Eclipsing Vengeance

by Jeremy Michelson

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. My heart thumped like a bunny rabbit on crack. I wasn’t so sure about letting that thing on this ship. I could be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire for all I knew.

  But I followed the Stickman’s instructions and soon enough he was telling me how to open the hatch on my side. My hand shook as I made the final motions. I was committed now.

  Not that I hadn’t already been.

  Dang it, Buck, where are you?

  I got up from the pilot’s couch. My joints crackled from sitting so long. I looked around for a weapon and my eyeballs lit on the purple stained knife. Nope. Wasn’t going to touch that.

  My gaze slid away from the Don lying on the floor. At least he hadn’t moved. I wasn’t ready to deal with space zombies.

  I head something squeaking and chirping. I eyed the silvery center door on the curved black wall. The sound got louder, then the door slid open and the Stickman flowed through it.

  The Stickman sounded like a herd of out of tune violins. The sight of him moving hurt my eyes. There were so many lines, moving, sliding against each other, bending and curving–my eye couldn’t find a solid shape in it. A part of my brain just wanted to scream and run.

  If we’d been on Earth, I woulda turned tail and beat feet.

  Didn’t have no where to run now, though.

  The Stickman slither-stepped closer. Its zillions of sticks seemed to gather together into a more coherent shape. Something vaguely person like. Two legs, two arms, a torso and a head. Sort of. No one looking at it would have been fooled unless they were blind and ten miles away from it.

  It stopped at the body of the Don. Tendrils of sticks extended from the things ‘arms’ and delicately touched the body. Then the sticks flowed over the body, squeaking and creaking and moaning. The thing reformed into its fake person shape in front of me.

  It smelled like cinnamon.

  I stood still. As still as I could with my whole body trembling, telling me to get the hell away from this nightmare thing.

  The thing spoke in its creaking, buzzy voice.

  “On behalf of SixUnion Treaty Enforcement, I hereby place you under arrest for the murder of Teh Kovan.”

  Well, didn’t that just figure.

  Sixteen

  Apparently there was an alien space prison on the ass end of Pluto. I found this out because I got trussed up by the Stickman and hauled there in his space cop car. At least Fe’zor’s spaceship smelled like cinnamon and not rancid cat food and raw sewage.

  I tried to talk to the Stickman. Explain that the Kovan dude was dead because he was trying to kill me. Fe’zor didn’t give me the time of day on my excuses though. Fact, he hardly said anything for the entire trip. I don’t know how long the trip took, either. Seemed like days. It was hard to tell, since there wasn’t no night or day in Fe’zor’s ship. Wasn’t much in the way of food either. I think I lost ten pounds. My stomach rumbled constantly. I complained about it all the time to the Stickman. The only thing he did was give me something he called a Universal Nutrition Capsule. It was about the size of a cockroach and tasted about the same.

  Course, if I’d know about the prison, I wouldn’t have complained so much about the ship.

  First thing I noticed after the ship set down on Pluto and Fe’zor escorted me out was the cold. Not just winter chill cold. Down to the marrow of your bones cold. The air was so dry I could feel the moisture steaming off my skin. No amount of lotion was going to keep my cheeks supple in that.

  Fe’zor led me down a stone corridor. It looked like it had been gnawed out of the rock by giant mutant beavers. Some places I could still see the teeth marks.

  We passed through a thick metal airlock into a dome shaped room. It stank of things that didn’t make sense to my poor nose. It was like cabbage dipped in ammonia and cat crap mixed with Louisiana hot sauce. It made my brain hurt.

  Light came a from a square fixture at the top of the room. It provided just enough light to reach the far edges of the room. There were two other arched, gated doorways at either side. At the far end of the room there was a kind of raised counter area. Behind the counter was a grumpy looking Blinky. It was dressed in some kind of dark gray coverall. The three eyes fixed on me. The pee yellow eye in the middle of the thing’s forehead creeped me out even more.

  “What’s that?” the Blinky asked.

  Fe’zor nudged me forward. His body creaked and squeaked with its cricket and violin sounds. Which I still found super creepy even after sitting in an enclosed space with it for several days.

  I stumbled forward. I was still wearing my winter clothes, thank goodness. The Stickman had put some kind of funky space handcuffs on me. There weren’t any ‘cuffs’, just a gold rod that somehow held my hands fixed to it.

  Somewhere along the way I’d lost Buck’s hat and zebra stripe coat. The Don had taken them and hid them somewhere on his ship. Fe’zor hadn’t been interested in letting me look for them. Though he towed the Don ship all the way out to Pluto.

  It was probably just as well. I had the feeling that looking like Buck might be a bad idea.

  I stepped up to the counter where the Blinky gave me a noxious look.

  “I’m from Earth and I want a lawyer,” I said.

  Two of the Blinky’s eyes (the normal white and blue ones) went to Fe’zor. The third one, the piss yellow one in the middle of his forehead, stayed on me.

  “What’s a lawyer?” he asked.

  A lump formed in the pit of my stomach. Fe’zor had asked the same question. I tried to explain it to him. His sticks had gone fuzzy like they did when he was startled or upset. That is a horrible concept, he said, why would your species do that to yourselves?

  Why indeed.

  “It is a concept that I do not wish to repeat,” Fe’zor said, “This is the sapient species of this star system. He has committed the crime of murder, by his own admission. I am remanding him to your custody.”

  “Hey, wait, don’t I get a trial?” I asked, “What about due process? What about innocent before proven guilty?”

  The Blinky shook his head. “This one is mentally aberrant then?” he asked Fe’zor.

  “I would assume so, since he had murdered without cause,” Fe’zor said.

  I spun around on Fe’zor. The Stickman skittered back a little bit from me. He’d taken on his vague human shape and now it lost a lot of its definition.

  “Hey, I had a lot of cause you creaking bundle of twigs,” I said, “That Don was going to torture and kill me.”

  “It killed a Don!” the Blinky said. He sat up straight, his three eyes going wide, “What’s a Don doing here? This is a quarantined system.”

  Quarantined system? Why the hell were we quarantined? Did we have galactic cooties or something? Maybe the mother of all STDs?

  “Those are questions that I will be endeavoring to answer,” the Stickman said, “In the meantime, you shall detain this Earther in the special cellblock.”

  Special cellblock? That didn’t sound good. Anything that ended with the word cellblock didn’t start with puppies or kittens or cotton candy. No one ever said, take him to the feather pillows and massage oil cellblock.

  “Hey, I should get a say in this,” I said, “I have rights. This is my solar system, you guys should honor our rules, not yours.”

  The Blinky snorted something that could have been a laugh, or could have been gas. “Your solar system? Your race will be lucky if SixUnion doesn’t put you creatures under a permanent quarantine blockade.”

  I yanked at the restraints on my wrist. If I could have managed it, I would have punched that thing right in his three eyes.

  “You things think you can blow up my planet? What gives you the right?”

  The Blinky got a puzzled look on his face. Or what would have passed for puzzled for a human with a piss yellow eyeball in the middle of his forehead..

  “Blow up?” he said, “What are you talking about?”

  “Killing everyone on E
arth,” I said, “That’s what you’re talking about, you piece of crap.”

  Fe’zor creaked and chirped up behind me. My skin crawled as he came closer. A wave of cinnamon scented air washed over me.

  “Earth person, we would not extinguish life on your world,” it said, “That is against all of our laws. Murder of intelligent life is the highest crime there is.”

  I thrust out my chin and puffed up my chest. “Then why were you going to let that Don kill me?”

  Fe’zor got fuzzy again and backed away. “The Don race are different.”

  I looked at the Blinky. He suddenly found something interesting to look at on his desk.

  “Different how? Aren’t they part of your Galactic Union thing?” I asked.

  “They are,” Fe’zor, “They are on the Council of Six, the founding members of SixUnion.”

  “So they don’t have to follow the rules?” I asked, “They’re more special than everyone else?”

  The Blinky cleared his throat. He fiddled with a clipboard sort of thing.

  “The Council of Six used to be the Council of Seven,” he said. His three eyes fixed me with a long stare, letting those last words sink in. “Let’s get you down to your new home.”

  “I want a lawyer,” I said.

  The Blinky did something with his thick arms that could have been a shrug. “You’ll be safer here,” he said. His three eyes went to Fe’zor, “Maybe.”

  A chill went through me that wasn’t the dry, frozen air.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Fe’zor moved away from me. “The Don will be upset at the loss of one of their princes,” he said, “But they will respect the authority represented by this facility.”

  “You’re optimistic,” the Blinky said. He gave me a sorrowful look, “Were you intending to start a war?”

  I didn’t answer. Didn’t have an answer to give.

  Holy crap on a stick, Buck, what did you get me into?

  Seventeen

  The Blinky called someone to come get me. Then Fe’zor left. Just like that. Not even a good-bye. Not that we’d become buds during our week or so together. I did miss the cinnamon smell of him though. It was better than the ammonia-rotten cabbage-whatever smell of the domed room and the three eyed Blinky who was staring at me.

  Something suddenly occurred to me. How was I understanding what Fe’zor and the Blinky were saying? I had figured Fe’zor knew english because he knew what I was. Galactic space cops were probably required to know the languages, but what about the Blinky warden sitting behind that counter. Was he speaking english? It seemed unlikely. Was there some sort of Universal Translator hanging around? Again seemed unlikely. It was convenient for a TV show like Star Trek, but improbable in the real world.

  Then again, I was standing in an alien prison on Pluto after killing a blue skinned alien in his spaceship after getting snatched off Earth by yet another alien spaceship. Improbable had gone out the window quite a ways back.

  The Blinky took me through one of the gate doors. For a moment I thought it was a cell. It was just a small, gray, metal room with nothing in it. Then I realized it was an elevator. The Blinky touched a control on his belt and the room lurched and I felt like we were falling.

  “How big is this prison?” I asked.

  “We house approximately five hundred prisoners of various races,” the Blinky said. He didn’t look at me. Stood facing the door with his back to me. Must not have thought I was a threat. What prison guard ever turned their back on an inmate?

  “You have any Dons here?”

  The Blinky jumped and cast a quick glance back at me. “No.”

  “That’s surprising,” I said, “I kind of get the idea they’re the bad boys of the galaxy.”

  The Blinky turned to me. His eyes darted in all directions. Separately. Kind of freaked me out. He leaned toward me and lowered his voice.

  “Do not speak of the Dons,” he said, “Their race is powerful and their technology is far advanced. Particularly their makers.”

  “What are makers?” I asked.

  The Blinky looked at me like I was an imbecile. The elevator thudded to a stop. So hard I almost fell. The Blinky turned back to the doors. A moment later the doors ground aside, creaking and whining. The cabbage ammonia cat crap smell rolled through the door like a slap to the face. My eyes watered and my nostrils tried to suck themselves shut.

  “Holy mother of crap,” I said, “What is that smell?”

  “It is the odor of despair,” the Blinky said, “Also, the waste removal system keeps backing up.”

  Well of course. What kind of space prison would it be if it had working plumbing? The Blinky took my arm and pulled me out of the elevator. The floor seemed to be made from stone, roughly carved. Same as the walls and ceiling. Did they bring in some giant mutant moles to build this thing? A string of square light fixtures ran along the ceiling of the long corridor. The seemed haphazardly fixed in place. A couple of them flickered. Several more seemed to be burned out.

  I half expected to see doors or bars, but the corridor was bare. The Blinky escorted me down the length of it. The only sounds were the slap of our feet on the bare stone.

  “So where is everyone?” I asked.

  The Blinky didn’t answer. Not much of a conversationalist. I took the opportunity to feel sorry for myself. Billions of miles from home, on my way to an alien prison cell. Abandoned by my alien hunter brother. Poor me. Would I ever again get to kick back in my easy chair by the roaring fire? Would I ever get to down a cold beer and a juicy bacon cheeseburger at Donna’s Cafe again?

  Well, the burgers were just okay at Donna’s. But I was going to miss hanging out with my friends there.

  We reached the end of the corridor. And, sure enough, there was another door at the end of it. The Blinky touched his belt and the door slid open. To another elevator.

  “Geez, how many elevators are we going to take?” I asked.

  “The main facility is located approximately one mile below the surface,” the Blinky said as he ushered me into the elevator, “In the event of a disturbance among the inmates, we will fill the long corridor with liquid nitrogen to discourage escape attempts.”

  I got a lump in my throat. “Yup, that would discourage me, all right,” I said, “You guys get many escape attempts?”

  “Just once,” the Blinky said.

  “Anybody escape?”

  “No.”

  So much for me organizing a breakout. I’d had visions of getting together with some badass aliens, then busting out of this joint, stealing a ship and becoming a rough and tumble pirate of the spaceways.

  Yeah, no. My main goal right now, besides not dying, was to not get raped by aliens. There wasn’t going to be any kind of rectal probing for this lost in space redneck.

  We rode the next elevator down for was seemed like a long, long time. I imagined myself getting closer and closer to the planet’s core. Pluto wasn’t that big, was it? It had to be more than a mile across, right? Somebody told me once that Pluto wasn’t even a planet. Just a big space rock.

  It definitely wasn’t as big as Earth. There was still gravity, but I felt lighter, like I could jump up a hundred feet without even trying. Maybe I could work that to my advantage. I mean, didn’t that make me stronger, too?

  The elevator finally clunked to a stop. The Blinky made the doors open and then I knew I was in a prison.

  The first thing that hit me was the unfiltered blast of alien sewage. I had thought it was bad up in the corridor. But this was something else. This was like having a giant hand grab the back of your head and shove your face into a big, steaming pile of freshly dropped space turds. The tears that ran down my face weren't from fear, it was from the stench. Really.

  The next thing was the noise. Hundred of voices, screaming and shouting, burping and farting. Everyone one of them at full blast. There were sounds like drums full of lug nuts getting rolled around in a washing machine. Screeching sounds like p
eacocks getting violated by howler monkeys. Sounds like metal grinding on stone. Sounds of bones cracking.

  Enough to about make my ears curl up in themselves.

  Then, there was the sight.

  That there was about enough to make my heart screech to a stop. Enough to make my stomach drop to my toes. It made my body shake like a super deluxe vibrator from Arlo’s Sex Shop back in Butte.

  The Blinky pushed me out of the elevator. In front of me was a short platform with a rickety looking metal railing. Beyond that…beyond that was the prison.

  It’s simple to describe, but not so simple to comprehend. In front of me stretched a large semicircle of barred cells. Below that row was another row of cells. And another row. And another row. Going down in a pit so deep I couldn’t see the bottom of it.

  Direct across from the platform me and the Blinky stood on I could see what was inside them cells.

  Aliens.

  Weren’t no mistaking any of them for people. I saw some Blinkys, gray and squat with their third pee yellow eyes stuck in the middle of their foreheads.

  Seeing them didn’t bother me any more. There were others though.

  There was something that looked like a cross between a lobster and a grizzly bear, with maybe some cockroach thrown in. It was huge, with shiny red shell parts showing where it wasn’t covered in thick, brown fur. It had four legs and two, thick arms that ended in hands that had multiple pincered claws where it should have had fingers. And its head was tiny. Kind of a black bubbled stalk sprouting up between its shoulders.

  There were several of the grizzly lobsters clustered at the far end of the row. They rattled their pincers on the bars and shouted at me. Their voices sound like someone farting at the bottom of 50 gallon drum. What in crap’s name is that thing! Did you bring us fresh meat! It looks soft, bring it over here, we’ll take good care of it.

  Made my balls try to crawl up inside my body just listening to them. Did the Blinky really say I’d be safer here? I didn’t see him smoking anything when he said it. Maybe he was already flying high on alien joy juice or happy pills.