Dreams.
Norton Drake dreamed of running and flying. He dreamed of fields of flowers and grass and a wholly unexpected warm blonde woman running across those fields with him. He turned to look at her. He saw Mary's smiling face. He reached for her, pulled her to him, kissed her pale willing lips. Movement. Behind her. Strong, rope like arms ending in three appendages pulled her away from him, separated them, started to seep into her –
He started awake, sweat trickling down his face onto his pillow. He shuddered. Was this what Suzanne found in her dreams? Dreams of losing Debbie to the enemy, losing her essence but not her form? He turned on a light, shifted into his wheelchair and rolled into the bathroom for a towel to wipe away the sweat, to soak up the fear that engendered it and the dream.
He looked in the mirror. He saw a pleasant looking black man in his early 30's. What did she see when she looked at him? What did Mary see?
Suzanne McCullough frowned in her sleep. She shifted, restless. She saw aliens, aliens and more aliens. She saw unsolvable biological problems keeping her from being the mother she should be to her daughter. She saw the aliens she hated and feared merging with the ones in red suits. She watched them meld and merge into a new and more terrifying form that rained fire from the sky on helpless humans. She watched her daughter grow up and grow old, never understanding what her mother did, or why. And she was content. Debbie was safe.
Harrison Blackwood dreamed as he always dreamed. He watched his parents moving in fear. He watched other adults running, afraid. He saw them vaporized by the alien weapon. And there was nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing. The aliens haunted him as they haunted no other member of the staff. They took his parents. They took Sylvia, driving her mad and away from him and Forrester. They took Forrester when no one would continue the research to confirm or deny his theories. Now they were taking his own life in the search to find a way to stop them. And always, they mocked him when all he really wanted was peace with them.
Paul Ironhorse slept soundly. If he dreamed of aliens and elders and battle, no one else would ever know.
Debbie McCullough, sprawled across her bed, sheets cast onto the floor, dreamed of horses running in golden meadows. She dreamed of races and winning. She dreamed of riding forever, her mother looking on in approval. She saw the shadows behind her mother, but ignored them. Shadows were for grown ups and their world, not for triumphant Debbie and her riding dreams.
Mary Roberts Straker Rutland lay in the darkness and stared up at the ceiling. She'd tried closing her eyes. It wasn't working. Her brain was whirling with information and with new understanding. She blinked tears out of her eyes, letting them slide away to dampen her pillow. So much she hadn't understood. So very much she had never even imagined. Aliens. So many aliens. Aliens that melded with human victims, taking their memories, their minds and leaving behind a puddle of goo when they vacated the host. Aliens that stole human bodies for organs. Aliens that hated humanity and wanted to destroy it. Aliens that probably couldn't live without what humanity supplied. Pity they couldn't set the two of them at each other, she thought with a watery chuckle. That might solve both problems. Or cause more. Earth as a battle ground for two disparate alien races. Ugh. Worse and worse.
At the center of one conflict, her ex-husband. At the center of the other, a man about whom she was coming to care more and more. What was she? An alien fighter magnet? Another watery chuckle. Oh, my. Poor Ed. Pitchforked into this meeting without a clue she would be here. It had to be rough on him. They needed to talk. But how? How could she apologize for all that pain? How could she let him know she understood now, but that what they had felt – what she had felt – was gone. That too much time had passed to try to work out more than a way to deal with each other as human beings, not as lovers.
How could she make him see that what they had shared was – a fantasy far more than a reality? Maybe she should find an excuse to go deal with the flat in England. She needed to get rid of it, move the rest of her stuff over here. She'd talk to Paul – No, dammit. She grinned at her borrow from Suzanne's vocabulary. No. Running was not the answer. If she could face slimy, horrible, human hating aliens and survive, she could find a way to help both of them survive this.
With that thought firmly held, she closed her eyes, wiped her face, turned her pillow over to the dry side and settled down to try to sleep.
Edward Straker, Commander of SHADO, ex-husband of Mary Rutland, lay back on the bed in the guest suite and tried to organize his thoughts. He failed miserably. For once, he was not in control. For once? When had he ever been in control? Not of his life, not of his destiny, not of – hell. He marshaled his thoughts with a firm hand and began to organize things.
One, there were two sets of aliens. Great. There was an invasion force that had been stopped already, no thanks to human intervention, and was now moving again, thanks to human intervention in the form of terrorists who had not known exactly what they were doing. Two, the Blackwood Foundation had not known about the aliens that SHADO had been formed to fight.
Three, that gave Straker and SHADO about fifteen years of experience on the Foundation against an enemy that was sporadic and not completely inimical to human life; just the occasional organ donor.
He sighed and felt the years pressing in on him. In two short years, the Blackwood Foundation had held against an enemy that out thought, out imagined and out hated them on every front. He shuddered to think what he and Henderson would have done had they confronted the same menace. Would he have managed as well as Ironhorse? Could he have done so, faced with the loss of his men the way this Colonel had? He frowned. Yes. He would have faced the reality and gone on, just as Ironhorse had done. He sympathized with the man, facing odds that seemingly grew more insurmountable every day with a handful of idiosyncratic scientists. And Mary.
He veered away from that thought. No. He had to face this. Mary, his – damn it! No. Not *his* Mary. The shock of seeing her here was sending him into a tailspin. Mary had not been Mary Straker in fifteen years, since before Johnny was born. There was no going back. Knowledge could not erase what had passed between them before. Now she understood, or thought she did. Now she sympathized, supported – but there was no love in her for him.
There. He'd faced it. Mary did not and had not loved him for a very long time. Not as a lover, not as a companion, not as a husband. He shuddered at the thought. Then he relaxed and frowned into the darkness around him. She didn't hate him. That was good. Maybe – no. He'd seen the looks, the companionship she was developing with the young black man. Sympathy for a cripple, he told himself harshly.
A wave of shame washed over him for even thinking that. Norton Drake was many things, but not a cripple. He was handicapped in not being able to walk, and that was all. The man was brilliant, humorous, kind and had a look in his eyes when he looked at Mary that said he was caring and loving also.
Ed took a breath and considered his own feelings. Jealousy. Yes, there was a touch of jealousy. But he could include the obvious friendship Norton, Harrison and Suzanne felt for each other in that jealousy. Even Col. Ironhorse was included in that feeling, although he was the most reserved of the quartet. Mary was beginning to be a part of that circle as well. Yes, he was jealous, but not the way he thought he had expected.
He examined this feeling. The Blackwood Foundation was a working organization with a leader and military backing, yet there was a relaxation of the formality he had kept in SHADO. SHADO was para-military with ranks, uniforms, a mission and a formal chain of command. Here there was Blackwood to spearhead the mission and Ironhorse to serve as enforcement and liaison with the American military and that was it. SHADO could not work the same way. Yet there was an opportunity here to expand SHADO's base of operations and to offer assistance when possible to these people.
Then it struck him. After all this time, he was fond of Mary. Her presence sparked an ache within him for what they had shared, but it was not the sharp pain he had expected. He was surprised and shocked at her presence, but he really was not particularly hurt. Not the way he had been when he had chosen between her and SHADO. The choices lay in the past. The hurt lay there also. He shook his head as though to clear it. He loved Mary. Didn't he?
The answer filtered through the years of hurt and abandonment. No. He did not love Mary. He loved the memory of his lovely bride, the child he'd married, the beauty he'd fallen so desperately in love with all those years ago. He didn't even know the woman who worked with Drake and the others. Fifteen years of SHADO, fifteen years of separation, of lives that went in two totally different directions, of social change and upheaval – He nearly laughed. There was an hysterical tinge to his thoughts. Damn. He'd wasted a lot of his emotional life regretting Mary and the errors he'd made with her.
He compared the Mary here and now to the Mary he remembered. This woman was an adult, a warm and caring person, a woman who had made choices and lived with them, who had made mistakes and learned to live with those as well. This Mary was so much more than the one he'd let leave him. Would she be the same if he had fought to keep her? If she had lived fifteen years inside the protective shell he would have built around their life together, would she be who she was now? He couldn't even answer with certainty that Johnny would still be alive if they had never parted.
Tears gathered in his eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. He swallowed hard. No, there was a reason for all of this, there had to be. He prayed for the strength not to make an ass of himself while he was here. He was grateful for the box of memories she had sent him, replacing the few things he had lost in the fire that destroyed his home. He was glad she wasn't still being a vituperative shrew about their marriage and Johnny's death. God, that still hurt so deeply.
He drew a deep shaky breath and released it. If Mary could let go of the hurt and the hate, perhaps he should try to let go of his own. Well, his hurt. He had never hated Mary. Alec had. Oh, yes, his faithful second in command who had introduced the two of them had never, ever forgiven Mary for a moment of the pain she had caused.
He grinned in the darkness, the tears tracing down the sharp edges of his cheek bones. Oh, dear God, Alec. When he found out where Mary was and what she was doing - he choked back the laughter that balanced on the fine edge of hysteria. He got out of bed, walked across the room and threw open the window for some fresh air and froze for a moment. Had he set off an alarm? He hoped not. He had no desire to explain to Ironhorse why he'd needed an open window. No desire at all.
Ed groped around in the darkness for the chair he knew he'd seen, barked his knuckles on the wooden edge of the arm piece and swore silently. He grabbed the arm of the chair and dragged it over so he could sit looking out at the quiet stars. He could make out the darker shapes of the pines against the velvet sky and could just make out the sound of the surf on the nearby beach.
He worked on calming down. All right. Mary was here. Mary was the past. No. Mary's love was the past. As was his love for her. Now they were soldiers in two different wars. They were comrades in arms. He settled into the welcoming cushions of the chair, nodding to himself. He could work with this. A wry smile curved his lips. Yes, he could work with this. They would have to talk at some point. He'd have to let her know that he was all right. That everything was all right. That he – she – His head nodded back against the upholstered wing of the chair as he finally relaxed enough to sleep.
Out over the ocean, a dozen miles or more away from the Foundation headquarters, a lone spinning silver craft hovered over the waves.
/ Target acquired. /
\\ The mission is over. \\
/ Target acquired. /
\\ Shut up. \\
Puzzled silence. / Target is isolated. Target is hostile. Target …/
Weary sigh. \\ Target is defending home. Target is defending loved ones. Target is – to hell with it. We are dieing. Get us out of atmosphere, now! \\
/ Fuel reserves diminished. Home trajectory too long. Disintegration advanced. / the ship sounded puzzled.
\\ I would rather die in space. \\
/ Final view. Star rise over planetary equator. Understood. /
The ship rose and shot off toward space. SHADO's tracking stations around the world suddenly came alive. Trajectory was established. It was headed out of atmosphere. None of the Sky units were in a suitable location to stop the ship. The chase was handed over to Moonbase and its capable personnel.
The insectile looking Interceptors rose from the moon's dusty surface and flew to intercept the lone craft. The SID satellite's monotone masculine voice gave coordinates. Just as the three shining moon craft were approaching range, the whirling vehicle seemed to come apart at the seams. Debris shot off in all directions as the silence claimed what ever noise the explosion might have made. None of the Interceptor pilots noticed the splendor that was sunrise over the disc of the earth.
\\ Star rise - \\ A lone red suited figure, face plate shattered in the disintegration of his craft, turned slowly in space above the planet he had left.
End part two