New Earth Read online

  FreeForm: New Earth

  FreeForm, Volume 6

  Orrin Jason Bradford

  Published by Porpoise Publishing, 2019.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  FreeForm: New Earth

  Part One

  Late Sleepers

  Fetch

  Rendezvous

  Strategy Meeting

  Capture

  Inflight

  Gulfstream

  Healing

  Yu-Lung's

  Falconcity

  Part Two

  Cruising

  Sedation

  Tina's Welcome

  Surprise

  Timeless

  Part Three

  Drop

  Reunion

  Transit

  Insomnia

  Lab

  Sightseeing

  Bashir

  Napping

  Perks

  Confrontation

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Further Reading: Babble

  About the Publisher

  FreeForm

  New Earth

  Orrin Jason Bradford

  They who pose the greatest risk possess our only hope...

  As it remains, Earth’s denizens are largely unaware that a new species walks amongst them. In the wake of a laboratory accident—one that may have sealed man’s fate—those called ‘the Kindred’ were born. Each possessing singular powers, immature but menacing, the siblings share a human father...and alien DNA.

  It’s yet to be seen whether these children wish to side with humanity or help facilitate the invasion coded in their genetic instructions, but one thing is frightfully clear: should they fall into sinister hands, the world won’t stand a chance.

  As known to fewer still, this end-game scenario has already begun to play out, as several of the Kindred have been captured by a tyrannous sheik, and, unless something is done, it’s only a matter of time before the rest are hunted down. James and Pat will coordinate a rescue team like none ever seen, but, once inside the belly of the beast, all bets are off...

  Deftly splicing story arcs while building tension ever-higher, sci-fi maven Bradford proves the sky is not the limit with a mesmerizing climax to the six-part FreeForm Series.

  Did you miss your free copy of Crash?

  A Prequel to the FreeForm Series

  Grab your free copy at:

  http://www.wbradfordswift.com/crashlanding

  Part One

  Late Sleepers

  THEY MUST BE SLEEPING late, Mimi Rawlins thought, as she pulled the monocular away from her face and glanced at the digital watch she wore on the inside of her wrist. It always made her feel good to check the time. Knowing the time helped to keep her grounded in reality, well, more like it grounded her in her uncle’s love. The watch was special. Her Uncle Bo had given it to her for graduating with honors from high school. She might only be his niece, but in many ways, their relationship was more like father-daughter. Since her dad spent way too much time trying to climb out of a bottle, Mimi stayed away from him and over at Bo's instead.

  The watch flicked over to 10:05 am. Mimi wished she'd had the luxury of sleeping so late. She enjoyed that luxurious feeling of dozing, awakening, and dozing again. Mimi often did it on weekends, especially Sundays, but not today. Today she was on assignment.

  She ran her long fingers through her short red hair; the color accentuated with help from Lady Clairol. Her boss, Aaron Aldridge, claimed it made her look too much like a boy. But Mimi knew better. She'd caught him more than once ogling her slim, shapely figure. He knew all too well her gender. There were times when Mimi wished she was a boy; well, a man. At twenty-six, it was fair to say that whatever her sex, she was an adult. In the world of journalism, being a man automatically placed you in the ‘good ole boy' network; while being a woman, especially an attractive one, just got you a lot of stares and snide remarks from those same ‘good ole boys.'

  She gazed down the hill to the log cabin. Was that some movement on the porch? It was hard to tell. She placed the monocular against her eye and looked again, but the shadows eliminated most of the details. As she studied the porch, she thought she saw the figure of someone moving. As she watched, a young girl stepped into the morning light and confirmed her suspicions. Evidently, her information gleaned from the secretary had been correct. She thought back over the past week, considering how she ended up where she was now, scoping out a run-down log cabin.

  Mimi had had a rough week, and as soon as the weekend started on Friday evening, she hit the closest bar, in an area of Atlanta with which she wasn't familiar. Not long after her first drink, another redhead came in and sat at the bar near Mimi. Soon the other redhead started talking. It was one of Mimi’s gifts that bordered on an extraordinary power. She'd developed her gift early in her life, soon after deciding, she wanted to be a journalist when she grew up. Getting people to spill their stories seemed like a necessary talent, one that came naturally to her, and was well worth developing.

  With just a little prodding, a question here, a comment there, she discovered the other redhead's name was Rachael, and she too had had one bear of a week. Soon she was about three sheets to the wind, as was Mimi, and at first, Mimi listened with only one ear. Mimi figured Rachael to be in her early to mid-thirties. She was well-dressed in a designer business suit that probably cost as much as a week of Mimi’s take-home pay from Global Inquiry, the gossip rag she now worked for after quitting the better paying but an oh-so-boring job at the Atlanta Journal. Why would this high-class lady come to a sleazy bar? Being a good journalist, Mimi knew her encounter with Rachael would reveal something interesting.

  Kismet had brought them together, no doubt. Well, at least that's what Mimi liked to think. She believed in karma. She also believed in divine destiny, white and black magic, and that the physical reality in which she walked was only one reality and not necessarily the most interesting one. With a childhood like hers, anyone with half a brain would have believed in such things.

  Mimi’s journalistic radar began to beep when Rachael started talking about having been part of a harem of professional women who had used some guy for their sexual pleasure. Rachael went on to share how all the women had become pregnant, even though they’d all been on birth control, and the man had supposedly had a vasectomy. But that wasn’t half of the strangeness. She had gone on to report that she and her preggie friends had all been hauled into a research lab in North Carolina, where they’d been forced to have their babies under close medical supervision.

  Mimi’s radar had almost broken into a hundred small pieces when Rachael claimed that her pregnancy had only lasted nine weeks! In fact, all the pregnancies had delivered at virtually the same time. Of course, by this time, both Rachael and Mimi were on their fourth or fifth drink, or had it been their sixth or seventh? Anyway, they were both feeling no pain, so the details had become blurred.

  Mimi wasn’t even too sure how she’d gotten herself home, but she’d made it a point to pull out her latest journal and enter as much as she could remember just in case. It was a habit she’d developed as a teenager back in Foster Flat, North Carolina, where she’d grown up with her alcoholic dad. Journaling helped her sort out her life, as well as becoming a reservoir for the many weird tales she'd heard about and even witnessed a few times. But none were any more bizarre than the tale she'd heard that night. So, as she sipped on her second cup of black coffee the next morning, she wrote down what she could remember. She then thought little about it until two days later when she’d gotten a call from Rachael.

  How did she get my number? Mimi wondered. She then remembered she'd given her card to the woman as the two stood in front of the bar waiting fo
r their respective cabs.

  MIMI CONTINUED TO WATCH the young girl as she strolled off the porch and over to the stack of wood. She gathered several pieces in her arms before heading back to the cabin. Evidently, the inside of the cabin is as rustic as the outside, Mimi thought. The West Virginia mountain air was crisp for mid-June, but not so cold as to warrant the need for a fire, in Mimi's opinion, so it was likely that it was needed for cooking. Is this young girl the one I’m supposed to be looking for? Mimi wondered. She seemed to be about the right age, and while it was a little hard to tell from this distance, she thought she could see a reddish color to her hair. Another redhead, Mimi thought. Counting her, that made three. Rachael, the reason she was on this assignment, had the reddest hair of all.

  Rachael had called to invite her to dinner that evening. The Polaris restaurant had recently re-opened on the 25th floor of the historic Hyatt Regency, after over a decade of having been closed. Rumor around town said it was well worth checking out, but not on a junior reporter's salary at one of the lowliest of newspapers. So, even if Rachael's story had been dull and uninteresting, Mimi would have accepted the invitation. But to get a good meal at a fancy restaurant while listening to a compelling story that might just might, one day turn into an article for her paper; well, life didn't get much better than that.

  So, she graciously accepted the invitation to meet Rachael at 7:30 that evening. In its early days, the restaurant’s blue domed roof had been an integral part of Atlanta’s skyline. After all, it was on the tallest building of the city in the late sixties. Over the decades, Atlanta’s skyline had grown with even taller buildings; to the point that the Polaris had been increasingly less remarkable until, finally, the owners had closed it. Thanks, in large part, to Rachael’s advertising firm, it was once again becoming the place to be seen in Atlanta.

  Mimi glanced around the slowly rotating circular restaurant with a central kitchen area. With just a turn of their head, the patrons could enjoy either watch their meal being prepared or take in the breathtaking view of the city.

  The two redheads found each other at the same time. Rachael rose from her chair at the bar, said a final word to the man sitting next to her, and strolled over to Mimi. The maître d’ magically appeared next to the two and showed them to a table where a bottle of already opened champagne rested in its bucket of ice.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I ordered us a bottle of champagne. I got thirsty so went ahead and opened it,” Rachael said as she pointed Mimi to the chair across from her.

  "Oh no, champagne is fine," Mimi replied, suddenly feeling awkward. Glancing around, it was obvious her black slacks and matching spaghetti strapped blouse was way too casual even for a Monday night at the Polaris. But it was the most elegant outfit she owned, so it would just have to do.

  She watched as Rachael waved away the approaching waiter and poured a glass for Mimi before refilling her own.

  “I think you’ll find the cuisine here more than adequate for even the most finicky taste buds. The chef is a personal friend of mine. In fact, he owes me his job so if there’s anything not to your liking, just let me know. I’ll have his head on a platter.” And then she chuckled with an edge that sent a chill through Mimi’s spine. Rachael motioned to the waiter as she opened her menu.

  It took Mimi only a minute to find what she wanted. She'd spied a delicious looking steak on one of the tables she'd walked by. She didn't eat red meat that often, partly because it didn't agree with her digestive system all that well. Besides, it wasn't easy finding a decent cut of meat that she could afford on her baked bean budget. So, why not splurge this evening on her new friend's tab?

  “I’ll have the same. Make my ribeye rare and no sour cream on the potato,” Rachael said as she closed her menu. “Oh, and bring us another bottle of Dom and a couple of shrimp cocktails, dear."

  “Quite a view,” Mimi said after the waiter left. The night was setting, and the skyline of Atlanta lay before them, the lights winking on all around.

  “Yes, it is,” Rachael replied. “And by the time we finish our meal, we’ll have made a complete circuit around, or close to it. But of course, that’s not why I asked you here, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Why are we meeting again?” Mimi asked as she took a sip of champagne and felt the little bubbles tickle her button nose.

  “You will recall from our previous conversation that I had a baby a few years ago that I then abandoned to the research lab.”

  "Yes," Mimi replied, leaning forward to show her interest but keeping a blank expression so Rachael wouldn't think Mimi was judging her.

  “Well, I think I also mentioned that I was in the bar because it had been a particularly hellish week, and I needed to blow off a little steam.”

  “Yes, I do recall something like that.”

  "What I didn't tell you was that the culmination of that hellish week was that I'd received a phone call. It was from my daughter or at least someone who claims to be my daughter, and I suspect it was. She said she was in trouble and needed help.”

  “Wow,” Mimi said. She started to reach for her glass, then stopped herself. Something told her that she was no longer on a social outing.

  “But wait a minute. Didn’t you say you had your daughter about three years ago?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “That’s pretty young for someone to be calling on their own, wouldn’t you say?”

  "Well, maybe, though these days kids and technology seem to go hand-in-hand. But there's something you're forgetting, or maybe you simply don't understand. Remember, my pregnancy...all of our pregnancies were extraordinarily sped up. We delivered in a matter of weeks, not months. That rapid growth continued after the delivery. While my daughter is only three chronologically, the girl who called me sounded much older and more mature.”

  “Okay,” Mimi answered. “And why are you telling me this?”

  Rachael picked up the bottle of champagne and filled Mimi's glass and then her own. "Because I need you to find my daughter and bring her home to me."

  Fetch

  "WHY IS IT ALWAYS MY turn to fetch the firewood?" Kristin asked in a whining voice that had become her morning modus operandi which only seemed to worsen the farther along she came in her pregnancy. "You're not the only one carrying a baby." She directed that last comment to her sister, Tabitha, who had given her the order.

  “I’ve told you before. Mel thinks I’m a much better cook than you are, so he wants me to cook and you to fetch. Now get on with it. He’ll be awake soon and will expect his breakfast to be ready. One guess who he’ll blame if it isn’t on the table.”

  "Well, it sure won't be Miss Goody-Two-Shoes," Kristin mumbled as she headed towards the door. She didn't mind fetching the wood. It gave her a chance to be outside and away from her two companions. Ever since Tabitha had learned that she hadn't been the only one that Mel had slept with on their first night at his old homestead, she'd become increasingly difficult with whom to live.

  Try as she might, Kristin had been unable to convince her sister that Mel had forced himself on her. “You’ve had your eye on him from the very beginning. Don’t deny it. Well, you can just forget it. He’s mine, and if I so much as see you glance his way, I’ll cut your heart out,” Tabitha had screamed at her just a few nights ago. Kristin was just about to retaliate with her threats when Mel had intervened.

  "Now, now, girls, settle down," Mel had said in the smooth, syrupy voice he used like he was talking to two small kids, rather than young women who were almost exactly his same age. "We're a family, and families have to get along."

  Yeah, like he knew anything about that. Hadn't he bragged about the burned spot on the cabin's living room floor where he'd used one of his special powers to kill his mother? Still, what Tabitha had said wasn't far off. She had had her eye on Mel. He was a good-looking guy despite the burn scar on the side of his face. And he had a particular animal magnetism that was undeniable even if he was technically th
eir half-brother.

  "But I wasn't ready to have a baby!" Kristin shouted to the great outdoors, but of course, no one was listening. They were miles away from the next closest house which was probably vacant this time of the year anyway. She took the last few steps to the woodpile and started filling her arms with the chunks of wood of assorted sizes. At least she'd learned how to build a decent fire in the old wood stove they used for cooking. You had to start with just a little crumbled up newspaper, then layer upon that a few small twigs, slowly increasing the size and thickness. Of course, she'd also learned to cheat just a little by including a layer of pine needles. Boy, did they burn well! But, often, she found she could stir the hot coals from the night before and then add fresh wood.

  As she slowly straightened up with a full load of firewood, she thought she saw a momentary glare off to her right a few hundred feet up towards the top of the ridge. She paused for a moment, then caught it again. It was like the morning sun glinting off a piece of glass or mirror. But there wasn't anything over in that direction, at least not for several miles. She bent down again to pick up one last piece of wood, though in truth she had more than she needed already. As she stood up, she glanced nonchalantly in the direction of the sparkle. Close to the top of the ridge was a line of pine trees and shrubs, but that wasn't all. Someone was lying there, just barely visible behind the natural cover.

  Kristin turned around and headed towards the house, fighting to keep her pace as natural as possible, even though she felt like running and screaming that they'd been discovered. But she maintained her calm at least until she felt the door close behind her, then she leaned against it and took a deep breath.

  “Well, don’t just stand there. Get the fire...” Tabitha stopped in mid-sentence as she noticed the astonished look on her sister’s face. “What is it?”