Escape 2: Fight the Aliens by T. Jackson King Read Free Book Online

Force Base. I’ve been there! Why the hell were they at Peterson rather than at DOD in DC?”
    “Yeah,” muttered Frank, raising thick black eyebrows. “Kinda strange for them all to be in this state. Is that image recent?”
    “Yup,” Bill said, lowering the iPhone to the table and nodding to each of his buddies before returning to Frank. “Gunny, they were all here, today, at Peterson, to talk with me and the Air Force captain lady who I’ve been hanging with these last nine months. We called them from orbit.”
    “Bullshit!” growled Bob, slamming his mug on the table hard enough to draw a quick look from Cheryl at the bar island. The man, who still wore a sidewall haircut, looked pissed. “Bill, you hate the brass. You’ve hated them ever since the sods took you off of SEAL field duty. You’re the last person to be chatting up the Chiefs!”
    His fellow SEAL Stefano fixed an intense look on Bill. “Bob is right. You hate brass. You hate taking orders from keyboard generals. But I can tell . . . you’re telling the truth!”
    Mark looked curious. “You said they talked to you and this gal from orbit. Did you get a ride up to the ISS for some kind of special operations deal?”
    Chris, the third Ranger in the crowd, squinted at Bill. “You’ve picked up a deep tan since you were here last. Did you get that from being in space? Out with it!”
    Bill smiled, tapped a third icon on the iPhone, then showed the image to everyone. “What does this look like?”
    “The bar scene from the first Star Wars movie!” yelled Alicia, her tone wondering.
    Frank nodded. “Yeah, some Star Wars thing. So?”
    Bill put the iPhone down on the table and leaned forward. “So, those are the Aliens I’ve worked with over the last nine months. They became crew on the spaceship run by my wife, Captain Jane Yamaguchi of the Air Force. And the Prez is going to tell the nation, and the world, that Earth will soon be under attack by six spaceships run by Aliens who have been visiting Earth to capture folks camping out or hunting in wilderness areas. Which is how Jane and I got captured by these nasty buggers.” The crowd at the table had gone deathly silent. “We escaped captivity, fought the Alien crew, captured the ship’s cockroach captain and took over their spaceship. We renamed the ship as Blue Sky .” He tapped another icon and held up the iPhone. “This is how she looks from the outside, up in orbit, which is where she is right now.”
    Frank groaned. “Buddy, you hit your head while out fly fishing? Those pics can be found on the internet. Hollywood does wild stuff these days with digital imaging. Did your ex’s departure send you round the bend?”
    Stefano grimaced. “Bill, never known you to lie or make up stuff. You seem to believe what you’re saying. But it can’t be real. Why you doing this? With us?”
    “Yeah,” called Master Chief Joe, his blue eyes looking over Bill. “You SEAL guys got your secrets. Like we all do. Spec ops is like that. Me, I just did fast boat drug busting in the Coast Guard. But even I know the stuff on your phone is made up fantasy!”
    In the background, Alicia and Cassandra were looking at each other, then looking back at him. Alicia clapped her hands loudly, silencing the muttering from the crowd. “Bill, this Jane Yamaguchi you said is your wife. And Air Force. Does she work at Peterson?”
    “She does. Did. Until we got kidnapped by these Collector Aliens,” Bill said, feeling tired by the open dismay of his vet buddies. They’d always stood by him in the past. Why couldn’t they believe him now?
    “Thought so,” Cassandra said, leaning forward and acting intensely alert. The woman who cut her hair to a rooster-tail Mohawk dyed orange fixed blue eyes on him. “Met her during some work I did at Peterson. For NORAD in Building Two. We met at lunch. She does satellite tracking and ASAT alert watch, right?”
    “She did do that at Peterson,” Bill said, putting the