by M. E. Castle
“Indeed,” Dr. X said, clasping his slender hands in front of his chest. Fisher waited for him to say more, but after a moment Dr. X cleared his throat and nodded to the plastic bag Fisher was holding. Fisher sighed and removed the paper-wrapped sub from the bag, handing it over.
The evil scientist unwrapped one end of the sandwich, inhaled deeply, and took a small bite. He chewed thoughtfully as Alex crossed his arms and Amanda started tapping her foot loudly.
“Excellent,” said Dr. X, swallowing. “This will do perfectly. Now then, to the ship. Main power systems are online. We still can’t get inside, however, but I dare say it should be space worthy before too much longer. Did you manage to track down the missing component portion?”
Alex set down his bag, opened it up, and pulled out the metal scanning device. “The missing component is a shuttle—and all of the data should be in here.”
Dr. X picked up the scanner, turned it over in both hands, and checked a small readout on its side. “The scanner’s memory is full,” he said. “Assuming the shuttle wasn’t shielded in ways we can’t anticipate, we should be able to learn everything we need to know about the ship’s operating system.”
“What happens then?” asked Fisher. A nearby worker fired up a welding torch to seal a small crack in the ship’s hull and Fisher winced in the sudden flare.
“Then we try to bring the ship fully online,” said Dr. X. “The question is, what do we do with it next? This cave is thickly shielded with thousands of tons of rock and our own concrete and lead barriers, but if we bring the ship up to the surface, the Gemini will know. And they can’t know until we’re ready to throw them a going-away party.”
The flashes from the welding torch threw rapid, momentary shadows across Dr. X’s face, as if he were a long-tormented soul rising from the underworld. It was an entirely appropriate look for him.
“If we can make Earth seem like too much trouble,” Fisher said, “hopefully they’ll want to leave. Thwarting their efforts at the parade was a good start. I think we should put together a presentation on everything wrong with the planet. Pollution, poisonous animals, the threat of asteroids, all that stuff. Presenting their repaired ship to them as a gift could seal the deal.”
“And if they don’t want to leave, maybe we can use it as a bargaining chip,” Veronica added.
Dr. X nodded. “Precisely,” he said. But Fisher thought he seemed hesitant, as if he didn’t want to let the beautiful ship out of his clutches so soon. “You to your work, and I to mine.”
He performed a comically elaborate bow. Amanda glared in reply and turned on her heel. Fisher and the others followed her back to the escalator.
“Oh! One more thing,” Dr. X called after them. “Next time, I require a strawberry milk shake with a little paper umbrella. I know, I know, little umbrellas aren’t normally put in milk shakes,” he added, when Veronica started to object, “but I find them awfully charming.”
A MORONS car dropped them outside of Wompalog’s temporary home. Parade floats were still being taken apart as the cleanup effort continued. Afternoon classes were about to begin, and students weary from the parade were trudging to the classroom trailers. Fisher took a moment to realign his thoughts. For now, the Gemini were under control. They’d made their play to wreck the parade, and Fisher and the others had stopped them. Maybe the Gemini would start to realize that humans wouldn’t be so easily pushed around—or turned into breakfast.
A defender, Fisher knew, doesn’t have to destroy or even defeat an attacker. He just has to make the attacker’s job so hard that the win no longer seems worth it.
Maybe, just maybe, there was hope for Earth yet.
His phone buzzed. It was a text from his mother. At last, his parents were on their way back. As far as Fisher was concerned, they couldn’t possibly get back fast enough. Fisher felt an extra surge of hope.
The text said, We’re almost home. Don’t look up.
Fisher looked up.
What he saw in the sky blotted that hope out like a waterlogged mattress dropping on a candle. The King of Hollywood lot was in shadow. A shadow cast by a massive spaceship floating directly overhead. The ground was vibrating.
The ship was rectangular, easily four times the size of the Gemini ship and bristling with dozens of extrusions, a good portion of which were probably weapons. The hull was painted a deep black, with an occasional lightning-bolt-like slash of bright red over it. Crudely scrawled writing appeared in several spots, and the glaring white skull of some very inhuman species was stenciled on the side, a pair of crossed blades beneath it.
A massive holographic image was projected from the belly of the ship and floated in the sky above the school. The hologram looked like a lobster that had been made from discarded engine parts. Everyone at school was staring dumbly up at the craft sitting in midair. It looked like it could turn Palo Alto into a mound of glowing pebbles with a single button push.
The other kids looked like they were trying to back away but had forgotten how to walk. Principal Teed stared up with a slack jaw, dropping the clipboard from his hand. Two news crews who’d been covering the parade rushed to put their equipment back together and grab a shot.
The lobster-hologram moved its mouth and made a series of clanky, static-like sounds. A translation boomed out a moment later. “Humans, your guests have something that belongs to us. If you value your lives and your planet, we will have it back. Now.”
Space pirates. They’re like ocean pirates, with a crucial difference—treading water doesn’t help when you walk the plank.
—Vic Daring, Issue #89
“What … is … that?” Amanda let out. She backed up one step, as if to get out of the giant spacecraft’s range.
Fisher knew, with a sinking feeling, that the Gemini were to these new aliens as tiger fish were to a tiger.
The real interplanterary heavy hitters had arrived. Fisher studied the incredible, massive machine above their heads. This ship wasn’t designed to be pretty. Odds were, most of its targets never got the chance to see it.
Fisher had noticed before that the Gemini’s compulsive planet-hopping covered more distance than it needed to. They skipped resource-rich planets to cover greater distance as they traveled. This was why. They weren’t just consuming resources. They were running from their enemies, hiding out on various planets.
“Fisher.” Alex pointed to a trio of dots that had appeared on the horizon. Fisher fished a long-range scope not much bigger than a jeweler’s eyepiece from his pack, wondering if these new aliens had brought even more friends.
The scope focused automatically, and clean images came into view: narrow conical noses, clear canopies, long wings, and single tail fins.
“F-16s,” Fisher said grimly. “There’s no way air force radar could’ve missed this thing coming down through the atmosphere, and they’ve sent a welcoming party.”
The fighter jets closed to about a thousand feet away and settled into a loop, making a broad circle around the ship like a cluster of asteroids caught in a planet’s gravity. Fisher wondered if the pilots had made radio contact with whoever was inside.
After a few minutes, the underside of the huge craft lit up, and a broad green beam shone down to the middle of the lot, not far from where Fisher and the others stood. Fisher braced for the impact of a blast.
But the beam wasn’t a weapon. Three figures descended as gently as if someone had turned down the Earth’s gravity to near-zero levels … which, Fisher realized, was exactly what the beam was doing. The three beings touched down on the asphalt.
From the outside, at least, they looked completely mechanical. They had long, segmented bodies, insect-like faces with eyes on stalks, and a multitude of legs and arms. They looked, in fact, kind of like giant metal lobsters. Their many legs clacked and shifted on the ground, adjusting to their own weight as the beam turned off, and their long eyes—could they be cameras?—swiveled so that they appeared to be staring directly at Fisher. A
hint of machine oil and coins met his nostrils.
A lead ball formed at the pit of Fisher’s gut. Partially thanks to him, there was already one alien species well on its way to taking over Earth. Now, less than a week later, a second aggressive alien species had arrived. Still, he couldn’t figure out why they were here, of all places. A temporary middle school location camped in trailers around a fast-food restaurant was one of the last places he’d expect.
Alex nudged Fisher.
“I think Earth may need our diplomacy again,” he said quietly.
“Sure, because we know how well that’s worked out so far,” Fisher whispered. He wasn’t just in over his head—he was standing at the bottom of a swimming pool dug into the bottom of the ocean, in pitch-black, being crushed to nothing by the pressure.
They were barely scraping together a plan to deal with the Gemini. What could they possibly do about the newcomers?
One of the creatures began to speak in its own incomprehensible language again. It sounded like someone clanking pots and pans at the other end of a really static-y phone connection. A speaker underneath its head played a translation that overlapped its sentence.
“Are you the representatives of Earth?”
Fisher and Alex exchanged a glance. In the distance, sirens were wailing. Fisher had no doubt that soon a squadron of cops, scientists, guards, and paratroopers would descend on the parking lot. Things could only go downhill. So Fisher nodded.
“Yes,” Alex said confidently. “We simply want to establish peaceful relations.”
“We have no issue with humans,” said the alien, its transmitter crackling.
Fisher hoped he could believe them. “So what are you doing here?”
There was a short pause. “We are an independent crew of opportunistic spaceship raiders,” said one of the alien lobsters.
“You’re pirates,” Veronica blurted.
The lobster tilted one black lens-tipped eyestalk to regard Veronica. A whirring sound followed by a click emitted from somewhere in its segmented body.
“Pirates,” it said. “This word has been added to our database of your language.”
“Great. So you want to loot our planet? Search for buried treasure?” asked Amanda.
“No. We are here only to seek justice from the other beings on your planet, the—” The lobster pirate produced a wash of sound that Fisher just barely recognized as the Gemini’s proper name. “Our scans indicated this spot as the rough epicenter of their activity.”
So that was why they’d come here. Wompalog’s temporary home was about halfway between Fisher’s house and Loopity Land, and the Gemini had spent a lot of time here. The pirates weren’t wasting any time in the pursuit of their prey.
“We call them the Gemini,” said Fisher. “They crash-landed here a few days ago.”
“The … Gemini,” said the pirate, pausing as it assimilated the new word, “are in possession of something extremely valuable to us. Something that they stole en route to Earth. If you would direct us to their exact location …”
“Right here!” someone shouted. Fisher jumped and spun around. The Gemini, all twenty-six of them, were back. Their shuttle, now stripped of its parade decorations, hovered menacingly above the parking lot, and they were fanned out on the ground in front of it.
Confused voices rose up from the crowd, which had previously been struck completely dumb. Where did the Eastern European exchange students get a fancy-looking hovercraft? How did they know the robot aliens? What in the world was happening?
In the sky, the fighter jets were circling lower, probably debating what to do with their commanding officer. They couldn’t fire at the aliens without putting all the people on the ground at risk. Even if they could damage the ship, what would happen if the massive structure exploded in the lower atmosphere over a populated area? It might be enough to wipe out the whole city.
“Um, you guys?” Veronica was looking back and forth between the Gemini and the space lobsters. “I’m thinking that standing between these two is not where we want to be right now.”
“Agreed,” Alex said. “Run!”
Alex grabbed Amanda’s hand as they dashed behind the library trailer with Veronica and Fisher in tow. Everyone else—including the security guards—scrambled for cover. One of the pirates made a large step to the side. Fisher spotted one of its manipulator limbs slashing through the air in Veronica’s direction. He had exactly enough time to shove her forward and out of the way, but he stumbled backward, right into the middle of the fight. Veronica turned back for him, but he shook his head at her terrified eyes.
Four of the Gemini charged across the lot at full sprint. The pirates fanned out, and sprouted extra limbs from inside their alloy shells. The limbs were tipped with blades and weapons Fisher couldn’t even identify.
The Gemini leapt high into the air, far higher than a human could. As they hurtled toward the pirates, each pair of Gemini drones locked hands and transformed in middive. By the time they hit their targets, four young girls had become two very tall and broad, if still cheerleader-like, girls. They landed heavily on one of the metal-lobster-alien-pirates, breaking into vicious brawls.
The third pirate backed off from its grappling comrades, inclining its head downward. A massive apparatus sprung from its back. Electricity raced across its surface as the weapon charged up.
The now-giant Gemini girls rolled along the ground, trying to tear into the pirates’ armored sides with their massive, perfectly manicured and deadly nails. The pirates fought back with their many appendages, clutching and stabbing at the Gemini with piston-like limbs and grasping claws.
Every time Fisher took a step in one direction, one of the fighters would step or tumble in his way. He twisted in a dizzying circle, looking for an escape route.
Boom.
Fisher once again collapsed to his knees as the middle pirate fired off the enormous weapon affixed to its back. It felt like the noonday sun in August had just popped up, and the hairs on the back of his neck raised, full of static. The Gemini scattered out of the way just in time.
The beam struck the Gemini shuttle dead center. A lengthwise two-foot hole was cored out of it instantly, and the disabled craft crashed to the ground, its lights blinking insanely before going dark with a final whimper.
In the momentary pause that followed the explosion, Fisher ran, reaching the relative safety of the library trailer just as the Gemini, roaring with rage, resumed their attack. Veronica held Fisher tightly when he reached her.
“You all right?” she said hoarsely.
“Amazingly, yes,” Fisher gasped. “The question is, will any of us be when this fight is over?”
Eight of the Gemini ran together and began morphing into a different shape: a solid white ball the size of a small car. The other eighteen Gemini clambered into a pile, similar to a cheerleader’s pyramid, and within seconds had turned into a single giant figure, one with distinct arms, legs, and a head but no other features, like an unfinished statue. It looked like some kind of organic stone, almost polished.
The transformation left enough of a lull in the cacophony of battle that the screams and panicked shouts of the crowd became briefly audible again. The crowd clearly wanted to run, but they were too cowed by the spectacle to budge. They could only hunker down behind the trailers in terror.
The giant picked up the ball with one immense hand, wound up, and threw the glowing projectile at the pirates’ ship. As it spun through the air, it emitted a familiar sound. This time it wasn’t so much like popcorn popping as a line of firecrackers being set off.
Up and up and up it went, directly toward the pirate’s ship.
Before it could make impact, four glittering particle beams stabbed down from the underside of the ship. One blast of energy hit the ball dead-on.
The light from the explosion forced Fisher’s eyes shut, and the shock wave, hitting him a second later, made him stagger to his knees. The ship rocked slightly, and a small
area on its underside gave off sparks. Even though the ball hadn’t struck the ship directly, the nearby explosion had been enough to do significant damage.
The pirates retreated to the center of the parking lot.
“Do not think this is over,” the pirate leader said. “There is nowhere you can go where we cannot find you. You will return what is ours.” The green beam zipped the three lobsters back up far more quickly than it had set them down, and the ship flew away with a sonic boom.
With thundering engines, the F-16s chased after the pirate ship, heading for the horizon.
Fisher realized he’d been holding his breath and exhaled. The fight was over, and no one had been harmed—for now. But he knew they’d been lucky. The Gemini shuttle had been destroyed—and that was just a little skirmish. A full-scale battle could be devastating. An all-out war would decimate the planet.
The giant shape shifted back into eighteen girls. The secret was out now. Soon every news agency worldwide would be blaring this story. He wondered if some country would decide not to wait around and launch its own attack on one or both alien species. The possible bad endings to the situation had multiplied hugely.
Dozens of police cars both marked and unmarked pulled into the parking lot, sirens wailing. From one of them, Mr. and Mrs. Bas appeared. They dashed toward their kids.
“Is everyone all right?” Mr. Bas said.
Fisher nodded shakily. “Did you see the explosion?”
“From nearly a mile away,” Mr. Bas said grimly. “If the explosion had occurred on the ground, everything within five blocks of here would be flattened.”
“This is what the secret meeting was about,” Mrs. Bas said, looking up at the sky as if waiting for every other species in the galaxy with a grudge to show up.
“We knew something else had arrived in the solar system,” Mr. Bas said. “But we weren’t sure it was another ship until we got to the Pentagon. We’ve been discussing possible options for dealing with these new aliens. Frankly,” he scratched the back of his neck, “we didn’t come up with a whole lot.”
