CHAPTER 22
The little freckle-faced Gray made a few facial twitches and I could tell he was using the interface to the Infrastructure. These Grays were not good at covering their facial tics. He would have been horrible at poker. Following the Framework communications that he had made, a small ball of light appeared from nowhere and hovered a meter or so in front of us. The ball of light expanded and then blinked out, leaving a hemispherical vehicle with no top on it. Inside the vehicle were two rows of seats, one with its back to the circumference of the hemisphere and the other on a smaller concentric circle around the central hub of the vehicle with its back to the center of the craft. The central hub had a lone chair, obviously the cockpit, and there was a pilot sitting there. The pilot was a standard Gray alien with no freckles.
The little freckle-faced Gray turned to Tabitha. 'Please, we must go in this vehicle to meet the Regency.'
'How do we know that we can trust you?' Tabitha responded. I maintained my grip on the little creature's choke collar.
'Trust is irrelevant. If you desire to see the Regency then you must come with me in this vehicle.'
'Yeah, right! And as soon as we step foot in this thing you will turn on the confinement beam and strand us in a bubble like you did Tatiana!' I was preparing to punch the thing in the spot where a nose should have been.
'I'd say that you little bastards are full of shit if you think we're just gonna hop in your device here and trust you for no reason. Tab, I'm gonna side with Steven on this one,' Anson said.
'Well, what would you have us do, Anson? Fly there on our own, perhaps?' Tabitha asked. She seemed the most clearheaded of us at the moment. 'We will take the smaller alien ship,' she decided. 'Alien, can you give us directions to where we can meet this Regency? We will fly in our own vessel.'
'I was ordered to take you in this vessel,' the little freckle-faced thing said and made a weird facial tic as he did so. I knew he was downloading information, but about what?
'Listen here, thing.' I rapped its right ear pretty hard and its head bobbled back and forth from left to right several times. It shook its head kind of the way a dog does to get water off its back. 'The lady says we fly our own vessel and that is the way it will be.'
'Must you continuously punish me? I will relay your request,' it said.
I slapped it again. 'Listen to me, you little bug, your race has relentlessly tortured millions of us throughout our history. I'm just getting started on the punishment that I plan to inflict on your species. You have a lot of explaining to do!'
'Steven, relax!' General Clemons ordered me. She seemed to forget that I wasn't in her army and that she wasn't the boss of me. In fact, had it not been for me they would never have figured out what was going on with these alien abductors. I was getting irrational and it reminded me of . . .
'EVERYBODY CIRCLE ON ME NOW!' I yelled. They all looked confused for a second. The emotional instability caused by the implants was delaying their abilities to think rapidly and rationally. A second or so delay passed before they realized I was concerned about our safety. They all rushed to my side and I flipped on my warp bubble with the radius modified to encompass all of us. 'We've been implanted!' I explained. At the same time I slung the little alien as hard as I could throw it against the warp bubble wall. It landed with a crack and then slid down to the bottom of the bubble, whimpering in an odd shrill voice.
'We've been what?' Jim asked.
'Hold still . . . you won't feel this at all,' I said as I placed my hand on his shoulder. I continued the same with each of the others. 'Did you notice that you were feeling unsure of your decisions and that your emotions were getting uncontrollable?' I asked them.
'Yeah, I was almost in tears,' Rebecca said.
'The Grays somehow implanted us with tracking devices like they put in the abductees. One of the side effects is that it makes you nuts. I know; I was nuts for four years because of one of those things. Fortunately, I recognized the symptoms of being crazy from experience. Mike was able to remove them for us. The warp fields should protect us. Keep your warp skins on at all times from now on.'
'How . . . did you know that? It is impossible for primitives to have this capability!' The alien rose to its feet and rubbed a new bruise on its forehead.
'None of your business!' I shot it a mean look hoping to instill a little fear into it. I wished now that I hadn't fixed his arm and eye. The rest of the team implemented their warp generators and I backed mine off just to enclose me. The Gray stood there confused and amazed by the power we primitives were wielding.
'Son, I think it's time to get rid of our baggage here. My guess is that he is responsible for the implants, right?' Anson shrugged his shoulders.
'Yes, as far as I can tell that's right. But let's not kill him yet, we still need to find this Regency,' I replied. Then
