Invaders

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Do you not realize the grandeur of the offer?” the hominid said. “This is a chance to change your status. Humans could become serfs instead of slaves. The Master will grant humans serf status with legally binding rights.”

  “Wow,” I said, letting the sarcasm drip. “Your master really knows how to sweeten a deal. Earthmen could become your serfs. That takes my breath away.”

  “It is grand indeed,” the hominid said in his monotone. “Now, describe in detail how to fashion the weapon you used in this chamber.”

  “This is your last chance, Charlie. Show me Debby or you die.”

  “That will halt the negotiation.”

  I swore at him, unable to take any more of this. I aimed at his head and squeezed the trigger, fully intending to blast him to kingdom come.

  The hominid turned around before I gave the trigger enough pressure. He went to a console and began to touch the panel. I eased pressure to see if he would do as I’d ordered.

  “Come here,” he said. “You must observe the females and indicate Debby to me.”

  I moved around the console behind him. A screen to his left, embedded in the console, showed various people. I presumed they had come from Far Butte.

  “Her?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He tapped the console more, coming to a new scene.

  “Her?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  We repeated this many times. Where was Debby?

  Finally, he stepped back from the console. “Debby is not in the ship. I have shown you all the females.”

  “Let’s try it again,” I said.

  “It is time to bargain for your weapon.”

  “One more time,” I said.

  “You are uncommonly stubborn.”

  “It’s been said,” I told him.

  He went through the same procedure. I watched him closely this time, seeing what he did with the controls. I’d seen Debby some time ago, but had been trying to figure out the control panel. I distrusted the mind-controlled hominid. He meant to screw me, to help the Starcore screw humanity. The human race wasn’t going to be anyone’s serf if I could help it.

  Finally, as the creature continued to show me images, I shot him in the back of the head. Yeah, it wasn’t knightly. But this was for the soul of humanity.

  I ran from the chamber back to the one I’d originally entered. The controls here were similar to the ones I’d been watching.

  I pressed the tab that had turned everything off before. Lights came on the panels and power hummed all around me.

  I wiped the back of my right wrist across my lips. Then, I did what the hominid had done when he’d shown me Debby. The dais glowed as it had earlier.

  “Here goes nothing,” I whispered.

  I ran for the dais, standing on it as the chamber began to fade. I hoped I was about to appear where Debby worked.

  -39-

  I appeared in a room with gleaming metal. I panned the .44, looking for somebody to shoot, but the place was empty. It was the size of a regular high school classroom but had no furniture, no nothing expect for three closed hatches.

  I ran to the left hatch, planning to open it and jump through. Instead, I used the back of my left wrist, feeling the opening lever for residual body heat. I went to the others and did the same. I couldn’t feel anything.

  Which hatch should I use? I could waste precious time if I went through the wrong one. Would Rax insert his bomb onto the spaceship? It seemed he was wrong about the ancient Polarions lacking teleporting ability.

  Stepping back, I regarded the hatches. I decided to do what I’d done all my life during multiple-choice tests. The rule of thumb was to follow your first instinct unless you had a good reason to switch answers.

  I went to the leftward hatch, clutched the lever and almost yanked it open. At the last moment, I eased the lever and did the same with the hatch as I opened it.

  A round egg clanked at my feet, rolling—

  I bent, picked up the egg-shaped thing before it could roll too far and pitched it back. I slammed the hatch shut, almost getting it closed. Then, I heard a crump sound and the hatch blew backward, knocking me onto the metal floor.

  I lay there and might have blinked a thousand times in confusion if I’d let myself. Instead, I climbed to my feet before I realized someone had tossed a grenade at me.

  I laughed in an unhinged manner, reopening the hatch. I stepped through smoke and spied blasted-apart hominids. Gore dripped down the corridor walls. That had been some grenade.

  The smoke stung my eyes, causing them to tear up. I inhaled too much and coughed explosively, finally vomiting and spitting onto the deck. I wanted to get the taste out of my mouth.

  In a stagger, I passed the dead hominids—three of them with blackened harnesses on their charred and now hairless bodies. The corridor curved around as I staggered faster.

  A side hatch opened. I fired at the hominid poking his head through. He dropped with a big hole in his forehead.

  I stepped over the dying creature and entered what looked like a surveillance room. Screens showed various chambers—horror chambers. Unguls were strapped to different types of restraints. Needles jabbed some of them. Electrodes were attached to others. Some writhed in agony. Some screamed with their faces turning stark colors. A few of the screens showed Neanderthals in white lab coats regarding the tortured aliens. Each of the men held slates, jotting down notes.

  I finally saw Debby. She stood behind a lab-coated Neanderthal. The scientist hunched over a prone man, delicately slicing open a portion of the man’s chest. The scientist must have spoken, because Debby mechanically picked a small round item off a tray, handing it to him.

  I tried to study her face. It seemed wooden, hypnotized perhaps.

  I felt soiled witnessing this. I hated the Starcore. This was monstrous. It was evil.

  I noticed a symbol under the screen showing Debby.

  While heading for the hatch… I halted, turned to the main security console and began tapping. I had no idea what these controls did, but what the heck, I was a monkey throwing my own kind of wrench into the system.

  A klaxon blared.

  Feeling righteously murderous, I dashed out of the room and sprinted down the corridor. I noticed symbols by the hatches. It was some kind of numbering system.

  I sprinted until the klaxon’s blare lessened, until I panted from the exertion. Finally, I quit running and walked as fast as I could. Sweat dripped from my face and my side hurt.

  Eventually, I saw the symbol I’d been looking for. I tried the opening lever. It wouldn’t move.

  I put my mouth by the hatch where it touched the wall and shouted as loudly as I could, “Debby! Do you hear me? Open the hatch, Debby! Open the hatch!”

  It was a long shot. I hammered on the hatch with the butt of the .44. I bellowed some more. I hammered—

  I heard a click. The lever moved.

  Jumping back, I raised the .44, holding it with two hands. The hatch swung open. I licked my upper teeth, readying to blast—

  Debby stared at me with blood smeared across her face. She blinked with incomprehension, tried to form words and collapsed across the bottom of the portal opening.

  -40-

  I would have stopped and inspected her, but the stakes were too high for me to indulge my more tender emotions just yet.

  I leaped across her, landing in an antechamber. Motion caught my eye. A man with hairy forearms and blood oozing from his chest advanced in a staggering lurch. I recognized him from the diner. When he saw me, he did a one-eighty, staggering away.

  I shot him, and he toppled through an entrance into another area. The dying man tried to drag himself across the floor. I ran up, expecting others.

  A Neanderthal in a white lab coat rushed me from around the entrance. He held a spark-emitting rod, silently thrusting it. The end of the rod connected with my chest. A terrific shock jolted, knocking me off my feet, sending the .44
skittering across the floor.

  I groaned, managed to open my eyes enough to see the Neanderthal coming at me, and tried to slide away.

  “You are dangerous,” the Neanderthal said in a monotone. “You are an amok man sentenced to immediate death. I therefore adjust the setting so.”

  He twisted the bottom of the rod so it sparked more fiercely.

  I scrambled to my feet, pulling out my flick-knife. I trembled with exhaustion as the spring-assisted blade snapped into position.

  “Surrender,” the Neanderthal said.

  “You surrender,” I said in a slur. The shock had affected me more than I realized.

  He advanced on me with the shock rod held out like a sword. I circled around him as I dragged my left foot. He stopped, looked at the .44 on the floor—

  I charged as fast as I could, hoping to stab him. He turned and lashed at me with the rod. I desperately twisted and barely avoided what I imagined was the killing stroke.

  He jabbed. I scrambled back, tripping over my bad foot and sprawling onto the floor. I hit my left elbow hard, jarring it, making pain flare up the forearm. Even so, I crawled backward on my back to get out of range of the probing rod.

  He stopped. I began getting up—he lunged faster than he had before. I threw myself back as the rod reached for me. It touched my jacket and emitted a spark that hit me in the face. I yelled, and he might have had me there.

  Debby screamed as she leaped onto his back, trying to bear him onto the floor. He twisted around and began bringing up the rod to touch her with it.

  I threw myself at him, stabbing him in the chest. My momentum threw him back against a wall, and Debby grunted in pain, caught between him and the wall. His rod hit the wall, and it exploded with a sizzle of raw power.

  That knocked all three of us onto the floor. Debby went rolling. The Neanderthal landed flat on his chest, and I hit my side.

  I was groggy and a raw burnt odor filled the room. The Neanderthal regarded me, his half-charred face oozing blood. He no longer held the rod. It lay on the floor, looking as if it had short-circuited.

  “You are destructive,” he said in the same monotone as before.

  I hurt. I was scared of losing, and I still feared that bastard of a shock rod. This Neanderthal had proven more deadly than the rest. I came at him on my hands and knees. He watched me. Maybe he couldn’t move. Maye he was playacting. I had no idea. Probably at this point, I didn’t care. I retrieved my knife and stabbed him in his good eye, killing him.

  Afterward, I crawled on my hands and knees to Debby. She was breathing, but she looked dead-beat. I checked her for cuts. I couldn’t find away.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She frowned severely at me.

  “Logan,” I said. “It’s me, Logan. You know me from Far Butte.”

  The frown deepened, which hadn’t seemed possible.

  “You work in the white tower, remember?” I said.

  She opened her mouth, trying to speak.

  “Did you hear me calling you from the other side of the hatch?” I asked.

  She began blinking, finally nodding.

  I went for my gun then, climbing to my feet. With the .44 ready, I checked the larger chamber.

  It had a high ceiling, with big lights that were turned off, and was crammed with medical equipment along the walls and what looked like old-style computer banks. In the center of the room was a table with a naked man strapped to it. An overturned cart with various scattered surgical tools lay nearby.

  With my .44 ready, I approached the torture table. What looked like an electrical wire had been partly inserted up the man’s left forearm. The wire was attached to an electrical box on a stand. He wore a half-mask that covered his mouth and nose. Anatomically, he looked human with good musculature and white hair. If he was the same man that I had seen on the screen earlier, the cut on his chest was no longer there.

  His eyes were closed at first. Maybe he heard me, as he opened his eyes. They were starkly blue. He stared at me for a long moment before closing them again.

  I removed the mask. Something hissed from it. I followed the tube line attached to the mask to a tank. I turned the tank’s valve, stopping whatever gas they’d been feeding him.

  I looked at the wire in his forearm and hated it. I put one hand on his wrist, grabbed the wire and yanked it out.

  He moaned and opened his eyes again.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He stared at me with incomprehension.

  “Yeah, you’re beat,” I said.

  I studied the table, soon unlatching him from it. I wondered how much time we had before Rax sent his bomb, the Starcore sent reinforcements or the Organizer’s Unguls won through onto the ship. Seeing that he was alive, I went back to Debby.

  She sat up against a wall, hugging herself.

  “Get up,” I said in as close to a monotone as I could, trying to sound like the Neanderthal.

  She stood up obediently. I wasn’t sure I liked that. What did it mean concerning her free will?

  “Stand here and wait,” I said.

  She stood stiffly.

  I opened the hatch and glanced down the corridor both ways. I couldn’t see anyone. I shut the hatch and locked the lever.

  “Stay with me,” I told Debby.

  She moved behind me as I reentered the scientific torture chamber.

  The naked man stood behind the torture table with blood running down his forearm. He had an alien gun, and he fired at me as I entered.

  -41-

  The shot scored the wall to my left, leaving a big smoking hole.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “We’re friends. I’m the one who let you off the table.”

  I don’t know why I thought he was free from the Starcore’s control. It must have been his face. It was twisted with agony. The others—the Neanderthals, apish hominids and Far Butte people—had all had wooden faces. I must have instinctively believed the Starcore controlled them.

  The naked man aimed the gun at me. He reached out with his other hand, steadying it. He looked dazed and confused but seemed determined.

  “Can’t you recognize me?” I said. “I just released you from the table.”

  He kept aiming, blinking, aiming— “Friend?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, slapping my chest.

  He flinched at that, and I figured he would fire by instinct.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “I’m Logan from Earth. I was trapped in Far Butte earlier. I think we’re still on the Starcore’s spaceship.”

  Some of the confusion left his eyes. He lowered the gun, setting it on the torture table. Then, he looked around, saw something and headed for it.

  I almost lunged for the alien gun or raised my .44 at him. Instead, I watched. He went to a crumpled uniform in a corner. He grabbed it, shoved his feet inside and soon closed his metallic looking one-piece. It had several stars as adornment.

  Could he be one of the Polarions I’d seen several days ago in a Greenland stasis tube? It seemed likely. If the Starcore had been reviving the Neanderthals and hominids, why not the Polarions—who I’d taken to be Polarions, in any case.

  The man looked at me. He had clear blue, intelligent-seeming eyes, and there was something else as well. It wasn’t quite arrogance. Maybe it was majesty. He seemed higher than I was, regal, perhaps. It was obvious that he figured he was the highest-ranking person in the room.

  He moved back to the gun, picked it up and walked past me to the hatch. He didn’t look back to see if I was following him. He opened the hatch, poked his head through, looking both ways, and hurried into the corridor.

  “Stay with me,” I told Debby.

  She did just that, trying to give me a flat tire several times by stepping on the back of my boot heels. We hurried after the Polarion.

  He moved briskly, which was pretty good for a man waking up from hideous interrogation.

  “Grab my hand,” I told Debby.

  She did, and we r
an after the Polarion.

  I suppose I could you give a detailed rundown of the next half-hour. It was a blur of activity. We climbed up access tubes, raced along corridors and snuck through hatches.

  By that time, I figured Rax had tried and failed to teleport a bomb onto the ancient spaceship. We were still here, so he must have failed.

  For ten minutes, the three of us hid in an access tube as others hurried past. Their footsteps dwindled, and it was silent again. Soon, a pair of people walked past. The Polarion burst out of hiding without warning. I don’t know what calculus he used to figure it would be safe doing so with these two.

  The Polarion moved like a cat, coming up behind the two men. He fired without hesitation, his weapon spewing an electrical-type discharge.

  The two staggered as their pseudo-flesh melted, revealing gleaming metal underneath. They were robots. Had the Polarion known that, and if so, how had he known?

  The two dead machines clanked onto the deck, sparking and sizzling as they did.

  The Polarion moved swiftly. He scooped a tablet off the deck. One of the robots had dropped it. First pressing his weapon against his one-piece—it stuck there—he began to access the tablet.

  The Polarion read the tiny screen, tapped faster, and made a hissing sound.

  I’d been listening and watching the corridor for more adversaries. As the hiss, I glanced at him.

  He stared at me before abruptly hurrying to the right. He broke into a run. Debby and I ran after him, finding it difficult to keep up.

  Finally, he stopped before a red color-coded hatch. It seemed like an important area. He put his weapon on the floor, cracked his knuckles like an old-time safecracker and began to manipulate a keypad beside the hatch. He stopped for a time, staring at the keypad as if he could figure it out through sheer brainpower.

  A klaxon began to wail. That had taken long enough to occur. The blaring sound made me nervous. I turned around, looking down the corridor, expecting to see a horde of security people attacking us.

  One thing seemed sure. The spaceship was a whole heck of a lot larger inside than it had looked outside.