The Pickup: Capt Hale’s Mach 6 Ride to the Amazon | Europa Break Ch. 6 (Patreon)

It was one of those times when you’re not sure if you’re dreaming. He twisted in his 4 AM sleep, dreaming of the contact that he still wasn’t sure would come. But there it was again… BOO-boop ... BOO-boop, accompanied by the vibration buzzing.

He’d come to know this contact method. His VeriStrike encrypted communication device, given to him by Reese, used this unmistakable call. He’d only heard it three times since he’d been “recruited” by Reese. He’d researched the sound: it was taken from the Amazonian Motmot (Momotus momota) bird. Strange, he’d thought, but it would make sense soon.

BOO-boop ... BOO-boop

He was awake now, snapping back to his strange reality. He grabbed his VS and on the screen it read: “Pickup notification follows, Press Cont.” There it was, finally:

“PICKUP: 38.6796 N / 120.6968 W at 0400am tomorrow. Bring only gear as instructed, arrive alone, have no lights showing whatsoever. Continue comm sec. Say goodbye to your world. You won’t be back.”

That last part stuck in his throat and slammed home the reality of what he was doing. He would leave Earth, command an untested star vessel using highly questionable alien technology and depart into space.

He was sitting upright on the edge of his bed now. He had always slept with the window on his 2nd floor condo open, the breeze blowing lightly through the light blue sheers he’d installed there. His friends always teased him about his decorating style, saying he’d make a good woman. He didn’t give a shit. He liked seeing these move with the wind, feeling a connection with the outside which he loved so much and had such a connection with. Griff knew he’d be losing that and, maybe for the first time, he felt fear.

He pressed the acknowledgment button on the VS and its confirmation beep rang out. He saw the message dissolve as it always had. His first two messages were simply connectivity confirmations, but the third, prior to this one, carried almost an equal weight to tonight’s contact:

“Pickup is pending within one week. Get your affairs in order. You are allowed a total of 100 lbs cargo, carried in 2 duffle bags, no more. Two weapons are allowed. More will be issued.”

That had been one week ago. Since then he had thought of nothing but the message. It sounded like a pending death notification and indeed it was…of sorts. For all intents and  purposes, to this world, he would be dead. For the past week he sorted through his items decided which if any he would take. He had always been a minimalist, again mocked by his buddies, but here it was paying off.

But he did have his trusted gear which would go with him: a Leatherman Charge TTi multi-tool, Damasko DSUB watch, Spyderco Nutnfancy-signed Delica and Endura knives [always carried by him], 2 Victorinox TNP G10 pocket knives, his worn purple Olight Baton 3 flashlight, and his guns. These he told would be allowed. One was his CA illegal BCM lightweight AR15 with his Vortex 1-8 LPVO scope, the other, his trusty FN 510 Tactical 10mm in FDE. Neither had ever let him down in all his practice sessions, always done illegally of course in remote parts of the CA desert. Other things came with the load out as well but most of his stuff would be simply left behind.

They were clear about this. Reese had said in her meeting with him “Live your life as normal, give no indication you knew you’d disappear. Act normally, go about go about your day-to-day life. Do not change anything in your residence that would be obvious.”

They had thought this through. And he would comply.

The next 24 hours, luckily off from his flying job (they knew this of course), he wandered around mostly in a daze. He tried his normal routine: coffee shop, sending insulting texts to his friends, playing some stupid game, flirting with the hot girl in his complex, doing some laundry (he made sure people saw him doing this), and driving his Suzuki Hayabusa bike for a short ride. He liked his coffee. He definitely liked the hot girl. But he’d miss his bike the most.

He pulled into his usual spot and killed the engine. The Hayabusa ticked quietly as it cooled. Griff sat there longer than usual, hands still on the grips, staring straight ahead. He couldn’t help it. Eventually he got off and walked away without looking back. It hurt.

He had set a 2:00 a.m. alarm. Actually, two. That was so Griff. He had pre-positioned everything for a fast getaway, including a thrashed moped he’d bought off Facebook Marketplace with cash.

Hale slipped out the back window and roped himself down because it was the only exit the complex cameras couldn’t see. He even wore lightweight tactical gloves so he wouldn’t leave fingerprints. Jason Bourne would be proud.

He arrived at the field early, running the moped with its lights off for the final stretch. It was a lonely agricultural field, nondescript and far from anything. A three-quarter moon hung overhead. He had an idea what was coming, but some part of him still refused to believe it.

He looked at his VS. Silent.

BOO-boop ... BOO-boop.

The message read: “You are at site. Stand in the middle of the field.”

His Damasko read 3:58 a.m.

He heard the air first. A strange rushing displacement above him, as if something enormous were pushing the atmosphere aside. Then came the sound—a deep, purring whine.

He’d heard something like it before.

In a documentary about leopards.

What the fuck?

Then he saw it. Kind of.

The speed at which it arrived was astounding, even to him, an experienced jet pilot. One moment the sky was empty. The next—

There was a damn UFO hovering over him. No rotor wash. No exhaust. No visible means of lift. The crops beneath it barely moved except from the air it had displaced on arrival.

Griff's pilot brain immediately rejected everything his eyes were reporting.

And not some exotic shape nobody would recognize. It looked like the kind of flying saucer people had been drawing since the 1950s: polished metal, disc-shaped, with an enlarged-radius section around its housing. With all their technology, this was the best they could come up with?

Griff stared upward, flabbergasted. The moonlight was dim, but with every one of his senses running at maximum gain, the thing might as well have been sitting under the lights of a football stadium.

Seriously? All this technology and they went with The Day the Earth Stood Still?

The craft stopped precisely over him, its belly maybe ten feet above the ground. A hatch opened.

Then a folding ladder dropped out. Griff stared at it. A voice came from above. “We’re still working on our ladder tech, but this is it for now. Hand me your bags, I’ll haul them up. And please climb aboard quickly, sir.”

Of everything happening at that moment, Griff somehow locked onto one word.

“Sir?” He thought…what the hell.

He pushed up the two duffles as the craft hovered, whining and yet stable. Then he grabbed the strange ladder. “I’m no sir. I’m just a twenty-six-year-old kid, dude.”

The answer came immediately.

“No sir, you aren’t. You are Stella 2 Captain and you’re my commanding officer. I am ESI Combat Leader 2 assigned to your ship, Lt Tee.”

Griff stopped, almost to the top. “There standing under a hovering UFO, he contemplated his answer. Being non-military in background and being essentially clueless in military protocol, he rifled through his movie memories. 

He simply said “As you were then soldier” as he resumed his climb. The weight of that stupid statement bugged him.

This was his first introduction to Europa Break military culture. There would be no time-consuming period of customary acclimatization, no gradual familiarity with rank, and no comfortable transition into responsibility. Everyone had been recruited for a role.

They were expected to step into it immediately. And fulfill it. He would learn this soon enough.

Aboard the craft Doogie took it all in as Lt Tee folding up the ladder into a purpose built compartment. Red light permeated the cockpit of the craft. At the controls was a GAIT who turned and greeted Capt Hale. “Welcome sir, your flight gear is in the seat, we must be underway immediately.” As Griff grabbed a blue flight suit, what appeared to be a G suit, and a helmet, and the craft began immediate movement.

Underway Griff slipped into the flight suit and somehow figured out how the helmet fit onto the shoulder yoke and he plugged into the comm network. All the pieces fit; of course they did, they knew everything about me. 

He felt slightly more at ease doing this; he was getting closer to his comfort envelope even in this UFO. Everything else made him feel like dead weight, and he hated that feeling. Usually it was Griff who knew all the trade secrets.

Kind of like seeing the interior of this amazing craft for the first time. Surprisingly the interior had two compartments: one for crewing, the other for entry, cargo, and what appeared to be a portion of the power plant. That’s where he’d come up the ladder. Somehow it was compact and roomy at the same time. Like a Honda Fit designed by people who could manipulate gravity.

Then passing forward through the hatch were four humanoid seats with full strapping systems, head harnesses (the kind he’d never seen before), and a more or less square appearance. He thought it odd this compartment did not match the circular exterior structure of this craft.

A red glow permeated everything. Griff studied the control panels mounted along three sides of the compartment. Some of it was surprisingly recognizable: synthetic vision, an MFD-like display, navigation and terrain information, system synoptics, and what appeared to be an autopilot control panel. There was even something resembling a flight-path vector, although this one moved in three dimensions.

He searched instinctively for the ugly stuff—the controls airplanes carried for when everything went to hell. Fire handles. Isolation valves. Emergency buses. Manual backups.

He couldn't find any.

Either this thing was unbelievably reliable or its designers were unbelievably confident.

Other indications were completely foreign. One display showed a constantly changing wireframe image of the craft surrounded by concentric fields. Another displayed acceleration vectors in every direction, with a prominent BIO LIMIT marker that seemed to move according to whoever was aboard. He found a hull-load presentation, but no airspeed limitations that he recognized and, more strangely, no conventional engine instruments.

Instead, an entire panel was devoted to GAD power. Output percentage, field symmetry, thermal loading, something labeled GRADIENT, Gravity XFer, and several parameters whose units meant absolutely nothing to him. One indication caught his attention: RU/RD — BIOLOGICAL CONSTRAINT ACTIVE.

Griff stared at that one for a moment.

Biological constraint?

There was a conventional-looking pressure-altitude readout, but beside it were geometric altitude, radar altitude, inertial position, gravitational reference, and something simply labeled LOCAL MASS ENVIRONMENT. The navigation display showed their flight path across the Earth, but it continued downward through the surface as naturally as an RJ flight plan crossed a state line.

That was interesting.

Most disturbing was what wasn’t there. No throttles. No thrust levers. No mixture of N1, N2, EGT, oil pressure, hydraulic pressure, or fuel flow. Nothing that told Griff an engine was doing anything because, apparently, there wasn’t an engine in any sense he understood.

Then he found a display showing all four seats.

Each occupant had a tiny human-shaped icon surrounded by numbers: heart rate, blood oxygen, respiration, body temperature, acceleration exposure, and predicted consciousness margin. His own icon had already appeared.

HALE, G.>>  BIOLOGICAL

“Well, that’s fucking creepy,” he muttered.

And then most astonishingly was the pilot at the controls: it was a humanoid robot. It rotated itss head 180º and addressed him on interphone after he donned his helmet and strapped in. Griff decided immediately that he hated that particular feature:

“Welcome aboard sir we are underway now. My designation is GAIT or General AI Technician 007…that’s right double oh seven and yes you can call me Bond. This morning I will be the copilot of this flight to destination. The onboard AI pilot “Ramshack” has programmed the flight and will ensure its safe execution.”

Bond and Ramshack.

These people were either brilliant or completely insane.

“Our travel time to the Amazon destination following completion of Ramp Up will be approximately one hour and twenty minutes. We will remain largely undetectable and, for practical purposes, uninterceptable. I must now monitor the flight. Lt Tee has a briefing that will answer many of your questions and explain your upcoming week.”

Bond paused, still “looking” directly at Doogie.

“You come highly recommended, sir. I have every confidence you will be a solid commander of Stella 2.”

That one hit differently.

Griff had been absorbing impossible information almost continuously since climbing the ladder, but hearing this machine casually refer to his spaceship sent a chill down his spine.

My Stella.

His brain was finally beginning to catch up with events.

Then what his pilot brain interpreted as thrust arrived.

Griff was shoved hard into the seat.

Holy shit.

He'd always thought his Busa had it going on. Compared to this thing, the Hayabusa was a fucking tricycle. Griff stole a look at the synthetic vision. California was already falling away behind them. The velocity vector stretched eastward across states the way his RJ display normally crossed counties.

The Lt came over the interphone. “Sir, we're in RU now. GAD output is heavily restricted with biological occupants aboard. This GAD V2G7, sized down for this craft. We’ll continue accelerating to approximately forty-five hundred miles per hour and level at sixty-five thousand feet.”

T sounded as casual as somebody announcing the beverage service.

“Under unrestricted acceleration, GAD would liquefy us. Ramshack has already deconflicted the flight path.”

Griff pictured a frog in a blender.

Yep. That could be me right now. Glad this fucking thing has limits.

The deep purring whine he'd heard outside changed character. It became a rhythmic pulsation, rising and falling through the structure before gradually climbing in pitch. It wasn't really an engine sound, Griff was beginning to understand that, but his aviation brain had nowhere else to file it.

The acceleration increased. His helmet pressed firmly into the articulated head restraint behind him.

Ah. So that's what that's for.

He glanced at the seat display. A G-load indication was changing rapidly. Then something didn't make sense.

The indicated acceleration continued increasing while the load on his body began decreasing.

“The G's are coming off, but we're still accelerating. What gives?”

Tee replied. “A portion of GAD output is now being diverted into a Manipulatable Gravitational Field or MGF. On this craft it's primarily used to increase humanoid tolerance of acceleration.”

Griff watched the numbers continue climbing.

“We only require approximately twenty percent compensation during this profile. You'll remain loaded against the seat, but comfortable. Ramshack intentionally preserves some acceleration sensation so biological crew retain useful physical orientation and also to get you used to the Stella craft. Approximately two minutes to cruise.”

The machine was accelerating toward 4500 mph. That’s almost Mach 6 he thought. Doogie couldn’t help himself. He was pressed into the seat the whole time. He thought how how happy he was having pissed in that bush before pickup. Excellent preflight decision.

A robot named Bond was sitting up front. Another AI named Ramshack was flying the thing. Twenty percent of some technology Griff hadn't known existed ten minutes ago was presently manipulating gravity so his internal organs stayed approximately where God had installed them.

And somehow, for the first time all morning, Griff felt completely comfortable.

He grinned.

These were his kind of people.

And apparently his kind of robots, too.