Three

7 Hours In

Corregan's jaw dropped when the car that picked him up from the private airport let him out at the massive launch vehicle complex. A flamboyantly red ship was perched on its side along a gantry, its sleek nose pointed toward the sky. Its fuselage was shapely, not unlike the flashy 1950s sports car that Senior had driven into a deep gully one night nearly two decades ago. Senior had stumbled from the wreck relatively unscathed, making it a half-mile down a dwindling stream before a Good Samaritan and his pickup truck found him beating his fists against the fresh mud in a roadside wadi. Corregan had been cramming for his first semester of law class finals when his mother called him and, through her histrionics, he deduced what had happened. He had visited Senior in the hospital, and the image of him lying semi-conscious in the bed as the orderlies prepped the next round of sedatives was the last one Corregan held onto.

A corrugated tin shack had been hastily erected several hundred yards from the base of the massive ship. As he traversed the distance, Corregan's eyes wandered up the ship again, and he wondered about Jack. The Secret Service had confiscated his phone immediately after leaving the White House. "Mitigating risks of exposure," they had repeated during Corregan's several attempts at retrieval. He wanted to tell Jack everything—the truth about the world, their new place in it, the ship standing in front of him. And he wanted to know how the game had ended. The sun passed behind a rare cloud, jarring him back to the shack. He found several Marines in military fatigues guarding the ramshackle entrance. Corregan was immediately allowed passage inside. He savored the chilled air, a brief reprieve from the tail end of an oppressive Southern Florida summer.

Four other guards occupied the corners of the shack. While they could have passed for Marines, they certainly served a different world's forces. The tallest of the creatures reached Corregan's sternum. They were clad in head-to-toe white jumpsuits, with opaque faceguards obscuring whatever features would be there. A special extension had been sewn into their suits, letting the creatures' thick tails both be covered and swing freely. Three-fingered gloves clothed their two hands, which gripped smoothed yellow cigar-shaped objects that Corregan guessed to be weapons of some kind. He felt his conclusion verified as the four objects swiveled in his direction upon his entrance.

He quickly raised up his hands, and the guns relented. As the guards returned to their stations, Corregan saw the rotund creature ahead of him, mumbling incoherently and fidgeting, with its back turned to the door. Corregan produced the massive file entrusted to him by the President, and flipped back and forth until he discovered the one-page write-up he needed. A quick perusal, and he moved forward and tapped the creature on its back.

"You must be Dr. Jookiba," Corregan ventured, extending his hand as the creature rotated. Halfway hidden beneath a tacky yellow Aloha shirt stretched to the brink of oblivion, its corpulent tan belly shuddered as it breathed. Four compact yellowed eyes, nearly level with Corregan's own, blinked in unison as it cocked its head, seemingly studying Corregan's features in much the same way as the President had done. An intelligence, profound and amiable yet tainted by an infectious darkness, burned deeply within the orbs. After a few moments, mauve arms reached forward and ensnared his hand.

"Hello there, Ambassador! A pleasure to be meeting you!" Dr. Jookiba's roughhewn voice exclaimed. Corregan reeled. He had not expected to understand the aliens, yet this one spoke commendable English, even if its heavy and dusky accent clung mercilessly to the h's and g's. "Come, come. These…cretins here, they are requiring us to depart already. And I had just gotten used to the coolness in here." The doctor's arms shined with a thin film of sweat as he hiked up his cargo pants, picked up a long rectangular silver case that had been resting at his oblong feet, and escorted Corregan to the door. The squad of white-clad guards followed the duo into the harsh sun blazing over the path toward the ship.

Both the doctor and Corregan blinked furiously in the sudden onslaught of white light. Corregan shielded his eyes with a hand and began, "Dr. Jookiba, I would like to say that—"

"Oh, please, call me Jumba! No need for stuffy formality, Ambassador."

Ambassador, Corregan shivered as Jumba said it. Hope I get used to that soon. Corregan hid his discomfort behind a cavalier smirk and pressed on. "Ah, of course, Jumba. I would just like to say I look forward to working with you."

"Hmm, what a nice thing to be saying. Even if it is not entirely true."

"Why would you think that?"

"Ambassador, when I turned around to greet you, your look of surprise, it was, eh, giving you away. You are not used to seeing, ehm, non-humans around, yes?"

"That obvious?"

Jumba nodded. "We'll need to be practicing a bit on ship before we reach Turo. A look like yours could spell doom for our mission. And not kind of doom I enjoy." As they approached the entry point of the large red ship, Jumba cackled, a throaty and not wholly pleasant, but tolerable, sound. With the threshold looming, Corregan pined for the warmth of his friend's rich laugh bouncing in the Oval Office.

"Jumba, tell me more about this creature," Corregan requested as they entered the belly of the ship. Harsh natural light was instantly replaced by dry artificial lamps. The scent of sterile steel had beaten back the fragrant Floridian air. A wave of chill washed up his arms, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

"Ah, yes. My greatest creation! Six-Two-Six is real masterpiece. Promise of total galactic destruction, wrapped up in one tiny, fluffy, adorable package. Truly genius."

"Yeah, my briefing mentioned he was a weapon of some kind…" Corregan absentmindedly thumbed through a few pages of the folder.

"No, no, not a weapon. The weapon. Greatest of all time!" Jumba threw his hands in the air. His excitement quickly fell back as he continued. "But, didn't work out that way. He found, ehm, kindness—something Jumba should've expected, in hindsight—and now he poses no real threat to galaxy, despite my best urgings. So, I am not sure what he could have been doing to anger Federation."

"And the Federation is—"

"United Galactic Federation," Jumba spat. "Pompous ingrates, all of them! They consistently mistake my genius for madness. Or for idiocy—pah! They think they can do what they please with my creations. They do not understand Experiments like I do."

Corregan finally settled on a page and sped through it. "If I remember correctly, you are an exile, like your Experiments. Will they even let you be a part of this excursion?"

Jumba cackled again. "Ambassador, they have no interest in detaining me again. They care only for my creations. Experiments are what frighten them, not this." He slapped his stomach, and the tan expanse rippled. "Even though Federation is full of imbeciles, they will leave us be."

"Frighten them, how?"

"I would be assuming, Ambassador, that ever-insistent Cobra put something about Experiments in that—paper file, hmm, nice touch. Much harder for Federation to steal data, heh." He tapped a plump finger against the smooth manila folder. Corregan instinctively tightened his forearm's grip. "Ah, more practice for you, Ambassador," Jumba proclaimed.

They had been progressing down a gray walkway, their guards prodding them along with stern postures and sterner weapons, when a large door appeared at the end. It effortlessly gave way into the wall as the cohort moved into a bustling hive. More of the creatures like the guards were seated in oversized chairs in front of consoles arranged along the perimeter of a precisely-drawn circle. Their faces were not covered, and Corregan had to devote extra willpower to keeping his jaw clamped as he walked past dozens of alien faces. Their looks were unassuming, and a few even reminded him of certain species that roamed the marshes surrounding the launch site. Gecko, garter snake, greenhouse frog…he named as he went. All stared back as the duo was escorted to plush chairs on a raised platform in the middle of the chamber.

"Hmph," Jumba snorted as he caressed the edge of his seat. "I am somewhat surprised they did not send Gantu."

"Gantu…I know that name!" Corregan rifled through his folder. "Yeah, Captain Gantu, isn't he in charge of operations like these?"

"Usually, yes, but…ah, that's right, I remember now, heh heh…" Jumba devolved into breathy chuckles.

Corregan was bewildered. "Where is he?"

Jumba waved him off. "Let us just say, I would not want to be being where he is now."

Corregan readied to press the point, but another thought struck him. A few flips through the folder, and his brow furrowed. "So, wait, Gantu used to be in charge of the Federation's Armada, right?"

"You are correct, Ambassador."

"So if he's…unavailable, who's in charge of those ships?"

"Ah, you have hit upon excellent point! There is massive power vacuum in Armada. Federation Council has been acting as managers for several Earth months. Grand Councilwoman is surely pleased by that. Will be interesting to see how this all will be turning out in future."

Corregan knew that name. "The Grand Councilwoman is involved? How does that—"

"Ach!" Jumba shouted as he pointed toward an impatient-looking ophidian creature at the helm. "Let us be saving that for later. For now, I am thinking it would be prudent, Ambassador, to be sitting down."

They took their seats and strapped in. As the guards dispersed, Corregan leaned over to Jumba and whispered, "So why are they frightened by—"

Jumba quickly shushed him. "Not here, Ambassador!" he strained. "Later, once we are on Turo."

Corregan nodded and leaned back into his chair. The melodious whirs of alien machinery soothed his overclocked mind. The rigors of discovering that humanity was far from alone in the galaxy had worn him down considerably. Even as he nestled into the velveteen fabric, tendrils of dread still crept up from the pit of his belly, a fear he recognized was rooted not in his current circumstances, but in the potential of what lay ahead.

"Ambassador, I have question for you," Jumba said.

Corregan disengaged from his musings and replied, "Sure, what's on your mind?"

"I am curious—why do you think you are here?"

Corregan tried to bury the flummoxed look and failed. "What do you mean?"

"Why did humanity get called to be part of this?"

Corregan shrugged as a whimsical chime dinged in the cabin. "Our planet, our rules. We may not be as advanced, but your Experiment is seeking asylum here. Seems only right that we are the ones to go to the negotiating table."

"Sure, sure," Jumba dismissed. "But…see, I was tremendously surprised to find out that humanity would be having representative. Knowing Federation like I do, it is very shocking indeed. You are—how to say, eh—comically under-advanced. No offense, but your ineptitude may be posing serious problem in our quest to retrieve Six-Two-Six."

Four beady eyes blinked in unison. Corregan took his time staring into each one. An intelligence burned within them, Corregan did not doubt that. Yet as he waited, something started to seethe behind the yellowed orbs. Corregan smiled as an understanding dawned, one he kept to himself at present. "Well then, guess I'll have to try not to screw up too badly," he casually scoffed.

A rumbling which surged from the aft overtook Jumba's guffaws. Vibrations shuddered through the floor into Corregan's bones. He squeezed the armrests and closed his eyes. Inertia's fingertips lightly touched him, easing him into the chair's back. Corregan thought of how it would look from the ground, the massive red vessel with flames erupting from below, readying to pierce the clear blue sky and rocket toward a far-off world.

"We shall see about that!" Jumba's voice barely carried over the roar of takeoff.

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Coming 1 June - Four