Chapter Three

“The 300 Star Cross passengers who were abducted but rescued will confirm your story?” His expression skeptical, Garrison rocked in his chair.

Unnerved by the burglary, my boss’s reaction shook me even more. Never in a lightyear would I have guessed he wouldn’t believe me. I should have leaped over his head and gone straight to the president, but, naively assuming he would help me, I’d followed the chain of command.

“No. I told you. They won’t remember anything.”

“Because of the memory serum administered by the Alliance of Galaxies,” he said in such a condescending tone, I itched to punch him. Unfortunately, Human Resources had rules against hitting another employee.

“The League of Planets,” I corrected through gritted teeth. “Because of the embargo. To prevent a mass of people from coming home and reporting how they’d been abducted, the LOP administered a memory wipe. They will have only hazy memories of the cruise.”

“The memory serum didn’t affect you though.”

“It would have, except Giselle Cartier, the physician aboard the Star Cross, who now works with the LOP to combat trafficking, slipped me a blocker to take before they injected me.”

“If she works for the LOP, why would she do that?”

“Because she’s human and believes the information needs to come out. The first step to protect our planet is to inform people what’s been happening.”

“Warn people not to accept any spaceship flights from strange aliens?”

“You think this is a joke?” I leaped to my feet and leaned over his desk. “You think this is funny?”

He raised his hands. “No, no. I apologize.”

With a huff, I sank into the chair and glowered. “My word ought to be enough for at least a fair hearing! You and I have worked together since the president’s first term. You know I’m not prone to wild ideas or conspiracy theories. I’m a straight shooter.”

In more ways than one. I could have killed the intruder if I’d intended to. I would never want to kill anyone, but the warning shot had left him able to return. Since he hadn’t gotten what he’d come for, I figured it would be safe to assume he’d try again. As soon as I’d collected myself, I’d grabbed the device and raced to the office to talk to Garrison.

I’d laid out how the space cruise had been a ruse by a galactic cartel to lure humans off New Terra, but the trafficking problem was much bigger than that. Humans had been disappearing for a long time, and the LOP could do little to stop it because its own rules and regulations prohibited contact with our planet.

“You are one of the most level headed people I know,” Garrison said, “and I respect you tremendously, which is why I’m being honest about my skepticism. People can’t vanish off the planet. Their relatives would report them as missing. There have been no spikes in missing person reports.”

“That you know about,” I pointed out. “MIAs would be reported to local police.”

“Eventually the data would funnel up to the planetary level,” he said.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a homeland security bureau to monitor those sorts of things. We hadn’t realized we needed one.

“What I am concerned about is the breach of security,” Garrison said. “You live in the Haley Building, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“This never should have happened there.”

“It shouldn’t have happened anywhere.”

“Of course not. But most buildings don’t have the security the Haley does.”

“You believe me about the break-in and attempted robbery but not the abduction.”

He shot me a look. “Without alarming the residents, I’m going to have security guards patrol your building.”

“And that won’t alarm them? They’ll wonder what’s up. But let’s not tell them about the real threat! You are unbelievable!” I couldn’t keep the derision out of my voice.

Garrison’s gaze sharpened. “Watch yourself, Jessie. I’ve allowed you the latitude to speak your mind, but I won’t tolerate insubordination.”

The rebuke infuriated me, but if I’d learned anything working for the governmental bureau responsible for diplomacy it was…diplomacy. One did not allow emotion to cause one to lose sight of the goal.

Clamping down on my temper, I said in an even voice, “Doesn’t the fact that the intruder demanded an alien communication device support my assertion?” I gestured to the unit on his desk.

“Nothing on the device you’ve shown me proves alien abduction. Proof of the existence of intelligent alien life, yes. But we already knew that. Someone spotted you with a high-tech, interesting device and tried to steal it.”

“Okay, you don’t believe me. Let’s see what the president says.”

“No. Absolutely not.” His voice turned to steel. “I won’t have you bothering her with this craz—unfounded, unproven story. You are not to speak to her at all, do you understand?”

“Do you at least believe that I was abducted?”

He sighed. “I believe you went into outer space—”

“People are disappearing off the planet, dammit!”

“No, they’re not. Look at this.” He punched a button on his control panel, and a computer screen sprang out of the console. He called up the last census report. “You know how closely we monitor population data.”

Hundreds of years had passed since the Great Nuclear War wiped out all humans except for the New Terra colonists, but our population was still too small. If people were being stolen, not only were their lives endangered, but the survival of our species was threatened.

Garrison dragged a cursor along a slightly ascending line on the graph. “Our population continues to grow at a slow but steady rate. The birth rate is not as great as we’d like but still shows an upward, positive trend.”

“Maybe we’d have a larger population if people weren’t being abducted.”

“There is not a single person unaccounted for. Every time someone keys into their residence, into their workplace, into a government building, their existence is verified. If you compare the count to a month ago, a year ago, five years ago, adding documented births and subtracting deaths, it’s clear the population is where it should be. You say hundreds, maybe thousands of people were abducted? If five people went missing, even a single person, the records would show it. Data doesn’t lie. That’s why I’m skeptical.”

“The data is wrong,” I insisted. “Can’t we at least check it out?”

“How? Do a special census, which will show exactly this?”

Facts were hard to refute, but I knew what I’d experienced and observed. I’d been gassed, removed from the Star Cross, and awakened in a cell on a slave ship—along with 300 others. Damn the LOP for its bureaucracy and competing goals! They’d silenced everyone who could have backed up my story. “Who was behind the space cruise?” I changed tactics.

He blinked. “You won it in a prize drawing you said.”

“But who sponsored it? Who owned the ship?” Hindsight was 20/20. I couldn’t believe how na?ve I’d been to accept the prize at face value.

“How should I know? It was your cruise.”

“I was told the cruise was a new venture. A pilot program. We don’t have space travel capability yet.”

“Obviously, we do.” He spread his hands.

“Do we? Do you know something I don’t?” If we had a space program, I would have thought I’d have been informed.

“Departments guard their turf. They don’t always talk to one another. There could be a secret space program, and the cruise could have been a test,” he offered.

It sounded plausible, except I knew better. The Copan-Cerulean Cartel had been behind the space cruise. “So, you’re not going to do anything,” I summed up our meeting.

“I’m not going to act on your allegations, unless there is proof.”

If we failed to act now, more people, mostly women, would disappear. Slave buyers preferred females over males because they considered them easier to control, and then there was the whole sex slave aspect. I crossed my arms, frustrated to no end. “Fine.”

Garrison looked at me. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know what ‘fine’ means coming from a woman. I’m ordering you to let this go.”