The Watcher [Alien Nation #1]

Chapter 11

Jules finished taking inventory in the Phoenix's tiny galley. In a few hours she would be back in the Sol system, her second home, and her entire body was as tense as a hair-tie on the verge of snapping.

She took a deep breath, bracing her hands on the narrow galley counter.

She could to this. She would do this. There were a dozen other agents like her; if the Councillors didn't think her capable, she wouldn't be here.

All she would have to do would be land on Josh's street, grab him, ask him where the data core was, and then Avery would extract it and they would be on their way. It almost sounded too easy. The hardest part would be actually getting to Earth undetected, and she had to trust Erri with that.

"You gonna be ready for take off in five minutes? We're just waiting for Avery to get here, she just had to grab some stuff." Erri's voice crackled over the Phoenix's internal comms, jolting her out of her thoughts.

"Sure. Galley's all stocked up, once I've finished my system check down here and I'll be ready. How about you?"

"Ready to fly when you are. Just waiting for the cockpit to warm up. You humans are too damn fond of the cold."

"No, I meant...Erri, are you absolutely sure you want to do this? If you've changed your mind, I'll totally understand."

"Jules, do you know how long I've been a fucking chauffeur or whatever it is your people call it? I live for this kind of flying. The higher the stakes, the happier I am."

Jules couldn't stop the grin that spread across her face. She'd always thought she didn't really have a best friend (apart from Cass, of course), but maybe he'd been sitting in her cockpit all along.

Her smile faded as she left the galley and climbed the short ladder that led up into the Phoenix's research deck. Did Josh have a best friend? A girlfriend? A boyfriend? How close was he to his family, how deep did his bond with his planet run? All questions that hadn't occurred to her until now, but now wouldn't stop spinning around her head like an accretion disk around a black hole. She was going to ask Josh to give up everything he loved, to abandon it all in the hands of alien invaders, at least until his memory could be wiped and he could be returned to Earth. She hadn't even stopped to consider what she would do if he refused.

That said, she wasn't entirely sure what she would do if he accepted, either. She just had to focus on finding the lost data core. There hadn't been time to think past that.

Cass was waiting for her on the research deck, as Jules had hoped. She hadn't been her usual chatty self while Jules had been on board. She'd worried Cass had decided to retreat into ones and zeroes today, but she emerged through the hatch and there she stood in the holograph node, in her usual shirt and cardigan, bobbed hair stirred by an imaginary breeze. The glow from her skin reflected off the shiny floor, the whole room awash in a silvery light.

"Hey," Jules said, moving up to the holo-node. She rested her hands on the railing, separated from Cass by millimetres. "I wanted to check up on you before we left. You've been quiet over the comms, and I was getting worried."

"You were concentrating on taking stock," said Cass. "I didn't want to interrupt. Must be hard, with an organic brain, not to lose count."

"Yeah, I've kind of got a lot of things on my mind right now," said Jules, fixing her gaze on the floor.

"Penny for your thoughts?" said Cass, tilting her head to one side. "Not that we use pennies, of course, or that I would have any use for them if we did."