind the pilot's seat, leaning down next to Dolly's ear. He tapped gently on the headphone cup over Dolly's left ear. She glanced up and shoved the headphone clear of her ear, nodding that she was listening even as she continued whatever she was doing with the controls. "She's a little unstable emotionally," he murmured into her ear. Dolly nodded. "If we can set it up, can Sappho calm her down, or do you think you need to...?"
"She can," Dolly breathed. Her words were just barely audible to Drummond, certainly not across the cockpit.
"OK," Drummond patted her on the head and straightened up. "Sappho," he spoke more loudly, "They said that we wouldn't be able to communicate with our people. By that, I assume they meant any of the Center teams that might render us assistance."
"Right. I mean, me too. I'd assume that."
"How much do they know about how the Center works such things?"
"Can't say for sure, but I'd bet it's not as much as they think."
"Do you suppose if I pulled a certain cord and a certain balloon were to go up it would be a surprise to a certain crew of ungodly types?"
Sappho and Dolly exchanged broadening grins. "I suspect so," Sappho answered. Xe Doll looked from one to the other, increasing puzzlement and irritation furrowing her forehead.
"What!?" she demanded.
Drummond chuckled. "Sorry, Xe. Didn't mean to be such a tease. Every piece of equipment which the Center owns and is large and valuable enough to warrant it has onboard a marvel of miniaturization and space-age technology. It's a GPS emergency beacon."
"GPS as in Geo-Positioning Satellite?"
"As in."
"What took us so long?"
"Well, things have been a little busy. But we've got a few minutes of breathing space. Sappho, why don't you distract the tower? Dolly. Head us out as far as possible from the terminal."
"Yes sir!" Dolly replied, chuckling and bouncing in her seat with glee written large on her expressive features.
"Hello, tower. This is CFXS Starship Flight One with the Ardent Bard in the radio chair. This one is called, 'Jesus is watching you.' It seems a man was robbing a house late one night, working by flashlight, when he hears a voice saying, 'Jesus is watching you.'."
"Oo! Perfect," Drummond said with an evil chuckle, giving Sappho a thumbs-up. "Xe, I have a project for you. Think you're up to it?"
"I'd be stupid to say, 'yes' before I heard what it was."
"No, no, no," Drummond took the tall, dark woman by the shoulders and pushed her into the galley. "You have to get into the spirit of things.. If I ask you if you're up to it, you're supposed to be insulted that I even had to ask and of course you're up to it."
"Oh. Of course I'm up to it," she said in as dead a voice as she could muster.
"That's the spirit," Drummond said cheerily and clapped her on the shoulder. He pulled open a locker on one side of the miniature food prep area. "This is where they stowed all their personal effects." Reaching in, he brought forth a pair of slim plastic briefcases. "The stuff they couldn't afford to leave in a hotel room or wherever, but was not quite important enough to carry on their persons." Another reach and he brought out a leather briefcase. "This one, I think, would be Melissa's. Yep. There's the initials, 'MQ.' Start with it." He snapped the catches and clicked his tongue in disgust. "So careless. See what you can find."
"What am I looking for?" Xe Doll asked him as she took the briefcase from him and set it on the counter, opening it up and beginning to rummage through it.
"Now there's your classic silly question, so I'll give you the classic silly answer: whatever you find. I'd guess that pretty much anything in there is going to hold some interest for us. I'll even bet that you spot most of the implications as soon as you see the stuff and figure out what it is. It should be that obvious."
"OK," Xe Doll said absently, bending over the case, getting into the task, as Drummond had suspected she would.
Meanwhile, Drummond headed back into the cockpit and pulled the door closed behind him. "Okay," he said to the two women at the controls. "Are we secure from observation?" He got affirmative replies from both.
The existence of the GPS emergency beacon, keyed as it was to bring down some pretty intense military response on the location of the signal, was a closely-guarded secret, and its activation procedure even more so. This was far more involved than the usual navigation and emergency signal carried by oceangoing sail racers and suchlike. It was encrypted so that it could not be duplicated, and setting it off was guaranteed to bring a response. A big response. A military response.
Drummond reached up to the ceiling of the cockpit and moved aside a hidden panel set in the headliner. He flipped a switch, twisted a knob, and spoke a chain of syllables that made no sense to a human ear into a small microphone mounted in the ceiling. An LED display turned from yellow to red and then to green. That was it.
"Ninety minutes, folks. Think we can last that long?"
"Piece of cake, Chief!" Dolly enthused.
Sappho was just finishing up her joke, "...The same kind of people who'd name a rotweiler Jesus." About then, she reached up and clawed the headset from her ears, her actions being matched by Dolly. A loud squeal could be heard emanating from the headsets. Sappho just laughed, but Dolly shouted, "OUCH!"
"What?" Drummond demanded.
"I think we were overheard. That's our own beacon being fed back to us at sixty-to-one," Sappho explained, still laughing.
"Uh, Chief," Dolly said. "Over there, by the tower." She pointed to the control tower, a half-mile away across the flat airfield. There was the undeniable stir of furious activity around the base of the tower. Vehicles pulled away and figures scurried around.
"Uh-oh," Drummond said. "This could be trouble."
"I don't think so, Chief," Dolly replied. "Looks to me like the rats are deserting the sinking et cetera. Look, see? That Humvee is headed for the exit."
"Looks like," Sappho agreed. "Thattaway should be the Number One." Drummond looked puzzled. "The Trans Canada Highway. The main drag in these parts." Drummond nodded comprehension.
"Yeah. You're right. Guess we'd better head for the tower, then, eh?"
Sappho chuckled. "What?" Drummond said again.
"Canadian not you are?"
"Huh?"
Sappho laughed louder. "You said, 'eh?' It must be in the air or something, or a force field you pass through at the border."
"Oh," said Drummond, laughing in dawning comprehension. "Take off, eh?" And he laughed again. "Well, those guys are a bunch of hosers."
"We can't take off," Dolly objected, being too young to remember the Mackenzie brothers routines.
"Don't take off, just take off, eh?" Sappho and Drummond chorused.
Just then, Xe Doll pushed the galley door open. "Is this a private party, or can anybody et cetera and so-on?"
"And so-forth," said Drummond, agreeably. "Good news," he went on, pulling the door open and ushering Xe Doll into the cockpit. "We've fired our beacon and the bad guys are taking a powder."
"What kind of powder?" Xe Doll asked.
"Um... Never mind. So what did you find?"
"Well," Xe Doll held out a three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk. "There's this."
Drummond took it. "Since you don't have a computer to put this in," he said as his hand carried the diskette toward his eyes, "the point of interest must be the label. Hel-loo. Listen to this. 'Gabrielle Dolly; sexuality profile'." He took another diskette from Xe Doll. "'Mitchell Drummond; sexuality profile.'" And another, "Terence Hallow Britten, Callisto Blue, Sappho Tarkasian... This is quite something, folks."
"They were in this box," she handed over a plastic carrying case sized to hold twenty of the slim diskettes. The box bore the legend, "Project Priapus, Center for X Studies, April 23-24, 1999."
"Two weeks ago," Drummond commented reading the label aloud.. "That was the day..." He looked over at Dolly, who met his glance and blushed prettily. "What are you all of a sudden so girlish about? We almost didn't spot it because it was so natural for you to act like a cat in heat."
"I'm missing something here," Xe Doll opined, holding a stoppered glass vial of a cyan-colored liquid in her hand — her next exhibit.
"These two had the whole Center giggling behind its collective palm that day," Sappho explained. "They'd just gotten back from New Xenaland and the attempt on OW, and everybody noticed that they just couldn't keep their hands off each other. Beast man here brought Dolly off in the middle of a staff meeting..."
"Sappho!" both Drummond and Dolly objected with strenuous outrage.
"Well you did!"
"You did?" Xe Doll looked amazed from Drummond to Dolly then back again, her jaw dropping when Sappho's assertion was first not denied, then positively confirmed by the couple's expressions.
"Yes he did. I expected any minute that he'd do her right there on the table."
"He did." Dolly said, then gulped.
"He did not, I was there."
"No, later. In my office."
"Enough! We made it, what? Six times in a little under eight hours. Nothing spectacular. But it turned out that somebody'd slipped us an aphrodisiac of some sort."
"No such thing," Xe Doll asserted.
"Not true. Unless I miss my guess, that's what's in that vial you're holding there."
"Oh. This. The label says, 'Priapistat.' What's that?"
"A made up word. Something that causes priapism, would be my guess. An ultra-Viagra."
"What is priapism?" Xe Doll asked. Drummond pursed his lips.
"Um," he mumbled.
Sappho came to his rescue, pulling Xe Doll close and whispering to her. Xe Doll's eyes went wide and she looked at Drummond and then at Dolly.
"So they really..." Sappho nodded. "And then after...? Fuck!" Xe Doll stood straight up. "I'm glad the bitch was killed! That was a fucking cold thing she did! Gabrielle, I..."
"It's OK, Xe," Dolly said softly. "I'll get over it."
"But I should have..."
"No you shouldn't. Don't beat yourself up over it. I'm a big girl. I knew what I was risking when I went in there after Cally." She took a deep breath. "It was rougher than I thought it would be, but..." she reached up and found Drummond's hand where it rested suddenly on her shoulder. "I've got a good support mechanism." She squeeze the hand. "I'll be OK."
Drummond's chin lifted and he bit his upper lip as he tilted his face away from Dolly. Sappho saw his eyes and caught his attention. An expression of deep panic--even terror--passed across Drummond's face as the import of Dolly's infinite trust in him sank in.
Sappho summoned up all the faith in him she could muster and poured it out to him through her eyes, frantically imploring him not to surrender to the overwhelming sense of inadequacy. Slowly, his expression melted and he features reformed into a weak and trembling--but undeniable--smile.
He leaned over Dolly's head and planted an infinitely gentle kiss on her hair. She looked up at him and he leaned farther and kissed her lips.
"I love you, Dolly," he murmured.
She just sighed. In that instant, for that instant, she was content. Let it last as long as it would, it was enough.
Next: XI: Exit to the East, Enter from the West | Previous: IX. Sunset Boulevard