Free The Black Ships by A.G. Claymore Page A

head.
“They missed showing this to professionals; that’s what they missed,” he said
with a soldier’s disdain for amateurs. “Those little bastards aren’t just
destroying equipment for the fun of it.”
    “Exactly,” breathed McCutcheon as he
watched the screen. “Alien or not, you don’t cart ordinance halfway across the
galaxy and waste it on mindless destruction.” He looked over at Mike. “Dr.
Wilsen, they blew the rovers but not the storage sheds or habitats.” He cocked
his head to the side. “Now what does that tell you about their intentions?”
    Mike shrugged; his mind was Swiss cheese
after so much time in the same room. “They want to make sure the rovers are
useless?” he guessed.
    The colonel nodded. “And just who are they
trying to deny mobility to?”
    Mike’s eyes grew wide. He felt a shiver.
“They think some of our people are still alive!”
     

Turtle Bay
    Manhattan, New York
    February 1 st , 2006
    J an pushed back from her desk, her breath escaping her lips in a
tightly controlled explosion. Three weeks now, she thought angrily. Three
weeks of sitting around, looking at the same videos and trying to look busy. Does anything ever get done here? She got up and walked out of the
bullpen, noting that the other two scientists were absent. Not knowing what
else to do in her agitated state, she decided to head down to the cafeteria and
get cup of tea.
    She walked into the elevator, returning the
friendly smile of the woman already in there, but Jan’s smile foundered upon
the stony countenance of the man standing at the back. Unfriendly sod. She
passed the ride in awkward silence and left as soon as the doors opened,
turning to head for the cafeteria entrance.
    Once she had her tea and a danish, she
headed for the windows where she found Dr. Hal Tudor from Vancouver and Dr.
Craig Pugh from Chicago. Hal waved her over and she sat next to him. “When did
you two sneak off?” she demanded with mock indignation, looking at their nearly
empty coffee cups.
    Hal grinned. “About twenty minutes ago.
Five minutes after you stormed off in a huff, which seems,” he raised an
eyebrow, “to be your favorite means of transportation lately.” His raised
inflection at the end turning the statement into a rhetorical question.
    Jan made a sound that was half amusement
and half frustration. “I was in the WC; call of nature if you must know.”
    “And we thought you had come down here to
start a food fight,” Craig added his two cents, his speech patterns heavily
peppered with the Northern-Cities-Vowel-Shift that marked so many Chicago
natives. “We figured we’d come down and back you up since we had nothing else
going on.”
    “At least we’re getting something done down
here.” Hal raised his mug as an example. “I was nice and happy back at UBC
enjoying the winter rains. Now I’m stuck in this freezing metropolis, and for
what?”
    Craig stared at Hal in shock. “You mean
it’s raining up there right now? It’s twenty degrees in the Big Onion; my wife
told me we’re getting a couple of inches of snow too.”
    Hal shrugged. “It’s late afternoon in
British Columbia so it’s probably around five or six degrees. That’s around
forty degrees in Fahrenheit,” he added, enjoying the looks on both colleagues.
“We do get four or five days of snow a year, so it’s not like it’s a tropical
paradise or anything. Anyway, my point was that I could drink coffee back home,
so I’m not really accomplishing anything extra by being here.”
    “Do you mind if I join you?” The woman from
the elevator was standing by their table with a steaming mug of coffee; the
unfriendly man was several paces back; looking them over.
    “Madam Secretary General?” Hal was gazing
up in surprise, but at least he seemed to know who she was. “Please!” He
gestured towards an empty chair.
    “I had meant to look in on you earlier, but
we’ve had a lot of work to do lately.” She sighed as she sat.