Half of the time was spent waiting for the paperwork to catch up to the action. In reality it was a miracle that anything could happen at all.

  The aluminum tube of transport reached Mach three. Passengers had to sign a health waiver before boarding. Civilians, IE, people who didn’t routinely break laws, had to file medical paperwork before getting a ticket.

  Windows got hot, passengers could touch them. Sleeping was permitted but the stewardess sold burn lotion.

  Once you boarded the craft the ordeal was half over. The only shocking part was the landing. The takeoff was smooth, jet engines spun the air over the wings. A quick physics hack to generate lift. This was great except for the fact the engineers had managed to get the flight computer to abuse this during landing. The craft bumped when it hit ground effect and the decelerators would have kicked you out of your seat and your impact and crushed form underneath the seat in front of you could have broken limbs and skin. Fight crew “unlocked” your seatbelt at the end of the flight.

  The final impact with the ground followed a disturbingly parabolic path as the same jet engines that carried you so far split their thrust, some fraction over the wings. Some fraction before the craft.

  If you talked to the pilot, as you always could on these small flights. They would tell you that the main issue the craft had was heavy wings. Purely because of the reverse thrust profile. Few airports would budget space for a proper rolling deceleration these days.

  Hence the craft’s design.

  But this circular path was only interesting to Edgecase and Charles, who spent the flight talking over the sound canceling intercom to a disturbingly relaxed co-pilot. Natural born. Unlike the Bram stewardess.

  The six men waved goodbye to the crew with the handful of other passengers. No armored suits had come with them to this little city. Captain Owningsburg, Papa Delt and Lopin, equipped with a simple recording device were immediately stopped by an ZRM Intel officer (plainclothes) who had been waiting for them.

  They yapped with little fear, the only indication that they were more than disheveled nerds who loved fantasy was the fact that their hygiene was worse and their mannerisms more predatory and fit.

  Edgecase and Covffefe rented cars.

  Charles was tasked with collecting all of them more than two thousand calories from the airport. There were fiber and protein minimums. Which made it a difficult task.

  Soon they were off to the races. The day was young, it was time to scout the city, three to a car. Edgecase and Captain took Lopin as well as the Intel officer. Papa and Coffee took Charles.

  They looked for keywords on billboards, news history of the city, “thallium.”

  “So how did this monster make it onto the planet?” Edgecase asked.

  “He just fell.” The response was blunt and minimal.

  Lopin drove, concealed recorder ticking away. Owningsburg took notes and looked at a physical paper map, they compared it with one on Edgecase’s phone.

  The men were grilling the Zeypher Republic Military Man as they rode around town, they were heading to visit some steel mills and port warehouses the Intel guy had recommended they investigate.

  “He didn’t burn up on entry into atmosphere?”

  “No.”

  “How?”

  “He appeared to have a nearly standard heat shield.”

  “So… the lizard, just fell onto the planet using a heat shield as a… shield?”

  “Yes. That is what was reported to me.”

  “Why aren’t we visiting the impact? Do you have the coordinates?”

  “Ummm… well, we really didn’t observe an impact. Our interceptors lost track of the bogey when it slid into a nearby timber yard, we haven’t been able to investigate because it’s bram territory.”

  “Surely you folks have the authority to tell some of the clones to stand aside.”

  “We would, but old computer systems give priority to Bram and his clones. If we act, we can’t document it in a standard way, normally the risk of pissing off one of the old computers is way higher than the gain from any single mission.” The intel guy said it without shame.

  The marines were incredulous, Lopin wasn’t really understanding, they were focusing on the gentle traffic even as the city infrastructure did the majority of the driving. Dutifully, Lopin waited to take over in the event of emergency. Honestly their biggest risk was that a large mutant elk designed for the planet or one of the alien “Molong” lumbering herbivores, best described as a cross between a snake and a walrus burst forth from the overgrown outskirts of the city to crush the front of the vehicle. Even still, this risk was minuscule.

  “Look this thing is an alien, I hate to sound apocryphal but isn’t alien invasion rather a….”

  “Black swan?” The intel man finished the statement.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “You said it not me.”

  “If it was up to me, we would just make our own computers primitive as they may be. These old dinosaur systems are nothing but liability even if they out-clock anything most worlds can put up.”

  Captain Owningsburg spoke up “We can’t ignore the impact zone. I’m going to call the others, tell them to check it out. What are the coordinates sir?”

  And the coordinates were relayed, first to Captain Owningsburg then to The other vehicle.

  Edgecase was still curious “Ok but an impact at terminal velocity, not to mention re-entry are brutal on systems. The little guy must have had some extra equipment.”

  “Well yes, the vehicle we saw re-enter involved a heat shielded shell, that burned away to deploy an entry thruster, which then split into two pods. Which crashed through that timber farm.”

  “Two?” This was finally enough to fascinate the distracted Lopin.

  “Yea we were wondering what was going on, we heard only one monster was reported. We see two objects land, perhaps one is a care package? Or maybe they are multiplying, anyway, we haven’t gotten any recognizable reports of the critter.”

  “Does local police even know that this alien is out and about?”

  “Yes… technically, but it seems people are not taking the threat seriously, it’s filtered as a crazy nonsense rumor to most. It’s like trying to get police to investigate crop-circles. Those guys are normally fired or institutionalized if they report an alien infiltrator. ZRM permission and protection doesn’t mean a lot to them, especially the Brams.”

  “You said interceptors engaged the craft on re-entry? Did they have any success?”

  “No, it had a basic jamming interface, the flights were not equipped with the proper jam resistant munitions. Unless you count the dumb guns, which were ‘jammed’ by the simple speed of re-entry.”

  The four got out just outside a chain link fence, the intel officer led them, with his key ring, into the sleepy warehouse.

  Captain Owningsburg, aware that four unaided humans were about to enter a building where one of them suspected an alien might hide ordered Edgecase to stay in the car, and to, if they didn’t make it back in a few minutes, to return to the little home they had rented for the week and report all three of the others missing.

  But they returned quickly, Lopin suspected that the captain was annoyed at wasting time visiting these warehouses. Also that the intel man must have some other reason for investigating them. But Lopin was not the cynical sort, so it wasn’t important aside from the fact that both of these parties were going to be unhappy with the service the other could provide them.

  They were off.

  Across the city, the other three had a much easier time simply visiting, while operating the automobile manually (they had to pay the tourist fee) the timber farm illegally. A few jokes about homemade Bram guns not being accurate enough to hit them and the three men had offloaded the vehicle, parked it in a ditch they were not sure they would get back out from and hopped a fence.

  They didn’t have to wander far to see the results of what clearly was two impacts. It appeared the final decent was supposed to be partially slowed by foliage. They followed first one trail then the other.

  The first one appeared to be mostly empty, only a crude shell of metal remained. Remarkable that the alien, assuming this one was the same had not bothered to cover its tracks.

  “HAH” Delta Papa laughed. The big guy was always a little nervous. “Can you guys check me here?”

  “What’s up?”

  “I Just want to make sure I’m not crazy! That’s um. Well those our our landing springs aren’t they?”

  “What?” Charles didn’t know what Delta was saying.

  “From the shuttle gunship. It damp’s G forces when we hot drop!”

  “Oh! Those do look human made, but I don….”

  “HOLY CRAP!” Covfeffe exclaimed “Haha!”

  “I’m not seeing things am I? The critter would have cut up our shuttle.”

  “Clever girl…”

  The two marines were laughing, like they had found a lost riddle or message from the future. Charles didn’t quite get the joke, because he had never seen the shuttle.

  “You two are saying this monster of ours cut up the shuttle you guys arrived in?”

  “Yea… that little lizard is a genius. Made his own re-entry vehicle out of our old school bus.”

  “Sounds like it’s some kind of combat engineer.”

  “Common! You gotta be more impressed than that! You couldn’t do that!”

  “I don’t think I could, how long did he have?”

  “He entered a day ago. We fought it back three days ago…” Delta was remembering. Covfeefe was taking a few pictures and collecting some parts of his old ship.

  “Two days huh?” Charles finished the thoughts of Delta Papa.

  Deltas eyes brightened “Yea! That’s what it seems like!” A deceptively earnest and cheerful man for his business. “Yea… let’s go check out the other crash!”

  “These are bad welds, it looks like a shoddy job.” Covfeefe was normally a downer, it was odd to think that his complaining would be useful data.

  “If it works it ain’t stupid!” Delta was unfazed by the revelation. If it could be called a revelation, the lizard was cutting up and rebuilding a spaceship it was riding, likely with its oddball laser horn. No way, in any culture, for any alien, with any magic technology was such an on the fly engineering challenge as DIY atmospheric re-entry intended.

  The dirt was soft here, Charles wondered if the lizard chose this spot for its deep and fertile soft muddy soils.

  “If that mech landed here do you think it got stuck in the mud?” Charles called out before they left the site.

  “That’s a good point! Glad we took you knights along, bunch of geniuses.” Delta Papa was too kind, or he just found flattery worked well for him.

  “I didn’t see any tracks though.” Covfeefe was less impressed, which was a refreshing pessimism.

  Charles briefly had visions of the beast of the station leaping from its glorified metal crumple zone they called a lander and swinging from the trees like a monkey. Then, looking at the modest branches and spindly timbers of the routine tree farm vegetation considered how heavy that monster must really be.

  “Perhaps it’s not made for terrestrial action, and we are only going to see another machine for that lizard to pilot.” Charles thought to himself. “If it doesn’t just kill us before we get the chance.”

  The second lander was a little more surprising, a human seat, seat belts.

  “look for biometrics Delta!” Most people found it hard to call Old Delta Papa. “Delta Papa.” It just didn’t feel like a real name.

  The two marines had brought little plastic test tubes for collecting samples like this. Charles didn’t worry too much about them. He looked for tracks. Sure enough he found some.

  “When you two are done check this out!”

  The human had walked over to a clearing, and been picked up it appeared, by a truck.

  The two marines caught back up to Charles, claiming to have found a little hair and blood.

  “Not to be cynical you two…” Charles didn’t want to impose, “But what if it’s not an alien, just an experimental syndicate war machine.”

  The two marines stared blankly for a second, not sure what the proper response was.

  “I mean the syndicate would love to make something like that wouldn’t they?”

  "Wasn't the thing faster than known computers or something?" Covfeefe needled.

  “I’d love to make something like that!” Delta Papa kept things optimistic.