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Back Roadkill Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Table of Contents
  4. Chapter One: Fender Bender
  5. Chapter Two: Bigfoot Burrito
  6. Chapter Three: Treasure Hunt
  7. Chapter Four: Open Sesame
  8. Chapter Five: Central Intelligence
  9. Chapter Six: First Flight
  10. Chapter Seven: Park It
  11. Chapter Eight: Next Steps
  12. Chapter Nine: Search Strategies
  13. Chapter Ten: Overflight
  14. Chapter Eleven: Barn Doors
  15. Chapter Twelve: Saturn Fly-By
  16. Chapter Thirteen: Getting a Clue
  17. Chapter Fourteen: Hacked
  18. Chapter Fifteen: The Spy Game
  19. Chapter Sixteen: Investigations
  20. Chapter Seventeen: Break-In
  21. Chapter Eighteen: Battening Down
  22. Chapter Nineteen: Shoring Up Defenses
  23. Chapter Twenty: Third Time’s the Charm
  24. Chapter Twenty-One: Proxy
  25. Chapter Twenty-Two: Rescue
  26. Chapter Twenty-Three: Chase
  27. Chapter Twenty-Four: Spies R Us
  28. Chapter Twenty-Five: Surveillance
  29. Chapter Twenty-Six: Making Plans
  30. Chapter Twenty-Seven: Going In
  31. Chapter Twenty-Eight: Infiltration
  32. Chapter Twenty-Nine: Accidental Captive
  33. Chapter Thirty: Interrogation
  34. Chapter Thirty-One: Reaction
  35. Chapter Thirty-Two: Kidnappings
  36. Chapter Thirty-Three: Reviewing Options
  37. Chapter Thirty-Four: Public Debut
  38. Chapter Thirty-Five: Distractions
  39. Chapter Thirty-Six: The Big Reveal
  40. Chapter Thirty-Seven: Regrouping
  41. Chapter Thirty-Eight: Waiting for Results
  42. Chapter Thirty-Nine: It Hits the Fan
  43. Chapter Forty: Disassembly
  44. Chapter Forty-One: Wrapping It Up
  45. Chapter Forty-Two: Negotiations
  46. Chapter Forty-Three: Coda
  47. About the Author
  48. About the Publisher

Patrick laughed with delight. “And obviously nuclear in nature. They won’t be covering that up anytime soon.”

“And what about the guys that were chasing us?” I asked.

“No signal,” Sheldon replied. “I expect they now consist of slightly radioactive dust.”

I grinned with relief. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“Don’t say I never give you anything.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Regrouping

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Regrouping

The news windows were spread around the conference room, taking up every single wall segment. Sheldon was displaying closed-captioning beside each window, to prevent the inevitable cacophony of competing audio tracks.

“Well, it’s really hit the fan, all right,” Nat mused, leaning back in the ops chair. “The disinfo channels have started up, but most people are unwilling to swallow the idea that the huge mushroom cloud and deafening roar were actually a weather phenomenon.”

“Or never happened at all,” Sheldon interjected. “I kid you not, there are a couple of purveyors trying to sell the idea that it’s a hoax.”

Nat shook her head slowly with a tired expression on her face. “I guess if you were farther than a couple of hundred miles away, you wouldn’t have seen it directly. Maybe the rising mushroom cloud for another couple of hundred. The sound would probably be audible over at least half of the continental US, though. But for the rest of the country, yeah, it’s just images on the TV.” She paused, then shrugged. “If you’re already inclined to distrust anything that doesn’t come from your favorite news source, and it starts telling you not to believe the reports, well … ”

“Hey, Sheldon,” Patrick said, “how likely are the Loranna to have figured out what we did to take out their ship?”

“I don’t see how they could. The weapon is a standard small nuke. Think of an air-to-air missile. Every air force on your planet has them. How would you tell whose missile was responsible for an explosion?”

“So the Loranna may think that we are actually an armed craft.”

“Or that we were saved by an armed craft. They may not even realize we opened a wormhole. Or if they have noticed, they might think it was an incoming Gen fighter craft. Hmmm … ”

I couldn’t help grinning. A hmmm sound was definitely an affectation. Sheldon continued to make a serious attempt to fit in. It was a good sign.

Nat interrupted his train of thought. “Here’s something new.”

All heads turned to the video window, where a news anchor was speaking in front of an image of the explosion: