On The Surface Tension Read online

  “Oh yeah, well what happens to them?” said Ron, incredulous.

  “Who cares, Ron? They probably join the great unwashed ranks of the Poor, who collect their charity checks and eke out whatever squalid existence their lazy entitled anarchistic asses deserve. Not our concern. Keeping our shareholders, Salarymen and Workers going is. Golden Industries is. Your father would be appalled.”

  “What happened to you?” asked Ron.

  “What happened to me?”

  Ron bit his lip, mentally vowing to change things.

  “And no, you can’t change things,” Tracey stated. “Things are the way they are and will stay that way.”

  “We shall see,” said Ron. “I am the head of this company after all. Now shall we rejoin the LaGrues and have them show me my new toy?”

  They rejoined the group, feigning a carefree air. Ron noted the old man and his young friend exiting the work area, shoulders slumped.

  “Take care of them,” Ron whispered to Smithson.

  —2—

  Jeremy Springs ran his index finger along the outside of a smooth, tan thigh, past the barely noticeable string of the bikini bottom on the outside of a perfectly curved hip, then paused in mid-back, torn between advancing north to the knot of the bikini top or retreating south to the territory that beckoned there. He and…Julie? lay on a towel in the sand next to the calmly murmuring surf in the moonlight, under the leaves of a palm tree framed by a million stars, with a pitcher of mango and pineapple margaritas in a bucket of ice nearby.

  It sure beat Marine boot camp.

  A month prior on training day 62, unknown to Jeremy, Ron Golden, Tracey Springs, and his sister Chris were winging their way to a secret Space Command base under the Denver airport. It was a scant week before graduating from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego’s Basic training in the First Battalion, Delta Company. His Series Commander had curtly summoned him, with no offer of explanation, to the Commanding General’s Office. Such an occurrence, to Jeremy’s knowledge, was unheard of.

  Upon arrival after a stunned jog across the heat-shimmering concrete parking lot, PFC Springs was escorted into the office of Brigadier General Gregory Thomas. He immediately noted that the General, as he sat behind his desk, chewing on the stub of a cigar, had an expression of repugnance on his face as though he was smoking a turd.

  Also standing ill-at-ease nearby was a black man, with sunglasses and earbuds, wearing a nondescript gray suit. Jeremy thought he looked like the quintessential Hollywood central-casting G-Man. The atmosphere was crackling with barely-dissipated tension.

  “All right, Private, just who the fuck are you?” spat the General.

  “Sir?” Jeremy chirped with incomprehension and only just the slightest break in his voice.

  “This man has just delivered orders, from the Commandant himself, instructing me to pull your ass out of your basic training and remand you to his control. I have been in the Corps for twenty-fucking-seven years, and I have never had this happen or even heard of this happening. Ever.”

  Jeremy stood stupidly at attention, mind flitting about like a wounded pelican.

  “So I repeat. Who the fuck are you?”

  Jeremy continued his silence, mouth semi-agape.

  “I am told that you are the son of someone who has some kind of weird assassins with war-painted faces chasing her. What do you know about that, Private?”

  “Sir, NOTHING sir!”

  The General furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes so tightly Jeremy thought his eyeballs would shoot out of his head like watermelon seeds. He noticed that the government agent type was studiously ignoring the entire exchange and had apparently divulged as little as possible—but more than he would have liked—to the General. The General, however, was clearly not used to having his fiefdom invaded by anyone, much less someone from another branch of the military.

  “Why would anyone be trying to kill your mother and her significant other, Private?”

  “Sir, I have no idea, sir. My mother is a fish scientist, and her boyfriend is…well, he’s kind of a boring putz. Sir.”

  Jeremy realized that this was true and was the main reason he had joined the Marines in the first place. He hadn’t wanted to live his whole life in tired obscurity like Ron had. He had wanted to make his mom proud.

  Silence settled in and stretched on longer than was necessary or comfortable. But General Thomas eventually convinced himself that even though this turn of events was incomprehensible and outrageous, he could neither control the outcome or would be supplied with any more information. He rose slowly from behind his desk, like an Old Testament patriarch.

  “Before I dismiss him,” he said gravely, raising his right index finger in an unwavering gesture of warning, “I want him back the instant he is done with whatever it is you need him for. And I must remind you, Private Springs, that you are very nearly a United States Marine. And even though you have not yet graduated into my beloved Corps, I expect you to comport yourself at all times with the honor, dignity, and pride of a U.S. Marine. Is…that…CLEAR?”

  “Sir, YES SIR!”

  The general resumed his seat.

  “Dismissed,” he growled, then busied himself in his paperwork without another thought to the two of them leaving his office.

  Jeremy was ushered by the agent into a non-descript white van, taken to an airfield, and loaded into an equally non-descript private jet plane.

  On his trip, he was only marginally better at extracting information from the agent than the General was. The agent told him that this name was Johnson. He learned that his mother, older sister Chris, and his mother’s boyfriend Ron had been taken somewhere else.

  That floored him. Ron had been tapped for some reason by the government. He could not fathom what that was about. While he was not sure what the government would need with a marine biologist, he could at least speculate. But Ron? Ron was a flabby, unemployed game programmer. Unless some covert agency within the United States government had suddenly taken an interest in Pong or Pac Man, he could see no use for him.

  He learned that he was in potential danger and was being taken to Andros Island in the Caribbean, along with others similarly at risk. Jeremy had asked him how an island in the Caribbean could be safer than being in the middle of a military base.

  The agent assured him that it was.

  Jeremy asked in jest whether the painted assassins could beam in like they did in Star Trek, then was surprised when the agent changed the subject.

  That struck him as interesting.

  After a refueling stop somewhere in Texas, they had continued to the Island, landing late at night.

  And the party had commenced.

  Jeremy had tried to keep his fitness level up, expecting to be shipped back to San Diego at any time to finish up his basic training. But this had not occurred. His days were spent swimming, sunning, and chasing the numerous young women who had been shipped there as well. There were other young men around, to be sure, but they were hardly the impressive physical specimens that a Marine fresh from boot was.

  The only thing keeping him from “getting more tail than a toilet seat in a sorority house” was his sister, who arrived some days later, telling tales of incomprehensible blood tests and aliens and other worlds. She constantly reminded him that while their hosts made sure that there was plenty of alcohol, food, parties, and fun, there were no condoms handed out as part of the package. She was convinced that this was all part of a government plot to breed some kind of recessive genes that she had learned about in a secret base under the Denver Airport. But Jeremy wasn’t buying it.

  There was, however, something weird going on. The mere fact that a crowd of mostly young adults had been rounded up and deposited on a sandy beach in the Caribbean was unusual enough. But then there were the guys in dark suits, sunglasses and bad haircuts with wires in their ears standing about sweating all over the place. This was indicative of…something. They were not allowed to leave the is
land, and nobody would say how long they would be there.

  Then there was the anti-aircraft battery. It was partially hidden behind some sand dunes and coconut palms, but Jeremy was able to wander around the cluster of three large missiles unchallenged. He had asked one of the “suits” about it and had been told only that the Island was used as a military testing facility when it was not “Club Paradise.”

  They lived in cabins and had a large common building which was used for dining, dances, parties, and other resort-like activities. Other buildings, farther inland, were off-limits. Jeremy assumed that they were part of the military end of things, including one taller building with a nest of antennas and dishes on the roof.

  Four months in, after admiring her from afar, he had met Julie. She was a new friend of his sister Chris, and he had been able to persuade her to listen to him instead of her proclamations of warning and doom. After a three-day whirlwind full-court press, Jeremy had managed to talk her out to the beach in the moonlight, where his hand was now poised in the middle of her goose-fleshed back, torn between trajectories.

  It was at that moment when he saw a brief but intense flash of light out at sea, and three seconds later, felt a deep throb in the air, lower than he could hear, but felt in his chest and bones.

  It was unlike anything he had ever experienced, and before he could think, he found himself standing on the beach, looking out to sea.

  “What was that?” Julie asked, rising to her knees.

  Jeremy shushed her, holding up a finger. He scanned the horizon, but could not see anything except a dark blob blotting out a patch of stars, moving slowly towards them, getting larger. It was slower and larger than anything but a zeppelin.

  He heard the whine of servo-motors in the sand dune where the anti-aircraft missiles were housed. They were apparently targeting the dark mass.

  “Get back to your cabin,” Jeremy ordered. She took a few tentative steps, then stopped, watching the massive black shape blotting out the stars get closer.

  His mind raced, wondering what to do. He decided to rouse the government agent types. He turned, and one of the missiles fired with a bright lance of blue-hot flame and a deafening roar.

  “Well, that should wake them,” he mumbled, turning back to watch the missile’s flight. The missile traveled halfway to the black shape, then disappeared with a flash. Seconds later, the sound of the explosion reached them, interspersed with the sound of some kind of large caliber gunfire.

  “Shit,” Jeremy intoned flatly.

  Before another missile could fire, the battery behind the dune erupted in an orange fireball, sending shrapnel whooshing over their heads. Jeremy pushed Julie down into the sand, scanning the sky for whatever had destroyed the missile battery. When he found it, his jaw dropped.

  It looked like a jet ski, but it was armed with a large caliber gun and small missiles. And it was flying. It streaked overhead, making no noise whatsoever. It was close enough that Jeremy could see the pilot clearly. He was dressed in some sort of skin-tight suit and helmet, and his face was painted with small black lightning bolts on the right cheek. They made eye contact, then he was past, banking sharply to the left, flying inland.

  He watched the craft fire at one of the military buildings with a missile. The building with the antennas vanished in the flash of another explosion, the sound reaching them a short time later. Whoever was attacking had just taken out their lines of communication.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Jeremy said again, more urgently, crouching on the sand in his bathing suit, wishing he had his M-4 carbine from back at boot camp. He fought the urge to run back towards the cabins and instead scanned the sky for more of the strange craft, unable to get his head around what he had just seen. No such aircraft existed. But there they were, more of the flying jet skis, whipping silently around the island, looking for targets. Occasionally, they fired at a building, and once the government agent and military types began boiling out of buildings, they fired at them as well.

  The original large craft now hovered in the sky about a mile offshore, almost visible in the moonlight. It was some kind of spaceship. From it issued four smaller craft, about the size and shape of motor homes. Jeremy knew instantly what they were: troop ships. He watched as they descended to the beach on either side of him in graceful arcs. Large ramps fell open from the front of the craft, and war-paint-wearing men armed with strange-looking guns disgorged from them.

  He knew they had no chance. It was over in minutes.

  Within an hour, the entire panicky population of the island, including seven surviving government agent types, was herded into two of the landing crafts. Jeremy made sure that he was on the same ship as his sister Chris and their friend Julie. He looked around, stunned, for some idea of who their captors were. The inside of the craft gave no clues: It looked like the inside of any military transport. There was no evidence of the propulsion system, and he could not see any cockpit or weapon stations. There was a row of small windows, and he could just make out the dark beach outside.

  There were screams, weeping, shouts for help. The war-painted captors ignored them.

  Jeremy and Chris looked at each other with round eyes. She was in her nightshirt.

  “Is this a bad time to mention ‘I told you so?’” she said, fighting to keep up at least the appearance of not being scared out of her wits.

  Jeremy felt an almost-imperceptible sense of motion and knew they had taken off from the island. A glance out the window at the dark ocean below them confirmed this. He heard a burst of radio static from somewhere in the ship, and a flat voice said, “Incoming aircraft, Mach 2. Estimating contact at five minutes. Jump in four.”

  So they speak English, Jeremy thought. But the military terminology they used was not common to American services. Neither was the face paint, nor the small arms.

  Their progress stopped with a metallic clang and a grind of metal against metal. The view outside the porthole was completely obscured by a uniform wall of metal. Jeremy deduced that they had docked to the larger ship.

  “Thirty seconds to jump,” intoned the radio voice.

  “Jeremy, listen to me,” Chris whispered fiercely. “I think they are talking about making a jump to another universe. I saw what they called a ‘rift’ at that base in Denver I told you about. It had a wreck of a ship like this in a yellow desert somewhere on the other side of it. It will make you feel sick.”

  Jeremy nodded, beyond doubting her anymore.

  “Ten seconds to jump,” the radio announced.

  Jeremy half expected a countdown from that point, but ten seconds later he noticed the soldiers grip their weapons tightly and clinch themselves. He tried to imitate them, but felt an indescribably sickening sensation from his midsection, which quickly passed. Several of the captors vomited.

  “Where are we?” he asked Chris. She could only pant with repressed nausea and shrug.

  He shouldered his way through the milling captors to one of the portholes and pressed his face against it.

  They were in space. Below them was a blue planet, swirled with white clouds.

  Shit, he thought again.

  “We’re in orbit,” he called over to Chris. She forced her way to the next porthole.

  “That isn’t Earth,” she announced quietly. Jeremy studied the outlines of the continent below and had to concur. It was nothing he had seen before on any globe or map. They looked at each other, shaking their heads.

  There was a burst of static on the speaker, then a voice boomed, “Welcome to Cambria, the home planet of Eiffelia, the Goddess of the Universe. Soon the airlock will open, and you will proceed into the main ship for processing. You will then be returned to the transports and taken to the planet surface. Resistance to the process will fail and will be punished. Cooperation and compliance will be rewarded.”

  The airlock door immediately opened with a slight hiss of air equalizing in pressure. The captives moved to the far side of the transport, facing it. Paint-face
d armed men cautiously entered and began taking captives out, one at a time. When it was Jeremy’s turn, he sized up the soldier quickly, counted the other ones around who were within gun-butt range, and decided to pick his battle for a later time.

  He was escorted into what must have been the cargo hold of the ship, where ten small folding tables and chairs had been set up. He was seated at one of them, at the other end of which was a woman in uniform, also with striped make-up, with what looked like a laptop computer. She was attractive, but he noticed that she had a thicker than usual gob of white paint on her upper lip, hiding what he could see were wispy whiskers. The other tables were similarly filled with captives, who were dutifully answering questions. It occurred to Jeremy that they were still in shock and were cooperating out of a sense of familiarity with the procedure, if nothing else.

  “Name?” his woman interrogator asked, slender fingers poised over the keyboard.

  “Fuck you,” Jeremy deadpanned.

  “Could you spell that please?” she said, unfazed. Jeremy raised the corner of his mouth with surprise. Maybe they knew the English language, but the apparently didn’t know the culture.

  “Uh, that would be F-U-K as the first name, and Y-U as the last. My father was Chinese.”

  “Very well,” she continued, tapping the keys. “Age?”

  “I’m thirty-seven,” he lied.

  She looked at him skeptically.