(Thank you all for your wonderful feedback and for your patience in awaiting this update! I apologize for the lateness of this update, I know I promised this chapter for September but life has a way of messing up one's plans... Anyway, this chapter will be narrated mostly by Graeme with a little bit of Tara in the beginning. I'm still going to try for Tuesday updates so keep your eyes peeled on Tuesdays for updates! I hope you all enjoy this chapter! Good day (or night) to all!)
Disclaimer: I may not have said this in the last chapter, but I do own Tua and the Ularans. Please forgive my forgetfulness.
Chapter 3: Broadcasts and Warning Signs
-Tara-
If there's one thing I know for sure and without any doubts, is that life is never certain. It's as if we're floating on open sea, surrounded by fog with no clear view of the horizon. Sometimes we drift into storms and other times we wash up onto paradise. It's different for everybody and my paradise in particular had always been outlined in rocky shoals. Difficult and even dangerous to get to, but the journey was well worth the destination.
Here, with Paul, I had everything I needed, everything I was missing in my former life on Earth. I had a place I could truly call home. I had friends and even a family; it really was everything I'd imagine my paradise to be like. Yet, in the midst of my happiness, the universe had another harsh lesson to teach me. No matter how beautiful a paradise may look, the sun still has to set at least once.
I just never thought the night would be this dark...
It came in the form of a message given to me in person by a trusted friend. It was a beautiful sunny day, quite a contrast to what it had in store for me and my daughter, Lilith. We were both outside, taking advantage of the weather. Paul had left a few days ago on a small salvage mission. I knew his friend Del was with him, so despite what had happened to him the last time he left the planet for a mission, I wasn't worried.
Fate would soon prove me wrong...
A friend of ours had agreed to check in on us while Paul was away. Since I was never able to pronounce his real name, we just called him Dave. I spotted him walking toward us, dressed warmly since it was autumn and we lived in a temperate region on Paul's home planet. I waved him over, but even as he walked up to me, I could tell in his demeanor that something was wrong. There was a certain kind of guilt and hesitation in his eyes, a look I would learn was only given when someone had to give bad news.
"Hello, Dave!" I greeted nonetheless. A part of me just wanted to believe that maybe he was just having a bad day.
"Hey, Tara..." I could even hear it in his voice, though I could tell he was trying to hide it.
"Dave!" Lilith came over to greet him, a sweet little smile on her face.
"Hey there, Lil'. How're you doing, kid?" Dave asked as he returned the hug she gave him. She was almost as tall as he was at the time.
"Good! I wanna show you this new trick I learned!" She exclaimed as she let him go.
"I'd love to see it, but first I have to talk to Tara about something. You can show me right after, okay?"
"Okay!" With that, I told her to play a little ways away from us so we could talk. She went back to where she had left the teddy bear I gave her and I turned back to look at Dave.
"Is everything alright?" I asked and he took my hand.
"We should talk about this inside the house." He suggested, glancing at Lilith then back at me. Whatever he wanted to talk about, he didn't want her to overhear. It was then I knew that it had something to do with Paul. I nodded to agree with him.
"Okay." I turned to walk back into the house, looking toward Lilith, "Lilith, you stay right there where I can see you through the window. I'll be right back."
"Okay." She answered, burying the teddy bear in dried leaves. Once we were inside, I took a seat in a chair facing the door some several feet away. Dave chose to remain standing across from me, appearing more guilt-ridden than before no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
"What's wrong?" I asked him.
"You can tell already, huh? So, I guess I'll just get right to the point..." He removed his black cap and looked at me, "We lost contact with Paul and Del's ship... we can't locate it either."
I felt confused and a little scared. "What do you mean? Are they marooned somewhere?"
"We don't know." He started to explain, "We're not getting any signals from the ship and we haven't received any responses to any of our attempts to communicate with them. We know they were heading to an ice dwarf planet in the Delta Quadrant, but we're really not entirely sure that they even made it there."
"But they're going to look for them, right? They're going to find them?" I was hopeful. I had to be. Inside, I knew what he was telling me and what it all meant, but I felt so scared.
I knew the answer when he looked down for a moment and twisted his cap in his hands, as if the knowledge of what happened was hurting him too...
"Believe me, Tara, as much as I really want to... as much as they should want to... they're not going to send anyone after them until they know for sure where they ended up."
"What?" I didn't want to believe this. They were out there stranded, in need of help, but it wasn't coming. What if they were injured? What if they were trapped on some hostile planet?
"As of right now, we have no idea where they are. They said that it's too much of a liability to send someone after them without knowing their exact location. They could be anywhere..." Dave's expression turned bitter at that and I could only look at the floor, "Unless Paul or Del could somehow contact us and give us their exact location, no one is going to look for them..."
This all seemed preposterous and I couldn't accept it. How could they just leave them out there like that? They wouldn't even bother to investigate it...
"Is that the reason why it took so long for him to return here from Earth?" I asked. When he was marooned there, I don't think anyone looked for him then either.
Dave simply nodded his head and took my hand in his to comfort me. "I'm really sorry, Tara..."
I couldn't say anything. I squeezed his hand a little as I felt the tears coming. What was I going to do? What about Lilith? Lord only knows how long it was going to be until Paul or Del contacted them.
For all I knew, they were both... I couldn't even finish the thought. It didn't seem fair. I waited sixty years for him, he went through all that turmoil on Earth and now this. I felt a sob shake my body and the tears fall to the floor.
"Tara, I promise, I'm going to do everything I possibly can to find them." Dave tried to console me, but this was all too much. A memory flashed through my mind for a brief moment, the night Paul healed Graeme's bullet wound. Seeing Paul laying there with his eyes glazed over and so still, it made me feel so helpless because there was nothing I could do for him. It was how I felt now.
Helpless... and scared...
"You do that," I choked out through sobs, "and Dave... don't you ever give up on them, understand?"
I looked up at him, his hands on my shoulders, and he nodded.
"You know I won't." He put his arms around me and stroked my head, "It's gonna be okay, Tara..."
I knew it was, no matter how scared or devastated I felt, I knew things would turn out okay. I knew because I knew he'd come back. Paul would come back just like before. Somehow, I knew he would find a way. It would take a while and I would need to be patient, but I believed in him.
Things were different than they were before. He had Del with him too, which gave me even more confidence that he'd make it back to me, to us. For now, I would just have to wait. I owed him that for everything he'd done for me. I could wait.
For the second time, it was all I could do for him...
-Graeme-
"...Phil, I am standing just a few blocks away from the scene where witnesses and officials reported seeing black triangles hovering just a few thousand feet above the White House..."
-TSSHHT-
"...the black triangles, seen in threes hovering over Manhattan, were also reported flying over every major city in the US. We've just received reports that these strange crafts have also been spotted over major cities in several countries all over the world..."
-TSSHHT-
"...military planes have tried to make contact with the triangular crafts and have thus far been unsuccessful, the planes mysteriously losing power within five-hundred yards and falling straight down to the ground..."
-TSSHHT-
"The Black Triangles, are they an elaborate hoax or are they proof that we are truly not alone in the universe?"
-TSSHHT-
"...I think they're here to study us, to observe our behavior and learn how we've evolved from just simple hunters and gatherers to the society we are today..."
-TSSHHT-
"We all need to open our eyes to the truth! These are secret government aircrafts that they've been working on since the 1960s designed to keep our enemies at bay!"
-TSSHHT-
The news reports had been like that all morning, nearly every channel was talking about it. These black, triangular crafts were hovering over every major city and capitol worldwide. To be honest, I felt a little excited about it. Our entire lives, Clive and I had always believed that there was intelligent life out there in the vast cosmos and that belief seemed proven to us when we met Paul. With the appearance of these strange crafts, it seemed the rest of the world would know for certain that we weren't alone in the universe and Clive shared my enthusiasm. Ruth, however, was bit more hesitant considering their coordinated positions over every major city.
Of course, I'd be lying if I said a part of me wasn't at least a little scared or disturbed by this. All of those science-fiction films and stories had certainly taught me that it was justifiably logical to be frightened, but what could be called my better instincts at the time were being overshadowed by the idea that mankind, not just government officials, would be making contact with a higher intelligence for the first time in human history. There's so much that we could learn from them and that knowledge could potentially boost humanity's progress forward by centuries. What logical person wouldn't be thrilled by that concept? According to the news reports, the triangular crafts hadn't done anything in the past few hours except hover in place over cities, so the chance that they could be hostile wasn't exactly a recurring thought in my mind.
I couldn't have been more wrong in that line of thinking... It turns out, they were just biding their time, waiting for the right moment to strike. It was close to 1:30 in the afternoon when the news started to report the first signs of movement from the unidentified crafts. With the cameras trained on them, the entire world watched as they all turned to face each other, the front tips tilting downward. We watched, foolishly curious, as the tips on the sides began to glow a red light, a red beam tracing its way up the sides of each craft until it reached the front.
Then, the beams shot out and collided with one another, creating a large red ball of energy until it shot down to the ground in a single blast three times the size of the original beams. When it touched the ground, the cameras only captured a flash of red before the screens cut out. We all swore in shock and disbelief and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. This wasn't happening... This couldn't be happening...
Yet I couldn't deny that it was, even as the news anchor tried to make sense of what was happening. The thing that we feared the most when a higher intelligence reveals itself to us, the event that we were virtually defenseless against... invasion. No one said it, but we were all thinking it even as the power failed in our flat. Ruth had gotten up to go check on our son, Preston, who was home sick from school that day. Yes, I have a son; he wasn't planned, but I hardly regret that it happened.
Of course it wasn't always easy, but it's always worth it no matter the hardships you face...
"It's an invasion..." Clive's frightened voice brought me back to reality, "They're either going to exterminate us or enslave us all!"
"I don't want to be enslaved!" I could already feel the panic starting to settle in. The thing is, I've never exactly been the most reliable person in these situations since I've been known to panic easily, which is why it was probably best that Ruth check in on Preston instead of me. I'd more than likely have us both panicking as a result... Fear was, after all, an appropriate response to this and I was sure that there was pandemonium on the streets.
In fact, I could hear people screaming and the sound of things breaking just outside the window as the knowledge that we were being invaded was becoming more apparent. Yet, even with all this chaos, I had to believe that somehow we would make it through this. A part of me knew I had to remain strong and keep hope alive or we were all doomed to die in this no matter how terrified I was. I even thought of Paul and how we had risked our lives to help him get home. I thought that maybe, just maybe, someone would come to help us too.
If there was some kind of intergalactic authority out there, surely they wouldn't let something like this go unjustified. I hoped that someone would come and help us set things right. If not Paul's species, then some other intelligent race with such capabilities...
I also hoped that wherever Paul was or whatever he was doing, that he was much better off than we were now...
(Disclaimer: I do not own Paul or any other characters created by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I do, however, own Dave, Lilith and Preston. Read and Review please!)