A collapsed and unconscious alien. The siren wail of emergency response vehicles, not yet near enough to be seen but getting closer every second. Then there were all the bystanders who had seen (or felt) the crash landings, probably throwing on their housecoats, grabbing their cameras and preparing to swarm the beachfront like a hive of simple-minded ants.
Nikki looked at the alien woman, crumpled on the sand like rare blue orchid, and one thought rang clear.
She had to get her out of here.
An idiot would let her get carted off by the ambulances, transferred to some military hospital where she'd be examined, dissected and locked away for all eternity. A dumbass would take her home with her; toss her in the back seat of a car or heft her into a shopping cart and make a break for it. Try playing nursemaid and resuscitating her when you could barely treat your own paper cuts.
Nikki had dwelled on this potential moment far too long to make those mistakes. Across paranormal message boards she'd debated first contact scenarios with like-minded alien enthusiasts and come to this simple conclusion: if you make first contact and the alien is injured, you take them back to their ship! If they're advanced enough to master interstellar travel they've probably got a pretty sweet first-aid kit on board, plus it'll be geared for their physiology!
"The gun first," Nikki decided. No way could she leave alien tech for some beach bro to abuse. With thumbs and forefingers she gingerly lifted the weapon, keeping the barrel pointed away from her soft and explode-able organs. Chucking it up the ship's loading ramp was maybe a wee bit reckless but she was pressed for time and nothing blew up, so it was all good. Now for the hard part.
"Up you go," Nikki grunted, sliding her hands underneath the blue woman's armpits. Oof! Either her species was incredibly dense or she was incredibly out of shape. It took a lot of wheezing, dragging and back-wrenching but Nikki pulled her limp body up the drawbridge and onto the ship's deck, where she collapsed with the alien's head flopped in her lap.
Through the exit hatch, Nikki stared at the battle-scarred cruiser and hesitated. Are there survivors on board? Were those dog-things the crew? They didn't seem intelligent but you couldn't hold any assumptions with alien lifeforms. She didn't like the idea of leaving a whole ship to be pillaged by CIA spooks but time was short and she had to prioritize.
She shot that thing dead to save my life. In Nikki's books, that boosted the Valkyrie's standing by a couple thousand points. Now she had a favor to return.
"Hello?" Scanning the saucer ship's interior gave Nikki the impression she'd entered the shell of a giant, silvery egg. A single, empty chamber, domed and rounded on all sides to match the outside shape. A halo of dim emergency lighting lifted the shadows, but only barely. Cold, she shivered. It was like she'd walked into a giant refrigerator.
A black computer screen was built into the front wall, and below it seemed to be some sort of control bank but all of the panels were bare. Squinting into the dark, she could see that the walls and floors were carved with the outlines of all sorts of hidden panels, consoles and trap doors but all of them were shut tight. "Anybody home?"
In response, an overhead panel ejected a small robot. Shaped like a bowling pin attached to a hinged joint, Nikki could only assume it was some sort of security camera. A rounded blue lens jutted into her face.
"Kosoko kangai na Shikai-to Subasa. Ta cho chuwan, Ki-Celeste?"
Oh joy, another language barrier. "Umm... Bah-weep Graahna Weep Ni-Ni Bong?"
The camera robot ignored her universal greeting and repositioned to scan the blue alien, her head spilled over Nikki's lap. Its blue lens jolted to an alarmed red.
"Shoku kantan! Asaroizu na viten tenryo!" The camera retreated into its wall panel and the ship's lighting blazed to full strength.
The gangplank began retracting.
"Whoa, hey!" In the time it took for Nikki to extract herself from beneath the alien, the exit panel had sealed shut and the entire ship shook under the roar of engines. An autopilot? She had no time to consider. The floor of the ship began rotating like a giant turn table, spinning Nikki and her savior to the far side of the vessel where the robot camera had emerged from a new pop-out cubby. Beneath its panel, a flat table like a prison bunk extended from the wall.
Invisible arms - tractor beams! - lifted the blue alien from the floor and deposited her on the platform, probably a medical table. A shelf lined with chemical vials had just ejected from the wall, and two segmented pincer-arms emerged from the camera bot's compartment to begin rummaging through the supplies. The doctor was in session.
The camera bot swept beams of light over the alien's body, dotting her injured scalp and shoulder with holographic circles. The pincer arms zeroed in on each targeting reticle and went to work: jabbing syringes into her skin, cauterizing her wounds with heated lasers and using some sort of space-age glue gun to glob a translucent gel over the injuries. Guess they got rid of bandages in that galaxy far, far away. The Valkyrie gave reflexive twitches over the needlework but did not wake, not even when the machines clamped a skin-tight metal cuff over her bicep and fed her an intravenous drip from a bag of black liquid.
That was weird. Who travels with spare pints of their own blood?
Nikki, of course, was recording the entire operation on her camera phone. As an establisher of first contact with a space-faring species, it was her duty to archive as much of this historical moment for the benefit of the human race. That, and to give a big, fat "I told you so" to all of her haters online.
"I don't know if you can hear over these crappy speakers," Nikki said to her future audience, "but that rumbling in the background like a bad AC system? That's the ship's engines. We're, um, being moved somewhere. I'm still getting free wi-fi, so I don't think we're off planet or anything, but um ... yeah. I'm in an alien ship. I'm flying in an alien ship!"
The medical bot didn't seem to mind her running commentary. "I get the feeling it's kinda limited for an AI," Nikki explained to her camera. "Or maybe it uses biometric imprints and can only recognize her species. Anyway, I'm not being vaporized so that's a plus."
Her camera screen focused on the unconscious alien. "This is her. The one who saved my life. Um, the ship's really starting to rumble a bit, and I'll try to keep the picture steady, but basically she's humanoid in appearance. She's got all our same limbs and features and ... proportions." Nikki's cheeks flushed as her phone traced over curves that would make a human supermodel green with envy.
"She has white hair, but I don't think she's that old. There's um, a lot of scars on her skin but it's pretty smooth looking." Nikki wondered how it felt - rough like leather? Cool as porcelain? Just the thought of running her fingers along that icy-blue skin sent a shiver through her body but her rational brain clenched her fists in revolt. Dude, that is so fucked up! Focus!
"So, basically, she's a lot like us. I mean, there's the skin of course, and then these -" she focused on the bone-like growths curling out the sides of her head like a ram's horns, "- thingies."
Wow, Nik, you're just a walking thesaurus tonight.
Maybe it was time to move onto clothing. On first glance, the alien's wardrobe seemed to be a space-age cocktail dress - a sleeveless, hip-hugging white skirt with thigh-high boots you'd expect to see on a go-go dancer - but to Nikki it was clearly a piece of wearable technology. What looked like oversized button studs were electronic sensors with green, cat's-eye lenses that flickered when she brought her phone near. Her right glove was imprinted with an arm-mounted keyboard, "and then, on her upper body you'll notice a ... well, um ..." Okay, there was no polite way to say it - her dress had a boob window.
"Clearly a ventilation patch for temperature control," Nikki coughed, switching her camera off once she realized how long her shot had been lingering. I think I'd better edit that part out ...
"Viten tenryo sai," the camera bot announced. Its patch job seemed to be wrapping up. Watching the mechanical medic, Nikki wondered if, while this was advanced tech for an Earthling, perhaps it wasn't very good by alien standards. The pincer arms moved in blunt, jerky motions, not the kind of precise dexterity you wanted from a battlefield surgeon, and when one selected a green sponge to clean the dried blood from its master's face, it just mashed the scrubber against her face - once - and left her wet and bloody before retracting into the wall compartments and leaving her all alone.
Nikki frowned the cheap bedside manners. Was that it? True, the alien warrior seemed to be breathing steadily, wounds patched and IV drip secure, but she was still filthy with the grit of sand and dried blood. Nikki searched her pockets and found a crumpled tissue paper. The least I can do, she reasoned, reaching a hand to wipe the alien's moistened cheek.
Blue eyelids split open.
Nikki freaked. She jumped back, feeling the swipe of a fist where her throat had just been. Flat on her ass again, the gamer girl made a crabwalk scuttle to the opposite end of the ship while the alien woman rose from her bunk with a rage that would send Audrey Belrose whimpering in fear. The Valkyrie made to pursue but found herself rudely tethered by her IV clamp. Her hand patted at her scalp and shoulder, and she made a face at the goopy slime her fingers found.
"Cogni cho kaba," she snarled at the wall compartments, then she was back to Nikki, staring her down like she was a cockroach crawling across a kitchen floor. Not able to pursue, but not that it mattered. The alien raised her left arm perpendicular to her body and opened her palm. A crystal bangle around her wrist began to glow.
The rattling of metal drew Nikki's ears across the ship, where the discarded rifle trembled on the floor. In direct defiance of the laws of physics, the gun flew across the room and into the alien's open hand as though she'd launched an invisible tow cable.
Holy crap, she's got a Mjolnir! That is so sweet!
Then the rifle hummed to life and they were back to a familiar song and dance: Nikki flat on her ass and in the crosshairs of an alien weapon. Please tell me she's not a scent-based tracker, Nikki pleaded, because crap, all these alien guts over me must be like a big, fat targeting marker.
They stared at each other across the weapon and, for some reason, the alien woman made her think of Audrey. It's her stance: back pressed against the medical stretcher, nostrils flaring out of control. She's in shock, Nikki realized.
"I'm - I'm not gonna hurt you."
She raised her open palms - no weapons, see? The alien only snarled and tensed behind her targeting scope. She's not shooting, Nikki reflected. Whether she was reluctant to miss and fry her ship's circuitry or if she was just too strained from injuries to aim properly, the warrior woman refused to shoot. Her eyes kept darting between the earthling stowaway and the medical intravenous dripping into her veins.
That's my hourglass, Nikki realized. The second the liquid was fully administered, the alien would rip off her cuff, clomp across the room and shred her. This was her ship and she, Nikki, was the intruder. For all this blue visitor knew, this peachy-skinned, blue-haired stowaway was a brainless beast - the equivalent of a bear cub prowling into your campsite or a raccoon scrounging through your garage.
She has to know I'm sentient.
They didn't speak the same language; they didn't even come from the same culture. With her luck, the Earth tradition of raising your hands in surrender would turn out to be a demonstration of superiority or a rude gesture.
They needed a common tongue.
Nikki squeezed her knuckles white. I hope she doesn't think I'm trying to wreck her ship. Breathing deeply, Nikki rapped her fist on the metal floor. The alien tilted her head at the hollow ringing.
Bang.
Bang, bang.
Bang-two-three.
Bang-two-three-four-five.
And again, counting eight, then thirteen and then the alien's eyes flashed with insight. "Siska-to Chozra?" she murmured to herself.
The alien raised her left foot and tapped the floor in return; Nikki followed every beat like it was the countdown to her execution, and when the count ended at twenty-one, she knew she'd been granted a reprieve. As fast as she could, Nikki rapped thirty-four, and the alien returned fifty-five. Nikki laughed. "You know the Fibonacci Sequence!"
They were speaking in math!
The alien's lips lifted in a smirk. I hope that means she's amused, Nikki gulped. The laser rifle was still trained at her head, but the Valkyrie's grip seemed to have relaxed. Removing the hand around the barrel, the alien made a downward gesture to her feet and began a new tapping pattern. Her left heel tapped once, then the right. A second round: twice on the left, four on the right. Three taps left, nine taps right.
Nikki scoffed - "perfect squares," - before continuing the pattern with four and sixteen to the alien's approval.
Another tapping pattern: one and four. Two and seven. Three and ten.
So we're moving to algebra, eh? Nikki tapped four and thirteen. "Three-X plus one," she declared. This is kid's stuff! Let's see what you know about number properties.
One, three, five, seven, eleven. The alien gave her another smirk and continued the pattern. Thirteen, seventeen, nineteen. "Prop chi," she announced in her language. Prime numbers.
She served Nikki another volley: four, sixteen ... thirty-six?
Crap, another equation, and this time it was only the products. 4, 16, 36... Even numbers, multiples of four, an increasing pattern... The alien leaned forward and drummed her impatient fingers along her rifle. "Hang on!" Nikki snapped. If she didn't know any better, she'd swear the blue woman enjoyed seeing her fluster.
4, 16, 36. What if she divided them, or quartered them? While Nikki rubbed her temples and muttered solutions, the alien drummed her index and middle finger along the barrel of her gun. Nikki had suffered her fill of the taunting. "Would you just give me two sec-"
Two.
Of course!
Using both fists to speed up the count, Nikki clonked the ship's floor sixty four times and - for good measure - rapped the next number too: an even one hundred. "The square of two-X," she trumpeted. "And I didn't need any hints," she added, mimicking holding a rifle and tapping two fingers on its barrel.
Then came the moment of magic: the alien slapped her knee and laughed out loud. Her chin reared back and the cold air of the ship rang with a dainty, girlish giggling, the kind of tittering you expected from a young schoolgirl. Nikki found herself lost for words as the bloody and battle-worn soldier giggled herself into stitches, but a single thought did beat upwards from her chest.
That's ... actually kinda cute...
A mechanized ding interrupted the revels. Both turned to watch the medical bot's silver cuff automatically unclip from the alien's arm, the leftover drops of black liquid dribbling on the floor. Nikki tensed as the alien rose to her full height - please don't shoot!
- and lowered her rifle onto the medical bed. Phew!
Nikki cocked an eyebrow. "Another round?" and she tapped on the floor in illustration. "Cause I could go all night at this."
The alien gave a cheeky grin but agreed that enough was enough. She rifled through a utility belt around her waist for some tech: earpieces that she inserted under her snow-white hair, and a black fabric collar she clipped around her throat. A square over her windpipe glowed red. "Uma," she ordered. When Nikki continued to stare she pointed a gloved finger at her lips. "Uma."
"Speak! You want me to speak?" The alien made a beckoning motion so Nikki figured she was on the right track.
"Um, hi, I guess. Oh god, I had a whole speech prepped but now I don't know what to say. Well, I'm Nikki. Nicole Ann-Marie, officially - from the planet Earth." Stupid! "But I guess that's a little obvious seeing as I was here when you got here. I mean, here on the planet, I ... oh god, sorry, I'm just so scared an excited; I mean, I just knew there had to be life beyond this planet and that one day we'd meet someone like you, but I guess deep down a part of me realized it'd never happen to me, so ... wow. I mean, just breathing is a stretch right now."
The alien nodded. "This must be a remarkable moment for your species."
"Oh totally," Nikki continued. "I mean, you change everything we know abou-" Nikki stopped herself. The alien smiled. "We're talking. Together. We're talking together!"
"Yes. I thought this might be more effective than trading mathematical equations."
Nikki squealed. "You're talking English!"
The alien puckered her face in a cute look of confusion. "In-ga-lish? That is the title of your language, yes?"
Nikki had already sprung to her feet. "A translator! You've got some sort of universal translator in that collar and you've learned English!"
"That is partially correct. Structurally, your In-ga-lish is similar to several dialects spoken within the galaxy. My device is now calibrated to the closest equivalent."
"Huh." Well, this visitor was practically human in physiology. If two separate races could evolve similar bodies, was it so impossible that they had developed equally similar systems of speech? While she mulled this over, the alien's eyes turned to the floor and she stooped to pick up Nikki's discarded, bloody tissue.
"You brought me aboard my ship after I lost consciousness. I am most grateful." She smiled and Nikki suddenly found her eyes impossible to meet.
"Oh, it's um, no big deal..." she shuffled out. Noticing her filthy state, the alien tossed her one of the medical sponges to wipe her slime-encrusted face and hands. "Oh. Thanks, it was starting to get sticky. And um, thanks for blowing up that weird monster thing instead of me. Um, what do I call you?"
"I am Celeste of the Luvendass."
Nikki blinked. "Pardon?"
"Luvendass."
Well, that was forward. "Um ... hi. I'm Nikki of the Nevahbeenkizzed."
Again, that utterly charming giggle. "A pleasure, Nikkeeee," she slurred, then Celeste paused and retreated into that disbelieving stare she'd given on the beach. "Uncanny... Forgive me for asking but are you certain you've never encountered a being from beyond your planet?"
Internally, Nikki chuckled to herself. Darling, this sure ain't my first rodeo. Technically the honour of her "first" alien went to a pink-haired 'Love Fairy' named Jessie, but Nikki didn't like to dwell on that part of her recent history. All that existed now was this breathtaking saviour from the stars and she had to be honest. "I've never met anyone like you before."
Then the ship hit a patch of turbulence that sent them bracing against the walls. Celeste marched to the ship's bow to adjust their course. The vessel seemed to react to her presence; as she approached, the black monitors winked to life, control consoles slid from their compartments and a sturdy metal captain's chair hissed out of a floor panel. Nikki tiptoed behind Celeste's shoulder and gazed at the main screen's projection of a starry sky.
"Are we in orbit?"
"Not quite. In the event that I am disabled my Cognition is programmed to pilot the ship into an upper atmosphere standby. I am inputting landing coordinates so that we may return to the surface." True enough, Nikki could feel that stomach-heaving queasiness she got from riding in elevators. Oh crap. Deep breaths, Nik. Please don't barf all over the nice alien's spaceship.
A camera window popped on screen displaying the beach crash site, now swarmed by fire engines dousing the flaming cruiser alongside a red and blue swarm of police cars. Celeste frowned. "Do your law enforcement vehicles carry surface-to-air missile deterrents?"
"What? Oh god, no. We're not that advanced!"
Celeste nodded. "I will need to keep out of sight, regardless," and her fingers danced over the console keyboards to adjust the landing coordinates. Nikki tried to keep her jaw from hanging as she took in the awesome tech, but Celeste caught her hungry look anyhow. "I am sure you have many questions. Please proceed. This is an opportune time."
"This is so sweet," Nikki gushed. "Oh my god, where do I start? You're a carbon-based lifeform, right? Your cells use DNA - I mean, deoxyribonucleic acid - as an instructional base for replication, right?"
"I am, and they do," the alien replied in order. "An astute inference."
"Oh, I'm not inferring anything. One look and I had you all figure out!"
Celeste cocked an eye. "Indeed?" She seemed willing to indulge this line of questioning. "Tell me what else you observe."
Another test, Nikki realized. They were solid on math, but what could she demonstrate about biology? "Well, for starters, on my planet we'd classify you as a mammal. You're warm-blooded, you can regulate your own body temperature, and you give birth to live young and feed them."
The alien nodded. "Impressive."
"Oh I'm just getting started. You're a herbivore, or at least you evolved from a plant-eating ancestry. Your teeth - when I saw your teeth - they were flat and shaped for grinding, not tearing, and those horns," she made curly-cue loops around her ears. "Carnivores concentrate on teeth and muscles; they don't need extra ornaments for defending or for showing off to mates."
"Go on."
Nikki pointed at her head. "Your hair. Assuming that's your natural colour, you're from a colder, Arctic environment. You'd blend in perfectly with the snow and ice crystals." Nikki chuckled and watched her breath exit in a white vapor. "Well, that and the temperature's set kinda low in here."
Celeste smiled. "I hadn't noticed." Course you wouldn't, this is room temperature to you. "Is there anything more you can discern?"
Nikki wanted to end on something praiseworthy: you're a soldier, you've got weapons training, you're not afraid to kill, and your arms and legs are ripped with scars from battle! But the more she looked over those blue limbs crisscrossed with white ridges and slashes, the more her buzz faded. She wondered what cruelties had caused all that damage, and what else was hidden behind her dress and boots.
With a quiet concern she whispered, "You've been hurt."
Celeste stiffened and, tracing Nikki's sightline to the marks on her arms, crossed her limbs indignantly. "You assume too much."
"Um, sorry, I -"
"I will take up the interrogation now." Her face hardened back to the warrior woman who had mercilessly shot down a ship and blown up a lifeform. "You represent the dominant species of this planet, correct? Yes or no will suffice."
"Y-yes, ma'am."
"Have your people developed extra-planetary travel?"
"Y-yes."
"To what degree are you in contact with the galaxy? Be specific."
"Yes ma'am. Well, um, we've sent a man to the Moon - that's our satellite - and sent a bunch of probes through our star system, but that's about it."
Celeste nodded to herself. "An Idyl world, then." Returning to her screens, Celeste magnified a bird's-eye view of a vast, green canopy. "Is this forested area home to any sentient species?"
The nature reserve, with its hiking trails? "Well, there's a herd of deer I think, and-" Celeste's death-glare cut her off. "I mean, no." The ship lurched hard in preparation for landing.
"Your settlement, where the other ship and I crashed. What is the population?"
"G-Glenberry? Um, about a hundred thousand I guess."
Celeste whipped her head around. "One hundred thousand?"
"Y-yeah. It's not much; I mean, we're nowhere near the millions in New York or Chicago, but I think it's -"
"Your species has further settlements? Home to millions?"
"Well, yeah. We're pretty much all over the globe. Seven billion, give or take."
Celeste looked ready to tumble over again, but caught herself against the console. "Billions," she whispered to herself. "So many ... how could ... I mean, this must be an Idyl world but ..."
"You're trying to get back to that crash site without being seen, right? Um, maybe I could help ... or some-"
"Worrying about my welfare?" Celeste snapped with a rage that blew out of nowhere. She stalked towards Nikki with eyes full of madness. "How droll that you pity me now! I am not so weak that I need your help, Celar-"
Then she caught herself, and sanity bled back into her eyes. Celeste backed away, terrified, and fumbled about her console for a button. The loading ramp hissed open.
"You should depart," she whispered. "I've broken too many protocols already."
Leave? A part of Nikki did want to run in terror - the look in her eyes! - but what truly terrified her was the thought of ending her alien encounter so abruptly. This is it? Eighteen years waiting on a one in a trillion chance and this is how it ends?
"Celeste, I can help you!"
The blue alien gave her a sad smile. "You have done enough. Please, I need to proceed alone."
"No, you don't understand. I-it's my job to help aliens like you. Be-because," deep breath, "I'm a government ambassador for extraterrestrial lifeforms!"
For a while there was nothing but Nikki's ragged panting to break the silence.
"What?" Celeste frowned.
WHAT? Her own brain screamed back at her.
"Yeah, you see, it's my job to meet and greet visitors from other worlds. I mean, why do you think I was the first at your crash site? I was monitoring your ships the whole time," with a hand-held camera phone with a crappy zoom lens, but the details weren't important. Nikki rifled through her pockets and handed over a business card to Celeste. "Nicole Ann-Marie, Earth ambassador."
The card read "GALAXY ARCADE PREMIUM MEMBER" but just because Celeste could interpret human speech didn't mean she could read their writing systems, right? All that mattered was that the card included a photo ID and a blue-and-green decal of the Earth in its background, and that looked like something you'd print on an interplanetary dignitary's identification, right?
"Pretty official-looking, right?"
Celeste frowned back at her - oh crap - but then exhaled her anger. "In that case, this was a fortuitous meeting."
Tapping on her glove's keyboard, Celeste activated some kind of wrist-mounted projector that displayed a holographic ID.
"Sergeant Celeste Luvendass, Special Operatives Division of the United Army of the Galactic Confederacy."
That's a mouthful, Nikki blinked, but she made a point of scanning over the alien notation as though it wasn't just chicken scratchings to her. She supposed an armed forces ID would include a grand, golden coat of arms at the top, and then there was the picture.
"Aww," she cooed. Celeste's photo ID was noticeably outdated, featuring a younger, chibi-fied version of the alien with big, globular eyes, short hair that frizzed with static and a frightened pout that was doing its best to twist into an angry sneer. "Is that little you? Because -"
"Kaba!" Celeste smashed her fist into the nearest console. The hologram flickered and updated with a confident, adult-sized mug shot. Okay... Nikki thought, but she worked quickly to suck the amusement from her face when Celeste looked to her.
"Well, uh, everything seems to be in order, Sergeant."
"The ship I was pursuing is a pirate vessel registered to a wanted felon. I need to know what became of him and his cargo."
"You mean those dog things from the beach?"
Celeste chose not to answer. "I require access to the crash site. You need to order your emergency responders to vacate the area. Under no circumstances must civilians be allowed near that vessel."
Nikki nodded thoughtfully, the way her coffee shop manager had taught her to respond to difficult customers. "Uh huh. Okay, I see what you're saying. I just kinda don't think that'll work. Yeah..."
"Explain. You are a government official, are you not?"
"Well yeah, but, here on Earth we kinda have a lot of um, levels of government and everyone's got different bosses to respond to."
"Bureaucracy." Celeste hissed the word like it was a hated rival.
"Yeah, what you said. So, um, I can send in an order for all the cops and emergency crews to leave, but it'll take some time to, um, trickle through the official channels."
"I cannot be seen by your people. The program has been disturbed far too much as it is."
"If, um, it's just a matter of checking out the crash site, I could go." Celeste stared her down. "I mean, you just want to see what's there, right? Count up the dead bodies 'n stuff? I'm totally tight with the police like that. Official ambassadorial clearance 'n stuff."
The deal sounded good in her mind, but Celeste only continued her dark and penetrating glare. Those eyes seemed to shred her lies as easily as clothing, and Nikki shuddered as the alien prowled around her in a circle, seeing her naked and exposed.
"What is the length of your planet's rotational cycle?"
A day? "Twenty-four hours. Um, I have a watch-"
Nikki froze as Celeste snatched her wrist and inspected the time piece, noting the divisions of time and the pace of the moving hands. Motioning for another wall panel to open, Celeste pulled out a silvery device that looked like a high-tech lava lamp. Tapping at her eye - a follow me order - Celeste set the device on the ship floor and touched the rounded tip. Green light burst from the 'lamp' portion and a grid of fan-shaped lasers rotated over the room, tracing the walls with their finger-like projections. After several sweeps, the device powered down and Celeste touched a point near the base. A miniature hologram of the ship interior sprang from the lava lamp's head.
"It's a camera," Nikki realized, "except it takes three-sixty degree pictures." If Celeste was pleased with her quick learning, that praise was lost within her stern features.
"You will acquire a visual recording of the cruiser's cargo bay. I need to ascertain the exact status of the ship and its contents."
"Yeah, no problem."
"Half a cycle," Celeste instructed. "And then I will find my own way into that ship."
Nikki gulped as her eyes trailed to the laser rifle on the medical bed. "I uh, won't let you down. On b-behalf of the government of Earth we thank you for cooperating through official channels."
"Tell the government of Urth that if I fail to receive my data, your kind will all be dead in several cycles."
Oh yeah, no pressure there.
"My ship will await you at these coordinates, Nicole Ann-Marie."
Nikki was drowning in too many thoughts to correct her name. The future of the human race depended on her convincing the paramedics, the police, the state troopers and - if the conspiracy-minded government acted as quickly as she feared - black suited agents from the FBI who would shut down the site and drag every last scrap of alien evidence to a locked warehouse at Area 51 to be reverse-engineered and exploited for the twisted, shadowy powers-that-be.
Trotting down the ship's exit ramp, Nikki giggled, a half-mad peal of terror you gave before a high school exam you'd failed to study for.
"I am so screwed."