And eventually, her dad would be proved wrong about Turner County.
CHAPTER FOUR
TARGET #1
ARNHEM LAND, AUSTRALIA
THE CESSNA CAME IN LOW OVER THE TINY ABORIGINAL village, sought the dusty runway and bounced through a landing on the hard-packed ground. Nearby, a group of the villagers huddled around a fire and prepared a freshly killed sea turtle for dinner. They stuffed the spear-holes in the animal’s shell with twigs and then buried it beneath coals so that the meat inside the shell would cook. They paused in their work to exchange glances as the plane’s engine rumbled to a stop. It was dusk and they weren’t expecting visitors.
For this village, tiny was perhaps an understatement. Only fifty aboriginals lived here, in the train-car-shaped houses just a stone’s throw from the Timor Sea. The walls were made of corrugated steel, these all painted vividly with images of stingrays and turtles and colorful dots and stripes. Dogs that straddled the line between stray and domesticated weaved in and out of the mango and banana trees, barking at the plane.
Jedda, the village’s matriarch, eyed the plane warily from the steps of her home, smoking a pipe. She was in possession of the village’s lone satellite phone.
Even if she had called for help right then, it would not have arrived in time.
From inside the airplane, Einar watched the villagers shuffle about. He could tell they were uneasy. He was nervous, too. This was his first operation on behalf of the Foundation and he badly wanted it to go smoothly. Needed it to go smoothly. He wondered if this little village even knew that there had been an alien invasion, if they knew how much the world had changed in the last four months. He could see the glow of a TV set inside one of the houses. They weren’t entirely cut off from society out here in the bush.
Still, he wondered if they even understood what they possessed.
Einar’s gaze drifted away from the villagers and towards a tree where the fat leaves seemed to shift oddly on the wind. Not leaves. Those were bats. Dozens of them hanging upside down from the thinning branches.
He suppressed a shudder. It wouldn’t be good to show weakness. Not considering his present company.
Sandwiched into the small plane with Einar were six very nasty-looking men. Mercenaries. All of them dressed in black body armor and carrying excessively large machine guns. Their leader was a Norwegian named Jarl, red-bearded with bulging neck muscles, a hooked scar that ran from his eye to the corner of his mouth. He and his men hadn’t been much for conversation during the journey. The Blackstone Group weren’t used to having a seventeen-year-old in charge of them. Einar wondered how much the Foundation was paying them.
Einar stood and delicately rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He looked at Jarl. The men knew their orders; he didn’t need to go over them again. Instead, he pointed at the serrated combat knife strapped to Jarl’s belt.
“May I?” Einar asked.
Jarl handed him the knife handle first. Without hesitating, Einar gritted his teeth and dragged the blade across the inside of his forearm.
The villagers were taken by surprise when Einar stumbled off the plane. A young, pale-skinned boy, dressed in sharply pressed chinos and a white dress shirt, carrying a stylish attaché case, his brown hair parted from the side. Some rich gubba whose plane lost his way? An intern from one of the mining companies that were always trying to buy up their land?
Bleeding from a cut on his arm. Deep and getting all over his shirt. The guy held up his arm.
“Hello? I’m sorry. Can someone help?”
Only half the aboriginals spoke English, but they all got the gist. They exchanged looks. One of the boys tending to the turtle—no more than fourteen, dark-skinned, with a mane of curly black hair—started immediately toward Einar. Jedda barked something at him in Yolngu Matha, a warning, but the boy waved her off.
He couldn’t explain it, but he felt an overwhelming urge to help this injured white boy. He felt like the stranger was an old friend.
“I’m Einar,” he said. “Do you speak English?”
“Yeah. I’m Bunji,” the aboriginal replied. He took Einar’s arm in his hands, his touch gentle despite the calluses on his palms. “What ya doing way out here?”
“Lost,” Einar replied. “Lost and hurt, as you can see.”
“Not for long,” Bunji declared, unable to keep the pride and excitement out of his voice.
Some of the other villagers had edged closer. They always wanted to watch Bunji use his gift, which he’d first discovered when his older brother had accidentally cut his hand on a fishing line.
Bunji pressed his hand onto Einar’s arm, not mindful of the blood. He squinted, and Einar felt a wave of warm energy wash into him. The sensation that followed was like a pleasant tickle.
When Bunji took his hand away, Einar’s cut was gone. His arm was healed.
“Remarkable,” Einar said, smiling at Bunji. “My friend, can you do this?”
Einar held up his attaché, then let it go. The case floated there, suspended in midair by telekinesis. Some of the villagers gasped. Bunji grinned and laughed.
“You! You’re like me!” The aboriginal reached out with his own telekinesis and levitated a handful of nearby stones. He floated them around the two of them like tiny meteors orbiting a planet.
“Indeed,” Einar said, and opened his floating attaché, produced a tranquilizer gun and shot Bunji in the neck. All the rocks he was levitating fell out of the air.
By the time the stones hit the ground, Jarl and his men were stepping off the plane, their guns clicking as the safeties were flicked off. They took care of the villagers while Einar carried Bunji to the plane.
The Foundation would be pleased.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE PATIENCE CREEK SURVIVORS
AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
AFTER DANIELA LEFT FOR NEW YORK, THE REMAINING Human Garde spent three idle months at the island military base, basically in limbo while they waited for construction of the Academy to finish. Ran and Nigel played a lot of chess, using their telekinesis to move the pieces around the board. Caleb started to grow his hair out and kept to himself. Ran’s room was right next to Caleb’s and, at night, she could hear him talking to himself—arguing with one of his duplicates—but she never mentioned this to anyone.
Nothing much happened at the base. Apparently, the only job of the military personnel stationed there was to watch over the three of them. Around the world, other newly discovered Human Garde endured similar holding patterns, waiting for the Academy to officially open. The days blended together.
Until, two days before they were to depart for California, they came for the Chimærae.
“Colonel Ray Archibald has been assigned to lead security at this new Academy. He’s a good man. Held down NORAD during the invasion. I briefed him on the three extraterrestrial creatures you and the others are in possession of. It’s the colonel’s opinion—and Earth Garde backs him up on this—that the animals pose a liability.”
General Lawson stoically imparted all this to Caleb from behind his desk. Caleb sat opposite, perfectly at attention as usual. Regal, his hawk-shaped Chimæra, was perched on his forearm, his talons a gentle pressure. Idly, Caleb stroked his Chimæra’s feathers.