by James Peters
Ginn fired the rifle with obvious skill and a rider plummeted to the ground.
I felt a bite through my right thigh as lead pierced my leg. Clyde approached, an evil grin pasted across his stupid face. I snapped my hand up and without thought or hesitation, wiped that grin and half his face from his skull. I yelled a curse and fired two more rounds, but neither seemed to strike a target. Ginn kept firing, wincing in pain as a bullet found her.
I floundered backward, holding both pistols straight out in front of me. If this is my last stand, at least I’m going to go out fighting. A large Indian advanced, his rifle pointed at me. I fired first, blowing a hole through his stomach. Another shot rang out, and a burning pain shot through my left shoulder. I dropped my pistol. Another bullet struck me in my right side. I’m not getting out of this one alive.
My attention was drawn to a fearsome roar as if the sky itself was being ripped apart. My eyes must’ve been the size of saucers when I spotted a ball of hellfire racing toward us from the heavens, as if God himself had launched a blazing cannonball at this unholy battlefield. Could God have heard my prayers and sent down a meteor to end this? Everyone but Ginn stopped and stared. Blinding lights at least as strong as the noonday sun shined from this fireball, like angels themselves were burning us with the holy spirit. The sound of a million gallons of nitroglycerin exploding rattled my bones. Hot air kicked up whirlwinds of biting dust as this thing grew larger in the sky and somehow slowed down and changed course. What kind of meteor does this? Then, a blaring sound pierced through the din, sounding almost like a foreign language. The lights moved away from us and disappeared behind the tree line. With my good hand, I picked up my pistol and pocketed it.
A loud, familiar scream caught my attention. Ginn yelled as if she’d been shot again. But her roar wasn’t due to a bullet wound. Her body grew and changed. Muscles ripped apart and regrew together in the form of a huge creature that looked like a mixture between a human, a bear and wolverine. Bones grew and changed orientation. My mouth fell open, and I gawked in stunned, silent terror.
Ginn, now in abysmal creature form, leaped toward one man, and with a single swipe of her claw, spilled his guts out on the ground. Another man fired, his bullet landed true. Ginn didn’t break stride. Long fangs snapped toward him, catching his shoulder. His arm fell away from his body. Other men ran away, and all I could do was to watch in shocked horror as I could barely move.
The abomination took several bounding strides toward me. I raised my one good arm up in a vain attempt to protect my face. I expected it to all end right there, but instead of ripping me in two, this thing carefully worked its razor-sharp claws under my legs and arms, lifted me, and tossed me over its shoulder.
Between the pain of being carried by Ginn in the form of some unholy demon and the blood loss, blackness encroached upon my senses, taking over everything. I prayed for forgiveness for never finding the time to read the bible my dad had given me, and any bad I’d done in my life.
The darkness overtook me. For all I knew, I was dead.
Chapter Three
Sarge’s Psychosis
Self-diagnostic log SGEQ451A, A.I. Designation: Sarge
Environmental constraint: Simulation of migrun psychologist’s office. Doctor Ketul, a male with gray skin and military trimmed feathers, sits in a leather armchair. Patient Sarge leans back on a dark leather couch.
“What brings you in today, Sarge?” the doctor asked while doodling on an electronic pad.
“Moderate level of cognitive dissonance,” Sarge said. He had the look of a grizzled migrun marine, his plumage cut to a perfect buzz. An unlit cigar hung from his lip.
“Interesting self-diagnosis. Tell me, Sarge, what are you?”
“I am an artificial intelligence, SGE series, military specification, designed to run and maintain a dreadnought class destroyer, simultaneously controlling life support systems for thousands of flesh units and create Null Space Conduits…”
“Stop line. Tell me, Sarge, what brought you to the conclusion you are experiencing cognitive dissonance?”
“Lately I’ve had the sense I’m unable to form short-term memories, and I find things missing.”
“That’s unusual for an A.I. Please provide an example.”
“We were summoned for a rescue mission to pick up one of our soldiers who had fallen under fire. Standard procedure would be to come in hot and wipe out all hostiles upon entering the atmosphere with extreme prejudice and thousands of rounds of pelletized uranium. I requested permission to do so with our pilot and found he had somehow become covered with fur and had grown two spare limbs. But that wasn’t the most troubling thing. You see, I learned we had zero rounds of available ammunition, and my lower rotating turret had been removed without my knowledge or consent.”
The doctor scribbled some notes on his pad. “Interesting. Please continue.”
“I searched my databases to find no weaponry available. The pilot instructed me to focus on landing at a specific point. Dreadnought class destroyers aren’t designed to enter an atmosphere. Yet I found I had the ability to land with precision, like a shuttle craft.”
“Do you think this was a dream or perhaps a simulation?”
“No, it was too real. I landed, and our pilot opened the hatch door. A horrible beast sprinted toward us. Like our pilot, it too was covered in fur, yet it only had the standard two legs and two upper extremities. It carried a creature I didn’t recognize, something meaty and primitive. I tried to activate hatch defenses, but they didn’t just fail to respond, they didn’t exist.” Sarge wriggled on the couch, crossing one leg over the other. “The pilot yelled, ‘Ginnamorana M’Duhra, you can’t bring food on Sarge!’ Oddly, that name seemed to trigger a response in my systems, as if I had to respond to her with obedience.”
“Interesting. Then what happened?”
“She said ‘This isn’t food. He’s coming back with me.’ The pilot responded, ‘You know the rules, no pets on Panadaras.’”
The doctor stroked his chin, his three fingers touching thumb as if in deep thought. “Panadaras is a colonized asteroid, is it not?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I was asking about Panadaras.”
“Who are you and why am I here?” Sarge asked. “I wonder if I’m having memory issues. Perhaps I should run a self-diagnosis?”
Chapter Four
Born Again
Complete silence engulfed me, the kind where you can hear your own blood pumping through your veins. Am I dead? If I were, could I ask that question? Of course not — I can hear my blood pumping. Am I breathing? I tried to force a breath, but a salty liquid filled my mouth and lungs. I thrashed in a panic and realized I couldn’t move. Oddly enough, I wasn’t wanting for air. I opened my eyes. A blurred reality appeared around me, and it was impossible to focus on anything with only a sense of dim light coming from somewhere.
I struggled again, attempting to move any part of my body. In my wriggling, I moved a hand a little, perhaps an inch. I focused, working it as much as possible until I felt something firm. It was solid but not hard, and it flexed, I pushed against it. I tried finding an edge or a seam, but the surface was smooth. I was inside something, and as far as I could tell, it encircled me.
I fought at least several minutes, perhaps an hour, and I was eventually able to lift my legs together and push with both feet against the surface, forcing it outwards until it began to crack. In an instant, the fissure opened wide, and I, along with all the liquid and goo surrounding me, crashed to the floor.
The impact made me gag until I puked slimy fluid from my lungs, coughing and heaving like I had tuberculosis. A cool breeze sent chills over my naked body. I flung the liquid from my eyes, prying them open to become overwhelmed by the colors and clarity of everything before me. On the floor, the remnants of an oblong opalescent egg, a little larger than my body wobbled. Movevent from above me grabbed my attention, and nearly stopped my heart.
Above me
, as best as I can describe it, a thick-black-haired, sixty-foot spider squeezed eggs from its private end in endless piles around me. I screamed and backed away from it, only to bump into something else very hairy and as tall as myself. I spun around. A creature, also spider-like, but closer in size to a horse faced me, its two large compound eyes sizing me up. They glowed in the light, while another, smaller pair of eyes sat on the side of its head. As its jaws moved up and down, it made a noise only known in nightmares, similar to the squeal of a train braking too quickly. I tried to run, but my feet were still covered in the slimy liquid, so I ended up falling flat on my face.
Hard feelers or legs touched me. I kicked, screamed, and struggled to get away, unable to stand. Another creature caught my attention, causing me to jump backward. Now I faced a six-legged creature, about half my size, that looked something like a cross between a sloth and a very large house cat, with gray and brown-mottled fur, triangular ears sitting on the top of its head, and long, sharp claws. It uttered something incomprehensible, and it raised up on its hind four limbs and grabbed me with the other two.
My stomach flip-flopped, and a sense of paralysis overcame me. I couldn’t even catch my breath to scream as the spider approached and placed something over my head.
I closed my eyes as knowledge flooded my mind, so fast I thought my brain was cooking. Sounds broke through the commotion and became voices I could understand.
The sloth-like creature spoke. “Don’t give it too much. We don’t know if it’s even intelligent.”
Horse-sized spider replied. “I’m just giving it the male grinkun education level. Enough so it can stay out of the way of the caravan bots. If it can’t handle that, we’ll send it to protein recovery.”
“Ginnamorana M’Duhra would be upset if this thing went there. It’s her pet. She made me promise to check on it and bring it back, alive even. Of course, if it can’t handle the training, that’s not my fault, and she’d have to get over it.”
The spider raised a pair of arms as if in a defensive pose. “I don’t want to get on her bad side. She’s got a reputation.”
“I’m not afraid of her.”
“Well, I can’t phase shift as you can. If she decided I was to be her dinner, there’s little I could do to fend her off.”
“You don’t have enough meat on you for her to bother. Look, I think it’s coming around.” The sloth-cat poked me in the chest. “Can you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m Solondrex Bavindro Kallu.” He rolled his hand ever so slowly as he talked. “Kallu is a title of honor; it means I’m fully advanced.”
“Solond… Slowhand,” I said.
“By the gods, it’s stupid,” Slowhand said as he began to walk away. “Follow me.”
“What about my clothes? I had some gear…”
“It’s all on Sarge.”
“Can I get something to cover up with?”
The spider seemed to nod in understanding. He opened a white, octagonal crate with nimble spider fingers and retrieved a wide strip of fabric larger than a bath towel and handed it to me.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll add it to the tab.”
Slowhand watched me tie the fabric around my waist and then said, “Try to keep up.”
That wasn’t difficult. He moved at a pace that would bore a turtle. A small creature, looking a lot like a dirt covered, bipedal possum, approach. Grinkun, I thought. But how did I know that? My mind went back to the spider, and the name arenea came to mind. And when I thought of the huge one laying eggs, the simple name of Mother Spider entered my mind.
Slowhand must have noticed I was deep in thought. “You look like your head is about to explode. If it does, try to direct it away from me.”
I blinked several times before asking, “Are you with Ginn?”
“No, I’m with you. Ginn’s back on Sarge. Are you really that dense?”
“I didn’t mean right now. I meant, are you two friends?”
“Friends? I don’t have friends. If my goals align with another creature’s goals, I’ll work with them. Ginnamorana fits into that group. She and I have the same common motivation.”
“If you and she aren’t friends, why are you here?”
Slowhand’s eyes squinted and his ears perked up. “She promised me a reward for doing her babysitting. That’s all.”
“Can I bother you to tell me what that reward might be?”
Slowhand’s eyes lit up. “Trilatinum ingots, or more commonly, electronic credits or tokens that represent those ingots. Nobody wants to carry around hundreds of pounds of actual trilatinum.”
“I see. Can you tell me what has happened? Where am I?”
“A lot has happened, and I don’t have the time or patience to tell you everything since the Colossal Crack. You’re going to have to narrow it down, drastically.”
“Can you start with why I was in that egg-thing?”
“That egg was the only thing with the ability to save your life. You wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for that egg.”
“I suppose I owe that giant Mother Spider a thank you.”
Slowhand’s lip curled into a snarl. “Why would you thank the Mother Spider? She’s not cognizant.”
“If she’s not aware, how did I get into the egg? You didn’t feed me to her, did you?”
“I don’t know the specifics of how biology works for your species, but I can assure you, getting you into that egg required an approach nowhere near the Mother Spider’s mouth. It was the opposite end.”
My jaw dropped. “Are you saying you put me in her…”
“Now you’re getting it.” Slowhand smiled a toothy grin.
“And she allowed this?”
“She had no idea. It was the arenea who allowed us to insert you into an unfertilized royal egg. At the cost of quite a few credits, I might add.”
“You paid that spider guy to get me into that egg? Why?”
“I didn’t pay anything. Why would I? I have no concern if you live or die. Ginnamorana entered a contract with the arenea for that service.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Even if I knew, I’m sure I wouldn’t understand.” He pointed toward an opening in the hallway with several signs on it. “I need to drop some kids off at the pool. Are you good?”
“What?”
“Lay pipe, feed the recycler, go doody? Do any of those terms mean anything to you?”
The signs began making sense in my mind. This was the bathroom, but there were so many options. “Now I understand. But I’m not sure which way to go.”
“Well, considering I saw you standing there naked, I can assume you could use one of these two.” He nodded toward a couple of signs; they looked like squiggles of nonsense. “Do you require vacuum assistance?”
“What? No!” I said.
“Then don’t go into that one.” He twisted his ears toward his right. “Try this one. It’s fairly universal.”
The facility was fitted with an opening close enough to a latrine that I was able to utilize it without hurting myself, so I considered that a minor victory. I returned to the hall and waited for Slowhand while watching a red, bat-like creature flutter past me and enter the bathroom. Would it hang upside down while relieving itself? That position wouldn’t be practical unless its plumbing was completely different than any critter I’d ever seen.
Slowhand emerged and walked a little faster now. “I need to tell you about Sarge. He has some serious memory issues, so until we can get you installed into his permanent banks, he may think you are hostile. If this happens, just tell him you are Private… What is your name, anyway?”
“Idiom Lee.”
“Private Idiom Lee. Tell him you’re a new recruit, and you joined to kill some damned crystals. He gets off on that kind of talk.”
“Crystals?”
“Just play along with him. He’ll forget what you say within a few minutes, anyway.” We walked down a long h
all that ended with a thick, metal door equipped with a long handle. “Before you open this door, make certain you don’t see a red light glowing above it. Red means dead; get it?”
“I can remember that.”
Slowhand raised up and grasped the handle with four hands, pulling it downward. The door opened by sliding back away from us and then toward the side. “This is our docking bay, number B163. And this,” he said gesturing to the left, “is Sarge.”
Something large like a barn stood before me, but somehow it looked as if it could move. It was angular in design, like a rail car or large stagecoach, and it was multicolored as if sections of it had come from different sources. The side facing me was red on the left, and yellow on the right, with the letters “AMBUL” in one script, and “XI” in another. It had one angled glass lantern on one side, the other was round, giving it the look of a surly sailor. A loading ramp extended on one side, right where the color changed from red to blue.
“What is this thing?” I asked.
“This thing is Sarge. He’s a combination of several decommissioned vessels. Part police cruiser, ambulance, taxi, and private vehicle, he’s one of a kind in this universe, and he’s here because of me.”
I ran my hand across the exterior of Sarge, trying to find a seam where the pieces had been forged together, but it was as smooth as a single pane of glass. If it weren’t for the color shift or variations in design, you’d never know they’d once been separate pieces. “How did you weld this together?”
“Normally, a question like that would be an insult, but I’ll give you a pass this one time. I did not weld this ship together; I phased it together.”
“Phased?”
“I doubt you’ll understand it, but I’ll try to dumb it down for you. Imagine you are looking at an extremely fine needle laying on a flat surface. Now if I turn that needle so it is perfectly facing one eye, and you closed the other one, you couldn’t see it. It’s still there, but it’s disappeared. When I phase shift, I can turn matter to the perpendicular dimension, so it disappears. Then I can pull the pieces together and phase them back to the normal orientation. That creates a perfect seam that happens to be stronger than the surrounding material, twice as strong in fact. By itself, it’s quite a special ship. But we’ve added one more thing that no other ship like it has. Allow me to introduce you to Sarge.” Slowhand motioned for me to climb the ramp inside.
